Yes, but your $900 PC will be worth about $300 in two years. The G5 will resell for about 75% of purchase price (based on the G4's history on eBay).
So you can have a G5 that screams like a porn star this summer, then offload it for the bulk of your purchase price when you're ready for that dual 4 GHz (or something) in 2005. In the meantime, you're getting quality hardware that looks great and runs OS X side-by-side with Linux. That's something no PC can do at any price.
If you can afford the up-front freight, it doesn't sound like a bad deal to me. I'm saving my lunch money.
SuSE needn't be "free" in the way you mean. I tried a basic SuSE install via FTP (free, of course) and enjoyed it so much I bought a boxed copy of 8.2 Pro. It was worth the investment: lots of extra software on convenient CDs and helpful documentation. I've rocked between distros for a while, but will probably settle into SuSE for a long time.
So SuSE *is* free. If you want the extra programs and polish, you can pay for it. It's a deal at $75.
> The desktop might be polished, but they complain about a notable lack of polished apps...
And they'll keep complaining until the Linux user base gets over the idea that commercial software is always evil.
I'm deeply in favor of free, but wonder how professional software developers might support themselves if they're spending a lot of hours coding for Linux. Because so much terrific software belongs to the community, we sort of assume it *all* should.
That visceral resistance to paying for programs (and the size of our user base) is why there's no Photoshop for Linux.
Perhaps as Linux continues to expand its presence on the desktop, we'll see this attitude diluted. I'm guessing we'll have all the highly polished commercial apps we'll ever want if we can ever get to 20% market share.
Thanks to all the guys 'n' gals who contribute to Open Software.
I probably buy a G5 because I'd like to dual-boot Linux (PPC, of course) with OS X. I spend 90% of my time on a KDE desktop, but require some pro graphics programs I'd rather run on a Mac than --eeewww--- Windows.
We know Apple is a hardware company. You can bet their latest and greatest software, including their OS, will be optimized for 64 bits in the next year or two. They push their users to upgrade every few years.
That's about how long I'll own my next computer. While I can certainly build an x86 box today that will perform favorably to the bottom-end G5 and save me maybe $500, the G5 will end up being the better buy. I know it'll be fully supported by Apple and its primary commercial software vendors for the service life of my machine (without slapping aftermarket cards into it to keep up with what developers do with 64 bits).
In the meantime, I get to run Linux on an attractive, nicely thought-out box that I will resell for about 75% of what I paid for it when it's time to upgrade.
Benchmark hype or not, the G5 is a no-brainer for those who need to run commercial apps.
Ah...I see Photoshop just announced a G5 patch. Time to go wrap pennies....
> Is it just me, or does the new G5 look like a massive cheese grater from the front?
No, you're thinking of Apple's new iGrate. It's the first of an insanely great line of personal kitchen tools from the industrial design wizards at Apple.
The iGrate is precision machined from a single block of aircraft-grade aluminum. Its ergonomic lines are presented in a satin-brushed finish with a non-slip handle inspired by Apple's revolutionary new G5 PowerMacs.
Elegance and design come together to make the iGrate the World's Fastest Cheese Grater. Cheddar...Monterey Jack...Romano...the iGrate does it all, and does it up to 30-percent faster than department store cheese graters.
The iGrate is available now from the Apple Store at a suggested retail price of just $99.50USD. One year of Apple Care for your iGrate can be purchased for an additional $99.50USD. Customer service support may also be purchased at $50.00USD per incident.
It'll be smokin'. Of course, IBM developed this chip for their own enterprise and desktop use, not just Apple's "G5" branded boxes. I'm thinking Power PC is back in a big way.
Ahhh...Linux PPC and OS X dual-booted on a box that eats PCs for breakfast. Linux for pretty much all my work; OS X for proprietary audio, video, and graphic software. Bring it on.
...there will be more Linux boxes in the field than OS X machines. Duh: they're cheaper.
This being said, no: Linux won't make Mac go away. Mac is solvent, well marketed, and--after today--on the cutting edge. People will still be willing to step up for a high-end Mac, particularly in Apple's traditional markets.
As an aside, I think a lot of Linux folks will wanna try PPC distributions on Apple's blazing new hardware.
Gentlemen, you guys are gonna love Linux PPC. Warm up those checkbooks for new PowerMacs. The day of x86 liberation has arrived.;-)
Yellow Dog will probably be the first of the PPC distros to support the new 64-bit processors. You can run 32-bit until then. Mandrake 9.1 PPC is also very good, and there are others.
No, they aren't ready to support Mandrake 9.1 yet. Not with the full desktop, anyway. There *is* a version of Red Carpet and Evolution 1.4 for Mandrake. Both work well on my desktop: have fun.
I'm pretty sure we'll see a Mandrake and Yellow Dog Linux desktop release soon.
Yes, you read things correctly: the timing of Novell's strike was calculated to produce maximum damage to SCO's management. It was a humiliating, vicious master stroke. There must have been great panic and gnashing of teeth in the SCO boardroom--and no time to fix things before facing the stockholders.
I forgot to lock out my Mandrake 9.1 desktop a couple weekends ago. Returned to find two of my kids--ages 11 and 4--camped out on my computer and playing Frozen Bubble.
They'd figured out how to navigate Mandrake on their own--not too bad, considering I have it set up sorta Mac-style. The 11-year-old asked to browse the Internet, and did so without my instruction. Now they want a Linux box of their own.
So, yes, Mandrake 9.1 is easy enough for pretty much everyone. It installs almost completely configured, with well thought-out unified menus, full mp3 support, terrific fonts, and their slick-looking Galaxy desktop theme. KDE runs noticably faster under MDK than RH9. And it's nice being able to install Windowmaker, IceWM, Blackbox, and Enlightenment right off the install CDs. Each desktop's menu is preconfigured, too. Easy.
Hope Mandrake makes it. I certainly prefer their current release to Red Hat.
Safari is a very young, but very promising browser. I'll keep Chimera for my default for now. But once we see tabs, better CSS support, and a few other things, we'll just have to see.
Yes, you're right: a shot across the bow of Bill Gates' boat. But I think it was a less significant announcement than Safari, which will surely replace IE as OS X's default browser.
Chimera bookmarks are XML, right? Perhaps you could open the bookmark file in something, then saving as HTML. If there's anything left, you could import from there.
I'll be playing with this tonight, also. But I doubt I'll abandon Chimera.
Actually, MacRumors.com was quite close last night. They had the 12" and 17" (good Lord!) Powerbooks; the iApp bundle at the correct price; Apple's amazing new Airport; the new Firewire; and the browser. Nobody saw the presentation software coming, but it was the least of Jobs' announcements. Nobody predicted an Apple-branded X11 port.
No video iPods, no all-in-one networking appliance (though the new Airport is certainly a step forward).
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but your $900 PC will be worth about $300 in two years. The G5 will resell for about 75% of purchase price (based on the G4's history on eBay).
So you can have a G5 that screams like a porn star this summer, then offload it for the bulk of your purchase price when you're ready for that dual 4 GHz (or something) in 2005. In the meantime, you're getting quality hardware that looks great and runs OS X side-by-side with Linux. That's something no PC can do at any price.
If you can afford the up-front freight, it doesn't sound like a bad deal to me. I'm saving my lunch money.
SuSE needn't be "free" in the way you mean. I tried a basic SuSE install via FTP (free, of course) and enjoyed it so much I bought a boxed copy of 8.2 Pro. It was worth the investment: lots of extra software on convenient CDs and helpful documentation. I've rocked between distros for a while, but will probably settle into SuSE for a long time.
So SuSE *is* free. If you want the extra programs and polish, you can pay for it. It's a deal at $75.
> The desktop might be polished, but they complain about a notable lack of polished apps...
And they'll keep complaining until the Linux user base gets over the idea that commercial software is always evil.
I'm deeply in favor of free, but wonder how professional software developers might support themselves if they're spending a lot of hours coding for Linux. Because so much terrific software belongs to the community, we sort of assume it *all* should.
That visceral resistance to paying for programs (and the size of our user base) is why there's no Photoshop for Linux.
Perhaps as Linux continues to expand its presence on the desktop, we'll see this attitude diluted. I'm guessing we'll have all the highly polished commercial apps we'll ever want if we can ever get to 20% market share.
Thanks to all the guys 'n' gals who contribute to Open Software.
Ah, but I have. Just my point, Comrade. ;-)
The last I checked, Berkeley wasn't a nation. An island, perhaps, but that's another story.
Bravo. I'd mod you up if I had points right now.
I probably buy a G5 because I'd like to dual-boot Linux (PPC, of course) with OS X. I spend 90% of my time on a KDE desktop, but require some pro graphics programs I'd rather run on a Mac than --eeewww--- Windows.
We know Apple is a hardware company. You can bet their latest and greatest software, including their OS, will be optimized for 64 bits in the next year or two. They push their users to upgrade every few years.
That's about how long I'll own my next computer. While I can certainly build an x86 box today that will perform favorably to the bottom-end G5 and save me maybe $500, the G5 will end up being the better buy. I know it'll be fully supported by Apple and its primary commercial software vendors for the service life of my machine (without slapping aftermarket cards into it to keep up with what developers do with 64 bits).
In the meantime, I get to run Linux on an attractive, nicely thought-out box that I will resell for about 75% of what I paid for it when it's time to upgrade.
Benchmark hype or not, the G5 is a no-brainer for those who need to run commercial apps.
Ah...I see Photoshop just announced a G5 patch. Time to go wrap pennies....
> Is it just me, or does the new G5 look like a massive cheese grater from the front?
No, you're thinking of Apple's new iGrate. It's the first of an insanely great line of personal kitchen tools from the industrial design wizards at Apple.
The iGrate is precision machined from a single block of aircraft-grade aluminum. Its ergonomic lines are presented in a satin-brushed finish with a non-slip handle inspired by Apple's revolutionary new G5 PowerMacs.
Elegance and design come together to make the iGrate the World's Fastest Cheese Grater. Cheddar...Monterey Jack...Romano...the iGrate does it all, and does it up to 30-percent faster than department store cheese graters.
The iGrate is available now from the Apple Store at a suggested retail price of just $99.50USD. One year of Apple Care for your iGrate can be purchased for an additional $99.50USD. Customer service support may also be purchased at $50.00USD per incident.
The iGrate. Finally, an Apple for your kitchen.
It'll be smokin'. Of course, IBM developed this chip for their own enterprise and desktop use, not just Apple's "G5" branded boxes. I'm thinking Power PC is back in a big way.
Ahhh...Linux PPC and OS X dual-booted on a box that eats PCs for breakfast. Linux for pretty much all my work; OS X for proprietary audio, video, and graphic software. Bring it on.
...there will be more Linux boxes in the field than OS X machines. Duh: they're cheaper.
This being said, no: Linux won't make Mac go away. Mac is solvent, well marketed, and--after today--on the cutting edge. People will still be willing to step up for a high-end Mac, particularly in Apple's traditional markets.
As an aside, I think a lot of Linux folks will wanna try PPC distributions on Apple's blazing new hardware.
I didn't know that. SuSE is next on my x86 box. Good to see so many choices.
Gentlemen, you guys are gonna love Linux PPC. Warm up those checkbooks for new PowerMacs. The day of x86 liberation has arrived. ;-)
Yellow Dog will probably be the first of the PPC distros to support the new 64-bit processors. You can run 32-bit until then. Mandrake 9.1 PPC is also very good, and there are others.
8Gb of RAM. What fun.
...a Beowulf cluster of those? ;-)
No, they aren't ready to support Mandrake 9.1 yet. Not with the full desktop, anyway. There *is* a version of Red Carpet and Evolution 1.4 for Mandrake. Both work well on my desktop: have fun.
I'm pretty sure we'll see a Mandrake and Yellow Dog Linux desktop release soon.
Just make the tags removable. We'll tear 'em off just like we do those mattress tags. Wal-Mart saves money, and Big Brother is thwarted.
So imagine if devious marketers *do* try scanning RFIDs in public places. I'm taking a wallet full of Kotex IDs wherever I go.
Yes, you read things correctly: the timing of Novell's strike was calculated to produce maximum damage to SCO's management. It was a humiliating, vicious master stroke. There must have been great panic and gnashing of teeth in the SCO boardroom--and no time to fix things before facing the stockholders.
Sic semper dumbassius.
I bet the couch was properly configured, huh?
I forgot to lock out my Mandrake 9.1 desktop a couple weekends ago. Returned to find two of my kids--ages 11 and 4--camped out on my computer and playing Frozen Bubble.
They'd figured out how to navigate Mandrake on their own--not too bad, considering I have it set up sorta Mac-style. The 11-year-old asked to browse the Internet, and did so without my instruction. Now they want a Linux box of their own.
So, yes, Mandrake 9.1 is easy enough for pretty much everyone. It installs almost completely configured, with well thought-out unified menus, full mp3 support, terrific fonts, and their slick-looking Galaxy desktop theme. KDE runs noticably faster under MDK than RH9. And it's nice being able to install Windowmaker, IceWM, Blackbox, and Enlightenment right off the install CDs. Each desktop's menu is preconfigured, too. Easy.
Hope Mandrake makes it. I certainly prefer their current release to Red Hat.
> 7.5% of its text messages never reached their destinations Ouch. I don't have SMS - Is this report consistent with your experience?
Yes! I didn't receive these messages, either.
Now we know what causes nightfall in the Black Forest.
Safari is a very young, but very promising browser. I'll keep Chimera for my default for now. But once we see tabs, better CSS support, and a few other things, we'll just have to see.
Looking forward to Chimera 0.7!
> Actually, were I wanting to show off a new web browser, I would probably try to hit slashdot before anywhere else. Why? Ugly table code!
Safari just loaded this page for me in VERY short order. Slashdot is a nightmare for IE (in oh-so-many-ways, huh?).
Regarding the importation of bookmarks, I found this tip on the Chimera board. Haven't tried it yet, but it beats drag-and-drop:
f ari.plist
---
For importing Chimera bookmarks, its a little tricky, but only takes a minute:
1) Export bookmarks in Chimera (Manage Bookmarks menu item)
2) rename the file 'Favourites.html'
3) Trash: Users:(Yourname):Library:Safari (folder)
4) Trash: Users:(Yourname):Library:preferences:com.apple.sa
5)Replace the file favourites.html in Users:(Yourname):Library:Preferences:Explorer with your exported file.
6) Launch Safari
Yes, you're right: a shot across the bow of Bill Gates' boat. But I think it was a less significant announcement than Safari, which will surely replace IE as OS X's default browser.
Chimera bookmarks are XML, right? Perhaps you could open the bookmark file in something, then saving as HTML. If there's anything left, you could import from there.
I'll be playing with this tonight, also. But I doubt I'll abandon Chimera.
Actually, MacRumors.com was quite close last night. They had the 12" and 17" (good Lord!) Powerbooks; the iApp bundle at the correct price; Apple's amazing new Airport; the new Firewire; and the browser. Nobody saw the presentation software coming, but it was the least of Jobs' announcements. Nobody predicted an Apple-branded X11 port.
No video iPods, no all-in-one networking appliance (though the new Airport is certainly a step forward).