When iTunes opened up a Canadian store, I stopped buying pre-recorded CDs. Now I've got to pay an extra levy for my purchased music to put them on media I can use in the car.
Considering that 10% of my CD burning involves music, it's nice to know that such a large portion of the levy is going to the music industry. I can imagine a lot of Canucks leeching even more music just to "stick it to the man."
I actually saw a prototype of this technology by Fujitsu last year, and they indeed had a map facing the driver and a movie facing the passenger, and it worked quite well.
It was pretty seamless and when you were in the correct viewing position, you would have no idea that the person beside you saw something completely different.
The Mac threat to desktop Linux distributions such as Xandros and Linspire exists more for new computer purchases than those switching on the same box. (Note: From my experience Xandros and Linspire need a pretty recent CPU to get decent performance.)
The ability to run some legacy Windows applications on an x86 Macintosh at a decent clip is compelling when combined with the fact that there are major software vendors providing native Macintosh software. This will "ease the switch" for many Windows users.
The usability of Xandros and Linspire, while quite good compared to some other distros is still not up to Mac OSX (or even Windows XP for that matter). Xandros and Linspire really can't compete with the iLife bundle and iPod friendliness that you get with a Mac x86.
How is it FUD? The article is about how distros like Xandros and Linspire should have something to worry about, not Linux as a whole.
And you know what? Xandros and Linspire do have something to worry about. Michael Robertson may say he has nothing to worry about (for those who aren't on the mailing list for Michael's Minute, he says he would rather see Apple go further and have OSX run on commodity white boxes, which is easy to say when you know that's not going to be the case).
Here's the deal. Linspire and a "well equipped" version of Xandros cost money. They're _sold_ as an alternative to Windows. Granted, both Linspire and Xandros have come a long way (I've used both fairly extensively), I would say they're not nearly as mature as OSX or even Windows.
As an alternative to Windows, OSX is quite viable. You've got software coming from many major vendors, like Quicken, Adobe and heck, even Microsoft. There are even commercial branded games available for OSX. How the gaming landscape shapes up post-cpu-switch remains to be seen, but at least there are several known titles with mindshare.
Those who might be thinking, "yeah, I hate Windows, what are my alternatives?" may not consider Linspire or Xandros once Mac OSX is available. People, and by "people", I mean the non-geek world, see Photoshop as a known entity, and the Gimp as some leather bound character from a Tarantino movie.
Perception _is_ reality. People will now see Macs as running with hardware competitive to Windows white boxes offering usability (no slag to G5s, but the mass market just doesn't know better), a wide selection of NAME BRAND software (even a game or two) and a helluva lot fewer headaches.
The only reason to buy a PC loaded with Linspire or Xandros comes down to price. If you compare these two distros to OSX, the old cliche rings true - you get what you pay for.
As a primarily Windows user with a "hobby" mac, I will be one of the so-called 5% of users who will be buying a Mac to run Windows. In fact, I only plan on buying Apple x86 hardware from now on.
Keep in mind, I don't plan on dual booting either. My bills are paid with Windows, but if I can use virtualization to run Windows in OSX at 80% of the machine's native speed, I can live with that. VMWare runs nicely in Windows for most tasks except for those that are intensive in I/O, and I would expect similar results from a Mac port. Expecting a Mac version of VMWare is a bit of a leap of faith, however.
What I don't want to be using is VirtualPC. Virtual PC on Windows is currently a little less slick than VMWare, at least when I've used it. Anything but VirtualPC please.
More accurately, until now, Apple has always designed their own motherboards. 2 weeks ago, you might have said "Apple has never used an Intel CPU in their computers and never will."
I agree. In some ways, Apple can counteract the Osborne effect by taking the tack that "now's your last chance to get a PPC based Mac" -- it _may_ (or may not) work on the zealots who hate the Intel chipset. After all the bitching and moaning by the faithful on the inferiority of the Intel chips, you would figure they would be running out by the boatload to get their last artifact of Mac CPU history before having to move to the so-called dark side.
I myself got a Mac Mini earlier this spring, and I have no regrets - it does what I want and expect it to do. All I can say for a fact is that all of my future computers will likely (99% odds) be Apple x86 hardware. No more white boxes for me.
It's time for the naysayers to simply get over themselves. The Mac is just a computer. As long as it still works like a Mac, why waste your time worrying? Summer's almost here, and I'm sure there are more important things to worry about than what kind of chip your next Mac will have.
Get over it. If you're buying any electronic item, you should be used to it. Just about every electronic item I've had, from my digital camera to my PDA to my camcorder has had a cheaper, faster replacement within six months of purchase.
You may as well stop buying electronics altogether than blame a company for your bad timing.
I second the motion. Who cares about dual boot when stuff like VMWware or Virtual PC would do?
What I'd like to see is Apple buying Transgaming and Codeweavers and putting some R&D money into WINE so that you can run windozeware without even launching Windows.
In any case, as a Windows user who recently got a Mac Mini, I find that I can do just about everything I can do in Windows with a Mac, often using the same software from major vendors. So outside of gaming or specific applications (i.e. stuff people might use at work only), I can't imagine a real need to have a dual boot system.
How many Apple fans are going to change their tune from "Apple has always been a hardware company" to "Apple has always been a software company"? What a complete 180 for Apple.
You mean what a complete 180 for Apple fanatics. I can't tell you how many times I've been flamed with those comments for wishing out aloud that Apple would switch to proprietary x86.
Hell might have frozen over today, but last time I checked, the Devil was a bad guy - so this has to be good news. If VMWare releases a version for an x86 Mac, I'm only going to be buying Apple hardware from this day forward. This is coming from a predominantly Windows user (I do have a McMini though).
As long as it works like a Mac and runs all my software as well as a current Mac can, I couldn't care less what CPU it's running on.
Either way, it's not as though the x86 is totally inferior to the PPC. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses compared to its rival.
Short of the zealots (who happen to gravitate to this site), I would tend to think my fellow mac users would feel the same way. The experience is what makes a Mac, not the cpu.
All I can say is that it would be kickass to have a Mac with WINE or VMWare to run 'doze in a pinch without sacrificing too much performance.
Can't the Mac shills finally give up on the car metaphors? When it comes down to it, the car metaphor is just damned stupid.
If you think about the analogy, most people in the REAL WORLD would probably pick the Charger for several reasons:
Price - Nobody in the upper middle class or below can even afford to buy a Lambo -- that makes the "certain breed of people" over 80% of the population
Insurance Cost
Practicality - The Lambo is so low that it's impractical to drive into any of the strip malls you find in North America without scraping the bottom.
Fuel Economy (I doubt an old Charger has good fuel economy, but it's gotta be better than an Lambo)
Noise - if you like listening to the radio in the car, don't get a Lambo
Carjack magnet - Highly doubtful that anyone's going to try to pull a gun on you when you're getting into your old Charger
Drivability - not everyone, especially Joe Average, knows how to drive a car with the performance characteristics of a Lambo. If you shred the clutch on a Charger, who cares? It's a piece of crap anyways.
Maintainability - I doubt the mechanic at the end of your street is going to be able to service your Lambo.
Two-seater - where you going to put your kids?
Trunk space - Not sure the Lambo is very useful there either
Year round driving in places with snow
I'm sure I could go on and on about how the "refined" Lambourghini isn't really that great a car for most people.
And, of course, like the guy in the Charger, the Linux people will extoll the limited virtues of their decision while gleefully ignoring the fact that they're still driving around in something that smells like pee.
Could also read:
And of course, like the guy in the Lambourghini, the Mac people will extoll the limited virtues of their decision while gleefully ignoring the fact that having an expensive car is still no guarantee of getting laid.
Of course, if the two cars were free, I'd take the Lambo so I could sell it and get a practical car like a Toyota Camry or a Honda Odyssey.
While my use of the term "hardware" was ambiguous, I perceive hardware to be how everything is put together. Yes, the Mac is made up of some pretty generic components, but it is how it is _put together_ as an entire system that is fabulous. The iMac, Mac Mini and Powerbooks are excellent examples of hardware design as a whole.
"a remarkably stable and well thought out OS" Just as my comment related to the hardware above, I see the operating system as more than just its kernel. I primarily use (and like) Windows. I've used (and paid for) several of the more usable flavors of Linux including Xandros and Linspire. None of them are as well "put together" as OS X. They might excel at one thing or another, but they don't make an attempt to give you everything. While I do think that the Finder sucks and that OSX could be snappier, it is probably the most well put together OS I've used since BeOS.
"and excellent (sometimes unrivalled) media software are the Mac's edge" I would say that most of the rivals to Final Cut, iPhoto (despite being pig ass slow), iMovie et al, have quite a ways to go. I've tried many of the competitors on Windows, but they've always left me wanting in the area of usability or integration with the other types of media tools.
Not to mention, the PowerPC processor is the only edge Macs have left on PC hardware.
Personally, I think that is a load of crap. I didn't buy my Mac Mini because of the chip, I bought it for iLife (in the interest of full disclosure, I'm an "adder", not a die-hard Mac user).
Apple's chip strategy leaves me baffled. How can the PPC provide an edge when users are still waiting for the "promised" 3.0 GHZ chips that were supposed to be available within a year of the G5's release? Even the XBOX360 alpha units, which are G5 towers, are said to be only a third of the power of the console. I might add that we're talking about console that will likely cost only $300. The thing that has always bothered me about Macs is the length of the "speed bump cycle". The x86 world is abuzz about multi-cores and such, and here we are, still stuck with "Power"-books that don't even have G5s.
Offtopic aside: How cool would it be to see Mac on Linux run on an XBOX360 hacked to run Linux?
Fabulous hardware design, a remarkably stable and well thought out OS, and excellent (sometimes unrivalled) media software are the Mac's edge. I like Windows and Linux, but I don't think they do quite as good a job as Apple does in all three of those areas. Change the guts of a Mac and you'll still have more than "an overpriced PC running a pretty gui on top of BSD".
There is infinitely more to the Mac than the CPU that it runs on.
It works fine. There is one glitch under Win2K (apparently it works ok in XP) - the box rings on an inbound call. Under XP, the phone itself will ring. Normally this isn't an issue, unless you're one of those daring people who don't have a land line and want to set up a centralized Skype server for the entire house. If that's the case, make sure the server is running XP, and you're good to go.
I've been using a USB device for Skype that allows me to use a normal phone with it for a few months now. Works great. Skype's not for everyone, and it doesn't work perfectly all the time, but it's the first one that I've actually used with some frequency (the "virtual" company I work for uses Skype and SkypeOut a lot, because it's cost-effective). It's great that there's a Mac, Windows, Linux and Windows Mobile version of Skype. I've used all but the Mac version of it (too lazy to install), and they all work great.
John Perry Barlow had an amusing blog entry about his experience with Skype. Personally, I disable strangers from trying to contact me, but so far, it seems like Skype is this decade's ICQ.
And since when did any photo application have to resize a thousand photos at a pop? With most monitors, you can't see more than maybe 50 thumbnails clearly, so why waste processing time on the remaining 950?
Your narrow view of what Excel can or can't do prevents you from seeing how or why companies do use Excel.
Sometimes the VBA IDE of Excel allows developers to sneak in applications under the nose of bureaucratic IT departments. In some cases, very little of Excel's functionality is even used. Excel just happens to be the transport mechanism for the application. It's a cheap and sneaky way of avoiding red tape in some large organizations.
What makes you think that all Excel applications even store data in the worksheets? I had a project where my client was using Excel to hit a real database to generate charts and graphs into PDFs for delivery over the web. The reason why? Because they were too cheap to spend any additional money on the reporting tool offered by their data warehouse vendor (the license alone cost more than the development effort in Excel). I would have rather done the project in PHP, but PHP was not an approved development platform at the company.
It's quite easy and feasible to create an application in Excel that acts as a presentation and logic layer to centrally stored data.
The funniest thing is that two years ago, I would have dismissed Excel in the same way you do. It just happened that I landed a bunch of projects where I realized that there were situations where writing applications in Excel made a lot of sense.
My Mac Mini does have a gig of ram. I don't know if that's a ton of ram, but it should be sufficient.
Sure, it's a low end mac, and you can probably say that about any of the current Powerbooks too. I don't recall any of the Powerbooks being G5s or dual G4s, for that matter. Yes, the hard drive on my Mac Mini only spins at 5400 rpm, but I don't think it should have that much of an impact on stuff like just surfing the Internet.
The Mini is my first Mac since around 1997. I don't recall System 8 having as much latency as OSX does.
Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy my Mac, but there is no way in hell that you can get me to say that the general GUI feels zippy. Compared to Windows or Xandros (Linux), it sometimes feels like molasses.
While the Mac can (and eventually will) replace all of the day-to-day activities I use my Wintel box for, the zippiness or lack of keeps me going back to Windoze for most of my non-iLife activities.
Call me cynical but I don't think it's possible to create "professional level applications" using Excel.
If what you're saying is true, you shouldn't be able to write professional level applications using Visual Basic either. You can do almost as much in Excel as you can in Visual Basic. The main difference is that one program results in an.exe file, and the other in an.xls file.
That of course, is not to say that Excel should be your platform of choice, but if that's what your client wants or needs, then give it to them.
Right. That's what Excel is for - importing data and transforming it. It's not designed to be the source of data itself.
Last I checked, Excel was a spreadsheet, not an ETL tool. Excel is a great tool for data entry, because so many people know how to use it without retraining. You don't even need to use a vb form to get data.
All of the form crap is easily handled with
VB.NET, which you can get for super cheap.
You neglect to consider that you have to send out installers to all the users of the application. This doesn't necessarily fly in many organizations. Excel has already been installed on the workstation, all you need to do is double click the XLS and say OK to running macros. Granted, there are security issues, but there are legitimate reasons (many of which are political) for using Excel as a development platform.
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When iTunes opened up a Canadian store, I stopped buying pre-recorded CDs. Now I've got to pay an extra levy for my purchased music to put them on media I can use in the car.
Considering that 10% of my CD burning involves music, it's nice to know that such a large portion of the levy is going to the music industry. I can imagine a lot of Canucks leeching even more music just to "stick it to the man."
I actually saw a prototype of this technology by Fujitsu last year, and they indeed had a map facing the driver and a movie facing the passenger, and it worked quite well.
It was pretty seamless and when you were in the correct viewing position, you would have no idea that the person beside you saw something completely different.
Sorry, let me add a little more context:
The Mac threat to desktop Linux distributions such as Xandros and Linspire exists more for new computer purchases than those switching on the same box. (Note: From my experience Xandros and Linspire need a pretty recent CPU to get decent performance.)
The ability to run some legacy Windows applications on an x86 Macintosh at a decent clip is compelling when combined with the fact that there are major software vendors providing native Macintosh software. This will "ease the switch" for many Windows users.
The usability of Xandros and Linspire, while quite good compared to some other distros is still not up to Mac OSX (or even Windows XP for that matter). Xandros and Linspire really can't compete with the iLife bundle and iPod friendliness that you get with a Mac x86.
Because it's highly likely that an x86 Mac will be able to run Windows better than any PPC based Mac whether it be dual boot or virtualisation.
How is it FUD? The article is about how distros like Xandros and Linspire should have something to worry about, not Linux as a whole.
And you know what? Xandros and Linspire do have something to worry about. Michael Robertson may say he has nothing to worry about (for those who aren't on the mailing list for Michael's Minute, he says he would rather see Apple go further and have OSX run on commodity white boxes, which is easy to say when you know that's not going to be the case).
Here's the deal. Linspire and a "well equipped" version of Xandros cost money. They're _sold_ as an alternative to Windows. Granted, both Linspire and Xandros have come a long way (I've used both fairly extensively), I would say they're not nearly as mature as OSX or even Windows.
As an alternative to Windows, OSX is quite viable. You've got software coming from many major vendors, like Quicken, Adobe and heck, even Microsoft. There are even commercial branded games available for OSX. How the gaming landscape shapes up post-cpu-switch remains to be seen, but at least there are several known titles with mindshare.
Those who might be thinking, "yeah, I hate Windows, what are my alternatives?" may not consider Linspire or Xandros once Mac OSX is available. People, and by "people", I mean the non-geek world, see Photoshop as a known entity, and the Gimp as some leather bound character from a Tarantino movie.
Perception _is_ reality. People will now see Macs as running with hardware competitive to Windows white boxes offering usability (no slag to G5s, but the mass market just doesn't know better), a wide selection of NAME BRAND software (even a game or two) and a helluva lot fewer headaches.
The only reason to buy a PC loaded with Linspire or Xandros comes down to price. If you compare these two distros to OSX, the old cliche rings true - you get what you pay for.
As a primarily Windows user with a "hobby" mac, I will be one of the so-called 5% of users who will be buying a Mac to run Windows. In fact, I only plan on buying Apple x86 hardware from now on.
Keep in mind, I don't plan on dual booting either. My bills are paid with Windows, but if I can use virtualization to run Windows in OSX at 80% of the machine's native speed, I can live with that. VMWare runs nicely in Windows for most tasks except for those that are intensive in I/O, and I would expect similar results from a Mac port. Expecting a Mac version of VMWare is a bit of a leap of faith, however.
What I don't want to be using is VirtualPC. Virtual PC on Windows is currently a little less slick than VMWare, at least when I've used it. Anything but VirtualPC please.
In other news, NASA announced the revival of the Apollo program. The first ship will be called the Apollo Creed.
More accurately, until now, Apple has always designed their own motherboards. 2 weeks ago, you might have said "Apple has never used an Intel CPU in their computers and never will."
Never say never.
I agree. In some ways, Apple can counteract the Osborne effect by taking the tack that "now's your last chance to get a PPC based Mac" -- it _may_ (or may not) work on the zealots who hate the Intel chipset. After all the bitching and moaning by the faithful on the inferiority of the Intel chips, you would figure they would be running out by the boatload to get their last artifact of Mac CPU history before having to move to the so-called dark side.
I myself got a Mac Mini earlier this spring, and I have no regrets - it does what I want and expect it to do. All I can say for a fact is that all of my future computers will likely (99% odds) be Apple x86 hardware. No more white boxes for me.
It's time for the naysayers to simply get over themselves. The Mac is just a computer. As long as it still works like a Mac, why waste your time worrying? Summer's almost here, and I'm sure there are more important things to worry about than what kind of chip your next Mac will have.
I'm unlikely to buy Apple again.
Get over it. If you're buying any electronic item, you should be used to it. Just about every electronic item I've had, from my digital camera to my PDA to my camcorder has had a cheaper, faster replacement within six months of purchase.
You may as well stop buying electronics altogether than blame a company for your bad timing.
I second the motion. Who cares about dual boot when stuff like VMWware or Virtual PC would do?
What I'd like to see is Apple buying Transgaming and Codeweavers and putting some R&D money into WINE so that you can run windozeware without even launching Windows.
In any case, as a Windows user who recently got a Mac Mini, I find that I can do just about everything I can do in Windows with a Mac, often using the same software from major vendors. So outside of gaming or specific applications (i.e. stuff people might use at work only), I can't imagine a real need to have a dual boot system.
Hell might have frozen over today, but last time I checked, the Devil was a bad guy - so this has to be good news. If VMWare releases a version for an x86 Mac, I'm only going to be buying Apple hardware from this day forward. This is coming from a predominantly Windows user (I do have a McMini though).
As long as it works like a Mac and runs all my software as well as a current Mac can, I couldn't care less what CPU it's running on.
Either way, it's not as though the x86 is totally inferior to the PPC. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses compared to its rival.
Short of the zealots (who happen to gravitate to this site), I would tend to think my fellow mac users would feel the same way. The experience is what makes a Mac, not the cpu.
All I can say is that it would be kickass to have a Mac with WINE or VMWare to run 'doze in a pinch without sacrificing too much performance.
If you think about the analogy, most people in the REAL WORLD would probably pick the Charger for several reasons:
- Price - Nobody in the upper middle class or below can even afford to buy a Lambo -- that makes the "certain breed of people" over 80% of the population
- Insurance Cost
- Practicality - The Lambo is so low that it's impractical to drive into any of the strip malls you find in North America without scraping the bottom.
- Fuel Economy (I doubt an old Charger has good fuel economy, but it's gotta be better than an Lambo)
- Noise - if you like listening to the radio in the car, don't get a Lambo
- Carjack magnet - Highly doubtful that anyone's going to try to pull a gun on you when you're getting into your old Charger
- Drivability - not everyone, especially Joe Average, knows how to drive a car with the performance characteristics of a Lambo. If you shred the clutch on a Charger, who cares? It's a piece of crap anyways.
- Maintainability - I doubt the mechanic at the end of your street is going to be able to service your Lambo.
- Two-seater - where you going to put your kids?
- Trunk space - Not sure the Lambo is very useful there either
- Year round driving in places with snow
I'm sure I could go on and on about how the "refined" Lambourghini isn't really that great a car for most people.Could also read:
And of course, like the guy in the Lambourghini, the Mac people will extoll the limited virtues of their decision while gleefully ignoring the fact that having an expensive car is still no guarantee of getting laid.
Of course, if the two cars were free, I'd take the Lambo so I could sell it and get a practical car like a Toyota Camry or a Honda Odyssey.
Take a look from the big picture.
"fabulous hardware"
While my use of the term "hardware" was ambiguous, I perceive hardware to be how everything is put together. Yes, the Mac is made up of some pretty generic components, but it is how it is _put together_ as an entire system that is fabulous. The iMac, Mac Mini and Powerbooks are excellent examples of hardware design as a whole.
"a remarkably stable and well thought out OS"
Just as my comment related to the hardware above, I see the operating system as more than just its kernel. I primarily use (and like) Windows. I've used (and paid for) several of the more usable flavors of Linux including Xandros and Linspire. None of them are as well "put together" as OS X. They might excel at one thing or another, but they don't make an attempt to give you everything. While I do think that the Finder sucks and that OSX could be snappier, it is probably the most well put together OS I've used since BeOS.
"and excellent (sometimes unrivalled) media software are the Mac's edge"
I would say that most of the rivals to Final Cut, iPhoto (despite being pig ass slow), iMovie et al, have quite a ways to go. I've tried many of the competitors on Windows, but they've always left me wanting in the area of usability or integration with the other types of media tools.
Not to mention, the PowerPC processor is the only edge Macs have left on PC hardware.
Personally, I think that is a load of crap. I didn't buy my Mac Mini because of the chip, I bought it for iLife (in the interest of full disclosure, I'm an "adder", not a die-hard Mac user).
Apple's chip strategy leaves me baffled. How can the PPC provide an edge when users are still waiting for the "promised" 3.0 GHZ chips that were supposed to be available within a year of the G5's release? Even the XBOX360 alpha units, which are G5 towers, are said to be only a third of the power of the console. I might add that we're talking about console that will likely cost only $300. The thing that has always bothered me about Macs is the length of the "speed bump cycle". The x86 world is abuzz about multi-cores and such, and here we are, still stuck with "Power"-books that don't even have G5s.
Offtopic aside: How cool would it be to see Mac on Linux run on an XBOX360 hacked to run Linux?
Fabulous hardware design, a remarkably stable and well thought out OS, and excellent (sometimes unrivalled) media software are the Mac's edge. I like Windows and Linux, but I don't think they do quite as good a job as Apple does in all three of those areas. Change the guts of a Mac and you'll still have more than "an overpriced PC running a pretty gui on top of BSD".
There is infinitely more to the Mac than the CPU that it runs on.
While I never thought TigerDirect had much of a case, their attempt did bring a smile to my face.
They have also been known to use their legal eagles as bullies.
It's good to see that what comes around, goes around.
IIRC, Patrick Stewart did voiceover for Porsche commercials in the 90s.
It works fine. There is one glitch under Win2K (apparently it works ok in XP) - the box rings on an inbound call. Under XP, the phone itself will ring. Normally this isn't an issue, unless you're one of those daring people who don't have a land line and want to set up a centralized Skype server for the entire house. If that's the case, make sure the server is running XP, and you're good to go.
I've been using a USB device for Skype that allows me to use a normal phone with it for a few months now. Works great. Skype's not for everyone, and it doesn't work perfectly all the time, but it's the first one that I've actually used with some frequency (the "virtual" company I work for uses Skype and SkypeOut a lot, because it's cost-effective). It's great that there's a Mac, Windows, Linux and Windows Mobile version of Skype. I've used all but the Mac version of it (too lazy to install), and they all work great.
John Perry Barlow had an amusing blog entry about his experience with Skype. Personally, I disable strangers from trying to contact me, but so far, it seems like Skype is this decade's ICQ.
And since when did any photo application have to resize a thousand photos at a pop? With most monitors, you can't see more than maybe 50 thumbnails clearly, so why waste processing time on the remaining 950?
Your narrow view of what Excel can or can't do prevents you from seeing how or why companies do use Excel.
Sometimes the VBA IDE of Excel allows developers to sneak in applications under the nose of bureaucratic IT departments. In some cases, very little of Excel's functionality is even used. Excel just happens to be the transport mechanism for the application. It's a cheap and sneaky way of avoiding red tape in some large organizations.
What makes you think that all Excel applications even store data in the worksheets? I had a project where my client was using Excel to hit a real database to generate charts and graphs into PDFs for delivery over the web. The reason why? Because they were too cheap to spend any additional money on the reporting tool offered by their data warehouse vendor (the license alone cost more than the development effort in Excel). I would have rather done the project in PHP, but PHP was not an approved development platform at the company.
It's quite easy and feasible to create an application in Excel that acts as a presentation and logic layer to centrally stored data.
The funniest thing is that two years ago, I would have dismissed Excel in the same way you do. It just happened that I landed a bunch of projects where I realized that there were situations where writing applications in Excel made a lot of sense.
My Mac Mini does have a gig of ram. I don't know if that's a ton of ram, but it should be sufficient.
Sure, it's a low end mac, and you can probably say that about any of the current Powerbooks too. I don't recall any of the Powerbooks being G5s or dual G4s, for that matter. Yes, the hard drive on my Mac Mini only spins at 5400 rpm, but I don't think it should have that much of an impact on stuff like just surfing the Internet.
The Mini is my first Mac since around 1997. I don't recall System 8 having as much latency as OSX does.
Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy my Mac, but there is no way in hell that you can get me to say that the general GUI feels zippy. Compared to Windows or Xandros (Linux), it sometimes feels like molasses.
While the Mac can (and eventually will) replace all of the day-to-day activities I use my Wintel box for, the zippiness or lack of keeps me going back to Windoze for most of my non-iLife activities.
Call me cynical but I don't think it's possible to create "professional level applications" using Excel.
.exe file, and the other in an .xls file.
If what you're saying is true, you shouldn't be able to write professional level applications using Visual Basic either. You can do almost as much in Excel as you can in Visual Basic. The main difference is that one program results in an
That of course, is not to say that Excel should be your platform of choice, but if that's what your client wants or needs, then give it to them.
Right. That's what Excel is for - importing data and transforming it. It's not designed to be the source of data itself.
Last I checked, Excel was a spreadsheet, not an ETL tool. Excel is a great tool for data entry, because so many people know how to use it without retraining. You don't even need to use a vb form to get data.
All of the form crap is easily handled with VB.NET, which you can get for super cheap.
You neglect to consider that you have to send out installers to all the users of the application. This doesn't necessarily fly in many organizations. Excel has already been installed on the workstation, all you need to do is double click the XLS and say OK to running macros. Granted, there are security issues, but there are legitimate reasons (many of which are political) for using Excel as a development platform.