What makes you think MS Office is that important? It's only one of more than 5000 native OS X applications, and not even Cocoa, for God's sake.
Personally, I much prefer AppleWorks or even TextEdit, and only use Office once every few weeks when I have to. The damn thing is over bloated with over 400 MB, and feels sluggish even with small documents. Now Apple has just released Keynote and Safari, which according to most review beat the pants off PowerPoint and IE, so clearly Apple doesn't rely on MS to survive.
What people keep forgetting is that Apple does produce cool software as well, and in many case better ones than MS: Mac OS X, FileMaker Pro, FinalCut Pro, DVD Studio, WebObjects, iLife, Newton OS, AppleWorks, Shake, QuickTime, Darwin Streaming Server, Project Builder, Interface Builder. And it shouldn't surprise anyone if Apple annouce an Office killer within a year or two based on AppleWorks or something entirely new.
But this is much more expensive than the iBook. And with 8 MB VRAM and max 384 MB SDRAM, it might be alright for checking email or writing simple scripts, but I wouldn't consider it a full featured laptop. Plus, I presume the Crusoe chip is no match for the G3 either.
For $100 more, you can get the much more powerful 12" G4 PowerBook with built-in Bluetooth, 802.11g ready, 32 MB VRAM and max 640 MB DDR RAM.
>> The last iBook I looked at that couldn't do as much as my pc laptop can do cost $300 more.
What the hell are you talking about? The iBook starts from $999 and comes with tons of features and software. So what exactly more could your $700 PC laptop do?
>> I paid the damn MS tax, and I paid $3300 for my laptop with an extensive warranty that I've already had the misfortune of using.
You are an idiot! For $3299, you can buy a 17" PowerBook with built-in AirPort Extreme (54 Mbps 802.11g), Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire 800, FireFire 400, USB, 512 MB DDR333, 64 MB nVidia GeForce 440 Go, 60 GB Ultra ATA/100, DVD burning slot-load SuperDrive, not to mention all the free software. Where on earth can you get such a beauty from the Wintel world even if you are willing to pay more?
>> I saw some demo laptops and they took their sweet time loading ANYTHING.
You better shut up if your only experience with the iBook came from watching a demo. I am using OS X on a 700 MHz iBook for programming C++ and Java, browsing, playing music, editing graphics, etc, and it feels faster than a Sony Vaio with more than twice clock rate.
The $999 iBook comes with a proper 3D card (ATI Radeon 7500) and 16 MB dedicated VRAM, while some of much more expensive Vaio models use cheap Intel integrated graphics with only shared VRAM. Personally, I wouldn't touch a Dell with a 10" pole, having known 3 people all had discovered serious problem with their Dell laptops within weeks of purchasing.
While there are Wintel laptops lighter than the iBook, none has longer battery life and full features. Another huge advantage of the Apple portables is that they all come free with much more best-of-class software than any of the Windows or Linux machines: iPhotos, iMovies, iTunes, iCal, iSync, iChat, and so on.
If you are a programmer and loves play with Unix and open standards, you simply can't get a better deal than Mac OS X. For instance, OS X comes with gcc 3.1 enhanced by Apple to handle Objective C / C++ on top of standard C / C++, and there are dozens of other tools that allow you to write and debug native Carbon, Cocoa, QuickTime, OpenGL, or terminal applications. Many popular open source applications (such as Perl, Ruby, Apatche, X11) are preloaded, and others (like MySql, PostgreSQL) can be downloaded and installed with a few mouse clicks. Project Builder and Interface Builder are free and much more powerful than tools on any other Unix platforms including Linux. In contrast, MS Visual Studio.NET costs up to $3000.
>> In either version of the post though, substance and evidence are lacking.
You are 50% wrong, because my version does have substance and evidence.
>> The poster expressed a personal opinion and supported it with anecdotal evidence (that was rude, insulting and generalizing no less),...
People are entitled to express their personal opinion, particularly if it's based on real life experiences. After all, we humans learn by observations and generalizations.
>> Is consideration of Windows users as ignorant new to Mac users? Is this revelation about Windows users even true (I doubt it)?
Are you really such a confused Windoze idiot? Maybe it's time to get your head examined. Since when does it have to be new to be true? Can you give any reason or evidence for doubting my story?
I do lots of C++ and Java programming, designing graphics, browsing, playing games and music, editing photos, etc, all on my lowly 700 MHz iBook, and never feel it's slow. I use PC as well, but XP still crashes like hell even if it's shut down every day, while the iBook get used much heavily and will carry on for weeks.
I really doubt that MS can find a real story like this one. None of the Windows users I know prefer the platform for any reason - they either have no choice or simply are ignorant.
I have been using and programming Windows, Mac and Unix for over 10 years. Although I always prefer Mac myself because "it just works" , I couldn't really recommend evryone around me to pay extra money for the Mac experiences, knowing there are substancial weakness in the classic Mac OS.
But with Mac OS X and the new generations of iMac, iBook and PowerBook, the Mac platform suddenly appears perfect for evryone - geeks and novices alike, and amazingly they cost no more than branded Wintel PCs. Take a look at the Apple Store http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore/ and you will notice that every things are just simply beautiful and good value for money: from the $799 CRT iMac, the $999 iBook, to the $1799 PowerBook. The single CPU Xserve with OS X Server and WebObjects and dozens of programming and system tools plus unlimited client license is only $2799, and for $10,999 you can get a 2.52 Terabytes Xserve RAID - much cheaper than the similar products from Dell, HP, Sun or IBM.
Before any of the usual idiots whining that they can build these things for less, let me just put you straight - you just can't - not to the same level of style or quality. In any case, Apple is probably the best brands (well, the second best following Google according to a recent survey), and certainly not in the business to compete with any of the DIY box makers.
The real story I am trying to tell is that I have never seen a Mac user switching to Windows in my entire computing life, but have recently persuaded someone to buy an iBook for her first ever computer and witnessed 3 Windows users switching to Mac.
The lady who bought the iBook lives next door, and she just loves playing with her new toy. Being a middle-aged women and having never touched a computer before, she was initially very nervous and constantly worried that she might break something, so I spent about 2 hours explaining the basics, encouraging her to explore the iBook intuitively, and she kept noticing those clever and cute little touches like the bouncing icons, the magnified dock, the pulsing spot when the iBook is asleep, the amber light ring when recharging, etc. And the next time I met her a few days later, she was playing iTunes, burning CDs, listen to Internet radios, playing GNU Chess, and she was fasinated by the voice recognition capability (which I haven't used very much myself).
Among the 3 switchers, my brother-in-law has always been a Windows user until recently, and has 4 Wintel boxes at home. He had been using Eclipse for Java programming on a Sony Vaio bought a year ago which already shows its age - it feels really slow just running Eclipse alone and hardly anything else, typically used two batteries to get a reasonable usage. But recently he put some extra RAM to speed up the Vaio, but unfortunately the thing would get hot really quickly and the 2 batteries couldn't last more than 2 hours. So now he have got an iBook - lighter, prettier, much longer bettery life. And Java is so much better and more on Mac OS X.
The other 2 switcher are all my wife's colleagues: an IT manager and the secretary. When my wife started her new job, she asked for the LCD iMac, but many people including the IT manager and the secretary told her that Macs were no good because no one used them. When the iMac arrived, the IT manager didn't know how to set it up, so my wife (not a computer geek by any stretch of imagination) did it herself (she called me once about the IP address and DNS server). A few weeks later, the secretary quietly bought herself an iMac and an iPod at home, even paid for a.mac account, and basicly appeared to be a Macholic (she started reading about Steve Jobs and swearing at Bill Gates) last time I met her accidentally on a train to London. What's more, she gave away her Windoze PC to some idiot in the lab and persuaded her boss to buy another iMac for her in the office. Interestingly, after playing with my wife's iMac from time to time, the IT manager switched to Mac himself recently and now he can claim he knows Unix.
On OS X, virtually all the IDEs written in Java (JBuilder, Eclipse, NetBeans, etc) feel solid and more responsive than many of the Carbon applications (written in C or C++) like MS Office and Macromedia Dreamweaver, the only exception is Oracle JDeveloper which is totally unusable. JBuilder is particularly powerful and probably better than any IDE on all platforms except perhaps the OS X combination of Project Builder and Interface Builder. Surely this proves that there is nothing wrong with Java at all, at least not on Mac OS X. As a C++ programmer for over 10 years, I recently switched to Java and feel much more productive.
The memo is either very old or simply a fake, particularly wrt the memory footprint - the resident set of JBuilder is typically about 70 MB even after weeks of continuous usage. In any case, if there are genuine issues with the Solaris implementation, Sun should put more effort to deal with it. After all, Apple and IBM have done a wonderful job, so could Sun and others.
>> Run Jext or Borland JBuilder and you'll see what I mean.
JBuilder is very fast and stable on my 700 MHz OS X iBook - much faster MS Word. The numerical performance of my own Java app is very close to C++, and multi-threading is really impressive.
The 15" iMac is $300 cheaper than this Vaio and better in virtually every way: G4 vs Celero, nVidia Geforce2 32 MB VRAM vs integrated graphics with no VRAM, space age design vs typewriter style, best-of-bread software(iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iChat, iSync, iCal, etc) vs third rate imitations (by the way, MS iWave http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/2743 is coming to a PC near you), Mac OS X vs XP Home, dozens of bundled programming tools vs zero,...
And for $200 more, the 17" iMac also offer DVD burning Superdrive, 54 Mbps 802.11g AirPort Extreme, Bluetooth ready. So let the hell freeze over before I touch the Vaio.
Oh, where are those idiots who always complain that home made PCs are much cheaper than Macs, and shouldn't the same old argument apply to Sony and other Wintel box makers?
>> This argument is akin to saying it's cheaper to buy a $40,000 Jaguar than a $20,000 Chevy because if you tried to custom-add the Jaguar's all-wheel-drive system to the Chevy, it would cost you a fortune.
Another clueless Windoze idiot. The other guy simply states the actual fact that a Mac comes with better and more useful software than a Wintel box and people will be more productive, that's all. But you, my darling, just went off on your own.
>> I have like a bajillion pr0n pictures/movies in one folder -- C:\Program Files\Agent -- and when I open the folder, explorer like pins the cpu at 99.99999%. Having that folder open (even minimized) means explorer is at about 25% cpu on average. (1.4 GHz Athlon XP by the way)
That's why iPhoto is so good - its a photo database that allows you to resize hundreds and thousands of pictures in real-time even on my 700 MHz G3 iMac, while XP just gives you the "My Pictures" folder.
>> People may still buy PowerBooks because of style and OS X, but in terms of overall functionality, a Centino notebook will blow away a PowerBook.
What's your definition of "overall functionality"? All you are saying is about performance, nothing else. As long as it runs the vastly inferior Windoze, all its advantages amounts to nothing to me.
Apple just introduced 802.11g, bluetooth and Firewire 800 in one stroke, but Intel and the rest of Wintel box makers are still pushing the awkward and more expensive b & a combination. Let's face it, even the name is confusing - version a is a few years older than version b - wtf.
Similarly, when Apple dropped the floppy drive and added USB and Firewire 4 or 5 years ago, people were laughing at them. Now even Dell are moving away from the floppy.
As another example, USB is a nice and simple low bandwidth technology for connecting mice and printers, and Firewire is ideal for high bandwidth. But oh no, things have to be more complicated, so Intel must chip in and muddle the water with the theoretically faster but practically slower 480 Mbps USB2 than Firewire 400. Now Apple has Firewire 800 and potentially 1600 and 3200 soon, are we going to see USB3 and USB4?
How dare are you to compare the gorgeous iMac to the ugly eMachine with that crappy CRT monitor? If you really have to, at leat compare the iMac to an IBM or HP machine.
The iMac is designed to last for at least 5 years, and it's virtually silent and a pure pleasure for your eyes, while the eMachine is an eyesore and a regret every second you sit in front of it. Furthermore, think about the extra electricity bills you have to pay for your idling 2 GHz processor in the next few years (if it lasts that long).
And by the time you want a new computer, your eMachine is probably worth nothing, but the iMac can be sold on eBay to compensate for the initial cost difference.
If you really don't have money for a decent computer, get a cleaning job or something and don't waste your breath to tell us what to buy. Most people in the real world don't just chase the lowest price regardless quality and long term value.
>> but the iMac is a painfully underpowered product for the price.
Why don't you fuck off, idiot. I am using a 700 MHz G3 iBook with PC100 SDRAM and 16 MB VRAM and 4200 RPM hard drive, which can simultaneously run dozens programs for Java / C++ programming, graphics / Web design, browsing, emailing, playing music, watching and editing photos and movies, playing games, burning CDs, wireless networking, etc. How the hell the GHz G4 iMac with DDR and 7200 RPM drive can be painfully underpowered, and what are you going to use it for? Your P4 may idle at 3 Ghz and generate lots of heat and noise, but may fails miserably when handling real tasks.
>> If that's worth the $700-800 more that an Apple will cost you for a non-upgradeable machine, go for it.
Are you mad or just plain stupid, and may I ask where you could buy a Wintel machine (even for the same price) with all that power and elegance that is Bluetooth and 54 Mbps 802.11g ready and comes with 4x DVD buring Superdrive? And how about iLife and all the other best-of-breed bundled software and programming tools which are not even available for Windows or Linux? By the way, for more power and upgradability, there are those PowerMac G4 machines.
I really hope that those clueless cheap PC junkies would somehow grow up and figure out that a Mac offers so much more value than a Wintel PC for the same price. Even the top box makers like Dell or HP can't compare to Apple in terms of quality and design and innovation, so it's just plain silly to expect Apple to match the lowest prices on the market.
You can buy a 12" iBook for $999 which has everything I want as a programmer, plus 4+ hours battery, instant sleep and wake up, dozens of first class, multimedia, Unix, Java, C/C++, Objective C/C++, Perl, Ruby, GUI programming tools. Can you build one for me? No, I don't trust you for that.
As a longtime user of Mac, Unix and Windows, I respect the first 2 groups much more than the pure Windows users. Generally speaking, people chose Mac or Linux over Windoze for good reasons such as technical or design superiority, ease of use, style, productivity, TCO, security, bad experiences with Windoze, refusal to reward the convicted Redmond monoplist for its bad practice, etc, and they tend to be more articulate and intelligent than the Wintel PC crowd who either think Windows is the only thing in the computing universe or Linux is too complicated or Mac is too expensive and slow and has no software or second mouse button. Everytime a PC hothead lost his argument, there is always the last defense: why is everyone using Windows if Mac and Linux are so good?
Personally, I think both Mac and Linux platforms badly need the critical mass to break the MS monoply, and the best way to achieve that goal is to help each other. I am not suggesting that MS should be elliminated altogether, but the economy and the computing industry are desperately in need of several viable alternatives and adequate ecological diversity to be heathy and prosperous, and MS is just too nasty to be trusted to control our destiny. Without the design flair and innovation of Apple and the spirit diversity of the Open Source community, the computing world would be such a boring place.
The fact that you are still talking about the age old single button mouse issue immediately disqualify you to give any informed oppinion about Mac. I have been using Unix, PC and Mac for over 10 years, and I can tell you that nothing comes close to Apple hardware and Mac OS X in terms of quality, style and usability.
Generally speaking, Mac users are passionate about their platform based on experiences, while most of the Wintel users often form strong oppinions out of ignorance. In most cases, Mac users win the argument because they are more articulate and intelligent than the average PC user.
I have noticed that there are lots of/. readers who have switched to Mac OS X (including several./ editors like Rob Malda and Hemos) recently but very few Mac people switching to other platforms.
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What makes you think MS Office is that important? It's only one of more than 5000 native OS X applications, and not even Cocoa, for God's sake.
Personally, I much prefer AppleWorks or even TextEdit, and only use Office once every few weeks when I have to. The damn thing is over bloated with over 400 MB, and feels sluggish even with small documents. Now Apple has just released Keynote and Safari, which according to most review beat the pants off PowerPoint and IE, so clearly Apple doesn't rely on MS to survive.
What people keep forgetting is that Apple does produce cool software as well, and in many case better ones than MS: Mac OS X, FileMaker Pro, FinalCut Pro, DVD Studio, WebObjects, iLife, Newton OS, AppleWorks, Shake, QuickTime, Darwin Streaming Server, Project Builder, Interface Builder. And it shouldn't surprise anyone if Apple annouce an Office killer within a year or two based on AppleWorks or something entirely new.
And of course, the Lifebook doesn't run the sexiest Unix in the Universe or comes with any useful software.
But this is much more expensive than the iBook. And with 8 MB VRAM and max 384 MB SDRAM, it might be alright for checking email or writing simple scripts, but I wouldn't consider it a full featured laptop. Plus, I presume the Crusoe chip is no match for the G3 either.
For $100 more, you can get the much more powerful 12" G4 PowerBook with built-in Bluetooth, 802.11g ready, 32 MB VRAM and max 640 MB DDR RAM.
Don't be so rude if you can read properly, idiot. The guy said:
"Currently I'm looking at an iBook; however, they're a bit larger and heavier than I'd like."
so he is use the iBook as a benchmark and hasn't found anything better yet. Where the fuck do you get that idea that he has ruled out the iBook?
And others are still recommending 14" Dell. If 12" is too large for him, his choice is severely limited.
But no, I don't think he has totally ruled out the iBook.
>> The last iBook I looked at that couldn't do as much as my pc laptop can do cost $300 more.
What the hell are you talking about? The iBook starts from $999 and comes with tons of features and software. So what exactly more could your $700 PC laptop do?
>> I paid the damn MS tax, and I paid $3300 for my laptop with an extensive warranty that I've already had the misfortune of using.
You are an idiot! For $3299, you can buy a 17" PowerBook with built-in AirPort Extreme (54 Mbps 802.11g), Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire 800, FireFire 400, USB, 512 MB DDR333, 64 MB nVidia GeForce 440 Go, 60 GB Ultra ATA/100, DVD burning slot-load SuperDrive, not to mention all the free software. Where on earth can you get such a beauty from the Wintel world even if you are willing to pay more?
>> I saw some demo laptops and they took their sweet time loading ANYTHING.
You better shut up if your only experience with the iBook came from watching a demo. I am using OS X on a 700 MHz iBook for programming C++ and Java, browsing, playing music, editing graphics, etc, and it feels faster than a Sony Vaio with more than twice clock rate.
The $999 iBook comes with a proper 3D card (ATI Radeon 7500) and 16 MB dedicated VRAM, while some of much more expensive Vaio models use cheap Intel integrated graphics with only shared VRAM. Personally, I wouldn't touch a Dell with a 10" pole, having known 3 people all had discovered serious problem with their Dell laptops within weeks of purchasing.
While there are Wintel laptops lighter than the iBook, none has longer battery life and full features. Another huge advantage of the Apple portables is that they all come free with much more best-of-class software than any of the Windows or Linux machines: iPhotos, iMovies, iTunes, iCal, iSync, iChat, and so on.
If you are a programmer and loves play with Unix and open standards, you simply can't get a better deal than Mac OS X. For instance, OS X comes with gcc 3.1 enhanced by Apple to handle Objective C / C++ on top of standard C / C++, and there are dozens of other tools that allow you to write and debug native Carbon, Cocoa, QuickTime, OpenGL, or terminal applications. Many popular open source applications (such as Perl, Ruby, Apatche, X11) are preloaded, and others (like MySql, PostgreSQL) can be downloaded and installed with a few mouse clicks. Project Builder and Interface Builder are free and much more powerful than tools on any other Unix platforms including Linux. In contrast, MS Visual Studio.NET costs up to $3000.
>> In either version of the post though, substance and evidence are lacking.
...
You are 50% wrong, because my version does have substance and evidence.
>> The poster expressed a personal opinion and supported it with anecdotal evidence (that was rude, insulting and generalizing no less),
People are entitled to express their personal opinion, particularly if it's based on real life experiences. After all, we humans learn by observations and generalizations.
>> Is consideration of Windows users as ignorant new to Mac users? Is this revelation about Windows users even true (I doubt it)?
Are you really such a confused Windoze idiot? Maybe it's time to get your head examined. Since when does it have to be new to be true? Can you give any reason or evidence for doubting my story?
I do lots of C++ and Java programming, designing graphics, browsing, playing games and music, editing photos, etc, all on my lowly 700 MHz iBook, and never feel it's slow. I use PC as well, but XP still crashes like hell even if it's shut down every day, while the iBook get used much heavily and will carry on for weeks.
I really doubt that MS can find a real story like this one. None of the Windows users I know prefer the platform for any reason - they either have no choice or simply are ignorant.
I have been using and programming Windows, Mac and Unix for over 10 years. Although I always prefer Mac myself because "it just works" , I couldn't really recommend evryone around me to pay extra money for the Mac experiences, knowing there are substancial weakness in the classic Mac OS.
A ppleStore/ and you will notice that every things are just simply beautiful and good value for money: from the $799 CRT iMac, the $999 iBook, to the $1799 PowerBook. The single CPU Xserve with OS X Server and WebObjects and dozens of programming and system tools plus unlimited client license is only $2799, and for $10,999 you can get a 2.52 Terabytes Xserve RAID - much cheaper than the similar products from Dell, HP, Sun or IBM.
.mac account, and basicly appeared to be a Macholic (she started reading about Steve Jobs and swearing at Bill Gates) last time I met her accidentally on a train to London. What's more, she gave away her Windoze PC to some idiot in the lab and persuaded her boss to buy another iMac for her in the office. Interestingly, after playing with my wife's iMac from time to time, the IT manager switched to Mac himself recently and now he can claim he knows Unix.
But with Mac OS X and the new generations of iMac, iBook and PowerBook, the Mac platform suddenly appears perfect for evryone - geeks and novices alike, and amazingly they cost no more than branded Wintel PCs. Take a look at the Apple Store http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/
Before any of the usual idiots whining that they can build these things for less, let me just put you straight - you just can't - not to the same level of style or quality. In any case, Apple is probably the best brands (well, the second best following Google according to a recent survey), and certainly not in the business to compete with any of the DIY box makers.
The real story I am trying to tell is that I have never seen a Mac user switching to Windows in my entire computing life, but have recently persuaded someone to buy an iBook for her first ever computer and witnessed 3 Windows users switching to Mac.
The lady who bought the iBook lives next door, and she just loves playing with her new toy. Being a middle-aged women and having never touched a computer before, she was initially very nervous and constantly worried that she might break something, so I spent about 2 hours explaining the basics, encouraging her to explore the iBook intuitively, and she kept noticing those clever and cute little touches like the bouncing icons, the magnified dock, the pulsing spot when the iBook is asleep, the amber light ring when recharging, etc. And the next time I met her a few days later, she was playing iTunes, burning CDs, listen to Internet radios, playing GNU Chess, and she was fasinated by the voice recognition capability (which I haven't used very much myself).
Among the 3 switchers, my brother-in-law has always been a Windows user until recently, and has 4 Wintel boxes at home. He had been using Eclipse for Java programming on a Sony Vaio bought a year ago which already shows its age - it feels really slow just running Eclipse alone and hardly anything else, typically used two batteries to get a reasonable usage. But recently he put some extra RAM to speed up the Vaio, but unfortunately the thing would get hot really quickly and the 2 batteries couldn't last more than 2 hours. So now he have got an iBook - lighter, prettier, much longer bettery life. And Java is so much better and more on Mac OS X.
The other 2 switcher are all my wife's colleagues: an IT manager and the secretary. When my wife started her new job, she asked for the LCD iMac, but many people including the IT manager and the secretary told her that Macs were no good because no one used them. When the iMac arrived, the IT manager didn't know how to set it up, so my wife (not a computer geek by any stretch of imagination) did it herself (she called me once about the IP address and DNS server). A few weeks later, the secretary quietly bought herself an iMac and an iPod at home, even paid for a
On OS X, virtually all the IDEs written in Java (JBuilder, Eclipse, NetBeans, etc) feel solid and more responsive than many of the Carbon applications (written in C or C++) like MS Office and Macromedia Dreamweaver, the only exception is Oracle JDeveloper which is totally unusable. JBuilder is particularly powerful and probably better than any IDE on all platforms except perhaps the OS X combination of Project Builder and Interface Builder. Surely this proves that there is nothing wrong with Java at all, at least not on Mac OS X. As a C++ programmer for over 10 years, I recently switched to Java and feel much more productive.
The memo is either very old or simply a fake, particularly wrt the memory footprint - the resident set of JBuilder is typically about 70 MB even after weeks of continuous usage. In any case, if there are genuine issues with the Solaris implementation, Sun should put more effort to deal with it. After all, Apple and IBM have done a wonderful job, so could Sun and others.
>> Run Jext or Borland JBuilder and you'll see what I mean.
JBuilder is very fast and stable on my 700 MHz OS X iBook - much faster MS Word. The numerical performance of my own Java app is very close to C++, and multi-threading is really impressive.
And the 17" iMac comes with nVidia GeForce4 MX with 64 MB VRAM.
The 15" iMac is $300 cheaper than this Vaio and better in virtually every way: G4 vs Celero, nVidia Geforce2 32 MB VRAM vs integrated graphics with no VRAM, space age design vs typewriter style, best-of-bread software(iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iChat, iSync, iCal, etc) vs third rate imitations (by the way, MS iWave http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/2743 is coming to a PC near you), Mac OS X vs XP Home, dozens of bundled programming tools vs zero, ...
And for $200 more, the 17" iMac also offer DVD burning Superdrive, 54 Mbps 802.11g AirPort Extreme, Bluetooth ready. So let the hell freeze over before I touch the Vaio.
Oh, where are those idiots who always complain that home made PCs are much cheaper than Macs, and shouldn't the same old argument apply to Sony and other Wintel box makers?
>> This argument is akin to saying it's cheaper to buy a $40,000 Jaguar than a $20,000 Chevy because if you tried to custom-add the Jaguar's all-wheel-drive system to the Chevy, it would cost you a fortune.
Another clueless Windoze idiot. The other guy simply states the actual fact that a Mac comes with better and more useful software than a Wintel box and people will be more productive, that's all. But you, my darling, just went off on your own.
>> I have like a bajillion pr0n pictures/movies in one folder -- C:\Program Files\Agent -- and when I open the folder, explorer like pins the cpu at 99.99999%. Having that folder open (even minimized) means explorer is at about 25% cpu on average. (1.4 GHz Athlon XP by the way)
That's why iPhoto is so good - its a photo database that allows you to resize hundreds and thousands of pictures in real-time even on my 700 MHz G3 iMac, while XP just gives you the "My Pictures" folder.
So Firewire is better because it doesn't suck your CPU power, and it carries power that recharges your iPod and drive your external hard disk.
>> People may still buy PowerBooks because of style and OS X, but in terms of overall functionality, a Centino notebook will blow away a PowerBook.
What's your definition of "overall functionality"? All you are saying is about performance, nothing else. As long as it runs the vastly inferior Windoze, all its advantages amounts to nothing to me.
Apple just introduced 802.11g, bluetooth and Firewire 800 in one stroke, but Intel and the rest of Wintel box makers are still pushing the awkward and more expensive b & a combination. Let's face it, even the name is confusing - version a is a few years older than version b - wtf.
Similarly, when Apple dropped the floppy drive and added USB and Firewire 4 or 5 years ago, people were laughing at them. Now even Dell are moving away from the floppy.
As another example, USB is a nice and simple low bandwidth technology for connecting mice and printers, and Firewire is ideal for high bandwidth. But oh no, things have to be more complicated, so Intel must chip in and muddle the water with the theoretically faster but practically slower 480 Mbps USB2 than Firewire 400. Now Apple has Firewire 800 and potentially 1600 and 3200 soon, are we going to see USB3 and USB4?
How dare are you to compare the gorgeous iMac to the ugly eMachine with that crappy CRT monitor? If you really have to, at leat compare the iMac to an IBM or HP machine.
The iMac is designed to last for at least 5 years, and it's virtually silent and a pure pleasure for your eyes, while the eMachine is an eyesore and a regret every second you sit in front of it. Furthermore, think about the extra electricity bills you have to pay for your idling 2 GHz processor in the next few years (if it lasts that long).
And by the time you want a new computer, your eMachine is probably worth nothing, but the iMac can be sold on eBay to compensate for the initial cost difference.
If you really don't have money for a decent computer, get a cleaning job or something and don't waste your breath to tell us what to buy. Most people in the real world don't just chase the lowest price regardless quality and long term value.
>> but the iMac is a painfully underpowered product for the price.
Why don't you fuck off, idiot. I am using a 700 MHz G3 iBook with PC100 SDRAM and 16 MB VRAM and 4200 RPM hard drive, which can simultaneously run dozens programs for Java / C++ programming, graphics / Web design, browsing, emailing, playing music, watching and editing photos and movies, playing games, burning CDs, wireless networking, etc. How the hell the GHz G4 iMac with DDR and 7200 RPM drive can be painfully underpowered, and what are you going to use it for? Your P4 may idle at 3 Ghz and generate lots of heat and noise, but may fails miserably when handling real tasks.
>> If that's worth the $700-800 more that an Apple will cost you for a non-upgradeable machine, go for it.
Are you mad or just plain stupid, and may I ask where you could buy a Wintel machine (even for the same price) with all that power and elegance that is Bluetooth and 54 Mbps 802.11g ready and comes with 4x DVD buring Superdrive? And how about iLife and all the other best-of-breed bundled software and programming tools which are not even available for Windows or Linux? By the way, for more power and upgradability, there are those PowerMac G4 machines.
I really hope that those clueless cheap PC junkies would somehow grow up and figure out that a Mac offers so much more value than a Wintel PC for the same price. Even the top box makers like Dell or HP can't compare to Apple in terms of quality and design and innovation, so it's just plain silly to expect Apple to match the lowest prices on the market.
You can buy a 12" iBook for $999 which has everything I want as a programmer, plus 4+ hours battery, instant sleep and wake up, dozens of first class, multimedia, Unix, Java, C/C++, Objective C/C++, Perl, Ruby, GUI programming tools. Can you build one for me? No, I don't trust you for that.
As a longtime user of Mac, Unix and Windows, I respect the first 2 groups much more than the pure Windows users. Generally speaking, people chose Mac or Linux over Windoze for good reasons such as technical or design superiority, ease of use, style, productivity, TCO, security, bad experiences with Windoze, refusal to reward the convicted Redmond monoplist for its bad practice, etc, and they tend to be more articulate and intelligent than the Wintel PC crowd who either think Windows is the only thing in the computing universe or Linux is too complicated or Mac is too expensive and slow and has no software or second mouse button. Everytime a PC hothead lost his argument, there is always the last defense: why is everyone using Windows if Mac and Linux are so good?
Personally, I think both Mac and Linux platforms badly need the critical mass to break the MS monoply, and the best way to achieve that goal is to help each other. I am not suggesting that MS should be elliminated altogether, but the economy and the computing industry are desperately in need of several viable alternatives and adequate ecological diversity to be heathy and prosperous, and MS is just too nasty to be trusted to control our destiny. Without the design flair and innovation of Apple and the spirit diversity of the Open Source community, the computing world would be such a boring place.
The fact that you are still talking about the age old single button mouse issue immediately disqualify you to give any informed oppinion about Mac. I have been using Unix, PC and Mac for over 10 years, and I can tell you that nothing comes close to Apple hardware and Mac OS X in terms of quality, style and usability.
/. readers who have switched to Mac OS X (including several ./ editors like Rob Malda and Hemos) recently but very few Mac people switching to other platforms.
Generally speaking, Mac users are passionate about their platform based on experiences, while most of the Wintel users often form strong oppinions out of ignorance. In most cases, Mac users win the argument because they are more articulate and intelligent than the average PC user.
I have noticed that there are lots of