If what the record companies are saying is true, shouldn't there be a dramatic reduction in the price of a new CD.
That would be a price based on the lower demand in the marketplace. I am not taking a stance on piracy either way in that statement but wouldn't that be a perfectly legitimate way to combat piracy?
Does piracy force the record companies (and software developers) to have high prices or do the high prices encourage people who may not have pirated otherwise to try it out.
Here's a thought: would we have seen as much looting in Kuwait had we overthrown that government (the average Kuwaiti being more affluent than the average Iraqi).
Unless Henry Mancini is playing while Jobs announces OS X 10.3, code-named "Pink Panther," I think the announcement will be about the music service. They already showed their hand with their press teaser.
Okay, here's the setting: a now defunct dot com that used to employ me to wear two hats - UI design for Product Development and marketing collateral design for, who else, Marketing.
When I arrived, the marketing collateral was being done by outside firms. I snuck into Testing and kidnapped a neglected Blue and White G3 350 with a 16 MB video card and 384 MB of RAM and said "From now on we design our printed stuff on this." Why? Because I had a Mac Quark license I could donate to the cause. Never hurts to use what your printing vendors use.
I ended up doing the UI work on it as well because Fireworks and Illustrator ran faster on it than on the P III 800 with a 32 MB video card and 512 MB of RAM that would grind almost to a halt when ever I would zoom in more than a couple hundred percent on a design.
This is what I mean by perceived speed. Nobody was emulating anything. The G3 simply made edits faster and redrew its screen WAY faster!
I have yet to be able to configure a box on Dell's site or on Gateway's site that comes even close to the prices you see advertised.
As soon as you hit the configure button, suddenly the price jumps and as soon as you add stuff that is usually included on a typical Mac, the price jumps even further.
As I re-read your post, you seem to be one of those who likes to build your PC from scratch and when you cannot build a Mac that way, they are suddenly more expensive.
Compare a similarly configured Dell to an Apple and then tell how much more the Apple is. Usually not much.
As for white boxes, we had an office full of them and I have never seen so many hardware failures. You get what you pay for and for me that means a machine that has yet to have a part fail.
I have long maintained that a computer is only as fast as it seems to the end user. In my experience, Celerons have been woefully slow for DTP apps. I have even been in settings where a G3 was more effective than a P III of twice its Mhz speed.
I have nothing against x86, but have never seen anything that would make me favor them. If Apple switched to an Athon or Pentium or Itanium or whatever, I wouldn't care as long as my user experience doesn't change. Just don't make me use Windows.
Well, I am glad you at least see my main point.
As for the rest.
a) What do I get for $499. A Celeron. What do I get in the eMac for $999. A G4. Worth it in my mind.
b) I have upgraded the video, the RAM, the hard drive (and added two more), the monitor and the processor (G3 to G4). Don't need to upgrade much else.
c) Games? This is my work computer (even though it is in my living room). Who has time for games? I use a computer to make money. If I had time for games, I would use a PlayStation or Gamecube.
Everytime you see a reference to Apple's marketshare, you have to realize it has nothing to do with its userbase.
Decreased marketshare refers to new sales only. It doesn't mean current users are abandoning the platform.
Mac users hang onto their machines and use them productively for longer than the average PC/PC user.
I use this 5 year old Mac to run Jaguar and all the latest Adobe and Macromedia apps and then some.
I find Entourage to be indispensable. I know there are worthy alternative products but this app works for me and never crashes.
Word is another story. Don't know why.
Applications that got their start on the Mac are the best example of why the Mac system of a single contextual menu bar is best for THESE APPS. Photoshop, GoLive (basically all the pallet heavy Adobe interfaces) started out with the Mac interface in mind. Use GoLive on a Windows box and you will see what I mean. Apps designed for the windows way of doing things (filling the whole screen in an Outlook or Word style way) tend to be okay on Windows precisely because of this. Rather than design two totally different versions, developers tend to pick one and one platform's interface suffers when running that particular app. One interesting exception is recent Macromedia apps that have come close to providing the user the option of either approach in their pallets.
Apple already previewed their upcoming service in a commercial a long time ago.
There's nothing to download. Using the iTunes interface, you schedule live acts (Smashmouth, Lil' Kim, and George Clinton were part of the beta stage testing) to play a private show in your own auditorium. You get to arrange the order of the acts and ask request of each.
Or something like that...
You can change your PC seats on any Adobe app to a Mac version for something like $30-35 per app. I know -not free but better then purchasing full versions.
Another way to go is to switch when you are ready to upgrade to new versions of the apps. Adobe will let you upgrade PC Illustrator 9 to Mac Illustrator 10, for instance.
I am so tired of hearing about Jakob Nielson being an authority on usability. Napolean presided over his own coronation and Nielson really no different.
How many broken links are at useit.com today? How many menu items don't lead where they say?
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Your comment makes so little sense, I cannot even tell who you are trying to insult. I have to give it "the confused cocker-spaniel head-tilt."
You say "Macs don't cut it in the office" but you do not say why.
Macs have a very capable version of MS-Office and when I worked in public relations we used little else.
What are Macs lacking in your opinion that they cannot "cut it" in your average, 9-to-5, office environment?
Add numerous chat clients, email clients and web browsers and you have a platform that is just fine in the office.
Does that mean I'm going to hell?
Satisfaction with the Mac OS is why Mac users never move to Windows. I cannot speak for Linux users.
Won't win any speed awards but I use it as a server and my daughter plays her games on it in Classic (she's 4, no need to discuss frame rates)
You may not be able to get it at Best Buy, though. Go to Club Mac and avoid sales tax.
If what the record companies are saying is true, shouldn't there be a dramatic reduction in the price of a new CD.
That would be a price based on the lower demand in the marketplace. I am not taking a stance on piracy either way in that statement but wouldn't that be a perfectly legitimate way to combat piracy?
Does piracy force the record companies (and software developers) to have high prices or do the high prices encourage people who may not have pirated otherwise to try it out.
Here's a thought: would we have seen as much looting in Kuwait had we overthrown that government (the average Kuwaiti being more affluent than the average Iraqi).
you're = you are it's = it is and so on. Apply as needed. Do not use internally.
Unless Henry Mancini is playing while Jobs announces OS X 10.3, code-named "Pink Panther," I think the announcement will be about the music service. They already showed their hand with their press teaser.
Okay, here's the setting: a now defunct dot com that used to employ me to wear two hats - UI design for Product Development and marketing collateral design for, who else, Marketing. When I arrived, the marketing collateral was being done by outside firms. I snuck into Testing and kidnapped a neglected Blue and White G3 350 with a 16 MB video card and 384 MB of RAM and said "From now on we design our printed stuff on this." Why? Because I had a Mac Quark license I could donate to the cause. Never hurts to use what your printing vendors use. I ended up doing the UI work on it as well because Fireworks and Illustrator ran faster on it than on the P III 800 with a 32 MB video card and 512 MB of RAM that would grind almost to a halt when ever I would zoom in more than a couple hundred percent on a design. This is what I mean by perceived speed. Nobody was emulating anything. The G3 simply made edits faster and redrew its screen WAY faster!
I have yet to be able to configure a box on Dell's site or on Gateway's site that comes even close to the prices you see advertised. As soon as you hit the configure button, suddenly the price jumps and as soon as you add stuff that is usually included on a typical Mac, the price jumps even further.
As I re-read your post, you seem to be one of those who likes to build your PC from scratch and when you cannot build a Mac that way, they are suddenly more expensive. Compare a similarly configured Dell to an Apple and then tell how much more the Apple is. Usually not much. As for white boxes, we had an office full of them and I have never seen so many hardware failures. You get what you pay for and for me that means a machine that has yet to have a part fail.
I have long maintained that a computer is only as fast as it seems to the end user. In my experience, Celerons have been woefully slow for DTP apps. I have even been in settings where a G3 was more effective than a P III of twice its Mhz speed. I have nothing against x86, but have never seen anything that would make me favor them. If Apple switched to an Athon or Pentium or Itanium or whatever, I wouldn't care as long as my user experience doesn't change. Just don't make me use Windows.
Well, I am glad you at least see my main point. As for the rest. a) What do I get for $499. A Celeron. What do I get in the eMac for $999. A G4. Worth it in my mind. b) I have upgraded the video, the RAM, the hard drive (and added two more), the monitor and the processor (G3 to G4). Don't need to upgrade much else. c) Games? This is my work computer (even though it is in my living room). Who has time for games? I use a computer to make money. If I had time for games, I would use a PlayStation or Gamecube.
The Quark 6 beta I've seen barely merits a Bronx cheer.
Everytime you see a reference to Apple's marketshare, you have to realize it has nothing to do with its userbase. Decreased marketshare refers to new sales only. It doesn't mean current users are abandoning the platform. Mac users hang onto their machines and use them productively for longer than the average PC/PC user. I use this 5 year old Mac to run Jaguar and all the latest Adobe and Macromedia apps and then some.
I am not disputing what you are saying but it sounds like end-user RTFM errors.
I find Entourage to be indispensable. I know there are worthy alternative products but this app works for me and never crashes. Word is another story. Don't know why.
In the Mac community, when XP was announced, its name was widely regarded as yet another example of MS trying to steal Apple's thunder.
Applications that got their start on the Mac are the best example of why the Mac system of a single contextual menu bar is best for THESE APPS. Photoshop, GoLive (basically all the pallet heavy Adobe interfaces) started out with the Mac interface in mind. Use GoLive on a Windows box and you will see what I mean. Apps designed for the windows way of doing things (filling the whole screen in an Outlook or Word style way) tend to be okay on Windows precisely because of this. Rather than design two totally different versions, developers tend to pick one and one platform's interface suffers when running that particular app. One interesting exception is recent Macromedia apps that have come close to providing the user the option of either approach in their pallets.
Apple already previewed their upcoming service in a commercial a long time ago. There's nothing to download. Using the iTunes interface, you schedule live acts (Smashmouth, Lil' Kim, and George Clinton were part of the beta stage testing) to play a private show in your own auditorium. You get to arrange the order of the acts and ask request of each. Or something like that...
Or what if you actually want to make a living and need Office to communicate with your clients?
Having major commercial apps on a UNIX based platform is the best of both worlds to a growing number of users.
It's now a paperweight.
:-(
Heavy sigh...
You can change your PC seats on any Adobe app to a Mac version for something like $30-35 per app. I know -not free but better then purchasing full versions.
Another way to go is to switch when you are ready to upgrade to new versions of the apps. Adobe will let you upgrade PC Illustrator 9 to Mac Illustrator 10, for instance.
I am so tired of hearing about Jakob Nielson being an authority on usability. Napolean presided over his own coronation and Nielson really no different. How many broken links are at useit.com today? How many menu items don't lead where they say?