I really hate to go trolling here, but I think this has to be said. I know this is slashdot and yeah, pro linux, woot, woot, etc, et. al, but Linux's short commings are in the lack of commerical software. The only time I have seen Linux being used in a major shop was with Maya, and the 3D artists loved it because most were former SGI/Irix users.
In all my years with linux (about 8 now, I started with Slackware 3) I have Linux become a very easy "intro to unix" application. However the Linux community arguable is more zeloty than the Mac community.
I like Opensource solutions. I use them almost daily in the form of FreeBSD, Linux, phpProjekt, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP, PERL, etc., but this is all on the server side.
In the past two years, really the past 18 months or so, why is it that about 60% of the Linux users I know (about 15 people) switched to Macintosh OS 10? (This includes myself). I know of another 5 - 10 that were waiting for the G5's and OS 10.3, so I imagine they will be purchasing those in the next few weeks, and then the others simply can't afford to switch to macintosh or are the hardcore zelots. Why are more people switching from Linux to Mac for their desktop? The very same reason why you say, "until I can play them in Linux". Until. That may be tomorrow or never. Macintosh at least has professional grade software for their platform from supported vendors like Macromedia, QuarkXpress, Adobe et. al., etc. This is why I switched. I stopped using windows because I could never get the system stable long enough to do anything (this was with 98 & 98SE, 2000 was actully decent) so I started to use Linux. I was happy with Linux and staroffice until I got into my upper level college classes and found that I had to have MS Office for items like Excell and Powerpoint. (business major).
So when it came time to replace my Sony Vaio laptop (with win 98) I was getting ready to leave for a semester in Germany and I was tired of fooling with the nitty gritty details of lack of drivers in Linux, unstable windows, and wanted something that just worked. So I bought this iBook because I got my Unix development enviroment for PHP/MySQL coding along with standard tools like photoshop and GoLive, DW, Flash, Office, etc.
If you choose to run Linux, you know its short falls and I hope are intelligent to know enough about markets that until Linux and its community realizes that most Linux deployments are in the server room and not deskops, AND that not all commercial software is evil, that they will be out in the dark waiting. Meanwhile, many of the non-zelots that actully like having *iux enviroment will proably continue to switch to the Apple platform.
Our shop is 90% Mac, 5% OpenBSD, and 5% FreeBSD. We run Apple update once a week. Its not a problem after we got them employees in the mind set that all they have to do is log out and leave the machine running 24/7. Then on friday nights before I leave, I go around to all the machines and click apple update and let them go, reset, and leave.
We usually let our people go about 3PM on Fridays if there isn't a major project do, so I usually am gone by 4:30.
Now on the FreeBSD machines, we haven't patched them at all because they run on a closed network and handle our file and print servers. The OpenBSD boxes serve as our company intranet, mail server, and firewall/router. These are patched when needed, but that is usually with updated every 6 months.
Well, when you are looking for a transparent object. Example, one of our client's website has several differnet backgrounds for different departments, but they needed their logo to stay the same. Logistics made it much easier to create a transparent GIF and that has worked perfectly.
We tried PNG first, and well it looked like shit in IE. When some 80%+ of the world uses IE, you can't have that.
Now I have had professional photographers that we manage sites for give me pictures for the web in PNG's, and everytime I have to go into Photoshop and convert to Jpegs in order for the file size to be managable for dial up users.
I thought in the late 1990's Yahoo! had an injunction issued by the 9th Circus Court stating that "Yahoo! was not reponsible being a US company for knowing all of France's Laws" during the whole Yahoo! Auction and Nazi materials case.
Granted, maybe I am missing something as I don't plan to enter a US Law School until next year, but when I studied this in Germany, I would think the same rule could apply here as well.
I don't see what the big fuss about GIF is about anyway. Who needs it? Don't tell me large advertising firms use GIFs in their production. And if you're a professional Web designer, you should know damn well that PNG is a better alternative anyway (Microsloth not getting off its ass to implement transparency in IE ra ra ra, you shouldn't depend on that anyway).
The very fact that 80% of the people DO use IE and it doesn't render PNG's correctly is the very reason WHY I don't use them for web stuff.
I code to standards and use whatever is the most compatiable. Everything reads GIF's without a problem and Jpeg's too for Photo's. PNG's have their place in, but until MSIE renders them correctly and no major browser has issues with Gif's, I'm sticking with them.
Well actully, I purchased one as a birthday present to my obessively organized Fiance and within 2 months its become a $300 MP3 player as she went back to paper and pencil for all her contact/scheduling.
She is one of many that bought PDA's and then decided paper and pencil were king. So the Stylus isn't mighter than the pen.
hmm, everything in my business is pretty well "over-priced", but their professional tools and yes, we make money from them.
Let's see here:
Quick Books Pro for Mac - USD 300
DVD Studio Pro 2 - $500
Soundtrack - $300
Final Cut Pro - USD 1000
QuarkXpress - $900
Adobe Web Collection - $1000
Discreet Combustion 2.1 - USD 1000
QuickTime VR - $400
Blender - Free
Total: $5400
# of Machines: 4
Total: $21,600
Amount of money my company made last year: $719,000.
Welcome to the wonderful world of professional media arts. Granted, my company does consulting and marketing/advertising for small businesses and I didn't add in M$ office on all 10 of our company's computers. Add in another $4000 to that total for software.
Now if your a home user, then chances are you can get by with PSP. The only boxes in our company that are not Macintoshes are our company file, and firewall/router, which all run from FreeBSD white boxes.
Bottom line, Photoshop is not designed for "the average user". So about 3% of our budget went into software investments that yielded a return of 27x's the amount invested. Granted we also have 15 employess and after all expenses paid we only saw a $45,000 profit, but consider an average contract is about $8500 for our company and we get about 3 - 4 of those a month. These businesses expect that we have the professional tools and these are all quality tools and so long as the quality is there, we will spend the money. Its when we spend that amount of money and see a product line dropped, like 3D studio Max (which was $2500 per machine) that we get mad.
The only OSS tool on the list is Blender, and that is because our rendering in 3d animation is limited, and Blender is one of the few OSS tools that make it to production/professional quality.
We *could* use openoffice, but kinda pain in the ass since there is not a native OSX build. Plus we recycle units. These dual 1.25Ghz G4's will make from the video production folks to the graphic artists and their ageing dual 500 and 867 G4's will go to the secartaries and office workers and their old single G3's and g4's given to charity. Although we won't be getting in any dual G5's till at least first of the year...
Well said. I recoup the upgrade costs usually within 1 job. I am waiting really for the next version of Final Cut Pro to use 64-bit extentions and get a dual G5 and upgrade GoLive and then whole 9 yards with the CS suite.
Around Photoshop 4, yeah, I thought GIMP could become a contender against Photoshop, but the GIMP I saw 4 years ago and the GIMP I see today look a lot alike, only today's can't save to GIFS (well can now due to patents expiring). There are some high promised about GIMP 2.0, but if it still takes 16 steps with layers to Bevel text & add a drop shadow that takes about 4 mouse click in PS, what's the bloody point?
I got tired of windows crashing, driver issues with Linux (this was a couple years ago), and finally just wanted something that worked. When it got time last year to replace my laptop, I got this iBook and have been happy ever since.
I have not Turned it off in over 6 months, just reset after Dling updates, and rest of the time, shut it and go, then open it back up and within a second or two it powers up and ready to go.
I work as a small business consultant (technology mainly) and I tell every one to spend the extra money on a Mac. So far I've only had 1 out of about 23 clients not like mac, because "it doesn't have solitare". Everyone else likes them because they don't crash, everything works, easy to use, and gets them the basic software they need. Quickbooks, MS Office, and even Point-of-Sale software that is easy to use with an USB hand scanner and cash drawer.
I worked at an architecture firm during most of my college years and they had about 25 ALPHA boxes. They had a range of speeds, but about 15 were quad ALPHA 500's with 4GB of ram used for rendering. Others were dual or quad 350's with 2GB of ram I believe. Anyway, I just finished working with them as a consultant getting paid about $50 a hour compared to my $9.50 an hour back in the day. We replaces a huge room ful of boxes, wires, cables, cooling equipment, into a single rack containing 2 IBM Blade servers running 14 x1u dual Xeon servers with 2GB of ram each.
They offered to sell me the old Alpha boxes for $450 a piece for the Quad 350's and $750 for the quad 500's. I just blew the $5000 I had saved up for a new Dual G5 on 5 quad Alpha 500 boxes and 6 Quad 350's. I think I am going to Ebay 4 of the 350's and 2 of the 500's see if I can recoop some of the money I spent. My fiance loved the fact that I used like $2500 of the wedding fund to buy these.
Its a shame compaq screwed with the pricing structure. Back in Febuary we did a rendering test between a new Dell Dual 2Ghz Xeon box with 2GB ram (is the office file/print server but "burned it in for 48 hours" - means we played with it for a couple days before acutlly hooking it into the network) and the Alpha STILL beat its rendering time by 12%. Granted our rendering software was highly optimized (aka cost a small fortune) for the Alpha platform, but still.
We looked at getting new Alpha boxes, but the cost and the fact we were frankly told by the HP rep that Alpha's days were numbered caused us to look between IBM and SUN. With the company switching its 3D graphics/animation division to Maya on Linux, IBM won out.
I have 3 of the boxes I bought running on FreeBSD 5 now. I will keep these box to shine as an enternal flame...at least until my fiance makes me sell 'em.
I used to beta test M$ Office packages, then I got Office XP beta, which required registration. No biggy, not uncommon for Beta products they want in the hands of certain people. (I was the IT advisor for a company at the time). Well then Office XP was released and I installed on my laptop. Only problem, I never used my laptop to get online because it didn't have an ethernet card. So I had to call M% and get a registration number.
I saw where everything XP was going that direction and decided, "I don't like this", so when it came time to replace my laptop, I bought this iBook.
Now Photoshop is the most pirated software on the face of the earth. When I was in college, EVERYONE had it. Granted my school Drury College had a good architecture school and the archies needed the program, but given the private school cost, could barely afford tution, books, and art supples, let alone even the EDU priced stuff.
Real world: we use Photoshop nearly everyday to help design web images and other artwork along with GoLive. Video editing, well we have one machine with Final Cut Pro 3, but 90% of the time we use iMovie & QT pro for importing client's movies for conversion to web.
We are still debating whether to purchase a couple dual G5's and upgrade to CS, but I don't think we will. Most of out boxes are a little of a year old and dual 1.25Ghz G4's with 1GB or 2GB of ram.
I think honestly we will wait until some more 64-bit apps, like a new version of FCP and some other tools, before we take the plundge. And this really brings it into question because if we upgrade now, then ditch these machine in say 6 months, reinstall, how much of a pain in the ass will it be to reinstall our copies of PS 6 or 7 then apply the upgrades?
I hope the parent was a troll but here is what I have to say:
There are a few standard and simple games in KDE one can play and several text based.
2 It cannot be used by my grandma
If your grandma can't use an iMac, then chances are Windows isn't going to be any better
It lacks a GUI of any note
GUI Installer, yes, but with X, you can choose KDE, Gnome, Windowmaker, a couple others. Or if you purchase a Mac you get Aqua, which is about a GUI as they come.
It is an assortment of fragmented OSes
Everytime I hear this I always ask, "And how many features has Linux stol...I mean borrowed from FreeBSD to make Linux more stable?"
It cannot be run on the x86 Platform
Well it seems to running on my 1.2Ghz Althon machine quite happly. Hell I even have it running on an ALPHA box here.
You have to compile everything and know C
Helps, but 99.9% of the programs you need are already in the ports tree. Typeing 'Make && make install' isn't that hard.
Support for the latest hardware is always poor
For Macintoshs, not so much of a problem. For those running Free, Open, Net, I would have to say hardware support is lacking for things like sound cards and vidcards. But consider that the main use of BSD is as a Server OS, you don't need the lattest ATI card with 1GB of vid ram to run terminal.
It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux
Well, FreeBSD has a great Linux emulator. I really havn't had much problems running Linux apps in FreeBSD
meanwhile this company call Apple Computer seems to maintain a *BSD. Not only have they produced a quality, easy to use, BSD for the masses, they have commerical software & hardware vendors supporting the platform.
I am sorry, but I don't see any Dreamweaver or Photoshop running on Linux. The only major application that I have seen support Linux has been Maya.
Last printer I bought came packaged with OS X drivers, no Linux drivers packaged with them.
The number of apple units shipping is actully increasing, especially their powerbook line. The more developer confences I go to for PHP and PERL, the more iBooks and Powerbooks I see in the crowd.
I do 3D animation and rendering of space scenes for fun. I started with 3D Studio during college since many lab machine already had it installed. Then I tried Blender 1.8, but it was too complex for me at the time for my level of interest.
I like the idea of having such a release especially for students that need to learn some more of the professional stuff. While blender is gaining popularity, because of it small download and price, it still lacks several fetures needed, like a raytracing engine, for professional work.
While this is cool and all, chances are I will still use Blender for my hobby work because it is free and allows me to do the level of work that I am at. Again, I am a hobbiest, not a pro, but I know of two shops in town that is using Blender over other packages for at least some of their work, like animated logos and such, because of the cost.
And my guess is that they ran the tests of the Athlon 64 on a 32-bit Windows OS too. Outside of Linux and FreeBSD, where else are you going to find a 64-bit os. Well there was OpenVMS and True-64 Unix for Alpha's, but that's for ALPHA processors.
The average user is going to have to wait for the OS and applications to catch up on the 64-bit horizon no matter which platform you use.
Out of all my consulting clients that asked, I have only recommended 2 purchase the G5. One is a graphics design firm in which PSCS can take advantage of the 64-bit processes. The other was a videoographer who was looking to replace his 6 year old G3. Why, well chances are he'll hang on to this machine for the next 6 years or more too.
Everyone else I've told to hang on to their cash and stick with 32-bit machines because for now, its not going to give them a huge cost advantage in Quickbooks and Word.
I worked for an architecture firm that had 27 quad 500 alpha boxes with 2 GB of ram and 4 - 5 9.1 GB SCSI drives a piece. These were configured as a render farm for one of our graphics apps.
Well one day we did a test between a dual 2Ghz Xeon box with 2GB of ram and the damned Alpha box still beat the rendering time by 12%.
Granted I just finished working with them again as a technology consultant and they are replacing these systems with two IBM blade units with 14 1u servers each, but this because they are changing their software and the whole 9 yards. The Alpha boxes were starting to have power supplies and HDD failures, which is to be expected after at least 6, maybe 8 years of usage.
They offered to sell me some at the bargin price of $400 a box, which I bought 10. Yeah, there goes my new G4 tower. Although I will probaly sell 5 of them on ebay and make my investment back. I am going to turn 2 into database & file servers for my office and just use the other 3 for personal rendering projects.
And to those that think that 64-bit systems are new.
But then again we also have a cluster of Blade Servers and we can run 1 process of blender per CPU. Each blade has dual Xeons, so blade 1, CPU 1 renders frames 1 x 250, Blade 1, CPU 2 renders 251 - 500, Blade 2-CPU 1, 501 - 750, etc. etc.
Then on smaller jobs, we just use the reppu network rendering program for blender through our older ALPHA and Solaris boxes.
Look at Blender vs. 3D studio or Lightwave. Both of which are about 100MB compaired to the 8MB of Blender, yet they can perform roughly the same functions.
For once I wish people would keep things efficent. Just because we can make things bloated with everything under the sun doesn't mean we should.
On a bigger note, they have made a lot of improvements in the past 3 years from Star Office to 1.1 today. Its well on its way and usable, but still there are some things that can be worked on, like getting it to load faster.
Eventually you will see one pipeline into your home that will provide your TV, HS internet, phone all on one bill. Whether this comes from satillite or a fiberoptic, or even some other kind of WiFI technology is wait and see. But when that happens, VoIP will proably be the standard for voice communications.
As for the FBI, I guess the NSA still isn't sharing their decryption technology. I always here the, "Don't wiretap me" arguement, but anytime some Mob ring is busted through wiretaps John Q. Public seem to say, "good job, see that is what happens when its used to nab bad guys".
If your not doing anything illegal you have nothing to worry about. I don't see the FBI recording every conversation on the current phone system. it logisitically & cost prohibitive to do so, but if they can provide enough evidence to get a judge to okay such a tap, they need to be able too.
Itunes = JUK -> Oh wait, my Vortex 2 sound card STILL doesn't have working drivers on my box...no sound.
Safari = Konqueror -> um well, both get the job done
Finder = Konqueror -> ah, I guess so...
Dock = Kickert -> Maybe, but looks more Windozish to me Menubar = Kicker -> Again, KDE thingy looks more like START
bbedit = Kate -> Wait a sec...BBedit is a 3rd party app, for apple, not made by apple. Not a correct comparison.
Quicktime = Kmplayer -> Yeah, but no $30 swiss army knife of media converters plus support for soranson codecs.
Appleworks = Kofiice -> This is utter bull shit since Koffice can't write to MS office formats, Apple works can. I am sorry, but I do live in the business world and even if I were to use some other office suite, the other 95% of the business world needs to be able to read that invoice or memo or letter or whatever.
iMovie = ??? -> Nothing as far as I can tell
iPhoto = ??? -> Again, nothing like it in KDE.
Now, what KDE doesn't have:
Commerical software support needed when working in major industry like:
QuarkXpress (some printing companies give us a discount for working with Quark on Mac instead of other file types)
Final Cut Pro -> 99% of what video editors need. Yeah an Avid can do more, but it also costs 10x's the price.
DVD Studio Pro -> Hm...I don't see anything like that for KDE.
Adobe Products -> Sorry, back in the days of PS 4 & 5, GIMP was closing in, but as of PS 6 & 7, GIMP is blown out of the water. Maybe we'll see some improvement in GIMP 2.x, but I doubt we'll see 64-bit enhancements for the G5's or IA 64 architectures.
Macromedia products -> Even though I personally perfer GoLive, still a staple for many in the webdesign community and the "defacto standard".
Driver support for many DV and digital cameras...let me rephase that...built in drivers that don't require additional DL's and configurations. Plug the thing into Firewire or USB port and go.
I could go on, but what's the point? The Linux Zelaots are mad that Apple came along and created a user friendly Unix with support by commerical software vendors coupled with excellent hardware. I know because I am one of many that switched from Linux to Macintosh and never looked back.
I go to confrences and conventions now and see the number of php and PERL developers increasingly using iBooks and Powerbooks as their primary developing machines.
Moreover, there is a TCO benefit with Macs since they are an intergrated platform: I don't have to mess with finding the latest drivers, or worried that the latest and greatest hardware may not have decent drivers available for months.
I switched from Win 98 to Linux in 1999 because I was tired of windows crashing all the time, but several peices of hardware, like my sound card, never did have decent drivers available. In 2002 I switched to mac because I just wanted something that worked and now I recommend others take a serious look at Macintosh for their office, because those that have switched have indicated that have seen an improvement in productivity and TCO.
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In all my years with linux (about 8 now, I started with Slackware 3) I have Linux become a very easy "intro to unix" application. However the Linux community arguable is more zeloty than the Mac community.
I like Opensource solutions. I use them almost daily in the form of FreeBSD, Linux, phpProjekt, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP, PERL, etc., but this is all on the server side.
In the past two years, really the past 18 months or so, why is it that about 60% of the Linux users I know (about 15 people) switched to Macintosh OS 10? (This includes myself). I know of another 5 - 10 that were waiting for the G5's and OS 10.3, so I imagine they will be purchasing those in the next few weeks, and then the others simply can't afford to switch to macintosh or are the hardcore zelots. Why are more people switching from Linux to Mac for their desktop? The very same reason why you say, "until I can play them in Linux". Until. That may be tomorrow or never. Macintosh at least has professional grade software for their platform from supported vendors like Macromedia, QuarkXpress, Adobe et. al., etc. This is why I switched. I stopped using windows because I could never get the system stable long enough to do anything (this was with 98 & 98SE, 2000 was actully decent) so I started to use Linux. I was happy with Linux and staroffice until I got into my upper level college classes and found that I had to have MS Office for items like Excell and Powerpoint. (business major).
So when it came time to replace my Sony Vaio laptop (with win 98) I was getting ready to leave for a semester in Germany and I was tired of fooling with the nitty gritty details of lack of drivers in Linux, unstable windows, and wanted something that just worked. So I bought this iBook because I got my Unix development enviroment for PHP/MySQL coding along with standard tools like photoshop and GoLive, DW, Flash, Office, etc.
If you choose to run Linux, you know its short falls and I hope are intelligent to know enough about markets that until Linux and its community realizes that most Linux deployments are in the server room and not deskops, AND that not all commercial software is evil, that they will be out in the dark waiting. Meanwhile, many of the non-zelots that actully like having *iux enviroment will proably continue to switch to the Apple platform.
We usually let our people go about 3PM on Fridays if there isn't a major project do, so I usually am gone by 4:30.
Now on the FreeBSD machines, we haven't patched them at all because they run on a closed network and handle our file and print servers. The OpenBSD boxes serve as our company intranet, mail server, and firewall/router. These are patched when needed, but that is usually with updated every 6 months.
We tried PNG first, and well it looked like shit in IE. When some 80%+ of the world uses IE, you can't have that.
Now I have had professional photographers that we manage sites for give me pictures for the web in PNG's, and everytime I have to go into Photoshop and convert to Jpegs in order for the file size to be managable for dial up users.
Granted, maybe I am missing something as I don't plan to enter a US Law School until next year, but when I studied this in Germany, I would think the same rule could apply here as well.
Well I have a tendancy to 1) Not give a shit what cowards say. 2) Not be at the top of my spelling game at 3:13AM...
The very fact that 80% of the people DO use IE and it doesn't render PNG's correctly is the very reason WHY I don't use them for web stuff.
I code to standards and use whatever is the most compatiable. Everything reads GIF's without a problem and Jpeg's too for Photo's. PNG's have their place in, but until MSIE renders them correctly and no major browser has issues with Gif's, I'm sticking with them.
She is one of many that bought PDA's and then decided paper and pencil were king. So the Stylus isn't mighter than the pen.
Quick Books Pro for Mac - USD 300
DVD Studio Pro 2 - $500 Soundtrack - $300 Final Cut Pro - USD 1000
QuarkXpress - $900
Adobe Web Collection - $1000 Discreet Combustion 2.1 - USD 1000
QuickTime VR - $400
Blender - Free
Total: $5400
# of Machines: 4
Total: $21,600
Amount of money my company made last year: $719,000.
Welcome to the wonderful world of professional media arts. Granted, my company does consulting and marketing/advertising for small businesses and I didn't add in M$ office on all 10 of our company's computers. Add in another $4000 to that total for software.
Now if your a home user, then chances are you can get by with PSP. The only boxes in our company that are not Macintoshes are our company file, and firewall/router, which all run from FreeBSD white boxes.
Bottom line, Photoshop is not designed for "the average user". So about 3% of our budget went into software investments that yielded a return of 27x's the amount invested. Granted we also have 15 employess and after all expenses paid we only saw a $45,000 profit, but consider an average contract is about $8500 for our company and we get about 3 - 4 of those a month. These businesses expect that we have the professional tools and these are all quality tools and so long as the quality is there, we will spend the money. Its when we spend that amount of money and see a product line dropped, like 3D studio Max (which was $2500 per machine) that we get mad.
The only OSS tool on the list is Blender, and that is because our rendering in 3d animation is limited, and Blender is one of the few OSS tools that make it to production/professional quality.
We *could* use openoffice, but kinda pain in the ass since there is not a native OSX build. Plus we recycle units. These dual 1.25Ghz G4's will make from the video production folks to the graphic artists and their ageing dual 500 and 867 G4's will go to the secartaries and office workers and their old single G3's and g4's given to charity. Although we won't be getting in any dual G5's till at least first of the year...
Around Photoshop 4, yeah, I thought GIMP could become a contender against Photoshop, but the GIMP I saw 4 years ago and the GIMP I see today look a lot alike, only today's can't save to GIFS (well can now due to patents expiring). There are some high promised about GIMP 2.0, but if it still takes 16 steps with layers to Bevel text & add a drop shadow that takes about 4 mouse click in PS, what's the bloody point?
Again, nice job on that response.
I have not Turned it off in over 6 months, just reset after Dling updates, and rest of the time, shut it and go, then open it back up and within a second or two it powers up and ready to go.
I work as a small business consultant (technology mainly) and I tell every one to spend the extra money on a Mac. So far I've only had 1 out of about 23 clients not like mac, because "it doesn't have solitare". Everyone else likes them because they don't crash, everything works, easy to use, and gets them the basic software they need. Quickbooks, MS Office, and even Point-of-Sale software that is easy to use with an USB hand scanner and cash drawer.
They offered to sell me the old Alpha boxes for $450 a piece for the Quad 350's and $750 for the quad 500's. I just blew the $5000 I had saved up for a new Dual G5 on 5 quad Alpha 500 boxes and 6 Quad 350's. I think I am going to Ebay 4 of the 350's and 2 of the 500's see if I can recoop some of the money I spent. My fiance loved the fact that I used like $2500 of the wedding fund to buy these.
Its a shame compaq screwed with the pricing structure. Back in Febuary we did a rendering test between a new Dell Dual 2Ghz Xeon box with 2GB ram (is the office file/print server but "burned it in for 48 hours" - means we played with it for a couple days before acutlly hooking it into the network) and the Alpha STILL beat its rendering time by 12%. Granted our rendering software was highly optimized (aka cost a small fortune) for the Alpha platform, but still.
We looked at getting new Alpha boxes, but the cost and the fact we were frankly told by the HP rep that Alpha's days were numbered caused us to look between IBM and SUN. With the company switching its 3D graphics/animation division to Maya on Linux, IBM won out.
I have 3 of the boxes I bought running on FreeBSD 5 now. I will keep these box to shine as an enternal flame...at least until my fiance makes me sell 'em.
I saw where everything XP was going that direction and decided, "I don't like this", so when it came time to replace my laptop, I bought this iBook.
Now Photoshop is the most pirated software on the face of the earth. When I was in college, EVERYONE had it. Granted my school Drury College had a good architecture school and the archies needed the program, but given the private school cost, could barely afford tution, books, and art supples, let alone even the EDU priced stuff.
Real world: we use Photoshop nearly everyday to help design web images and other artwork along with GoLive. Video editing, well we have one machine with Final Cut Pro 3, but 90% of the time we use iMovie & QT pro for importing client's movies for conversion to web.
We are still debating whether to purchase a couple dual G5's and upgrade to CS, but I don't think we will. Most of out boxes are a little of a year old and dual 1.25Ghz G4's with 1GB or 2GB of ram.
I think honestly we will wait until some more 64-bit apps, like a new version of FCP and some other tools, before we take the plundge. And this really brings it into question because if we upgrade now, then ditch these machine in say 6 months, reinstall, how much of a pain in the ass will it be to reinstall our copies of PS 6 or 7 then apply the upgrades?
2 It cannot be used by my grandma
If your grandma can't use an iMac, then chances are Windows isn't going to be any better
It lacks a GUI of any note
GUI Installer, yes, but with X, you can choose KDE, Gnome, Windowmaker, a couple others. Or if you purchase a Mac you get Aqua, which is about a GUI as they come.
It is an assortment of fragmented OSes
Everytime I hear this I always ask, "And how many features has Linux stol...I mean borrowed from FreeBSD to make Linux more stable?"
It cannot be run on the x86 Platform
Well it seems to running on my 1.2Ghz Althon machine quite happly. Hell I even have it running on an ALPHA box here.
You have to compile everything and know C
Helps, but 99.9% of the programs you need are already in the ports tree. Typeing 'Make && make install' isn't that hard.
Support for the latest hardware is always poor
For Macintoshs, not so much of a problem. For those running Free, Open, Net, I would have to say hardware support is lacking for things like sound cards and vidcards. But consider that the main use of BSD is as a Server OS, you don't need the lattest ATI card with 1GB of vid ram to run terminal.
It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux
Well, FreeBSD has a great Linux emulator. I really havn't had much problems running Linux apps in FreeBSD
It is dying
Aren't we all...
I am sorry, but I don't see any Dreamweaver or Photoshop running on Linux. The only major application that I have seen support Linux has been Maya.
Last printer I bought came packaged with OS X drivers, no Linux drivers packaged with them.
The number of apple units shipping is actully increasing, especially their powerbook line. The more developer confences I go to for PHP and PERL, the more iBooks and Powerbooks I see in the crowd.
So to say BSD is dead...
I like the idea of having such a release especially for students that need to learn some more of the professional stuff. While blender is gaining popularity, because of it small download and price, it still lacks several fetures needed, like a raytracing engine, for professional work.
While this is cool and all, chances are I will still use Blender for my hobby work because it is free and allows me to do the level of work that I am at. Again, I am a hobbiest, not a pro, but I know of two shops in town that is using Blender over other packages for at least some of their work, like animated logos and such, because of the cost.
The average user is going to have to wait for the OS and applications to catch up on the 64-bit horizon no matter which platform you use.
Out of all my consulting clients that asked, I have only recommended 2 purchase the G5. One is a graphics design firm in which PSCS can take advantage of the 64-bit processes. The other was a videoographer who was looking to replace his 6 year old G3. Why, well chances are he'll hang on to this machine for the next 6 years or more too.
Everyone else I've told to hang on to their cash and stick with 32-bit machines because for now, its not going to give them a huge cost advantage in Quickbooks and Word.
I am placing FreeBSD or Alpha Linux on the boxes I'm using.
Well they paid me $7600 of the $10000 to put in drainage pipes on our newly leveled farm and to leave 20 of 200 acres fallow this year.
Well one day we did a test between a dual 2Ghz Xeon box with 2GB of ram and the damned Alpha box still beat the rendering time by 12%.
Granted I just finished working with them again as a technology consultant and they are replacing these systems with two IBM blade units with 14 1u servers each, but this because they are changing their software and the whole 9 yards. The Alpha boxes were starting to have power supplies and HDD failures, which is to be expected after at least 6, maybe 8 years of usage.
They offered to sell me some at the bargin price of $400 a box, which I bought 10. Yeah, there goes my new G4 tower. Although I will probaly sell 5 of them on ebay and make my investment back. I am going to turn 2 into database & file servers for my office and just use the other 3 for personal rendering projects.
And to those that think that 64-bit systems are new.
http://www.flyingsnail.com/reppu.html
But then again we also have a cluster of Blade Servers and we can run 1 process of blender per CPU. Each blade has dual Xeons, so blade 1, CPU 1 renders frames 1 x 250, Blade 1, CPU 2 renders 251 - 500, Blade 2-CPU 1, 501 - 750, etc. etc.
Then on smaller jobs, we just use the reppu network rendering program for blender through our older ALPHA and Solaris boxes.
Yep, one of those XT clones. I really don't use it, just turn it on from time to time to see Dos 3.23 and GWBasic and play jumpman...
Look at Blender vs. 3D studio or Lightwave. Both of which are about 100MB compaired to the 8MB of Blender, yet they can perform roughly the same functions.
On a bigger note, they have made a lot of improvements in the past 3 years from Star Office to 1.1 today. Its well on its way and usable, but still there are some things that can be worked on, like getting it to load faster.
As for the FBI, I guess the NSA still isn't sharing their decryption technology. I always here the, "Don't wiretap me" arguement, but anytime some Mob ring is busted through wiretaps John Q. Public seem to say, "good job, see that is what happens when its used to nab bad guys".
If your not doing anything illegal you have nothing to worry about. I don't see the FBI recording every conversation on the current phone system. it logisitically & cost prohibitive to do so, but if they can provide enough evidence to get a judge to okay such a tap, they need to be able too.
I'm not too worried, they will find away.
*fires up FreeBSD 5-Current with KDE 3*
Itunes = JUK -> Oh wait, my Vortex 2 sound card STILL doesn't have working drivers on my box...no sound.
Safari = Konqueror -> um well, both get the job done
Finder = Konqueror -> ah, I guess so...
Dock = Kickert -> Maybe, but looks more Windozish to me
Menubar = Kicker -> Again, KDE thingy looks more like START
bbedit = Kate -> Wait a sec...BBedit is a 3rd party app, for apple, not made by apple. Not a correct comparison.
Quicktime = Kmplayer -> Yeah, but no $30 swiss army knife of media converters plus support for soranson codecs.
Appleworks = Kofiice -> This is utter bull shit since Koffice can't write to MS office formats, Apple works can. I am sorry, but I do live in the business world and even if I were to use some other office suite, the other 95% of the business world needs to be able to read that invoice or memo or letter or whatever.
iMovie = ??? -> Nothing as far as I can tell
iPhoto = ??? -> Again, nothing like it in KDE.
Now, what KDE doesn't have:
Commerical software support needed when working in major industry like:
QuarkXpress (some printing companies give us a discount for working with Quark on Mac instead of other file types)
Final Cut Pro -> 99% of what video editors need. Yeah an Avid can do more, but it also costs 10x's the price.
DVD Studio Pro -> Hm...I don't see anything like that for KDE.
Adobe Products -> Sorry, back in the days of PS 4 & 5, GIMP was closing in, but as of PS 6 & 7, GIMP is blown out of the water. Maybe we'll see some improvement in GIMP 2.x, but I doubt we'll see 64-bit enhancements for the G5's or IA 64 architectures.
Macromedia products -> Even though I personally perfer GoLive, still a staple for many in the webdesign community and the "defacto standard".
Driver support for many DV and digital cameras...let me rephase that...built in drivers that don't require additional DL's and configurations. Plug the thing into Firewire or USB port and go.
I could go on, but what's the point? The Linux Zelaots are mad that Apple came along and created a user friendly Unix with support by commerical software vendors coupled with excellent hardware. I know because I am one of many that switched from Linux to Macintosh and never looked back.
I go to confrences and conventions now and see the number of php and PERL developers increasingly using iBooks and Powerbooks as their primary developing machines.
Moreover, there is a TCO benefit with Macs since they are an intergrated platform: I don't have to mess with finding the latest drivers, or worried that the latest and greatest hardware may not have decent drivers available for months.
I switched from Win 98 to Linux in 1999 because I was tired of windows crashing all the time, but several peices of hardware, like my sound card, never did have decent drivers available. In 2002 I switched to mac because I just wanted something that worked and now I recommend others take a serious look at Macintosh for their office, because those that have switched have indicated that have seen an improvement in productivity and TCO.