A lot of people seem to love BBEdit. Not sure why, that feature list you cite isn't really outstanding for an IDE.
I really like BBEdit as well. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it's at least partially because it doesn't try to be your operating system. It doesn't bog you down with masses of toolbars, tabs file browsers, etc. This is where HomeSite become unusable for me.
There's no particular set of features that make BBEdit special. It may be the philoshopy the developers applied to the application more than anything -- it doesn't make any of those stupid really obvious mistakes that drive one insane. But certainly the focused approached to editing is a big lure. It gets out of your way and lets you focus on what you're doing.
for most of the people who really want a Mac for its prettyness
I can see why this could be the assumption, seeing as it's an immediately obvious trait when you see a Mac. But believe it or not, Apple chose to focus on more than one thing when they created their current lineup of hardware and software.
Visual appeal is one aspect, but that's completely separate from things like AppleScript, ColorSync, Cocoa, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, solid Java 2 support, free developer tools, mainstream applications, etc. Not to mention the obsession with creating a fluid user experience.
If you ask the Mac community at large as to what they value most about their platform, I believe you'll find "prettiness" surprisingly low down the list. Certain groups of consumers have certainly been drawn to the platform due to the aesethics, though.
"I used to use operating system X and now I'm an OS X freak" articles and it gets posted on some sort of nerd news site (Slashdot, OSNews, etc.). It generally seems to be the same thing...
In my book, that says a lot about Mac OS X.
Now, I'm a Linux user and I used to be a DOS user (liked PC-DOS best), an Amiga Workbench/Amiga DOS user, but Linux is the best I've found yet. If I write some long opinion-filled "article" and submit it to Slashdot will it get posted?
I think what's significant is:
1. Few expected Apple could actually make Unix user friendly 2. Few expected Apple could make an OS that Linux users would like 3. Mac OS X is very new, people are still learning about it
The fact that Macromedia wants to do the entire site rendering process is not at all appealing to me. You can't reasonably create Flash without a several hundred dollar package (Macromedia's or Adobe's). The learning curve is also quite high, and it is harder to generate programmatically than plain text-based XML/CSS content.
I can see from a business perspective why Macromedia would want to displace HTML/XML/CSS with their own product, but I don't think it's really to the benefit of the web community. I don't want the web tied to Macromedia's whim anymore than I want it tied to Microsoft's.
XML/CSS and their derivatives (like SVG) provide us quite a bit of flexibility -- except for free. These tools also allow you to maintain documents rather than simply animations. There's a lot of options with XML, ECMAScript, CSS, etc (including interactive animation). There are good times to use Flash, but Macromedia's move to take over disturbs me.
And unless they have done something drastic, there are a lot of fudamental problems with using Flash site-wide. Search engines don't really grok it, and you can't bookmark or email specific pages. This is the same problem frames have. Flash is good in certain contexts when used in conunction with XML/XHTML and CSS. Flash as a replacement for these seems like bad news for everyone except Macromedia.
I can't understand what is this buzz with Imode, it really isn't so speacial in technical terms.
The technical design really doesn't matter consumers. It's what it gives them. If they get content and features they want, they will buy it. The problem is that what slashdotters want is often different from the general public.
Another words, don't be too excited about hearing these news. I'd say, if you really care, boycott this shit and tell the japs to go back to their country with that I-mode crap. Support ricochet or whatever other True American company is there to provide you service
Ignoring the shades of racism for a moment, I think you're missing the fact that i-Mode's primary purpose is not to browse things like Slashdot. As I understand it, most of i-Mode's lure in japan is information and entertainment that is given the i-Mode seal of approval. They are made in HTML, but they are constantly evaluated by DoCoMo. Their content has to be good to keep the seal of approval.
A lot of the content is entertainment. Screen savers, graphics, trinkets animations and such. These people are not downloading and compiling kernels. People that technology has to revolve around "real work" or prove its usefulness would probably not understand the lure.
Richocet is a wireless internet service designed to use in conjunction with laptops. As far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with i-Mode.
All of my information on this topic comes from a Wired article that I read a few months ago.
You have no choice, and you buy the new phone. You talk on it about 10-20 times a month, and never even touch anything related to I-mode.
This is the exact opposite impression the Wired article gives. It says that i-Mode use is rampant in Japan, and text messaging exceeds voice call usage -- largely due to the fact that the culture sees it as inconsiderate to impose yourself on other people by contact phone calls in public.
He is complaining about bad things it the UI that Apple learned about 15 years ago, and forgot when NeXT was paid to buy them out. Things like "Icons should be nouns, and not verbs."
There are certain things that certain people in Apple researched and formed opinions on. That doesn't mean they're true from now until eternity. Somebody can disagree with the earlier findings and try new things. They're not necessarily going to perfect out of the gate.
In my opinion, there's an abusrd amount of arrogance regarding the Mac UI. I think people could be confusing fondness and familiarity with perfection. Yes, it has many good points. But it's far from perfect.
He was spot on with the problems with the Installation dialog.
I agree the authentication thing is a too vague. My personal opinion is he went a little overboard on the commentary on that subject.
I am complaining about the fact that the UI expects you to know that the little lock, inside a circle, is a button, and the only way to install the software. It would have been _much_ better UI to have an authenticate and install, rather than a quit button.
I agree.
Again Apple learned years ago that translucency sucks, yet they insist that all Macs come with translucency.
I believe it's a personal preference in most cases. The fact that certain types of people like flat shaded color and it helps them work better does not mean "transparency sucks." It means they don't like it. The are people that find it interesting to look at, and it allows them to feel like computer work is not such drugery.
Apple learned years ago how to make files and folders not rely on file paths
I agree. This is an aspect of the Mac with no perceptable down side. You apparently gain nothing and lose much by refering to files by ID instead of hard text paths.
Oh, and if I want to put other apps in my home folder, they won't register services either. Of course, if there was anything as infinitely cool as services for Mac OS 9, it would register at startup, and be done with it.
Only problem there is that many people never want to reboot their machines -- just put them to sleep.
you can expect Apple to be totally uninterested in the OSX for PC idea
I expect you're right, but I doubt it has much to do with Jobs deciding not to gain too much marketshare. Jobs has historically wanted to ship a single box as a piece of art. He doesn't want people to have to worry about how the computer works. He wants the the complete experience to be seamless. This is pretty hard to do unless you have control of the hardware and software platform.
What we need are cheap PPC machines, with dull beige designs.
What keeps Apple machines from being cheap is not the color, but rather the money required to develop, maintain and give away software and internet services with your hardware. For instance, if Apple had to work with razor thing margins, we most likely wouldn't even have Mac OS X in the first place, and the point would be moot.
I swear, the technical publishing community must assume that programmers were born with C++ knowledge, because every book in creation assumes that one has that.
Two decades ago, computer user and programmer were pretty much synonmous. But today, things are different. Believe it or not, there are a lot newbies that are just now getting interested in software development after being computer users for quite a while. Looking for a book on Java programming that assumes no programming experience? You can probably find it, but it's not exactly easy.
Want a book to learn Mac OS X Cocoa programming? You better hope you have C++ or Java experience, otherwise you're simply out of luck. There are no entry-level Cocoa books. Same for WebObjects. Developers themselves aren't at all concerned about this, of course. They expect everyone to follow the same path they did.
Believe it or not, a lot of people do not want to read a *full* book before even cracking the book actually pertains to Mac OS X development. Additionally, not everyone is interested in become career software developers. They may just want to try it out as a hobby first. I hear from all sorts of people that just got Mac OS X and want to learn how to use those free development tools that Apple provides. There's no well-suited path for that. Why should you have to learn all sorts of general C theory when all you want to do is learn the stuff that pertains to Mac OS X development? This turns potential developers off, which is sad.
The Visual QuickStart series by Peachpit Press is the only series that I have seen that is consistently good at addressing this problem. As far as I can tell, the series is rapidly expanding.
Here's a crazy idea: how about a book that teaches you Java or C with the intention of writing Mac OS X apps? How about a Java servlet book that doesn't assume you're transitioning from C++? How about making this books readible and more practical than theory-oriented?
What I'm getting at is that Apple may have to face an open market not too far in the future.
Apple's business model would not support this -- which is why clones were cancelled. Apple sells hardware at high margins, and then devotes that income to the development of the platform and the software they give away with the machines. If you take away the margins, you lose things like Mac OS X, iDVD, iMovie, Darwin funding, etc.
Therefore, Apple could simply change the hardware in such a way that others couldn't replicate (assuming they haven't already done so), or at least make it extremely inconvenient. This would prevent the sale of bare PPC boxes that were marketed to those who would then buy Mac OS X and install it on the machine.
If anything, your test proves just this: PS7 has been rewritten to take advantage of dual CPU's, where PS6 is not. OS X has nothing to do with it other than perhaps providing a more (or less?) efficient environment for the app to work in.
But getting back to the original point, general usage will benefit from OS X's MP agility because one can give iDVD one processor to encode its data while the other processor is used for email, iTunes, web browser, etc.
Some people compile large projects with one processor, and use the others to play a game.
if Apple wasn't so anti-competitive there would be lots of nice cheap apples floating around
Anti-compeitive?
They make their own software for their own hardware so they're anti-competive? They have to compete with each and every computer maker in the industry. You aren't forced to buy a Mac. In fact, if anything, most people are forced to buy a Windows machine.
Apple brings in 30% gross margins on average on hardware sales, but it's not like they just toss all of the money in a big pile. Apple reported a fiscal Q1 revenue of $1.38 billion. Do you know how much was profit? $38 million.
See, Apple actually creates and maintains products. They give away things like iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto and iTunes for free with every machine they sell. They also give every Mac owner free email, free web space -- all without ads.
A company like Dell doesn't really compete by coming up with new products per say. They take the newest intel processor and the newest rev of Windows, stick it in a box, and sell it to you on a razor thin margin. They compete primarily on the sale, secondarily on the product.
This is great if all you care about is a cheap PC that does the same stuff your old one did, but faster. Unfortunately, this thinking has contributed to a huge downturn in the PC industry. At some point, PC makers decided cheap and fast was all that mattered. Somebody forgot about inventiveness and experience. Cheap and fast is good in some situations, but you cannot rely on that entirely. You have to move forward on fronts besides clock rate.
So the fact that you pay more for a Mac means Apple can afford to create things like Mac OS X, iTools, iDVD, iPhoto, etc. It also contributes to the support of things like Darwin. Thank goodness they're doing this kind of stuff, because few others are.
mac's aren't really faster than PC's. Most of the parts are identical. So why would I pay more for a mac than a PC?
If all you care about is clock rating, then you shouldn't buy a Mac.
Apple charges you more than say, Dell, because Apple actually develops products. Dell's business model for PCs is basically to be an assembly service. They essentially compete on margin. That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not the only way it can or should be done. Apple's higher margins goes into creating stuff like Mac OS X, iTunes, iDVD, iMovie, etc, then puts it all on the machine for you.
People with existing machines can download iTunes and iPhoto for free. They also give you free (and banner-free) web hosting, email, and a ton of other stuff. They spend time worrying about what the experience will be like when you plug your digital camera into the computer. They sit down and figure out how easy and pleasant they can make it to burn a DVD.
If none of this stuff interests you, then you're probably not in Apple's target audience. But even if you're not a actual Apple customer, you still reap the benefits.
Sorry, but I perfer being able to go to a store buy a piece of HW and know that it'll work in my computer.
So you buy wintel hardware to do that?:)
Firewire? Haven't seen a single firewire product
Ever seen a video camera?
Not to mention the oodles of hard drives, CDRW drives, web cams etc. There are tons of them. You're not going to see FireWire based mice because they simply don't need that kind of bandwidth. USB works fine for input. USB is not what you want to use for hard drives or video, though.
Something that is to be used for clicking on an application to run said application should NOT count as being a serious (or even a moderate) drain on your systems resources.
What in the world does this mean? I would think you meant the Dock except that it doesn't drain system resource to bounce a bitmap up and down a few times. Maybe you mean the magnification feature, which is off by default?
Anybody who likes form over substance has yet to get out of that 4 year old 'oooh, pretty shiny thing!!!' phase.
That's pretty one sided. Any chance you're not seeing the whole perspective on this?
And don't claim that OSX is a superior OS just because it does all the same stuff as any other half assed GUI, but just with pretty transparencies and fancy colored boxs.
Have you even used Mac OS X for any extended period of time? Do you know what Quartz is? The transparencies are simply one manifestation of what Quartz can do. iPhoto is another.
If you think "shiny stuff" is all there is to Mac OS X, you're totally missing out.
How can like the design of something that's closed? It's like saying you admire the way Office uses data structures or the purity of the chemical composition of Coca-Cola as it relates to the original formula.
I think it's more like he's saying "I like the taste of Coke" not the chemical composition.
He's not saying he likes the engineering process of making the machine, he likes the final result. In fact, this is the only thing that matters to non-engineers.
pointing to recent data that suggest Apple OS's accounted for only 3.6% of new license revenue in 2000
Outside of that fact that IDC is hardly the final word on The Way Things Are...
I'm a bit skeptical of something that says "license revenue." There's a lot of room for that to be irrelevant when one takes into account how Apple actually delivers software to its customers.
All that really matters is how many machines they sell.
OS X is nice, and very full-featured, now just optimize it a little, christ. I'd be much more happy if they had just stuck with the old interface and gradually worked in Aqua.
Why does it matter to you if they do it gradually or all at once?:)
I think this issue is much more complex than it seems. I think there were reasons for doiung Aqua beyond just they wanted to, or thought it would be a cool. When there's a major shift in the underlying technology, you have to illustrate this. You need to do things that make the computer look powerful and special.
It may not seem like it to those of us that have been using computers forever, but software UI design was extremely drab and boring. The audience and uses of computers are rapidly changing. I can see an argument that says there are behavior modifcations that need to be made, and tweaks to make Aqua a little more elegant. But the idea that Apple should have kept Platinum, I don't see it. The stagnant was what really hurt Apple in the 90s.
If you are on a LAN and try to run an instance of Office X that has the same serial number Office X will detect this and not allow you to run the new instance!
As for Cocoa, it's GNU GPL'd POSIX implementation is GNUStep.
Except it's not done or anything. And there's no QuickTime, AppleScript and a bunch of other stuff that Mac apps use.
As for the Microsoft products for the Mac, they weren't ported. Office 98 was written from the ground up for the Mac, as were the products that followed it. There are some apps that are Win32 ports, but they are a bit more obscure.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of people seem to love BBEdit. Not sure why, that feature list you cite isn't really outstanding for an IDE.
I really like BBEdit as well. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it's at least partially because it doesn't try to be your operating system. It doesn't bog you down with masses of toolbars, tabs file browsers, etc. This is where HomeSite become unusable for me.
There's no particular set of features that make BBEdit special. It may be the philoshopy the developers applied to the application more than anything -- it doesn't make any of those stupid really obvious mistakes that drive one insane. But certainly the focused approached to editing is a big lure. It gets out of your way and lets you focus on what you're doing.
On the other hand, Project Builder is nice.
- Scott
Other posters have basically covered the main points, but one thing I wanted to touch on...
On a 600MHz G3 iMac running OSX 10.1.2, applications are annoyingly sluggish
I think you'll find this is a much difference experience when using a G4-based Mac at equal or possibly even lower clock rate. Quartz uses AltiVec.
- Scott
for most of the people who really want a Mac for its prettyness
I can see why this could be the assumption, seeing as it's an immediately obvious trait when you see a Mac. But believe it or not, Apple chose to focus on more than one thing when they created their current lineup of hardware and software.
Visual appeal is one aspect, but that's completely separate from things like AppleScript, ColorSync, Cocoa, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, solid Java 2 support, free developer tools, mainstream applications, etc. Not to mention the obsession with creating a fluid user experience.
If you ask the Mac community at large as to what they value most about their platform, I believe you'll find "prettiness" surprisingly low down the list. Certain groups of consumers have certainly been drawn to the platform due to the aesethics, though.
- Scott
"I used to use operating system X and now I'm an OS X freak" articles and it gets posted on some sort of nerd news site (Slashdot, OSNews, etc.). It generally seems to be the same thing...
In my book, that says a lot about Mac OS X.
Now, I'm a Linux user and I used to be a DOS user (liked PC-DOS best), an Amiga Workbench/Amiga DOS user, but Linux is the best I've found yet. If I write some long opinion-filled "article" and submit it to Slashdot will it get posted?
I think what's significant is:
1. Few expected Apple could actually make Unix user friendly
2. Few expected Apple could make an OS that Linux users would like
3. Mac OS X is very new, people are still learning about it
- Scott
The fact that Macromedia wants to do the entire site rendering process is not at all appealing to me. You can't reasonably create Flash without a several hundred dollar package (Macromedia's or Adobe's). The learning curve is also quite high, and it is harder to generate programmatically than plain text-based XML/CSS content.
I can see from a business perspective why Macromedia would want to displace HTML/XML/CSS with their own product, but I don't think it's really to the benefit of the web community. I don't want the web tied to Macromedia's whim anymore than I want it tied to Microsoft's.
XML/CSS and their derivatives (like SVG) provide us quite a bit of flexibility -- except for free. These tools also allow you to maintain documents rather than simply animations. There's a lot of options with XML, ECMAScript, CSS, etc (including interactive animation). There are good times to use Flash, but Macromedia's move to take over disturbs me.
And unless they have done something drastic, there are a lot of fudamental problems with using Flash site-wide. Search engines don't really grok it, and you can't bookmark or email specific pages. This is the same problem frames have. Flash is good in certain contexts when used in conunction with XML/XHTML and CSS. Flash as a replacement for these seems like bad news for everyone except Macromedia.
- Scott
I can't understand what is this buzz with Imode, it really isn't so speacial in technical terms.
The technical design really doesn't matter consumers. It's what it gives them. If they get content and features they want, they will buy it. The problem is that what slashdotters want is often different from the general public.
- Scott
The screen is, by definition, far too small. There is no easy way of typing in text.
The Nokia phones have remarkably effective predictive text entry systems using the standard keypads. Simple text messages are quite practical.
- Scott
Another words, don't be too excited about hearing these news. I'd say, if you really care, boycott this shit and tell the japs to go back to their country with that I-mode crap. Support ricochet or whatever other True American company is there to provide you service
Ignoring the shades of racism for a moment, I think you're missing the fact that i-Mode's primary purpose is not to browse things like Slashdot. As I understand it, most of i-Mode's lure in japan is information and entertainment that is given the i-Mode seal of approval. They are made in HTML, but they are constantly evaluated by DoCoMo. Their content has to be good to keep the seal of approval.
A lot of the content is entertainment. Screen savers, graphics, trinkets animations and such. These people are not downloading and compiling kernels. People that technology has to revolve around "real work" or prove its usefulness would probably not understand the lure.
Richocet is a wireless internet service designed to use in conjunction with laptops. As far as I can tell, this has nothing to do with i-Mode.
All of my information on this topic comes from a Wired article that I read a few months ago.
You have no choice, and you buy the new phone. You talk on it about 10-20 times a month, and never even touch anything related to I-mode.
This is the exact opposite impression the Wired article gives. It says that i-Mode use is rampant in Japan, and text messaging exceeds voice call usage -- largely due to the fact that the culture sees it as inconsiderate to impose yourself on other people by contact phone calls in public.
Again, I'm just going on what Wired said.
- Scott
He is complaining about bad things it the UI that Apple learned about 15 years ago, and forgot when NeXT was paid to buy them out. Things like "Icons should be nouns, and not verbs."
There are certain things that certain people in Apple researched and formed opinions on. That doesn't mean they're true from now until eternity. Somebody can disagree with the earlier findings and try new things. They're not necessarily going to perfect out of the gate.
In my opinion, there's an abusrd amount of arrogance regarding the Mac UI. I think people could be confusing fondness and familiarity with perfection. Yes, it has many good points. But it's far from perfect.
He was spot on with the problems with the Installation dialog.
I agree the authentication thing is a too vague. My personal opinion is he went a little overboard on the commentary on that subject.
I am complaining about the fact that the UI expects you to know that the little lock, inside a circle, is a button, and the only way to install the software. It would have been _much_ better UI to have an authenticate and install, rather than a quit button.
I agree.
Again Apple learned years ago that translucency sucks, yet they insist that all Macs come with translucency.
I believe it's a personal preference in most cases. The fact that certain types of people like flat shaded color and it helps them work better does not mean "transparency sucks." It means they don't like it. The are people that find it interesting to look at, and it allows them to feel like computer work is not such drugery.
Apple learned years ago how to make files and folders not rely on file paths
I agree. This is an aspect of the Mac with no perceptable down side. You apparently gain nothing and lose much by refering to files by ID instead of hard text paths.
Oh, and if I want to put other apps in my home folder, they won't register services either. Of course, if there was anything as infinitely cool as services for Mac OS 9, it would register at startup, and be done with it.
Only problem there is that many people never want to reboot their machines -- just put them to sleep.
- Scott
you can expect Apple to be totally uninterested in the OSX for PC idea
I expect you're right, but I doubt it has much to do with Jobs deciding not to gain too much marketshare. Jobs has historically wanted to ship a single box as a piece of art. He doesn't want people to have to worry about how the computer works. He wants the the complete experience to be seamless. This is pretty hard to do unless you have control of the hardware and software platform.
- Scott
What we need are cheap PPC machines, with dull beige designs.
What keeps Apple machines from being cheap is not the color, but rather the money required to develop, maintain and give away software and internet services with your hardware. For instance, if Apple had to work with razor thing margins, we most likely wouldn't even have Mac OS X in the first place, and the point would be moot.
- Scott
I swear, the technical publishing community must assume that programmers were born with C++ knowledge, because every book in creation assumes that one has that.
Two decades ago, computer user and programmer were pretty much synonmous. But today, things are different. Believe it or not, there are a lot newbies that are just now getting interested in software development after being computer users for quite a while. Looking for a book on Java programming that assumes no programming experience? You can probably find it, but it's not exactly easy.
Want a book to learn Mac OS X Cocoa programming? You better hope you have C++ or Java experience, otherwise you're simply out of luck. There are no entry-level Cocoa books. Same for WebObjects. Developers themselves aren't at all concerned about this, of course. They expect everyone to follow the same path they did.
Believe it or not, a lot of people do not want to read a *full* book before even cracking the book actually pertains to Mac OS X development. Additionally, not everyone is interested in become career software developers. They may just want to try it out as a hobby first. I hear from all sorts of people that just got Mac OS X and want to learn how to use those free development tools that Apple provides. There's no well-suited path for that. Why should you have to learn all sorts of general C theory when all you want to do is learn the stuff that pertains to Mac OS X development? This turns potential developers off, which is sad.
The Visual QuickStart series by Peachpit Press is the only series that I have seen that is consistently good at addressing this problem. As far as I can tell, the series is rapidly expanding.
Here's a crazy idea: how about a book that teaches you Java or C with the intention of writing Mac OS X apps? How about a Java servlet book that doesn't assume you're transitioning from C++? How about making this books readible and more practical than theory-oriented?
Lower the barrier to entry.
- Scott
You expect me to read the ENTIRE post before replying?
- Scott
What I'm getting at is that Apple may have to face an open market not too far in the future.
Apple's business model would not support this -- which is why clones were cancelled. Apple sells hardware at high margins, and then devotes that income to the development of the platform and the software they give away with the machines. If you take away the margins, you lose things like Mac OS X, iDVD, iMovie, Darwin funding, etc.
Therefore, Apple could simply change the hardware in such a way that others couldn't replicate (assuming they haven't already done so), or at least make it extremely inconvenient. This would prevent the sale of bare PPC boxes that were marketed to those who would then buy Mac OS X and install it on the machine.
- Scott
If anything, your test proves just this: PS7 has been rewritten to take advantage of dual CPU's, where PS6 is not. OS X has nothing to do with it other than perhaps providing a more (or less?) efficient environment for the app to work in.
But getting back to the original point, general usage will benefit from OS X's MP agility because one can give iDVD one processor to encode its data while the other processor is used for email, iTunes, web browser, etc.
Some people compile large projects with one processor, and use the others to play a game.
- Scott
if Apple wasn't so anti-competitive there would be lots of nice cheap apples floating around
Anti-compeitive?
They make their own software for their own hardware so they're anti-competive? They have to compete with each and every computer maker in the industry. You aren't forced to buy a Mac. In fact, if anything, most people are forced to buy a Windows machine.
Apple brings in 30% gross margins on average on hardware sales, but it's not like they just toss all of the money in a big pile. Apple reported a fiscal Q1 revenue of $1.38 billion. Do you know how much was profit? $38 million.
See, Apple actually creates and maintains products. They give away things like iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto and iTunes for free with every machine they sell. They also give every Mac owner free email, free web space -- all without ads.
A company like Dell doesn't really compete by coming up with new products per say. They take the newest intel processor and the newest rev of Windows, stick it in a box, and sell it to you on a razor thin margin. They compete primarily on the sale, secondarily on the product.
This is great if all you care about is a cheap PC that does the same stuff your old one did, but faster. Unfortunately, this thinking has contributed to a huge downturn in the PC industry. At some point, PC makers decided cheap and fast was all that mattered. Somebody forgot about inventiveness and experience. Cheap and fast is good in some situations, but you cannot rely on that entirely. You have to move forward on fronts besides clock rate.
So the fact that you pay more for a Mac means Apple can afford to create things like Mac OS X, iTools, iDVD, iPhoto, etc. It also contributes to the support of things like Darwin. Thank goodness they're doing this kind of stuff, because few others are.
- Scott
mac's aren't really faster than PC's. Most of the parts are identical. So why would I pay more for a mac than a PC?
If all you care about is clock rating, then you shouldn't buy a Mac.
Apple charges you more than say, Dell, because Apple actually develops products. Dell's business model for PCs is basically to be an assembly service. They essentially compete on margin. That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not the only way it can or should be done. Apple's higher margins goes into creating stuff like Mac OS X, iTunes, iDVD, iMovie, etc, then puts it all on the machine for you.
People with existing machines can download iTunes and iPhoto for free. They also give you free (and banner-free) web hosting, email, and a ton of other stuff. They spend time worrying about what the experience will be like when you plug your digital camera into the computer. They sit down and figure out how easy and pleasant they can make it to burn a DVD.
If none of this stuff interests you, then you're probably not in Apple's target audience. But even if you're not a actual Apple customer, you still reap the benefits.
- Scott
and the white that Apple uses on the new iMac to me is blinding
So you're saying we need beige?
- Scott
Sorry, but I perfer being able to go to a store buy a piece of HW and know that it'll work in my computer.
:)
So you buy wintel hardware to do that?
Firewire? Haven't seen a single firewire product
Ever seen a video camera?
Not to mention the oodles of hard drives, CDRW drives, web cams etc. There are tons of them. You're not going to see FireWire based mice because they simply don't need that kind of bandwidth. USB works fine for input. USB is not what you want to use for hard drives or video, though.
Something that is to be used for clicking on an application to run said application should NOT count as being a serious (or even a moderate) drain on your systems resources.
What in the world does this mean? I would think you meant the Dock except that it doesn't drain system resource to bounce a bitmap up and down a few times. Maybe you mean the magnification feature, which is off by default?
Anybody who likes form over substance has yet to get out of that 4 year old 'oooh, pretty shiny thing!!!' phase.
That's pretty one sided. Any chance you're not seeing the whole perspective on this?
And don't claim that OSX is a superior OS just because it does all the same stuff as any other half assed GUI, but just with pretty transparencies and fancy colored boxs.
Have you even used Mac OS X for any extended period of time? Do you know what Quartz is? The transparencies are simply one manifestation of what Quartz can do. iPhoto is another.
If you think "shiny stuff" is all there is to Mac OS X, you're totally missing out.
- Scott
How can like the design of something that's closed? It's like saying you admire the way Office uses data structures or the purity of the chemical composition of Coca-Cola as it relates to the original formula.
I think it's more like he's saying "I like the taste of Coke" not the chemical composition.
He's not saying he likes the engineering process of making the machine, he likes the final result. In fact, this is the only thing that matters to non-engineers.
- Scott
pointing to recent data that suggest Apple OS's accounted for only 3.6% of new license revenue in 2000
Outside of that fact that IDC is hardly the final word on The Way Things Are...
I'm a bit skeptical of something that says "license revenue." There's a lot of room for that to be irrelevant when one takes into account how Apple actually delivers software to its customers.
All that really matters is how many machines they sell.
- Scott
OS X is nice, and very full-featured, now just optimize it a little, christ. I'd be much more happy if they had just stuck with the old interface and gradually worked in Aqua.
:)
Why does it matter to you if they do it gradually or all at once?
I think this issue is much more complex than it seems. I think there were reasons for doiung Aqua beyond just they wanted to, or thought it would be a cool. When there's a major shift in the underlying technology, you have to illustrate this. You need to do things that make the computer look powerful and special.
It may not seem like it to those of us that have been using computers forever, but software UI design was extremely drab and boring. The audience and uses of computers are rapidly changing. I can see an argument that says there are behavior modifcations that need to be made, and tweaks to make Aqua a little more elegant. But the idea that Apple should have kept Platinum, I don't see it. The stagnant was what really hurt Apple in the 90s.
- Scott
Anyway, don't confuse OS X with a Real Unix with Real X Windows. Support for X on OSX is a third-party effort at best.
On Mac OS X, you have to launch XFree. On Linux, you have to launch XFree. Where's the difference?
- Scott
If you are on a LAN and try to run an instance of Office X that has the same serial number Office X will detect this and not allow you to run the new instance!
Photoshop has done this for ages.
- Scott
As for Cocoa, it's GNU GPL'd POSIX implementation is GNUStep.
Except it's not done or anything. And there's no QuickTime, AppleScript and a bunch of other stuff that Mac apps use.
As for the Microsoft products for the Mac, they weren't ported. Office 98 was written from the ground up for the Mac, as were the products that followed it. There are some apps that are Win32 ports, but they are a bit more obscure.
- Scott