Eventually they just got tired of fooling with something that was going to be their primary machine (plus BSD tends to be a pain on laptops).
I think this phenomenon has a lot to do with maturity as well. When someone is 16-21 building a computer from scratch, with all the bells and whistles, customized cabling and cooling, etc. is a really cool learning experience. However, it gets to a point where you've been there and done that, and just want something that works.
That said, if I were still a PC user I'd keep building from scratch, simply because you almost have to unless you want integrated/shared video ram, on board sound, and other cheap components. I'd much rather just get a Mac, that generally comes with good parts, awesome ascetics, and just get work done. No need to read up on the latest and greatest cooling techniques, and which motherboard manufacture is the greatest, blah blah blah.
It's just not worth it to be a PC user, unless you have a specific need for it.
Those permissions were probably incorrect long before you installed 10.3.8. And if they didn't hurt anything then, they're not going to now.
I think somewhere along the line a person had a bad experience with an update, repaired permissions, and things were okay. He probably posted to a message board, and people followed in believing repairing permissions is the cure to all woes.
If you want to keep believing that, it's fine with me. I repair permissions after most updates, but it's not because I believe there is a relationship between the two. The updates just serve as a reminder to do preventative maintenance that you otherwise might forget about -- and it occasionally does fix some annoying bug.
The problem with Performas was not just that they were overpriced and underperforming, but that they were released during a time when the average joe was considering a PC purchase. The types of machines Apple released during this period, and the prices they were offered for could have made the difference between now having 5% of the installed base, and perhaps 25% or more. This is their biggest mistake in my opinion.
Forget the argument about the superiority or inferiority of the one-button mouse itself -- that's irrelevant. What one needs to realize is that the presence of one button mice and trackpads in the Mac world fosters more intuitive UI design, where one doesn't need to plow through a series of confusing contextual menus to find an option.
Case in point, there's a world of difference between using a native OS X app for the first time, and then using an app like Gimp under X11 for the first time. For me, the clutter level feels much higher with X11 apps, and the right-clicking, over reliance on contextual menus adds to that problem.
So let's say 3 and 4 button mice become standard, and developers start programming with that in mind. Who will agree upon a standard way of handling what each button does? How confused will even experienced users become when finding contextual menus act completely different across different apps?
The Apple mouse adds to UI consistently, and yet still provides power users with the ability to expand if need be. As someone who has a Logitech dual-optical attached to his PowerMac, I plead that Apple keeps the one-button mouse. If it weren't for gaming, I would probably still be using the pack-in mouse.
Now, as an interesting twist, when using my iBook I find the one button trackpad much easier to deal with, and control clicking feels much more intuitive. When I use my friend's PC laptop I constantly find myself accidently hitting the right click on the track pad, and the time it takes me to reposition my thumb from the left to right button actually slows me down. I was a PC user most of my life by the way, so it's not just a matter of habit.
With all that said, I think Apple might want to consider adding a scroll wheel to their pro mice. I don't believe it would overly clutter things, and it's something even inexperienced users like my parents can figure out. Whether they would decide to go with a traditional scroll wheel is another story.
Why did the first Mac have a monochrome display? I mean, it was an expensive computer in the first place, I'm not sure a color display would've made it much more expensive.
Sick of Microsoft's Lack of Dedication to Mac
on
Microsoft At Macworld
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
With all the hype Office gets for the Mac, it has serious issues. As far as speed is concerned, it performs no where nearly as well as its Windows counterpart. Scrolling through large documents in Word is a horrific experience, and that's assuming it doesn't mysteriously crash while editing a table or equation. While unicode support was added in 2004, it still cannot properly support right-to-left languages. When it comes to Mac, Microsoft cuts corners wherever possible, just to get the product out the door. Not to say they don't do the same with their Windows products, but at least to a lesser degree.
Applications that bring MS absolutely no financial incentive are only maintained for the sake of propagating their proprietary formats. It was likely that a person would rethink publishing content in WMV if he knew Mac users have absolutely no way of playing it back; now, individuals will be a bit less reluctant to take the full plunge into WMV, oftentimes unaware that the Mac user's experience (especially with streaming, imbedded media) is horrific.
MSN Messenger has not really seen a major change in ages, and is far behind its Windows counterpart. I realize things like audio/video conferencing are difficult to implement, but something as simple as pictures could have been done in a minor revision.
I haven't used the latest version of VPC, so I won't comment on its overall quality. However I suspect that if it were still in the hands of Connectix a G5 capable version would have arrived much sooner, and it likely would not have been delayed numerous times simply because of SP2. Let's hope Darwine will save the day.
After replacing Powerpoint with Keynote I fully welcome Pages. As clicheish as it may sound, Microsoft's applications emit an aura of conformity and stagnation, while Apple's seem to feel a bit more flexible and fun, something that's important when writing anything other than a business letter.
I was very dismayed when Office 2004 was released and failed to support right to left languages at all. OS X has had support for Arabic and Hebrew since Jaguar; plenty of time for MS to implement this feature. In all likelihood Apple's Word replacement would be a Cocoa app, which should support right-to-left text seamlessly.
I'm throughly impressed with Keynote, and it has long since replaced Powerpoint for me. Assuming Apple can create a word processor of the same caliber, I will be there in a second. Recently I was working with a 200+ page document full of tables and equations; Word 2004 was dog slow dealing with this, crashed a few times, and occasionally would refuse to save the document complaining that there was insufficient disk space, even with 10+ gigabytes free. Feature-wise Office for Mac might be better than the Windows version, but its performance is seriously lacking. Yes, it may perform fine on your machine (it's okay on my 800mhz G4 and G3), but it's still not as speedy as the Windows version.
I wouldn't be too concerned about MS seeing this as a competitive move on Apple's part, no more than they did when Keynote was released. People who need a full-fledged Office suite are still likely to purchase Office, while the student or family who needs a functional suite will be happy with Apple's offering.
This player is $344, almost $100 more than the iPod mini. With educational pricing one can get an iPod mini for $229. People purchasing a mini iPod don't care about photo viewing, and there won't be much room for any once all your audio fills up the 5gb hard drive. Built-in radio? Every walkman I ever owned had pathetic radios that were essentially useless, not to mention radio itself is barely worth listening to nowadays.
Just another example of how Apple just 'gets it' and others attempt to add the kitchen sink and clutter to make up for their design inadequacies.
Just think what Ms. Ellsworth could have achieved with a proper education.
A four to six year delay (depending on if she wanted to pursue a MA/MS) in doing what she really wanted to do, only to work as a code monkey in a cubicle? $100k in debt? If she went to school this likely wouldn't have happened for her.
She's done something pretty practical, that exemplifies she has some skills most people don't. That's worth way more than some printed scraps of paper with her name on it. This is coming from an overeducated bastard, by the way.
Gaming Culture??? What??? During the Nintendo days everybody was playing. Grandmas, six year olds, teenagers - everyone played Nintendo from 1988-1990.
There is no gaming culture. People just play games.
Exactly. The gaming industry has always been divided into casual consumers and hardcore gamers. The Madden of today is the Tecmo Bowl of the 80s. 'Jock' and games targeted toward the lowest common denominator have always existed, and there's nothing inherently wrong with them (I'm totally not into sports, but played hours of Madden on Genesis).
The difference nowadays is that since non-technical people have become forced to interact with electronics, they feel a need to conqueror them. Shows like this and TechTV help them feel as if they're not defeated by the machines that crash and confuse them on a daily basis. You know the guy who made his web page in Frontpage, with animated GIFs and tacky marquees, who feels he's conquered the world? That's the target audience for this, and that's the essence of recent Geek Chic.
I've thought of this a few times, but could never find a game suitable for the task. The best bet would be to write one on your own, seeking input from ESL learners along the way about its effectiveness. From the looks of things, it's not too difficult.
Another possible idea is using AI to teach ESL writing. You can send students out to chat rooms, but they encounter all kinds of difficult things: slang, insults, cultural confusion, etc. An AI program catered to ESL learners could be very beneficial, especially if it were able to make subtle corrections and suggestions about usage. Then, unfortunately, one has to be careful the AI isn't suggesting the wrong things (MS Word's grammar check is a huge culprit of this).
It's sad really when you go to various ESL conferences and see companies attempting to sell fancy Flash based software; all kinds of stuff that will just cost tons of money and sit in a lab with no one using it. People make big bucks selling the idea that the latest, most expensive technology will be the greatest teaching aide, when something very useful -- like text adventure games, could be crafted by a couple graduate assistants for free, and probably be of equal benefit.
It's a society intrigued by marketing buzzwords and pretty-graphics though, and it consistently loses because of its programmed gullibility and search for quick answers. It's kind of like a technological tower of babel. People don't realize that in their search to make things simpler, they're creating long-term dilemmas. So-called outdated technology from the 70s in this scenario is probably more beneficial than the latest and greatest.
The traditional argument around here has been that AOL/Netscape gives Mozilla/Firefox brand strength. Well, stuff like this is backfiring tremendously. Whether justified or not, the general public has long since identified Netscape as the 'loser' browser, and tend to scoff at anything that resembles it. One of the first things many people say to me when I install Mozilla is, "It kind of looks like Netscape" -- and they don't mean it in a good way. Thankfully, Firefox has taken away some of that stigma, but for how long? Even though I'm on a Mac using Safari, I still think Firefox is one of the most interesting things to happen to browsers in a long time, and certainly a good piece of PR for open source in general. Please Netscape, just stay away from this.
also, how long does the battery last watching a movie on an airplane?
I have an older iBook without a DVD drive, but I've had no problem loading it up with DivXs to watch while traveling. If you still want DVD quality then rip the DVD to the hard drive; you'll get much longer battery life than with the optical drive spinning.
Dreamweaver and Photoshop run fine (simultaneously) on my 800mhz G3 and G4 machines, so you should have no problem on iBooks that are now 1ghz+. The key is RAM.
Actually, I was about to buy a MD player instead of a Flash MP3 player until I found out Sony supports it under nothing but Windows. Shame, it's a really cool product (I think).
I wrote Sony a comment letting them know they lost a potential buyer. The product did everything I needed, except not in OS X . . .
What harm has Nintendo really done to people other than sue the occasional Warez site distributing old Nintendo ROMS?
Well, they had a licensing program in the 80s that forbade any third-party manufacture to release the same game for Master System if it was released for NES in the US. The result? The Master System didn't do too well in America. Not to mention their battles with Tengen.
The things that failed on the PCs were bad hard drives, cdroms and cpu fans. The things that failed on apples were poorly designed power buttons that stuck, cdrom drives misaligned in imacs, bad power boards, and that damn cuda chip.
I don't doubt it. But then again Apple uses a number of speciality parts in their machines, while HP, Compaq, and others use standardized parts that in many cases haven't changed their basic design in 10 years. Some mishaps are bound to happen.
IBM allowed clones (IIRC, by accident), apple should have seen this as a place to grow.
Right, because when your sole source of income is hardware allowing other people to copy it at best, and totally bastardize it at worst is an opportunity to grow. IBM didn't benefit from the widespread acceptance of PCs, only Microsoft did.
If Macs were cloned Apple would be out of business. No iMac, no OS X, no G5. In the best case scenario they would have turned into a lucrative trademark ala Atari, that merely changed hands every 5 years or so as a shadow of its former self.
I already addressed the reason Apple never went open though, and the platform is better because of it. Thankfully, I'm not forced to run OS X on shoddy mismatched clones that may or may not function correctly; thankfully Apple doesn't have to waste precious time that could be used for technical innovation haggling over support for some chipset or third-rate video card manufactured in Bangalore. And thankfully Apple doesn't have to slash costs to such an extent that there is no money for R&D. The results are obvious: a company able to push limits while everyone else plays catch up three years later.
If you want to void my argument on #3 by calling it moot, then I void this one of yours. Apple is a public company, just like Dell or MS, at the end of the day profit drives them. Nothing but profit.
Asshole or not, Steve Jobs had a quite different vision of what computers meant to consumers than Gates and company. In a battle of moral superiority and desire for innovation I'll take Woz and Jobs over Gates and Ballmer any day. Jobs basically had a grand vision of what computers could ideally be, and (perhaps unfortunately) never scarified those ideas, at all. That's why NeXT was doing things 10 years ago that are commonplace now.
Gates has done nothing of importance, and his vision of a PC on every desktop was hardly philanthropic, as we're now witnessing. It was about absolute dominance and control of standards and information, making political friends, and then advancing his personal interests utilizing the former two. It's no surprise he's one of the biggest supporters of the Bush campaign.
To be honest, nothing tremendously interesting has happened in gaming for a long time. Some of the most interesting (and popular) games run adequately on mid-range hardware. Call me crazy, but I find my Gamecube more entertaining than most PC games, especially since I know I won't have to spend time tweaking it to get the highest FPS possible, or any other kind of nonsense. Who cares about technical details when the games aren't even fun? PC gamers are hardware manufactures' number one whores. The pressure shouldn't be on a video card maker to create the latest in greatest, but it should be on software developers to stretch technology to its limit; some of the cheapest, lamest, c64 games were still better than the $40+ crap that's released today -- and all it needed was 1mhz. Why is it that developers manage to push the limits of a PS2, but merely up the specifications without any hacking effort when it coms to PCs? It's a huge money making scheme, and I don't pay it much mind anymore.
For the money one blows on an insane gaming rig, and constantly upgrading that setup, he/she could just buy a top of the line Mac and possibly a couple consoles along the way. Keep in mind that Mac will probably last a minimum of 5 years without any major upgrades; longer if you upgrade the GPU, CPU, and other things. I don't see my Quicksilver going anywhere any time soon.
You may be right, but here are a couple things to consider:
1) In the era when Apple was beginning, I don't think anyone -- even Steve Jobs imagined that one company would gain 90% or more of the computer market. Being cutthroat was more out of survival than absolute greed. To say how Apple may or may not have acted if they became a monopoly is really irrelevant, because it never happened, and I don't think that was ever their goal. Who really would have thought with cool machines like the Amiga, Atari ST, and Mac that the lame, black-screened, DOS-based IBM PC would take over the hearts of the masses? The Amigas and Atari STs weren't even that expensive; many times less expensive than their inferior PC counterparts.
2) Apple's seemingly closed attitude is historically justified. Their innovations were consistently ridiculed, then after a year or two hijacked and reinterpreted in a less impressive manner. Whereas Dell, Microsoft, and others are motivated solely by profit, Apple sees design of their OS and hardware as a kind of art, and with that in mind, it hurts much more when half-assed imitations of it are created. When I use OS X, then use Windows it's like the difference between a supermodel and a crack whore. Linux is also a desktop crack whore, but deep down she's a good girl, and I hope she'll eventually kick her habit.
3) Apple will never obtain a 90% market share, so all of your points are largely void. No company is will ever be able to achieve what MS has again, unless it's mandated by some kind of government bureaucracy.
And it answers the age-old argument that gets posed back and forth. You know, the "I wouldn't pirate games if they were cheaper...Games would be cheaper if you didn't pirate them"
If it's of any worth, when I owned my modded PSX about 5-6 of my games were legitimate copies. As a Gamecube owner, with no pirated games, I still only own about six. It's the age old realization most companies never come to: just because one pirated 50 games doesn't mean he/she was going to buy them in the first place.
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Eventually they just got tired of fooling with something that was going to be their primary machine (plus BSD tends to be a pain on laptops).
I think this phenomenon has a lot to do with maturity as well. When someone is 16-21 building a computer from scratch, with all the bells and whistles, customized cabling and cooling, etc. is a really cool learning experience. However, it gets to a point where you've been there and done that, and just want something that works.
That said, if I were still a PC user I'd keep building from scratch, simply because you almost have to unless you want integrated/shared video ram, on board sound, and other cheap components. I'd much rather just get a Mac, that generally comes with good parts, awesome ascetics, and just get work done. No need to read up on the latest and greatest cooling techniques, and which motherboard manufacture is the greatest, blah blah blah.
It's just not worth it to be a PC user, unless you have a specific need for it.
You can still find a number of musicians who prefer to record in analog.
Those permissions were probably incorrect long before you installed 10.3.8. And if they didn't hurt anything then, they're not going to now.
I think somewhere along the line a person had a bad experience with an update, repaired permissions, and things were okay. He probably posted to a message board, and people followed in believing repairing permissions is the cure to all woes.
If you want to keep believing that, it's fine with me. I repair permissions after most updates, but it's not because I believe there is a relationship between the two. The updates just serve as a reminder to do preventative maintenance that you otherwise might forget about -- and it occasionally does fix some annoying bug.
The problem with Performas was not just that they were overpriced and underperforming, but that they were released during a time when the average joe was considering a PC purchase. The types of machines Apple released during this period, and the prices they were offered for could have made the difference between now having 5% of the installed base, and perhaps 25% or more. This is their biggest mistake in my opinion.
We Todd Ed
Forget the argument about the superiority or inferiority of the one-button mouse itself -- that's irrelevant. What one needs to realize is that the presence of one button mice and trackpads in the Mac world fosters more intuitive UI design, where one doesn't need to plow through a series of confusing contextual menus to find an option.
Case in point, there's a world of difference between using a native OS X app for the first time, and then using an app like Gimp under X11 for the first time. For me, the clutter level feels much higher with X11 apps, and the right-clicking, over reliance on contextual menus adds to that problem.
So let's say 3 and 4 button mice become standard, and developers start programming with that in mind. Who will agree upon a standard way of handling what each button does? How confused will even experienced users become when finding contextual menus act completely different across different apps?
The Apple mouse adds to UI consistently, and yet still provides power users with the ability to expand if need be. As someone who has a Logitech dual-optical attached to his PowerMac, I plead that Apple keeps the one-button mouse. If it weren't for gaming, I would probably still be using the pack-in mouse.
Now, as an interesting twist, when using my iBook I find the one button trackpad much easier to deal with, and control clicking feels much more intuitive. When I use my friend's PC laptop I constantly find myself accidently hitting the right click on the track pad, and the time it takes me to reposition my thumb from the left to right button actually slows me down. I was a PC user most of my life by the way, so it's not just a matter of habit.
With all that said, I think Apple might want to consider adding a scroll wheel to their pro mice. I don't believe it would overly clutter things, and it's something even inexperienced users like my parents can figure out. Whether they would decide to go with a traditional scroll wheel is another story.
Why did the first Mac have a monochrome display? I mean, it was an expensive computer in the first place, I'm not sure a color display would've made it much more expensive.
With all the hype Office gets for the Mac, it has serious issues. As far as speed is concerned, it performs no where nearly as well as its Windows counterpart. Scrolling through large documents in Word is a horrific experience, and that's assuming it doesn't mysteriously crash while editing a table or equation. While unicode support was added in 2004, it still cannot properly support right-to-left languages. When it comes to Mac, Microsoft cuts corners wherever possible, just to get the product out the door. Not to say they don't do the same with their Windows products, but at least to a lesser degree.
Applications that bring MS absolutely no financial incentive are only maintained for the sake of propagating their proprietary formats. It was likely that a person would rethink publishing content in WMV if he knew Mac users have absolutely no way of playing it back; now, individuals will be a bit less reluctant to take the full plunge into WMV, oftentimes unaware that the Mac user's experience (especially with streaming, imbedded media) is horrific.
MSN Messenger has not really seen a major change in ages, and is far behind its Windows counterpart. I realize things like audio/video conferencing are difficult to implement, but something as simple as pictures could have been done in a minor revision.
I haven't used the latest version of VPC, so I won't comment on its overall quality. However I suspect that if it were still in the hands of Connectix a G5 capable version would have arrived much sooner, and it likely would not have been delayed numerous times simply because of SP2. Let's hope Darwine will save the day.
After replacing Powerpoint with Keynote I fully welcome Pages. As clicheish as it may sound, Microsoft's applications emit an aura of conformity and stagnation, while Apple's seem to feel a bit more flexible and fun, something that's important when writing anything other than a business letter.
I was very dismayed when Office 2004 was released and failed to support right to left languages at all. OS X has had support for Arabic and Hebrew since Jaguar; plenty of time for MS to implement this feature. In all likelihood Apple's Word replacement would be a Cocoa app, which should support right-to-left text seamlessly.
I'm throughly impressed with Keynote, and it has long since replaced Powerpoint for me. Assuming Apple can create a word processor of the same caliber, I will be there in a second. Recently I was working with a 200+ page document full of tables and equations; Word 2004 was dog slow dealing with this, crashed a few times, and occasionally would refuse to save the document complaining that there was insufficient disk space, even with 10+ gigabytes free. Feature-wise Office for Mac might be better than the Windows version, but its performance is seriously lacking. Yes, it may perform fine on your machine (it's okay on my 800mhz G4 and G3), but it's still not as speedy as the Windows version.
I wouldn't be too concerned about MS seeing this as a competitive move on Apple's part, no more than they did when Keynote was released. People who need a full-fledged Office suite are still likely to purchase Office, while the student or family who needs a functional suite will be happy with Apple's offering.
He became a hero to nerds everywhere, making this /. newsworthy.
Sorry, but rote memorization of useless facts and pop culture doesn't make you a nerd, or even smart.
If anything, the type of person to win on jeporardy is probably seriously lacking in a number of intelligence areas.
This player is $344, almost $100 more than the iPod mini. With educational pricing one can get an iPod mini for $229. People purchasing a mini iPod don't care about photo viewing, and there won't be much room for any once all your audio fills up the 5gb hard drive. Built-in radio? Every walkman I ever owned had pathetic radios that were essentially useless, not to mention radio itself is barely worth listening to nowadays.
Just another example of how Apple just 'gets it' and others attempt to add the kitchen sink and clutter to make up for their design inadequacies.
Just think what Ms. Ellsworth could have achieved with a proper education.
A four to six year delay (depending on if she wanted to pursue a MA/MS) in doing what she really wanted to do, only to work as a code monkey in a cubicle? $100k in debt? If she went to school this likely wouldn't have happened for her.
She's done something pretty practical, that exemplifies she has some skills most people don't. That's worth way more than some printed scraps of paper with her name on it. This is coming from an overeducated bastard, by the way.
Gaming Culture??? What??? During the Nintendo days everybody was playing. Grandmas, six year olds, teenagers - everyone played Nintendo from 1988-1990.
There is no gaming culture. People just play games.
Exactly. The gaming industry has always been divided into casual consumers and hardcore gamers. The Madden of today is the Tecmo Bowl of the 80s. 'Jock' and games targeted toward the lowest common denominator have always existed, and there's nothing inherently wrong with them (I'm totally not into sports, but played hours of Madden on Genesis).
The difference nowadays is that since non-technical people have become forced to interact with electronics, they feel a need to conqueror them. Shows like this and TechTV help them feel as if they're not defeated by the machines that crash and confuse them on a daily basis. You know the guy who made his web page in Frontpage, with animated GIFs and tacky marquees, who feels he's conquered the world? That's the target audience for this, and that's the essence of recent Geek Chic.
I've thought of this a few times, but could never find a game suitable for the task. The best bet would be to write one on your own, seeking input from ESL learners along the way about its effectiveness. From the looks of things, it's not too difficult.
Another possible idea is using AI to teach ESL writing. You can send students out to chat rooms, but they encounter all kinds of difficult things: slang, insults, cultural confusion, etc. An AI program catered to ESL learners could be very beneficial, especially if it were able to make subtle corrections and suggestions about usage. Then, unfortunately, one has to be careful the AI isn't suggesting the wrong things (MS Word's grammar check is a huge culprit of this).
It's sad really when you go to various ESL conferences and see companies attempting to sell fancy Flash based software; all kinds of stuff that will just cost tons of money and sit in a lab with no one using it. People make big bucks selling the idea that the latest, most expensive technology will be the greatest teaching aide, when something very useful -- like text adventure games, could be crafted by a couple graduate assistants for free, and probably be of equal benefit.
It's a society intrigued by marketing buzzwords and pretty-graphics though, and it consistently loses because of its programmed gullibility and search for quick answers. It's kind of like a technological tower of babel. People don't realize that in their search to make things simpler, they're creating long-term dilemmas. So-called outdated technology from the 70s in this scenario is probably more beneficial than the latest and greatest.
The traditional argument around here has been that AOL/Netscape gives Mozilla/Firefox brand strength. Well, stuff like this is backfiring tremendously. Whether justified or not, the general public has long since identified Netscape as the 'loser' browser, and tend to scoff at anything that resembles it. One of the first things many people say to me when I install Mozilla is, "It kind of looks like Netscape" -- and they don't mean it in a good way. Thankfully, Firefox has taken away some of that stigma, but for how long? Even though I'm on a Mac using Safari, I still think Firefox is one of the most interesting things to happen to browsers in a long time, and certainly a good piece of PR for open source in general. Please Netscape, just stay away from this.
also, how long does the battery last watching a movie on an airplane?
I have an older iBook without a DVD drive, but I've had no problem loading it up with DivXs to watch while traveling. If you still want DVD quality then rip the DVD to the hard drive; you'll get much longer battery life than with the optical drive spinning.
Dreamweaver and Photoshop run fine (simultaneously) on my 800mhz G3 and G4 machines, so you should have no problem on iBooks that are now 1ghz+. The key is RAM.
Actually, I was about to buy a MD player instead of a Flash MP3 player until I found out Sony supports it under nothing but Windows. Shame, it's a really cool product (I think).
I wrote Sony a comment letting them know they lost a potential buyer. The product did everything I needed, except not in OS X . . .
What harm has Nintendo really done to people other than sue the occasional Warez site distributing old Nintendo ROMS?
Well, they had a licensing program in the 80s that forbade any third-party manufacture to release the same game for Master System if it was released for NES in the US. The result? The Master System didn't do too well in America. Not to mention their battles with Tengen.
YDL 4.0 has been out for over a month now, yet still no torrents?
The things that failed on the PCs were bad hard drives, cdroms and cpu fans. The things that failed on apples were poorly designed power buttons that stuck, cdrom drives misaligned in imacs, bad power boards, and that damn cuda chip.
I don't doubt it. But then again Apple uses a number of speciality parts in their machines, while HP, Compaq, and others use standardized parts that in many cases haven't changed their basic design in 10 years. Some mishaps are bound to happen.
IBM allowed clones (IIRC, by accident), apple should have seen this as a place to grow.
Right, because when your sole source of income is hardware allowing other people to copy it at best, and totally bastardize it at worst is an opportunity to grow. IBM didn't benefit from the widespread acceptance of PCs, only Microsoft did.
If Macs were cloned Apple would be out of business. No iMac, no OS X, no G5. In the best case scenario they would have turned into a lucrative trademark ala Atari, that merely changed hands every 5 years or so as a shadow of its former self.
I already addressed the reason Apple never went open though, and the platform is better because of it. Thankfully, I'm not forced to run OS X on shoddy mismatched clones that may or may not function correctly; thankfully Apple doesn't have to waste precious time that could be used for technical innovation haggling over support for some chipset or third-rate video card manufactured in Bangalore. And thankfully Apple doesn't have to slash costs to such an extent that there is no money for R&D. The results are obvious: a company able to push limits while everyone else plays catch up three years later.
If you want to void my argument on #3 by calling it moot, then I void this one of yours. Apple is a public company, just like Dell or MS, at the end of the day profit drives them. Nothing but profit.
Asshole or not, Steve Jobs had a quite different vision of what computers meant to consumers than Gates and company. In a battle of moral superiority and desire for innovation I'll take Woz and Jobs over Gates and Ballmer any day. Jobs basically had a grand vision of what computers could ideally be, and (perhaps unfortunately) never scarified those ideas, at all. That's why NeXT was doing things 10 years ago that are commonplace now.
Gates has done nothing of importance, and his vision of a PC on every desktop was hardly philanthropic, as we're now witnessing. It was about absolute dominance and control of standards and information, making political friends, and then advancing his personal interests utilizing the former two. It's no surprise he's one of the biggest supporters of the Bush campaign.
To be honest, nothing tremendously interesting has happened in gaming for a long time. Some of the most interesting (and popular) games run adequately on mid-range hardware. Call me crazy, but I find my Gamecube more entertaining than most PC games, especially since I know I won't have to spend time tweaking it to get the highest FPS possible, or any other kind of nonsense. Who cares about technical details when the games aren't even fun? PC gamers are hardware manufactures' number one whores. The pressure shouldn't be on a video card maker to create the latest in greatest, but it should be on software developers to stretch technology to its limit; some of the cheapest, lamest, c64 games were still better than the $40+ crap that's released today -- and all it needed was 1mhz. Why is it that developers manage to push the limits of a PS2, but merely up the specifications without any hacking effort when it coms to PCs? It's a huge money making scheme, and I don't pay it much mind anymore.
For the money one blows on an insane gaming rig, and constantly upgrading that setup, he/she could just buy a top of the line Mac and possibly a couple consoles along the way. Keep in mind that Mac will probably last a minimum of 5 years without any major upgrades; longer if you upgrade the GPU, CPU, and other things. I don't see my Quicksilver going anywhere any time soon.
You may be right, but here are a couple things to consider:
1) In the era when Apple was beginning, I don't think anyone -- even Steve Jobs imagined that one company would gain 90% or more of the computer market. Being cutthroat was more out of survival than absolute greed. To say how Apple may or may not have acted if they became a monopoly is really irrelevant, because it never happened, and I don't think that was ever their goal. Who really would have thought with cool machines like the Amiga, Atari ST, and Mac that the lame, black-screened, DOS-based IBM PC would take over the hearts of the masses? The Amigas and Atari STs weren't even that expensive; many times less expensive than their inferior PC counterparts.
2) Apple's seemingly closed attitude is historically justified. Their innovations were consistently ridiculed, then after a year or two hijacked and reinterpreted in a less impressive manner. Whereas Dell, Microsoft, and others are motivated solely by profit, Apple sees design of their OS and hardware as a kind of art, and with that in mind, it hurts much more when half-assed imitations of it are created. When I use OS X, then use Windows it's like the difference between a supermodel and a crack whore. Linux is also a desktop crack whore, but deep down she's a good girl, and I hope she'll eventually kick her habit.
3) Apple will never obtain a 90% market share, so all of your points are largely void. No company is will ever be able to achieve what MS has again, unless it's mandated by some kind of government bureaucracy.
And it answers the age-old argument that gets posed back and forth. You know, the "I wouldn't pirate games if they were cheaper...Games would be cheaper if you didn't pirate them"
If it's of any worth, when I owned my modded PSX about 5-6 of my games were legitimate copies. As a Gamecube owner, with no pirated games, I still only own about six. It's the age old realization most companies never come to: just because one pirated 50 games doesn't mean he/she was going to buy them in the first place.
I was hoping the rumors of an inexpensive flash-based iPod would come true, then I'd have an excuse to ditch my MuVo.