There is a hell of a lot more to life then your job
See, if you really were a programmer, you wouldn't think of it as a job-- it would be your hobby as well. By programmer, I mean a programmer by spirit, by trade, by genes. I don't mean someone who calculated a lucurative career doing something they can do so-so but it will always just be a "job" to them.
Sure there are times you don't want ot be near a computer... true for everyone. But to pooh-pooh people who spend their off hours programming (for the fun of it) and to say there is more to life-- as if they were missing out on it-- tells me you're not a programmer.
Why is it people seem to think you have to choose between "Family" and "Career"? And often they are pooh-poohing achievement because it means you "neglected your family". WTF? Where does that come from?
We have no problem working non-stop 3 or 4 months, until a project is finished. When it is, we take off out of town for a weekend, or go out on the boat. My partner is happy, and I don't buy this argument that by working I'm neglecting my family-- they certainly are working as well.
I think there's a general agenda that downplays achievement. As if non-achievement is superior-- yes, its better to be a slacker. Cause this idea that you can't be successful AND spend quality time with your family is just bullshit.
You know, sometimes "The good things in life" really are ENGINEERING ACHIEVEMENTS. Not going out and communing with nature, though I do that as well.
Any friend who leaves you because you work to much is not a friend.
Last I checked, to be an "Engineer", you need to be accredited as such from a recognized institution. By recognized I of course mean a respected university, not a technical certification.
Now that is misusing the world.
Quoth Dictionary.com: engineer n. 1. One who is trained or professionally engaged in a branch of engineering. 2. One who operates an engine. 3. One who skillfully or shrewdly manages an enterprise.
Nothing says there that one has to join your little club or guild to call themselves an engineer.
Oh, like the RC5 cracking that showed 800MHz powerPCs almost twice as fast as 2.8GHz x86s?
No, I'm not interested in discussing this with you. This is the kind of "I think I know what I'm talking about" pseudo-techie junk I was ranting against.
AS to collecting sacrifices, if you're referring to the quoe stuffed in my bio (for handy access) there is a critical distinction: I did business with Apple out of free choice, after rationally evaluating all the options. I did not do it out of some sense of collective obligation. (IF you weren't referring to it, then I don't know what you're talking about. I got the best deal out there, and I'm surprised that people will get emotionally invested in bad money decisions.)
Re:Wow, you're an ass (Re:Good Riddance...)
on
Careers After Tech?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
It's certainly not about knowing more than you. There are people who know more than me. People I went to high school with who now have doctorates from MIT and design systems far above my ability.
I suspect you're going to be in for a rude awakening when you start teaching and you find it is more of a joyless grind than tech jobs. Teaching is fraught with politics, and by definition, is an environment suffering from an unresponsive, oppressive, CYA style bureaucracy which insures that all the money stays at the top in overhead and none of the joy gets down to the teachers. (which is the case for all taxpayer , rather than customer, funded organizations.) There's no incentive in it- lots of people don't have more valuable (as in economically) skills than to teach and so there are lots of teachers to grind thru.
Its like nursing. A very important job but they waste nurses- they use them up and throw them away.
The tech industry is not going away. It is not dying or shrinking. What we've seen is a slowdown in GROWTH. It will continue to grow and it will grow faster in the future. You're a creative person, learn java. Its the nature of reality that some ways of expressing yourself are more profitable than others. Painting is profitable for very few, java is profitable for far more, and the gap will get wider, not smaller.
Deadlines and 8 hour days are the nature of business. Politics is the nature of people. You're going to find those anywhere that people actually expect you to be productive for some business purpose (including teaching.)
You may be one of the people I was ranting about if you got into the tech industry because you thought you'd get easy money for your hobby. But I got no beef with you if you recognize the economic realities and learn the skills necessary to be viable, whatever those are for you. They may merely be how to cope with a deadline driven environment and 8 hour days, while still providing high quality results.
Or how to find companies that will provide an environment that allows that.
With any job you're going to get out of it something akin to what you put into it. Its not the industry that takes more out of you than it gives... it could be poor choice of companies, or non-investment in yourself that caused that.
I'm not talking about engineers without side interests-- what engineer doesn't? My current one is sailing. In the past I've had other outside interests.
But I've spent my life learning and that doesn't mean I spent it in school.
The multi-talented uber-geeks that you are talking about were always, and will always be geeks-- even if they open a motorcycle shop in their early retirement, they will write their own customer tracking system, etc.
What I'm talking about is the wannabes who don't really have an interest or desire to learn technology. The non-technical tech workers, who for a long time blocked the avenues for actual true geeks to get jobs. (And I'm not bitter because I was one of those blocked-- I Was well employed and well compensated.)
I saw a lot of companies- hell WORKED for some of them-- hire foolishly. Soemtimes buying someone with a degree but no engineering skill and passing over an excellent hacker (who comments their code) because they spent the four years after high school BUILDING THINGS rather than in a classroom learning 1980s era "Technology".
Yeah, I'm harsh on colleges as well- their agenda does not seem to be about bringing out the engineer and making them an excellent one. They are about McSkills and a piece of paper that gives a false sense of legitimacy. (OH, and making money-- not that there's anything wrong with that-- they just don't do it by providing great service to their customers.)
ANYONE can be successful at pretty much anything they put their minds to- especially when it comes to engineering, a category that doesn't require you to be fully able bodied and that you can teach yourself without spending much money at all.
The guy you linked to was a geek from the day he was born. He's not the group I'm talking about.
Sure. Its hard to generalize without also catching people you don't intend to in the net.
People who sincerely wanted to be tech workers (and I know some myself) but who are having trouble becoming engineers (and I use that word broadly) I got no beef with. Even if they try for awhile and then give up.
But there are a LOT of people who jumped into the arena with dollar signs in their eyes and wanted to jump on the band wagon *without being technical*.
I got no beef with anyone who's still learning, or is just inexperienced if they are sincere. Its the insincere money chasers to whom I say "Good riddance".
Basically, Real Engineers are sticking around for the long haul. We were here before the boom and we will be here afterwards. And those of use who are too young to have been here before the boom are seeing the bust as an opportunity to fine tune our skills and are NOT considering doing anything else.
People "burned out by tech jobs" are people who got into "tech jobs" because it was hot. Because it was the thing. Because companies were so desperate they didn't care, and were often run by unqualified people doing the hiring. One could argue that part of the reason so many of these companies failed is they had incompetent engineering staff (and incompetent management and marketing staff) and provided crappy, and thus, non-profitable services to people.
To all those people who jumped on the tech bandwagon and are not engineers / hackers / competant. (EG: if your title or qualification is "MCSE" or "Web Designer" or you never built a computer or operating system in high school (or something even more geeky like my roomates railgun)) then I say good riddance.
What were you doing sticking around trying to get our jobs anyway? The boom is bust, the party is over, the bandwagon got overloaded and there's no room for you.
If you don't have enough conviction that you're actually considering doing "something non-technical" I say, good riddance.
Those who worked hard and have the financial freedom to go live on a desert island-- YOU have earned the right to be "burned out" on technology and I wish you well.
But the party is definitely over, and if there's any question in your mind, then you do NOT belong in a tech job.
The dotcom "boom" saw a lot of weenies with MCSE's and dipshit "IT guys" like the one in the new apple switch advert "I used to hate macs, now I are one", vinnie pipsqueek.
If you're considering going elsewhere because of the tech slump, I say, good riddance. Too many idiots who didn't understand technology got jobs in the boom anyway. Companies were so desperate for warm bodies that they lowered the bar for hiring to such a level that it was pathetic.
IF you aren't a real engineer-- and by real engineer, I mean someone who learns new technologies in their spare time, someone who wouldn't be cought dead without a computer at home-- then you won't considering leaving.
I worked with a guy once who didn't even have a home computer. He called himself a programmer. Yeah, sure, and I'm a lawyer. He was proud of the fact that he didn't have a computer.
And given the postings of many of the people on slashdot, I think there are a lot of such posers here. (If you think a x86 gets as mauch work done in a clock cycle as a powerpc, you qualify as "not a technical person")
Go back to working retail and leave the entry level jobs for real engineers who simply lack experience (like college students etc.)
If you had experience working for software developers, I wouldn't need to substantiate the assertion.
But it is my experience, and I've a long history with various software companies.
I've seen profitable products killed because they were mac products (while the PC product was loosing money) and the company eventually goes out of business, etc.
Most marketing people working for software companies are newbies. There are few experienced marketers, and even then they tend to have a herd mentality.
I didn't say that was the market share-- I don't know the market share. but Gartner and IDC don't either.
I'm saying by thier published numbers, if you account for the way they collect data, then THEY are saying the mac market is %15-%20 of the consumer internet accessing market.
By the way, almost all mac browsers report to be PCs-- googles stats are pointless. After getting told you cant' use a website because you aren't running IE, (even when you are) people switch and report themselves as PCs.
OH, I forgot another issue with their numbers: They dont' count mac sales.
Yep.
When they say Macs have "%3" of the market, they are saying that macs make up %3 of the x86 market-- that is companies that sell x86 boxes or distribute them, also often care apple hardware and report that to them. But they don't count sales made via mac mail order companies, local mac dealers, the apple retail stores or the apple online store.
In other words, the ignore all the mac sales channels and only count sales thru x86 sales channesl as mac channels. Thus not counting most mac sales.
(I'm sure there are irregularities in how they count linux and other unix on pc hardware sales as well.)
Yeah-- they only count computers sold in a given year. People then take that number and call it the total addressable market. This ignores the fact that the average mac is kept around twice as long as the average PC.
Furthermore, Gartner counts every computer sold with windows as a windows sale, and every sale of windows software as another windows sale-- so many computers which ship with windows and are then upgraded to another version of windows are counted twice.
Furthermore, they count all computers sold with windows that are installed in a datacenter or otherwise have Linux installed as windows sales-- inflating the windows numbers and deflating the linux numbers.
They don't do ANY RESEARCH into the actual operating system installed on customers computers.
Nor do they account for the fact that many computers are bought for data centers or for business use that does not involve customer use. The business market and the consumer markets are quite different-- when you talk about selling software into a market, you're talking about the consumer market (unless you're talking business software). The huge distortion causes by counting computers that live in closets and computer rooms as addressable for software sales is very erronous-- nobody installs word or a movie editing package on these machines.
This is why these bullshit reports from IDC and gartner should not be tolerated.
Even based on THIER numbers, the Mac Marketshare of currently used computers accessing the internet is around %15 to %20. Making them prime candidates for this type of access.
Furthermore, simple thought about who runs linux boxes tells you that the linux market would probably be profitable for them as well. Even if the linux market share was only %2 (I'm not saying it is)--- whats relevant is how much money you'll make from the customers, not how much of the market there is.
For Mac software, for instance, its a very lucurative market. Mac users spend more and buy more software items than Windows users AND there's less competition. so its quite possible that if you release a good product you could be 4 times as profitable in the Mac space as the PC space-- even though its much smaller. Simply not having Microsoft there to take away your thunder is a big help in itself.
Unfortunately, most of these decisions are made by newbie marketing types who don't understand the industry and don't think for themselves-- they just all do what everyone else is doing and so you end up with 10 different applications in category X on the Windows side, all loosing money, and one done by some guy in a garage on the Mac side making more than he can figure out how to spend.
The value of a market is the number of people who will buy your service-- not the number of people you have to try and reach to tell you about the service. A 10,000 person market is more valuable than a 100 million person market if you can get 500 customers for $500 in the former and $250 customers for $1 million in the latter.
Maybe, but its doubtful. you are buying at retail in quantities of one. Apple and IBM buy in quantities of thousands at wholesale.
So if you get the SAME quality parts, the OEM gets a better deal than you.
On top of that, apple enjoys the price advantage of the PowerPC... that alone will give Apple a %15 to %20 price advantage over you, even after making their margin.
The margin on a complete system is much smaller htan the margin on all those parts you bought one at a time.
The math doesn't add up. So either you're using cheap, poor quality parts, or you paid more.
Of course you have to disagree. Your livelihood is made on the lie that I'm exposing. Not that it needs exposing, anyone who wants to can see the facts.
Even companies like Gateway and Dell ship crappy products that don't last very long.
You can get PCs of comparable quality to Macintoshes from IBM and probably Toshiba (and maybe HP before they merged with compaq.)
But to do so, you pay more than for a comperable Macintosh.
The reason for this (and the reason it will always bee like this) is the PowerPC is much cheaper for Apple and quality PC commodity parts cost the same for it and for PC manufacturers. So, apple doesn't have to pay for windows and gets faster processors for less money and passes the savings on to us.
A 667 Mhz mac is not going to perform as well in the general case as a 2+ Ghz x86 chip.
That you think this is saying something, or is even true, shows that you don't know what you are talking about.
In the general case, its likely to perform better.
Remember, PowerPCs get 2-6 times as much work done in a given clock cycle as a x86 chip (even more when you compare laptop chips). So, if the x86 has 6 times the clock rate, then you would be right "in the general case" -- ignoring memory bandwidth, system architecture, etc.
By the way, why do you feel the need to compare an older slower mac to the latest x86? It just shows your disingenuous.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see how being a sales support person or engineering support person is leaving the tech industry.
Obviously, you are not who I was talking about. You enjoy engineering, and you don't seem to want to leave the industry to boot.
There is a hell of a lot more to life then your job
See, if you really were a programmer, you wouldn't think of it as a job-- it would be your hobby as well. By programmer, I mean a programmer by spirit, by trade, by genes. I don't mean someone who calculated a lucurative career doing something they can do so-so but it will always just be a "job" to them.
Sure there are times you don't want ot be near a computer... true for everyone. But to pooh-pooh people who spend their off hours programming (for the fun of it) and to say there is more to life-- as if they were missing out on it-- tells me you're not a programmer.
Why would you want to do something that deprives you of becoming a well rounded person?
What possible justification can you have for claiming this deprives him of being a well rounded person?
How in the hell can you say that?
You have no clue, and you really are speaking out of turn.
I could say to you-- why do you advocate that people do half assed jobs and spend their time laying around accomplishing nothing?
But I won't.
Why is it people seem to think you have to choose between "Family" and "Career"? And often they are pooh-poohing achievement because it means you "neglected your family". WTF? Where does that come from?
We have no problem working non-stop 3 or 4 months, until a project is finished. When it is, we take off out of town for a weekend, or go out on the boat. My partner is happy, and I don't buy this argument that by working I'm neglecting my family-- they certainly are working as well.
I think there's a general agenda that downplays achievement. As if non-achievement is superior-- yes, its better to be a slacker. Cause this idea that you can't be successful AND spend quality time with your family is just bullshit.
You know, sometimes "The good things in life" really are ENGINEERING ACHIEVEMENTS. Not going out and communing with nature, though I do that as well.
Any friend who leaves you because you work to much is not a friend.
Last I checked, to be an "Engineer", you need to be accredited as such from a recognized institution. By recognized I of course mean a respected university, not a technical certification.
Now that is misusing the world.
Quoth Dictionary.com:
engineer n.
1. One who is trained or professionally engaged in a branch of engineering.
2. One who operates an engine.
3. One who skillfully or shrewdly manages an enterprise.
Nothing says there that one has to join your little club or guild to call themselves an engineer.
Oh, like the RC5 cracking that showed 800MHz powerPCs almost twice as fast as 2.8GHz x86s?
No, I'm not interested in discussing this with you. This is the kind of "I think I know what I'm talking about" pseudo-techie junk I was ranting against.
AS to collecting sacrifices, if you're referring to the quoe stuffed in my bio (for handy access) there is a critical distinction: I did business with Apple out of free choice, after rationally evaluating all the options. I did not do it out of some sense of collective obligation. (IF you weren't referring to it, then I don't know what you're talking about. I got the best deal out there, and I'm surprised that people will get emotionally invested in bad money decisions.)
It's certainly not about knowing more than you. There are people who know more than me. People I went to high school with who now have doctorates from MIT and design systems far above my ability.
I suspect you're going to be in for a rude awakening when you start teaching and you find it is more of a joyless grind than tech jobs. Teaching is fraught with politics, and by definition, is an environment suffering from an unresponsive, oppressive, CYA style bureaucracy which insures that all the money stays at the top in overhead and none of the joy gets down to the teachers. (which is the case for all taxpayer , rather than customer, funded organizations.) There's no incentive in it- lots of people don't have more valuable (as in economically) skills than to teach and so there are lots of teachers to grind thru.
Its like nursing. A very important job but they waste nurses- they use them up and throw them away.
The tech industry is not going away. It is not dying or shrinking. What we've seen is a slowdown in GROWTH. It will continue to grow and it will grow faster in the future. You're a creative person, learn java. Its the nature of reality that some ways of expressing yourself are more profitable than others. Painting is profitable for very few, java is profitable for far more, and the gap will get wider, not smaller.
Deadlines and 8 hour days are the nature of business. Politics is the nature of people. You're going to find those anywhere that people actually expect you to be productive for some business purpose (including teaching.)
You may be one of the people I was ranting about if you got into the tech industry because you thought you'd get easy money for your hobby. But I got no beef with you if you recognize the economic realities and learn the skills necessary to be viable, whatever those are for you. They may merely be how to cope with a deadline driven environment and 8 hour days, while still providing high quality results.
Or how to find companies that will provide an environment that allows that.
With any job you're going to get out of it something akin to what you put into it. Its not the industry that takes more out of you than it gives... it could be poor choice of companies, or non-investment in yourself that caused that.
I'm not talking about engineers without side interests-- what engineer doesn't? My current one is sailing. In the past I've had other outside interests.
But I've spent my life learning and that doesn't mean I spent it in school.
The multi-talented uber-geeks that you are talking about were always, and will always be geeks-- even if they open a motorcycle shop in their early retirement, they will write their own customer tracking system, etc.
What I'm talking about is the wannabes who don't really have an interest or desire to learn technology. The non-technical tech workers, who for a long time blocked the avenues for actual true geeks to get jobs. (And I'm not bitter because I was one of those blocked-- I Was well employed and well compensated.)
I saw a lot of companies- hell WORKED for some of them-- hire foolishly. Soemtimes buying someone with a degree but no engineering skill and passing over an excellent hacker (who comments their code) because they spent the four years after high school BUILDING THINGS rather than in a classroom learning 1980s era "Technology".
Yeah, I'm harsh on colleges as well- their agenda does not seem to be about bringing out the engineer and making them an excellent one. They are about McSkills and a piece of paper that gives a false sense of legitimacy. (OH, and making money-- not that there's anything wrong with that-- they just don't do it by providing great service to their customers.)
ANYONE can be successful at pretty much anything they put their minds to- especially when it comes to engineering, a category that doesn't require you to be fully able bodied and that you can teach yourself without spending much money at all.
The guy you linked to was a geek from the day he was born. He's not the group I'm talking about.
Sure. Its hard to generalize without also catching people you don't intend to in the net.
People who sincerely wanted to be tech workers (and I know some myself) but who are having trouble becoming engineers (and I use that word broadly) I got no beef with. Even if they try for awhile and then give up.
But there are a LOT of people who jumped into the arena with dollar signs in their eyes and wanted to jump on the band wagon *without being technical*.
I got no beef with anyone who's still learning, or is just inexperienced if they are sincere. Its the insincere money chasers to whom I say "Good riddance".
In my rant, I misspoke.
Basically, Real Engineers are sticking around for the long haul. We were here before the boom and we will be here afterwards. And those of use who are too young to have been here before the boom are seeing the bust as an opportunity to fine tune our skills and are NOT considering doing anything else.
People "burned out by tech jobs" are people who got into "tech jobs" because it was hot. Because it was the thing. Because companies were so desperate they didn't care, and were often run by unqualified people doing the hiring. One could argue that part of the reason so many of these companies failed is they had incompetent engineering staff (and incompetent management and marketing staff) and provided crappy, and thus, non-profitable services to people.
To all those people who jumped on the tech bandwagon and are not engineers / hackers / competant. (EG: if your title or qualification is "MCSE" or "Web Designer" or you never built a computer or operating system in high school (or something even more geeky like my roomates railgun)) then I say good riddance.
What were you doing sticking around trying to get our jobs anyway? The boom is bust, the party is over, the bandwagon got overloaded and there's no room for you.
If you don't have enough conviction that you're actually considering doing "something non-technical" I say, good riddance.
Those who worked hard and have the financial freedom to go live on a desert island-- YOU have earned the right to be "burned out" on technology and I wish you well.
But the party is definitely over, and if there's any question in your mind, then you do NOT belong in a tech job.
The dotcom "boom" saw a lot of weenies with MCSE's and dipshit "IT guys" like the one in the new apple switch advert "I used to hate macs, now I are one", vinnie pipsqueek.
If you're considering going elsewhere because of the tech slump, I say, good riddance. Too many idiots who didn't understand technology got jobs in the boom anyway. Companies were so desperate for warm bodies that they lowered the bar for hiring to such a level that it was pathetic.
IF you aren't a real engineer-- and by real engineer, I mean someone who learns new technologies in their spare time, someone who wouldn't be cought dead without a computer at home-- then you won't considering leaving.
I worked with a guy once who didn't even have a home computer. He called himself a programmer. Yeah, sure, and I'm a lawyer. He was proud of the fact that he didn't have a computer.
And given the postings of many of the people on slashdot, I think there are a lot of such posers here. (If you think a x86 gets as mauch work done in a clock cycle as a powerpc, you qualify as "not a technical person")
Go back to working retail and leave the entry level jobs for real engineers who simply lack experience (like college students etc.)
Actually, I do. Unlike most posters to slashdot, I have actually studied microprocessor architecture.
Apparently most of you don't even know how the x86 architecture works- its tradeoffs for high clock speed, specifically.
If you had experience working for software developers, I wouldn't need to substantiate the assertion.
But it is my experience, and I've a long history with various software companies.
I've seen profitable products killed because they were mac products (while the PC product was loosing money) and the company eventually goes out of business, etc.
Most marketing people working for software companies are newbies. There are few experienced marketers, and even then they tend to have a herd mentality.
I didn't say that was the market share-- I don't know the market share. but Gartner and IDC don't either.
I'm saying by thier published numbers, if you account for the way they collect data, then THEY are saying the mac market is %15-%20 of the consumer internet accessing market.
By the way, almost all mac browsers report to be PCs-- googles stats are pointless. After getting told you cant' use a website because you aren't running IE, (even when you are) people switch and report themselves as PCs.
OH, I forgot another issue with their numbers: They dont' count mac sales.
Yep.
When they say Macs have "%3" of the market, they are saying that macs make up %3 of the x86 market-- that is companies that sell x86 boxes or distribute them, also often care apple hardware and report that to them. But they don't count sales made via mac mail order companies, local mac dealers, the apple retail stores or the apple online store.
In other words, the ignore all the mac sales channels and only count sales thru x86 sales channesl as mac channels. Thus not counting most mac sales.
(I'm sure there are irregularities in how they count linux and other unix on pc hardware sales as well.)
Yeah-- they only count computers sold in a given year. People then take that number and call it the total addressable market. This ignores the fact that the average mac is kept around twice as long as the average PC.
Furthermore, Gartner counts every computer sold with windows as a windows sale, and every sale of windows software as another windows sale-- so many computers which ship with windows and are then upgraded to another version of windows are counted twice.
Furthermore, they count all computers sold with windows that are installed in a datacenter or otherwise have Linux installed as windows sales-- inflating the windows numbers and deflating the linux numbers.
They don't do ANY RESEARCH into the actual operating system installed on customers computers.
Nor do they account for the fact that many computers are bought for data centers or for business use that does not involve customer use. The business market and the consumer markets are quite different-- when you talk about selling software into a market, you're talking about the consumer market (unless you're talking business software). The huge distortion causes by counting computers that live in closets and computer rooms as addressable for software sales is very erronous-- nobody installs word or a movie editing package on these machines.
Basically, their numbers are made up.
This is why these bullshit reports from IDC and gartner should not be tolerated.
Even based on THIER numbers, the Mac Marketshare of currently used computers accessing the internet is around %15 to %20. Making them prime candidates for this type of access.
Furthermore, simple thought about who runs linux boxes tells you that the linux market would probably be profitable for them as well. Even if the linux market share was only %2 (I'm not saying it is)--- whats relevant is how much money you'll make from the customers, not how much of the market there is.
For Mac software, for instance, its a very lucurative market. Mac users spend more and buy more software items than Windows users AND there's less competition. so its quite possible that if you release a good product you could be 4 times as profitable in the Mac space as the PC space-- even though its much smaller. Simply not having Microsoft there to take away your thunder is a big help in itself.
Unfortunately, most of these decisions are made by newbie marketing types who don't understand the industry and don't think for themselves-- they just all do what everyone else is doing and so you end up with 10 different applications in category X on the Windows side, all loosing money, and one done by some guy in a garage on the Mac side making more than he can figure out how to spend.
The value of a market is the number of people who will buy your service-- not the number of people you have to try and reach to tell you about the service. A 10,000 person market is more valuable than a 100 million person market if you can get 500 customers for $500 in the former and $250 customers for $1 million in the latter.
Maybe, but its doubtful. you are buying at retail in quantities of one. Apple and IBM buy in quantities of thousands at wholesale.
So if you get the SAME quality parts, the OEM gets a better deal than you.
On top of that, apple enjoys the price advantage of the PowerPC... that alone will give Apple a %15 to %20 price advantage over you, even after making their margin.
The margin on a complete system is much smaller htan the margin on all those parts you bought one at a time.
The math doesn't add up. So either you're using cheap, poor quality parts, or you paid more.
Of course you have to disagree. Your livelihood is made on the lie that I'm exposing. Not that it needs exposing, anyone who wants to can see the facts.
Even companies like Gateway and Dell ship crappy products that don't last very long.
You can get PCs of comparable quality to Macintoshes from IBM and probably Toshiba (and maybe HP before they merged with compaq.)
But to do so, you pay more than for a comperable Macintosh.
The reason for this (and the reason it will always bee like this) is the PowerPC is much cheaper for Apple and quality PC commodity parts cost the same for it and for PC manufacturers. So, apple doesn't have to pay for windows and gets faster processors for less money and passes the savings on to us.
arstechnica?
A site run by a bunch of high school freshman who don't even know the basics of computer architecture, let alone microprocessor design?
Don't believe everything you read, especially from sources as ignorant as that one.
There's nothing of value there-- unless you want to feel better about buying a PC.
Nevermind that Theming the OS is yet another Apple innovation copied by everyone else!
The first ever "themes" were changing the desktop, which you could do on macs for years before Windows even shipped. And its gone from there.
You have got to be kidding. There isn't even any GUI for switching themes AT ALL.
You have proven yourself to be an idiot in the past, so I'm not going to waste my time with the rest of your message-- I didn't even read it.
But the answer to this is in System Preferences, under general.
If you want to do that, nobody at apple is stopping you.
Hell, you can run XWindows instead of Aqua if you want to.
Yeah, you've made that assertion before, and in public too.
Unfortunately, I believe you are misrepresenting the situation. (Polite talk for "making it up".)
A 667 Mhz mac is not going to perform as well in the general case as a 2+ Ghz x86 chip.
That you think this is saying something, or is even true, shows that you don't know what you are talking about.
In the general case, its likely to perform better.
Remember, PowerPCs get 2-6 times as much work done in a given clock cycle as a x86 chip (even more when you compare laptop chips). So, if the x86 has 6 times the clock rate, then you would be right "in the general case" -- ignoring memory bandwidth, system architecture, etc.
By the way, why do you feel the need to compare an older slower mac to the latest x86? It just shows your disingenuous.