Here's mine: Regarding your request that recent first-time Mac purchasers share what's on their minds regarding Apple products:
My wife and I have used many different operating systems and computers over the years. But in the post-8-bit computing world, we've always used Intel-based computers running the best operating system available for them at the time. We started with DOS, upgraded through the various versions of Windows, then spent the last four years or so running Linux (with a brief diversion into FreeBSD). Although Linux was really good in terms of its power, security, and stability, it wasn't easy to use. I am a system administrator, so it wasn't much of a problem for me, but for my wife it was more of an irritation. And, I have to admit, that even for me it can be more of a hassle than it's worth. The last thing I want to do when I come home from a long day of wrestling with the desktop systems and servers at work is to spend time convincing my own machines to do what we want them to. They should just work. Beyond that, there is the problem that there is very little commercial software available for Linux. So, where free software hasn't been created to fulfill certain needs (or isn't feature complete enough yet) , life can be difficult.
Even so, I would never have considered a Macintosh but for two things: ColorSync and MacOS X's UNIX underpinnings. I had never heard of ColorSync until about a year ago. Up until then, I had no idea why Macs were considered better for artists than any other operating system. ColorSync answers that question. And, given that my wife spends most of her time on the computer scanning, editing, drawing, and printing, I knew that an operating system that integrates color synchronization between devices would be perfect for her. As for the UNIX part, I also knew that we both wanted to keep the power & stability that comes with UNIX (and Linux), so the old Mac OS just wouldn't have cut it for us. But now, with MacOS X, that's no longer a problem.
After keeping the idea in the back of our minds for the last year, we finally decided to give it serious consideration two weekends ago. We did some research, and decided that buying Apple computers would be a good idea for us. And, while we initially were taken with the new iMac with flat screen panel, we ultimately decided to buy Power Mac G4's. The iMacs are cute, and they're probably more than powerful enough for me, but the lack of upgrade options is a big downside to them. But, then, I don't believe the iMac line isn't really targeted at people like my wife and I, who've built our own computers and who expect to be able to swap out major subsystems of any computer we own. Thus, the Power Mac line looked like it would be the best for us.
So, this past Saturday, we went to the local Apple Store and picked out new computers for us both. We chose a PowerMac G4 933 MHz for my wife (who needs the speed for her Illustrator and Photoshop projects), while choosing the more modest PowerMac G4 800 MHz for me. We also bought a scanner, drawing tablet, and several software titles. We decided to save some money and keep our current Sony monitors, as well as our Epson printers, for now. Unfortunately, the Apple store didn't carry the 16' USB cable my wife needed for her printer, nor the ink cartridges for my printer. Oh, and the books I wanted weren't available - some were sold out, others simply weren't stocked. Fortunately, a store across the street took care of these needs.
Overall, our experience in the Apple store was very positive. It was clean, well-lit, well-stocked, and well-staffed. As I mentioned, the store had almost everything we needed. I wouldn't have expected the Apple store to carry a decent selection of scanners and so on. Oh, and the sales associates were just great - there was no pressure to buy, and no effort to get us to spend more than we wanted to once we'd decided to buy. One of the associates even brought us each a bottle of water while we were waiting for our purchase to be rung up, then another brought all the merchandise to our car and loaded it in for us!
But that's not the best. The best came later, when we had them home. From the time we started unpacking them, we were blown away. The care with which each item was packed into the boxes, the wonderful design of the machines themselves (my wife said to me more than once this weekend, "It's a thing of beauty!"), the ease with which they can be opened up for service and upgrades . . . and the little details, like the way the power button lights up brightly when you first press it, then dims a bit as it gets going - and the way it "breathes" when in sleep mode. And the speed of these systems is just amazing.
But I still haven't gotten to the best thing yet. The best Apple Macintosh feature of all is its operating system. Mac OS X is, like the machine it come in, a thing of rare beauty and grace. As promised, it has all the power and stability of UNIX with all the ease of use of the Macintosh. Finally, when we need to change something about our computers, we have the option of either doing it the simple way through the GUI, or grovelling through the text files on the command line. My wife can run all of the commercial software she needs, and I can write programs using vi and gcc (not to mention grep, sed, and awk) - all on the same operating system!
You wanted to know whether our transition was difficult. So far, it's been very simple. The only thing we've had any real trouble getting used to is the single-button mouse. I know Mac OS X can handle more buttons, but for now we're using the Apple Pro mice that came with the machines (one little irritation is that my wife's mouse squeeks when clicked). Other than getting used to Command-Clicking and so on, though, the transition has been a cake walk. We were on the Internet about twenty minutes after we opened the boxes (it would have happened much more quickly if we hadn't stopped to "oooh" and "ahhh" over the machiens and the interface, though). Then we plugged in our printers, and they just worked. We installed our software and, again, everything just worked. None of that "Windows has found new hardware and is proceeding to ruin your computer by overwriting needed files and damaging the registry" stuff!
Well, I think I've written enough, so I'll stop here and just say, "Thank you for the incredible experience!" It was well worth the price of the new machines and software. I think my wife and I have finally found a permanent home after wandering the computer wilderness for many, many years.
The research cited in the article purports that interest in Microsoft Windows and computer security are both strong among Fortune 1000 companies, while interest in Linux is weak.
Does anyone else find that position absurd? If folks were interested in computer security, you'd think they would have no interest at all in Windows.
Ah, well. So it goes. Just another sign that most people are idiots.
From my perspective, your complaints seem far off-base. So, I must not understand something. To me, SuSE Linux 7.2 Personal's default install will give you everything you're asking for in a distro. YaST2 and a well-setup KDE2 desktop go a long, long way to making things obvious and point-and-clicky enough for the average computer user.
But, that's just my perception. What am I not seeing?
Or...have you tried the latest version of the more user-friendly distros out there? Things really are getting better by leaps and bounds.
The hope is in future businesses and the infrastructure designers of the future.
Yes, indeed!
In addition to the points you brought up, I see another, quieter force working on behalf of Linux in the enterprise: just the fact that every day, it's been around one more day. A lot of conservative folks (like those I work for) tend to dismiss anything new out-of-hand, whereas things that have been around for a while are seen as worth checking out.
In 1998-99, Linux was all over the news as the greatest thing since sliced bread. The people I work for ignored it, because it was, in their opinions, probably just a flash in the pan. By 2000, I was able to win permission to set up a few Free servers by writing a few management-level reports on the idea, focusing on the cost/benefit aspect. This year, when we needed another web server, the CFO didn't blink when I said I planned to use FreeBSD and Apache. On the other hand, my occasional casual comments about "someday" moving to Linux on the desktop and as our main network servers still get dismissed out of hand.
But, I'm patient. That'll change eventually. And someday, as you pointed out, there will be a great number of newer businesses using free software throughout their operations. Won't that be fantastic?
Not to be too much of an apologist for the company I work for, but to be fair, most of the apps we use were decided upon 10 or more years ago. Heck, the accounting software's been migrated from MS-DOS to Win 3.1 to Win 9x, going from being a simple workstation app to a client-server app somewhere along the line. The financial reporting software followed a similar path, starting out as basically a bunch of macros under Lotus 1-2-3 for MS-DOS and now being a client-server app tied to Excel.
I don't think the company I work for is unique in having this approach to software. Basically, once your data's in a given proprietary format and your employees are used to a given app, you stick with it because the cost of changing over to something else is too great.
I know, that's the argument behind open formats and protocols, but try to convince your average MBA that the cost of changing over to an open specification only occurs once, while the cost of staying with an app goes on forever, and you're likely to get told that the cost of sticking with the current stuff is 'budgeted', while the cost of changing is 'unbudgeted' - which always makes me think such people equate 'budgeted' with 'zero cost'.
Anyway, I'm just ranting now. I'll stop, but hopefully I've gotten the point across that the company I work for isn't as dysfunctional as your post made out. It's just "gone along" for so long that even the idea of changing to different software is seen as off-the-wall.
On the other hand, I'm just about done with a client-server app with a GUI front end that I've written in Python that is therefore pretty darned protable. There's hope!
I'm glad they're using Linux. Unfortunately, there's no way the medium-sized business I work for could do that. For us, the problem isn't usability, it's software. And I don't mean a lack of MS-Office. Let me explain.
Like most businesses our size, we use a variety of custom, semi-custom, and prepackaged applications. While, yes, we could use free alternatives to our operating systems, office software, and email/scheduling software, there's no way in heck we're going to find a free replacement to our inventory, financial reporting, or human resource management software, for example, any time soon.
Even if someone came up with one, the cost of switching to the new packages would be enormous, given the complexity of such software and its impact on day-to-day business.
What's more, the specialized software we use requires that MS-Office be installed or it can't do simple things like generate reports. So, if we have to stay with these inventory, HR, and financial reporting packages, that means staying with MS-Office and MS-Windows.
Oh, how I'd love to move the whole corporation to free software. But there's just no way that's going to happen until all the mid-size apps are moved to Linux.
Until then, I'll continue to use FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux on the server side as much as possible. But that's where they'll stay for the forseeable future.
Many people can't [install an OS]. It comes pre-installed, which is the only reason a lot of people can get started without help.
I agree. That's why it's unreasonable to expect Linux to be easy for the average person to install. If corporations with billions to spend on R&D and usability studies can't come up with such a design, then it's unreasonable to knock free software for failing to do it.
I should have made that clearer in my response to osgeek. I was trying to make the distinction by breaking "install" and "use" up into two sentences, but I should have made it clearer that I realize the two are different, and that not every computer user can install an OS.
Still, I think that most of the time what stops people from installing an OS simple inexperience. They've never had to do it before, so they don't know how. I think most people could figure out how to install a modern consumer/desktop OS from the simple documentation that comes with them. There really aren't any hard questions in a modern, graphical OS install.
But, again, since most people have never had to do it, they of course will fear doing an OS install. Given the chance, though, most people would do fine these days.
Despite the fact that the GNU project has been around for every bit as long as the Mac (since 1984), they still don't have an OS that my mom could install and use.
Have you tried SuSE Linux 7.2, or Mandrake 8.0? Both install very nicely. SuSE will auto-detect your hardware for you, setting up X and so on. If you can install a Microsoft OS, you can install SuSE Linux 7.2. And if you can use a Microsoft OS, then you can use SuSE Linux 7.2 as well.
What about Dan (Danielle) Bunten of Ozark Software? M.U.L.E. was a tremendous multiplayer strategy game that was very popular on many platforms, but most particularly on its home system of the Atari 400/800 computer system, where up to 4 players could play at the same time.
And let's not forget "Seven Cities of Gold," "Modem Wars" (online multiplyer game from the early eighties) "Command HQ", and more.
And how about Chris Crawford (many innnovative games in the early 8-bit computer era), Jobs & Wozniak (Breakout, for Atari's coin-op division) . . . there are so many more from that era that are totally ignore here, yet they did ground-breaking work for their time! Arrghh!
But, what do I expect? That's the way it always is with these pop culture lists. Like how all of MTV/VH1's "Top Artists" lists are always heavily weighted to those artists that rose to prominence in the era of music videos. So, you end up with the fairly good artists from recent times side-by-side with only the most mind-blowingly greatest artists from 30, 40, or more years ago.
Since it would not occur to a reasonable person that a medical kit could be found inside an oil tank, a reasonable person will not needlessly blow it up, and is therefore at a disadvantage when playing the game.
Uh..a reasonable person wouldn't blow up an oil tank and expect to find *anything* useful left behind!
These folks made a nice attempt at getting people out of the rut videogaming has created for itself, but the above quote shows they're still not quite on level ground yet.
The cost is not always marginal. For a large enterprise, the cost can be downright large.
I'm not sure if you were making a play on words here, but just in case: I meant "marginal" in the sense it is used by economists. That is, meaning the incremental cost. I didn't mean marginal in the sense of small or inconsequential.
Your point is a good one, though. The cost of most software does lie only in the purchase price. So, free-as-in-speech software will never really be free-as-in-beer.
Well, not until OS's and apps can install, configure, update, and maintain themselves!:)
Commerically successfuly OS's like Windows are popular and profitable not because they are the best, but because its good enough.
Lest it be forgotten, Windows is popular because Microsoft used illegal tactics to make sure everyone who bought a computer also bought a copy of Windows, not because it's "good enough."
However, if what you meant was that people continue to use Windows because it is good enough, then you're right. For most people, the marginal cost of moving to another platform is greater than the percieved benefit of doing so.
I love free software. My wife and I have been free of Microsoft products at home for almost three years now, and free of commercial software at home for well over a year. I've successfully integrated two FreeBSD servers and two OpenBSD servers into my employer's network after convincing management that it was the right thing to do. I really, truly believe in free software.
But I don't see the masses switching to it for their OS and apps anytime soon, unfortunately.
When it comes to the workplace, where do loyalties end and responsibilities to oneself begin?"
Companies, just like people, only deserve the loyalty that they've earned. If they've earned your loyalty (for example, through treating you better than you would be treated elsewhere), then take that into consideration. But if not, then there's no reason to be loyal to them. Look for a better job and leave as soon as you land one.
Under the proposed plan, programs recorded from a given TV will only be viewable on that TV. So, not only will I be unable to view my recorded programs in my den if I recorded them on my living room TV, I'll also have to trash my entire library of recordings when I replace the TV I record them from.
And, as always, these devices will only hurt the average consumer who has never cost "content providers" any money at all, while the big-time "content pirates" will easily find ways around them.
But the thing I hate the most about this whole situation is that, once again, it points out that businesses think I'm a thief and should be treated like one.
"UNIX System Administration Handbook" is one of the few books that I consider essential to my job. I bought a copy for myself, and then I got my employer to buy one to add to my ever-growing professional library here at work. The book really is that useful.
The best thing about the book, to me, is the way the authors tell it to you straight. There is very little of the usual mealy-mouthed cow-towing to the Almighty Producers of Computer Products here. Instead, readers get the benefit of the authors' considerable experience and knowledge, unfiltered.
If you're an admin and don't have this book, buy it. You'll need many other books, too, but there's no way your library can be complete without this one.
I agree, it is unconscionable that the top 10% pays 1/3 of all taxes in the US. After all, that 10% of the population owns more than 2/3 of all wealth in the country. If the tax system was fair, the top 10% would pay at least 2/3 of the taxes, rather than the 1/3 they do.
Instead, the people who have 1/3 of the wealth pay 2/3 of the taxes. The poor and middle class end up paying twice as much in taxes as the wealthiest of the wealthy!
Even in my story I spent too much time fiddling with that NetGear, all because I didn't feel like driving back out to Best Buy.
You're absolutely right about us needing to return stuff that doesn't work as advertised. I've personally resolved to start treating computer hardware like I would any other physical item I purchase - if it doesn't work right away, without problems, I'll return it for a refund.
I made that resolution a few years ago. When Windows 98 was first released, my wife and I bought a new Compaq Presario unit for her parents. We brought it to their house, set it up for them...and the danged thing crashed right away. No problem, it's just Windows, right? Well, it was crashing every three to five minutes! Instead of taking it back right away, we spent our entire week off trying to fix that thing. We spent time with Compaq on the phone, did the system restore thing a few times, got a replacement HDD shipped to us overnight, and all that stuff. Nothing made it stop crashing. Finally, at the end of our week off, we brought it back to the store and got another one. That one worked perfectly right away, right out of the box.
That's when we decided we'd never do that again. If some piece of hardware doesn't work properly right out of the box, we return it. Either it's poorly engineered and requires special attention to set it up, or it's broken in some other way. Whatever the case, my time's too valuable to spend on this sort of garbage, so I don't bother any more.
I hate returning things, but I hate wasting my time even more. I'm glad you brought this issue up.
I don't mind paying for software but jeez that crap is so expensive! $99 for an upgrade to Windoze?!? $500 for a drawing program? People are lucky to be able to afford a computer let alone $500 for a drawing program [yeah it's cheaper than others...they're overpriced too:) ].
As an individual, there are precious few pieces of software I'll pay for on a free OS platform, given the free software that is already available. First off, I won't pay for any development tools whatsoever. I love the free stuff much more than I ever did any IDE I've ever used (and paid through the nose for, most times). I also won't pay for office productivity programs - the Lyx is great for the few things I need to prettyprint, while the text tools give me more power than I've had in a long time over every other file. Spreadsheets are different, of course, but then there's Abs and sc, and they're fine for me. The free Email, USENet, and IRC clients are better on the free *nix's than their counterparts on Windows.
So what would I pay for? Well, I'd buy a good vector drawing program for my wife, if there was one. I've tried to get her to use Sketch, but she really wants CorelDRAW! It's the one package she misses from her Windows days.
And yes, I do buy the occasional game from Loki, although they're only installed on my wife's machine. I really don't care very much for today's games.
In short, as a developer, I find nothing lacking in the free *nix world. But, that stands to reason, doesn't it? My wife, as an artist and computer enthusiast, finds the free *nix's to be great OS's with great programs, but she does long for a really good vector drawing tool and the occasional commercial game. And she's willing to pay to get 'em.
Now, to answer the question as to who would buy commercial software for a free OS, I'd say that most of it will be purchased by businesses eventually. I'd love to move us to a rock-solid OS at work, and I'd even keep MS-Office if it was available in a free *nix version. We'd still be better off, and the PHB's would be satisfied.
In the long term, though? I agree with Neal Stephenson's assessement. Any useful piece of software is eventually reimplemented as free software. If the commercial software providers keep sitting on their kiesters, churning out 10 year old software with annual feature upgrades, then eventually they'll be overtaken by freely implemented versions and they'll have no business left.
So in the long term, I see very few mainstream apps being purchased. Shrinkwrap software will just about disappear. Custom and semi-custom software will still be sold to businesses, and shrinkwrapped free software will still be available (as will commercial games), but the rest of the stuff you see in the software department of your local Best Buy will eventually fall by the wayside.
Well, darn it! I jumped the wrong way yet again. Microsoft came out with Windows 3.x, and I went with Desqview. Then they came out with '95, and I went with Linux. Windows 2000 came along, and I started using FreeBSD. And now that I've started learning Tcl/Tk, they're coming out with C#.
Darn, darn darn. I just can't seem to pick the best technology no matter what I do!
Oh, I know! I'll just do whatever Microsoft tells me to do. Yeah, that'll make my life better.
Gosh, I'm so lucky to have Microsoft's marketing department around to tell me how to live my life. It's a wonderful time to be alive!
Now that's the funniest thing I've read in a/long/ time. As I sat in the computer cave here at work, reading that post, I started laughing out loud. The secretaries down the hall are probably even more certain I'm insane now, but what the Hell. Everyone knows us lynxey people aren't worth a damn anyway. And stuff.
I also think that graphical programming has come a long way since those days, and that you need a powerful language like C++ to do that kind of programming today.
Oh, yeah, definitely. To make something like Quake, or even Super Mario Brothers, requires a lot more sophistication than anyone's going to get from a beginning programming book.
But, then, it was that way back then, too. I progressed from pure BASIC, to BASIC with ML subroutines for moving the player/missile objects (aka sprites) around, to pure ML as I realized it was necessary. You could do something hokey in BASIC, but it would never look like the top games of the day (PacMan, Donkey Kong, etc.).
I see a change of degree only. It's a lot further from moving a dot on the screen to the hottest games today than it was back then. Still, it's a lot cooler to be learning a language that can lead you to that sort of thing (C or C++, say) if it starts out with SOME level of graphical whiz-bang than with some sort of accounting program.
I wonder what the Quake graphics engine is written in?
I dunno. I would hope assembler, but these days, I doubt that's the case.
If anyone out there knows of an open source or freeware vector drafting package that offers anything like the ease of use and functionality that CorelDRAW does, please post the info because I bet theres many of us out there that would want it.
My wife's the artist of the family, and she used CorelDRAW! starting with version 3 in the MS world. It's the 1 program she missees since switching to Linux.
Right now, she's using a program called Sketch that offers the main functionality you'd expect in a vector graphics program. It's at version.6.x right now, but it's still usable.
Even so, it's not even close to the level of CorelDRAW! 8, which was the last one my wife used in the Windows world.
I hope Sketch gets more developers (it only has one right now) so people like us can avoid paying hundreds of dollars for a closed-source, buggy program.
IMHO, it doesn't matter what language you program in(I progam in several, including C++), the important point is that you understand the basic tenets of programming, and can use these concepts to program in any language!
I agree with you. I want to point out another problem, though. In addition to the problem of thinking like a programmer, I find that it's harder to get people interested in modern languages because it's generally much more difficult to do fun graphical things with them.
Take the first language I learned, for example: Atari BASIC. I learned it using the slim little book with the silver cover that came with the Atari 400 my parents bought me. After reading that little book (I don't have it with me, but it was about 100 pages long, with large type and many illustrations), I was able to use BASIC to draw on the screen. I could use FOR...NEXT loops to cycle colors among many lines to get a neat effect. I could actually move a dot around on the screen using my joystick.
That felt powerful. To make a program that responds graphically to my input was just mind-blowing at the time. I quickly wrote a little game, and - WOW - I felt like I could do anything if I just put in the time.
Compare that with today's computer books. Friendly or no, the books teach you how to write little boring text-based programs, for the most part. Maybe they teach you how to use a RAD tool to make a WIMP interface, but still the program itself is just a "get some text input from the keyboard, process it, and output some text" program. That is boring!
It'd be nice to write some graphics routines for C that are as easy to use as the old Atari BASIC graphics commands (SETCOLOR; COLOR; PLOT X,Y; DRAWTO A,B) and input commands (if not joystick, at least some info on using a keyboard to do game input).
Take those commands and some basic housekeeping code, then distribute them with a book on learning C. The book could still focus on the processing and structure stuff, but if something was thrown in there that would give the person some ability to make something fun and exciting after learning just a little bit.
That's a tremendous incentive for neophyte programmers, in my opinion. It not only gives them some warm fuzzies when they see it, it's also a lot more exciting to show someone else than any of the text based stuff.
It's my view that any language based on the C syntax is not suitable for beginners.
I've tried to teach many people to program. The first time I was called upon for this was when I was 13 and one of my mom's friends had purchased a Commodore VIC-20 thinking she and her husband could automate their business with it. My mom sent me over to this woman's house to teach her how to program BASIC so she could automate the accounting system. Yeah, that was just tons of fun. Fortunately, she gave up after a few sessions. And I got some nice home-made cookies out of it, so it wasn't a total loss for me!
Anyway, I've been informally teaching people to program, with varying degrees of success, ever since. In all this time, perhaps the most important thing I've learned is that the biggest hurdle potential programmers face is learning to think programmatically. Or, as someone else said, to think like the computer.
It doesn't matter whether I was teaching someone to program in BASIC, Pascal, C, or Java, the stumbling block was the same. I'm not a professional instructor, so I wasn't able to get some people over that hump. But those who did get over it found that, within a short while, they didn't need me to teach them anymore. They could pick up the rest on their own. (Of course, those who didn't get over the hump didn't need me anymore either, so either way I was out of a job!)
I believe C++ would be just as appropriate for this as anything else, but as with BASIC and a host of other languages, people who only know C++ tend to have a harder time understanding how the computer works. C++ adds a layer of abstraction that, while useful to the experienced programmer, doesn't help neophytes to learn other, non-object-oriented languages.
Still, I'll probably add the book in question to my collection of "how to program" books. I'm always interested in seeing how people try to teach one another (unless it's a "learn X in Y hours/days/weeks" book or any title that insults the purchaser's intelligence ("...for Dummies," "Complete Idiot's guide to...", etc.) - I avoid all of those titles like the worthless detritus that they are).
Slashdot Mirror
Here's mine:
Regarding your request that recent first-time Mac purchasers share what's on their minds regarding Apple products:
My wife and I have used many different operating systems and computers over the years. But in the post-8-bit computing world, we've always used Intel-based computers running the best operating system available for them at the time. We started with DOS, upgraded through the various versions of Windows, then spent the last four years or so running Linux (with a brief diversion into FreeBSD). Although Linux was really good in terms of its power, security, and stability, it wasn't easy to use. I am a system administrator, so it wasn't much of a problem for me, but for my wife it was more of an irritation. And, I have to admit, that even for me it can be more of a hassle than it's worth. The last thing I want to do when I come home from a long day of wrestling with the desktop systems and servers at work is to spend time convincing my own machines to do what we want them to. They should just work. Beyond that, there is the problem that there is very little commercial software available for Linux. So, where free software hasn't been created to fulfill certain needs (or isn't feature complete enough yet) , life can be difficult.
Even so, I would never have considered a Macintosh but for two things: ColorSync and MacOS X's UNIX underpinnings. I had never heard of ColorSync until about a year ago. Up until then, I had no idea why Macs were considered better for artists than any other operating system. ColorSync answers that question. And, given that my wife spends most of her time on the computer scanning, editing, drawing, and printing, I knew that an operating system that integrates color synchronization between devices would be perfect for her. As for the UNIX part, I also knew that we both wanted to keep the power & stability that comes with UNIX (and Linux), so the old Mac OS just wouldn't have cut it for us. But now, with MacOS X, that's no longer a problem.
After keeping the idea in the back of our minds for the last year, we finally decided to give it serious consideration two weekends ago. We did some research, and decided that buying Apple computers would be a good idea for us. And, while we initially were taken with the new iMac with flat screen panel, we ultimately decided to buy Power Mac G4's. The iMacs are cute, and they're probably more than powerful enough for me, but the lack of upgrade options is a big downside to them. But, then, I don't believe the iMac line isn't really targeted at people like my wife and I, who've built our own computers and who expect to be able to swap out major subsystems of any computer we own. Thus, the Power Mac line looked like it would be the best for us.
So, this past Saturday, we went to the local Apple Store and picked out new computers for us both. We chose a PowerMac G4 933 MHz for my wife (who needs the speed for her Illustrator and Photoshop projects), while choosing the more modest PowerMac G4 800 MHz for me. We also bought a scanner, drawing tablet, and several software titles. We decided to save some money and keep our current Sony monitors, as well as our Epson printers, for now. Unfortunately, the Apple store didn't carry the 16' USB cable my wife needed for her printer, nor the ink cartridges for my printer. Oh, and the books I wanted weren't available - some were sold out, others simply weren't stocked. Fortunately, a store across the street took care of these needs.
Overall, our experience in the Apple store was very positive. It was clean, well-lit, well-stocked, and well-staffed. As I mentioned, the store had almost everything we needed. I wouldn't have expected the Apple store to carry a decent selection of scanners and so on. Oh, and the sales associates were just great - there was no pressure to buy, and no effort to get us to spend more than we wanted to once we'd decided to buy. One of the associates even brought us each a bottle of water while we were waiting for our purchase to be rung up, then another brought all the merchandise to our car and loaded it in for us!
But that's not the best. The best came later, when we had them home. From the time we started unpacking them, we were blown away. The care with which each item was packed into the boxes, the wonderful design of the machines themselves (my wife said to me more than once this weekend, "It's a thing of beauty!"), the ease with which they can be opened up for service and upgrades . . . and the little details, like the way the power button lights up brightly when you first press it, then dims a bit as it gets going - and the way it "breathes" when in sleep mode. And the speed of these systems is just amazing.
But I still haven't gotten to the best thing yet. The best Apple Macintosh feature of all is its operating system. Mac OS X is, like the machine it come in, a thing of rare beauty and grace. As promised, it has all the power and stability of UNIX with all the ease of use of the Macintosh. Finally, when we need to change something about our computers, we have the option of either doing it the simple way through the GUI, or grovelling through the text files on the command line. My wife can run all of the commercial software she needs, and I can write programs using vi and gcc (not to mention grep, sed, and awk) - all on the same operating system!
You wanted to know whether our transition was difficult. So far, it's been very simple. The only thing we've had any real trouble getting used to is the single-button mouse. I know Mac OS X can handle more buttons, but for now we're using the Apple Pro mice that came with the machines (one little irritation is that my wife's mouse squeeks when clicked). Other than getting used to Command-Clicking and so on, though, the transition has been a cake walk. We were on the Internet about twenty minutes after we opened the boxes (it would have happened much more quickly if we hadn't stopped to "oooh" and "ahhh" over the machiens and the interface, though). Then we plugged in our printers, and they just worked. We installed our software and, again, everything just worked. None of that "Windows has found new hardware and is proceeding to ruin your computer by overwriting needed files and damaging the registry" stuff!
Well, I think I've written enough, so I'll stop here and just say, "Thank you for the incredible experience!" It was well worth the price of the new machines and software. I think my wife and I have finally found a permanent home after wandering the computer wilderness for many, many years.
Best Regards,
Joe Walsh
The research cited in the article purports that interest in Microsoft Windows and computer security are both strong among Fortune 1000 companies, while interest in Linux is weak.
Does anyone else find that position absurd? If folks were interested in computer security, you'd think they would have no interest at all in Windows.
Ah, well. So it goes. Just another sign that most people are idiots.
From my perspective, your complaints seem far off-base. So, I must not understand something. To me, SuSE Linux 7.2 Personal's default install will give you everything you're asking for in a distro. YaST2 and a well-setup KDE2 desktop go a long, long way to making things obvious and point-and-clicky enough for the average computer user.
But, that's just my perception. What am I not seeing?
Or...have you tried the latest version of the more user-friendly distros out there? Things really are getting better by leaps and bounds.
The hope is in future businesses and the infrastructure designers of the future.
Yes, indeed!
In addition to the points you brought up, I see another, quieter force working on behalf of Linux in the enterprise: just the fact that every day, it's been around one more day. A lot of conservative folks (like those I work for) tend to dismiss anything new out-of-hand, whereas things that have been around for a while are seen as worth checking out.
In 1998-99, Linux was all over the news as the greatest thing since sliced bread. The people I work for ignored it, because it was, in their opinions, probably just a flash in the pan. By 2000, I was able to win permission to set up a few Free servers by writing a few management-level reports on the idea, focusing on the cost/benefit aspect. This year, when we needed another web server, the CFO didn't blink when I said I planned to use FreeBSD and Apache. On the other hand, my occasional casual comments about "someday" moving to Linux on the desktop and as our main network servers still get dismissed out of hand.
But, I'm patient. That'll change eventually. And someday, as you pointed out, there will be a great number of newer businesses using free software throughout their operations. Won't that be fantastic?
Not to be too much of an apologist for the company I work for, but to be fair, most of the apps we use were decided upon 10 or more years ago. Heck, the accounting software's been migrated from MS-DOS to Win 3.1 to Win 9x, going from being a simple workstation app to a client-server app somewhere along the line. The financial reporting software followed a similar path, starting out as basically a bunch of macros under Lotus 1-2-3 for MS-DOS and now being a client-server app tied to Excel.
I don't think the company I work for is unique in having this approach to software. Basically, once your data's in a given proprietary format and your employees are used to a given app, you stick with it because the cost of changing over to something else is too great.
I know, that's the argument behind open formats and protocols, but try to convince your average MBA that the cost of changing over to an open specification only occurs once, while the cost of staying with an app goes on forever, and you're likely to get told that the cost of sticking with the current stuff is 'budgeted', while the cost of changing is 'unbudgeted' - which always makes me think such people equate 'budgeted' with 'zero cost'.
Anyway, I'm just ranting now. I'll stop, but hopefully I've gotten the point across that the company I work for isn't as dysfunctional as your post made out. It's just "gone along" for so long that even the idea of changing to different software is seen as off-the-wall.
On the other hand, I'm just about done with a client-server app with a GUI front end that I've written in Python that is therefore pretty darned protable. There's hope!
I'm glad they're using Linux. Unfortunately, there's no way the medium-sized business I work for could do that. For us, the problem isn't usability, it's software. And I don't mean a lack of MS-Office. Let me explain.
Like most businesses our size, we use a variety of custom, semi-custom, and prepackaged applications. While, yes, we could use free alternatives to our operating systems, office software, and email/scheduling software, there's no way in heck we're going to find a free replacement to our inventory, financial reporting, or human resource management software, for example, any time soon.
Even if someone came up with one, the cost of switching to the new packages would be enormous, given the complexity of such software and its impact on day-to-day business.
What's more, the specialized software we use requires that MS-Office be installed or it can't do simple things like generate reports. So, if we have to stay with these inventory, HR, and financial reporting packages, that means staying with MS-Office and MS-Windows.
Oh, how I'd love to move the whole corporation to free software. But there's just no way that's going to happen until all the mid-size apps are moved to Linux.
Until then, I'll continue to use FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux on the server side as much as possible. But that's where they'll stay for the forseeable future.
Many people can't [install an OS]. It comes pre-installed, which is the only reason a lot of people can get started without help.
I agree. That's why it's unreasonable to expect Linux to be easy for the average person to install. If corporations with billions to spend on R&D and usability studies can't come up with such a design, then it's unreasonable to knock free software for failing to do it.
I should have made that clearer in my response to osgeek. I was trying to make the distinction by breaking "install" and "use" up into two sentences, but I should have made it clearer that I realize the two are different, and that not every computer user can install an OS.
Still, I think that most of the time what stops people from installing an OS simple inexperience. They've never had to do it before, so they don't know how. I think most people could figure out how to install a modern consumer/desktop OS from the simple documentation that comes with them. There really aren't any hard questions in a modern, graphical OS install.
But, again, since most people have never had to do it, they of course will fear doing an OS install. Given the chance, though, most people would do fine these days.
Despite the fact that the GNU project has been around for every bit as long as the Mac (since 1984), they still don't have an OS that my mom could install and use.
Have you tried SuSE Linux 7.2, or Mandrake 8.0? Both install very nicely. SuSE will auto-detect your hardware for you, setting up X and so on. If you can install a Microsoft OS, you can install SuSE Linux 7.2. And if you can use a Microsoft OS, then you can use SuSE Linux 7.2 as well.
Check it out, if you get the chance.
What about Dan (Danielle) Bunten of Ozark Software? M.U.L.E. was a tremendous multiplayer strategy game that was very popular on many platforms, but most particularly on its home system of the Atari 400/800 computer system, where up to 4 players could play at the same time.
And let's not forget "Seven Cities of Gold," "Modem Wars" (online multiplyer game from the early eighties) "Command HQ", and more.
And how about Chris Crawford (many innnovative games in the early 8-bit computer era), Jobs & Wozniak (Breakout, for Atari's coin-op division) . . . there are so many more from that era that are totally ignore here, yet they did ground-breaking work for their time! Arrghh!
But, what do I expect? That's the way it always is with these pop culture lists. Like how all of MTV/VH1's "Top Artists" lists are always heavily weighted to those artists that rose to prominence in the era of music videos. So, you end up with the fairly good artists from recent times side-by-side with only the most mind-blowingly greatest artists from 30, 40, or more years ago.
Sigh
Here's the flaw I saw in their theory:
Since it would not occur to a reasonable person that a medical kit could be found inside an oil tank, a reasonable person will not needlessly blow it up, and is therefore at a disadvantage when playing the game.
Uh..a reasonable person wouldn't blow up an oil tank and expect to find *anything* useful left behind!
These folks made a nice attempt at getting people out of the rut videogaming has created for itself, but the above quote shows they're still not quite on level ground yet.
The cost is not always marginal. For a large enterprise, the cost can be downright large.
:)
I'm not sure if you were making a play on words here, but just in case: I meant "marginal" in the sense it is used by economists. That is, meaning the incremental cost. I didn't mean marginal in the sense of small or inconsequential.
Your point is a good one, though. The cost of most software does lie only in the purchase price. So, free-as-in-speech software will never really be free-as-in-beer.
Well, not until OS's and apps can install, configure, update, and maintain themselves!
Well, it's the open source concept, but one notch better, because the source wouldn't be open
All I can say is . . . wow!
I won't even bother to comment otherwise, because there's no way I could improve on the perfection of his admission of idiocy.
Commerically successfuly OS's like Windows are popular and profitable not because they are the best, but because its good enough.
Lest it be forgotten, Windows is popular because Microsoft used illegal tactics to make sure everyone who bought a computer also bought a copy of Windows, not because it's "good enough."
However, if what you meant was that people continue to use Windows because it is good enough, then you're right. For most people, the marginal cost of moving to another platform is greater than the percieved benefit of doing so.
I love free software. My wife and I have been free of Microsoft products at home for almost three years now, and free of commercial software at home for well over a year. I've successfully integrated two FreeBSD servers and two OpenBSD servers into my employer's network after convincing management that it was the right thing to do. I really, truly believe in free software.
But I don't see the masses switching to it for their OS and apps anytime soon, unfortunately.
When it comes to the workplace, where do loyalties end and responsibilities to oneself begin?"
Companies, just like people, only deserve the loyalty that they've earned. If they've earned your loyalty (for example, through treating you better than you would be treated elsewhere), then take that into consideration. But if not, then there's no reason to be loyal to them. Look for a better job and leave as soon as you land one.
Under the proposed plan, programs recorded from a given TV will only be viewable on that TV. So, not only will I be unable to view my recorded programs in my den if I recorded them on my living room TV, I'll also have to trash my entire library of recordings when I replace the TV I record them from.
And, as always, these devices will only hurt the average consumer who has never cost "content providers" any money at all, while the big-time "content pirates" will easily find ways around them.
But the thing I hate the most about this whole situation is that, once again, it points out that businesses think I'm a thief and should be treated like one.
"UNIX System Administration Handbook" is one of the few books that I consider essential to my job. I bought a copy for myself, and then I got my employer to buy one to add to my ever-growing professional library here at work. The book really is that useful.
The best thing about the book, to me, is the way the authors tell it to you straight. There is very little of the usual mealy-mouthed cow-towing to the Almighty Producers of Computer Products here. Instead, readers get the benefit of the authors' considerable experience and knowledge, unfiltered.
If you're an admin and don't have this book, buy it. You'll need many other books, too, but there's no way your library can be complete without this one.
Instead, the people who have 1/3 of the wealth pay 2/3 of the taxes. The poor and middle class end up paying twice as much in taxes as the wealthiest of the wealthy!
That's unconscionable, and it must be changed.
Even in my story I spent too much time fiddling with that NetGear, all because I didn't feel like driving back out to Best Buy.
You're absolutely right about us needing to return stuff that doesn't work as advertised. I've personally resolved to start treating computer hardware like I would any other physical item I purchase - if it doesn't work right away, without problems, I'll return it for a refund.
I made that resolution a few years ago. When Windows 98 was first released, my wife and I bought a new Compaq Presario unit for her parents. We brought it to their house, set it up for them...and the danged thing crashed right away. No problem, it's just Windows, right? Well, it was crashing every three to five minutes!
Instead of taking it back right away, we spent our entire week off trying to fix that thing. We spent time with Compaq on the phone, did the system restore thing a few times, got a replacement HDD shipped to us overnight, and all that stuff. Nothing made it stop crashing. Finally, at the end of our week off, we brought it back to the store and got another one. That one worked perfectly right away, right out of the box.
That's when we decided we'd never do that again. If some piece of hardware doesn't work properly right out of the box, we return it. Either it's poorly engineered and requires special attention to set it up, or it's broken in some other way. Whatever the case, my time's too valuable to spend on this sort of garbage, so I don't bother any more.
I hate returning things, but I hate wasting my time even more. I'm glad you brought this issue up.
I don't mind paying for software but jeez that crap is so expensive! $99 for an upgrade to Windoze?!? $500 for a drawing program? People are lucky to be able to afford a computer let alone $500 for a drawing program [yeah it's cheaper than others...they're overpriced too :) ].
As an individual, there are precious few pieces of software I'll pay for on a free OS platform, given the free software that is already available. First off, I won't pay for any development tools whatsoever. I love the free stuff much more than I ever did any IDE I've ever used (and paid through the nose for, most times). I also won't pay for office productivity programs - the Lyx is great for the few things I need to prettyprint, while the text tools give me more power than I've had in a long time over every other file. Spreadsheets are different, of course, but then there's Abs and sc, and they're fine for me. The free Email, USENet, and IRC clients are better on the free *nix's than their counterparts on Windows.
So what would I pay for? Well, I'd buy a good vector drawing program for my wife, if there was one. I've tried to get her to use Sketch, but she really wants CorelDRAW! It's the one package she misses from her Windows days.
And yes, I do buy the occasional game from Loki, although they're only installed on my wife's machine. I really don't care very much for today's games.
In short, as a developer, I find nothing lacking in the free *nix world. But, that stands to reason, doesn't it? My wife, as an artist and computer enthusiast, finds the free *nix's to be great OS's with great programs, but she does long for a really good vector drawing tool and the occasional commercial game. And she's willing to pay to get 'em.
Now, to answer the question as to who would buy commercial software for a free OS, I'd say that most of it will be purchased by businesses eventually. I'd love to move us to a rock-solid OS at work, and I'd even keep MS-Office if it was available in a free *nix version. We'd still be better off, and the PHB's would be satisfied.
In the long term, though? I agree with Neal Stephenson's assessement. Any useful piece of software is eventually reimplemented as free software. If the commercial software providers keep sitting on their kiesters, churning out 10 year old software with annual feature upgrades, then eventually they'll be overtaken by freely implemented versions and they'll have no business left.
So in the long term, I see very few mainstream apps being purchased. Shrinkwrap software will just about disappear. Custom and semi-custom software will still be sold to businesses, and shrinkwrapped free software will still be available (as will commercial games), but the rest of the stuff you see in the software department of your local Best Buy will eventually fall by the wayside.
Well, darn it! I jumped the wrong way yet again. Microsoft came out with Windows 3.x, and I went with Desqview. Then they came out with '95, and I went with Linux. Windows 2000 came along, and I started using FreeBSD. And now that I've started learning Tcl/Tk, they're coming out with C#.
Darn, darn darn. I just can't seem to pick the best technology no matter what I do!
Oh, I know! I'll just do whatever Microsoft tells me to do. Yeah, that'll make my life better.
Gosh, I'm so lucky to have Microsoft's marketing department around to tell me how to live my life. It's a wonderful time to be alive!
Now that's the funniest thing I've read in a /long/ time. As I sat in the computer cave here at work, reading that post, I started laughing out loud. The secretaries down the hall are probably even more certain I'm insane now, but what the Hell. Everyone knows us lynxey people aren't worth a damn anyway. And stuff.
I also think that graphical programming has come a long way since those days, and that you need a powerful language like C++ to do that kind of programming today.
Oh, yeah, definitely. To make something like Quake, or even Super Mario Brothers, requires a lot more sophistication than anyone's going to get from a beginning programming book.
But, then, it was that way back then, too. I progressed from pure BASIC, to BASIC with ML subroutines for moving the player/missile objects (aka sprites) around, to pure ML as I realized it was necessary. You could do something hokey in BASIC, but it would never look like the top games of the day (PacMan, Donkey Kong, etc.).
I see a change of degree only. It's a lot further from moving a dot on the screen to the hottest games today than it was back then. Still, it's a lot cooler to be learning a language that can lead you to that sort of thing (C or C++, say) if it starts out with SOME level of graphical whiz-bang than with some sort of accounting program.
I wonder what the Quake graphics engine is written in?
I dunno. I would hope assembler, but these days, I doubt that's the case.
Have a good one!
If anyone out there knows of an open source or freeware vector drafting package that offers anything like the ease of use and functionality that CorelDRAW does, please post the info because I bet theres many of us out there that would want it.
.6.x right now, but it's still usable.
My wife's the artist of the family, and she used CorelDRAW! starting with version 3 in the MS world. It's the 1 program she missees since switching to Linux.
Right now, she's using a program called Sketch that offers the main functionality you'd expect in a vector graphics program. It's at version
Even so, it's not even close to the level of CorelDRAW! 8, which was the last one my wife used in the Windows world.
I hope Sketch gets more developers (it only has one right now) so people like us can avoid paying hundreds of dollars for a closed-source, buggy program.
IMHO, it doesn't matter what language you program in(I progam in several, including C++), the important point is that you understand the basic tenets of programming, and can use these concepts to program in any language!
I agree with you. I want to point out another problem, though. In addition to the problem of thinking like a programmer, I find that it's harder to get people interested in modern languages because it's generally much more difficult to do fun graphical things with them.
Take the first language I learned, for example: Atari BASIC. I learned it using the slim little book with the silver cover that came with the Atari 400 my parents bought me. After reading that little book (I don't have it with me, but it was about 100 pages long, with large type and many illustrations), I was able to use BASIC to draw on the screen. I could use FOR...NEXT loops to cycle colors among many lines to get a neat effect. I could actually move a dot around on the screen using my joystick.
That felt powerful. To make a program that responds graphically to my input was just mind-blowing at the time. I quickly wrote a little game, and - WOW - I felt like I could do anything if I just put in the time.
Compare that with today's computer books. Friendly or no, the books teach you how to write little boring text-based programs, for the most part. Maybe they teach you how to use a RAD tool to make a WIMP interface, but still the program itself is just a "get some text input from the keyboard, process it, and output some text" program. That is boring!
It'd be nice to write some graphics routines for C that are as easy to use as the old Atari BASIC graphics commands (SETCOLOR; COLOR; PLOT X,Y; DRAWTO A,B) and input commands (if not joystick, at least some info on using a keyboard to do game input).
Take those commands and some basic housekeeping code, then distribute them with a book on learning C. The book could still focus on the processing and structure stuff, but if something was thrown in there that would give the person some ability to make something fun and exciting after learning just a little bit.
That's a tremendous incentive for neophyte programmers, in my opinion. It not only gives them some warm fuzzies when they see it, it's also a lot more exciting to show someone else than any of the text based stuff.
It's my view that any language based on the C syntax is not suitable for beginners.
I've tried to teach many people to program. The first time I was called upon for this was when I was 13 and one of my mom's friends had purchased a Commodore VIC-20 thinking she and her husband could automate their business with it. My mom sent me over to this woman's house to teach her how to program BASIC so she could automate the accounting system. Yeah, that was just tons of fun. Fortunately, she gave up after a few sessions. And I got some nice home-made cookies out of it, so it wasn't a total loss for me!
Anyway, I've been informally teaching people to program, with varying degrees of success, ever since. In all this time, perhaps the most important thing I've learned is that the biggest hurdle potential programmers face is learning to think programmatically. Or, as someone else said, to think like the computer.
It doesn't matter whether I was teaching someone to program in BASIC, Pascal, C, or Java, the stumbling block was the same. I'm not a professional instructor, so I wasn't able to get some people over that hump. But those who did get over it found that, within a short while, they didn't need me to teach them anymore. They could pick up the rest on their own. (Of course, those who didn't get over the hump didn't need me anymore either, so either way I was out of a job!)
I believe C++ would be just as appropriate for this as anything else, but as with BASIC and a host of other languages, people who only know C++ tend to have a harder time understanding how the computer works. C++ adds a layer of abstraction that, while useful to the experienced programmer, doesn't help neophytes to learn other, non-object-oriented languages.
Still, I'll probably add the book in question to my collection of "how to program" books. I'm always interested in seeing how people try to teach one another (unless it's a "learn X in Y hours/days/weeks" book or any title that insults the purchaser's intelligence ("...for Dummies," "Complete Idiot's guide to...", etc.) - I avoid all of those titles like the worthless detritus that they are).