It does remain viable twice as long. I make very good money, and I could buy a new Mac anytime I want. The need wasn't there, because my older machine was still doing everything I used it for, which was a lot-- programming, pre-iMovie video capture and editing, image editing, web design. Lots of stuff.
If I didn't need an OS X capable machine for myself because my clients are migrating to it and I need to learn to efficiently, effectively configure it and deploy it, then my Power Mac would've been fine for even longer. I still have it, I'm going to wipe it and use it as a development station for my home automation system, which runs on an older Power Mac that I bought used for a song, just to run the HA stuff.
Furthermore, people don't buy Macs because they aren't smart enough to use Windows, they buy Macs because they'd rather put their brain power to use doing something other than getting the computer to cooperate with them.
I make my living supporting Windows crap all day, I see everything that can go wrong with them. When I go home, I want a machine I can rely on. A fraction of the viruses, no spyware worth mentioning, no worries about script kiddies and their Trojans, or Windows Messenger popup ads, or security holes you can drive a truck through. I turn the thing on, I use it, I turn it off. Mind you, my first computer back in '85 was a PC, and I also have a couple home-built boxes running XP Pro, so I kinda think I know what I'm talking about. I use both, but I vastly prefer my Macs.
People who are intimidated by a Mac fall into three groups:
1) They were taught to use Windows, as opposed to being taught to use a computer, and fear and loathe anything different.
2) They work in IT, and are afraid that replacing their Windows boxes with more reliable Macs will weaken their IT empire.
3) They are too damned dumb to use any computer, and should stick with a typewriter and a calculator. Or in some cases a crayon, circle of paper, and abacus.
My post was referring to desktop Macs, and viability relative to Windows PCs. Apple laptops, however, are much more price-competitive with their Wintel brethren, so how long they remain viable does not need to be debated.
I am well aware that the average 486 can probably still run Linux quite capably, and that you can pick up an old ThinkPad on eBay for chump change and make a decent Linux laptop out of it. I neglected to mention that because we're discussing this article, which acts as if Windows and Mac OS X are the only two operating systems on the planet.
Designers are a core part of the Macintosh constituency but Web designers can't test web pages properly because most of their users use a browser that doesn't exist for the Macintosh (IE 6.x).
Hate to burst your bubble, but IE 5.x for Windows and IE 5.x for the Mac did not render pages identically, so the fact that there is no IE 6.x for the Mac means nothing-- you'd still need to look at your pages in Windows somehow, either in emulation via VirtualPC or on the actual hardware by buying a super-low-end and/or used PC and a KVM.
And yes, this is a transitory period for the Mac, so there will be a little confusion while things need to be done/run in Classic while OS X-native apps are written. You should absolutely NOT, however, complain about consistency issues if you use a Mac. Apple managed the smooth migration of its platform from 680x0 to PowerPC, and the Classic Mac OS evolved quite smartly over the years. Contrast this to the Windows world, where people fear upgrading from Windows X to Windows X+1 because so much shit gets changed around, every time. Win 3.1, to 95, to 98, to ME, to XP was not evolution, it was mutation.
I sleep pretty well at night knowing that while Classic isn't great, it is most certainly the best solution possible and is only temporary. This time next year, the probably the only people still running Classic will be people who use QuarkXPress and are too lazy to migrate to Adobe InDesign.
Maybe the public is realizing you can get a very formidible windows based computer for half the price of a cheap mac.
The public are mostly morons-- and since when have they ever done anything but look for the absolute cheapest of [product]? Quality and longevity are of little or no concern.
They don't realize that while the Mac costs twice as much, it also remains a viable computer twice as long (or longer) and in the long run provides a fraction of the aggravation that comes with dealing with computer problems (thanks to Windows not being in the equation). I'm a system integrator, and I've seen the ugly Windows problems that just occur out of nowhere, and dealt with the people who can't do more than turn their PCs on and type Word documents because the machine intimidates them.
I got more than six years out of the last brand new desktop Mac I bought (a Power Mac 7600, with a few modest upgrades sprinkled into it over the years to keep somewhat current), and could've gotten more but I wanted a machine that would run OS X capably and without me having to resort to any hacks to get it installed and make it work. Now I've got a G4/733, and it will likely last me just as long.
If nothing else, car stereo makers need to start offering this as a feature in their products... so when you make or take a call from your Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone, the stereo automatically mutes itself for the duration of the call (unless you manually override the volume) and then restores it to its previous level when you terminate the call. I'm fairly certain there are already gadgets that do something like this, but not wirelessly and with nothing but what's built into the phone and stereo.
I don't know much about them except that they're in Ohio, and that's just from going to their site a second ago. But my mailserver received spam from a mailserver on one of their IPs shortly after noon yesterday.
I fired off a forwarded copy to their "abuse" address at 12:22pm. I received an auto-reply instantaneously, and then at 1:59pm the same day I received the following message from them:
"We have traced the originator of this spam and have taken action according to bright.net policy. If you should experience further problems, please don't hesitate to let us know."
Needless to say, I was pretty impressed, both with the blazing fast turnaround, and the fact that I actually got something other than an autoreply from them-- with the big boys, you never feel like anyone is reading your spam reports. It was very nice to hear that my report actually had an impact, and some asshole spammer has been smacked down because of it.
I vaguely remember reading on a Mac site that the TurboTax packaging rather explicitly states that the product will not run in any kind of Windows emulator (the article of course was talking about Connectix Virtual PC).
If that's the case, this boot-sector thing might be a major part of the reason why.
Adults don't assume what others should know or expect. They explain out in front what is and isn't expected. Why?
Because common sense and personal responsibility are lost concepts today. How are people supposed to know that McDonald's coffee is hot, unless it says so on the cup? How else are people supposed to know that the SUV in the commercial really can't drive vertically up the side of a skyscraper, unless a disclaimer on the screen says so?
Not really on topic, but I just like to rant about this once in a while. Forgive me.:-)
Quote 1: Bart: According to three-time soap box derby champion Ronny Beck, "Poorly guarded contruction sites are a gold mine."
Quote 2: Marge: Homer, we have a perfectly good bookcase. Homer: Yeah, but this is what they're doing on campus. Besides, it isn't costing us: I swiped the cinderblocks from a construction site.
[At the site, a worker walks forlornly up to his boss] Worker: Sir, six cinderblocks are missing. Boss: There'll be no hospital, then. I'll tell the children.
It was like the 11th post in the thread, asshole, and the FIRST one to mention that Apple already has the pieces and could roll its own groupware solution!
Thus spake Microsoft's Mike Maples, who may have since left the company, "If someone thinks we're not after Lotus and after WordPerfect and after Borland, they're confused... My job is to get a fair share of the software applications market, and to me that's 100 percent." (Emphasis mine)
Maples said this around 10 years ago, but that was and still is pretty much the mentality of everyone in power in the company-- even with 95% of the market, the greedy bastards still lose sleep at night at the thought of dollars going into a competitor's coffers.
The above quote either came from Cringely's Accidental Empires, or Wallace & Erickson's Hard Drive, I can't remember right now-- I recalled it verbatim because it was so galling to read that it has stuck in my mind.
The fact is that as bad as Exchange is (and it can be a pig to admin), there are precious few alternatives for a centralized email/groupware server. Especially one that integrates seamlessly with Office.
Yeah... but Apple might be working on one. They've got Mail, iCal and Address Book already-- all they need is a server app to tie them all together, and/or to make a single, new app that's a hybrid of the three of them.
And as for Office integration, Apple has already released Keynote, and rumors are flying of a new, allegedly-in-development, full-featured word processor called Document. No word of a spreadsheet yet, but they could sufficiently pump up the one in AppleWorks. Any doubters of how well Apple can integrate its apps with each other and the OS need only look at iLife.
If you step back and look at the big picture, it's pretty clear that Apple already has a lot of the disparate pieces of what they rely on Microsoft for-- and that with some work, those pieces could be tied together into a superior, Mac-based alternative to Outlook and Office.
There are many, many Mac users who despise Microsoft but grudgingly use their products because there's no truly viable alternative out there-- those people would switch in a minute if it meant they could cast off the Microsoft chains. Now that Apple seems to be willing to play hardball with Microsoft and release competing products, those people probably scare the shit out of Microsoft.
Having said that, it's about God damned time Microsoft got on the stick and provided a true OS X solution for Exchange connectivity. POP, IMAP, and OWA are not optimal solutions, and for places who don't want to be bothered with Classic, continuing to run Outlook 2001 is not an option.
Once this application makes its debut, there's only one dickhead company left who needs to get their ass in gear and produce an OS X native version of their product. <cough>Quark<cough>
BTW, in *recent* news,Apple released OS X 10.2.4 late this afternoon-- it's in Software Update if anyone's interested.
...since in all likelihood it will put him in the poorhouse?
In other news, California Public Utilities Commission Chairman C. Montgomery Burns was quoted as saying, "Since the dawn of time man has longed to destroy the sun. We shall do the next best thing, tax the energy it provides."
Seriously, this is the biggest bunch of bullshit I have ever heard. On the other hand, it makes me feel better about living in Philadelphia, PA, where we pay a 4% tax on our income for the apparent "privilege" of having a job.
This country gets more ass-backwards every day. We're supposed to conserve fossil fuels, but people get a tremendous tax break when they buy gas-guzzling, killing-machine SUVs. And now some shithole state wants to tax the energy people collect from THE SUN??? If you're going to start taxing the use of solar energy, will Californians have to pay tax based on how tan they are? Where will the madness end?
The best demo of Rendezvous currently is iChat. I used it to wow one of my clients back in December when I upgraded them to Jaguar. They were always having to e-mail files back and forth to one another, blah blah blah.
Now, they just launch iChat when they log in in the morning, and boom-- instant, zero-config buddy list of everyone in the department. Need to ask someone a question? No more hollering over cubes or using the phone, a quick IM does the trick. Need to send someone a file? No more e-mailing or putting it on the server for the person who needs it. Drag it and drop it onto their name in the buddy list, and they'll get a dialog, "Person wants to send you file filename, do you wish to accept?"
The only people who think something like this is a bad thing are the ignorant ones. OF COURSE the devices that use Rendezvous will OFFER security and configurability options-- but the point is, you don't NEED them if all you want to do is get on a network and print to a networked printer. And you don't need to have silly little wizards walk you through the process. Rendezvous is the logical extension of Apple's whole 'it just works' philosophy, and is a wonderful modern incarnation of AppleTalk.
The online Apple Store has charged local sales tax from day one, back in 1997 or so. I don't know if they had the Apple Retail Stores in mind back then, but now that they have brick-&-mortar retail presences in some states, they *have* to charge sales tax in those states.
IIRC, people who live in NJ have always had to pay sales tax on Micro/MacWarehouse merchandise because that's where Micro/MacWarehouse's physical HQ is based. I stopped buying stuff from them when I got a job in Princeton, because I couldn't have stuff shipped to my home in Pennsylvania during the day since nobody was there, and if the stuff shipped to my office they dinged me for the sales tax on it.
Just in case you weren't aware, just because Macs don't have built-in floppies doesn't mean they're not supported.
The other week I had to grab a driver off the net for a 3rd-party Ethernet card that's in an older Mac at one of my clients' offices. I grabbed the (rarely-used) 'floater' 3.5" USB floppy drive that everyone in the office shares. I plugged it into their brand new G4 server running OS X Server 10.2.3, slipped in a disk, and it popped right up on the desktop-- a really nice, photorealistic floppy icon.
At my last job we had many brand-name PCs from 1998-1999, and almost none could boot from a CD. And yes, we looked for the option in the BIOS.
ANY Macintosh that could have a CD-ROM drive connected to it could boot from a CD, i.e. any Mac with a SCSI port. The first Mac with a SCSI port was, IIRC, the Mac Plus in 1986. Twelve or thirteen years later, and you still couldn't absolutely count on any PC you might encounter being able to boot from a CD. I don't think there's much room for debate over which was the more versatile platform.
Years ago, I think it was in 1994 or 1995, I got a catalog from MacWarehouse that did list a Sony MD-Data drive. It was horrendously expensive and died a rather speedy death as a product, most probably because of the spring 1995 introduction of the Iomega Zip drive
The Zip held almost as much data but cost significantly less, and in those days was very reliable (i.e before the Click of same day I first heard about them, and that drive worked flawlessly from the day I got it in '95 until two weeks ago when I decommissioned the Power Mac it was connected to.
~Philly
Re:Michael Dell once again follows Apple's lead
on
Dell Dropping The Floppy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Actually, this is the second time Dell has tried to do away with the floppy. The first time was back in December of 1999, with their floppy-less WebPC-- their "me too" attempt at creating an iMac (though it was not an all-in-one form factor). It was a miserable failure, I don't think it lasted very long into 2000 before Dell pulled the plug on it.
Here is a blurb from the WebPC FAQ that used to be on their site: "Does webpc include a floppy drive?"
"Good question.
First, every Dell webpc comes with either a CD-ROM or a DVD-ROM drive, both of which are faster, more efficient, and can store a lot more storage than floppy drives.
And, since webpc allows you to e-mail important files to other people via the Internet quickly, why transfer files using a floppy drive?
Without a floppy drive, the webpc is smaller and frees up space for more cool features. However, if you'd still like a floppy drive, and optional, external 120 MB floppy storage drive is available."
Yeah! Next thing you know, the Brits'll say that THEY were the first ones to capture an Enigma from the Nazis, and not a team of Americans like was portrayed in U-571... oh, wait.:-)
Listening to the telecom giants whining about "unfair competition" makes me want to retch.
This, from companies who do everything in their power to screw their competitors and customers. Advertise high-speed, always-on internet service, but don't make guarantees as to the speed or the uptime. Grudgingly provide their infrastructure to their competitors as mandated by law, but give preferential treatment to their own services and relentlessly play the blame game when the problems lie in their network. It's pathetically laughable to hear them preaching about how the playing field must be leveled.
Slashdot Mirror
It does remain viable twice as long. I make very good money, and I could buy a new Mac anytime I want. The need wasn't there, because my older machine was still doing everything I used it for, which was a lot-- programming, pre-iMovie video capture and editing, image editing, web design. Lots of stuff.
If I didn't need an OS X capable machine for myself because my clients are migrating to it and I need to learn to efficiently, effectively configure it and deploy it, then my Power Mac would've been fine for even longer. I still have it, I'm going to wipe it and use it as a development station for my home automation system, which runs on an older Power Mac that I bought used for a song, just to run the HA stuff.
~Philly
Furthermore, people don't buy Macs because they aren't smart enough to use Windows, they buy Macs because they'd rather put their brain power to use doing something other than getting the computer to cooperate with them.
I make my living supporting Windows crap all day, I see everything that can go wrong with them. When I go home, I want a machine I can rely on. A fraction of the viruses, no spyware worth mentioning, no worries about script kiddies and their Trojans, or Windows Messenger popup ads, or security holes you can drive a truck through. I turn the thing on, I use it, I turn it off. Mind you, my first computer back in '85 was a PC, and I also have a couple home-built boxes running XP Pro, so I kinda think I know what I'm talking about. I use both, but I vastly prefer my Macs.
~Philly
People who are intimidated by a Mac fall into three groups:
1) They were taught to use Windows, as opposed to being taught to use a computer, and fear and loathe anything different.
2) They work in IT, and are afraid that replacing their Windows boxes with more reliable Macs will weaken their IT empire.
3) They are too damned dumb to use any computer, and should stick with a typewriter and a calculator. Or in some cases a crayon, circle of paper, and abacus.
~Philly
[sniff, sniff] I smell a laptop Linux user!
My post was referring to desktop Macs, and viability relative to Windows PCs. Apple laptops, however, are much more price-competitive with their Wintel brethren, so how long they remain viable does not need to be debated.
I am well aware that the average 486 can probably still run Linux quite capably, and that you can pick up an old ThinkPad on eBay for chump change and make a decent Linux laptop out of it. I neglected to mention that because we're discussing this article, which acts as if Windows and Mac OS X are the only two operating systems on the planet.
~Philly
Designers are a core part of the Macintosh constituency but Web designers can't test web pages properly because most of their users use a browser that doesn't exist for the Macintosh (IE 6.x).
Hate to burst your bubble, but IE 5.x for Windows and IE 5.x for the Mac did not render pages identically, so the fact that there is no IE 6.x for the Mac means nothing-- you'd still need to look at your pages in Windows somehow, either in emulation via VirtualPC or on the actual hardware by buying a super-low-end and/or used PC and a KVM.
And yes, this is a transitory period for the Mac, so there will be a little confusion while things need to be done/run in Classic while OS X-native apps are written. You should absolutely NOT, however, complain about consistency issues if you use a Mac. Apple managed the smooth migration of its platform from 680x0 to PowerPC, and the Classic Mac OS evolved quite smartly over the years. Contrast this to the Windows world, where people fear upgrading from Windows X to Windows X+1 because so much shit gets changed around, every time. Win 3.1, to 95, to 98, to ME, to XP was not evolution, it was mutation.
I sleep pretty well at night knowing that while Classic isn't great, it is most certainly the best solution possible and is only temporary. This time next year, the probably the only people still running Classic will be people who use QuarkXPress and are too lazy to migrate to Adobe InDesign.
~Philly
Maybe the public is realizing you can get a very formidible windows based computer for half the price of a cheap mac.
The public are mostly morons-- and since when have they ever done anything but look for the absolute cheapest of [product]? Quality and longevity are of little or no concern.
They don't realize that while the Mac costs twice as much, it also remains a viable computer twice as long (or longer) and in the long run provides a fraction of the aggravation that comes with dealing with computer problems (thanks to Windows not being in the equation). I'm a system integrator, and I've seen the ugly Windows problems that just occur out of nowhere, and dealt with the people who can't do more than turn their PCs on and type Word documents because the machine intimidates them.
I got more than six years out of the last brand new desktop Mac I bought (a Power Mac 7600, with a few modest upgrades sprinkled into it over the years to keep somewhat current), and could've gotten more but I wanted a machine that would run OS X capably and without me having to resort to any hacks to get it installed and make it work. Now I've got a G4/733, and it will likely last me just as long.
~Philly
...using Bluetooth is a good idea.
If nothing else, car stereo makers need to start offering this as a feature in their products... so when you make or take a call from your Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone, the stereo automatically mutes itself for the duration of the call (unless you manually override the volume) and then restores it to its previous level when you terminate the call. I'm fairly certain there are already gadgets that do something like this, but not wirelessly and with nothing but what's built into the phone and stereo.
~Philly
I don't know much about them except that they're in Ohio, and that's just from going to their site a second ago. But my mailserver received spam from a mailserver on one of their IPs shortly after noon yesterday.
I fired off a forwarded copy to their "abuse" address at 12:22pm. I received an auto-reply instantaneously, and then at 1:59pm the same day I received the following message from them:
"We have traced the originator of this spam and have taken action according to bright.net policy. If you should experience further problems, please don't hesitate to let us know."
Needless to say, I was pretty impressed, both with the blazing fast turnaround, and the fact that I actually got something other than an autoreply from them-- with the big boys, you never feel like anyone is reading your spam reports. It was very nice to hear that my report actually had an impact, and some asshole spammer has been smacked down because of it.
~Philly
I vaguely remember reading on a Mac site that the TurboTax packaging rather explicitly states that the product will not run in any kind of Windows emulator (the article of course was talking about Connectix Virtual PC).
If that's the case, this boot-sector thing might be a major part of the reason why.
~Philly
Adults don't assume what others should know or expect. They explain out in front what is and isn't expected. Why?
:-)
Because common sense and personal responsibility are lost concepts today. How are people supposed to know that McDonald's coffee is hot, unless it says so on the cup? How else are people supposed to know that the SUV in the commercial really can't drive vertically up the side of a skyscraper, unless a disclaimer on the screen says so?
Not really on topic, but I just like to rant about this once in a while. Forgive me.
~Philly
Quote 1:
Bart: According to three-time soap box derby champion Ronny Beck, "Poorly guarded contruction sites are a gold mine."
Quote 2:
Marge: Homer, we have a perfectly good bookcase.
Homer: Yeah, but this is what they're doing on campus. Besides, it isn't costing us: I swiped the cinderblocks from a construction site.
[At the site, a worker walks forlornly up to his boss]
Worker: Sir, six cinderblocks are missing.
Boss: There'll be no hospital, then. I'll tell the children.
~Philly
It was like the 11th post in the thread, asshole, and the FIRST one to mention that Apple already has the pieces and could roll its own groupware solution!
Thus spake Microsoft's Mike Maples, who may have since left the company, "If someone thinks we're not after Lotus and after WordPerfect and after Borland, they're confused ... My job is to get a fair share of the software applications market, and to me that's 100 percent." (Emphasis mine)
Maples said this around 10 years ago, but that was and still is pretty much the mentality of everyone in power in the company-- even with 95% of the market, the greedy bastards still lose sleep at night at the thought of dollars going into a competitor's coffers.
The above quote either came from Cringely's Accidental Empires, or Wallace & Erickson's Hard Drive, I can't remember right now-- I recalled it verbatim because it was so galling to read that it has stuck in my mind.
~Philly
The fact is that as bad as Exchange is (and it can be a pig to admin), there are precious few alternatives for a centralized email/groupware server. Especially one that integrates seamlessly with Office.
Yeah... but Apple might be working on one. They've got Mail, iCal and Address Book already-- all they need is a server app to tie them all together, and/or to make a single, new app that's a hybrid of the three of them.
And as for Office integration, Apple has already released Keynote, and rumors are flying of a new, allegedly-in-development, full-featured word processor called Document. No word of a spreadsheet yet, but they could sufficiently pump up the one in AppleWorks. Any doubters of how well Apple can integrate its apps with each other and the OS need only look at iLife.
If you step back and look at the big picture, it's pretty clear that Apple already has a lot of the disparate pieces of what they rely on Microsoft for-- and that with some work, those pieces could be tied together into a superior, Mac-based alternative to Outlook and Office.
There are many, many Mac users who despise Microsoft but grudgingly use their products because there's no truly viable alternative out there-- those people would switch in a minute if it meant they could cast off the Microsoft chains. Now that Apple seems to be willing to play hardball with Microsoft and release competing products, those people probably scare the shit out of Microsoft.
~Philly
Having said that, it's about God damned time Microsoft got on the stick and provided a true OS X solution for Exchange connectivity. POP, IMAP, and OWA are not optimal solutions, and for places who don't want to be bothered with Classic, continuing to run Outlook 2001 is not an option.
Once this application makes its debut, there's only one dickhead company left who needs to get their ass in gear and produce an OS X native version of their product. <cough>Quark<cough>
BTW, in *recent* news,Apple released OS X 10.2.4 late this afternoon-- it's in Software Update if anyone's interested.
~Philly
...since in all likelihood it will put him in the poorhouse?
In other news, California Public Utilities Commission Chairman C. Montgomery Burns was quoted as saying, "Since the dawn of time man has longed to destroy the sun. We shall do the next best thing, tax the energy it provides."
Seriously, this is the biggest bunch of bullshit I have ever heard. On the other hand, it makes me feel better about living in Philadelphia, PA, where we pay a 4% tax on our income for the apparent "privilege" of having a job.
This country gets more ass-backwards every day. We're supposed to conserve fossil fuels, but people get a tremendous tax break when they buy gas-guzzling, killing-machine SUVs. And now some shithole state wants to tax the energy people collect from THE SUN??? If you're going to start taxing the use of solar energy, will Californians have to pay tax based on how tan they are? Where will the madness end?
~Philly
The best demo of Rendezvous currently is iChat. I used it to wow one of my clients back in December when I upgraded them to Jaguar. They were always having to e-mail files back and forth to one another, blah blah blah.
Now, they just launch iChat when they log in in the morning, and boom-- instant, zero-config buddy list of everyone in the department. Need to ask someone a question? No more hollering over cubes or using the phone, a quick IM does the trick. Need to send someone a file? No more e-mailing or putting it on the server for the person who needs it. Drag it and drop it onto their name in the buddy list, and they'll get a dialog, "Person wants to send you file filename, do you wish to accept?"
The only people who think something like this is a bad thing are the ignorant ones. OF COURSE the devices that use Rendezvous will OFFER security and configurability options-- but the point is, you don't NEED them if all you want to do is get on a network and print to a networked printer. And you don't need to have silly little wizards walk you through the process. Rendezvous is the logical extension of Apple's whole 'it just works' philosophy, and is a wonderful modern incarnation of AppleTalk.
~Philly
The online Apple Store has charged local sales tax from day one, back in 1997 or so. I don't know if they had the Apple Retail Stores in mind back then, but now that they have brick-&-mortar retail presences in some states, they *have* to charge sales tax in those states.
IIRC, people who live in NJ have always had to pay sales tax on Micro/MacWarehouse merchandise because that's where Micro/MacWarehouse's physical HQ is based. I stopped buying stuff from them when I got a job in Princeton, because I couldn't have stuff shipped to my home in Pennsylvania during the day since nobody was there, and if the stuff shipped to my office they dinged me for the sales tax on it.
~Philly
Unless one of them is a Mac.
Just in case you weren't aware, just because Macs don't have built-in floppies doesn't mean they're not supported.
The other week I had to grab a driver off the net for a 3rd-party Ethernet card that's in an older Mac at one of my clients' offices. I grabbed the (rarely-used) 'floater' 3.5" USB floppy drive that everyone in the office shares. I plugged it into their brand new G4 server running OS X Server 10.2.3, slipped in a disk, and it popped right up on the desktop-- a really nice, photorealistic floppy icon.
~Philly
"Around on PCs" != "standard on PCs"
At my last job we had many brand-name PCs from 1998-1999, and almost none could boot from a CD. And yes, we looked for the option in the BIOS.
ANY Macintosh that could have a CD-ROM drive connected to it could boot from a CD, i.e. any Mac with a SCSI port. The first Mac with a SCSI port was, IIRC, the Mac Plus in 1986. Twelve or thirteen years later, and you still couldn't absolutely count on any PC you might encounter being able to boot from a CD. I don't think there's much room for debate over which was the more versatile platform.
~Philly
Years ago, I think it was in 1994 or 1995, I got a catalog from MacWarehouse that did list a Sony MD-Data drive. It was horrendously expensive and died a rather speedy death as a product, most probably because of the spring 1995 introduction of the Iomega Zip drive
The Zip held almost as much data but cost significantly less, and in those days was very reliable (i.e before the Click of same day I first heard about them, and that drive worked flawlessly from the day I got it in '95 until two weeks ago when I decommissioned the Power Mac it was connected to.
~Philly
Actually, this is the second time Dell has tried to do away with the floppy. The first time was back in December of 1999, with their floppy-less WebPC-- their "me too" attempt at creating an iMac (though it was not an all-in-one form factor). It was a miserable failure, I don't think it lasted very long into 2000 before Dell pulled the plug on it.
Here is a blurb from the WebPC FAQ that used to be on their site:
"Does webpc include a floppy drive?"
"Good question.
First, every Dell webpc comes with either a CD-ROM or a DVD-ROM drive, both of which are faster, more efficient, and can store a lot more storage than floppy drives.
And, since webpc allows you to e-mail important files to other people via the Internet quickly, why transfer files using a floppy drive?
Without a floppy drive, the webpc is smaller and frees up space for more cool features. However, if you'd still like a floppy drive, and optional, external 120 MB floppy storage drive is available."
~Philly
Yeah! Next thing you know, the Brits'll say that THEY were the first ones to capture an Enigma from the Nazis, and not a team of Americans like was portrayed in U-571... oh, wait. :-)
~Philly
Listening to the telecom giants whining about "unfair competition" makes me want to retch.
This, from companies who do everything in their power to screw their competitors and customers. Advertise high-speed, always-on internet service, but don't make guarantees as to the speed or the uptime. Grudgingly provide their infrastructure to their competitors as mandated by law, but give preferential treatment to their own services and relentlessly play the blame game when the problems lie in their network. It's pathetically laughable to hear them preaching about how the playing field must be leveled.
~Philly
I am proud to annouce that these guys have won this week's "Too Much Time On Your Hands" award.
If they really come through on a sequel, I may just rename the award after them.
~Philly