I never have and I never will trust benchmarks. Just like I will never trust any specs that a company puts out untill I try the machine for myself. It's one of the reasons I use Apple computers. As I type this, I'm on a custom built PC, with an AMD Athlon XP 2000 processor. It has 512 MB of memory, an Abit KR7A-133 mo-bo and plenty of other bells and wistles. Now theoreticaly speaking, this computer should be a hell of a lot faster than my 300Mhz iBook. Yet for everything except playing UT, thsi computer seems either equivilent to or sometimes (especialy right after startup) slower than the iBook. My point is, don't trust the numbers, use it yourself and decide for yourself. You're the one using the computer, and 90% o fusing a computer is how it feels to you.
I could swear I've heard all this before, like maybe here: http://www.apple.com/powermac/processor.html
While I will admit that apple does skew their tests in their favor, they have been saying this for years, AMD realized it a while back when they switched to an alternative numbering system. Only intel continues with the idea that Mhz is the only measure of a processor.
Personaly speaking, I think processors, in theri current 32-bit forms have essentialy hit a brick wall. But Intel doesn't want to admit that yet becasue they've invested so much into making people believe in Mhz, that to try to convince people that 1ghz is as fast as the 2ghz they bought last year would be nearly impossible.
The internet went wrong as soon as someone started regulating it. And no this isn't a support anarchy post, give me a moment to explain.
The internet, as it was envisioned in it's earliest forms (by the government no less) was for open and free exchange of information across a series of service. Anyone who needed access had it. As it expanded out and fell into control of the early hacker/geek community it moved from free flow of information between those in he know to free flow to anyone who had the equipment and the skills to get to it. The internet of the time was a self regulating society. People who wer obnoxious were ignored and shunned, malicious people were fought against by the rigtous vigalantes of the net. Sort of a wild west.
Soon however, the greedy people of the world realized that if they had information that no one else had, and restricted acess, they could control people. If they could control them, they could make money off of them. So they began businesses. This shifted the balance of power away from individuals and toward businesses and corporations with money. Feeling their power threatened, individuals with skills fought back. They were labled hackers, and unfortunately as with any group, it's the fanatics that generate the stereo-type and hackers bacme known as vicious online criminals.
So the businesses did what any business in danger of colapse would do. They complained to the government, and the government steped in. They started regulateing the internet, laws, rules, they took control of the system, the names, the places and it fell inot corporate control, with the lone individuals shut out and shunned. The individual became a criminal, suspect to doing crimes with every move he made.
And so the internet fell into the state it's in now, a pathetic mix of advertisements (because the businesses found you really can't make money off freedom, corporate watchdogs (because everyone online is out to destroy Free America ), porn (because as a society in the real world we have severe issues with sexualitycreatingan extreme and perverted attraction to it), and pathetic wannabie skript kiddies because all the real Hackers:
a) Are in jail b) Have a real job as a security consultant c) Gave up d) Have become greedy e) Fight on, bu tare shunned as extermists and lumped with scriptkiddies, pirates and warez makers. f) Have focused on open source in the hopes of creating a free society within the controled one.
Though I wish him luck and will support him as best I can, I feel that unless he does everything in his power to prevent restrictions, he will merely see the same thing that the internet, hotline and p2p has seen. Freedom threatens buiness models of old, freedom must be destroyed.
Idealistic? Skewed viewpoint? Glorifying overy optimistic ideals? Maybe, but without ideals you have no purpose.
ADB wouldn't matter anyway since that hasn't been in a mac since 1998. If you're using a mac that has ADB ports with OS X then your mac is at the very least 4 years old. It's time to seriously consider getting a new one anyway. Besides it isn't apple's responsibility to support Wacom tablets, that's Wacom's job. Somehow I doubt your DVD drive is the same model as used in the new computers unless it also writes CDs, but even assuming it does, iDVD and the DVD player are fairly new in terms of software. Give it a while and it will support more drives (just like iTunes). OTOH if they disabled the ability to work with other drives, then what is preventing you from re-enabling it? Or looking for a third party hack which I'm sure is out by now? Yo're trying to convince me you are going to build an AMD-Linux box, but you can't hack a simple DVD player and burner to recognize other drives. That's almost unbeleivable.
CIP, Multibutton mice. If you are a PC user, and have purchased a computer in the past 3 years. Most likely it has a USB mouse. When you buy your mac, plug in the PC mouse. It's not like you'll want to use the PC again anytime soon. And even if you do, unplug and switcvh (without powering down the mac, and hopefuly without powering down the PC, or just buy a $3 discount mouse for the PC
If you have valid complaints, by all means, bring them up, but when someone helps you don't come back with a "well... uh... um.. it's still too pricey and it's not like my box" because that isn't a valid complaint
Pardon me, but Bull Shit. How much money do you plan on spending on computer upgrades for the next 2 years? And when those 2 or 3 years comes to a close, how much will you spend on a new PC? Add all that money up and you realize you could have bought a mac and kept it useable and upgraded for 5 years and have enough money to buy a new one because you saved money that you would have spent upgrading.
And yes, Apple is a niche market, but so is SUN. And guess what, for the most part we like being a niche market. We don't have to worry about morons and trolls representing us (though some Zealots are almost worse) and we enjoy high returns on our investments. And Apple gets a nice chunk of change and doesn't crumble when the economy experiences a downturn.
Let me try to make this simple so that any troll that come through can understand as well. If appl ewer to release an x86 version of OS X, which ran only on AMD processors, with only nVidia graphics cards and a very select series of sound cards, what do you think the reaction of the x86 world would be? "BLOODY FUCKING MURDER!!!! THEY'RE NOT SUPPORTING MY CHOP JOB SUPER HACKED INTEL!!!!! EVIL EVIL EVIL!!!!!!!" Sadly enough, complaining that Apple doesn't give you enough choices and then suggesting they limit choices is very hypocritical. And imagine the hell of tech support:
"And which type of computer are you using? An AMD or a PPC?"
"I don't know, the guy at the store said it was a PC"
"Sir, PC stands for personal computer, look on the front, do you see a logo that looks like an Apple anywhere?"
"No, I don't see any logos"
"Then you have an AMD based computer"
"What's the difference I thought all computers were the same? This is too confusing, why can't you guys make things simpler."
Being on APPLE hardware makes it something that most all will never see.
And goo driddence to bad rubbish then. If we take the number to be correct, 90% of the people in the US use windows. I personaly do not want to be associated with all 90% of those people (just look at the troll here on slashdot. Yes macs users are part of an elitist highpriced club. But if you're willing to take the plunge for one of the best experiences of your life, we welcome you with open arms.
Mac OS, Windows and Unix, all in one box, without paying an arm and a leg, and it looks damn cool too. Believe me, M$ is scared, but they're also secure in their position in the x86 market because manufacturers will not preinstall anything but windows and average joe doesn't touch mac OS ("macs? arent' those the crappy things we hear about? why would we want to run their system when we've got windows?
Yes, you do need closed sourse combined with open source if just to provide an immage. It's the same reason the Linux cons have moved from a sci-fi con feel to a business con feel, because in order to be commercialy viable (which you have to do to win more than just a fan base, as Apple has painfuly learned) you need to present the immage of being professional. As great as OSS is, it doesn't quite have the feel of professionalism. Why do you think businesses using a *NIX system use the ones with closed licences (yes, if you read into it, UNIX is technicaly a closed system. Linux is the open version, there are of course exceptions). Think about it, before OS X, Linux and OSS as a viable commercial and home platform was almost dead in the water. SUre Red Hat had made some progress and some of the big distros were doing OK, but companies which had tried Linux configured systems had returned to windows. ANd I remember seeing a few articles proclaiming linux dead. Sure OSS still had it's geek cult following, but then again, so did Apple in 1996 and 97. Then along came OS X and revitalized the opensource industry. Now there was a big name comapny supporting OSS (by big name I refer to visable, like it or not, a lot of people know who Apple is, fewer know Red Hat) And what did it bring? It brought apps closer to OSS. Sure Photoshop for OS X isn't Photoshop for Linux, and Quicktime for OS X isn't Quicktime for linux, but it's a hell of a lot closer than it was before. My point is, when you have a commercial company with money behind it backing something like OSS (even if it's underlining is CSS) you make all the people that are nervous about trusting an openstandard a little bit more secure.
my apologies, the last version of OS X that I've used (I'm waiting to get a Ti Book for the full experience was OS X.0 so it was not an option in that release
they key board should be mapabe or do what the above post said to do.
Bang for buck doesn't seem that different to me, but really the only way to compare bang for buck is to sit down and play with the two laptops side by side
The dock can not only be minimized but also set to auto hide when not in use. It can also be anchored to the left and right sides with a hack
Wrong, Apple sales would plummet. Let me go through this one by one and tell you why:
1) Steve Jobs is making the biggest mistake he has yet. Apple sales would explode if Jobs ported OS X to the Intel platform.
Apple sells hardware, it has been said time and time again that they sell hardware and it is their main income. Infact, the only reason they sel the software stand alone is because it makes good business sense. Imagine how many customers they would loose if you had to buy a new machine for each new pice of software.
2)Granted, it may indeed threaten Mac hardware sales but, he could test the waters with less optimized Intel version. That way you could get a great OS on Intel but, if you wanted to see *really* fast, you should buy the Mac.
People don't think that deep. Here's how the though process would go. OS X on x86 = slow ---> Mac hardware numbers = slower than PC numbers ----> OS X on mac hardware = slowwer ----> buy X86 and windows. YOu see hoiw this is counterproductive? Not to mention if they didn't support everything at once, PC users would have a royal fit (just look at the mac users who bitched when beta wouldn't print to their 5 year old printer)
3) I'm certain that OS X on Intel would fly off the shelves faster than Apple could stamp out the CDs and Microsoft would crap all over themselves. Everybody wins.
BY promoting OS X I don't think they're saying you're better off with closed source, but they'r saying that you need some closed source. And they really are right. Money is still a motivational factor in this world. It's nice that OSS allows for everyone to have whatever they want, but just imagine if things like video codecs and certain ways of doing certain things became open source? 100s of versions, niether one compatible witht eh other. And they wouldn't be made compatible because that takes time and time is money and let's face it, untill food becomes downloadable, we're going to do more of what pays us than what we do in our spare time. Also factor in that as much as freedom is nice, it's also nice to know there is a closed source, something which there are real experts in who can and will help you (because it's their job). OSS is nessesary, but so is CSS, two forms of development, each one pushing the other.
I've felt pretty safe with Apple, and I know that if they started plugging in hardware restrictions, I could always opt to buy different hardware and stick it in my mac and configure my own drivers, and still have a great experience. My question however, and I'm not trolling here, is what will you do if the hardware become restricted? If they start putting in hardware locks to prevent hardware from running with any system that isn't DMCA approved, what will you do then? I know it's a long shot, but 10 years ago, so was the DMCA
Actualy, I would argue that OS X is more UNIX than Linux (infact it is UNIX, hence BSD) That fact that Linux looks more like the text based computers of old doesn't make it Linux. I can put a hat, a shirt and pants ona dog and teach him to walk on his hind legs but that doesn't make him human. The point is, looks don't count when you compare what is what. (It's what's inside that counts, don't you remember that from your corporate ati-discrimination sessions sessions).
As for the MMB, there are many third party solutions to this as well as the x windowing environment availible for OS X, try www.macosxapps.com
I would absolutely love for you to build me a computer with dual processors each with 256k L2 cache and 1MB L3 cache 2 gigs of RAM (I know you said 4 time as much ram, but I can go online and pick up a 256 stick for about $60 so that's what I would do, not a giant expense). 120 GB of 7200 RPM HD space, a combo drive, a GeForce4MX card (I know it's the lowend card but I really don't need to run quake at 500 fps), gigabit ethernet, USB, Firewire, 4 PCI slots OPEN at minimum (NO ISA, a great *NIX OS with an easy to use intuitive interface, a software development package, a vector processor,Digital output (not just VGA), and audio audio line in and out for less than $1000. And thats just the minimum with the updates you described. I'm not tryin gto flame here, but seriously PCs for anythign decent are not that much better priced than macs.
Slashdot Mirror
I never have and I never will trust benchmarks. Just like I will never trust any specs that a company puts out untill I try the machine for myself. It's one of the reasons I use Apple computers. As I type this, I'm on a custom built PC, with an AMD Athlon XP 2000 processor. It has 512 MB of memory, an Abit KR7A-133 mo-bo and plenty of other bells and wistles. Now theoreticaly speaking, this computer should be a hell of a lot faster than my 300Mhz iBook. Yet for everything except playing UT, thsi computer seems either equivilent to or sometimes (especialy right after startup) slower than the iBook. My point is, don't trust the numbers, use it yourself and decide for yourself. You're the one using the computer, and 90% o fusing a computer is how it feels to you.
I could swear I've heard all this before, like maybe here: http://www.apple.com/powermac/processor.html
While I will admit that apple does skew their tests in their favor, they have been saying this for years, AMD realized it a while back when they switched to an alternative numbering system. Only intel continues with the idea that Mhz is the only measure of a processor.
Personaly speaking, I think processors, in theri current 32-bit forms have essentialy hit a brick wall. But Intel doesn't want to admit that yet becasue they've invested so much into making people believe in Mhz, that to try to convince people that 1ghz is as fast as the 2ghz they bought last year would be nearly impossible.
The internet went wrong as soon as someone started regulating it. And no this isn't a support anarchy post, give me a moment to explain.
The internet, as it was envisioned in it's earliest forms (by the government no less) was for open and free exchange of information across a series of service. Anyone who needed access had it. As it expanded out and fell into control of the early hacker/geek community it moved from free flow of information between those in he know to free flow to anyone who had the equipment and the skills to get to it. The internet of the time was a self regulating society. People who wer obnoxious were ignored and shunned, malicious people were fought against by the rigtous vigalantes of the net. Sort of a wild west.
Soon however, the greedy people of the world realized that if they had information that no one else had, and restricted acess, they could control people. If they could control them, they could make money off of them. So they began businesses. This shifted the balance of power away from individuals and toward businesses and corporations with money. Feeling their power threatened, individuals with skills fought back. They were labled hackers, and unfortunately as with any group, it's the fanatics that generate the stereo-type and hackers bacme known as vicious online criminals.
So the businesses did what any business in danger of colapse would do. They complained to the government, and the government steped in. They started regulateing the internet, laws, rules, they took control of the system, the names, the places and it fell inot corporate control, with the lone individuals shut out and shunned. The individual became a criminal, suspect to doing crimes with every move he made.
And so the internet fell into the state it's in now, a pathetic mix of advertisements (because the businesses found you really can't make money off freedom, corporate watchdogs (because everyone online is out to destroy Free America ), porn (because as a society in the real world we have severe issues with sexualitycreatingan extreme and perverted attraction to it), and pathetic wannabie skript kiddies because all the real Hackers:
a) Are in jail
b) Have a real job as a security consultant
c) Gave up
d) Have become greedy
e) Fight on, bu tare shunned as extermists and lumped with scriptkiddies, pirates and warez makers.
f) Have focused on open source in the hopes of creating a free society within the controled one.
Though I wish him luck and will support him as best I can, I feel that unless he does everything in his power to prevent restrictions, he will merely see the same thing that the internet, hotline and p2p has seen. Freedom threatens buiness models of old, freedom must be destroyed.
Idealistic? Skewed viewpoint? Glorifying overy optimistic ideals? Maybe, but without ideals you have no purpose.
ADB wouldn't matter anyway since that hasn't been in a mac since 1998. If you're using a mac that has ADB ports with OS X then your mac is at the very least 4 years old. It's time to seriously consider getting a new one anyway. Besides it isn't apple's responsibility to support Wacom tablets, that's Wacom's job. Somehow I doubt your DVD drive is the same model as used in the new computers unless it also writes CDs, but even assuming it does, iDVD and the DVD player are fairly new in terms of software. Give it a while and it will support more drives (just like iTunes). OTOH if they disabled the ability to work with other drives, then what is preventing you from re-enabling it? Or looking for a third party hack which I'm sure is out by now? Yo're trying to convince me you are going to build an AMD-Linux box, but you can't hack a simple DVD player and burner to recognize other drives. That's almost unbeleivable.
Why aren't you switching now? Seriously what reasons do you have for not switching? Maybe we can resolve someof those for you.
It's hating the bullshit ones.
CIP, Multibutton mice. If you are a PC user, and have purchased a computer in the past 3 years. Most likely it has a USB mouse. When you buy your mac, plug in the PC mouse. It's not like you'll want to use the PC again anytime soon. And even if you do, unplug and switcvh (without powering down the mac, and hopefuly without powering down the PC, or just buy a $3 discount mouse for the PC
If you have valid complaints, by all means, bring them up, but when someone helps you don't come back with a "well... uh... um.. it's still too pricey and it's not like my box" because that isn't a valid complaint
Pardon me, but Bull Shit. How much money do you plan on spending on computer upgrades for the next 2 years? And when those 2 or 3 years comes to a close, how much will you spend on a new PC? Add all that money up and you realize you could have bought a mac and kept it useable and upgraded for 5 years and have enough money to buy a new one because you saved money that you would have spent upgrading.
And yes, Apple is a niche market, but so is SUN. And guess what, for the most part we like being a niche market. We don't have to worry about morons and trolls representing us (though some Zealots are almost worse) and we enjoy high returns on our investments. And Apple gets a nice chunk of change and doesn't crumble when the economy experiences a downturn.
Let me try to make this simple so that any troll that come through can understand as well. If appl ewer to release an x86 version of OS X, which ran only on AMD processors, with only nVidia graphics cards and a very select series of sound cards, what do you think the reaction of the x86 world would be? "BLOODY FUCKING MURDER!!!! THEY'RE NOT SUPPORTING MY CHOP JOB SUPER HACKED INTEL!!!!! EVIL EVIL EVIL!!!!!!!" Sadly enough, complaining that Apple doesn't give you enough choices and then suggesting they limit choices is very hypocritical. And imagine the hell of tech support:
"And which type of computer are you using? An AMD or a PPC?"
"I don't know, the guy at the store said it was a PC"
"Sir, PC stands for personal computer, look on the front, do you see a logo that looks like an Apple anywhere?"
"No, I don't see any logos"
"Then you have an AMD based computer"
"What's the difference I thought all computers were the same? This is too confusing, why can't you guys make things simpler."
Finaly, someone besides me is doing research!!!!!
they didn't borrow those, M$ makes those because it's a big cash cow for them
Being on APPLE hardware makes it something that most all will never see.
And goo driddence to bad rubbish then. If we take the number to be correct, 90% of the people in the US use windows. I personaly do not want to be associated with all 90% of those people (just look at the troll here on slashdot. Yes macs users are part of an elitist highpriced club. But if you're willing to take the plunge for one of the best experiences of your life, we welcome you with open arms.
what if you do? or you're learning too?
www.apple.com/imac
Mac OS, Windows and Unix, all in one box, without paying an arm and a leg, and it looks damn cool too. Believe me, M$ is scared, but they're also secure in their position in the x86 market because manufacturers will not preinstall anything but windows and average joe doesn't touch mac OS ("macs? arent' those the crappy things we hear about? why would we want to run their system when we've got windows?
I personaly think Fast Company said it best nearly a month ago
. ht ml
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/60/monopolist
Yes, you do need closed sourse combined with open source if just to provide an immage. It's the same reason the Linux cons have moved from a sci-fi con feel to a business con feel, because in order to be commercialy viable (which you have to do to win more than just a fan base, as Apple has painfuly learned) you need to present the immage of being professional. As great as OSS is, it doesn't quite have the feel of professionalism. Why do you think businesses using a *NIX system use the ones with closed licences (yes, if you read into it, UNIX is technicaly a closed system. Linux is the open version, there are of course exceptions). Think about it, before OS X, Linux and OSS as a viable commercial and home platform was almost dead in the water. SUre Red Hat had made some progress and some of the big distros were doing OK, but companies which had tried Linux configured systems had returned to windows. ANd I remember seeing a few articles proclaiming linux dead. Sure OSS still had it's geek cult following, but then again, so did Apple in 1996 and 97. Then along came OS X and revitalized the opensource industry. Now there was a big name comapny supporting OSS (by big name I refer to visable, like it or not, a lot of people know who Apple is, fewer know Red Hat) And what did it bring? It brought apps closer to OSS. Sure Photoshop for OS X isn't Photoshop for Linux, and Quicktime for OS X isn't Quicktime for linux, but it's a hell of a lot closer than it was before. My point is, when you have a commercial company with money behind it backing something like OSS (even if it's underlining is CSS) you make all the people that are nervous about trusting an openstandard a little bit more secure.
my apologies, the last version of OS X that I've used (I'm waiting to get a Ti Book for the full experience was OS X.0 so it was not an option in that release
If the laptop is falling apart, send it back to apple (you did buy apple care didn't you?)
With the exception of a dead memory controller, I have never come across a problem on the mac that I could not fix myself.
they key board should be mapabe or do what the above post said to do.
Bang for buck doesn't seem that different to me, but really the only way to compare bang for buck is to sit down and play with the two laptops side by side
The dock can not only be minimized but also set to auto hide when not in use. It can also be anchored to the left and right sides with a hack
Wrong, Apple sales would plummet. Let me go through this one by one and tell you why:
1) Steve Jobs is making the biggest mistake he has yet. Apple sales would explode if Jobs ported OS X to the Intel platform.
Apple sells hardware, it has been said time and time again that they sell hardware and it is their main income. Infact, the only reason they sel the software stand alone is because it makes good business sense. Imagine how many customers they would loose if you had to buy a new machine for each new pice of software.
2)Granted, it may indeed threaten Mac hardware sales but, he could test the waters with less optimized Intel version. That way you could get a great OS on Intel but, if you wanted to see *really* fast, you should buy the Mac.
People don't think that deep. Here's how the though process would go. OS X on x86 = slow ---> Mac hardware numbers = slower than PC numbers ----> OS X on mac hardware = slowwer ----> buy X86 and windows. YOu see hoiw this is counterproductive? Not to mention if they didn't support everything at once, PC users would have a royal fit (just look at the mac users who bitched when beta wouldn't print to their 5 year old printer)
3) I'm certain that OS X on Intel would fly off the shelves faster than Apple could stamp out the CDs and Microsoft would crap all over themselves. Everybody wins.
No, it would sell fo ra bit and then be pirated.
And when apple went from system 6 to system 7 the debates raged then too, and mac users of old feared. Ah well, it will all be settled soon
BY promoting OS X I don't think they're saying you're better off with closed source, but they'r saying that you need some closed source. And they really are right. Money is still a motivational factor in this world. It's nice that OSS allows for everyone to have whatever they want, but just imagine if things like video codecs and certain ways of doing certain things became open source? 100s of versions, niether one compatible witht eh other. And they wouldn't be made compatible because that takes time and time is money and let's face it, untill food becomes downloadable, we're going to do more of what pays us than what we do in our spare time. Also factor in that as much as freedom is nice, it's also nice to know there is a closed source, something which there are real experts in who can and will help you (because it's their job). OSS is nessesary, but so is CSS, two forms of development, each one pushing the other.
I've felt pretty safe with Apple, and I know that if they started plugging in hardware restrictions, I could always opt to buy different hardware and stick it in my mac and configure my own drivers, and still have a great experience. My question however, and I'm not trolling here, is what will you do if the hardware become restricted? If they start putting in hardware locks to prevent hardware from running with any system that isn't DMCA approved, what will you do then? I know it's a long shot, but 10 years ago, so was the DMCA
Actualy, I would argue that OS X is more UNIX than Linux (infact it is UNIX, hence BSD) That fact that Linux looks more like the text based computers of old doesn't make it Linux. I can put a hat, a shirt and pants ona dog and teach him to walk on his hind legs but that doesn't make him human. The point is, looks don't count when you compare what is what. (It's what's inside that counts, don't you remember that from your corporate ati-discrimination sessions sessions).
As for the MMB, there are many third party solutions to this as well as the x windowing environment availible for OS X, try www.macosxapps.com
I would absolutely love for you to build me a computer with dual processors each with 256k L2 cache and 1MB L3 cache 2 gigs of RAM (I know you said 4 time as much ram, but I can go online and pick up a 256 stick for about $60 so that's what I would do, not a giant expense). 120 GB of 7200 RPM HD space, a combo drive, a GeForce4MX card (I know it's the lowend card but I really don't need to run quake at 500 fps), gigabit ethernet, USB, Firewire, 4 PCI slots OPEN at minimum (NO ISA, a great *NIX OS with an easy to use intuitive interface, a software development package, a vector processor,Digital output (not just VGA), and audio audio line in and out for less than $1000. And thats just the minimum with the updates you described. I'm not tryin gto flame here, but seriously PCs for anythign decent are not that much better priced than macs.