Yes it looks purty but I don't think it's any easier to use
On the contrary, I think Mac OS X provides a much more clear message to the user about how to perform tasks. But it is different than Mac OS 9, which some people have gotten used to.
I'm sure there is a strong voice somewhere in Apple insisting the dock should do everything. This voice is wrong; many Mac users like having icons strewn about the place so the dock should not be so integral
Mac users can strew things across the desktop if they like, but I think the Mac has long been begging for a central management metaphor. In OS9, you had the control strip, the application menu, the Apple menu and some other gadgets. None of them really looked or worked the same. Sure people became accustomed to it, but that doesn't mean it was good.
Application wise, you get pretty much the equivalents of Mac OS 9 plus a few Unix style monitoring tools.
By this you obviously are talking purely about the applications that are included on the CD, which some people might not figure out unless you say it explicitly.
Aqua looks lovely but hogs CPU and offers few innovations beyond the old classic look
There are real improvements present, but some of them are subtle. Aqua itself isn't going to provide anything other than the look -- it's just a theme. But other Mac OS X UI conventions, like drawers and sheets offer something quite new and quite useful, IMHO.
I think this hardcoding will bite them as apps are likely to be skinned to look like Aqua which is all well and good until Apple go and change the L&F once more
UI calls are abstracted in most cases, and the OS generates the widgets. ProjectBuilder handles all of this for you.
Overall, I find Mac OS X feels more like home to me than Mac OS 9 does now. More work to do, but good progress is being made. Progress was not being made in OS9 UI, it was just familiar, and felt somewhat stale.
Its funny to me how we gleefully bash Microsoft for its monopoly, but hardly anyone ever mentions Apple's monopoly. The only difference is that no one really considers Apple a threat.
A monopoly over what? The hardware THEY design? Quick, somebody sue Nintendo. They have a monopoly over the GameCube.
Anybody else is free to make their own platform. Sony created the PlayStation. Sony doesn't have a monopoly over PlayStation hardware any more than Apple has a monopoly over Macintosh hardware.
Why do I have to lie about being a student to get decent pricing from Apple?
Because if everybody got the educational discounts, Apple wouldn't have the means to develop and give away iMovie, iDVD, iTools, etc for free. Plus they subsidize Darwin and several other open source projects.
Dell and Apple have completely different types of products, business modules and value propositions. The only thing the two companies have in common is that they both make computers.
But I can assure you that was the only reason for making the descision
Or perhaps not everyone in the company knew what was up initially. Just another possibilty.
But BEING good or evil is NEVER a reason for a company to make a descision.
This is pretty extreme.
A lot of companies are not this bad. In my opinion, this includes Apple. Apple makes mistakes (and generally repents), but it also sometimes does something just because it's right, as subjective as that can be. I believe a major contributing factor here is that many journalists prefer controversey, so that's what people hear more of.
Companies are run by humans. The fact the people have different philoshopies and priorities is reflected in their respective organizations.
and their very own "Megahertz Myth" argument, this mod should have no bearing on performance.
They never said megahertz has no bearing on performance. They simply said that clock rate can not be used as the only means to compare performance of chips of different processor families.
There are some serious challenges that face Apple, and most of it comes from not licensing
their hardware platform.
Whether that is true or not is up for discussion, but the fact is licensing the hardware would (and did) create a whole slew of new problems. Apple and the Mac are both in far better strategic position today than they were when the cloners where around.
Yes, IBM allowed clones, and everybody lived happily ever after. That doesn't mean that this can be applied to other platforms with guaranteed success. In fact, the hardware/software integration is one of the key differentiating factors between x86 and Macs. This has a number of advantages, virtually all relating directly to user experience.
Apple seems to have sacrificed some serious quality issues with OSX's performance on current hardware.
This hasn't been my experience. OS X 10.1 zips right along on my sister's iBook G3/500 w/ 128MB. 10.0.4 did not provide satisfactory performance on the same hardware, mainly due to swapping. Have you actually run 10.1 on the iBook, or only 10.0.x?
the parts and bought a 700Mhz Dell with 256Mhz of RAM, a 20 Gig drive, and a 32
Meg GeForce 2 video card and DVD Rom drive (a refurbished laptop) for $300
less than the iBook
Dell and Apple have totally different business models. Dell mainly assembles parts and sells at low margins. They don't really develop products in the same sense that Apple does. If Apple adopted Dell's business model, there would be no Mac OS X, no iMovie, no FireWire, no Darwin, etc.
I do occasionally use IE, when hitting one of those pages designed by MS only shops, but most of my browsing time is in OmniWeb [omnigroup.com] (www.omnigroup.com). Problem solved.
OmniWeb has incomplete and broken CSS support, and JavaScript has issues as well. It simply cannot render modern pages. This creates major headaches for site authors, and encourages poor page design (nested tables, font tags, single pixel spacers, etc.). This sends the web backwards.
Fortunately, OmniGroup is rewriting their rendering engine for 5.0, to be released sometime next year. But in the meantime, more and more sites are using CSS.
There are occassions when sites are aimed specifically at IE to OmniWeb's detriment, but these are far less common than most people think.
I find it strange as I always consider IE for Mac to be inferior. Sure it may be more standards compliant, but I can't tell that by looking.
Whether you can tell or not by just glancing at a few dozen pages out of several billion is not the most important issue. As a user of a non-Windows platform, W3C standards support is essential to your independence on the web. Browsers simply need to have complete CSS support.
Formatting with nested tables, single pixel spacers and bazillions of font tags is insane. CSS remedies this, but OmniWeb's CSS support is not complete. This causes problems for performance, accessibility, managability and appearance. Visit the home page of A List Apart in both MacIE and OmniWeb for a demonstration of the difference in CSS support.
I'm just wondering - what makes the Mac version of IE so good?
It can render significantly more content than OmniWeb -- that's the underlying issue. A browser's job is to render pages. If it can't do that well, how nicely it renders text (thanks to Quartz) isn't nearly as important. CSS content is becoming increasingly common. OmniWeb's CSSP support is totally incomplete.
it can't copy and paste from URLs or from textfields
If this is the case, you're using an outdated version. The one released in March had this problem. It has since been fixed.
Unlike MS, they don't use their proprietary widgets to corner the application market; the information on how to use them is free to all, no royalties.... no licenses (afiak).. nothing
For that matter, all of Apple's Mac OS X application development tools are free.
Apple has apparently worked things out with Eric Yang, whom we earlier today reported was prevented from developing an Aqua front-end for Mozilla and Netscape: "What Apple objected to was not Aquafying Mozilla, but rather the way I was doing it via emulation, thus not giving Mozilla users a pure Aqua experience. Apple is willing to provide information for creating real Aqua experience for Mozilla. Right now, my efforts are focused on an Aqua interface for Tenon's iTools, so work on Mozilla for the moment is in abeyance."
they are attempting to copyright the color blue the notion of transperancy
I don't think that's the case.
Aqua theme is simply too general to be copyrighted. Therefore someone using similar candy colored transperancies for a computer GUI should not be considered plagiarism.
People look at it and know it's meant to look like Aqua. That's what's significant. Some even use the Apple logo. It's not like they created something unique and accientally came up some similarties to Aqua. There's plenty of room to be creative with blue and transparency without creating an Aqua clone.
Equivalent of that "serious" hardware can be purchased by around $2500 if one is willing to go with Intel.
I'd be interested where you can a dual ~1.4GHz machine with a DVD-R/CD-RW drive, gigabit ethernet, and dual port video card for $2500.
"it has a software, hardware and a platform to develop and maintain. "
That is why Apple has been almost completely marginalized, trying to sustain their 4% market share. They have NO CHANCE competing with thousands of PC companies.
Competing in what terms? PC manufactuers are dropping like flies. Selling lots of units does not mean you have a successful business.
The fact Apple has its own platform and accompanying line of software provides choice in the industry. The last thing we need is less choice.
Hardcode Windows cronies but on your side only "mac users". How sweet.
BTW: I say "hardcore Windows advocates" because there are oodles of people that haven't chosen Windows, they just use what is put in front of them. As a result, I doubt most would care about a Windows theme for E. These people aren't really active members of the Windows community. They just have an email/web browser machine that happens to run Windows.
I strong suspect there is a higher percentage of Mac users that are active advocates.
"Because it was driving the platform into the ground. The Mac, as a platform, is in much better shape today then when the cloner makers were around."
So, are you saying that PC as a platform would be in much better shape if IBM never did allow people to make clones?
No, I'm saying "The Mac, as a platform, is in much better shape today then when the cloner makers were around." Part of the differentiation of the Mac from x86 platform is that the hardware and software are standardized and integrated. This delivers a different type of experience, it provides an alternative. The clones theatened some of that core value of the Mac.
Futhermore, the Mac cloner makers were completely clueless when it came to marketing their wares. They didn't try to open up new markets for the platform. They only advertised in Mac magazines, and the message was very fragemented.
People have this idea that if Apple allowed anyone to license Mac OS, then the platform would just take off, but nobody every really provides details other than "it worked for IBM." IBM and Apple are totally different types of companies.
Apple platform ( not company) is where it is ( scraping for measly few percent of the market) because of their stupid policies which result in overpriced and purely hype (coolness) driven systems.
Do you really think that's why people buy Macs? Just because they're "cool?" You should go to a Macworld Expo sometime.:)
A lot of people buy Macs because they have higher expectations of software design, and are willing to pay a little more for the better experience an integrated hardware/software platform provides. You don't have to agree with this, but you should recognize that the allure doesn't revolve around translucent plastics. The unique designs have certainly attracted attention, though, bringing new users to the platform. But, if the overall experience is not as important to you as the best specs for the lowest cose, then you probably don't want a Mac.
And that "measly few percent of the market" accounts for about $6-8 billion in income anually.
I looked at buying one of recent Macs for my son and, hell, they are simply not offering anything unique above your average PC while costing almost twice as much.
Twice as much? I'm sorry, they just aren't that expensive. You can find a bare bones, no-name 800MHz PC for half the price of a 867MHz G4, but that does not mean they are at all comparable.
It simply doesn't make sense to buy Mac, unless you want to be different just for the sake of being different.
It's intersting you would see it that way, and perhaps that is true for your purposes. However, plenty of other people want them because they:
[1] want to spend less time diddling with hardware/software conflicts
[2] want well-designed application software
[3] want a nice GUI on top of a unix-like core
[4] want great desktop video support
[5] want world-class development tools
[6] need cost effective professional video support
[7] need professional publishing tools
[8] want a better overall computing experience
...some just off the top of my head. A lot of this value might be missed if you only played with a Mac for thirty seconds. You definitely are missing out if you haven't tried Mac OS X 10.1 yet.
Under the Lanham Act and Dilution Act, a trademark owner also has the option of settling by just licensing the trademark to the defendant, without any ill effect on the trademark's strength.
So you are suggesting they license the appropriate items to any theme maker who asks?
I would have to reckon that due to the availability of high quality soundcards, soft synths, and amazing software studios for cheap, more and more people are doing it everyday, if only as a hobby.
Okay, but I don't understand where the problem is. Apple has been shippining standard audio hardware for 17 years, and all other computer manufacturers now do the same. But there's nothing that prevents people from selling aftermarket sound cards. For example, SoundBlaster Live for the Mac.
I guess I don't understand why Apple is bad for including standard audio hardware.
Hey, I totally agree with that, but you cannot tell me that Apple is not a huge corporation with huge corporation goals.
Oh, they are fortune 500 company, I will not dispute that with you. They are big. But being big does not mean they are equivalent to Microsoft.
Hardware monopoly for example? Take the soundcard or graphics card situation. They chose, so you get to chose what they have chosen.
I really don't have the time or interest to compare soundcards, and I know I'm not alone in that. Most people don't need anything very special. The situation's pretty much the same for video cards. This is really geeky stuff that very few people actually care about. They expect the manufacturer to choose something good. NVIDIA cards are good.
If you really want an aftermarket card, you can get one.
It's definitely noticeably improved. I still disabled the "genie" docking effect, but scrolling in the finder is smoother, etc. There's still substantial room for improvement, however.
I've heard from one person who said he installed 10.1 over his existing 10.0.x installation. He said the speed gains were initially modest. However, there was a dramatic difference when he wiped the drive and did a clean install.
What this says is that you can't make your computer look like what YOU want it to.
Sure you can. You can do whatever you like. Apple isn't going to raid your home for Aqua themes.
What you can't do to make nearly pixel perfect copies of Apple's creations and redistribute it without asking their permission. It doesn't matter whether they deem the themes a commercial threat or not. The law says Apple isn't allowed to play favorites.
Can we all agree that if Red Hat took one of these Aqua themes and made it their default, that Apple would be justified in asking them to remove it? Assuming that is true, Apple can't just pick out situations like that. They have to defend the image at every single step they encounter along the way, otherwise they lose their rights.
If look and feel is all that Apple has got
I don't believe they ever said that. But the appearance of their products is an identifying and unique feature. They spent time on this because it added value to the product. It was another reason to buy it.
Bad Apple, bad! Fix this now.
Apple didn't make the rules. If anyone, your beef is with the government.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes it looks purty but I don't think it's any easier to use
On the contrary, I think Mac OS X provides a much more clear message to the user about how to perform tasks. But it is different than Mac OS 9, which some people have gotten used to.
I'm sure there is a strong voice somewhere in Apple insisting the dock should do everything. This voice is wrong; many Mac users like having icons strewn about the place so the dock should not be so integral
Mac users can strew things across the desktop if they like, but I think the Mac has long been begging for a central management metaphor. In OS9, you had the control strip, the application menu, the Apple menu and some other gadgets. None of them really looked or worked the same. Sure people became accustomed to it, but that doesn't mean it was good.
Application wise, you get pretty much the equivalents of Mac OS 9 plus a few Unix style monitoring tools.
By this you obviously are talking purely about the applications that are included on the CD, which some people might not figure out unless you say it explicitly.
Aqua looks lovely but hogs CPU and offers few innovations beyond the old classic look
There are real improvements present, but some of them are subtle. Aqua itself isn't going to provide anything other than the look -- it's just a theme. But other Mac OS X UI conventions, like drawers and sheets offer something quite new and quite useful, IMHO.
I think this hardcoding will bite them as apps are likely to be skinned to look like Aqua which is all well and good until Apple go and change the L&F once more
UI calls are abstracted in most cases, and the OS generates the widgets. ProjectBuilder handles all of this for you.
Overall, I find Mac OS X feels more like home to me than Mac OS 9 does now. More work to do, but good progress is being made. Progress was not being made in OS9 UI, it was just familiar, and felt somewhat stale.
- Scott
Its funny to me how we gleefully bash Microsoft for its monopoly, but hardly anyone ever mentions Apple's monopoly. The only difference is that no one really considers Apple a threat.
A monopoly over what? The hardware THEY design? Quick, somebody sue Nintendo. They have a monopoly over the GameCube.
Anybody else is free to make their own platform. Sony created the PlayStation. Sony doesn't have a monopoly over PlayStation hardware any more than Apple has a monopoly over Macintosh hardware.
- Scott
Why do I have to lie about being a student to get decent pricing from Apple?
Because if everybody got the educational discounts, Apple wouldn't have the means to develop and give away iMovie, iDVD, iTools, etc for free. Plus they subsidize Darwin and several other open source projects.
Dell and Apple have completely different types of products, business modules and value propositions. The only thing the two companies have in common is that they both make computers.
- Scott
My brand new machine runs IE 5 on OS X like SHIT. It takes literally 2 minutes of a spinning color cursor just to render one Slashdot comments page
I don't think this experience is at all typical. I suspect there's some other factor at work.
- Scott
But I can assure you that was the only reason for making the descision
Or perhaps not everyone in the company knew what was up initially. Just another possibilty.
But BEING good or evil is NEVER a reason for a company to make a descision.
This is pretty extreme.
A lot of companies are not this bad. In my opinion, this includes Apple. Apple makes mistakes (and generally repents), but it also sometimes does something just because it's right, as subjective as that can be. I believe a major contributing factor here is that many journalists prefer controversey, so that's what people hear more of.
Companies are run by humans. The fact the people have different philoshopies and priorities is reflected in their respective organizations.
- Scott
the only thing new about this thing is the keyboard...
"only"? Sure makes messaging significantly easier.
- Scott
and their very own "Megahertz Myth" argument, this mod should have no bearing on performance.
They never said megahertz has no bearing on performance. They simply said that clock rate can not be used as the only means to compare performance of chips of different processor families.
- Scott
There are some serious challenges that face Apple, and most of it comes from not licensing
their hardware platform.
Whether that is true or not is up for discussion, but the fact is licensing the hardware would (and did) create a whole slew of new problems. Apple and the Mac are both in far better strategic position today than they were when the cloners where around.
Yes, IBM allowed clones, and everybody lived happily ever after. That doesn't mean that this can be applied to other platforms with guaranteed success. In fact, the hardware/software integration is one of the key differentiating factors between x86 and Macs. This has a number of advantages, virtually all relating directly to user experience.
Apple seems to have sacrificed some serious quality issues with OSX's performance on current hardware.
This hasn't been my experience. OS X 10.1 zips right along on my sister's iBook G3/500 w/ 128MB. 10.0.4 did not provide satisfactory performance on the same hardware, mainly due to swapping. Have you actually run 10.1 on the iBook, or only 10.0.x?
the parts and bought a 700Mhz Dell with 256Mhz of RAM, a 20 Gig drive, and a 32
Meg GeForce 2 video card and DVD Rom drive (a refurbished laptop) for $300
less than the iBook
Dell and Apple have totally different business models. Dell mainly assembles parts and sells at low margins. They don't really develop products in the same sense that Apple does. If Apple adopted Dell's business model, there would be no Mac OS X, no iMovie, no FireWire, no Darwin, etc.
- Scott
ANOTHER security hole in IE for OS X!
What were the others? I don't remember hearing about any other security issues in MacIE for OS X.
- Scot
I do occasionally use IE, when hitting one of those pages designed by MS only shops, but most of my browsing time is in OmniWeb [omnigroup.com] (www.omnigroup.com). Problem solved.
OmniWeb has incomplete and broken CSS support, and JavaScript has issues as well. It simply cannot render modern pages. This creates major headaches for site authors, and encourages poor page design (nested tables, font tags, single pixel spacers, etc.). This sends the web backwards.
Fortunately, OmniGroup is rewriting their rendering engine for 5.0, to be released sometime next year. But in the meantime, more and more sites are using CSS.
There are occassions when sites are aimed specifically at IE to OmniWeb's detriment, but these are far less common than most people think.
As a company, though, OmniGroup is great.
- Scott
Omniweb does not have complete javascript support.
Or CSS support.
- Scott
I find it strange as I always consider IE for Mac to be inferior. Sure it may be more standards compliant, but I can't tell that by looking.
Whether you can tell or not by just glancing at a few dozen pages out of several billion is not the most important issue. As a user of a non-Windows platform, W3C standards support is essential to your independence on the web. Browsers simply need to have complete CSS support.
Formatting with nested tables, single pixel spacers and bazillions of font tags is insane. CSS remedies this, but OmniWeb's CSS support is not complete. This causes problems for performance, accessibility, managability and appearance. Visit the home page of A List Apart in both MacIE and OmniWeb for a demonstration of the difference in CSS support.
I'm just wondering - what makes the Mac version of IE so good?
It can render significantly more content than OmniWeb -- that's the underlying issue. A browser's job is to render pages. If it can't do that well, how nicely it renders text (thanks to Quartz) isn't nearly as important. CSS content is becoming increasingly common. OmniWeb's CSSP support is totally incomplete.
it can't copy and paste from URLs or from textfields
If this is the case, you're using an outdated version. The one released in March had this problem. It has since been fixed.
- Scott
I mean, I own a Mac, but I was wondering how many other people do...
About 25 million. Apple sells about 5 million machines per year and grosses about $6-8 billion annually.
Not that I understand why one would be boycotting over this issue. Apple takes unix mainstream. Off with their heads!
- Scott
Apple probably saw the reaction on slashdot...
Oh please.
- Scott
Unlike MS, they don't use their proprietary widgets to corner the application market; the information on how to use them is free to all, no royalties.... no licenses (afiak).. nothing
For that matter, all of Apple's Mac OS X application development tools are free.
- Scott
From MacNN.com:
Apple has apparently worked things out with Eric Yang, whom we earlier today reported was prevented from developing an Aqua front-end for Mozilla and Netscape: "What Apple objected to was not Aquafying Mozilla, but rather the way I was doing it via emulation, thus not giving Mozilla users a pure Aqua experience. Apple is willing to provide information for creating real Aqua experience for Mozilla. Right now, my efforts are focused on an Aqua interface for Tenon's iTools, so work on Mozilla for the moment is in abeyance."
they are attempting to copyright the color blue the notion of transperancy
I don't think that's the case.
Aqua theme is simply too general to be copyrighted. Therefore someone using similar candy colored transperancies for a computer GUI should not be considered plagiarism.
People look at it and know it's meant to look like Aqua. That's what's significant. Some even use the Apple logo. It's not like they created something unique and accientally came up some similarties to Aqua. There's plenty of room to be creative with blue and transparency without creating an Aqua clone.
- Scott
Equivalent of that "serious" hardware can be purchased by around $2500 if one is willing to go with Intel.
I'd be interested where you can a dual ~1.4GHz machine with a DVD-R/CD-RW drive, gigabit ethernet, and dual port video card for $2500.
"it has a software, hardware and a platform to develop and maintain. "
That is why Apple has been almost completely marginalized, trying to sustain their 4% market share. They have NO CHANCE competing with thousands of PC companies.
Competing in what terms? PC manufactuers are dropping like flies. Selling lots of units does not mean you have a successful business.
The fact Apple has its own platform and accompanying line of software provides choice in the industry. The last thing we need is less choice.
- Scott
Hardcode Windows cronies but on your side only "mac users". How sweet.
BTW: I say "hardcore Windows advocates" because there are oodles of people that haven't chosen Windows, they just use what is put in front of them. As a result, I doubt most would care about a Windows theme for E. These people aren't really active members of the Windows community. They just have an email/web browser machine that happens to run Windows.
I strong suspect there is a higher percentage of Mac users that are active advocates.
- Scott
"Because it was driving the platform into the ground. The Mac, as a platform, is in much better shape today then when the cloner makers were around."
:)
So, are you saying that PC as a platform would be in much better shape if IBM never did allow people to make clones?
No, I'm saying "The Mac, as a platform, is in much better shape today then when the cloner makers were around." Part of the differentiation of the Mac from x86 platform is that the hardware and software are standardized and integrated. This delivers a different type of experience, it provides an alternative. The clones theatened some of that core value of the Mac.
Futhermore, the Mac cloner makers were completely clueless when it came to marketing their wares. They didn't try to open up new markets for the platform. They only advertised in Mac magazines, and the message was very fragemented.
People have this idea that if Apple allowed anyone to license Mac OS, then the platform would just take off, but nobody every really provides details other than "it worked for IBM." IBM and Apple are totally different types of companies.
Apple platform ( not company) is where it is ( scraping for measly few percent of the market) because of their stupid policies which result in overpriced and purely hype (coolness) driven systems.
Do you really think that's why people buy Macs? Just because they're "cool?" You should go to a Macworld Expo sometime.
A lot of people buy Macs because they have higher expectations of software design, and are willing to pay a little more for the better experience an integrated hardware/software platform provides. You don't have to agree with this, but you should recognize that the allure doesn't revolve around translucent plastics. The unique designs have certainly attracted attention, though, bringing new users to the platform. But, if the overall experience is not as important to you as the best specs for the lowest cose, then you probably don't want a Mac.
And that "measly few percent of the market" accounts for about $6-8 billion in income anually.
I looked at buying one of recent Macs for my son and, hell, they are simply not offering anything unique above your average PC while costing almost twice as much.
Twice as much? I'm sorry, they just aren't that expensive. You can find a bare bones, no-name 800MHz PC for half the price of a 867MHz G4, but that does not mean they are at all comparable.
It simply doesn't make sense to buy Mac, unless you want to be different just for the sake of being different.
It's intersting you would see it that way, and perhaps that is true for your purposes. However, plenty of other people want them because they:
[1] want to spend less time diddling with hardware/software conflicts
[2] want well-designed application software
[3] want a nice GUI on top of a unix-like core
[4] want great desktop video support
[5] want world-class development tools
[6] need cost effective professional video support
[7] need professional publishing tools
[8] want a better overall computing experience
...some just off the top of my head. A lot of this value might be missed if you only played with a Mac for thirty seconds. You definitely are missing out if you haven't tried Mac OS X 10.1 yet.
- Scott
Under the Lanham Act and Dilution Act, a trademark owner also has the option of settling by just licensing the trademark to the defendant, without any ill effect on the trademark's strength.
So you are suggesting they license the appropriate items to any theme maker who asks?
- Scott
I would have to reckon that due to the availability of high quality soundcards, soft synths, and amazing software studios for cheap, more and more people are doing it everyday, if only as a hobby.
Okay, but I don't understand where the problem is. Apple has been shippining standard audio hardware for 17 years, and all other computer manufacturers now do the same. But there's nothing that prevents people from selling aftermarket sound cards. For example, SoundBlaster Live for the Mac.
I guess I don't understand why Apple is bad for including standard audio hardware.
- Scott
Hey, I totally agree with that, but you cannot tell me that Apple is not a huge corporation with huge corporation goals.
Oh, they are fortune 500 company, I will not dispute that with you. They are big. But being big does not mean they are equivalent to Microsoft.
Hardware monopoly for example? Take the soundcard or graphics card situation. They chose, so you get to chose what they have chosen.
I really don't have the time or interest to compare soundcards, and I know I'm not alone in that. Most people don't need anything very special. The situation's pretty much the same for video cards. This is really geeky stuff that very few people actually care about. They expect the manufacturer to choose something good. NVIDIA cards are good.
If you really want an aftermarket card, you can get one.
- Scott
It's definitely noticeably improved. I still disabled the "genie" docking effect, but scrolling in the finder is smoother, etc. There's still substantial room for improvement, however.
I've heard from one person who said he installed 10.1 over his existing 10.0.x installation. He said the speed gains were initially modest. However, there was a dramatic difference when he wiped the drive and did a clean install.
- Scott
What this says is that you can't make your computer look like what YOU want it to.
Sure you can. You can do whatever you like. Apple isn't going to raid your home for Aqua themes.
What you can't do to make nearly pixel perfect copies of Apple's creations and redistribute it without asking their permission. It doesn't matter whether they deem the themes a commercial threat or not. The law says Apple isn't allowed to play favorites.
Can we all agree that if Red Hat took one of these Aqua themes and made it their default, that Apple would be justified in asking them to remove it? Assuming that is true, Apple can't just pick out situations like that. They have to defend the image at every single step they encounter along the way, otherwise they lose their rights.
If look and feel is all that Apple has got
I don't believe they ever said that. But the appearance of their products is an identifying and unique feature. They spent time on this because it added value to the product. It was another reason to buy it.
Bad Apple, bad! Fix this now.
Apple didn't make the rules. If anyone, your beef is with the government.
- Scott