I'd buy one of these hypothetical Airport Express 2 within a week of release. I'd spend at least as much as I currently spend at iTMS on "iShows Video Store" or whatever it is. A good chunk of my regular Amazon.co.uk DVD outlay would be spent there too. Also, if the "iShows Video Store" was stocked well-enough and set at the right price, my BitTorrent activities would disappear.
Knowing Apple UK, I'd probably have to buy $100 gift vouchers for myself when in the States as opposed to having the choice of "Coronation Street (digital box set)" and a Video iMix by Carol Smillie. I'd also consider adding a Mac Mini with one of those Lacie 1TB external drives, too.
In all, what you describe in your second paragraph is perfectly reasonable, technologically within reach of Apple, and I'm sure would be pretty successful. They'd get a big pile of money from me.
I couldn't agree with you more. You described my typical at home activities perfectly (although I don't let the laptop anywhere near the bath...)
When I upgraded to the G4 TiBook I had to go with the 15" over the 12" (which I preferred).
Why?
S-Video Out.
I would pay Apple a whole bunch of money to be able to stream my videos out to my TV the way I can stream my audio out to my stereo.
Thanks to World of Warcraft running on the Mac, I am *finally* rid of all of the PeeCees, and down to two computers total: iMac G5 for all of my I/O intensive and/or static connection activities and my laptop to run said activities and do everything else.
When Apple releases a video equivalent of Airport Express and iTMS I will pretty much be in nirvana and be able to further simplify my setup.
(a) 7-8 years is the better part of a decade. How is that a stretch, unless you are unable to grok simple math?
(b) It's not "over-dumbing": it's called Human Interface Guidelines. Apple pretty much wrote the book on it. Oh wait, they did write the book on it:
The book is called Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines (Apple Technical Library)
. It was published over a decade ago, if we can agree that 12 years > 10 years.
I've seen a few Dell machines in offices, where the PC basically that small as the Mac mini.
Dear Michael Dell:
No you haven't.
They are not even close to the same size. The Dells you speak of are underpowered pieces of crap that are poorly made and poorly supported by the vendor. We bought a couple hundred of them at my old job, and they ended up being used as Citrix client boxen for the severely inept, and they sucked at that. Most of them ended up in RMA limbo with Dell within 90 days.
Please try talking about something you actually know about rather than throwing around some vague assertions. If you are going to compare a Wintel hardware manufacturer with Apple, the best comparison is probably Sony. They don't have anything close to the mini. They will in 2006. It will be called the Playstation 3 or something like that.
I love Dell fanbois: The ones I worked with were so happy when they got a music player too: a couple of them actually had the gall to refer to them as "iPod Killers".
They made nice backpacks. Now they make nice paper weights. The fanbois bought iPods. They were strangely quiet about it. Now they are spending a lot of time on the Apple website and pricing KVM switches. No doubt for something that they're going to stick on top of their towers.
What a load of crap, revisionist history. The complaint was not that Apple dropped the floppy, the complaint was that the rev A iMac had no removable media. No zip. No CD-R. Nothing. Apple solved this deficiency and eventually added a CD-R. If I had to guess I would say they wanted a CD-R all along but had to go to plain CD to make their price point.
I've been using Apple's since 1981, Mac's since '83 (developer - Lisa actually). I'd comment on your other nonsense but I've fed the trolls enough tonight.
I'm assuming you meant Apples not Apple's.... and you're ill-adwised whipping out your resume(CV) around here. From the sounds of it, you're probably one of those assholes still trying to squeak along using cyberdog on your LC 475 buffed out to 64MB of RAM.
I would also suggest looking up the word troll within the context of posting on the web: I wasn't trolling. Assuming I was trolling, you're the only idiot who bit: congratulations. I'll send you an ADB->USB adaptor so that you can use your dirty 800 year old keyboard on a Mac mini.
It's obvious that you can't write. Please at least learn how to read.
Now shut up and get back under my desk.
Apple's worst enemies are the fanboys who think Apple can do no wrong. Thankfully Apple seems to be listening to the market not the fanboys.
No. Those are Apple's second worst enemies.
Apple's worst enemies are the people who predicted Apple's demise when they stopped shipping with floppies.
Then predicted Apple's demise when they started using USB.
Then predicted Apple's demise when they completely changed their OS.
Then predicted Apple's demise when they stopped supporting their venerable OS and declared it dead.
There are people who have predicted Apple's demise since 1984 when they came out with that useless Graphical Interface thingy. People will always complain about what Apple doesn't do. Have fun. I've been using Apple product for years: the only apps I've ever needed to run that I couldn't run in emulation or run an Apple equivalent were games. That's it.
Ultimately Doom 3 is pretty, but just another Doom. HL 2 is pretty, but just another HL, and frankly I'm over staying up late shooting 13 year old stat whores in the head.
Since World of Warcraft plays just fine on my Aluminum PowerBook, I have no need for a PeeCee, and I'm kept more than busy by that, HomeWorld 2, and all the games on my XBox and Playstation2. Other than that, Word runs fine, Excel runs fine, vi runs fine, and at work I use Remote Desktop Connection to view Outlook on my now headless POS Dell, which allows me to use both 20" LCDs on my G4.
We are now into the 5th year of the 21st century. Shut up about the mouse and the keyboard already. if you must run Windows or wish to run an inferior *nix window manager, feel free.
I'll take my Mac. And I'll take one of those Mac minis too. Personally, I think miniMac is a cooler name, but Steve didn't call me first.
I miss ClarisEmailer.
I also miss the Claris HTML app: FileMaker integration and far less bloated/more useful than anything else out at the time.
I can't remember what it was called.
I still think that Word 5.1 is and was the best WP app for the Mac.
Fortunately I now have vi =)
Against my recommendations, my boss just added a slew of new feature requirements to my project, so now I'm spending even more late nights at work trying to make magic happen. He stops by my office a couple times a day all chipper and excited, and it's all I can do not to strangle the dillweed. How does one professionally convey the message, "I don't like you, I don't respect you, you're not qualified for the job you're doing, get the hell out of my office and let me work." ?
Sure beats the shit out of the babbling, specious analogies, and hypocrisy coming from the peta camp. If peta feels justified in killing animals for any reason then they need to stop complaining when others do it. Googling "peta hypocrite" gives about 4,300 hits. Googling "peta lie" gives about 54,500.
Should be enough to keep you busy for a while.
My favorite?: http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview. cfm/oid/21
Oh, and here's my favorite Ingrid quote: "Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it."
You have no idea what kind of guy I am: go back and read your original post. If you don't like my tone or my suggesting that your parents should have beaten you(more), don't act like a brat.
And please, whatever you do, don't go all "emo": it's so insincere after your original post.
I've worked on both sides of the process: QA and Engineering. Clearly you haven't. In a lot of smaller shops, it's the QA team who gets the support escalations: have you ever had to handle a support call? Have you ever had to handle a support call on an application where the loss of data resulted in loss of revenue?
Give it a try sometime.
It's guys like you who are the reason why so much engineering is moving overseas. I have yet to meet an engineer whose throughput, quality of work, or revenue stream warranted acting like an insufferable prick: you are likely no exception. There's a lot less of a time-difference dealing with offshore developers when you don't have to factor in a bunch of bullshit ego-massaging and team-building meetings in order to get an engineer to fix a bug. Some of us grownups have to actually answer for quality of deliverables, deadlines, etc. The fact that you went Captain Sensitive on me because my response was too violent for you is cute: I'm sorry if I upset your tummy.
I left the game industry in 1994 because I decided I wanted to work with adults and take home twice the money: I have yet to regret that decision.
By the way, you're right: if it wasn't for Engineers like you, there'd be no need for QA.
I know it's a troll and it's a little late to respond, but WTF, I'll bite.
Do you realize that your shitty, entitled, way too much encouragement from parents that should have beaten you once or twice and sent you to bed early has turned you into just another myopic code monkey who wouldn't know a best practice if it came up and punched them in the face?
I spent the last 7 years as an engineer working on "Award Winning" software: I went BACK to QA/User Support because I got tired of having to spend 60+ hours a week not punching people like you in the face.
No one on earth cares about their "status" among engineering departments? If your code sucks, fix it or find another job.
I'd suggest enrolling in a business communications (or one of those other "soft skills" courses) so that you can learn to be somewhat less of of a complete prick on your inevitable job interview.
From what I hear it's a crap job market for engineers. I wouldn't know.
no. It's not. The Theorem is that as the length of the discussion progresses, the probability of somebody invoking
Hitler or the Nazis approaches 1.
I'm not even going to bother correcting your spelling. Then someone would call me a 'spelling nazi' and we'd end up in some hellish Godwinian wormhole. Where I'd still be right.
The question therefore is that if this were the case, and the games available on both platforms were the same, would you switch from using Windows to getting a Mac?
Or, would you go back to one OS?
I bought a PeeCee way back in order to play Half-Life (and HomeWorld, and AHL/CS...). I've since decided that I'd rather just play console games than deal with the forced hardware upgrades in order to stay on the bleeding edge. Games are really the only PeeCee applications that I can't run on a Mac: VirtualPC and Citrix will let me run any other PeeCee app I've needed to run.
There are more than a few people I know who primarily exist on Macs who own a PeeCee purely for gaming and Kazaa Lite.
They can sell you a piece of shit and not accept it as a return
Wrong. There's something in the UCC in the United States called the "Implied Warranty of Merchantability" which is based on English Common Law, so I'm assuming it's the same in the UK.
[RANT] There are a number of legitimate, legal reasons why, as consumers, we are legally protected from circumventing software (including music and film) that has been intentionally crippled to prevent our fair use. I would strongly suggest checking out the EFF's website (www.eff.org) and arming yourself with more information, especially if you live in the United States[/RANT]
The RIAA and MPAA Congressional Concubines are once again attempting to hide restrictive legislation behind a certain child welfare act: this legislation will make copyright infringement a criminal offense. Coupled with legislation that has already been passed, you could in theory be brought up on criminal charges for simply having a copy of peer-to-peer sofware on your computer, especially if you had a couple of mp3s and didn't have their corresponding CDs.
Keep making cracks about the RIAA and the MPAA all you want: this starting to become not funny.
Being that the laser in Sony's PS2 is so weak I've seen consoles less than 1 year old worn out, is there any chance this device will have a laser that justifies the pricetag?
Since it's a DVD-R it's going to have to. I've had my PS2 since launch and have had no problems with it, nor have I heard of consoles
The PSX looks cool, and it's got great stats for an appliance.
The market isn't gearheads who can build it themselves with two tin cans and some gaffer's tape: it's for people that would like to combine their appliances into one box. As I paid $200 for my PS2 and $500 for my EMR-E60 when it came out, I don't see this as being badly priced.
I have an Executive Producer upstairs who is Dead Set on getting a wireless device she can watch movies on - so she can see rough cuts while on location. And she'll authorize whatever the gadget will cost.
Precisely. This is more than likely where the market pressure will be felt the most strongly.
Our team has built an app that among other things, allows our producers to preview acquired video (we're talking way upstream of rough cuts, btw.)
The biggest feature request is to be able to access the app from home, which is doable as long as you've got pipe and can VPN in.
Your average Executive Producer isn't going to be doing that.
A handheld video device can create some new challenges (especially from a security standpoint) but they are all solvable -- a device that required me to authenticate with my SecureID would be sweet...
If you have an A/V out then you're outputting to a DLT projector and a 5:1 home theater system if you so choose... can you imagine a player that you could dock to your TiVo, transfer files, and carry around with you?
Of course, in the consumer market the parent poster is probably right.
ehh..... I dunno.
I didn't really see the point in carrying around 5,000 mp3s with me until I bought my iPod. Now I'm looking at buying a second one just to make my home folder machine portable:-)
An avPod would sell like crazy: especially to all of the Volvo/Audi driving soccer parents who are making movies every time their darling baby angel blinks and putting them up on their.Mac web pages.
I'd go buy one today. I've got over 20 GB of music videos that I would love to be able to carry around in a small form factor and plug into my home theater as easily as I can with my iPod.
The thing to realize, in the real world of IT Dept Politics, zealous advocacy often hurts one's cause more than it helps. People tend to think "This guy is not objective, I don't like him, therefore I disagree with whatever he says." Yes, that's not logical like Mr Spock, but its how the real world works outside of internet boards. God forbid people have to work with a lot of you folks.
Nicely put... unfortunately I can't use my mod points in this thread:-)
The thing that's always been interesting to me about working in software development and IT is how intellectually inflexible people can be. I will never forget when I was first motivated to learn Unix a few years back and I made the mistake of asking for an OS recommendation. Even more fun was when I asked "emacs or vi?".
And I think that's a good thing. Any publicity is good publicity, after all. At least linux will be on their "radar screen". Maybe they'll mention the article to one of their technical underlings, who will bring up alternatives to Gnome, or point out some of its strong points.
laff.
No.
Any publicity is not good publicity. FUD is not good publicity.
Why do you think Mac people became/are percieved as being so fanatical?
Years of bad publicity. And Steve Jobs. And Guy Kawasaki. Try Googling "Guy Kawasaki" or "mac evangelism".
Before there was Linux, the mindshare fight was between Redmond and Cupertino, and it was nasty. God forbid anyone *ever* cast any aspersions toward Apple or pointed out any imperfections in Apple hardware or software. They would get tons of hate-mail, really ridiculous over-the-top stuff. That was *evangelism*, which of course brought about even more negative publicity for the Mac and Mac users. The media's quarterly forecasting of Apple's demise certainly wasn't good publicity.
...and it lives on. Have you ever visited macslash?
Unfortunately I don't think the average Penguinista has learned the evangelism lesson.
I work with people who love nothing more than an article slamming anything even vaguely Linux-related, and will clip and distribute this article just for the sake of inflaming the Penguinistas I work with. Where it gets unfortunate is when people make business decisions based on these kinds of biases.
That's the only real benefit of being a Penguinista over a Macintosh Evangelist: you don't have to pay as much for the privilege of being perceived as some kind of weird fanatic by your average Redmond-worshipping blockhead.
All of it is platform bigotry, and ultimately it's a bad thing. There's no one hardware or software platform that's perfect for every circumstance, although my Mac is damn close:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Knowing Apple UK, I'd probably have to buy $100 gift vouchers for myself when in the States as opposed to having the choice of "Coronation Street (digital box set)" and a Video iMix by Carol Smillie. I'd also consider adding a Mac Mini with one of those Lacie 1TB external drives, too.
In all, what you describe in your second paragraph is perfectly reasonable, technologically within reach of Apple, and I'm sure would be pretty successful. They'd get a big pile of money from me.
I couldn't agree with you more. You described my typical at home activities perfectly (although I don't let the laptop anywhere near the bath...)
When I upgraded to the G4 TiBook I had to go with the 15" over the 12" (which I preferred).
Why?
S-Video Out.
I would pay Apple a whole bunch of money to be able to stream my videos out to my TV the way I can stream my audio out to my stereo.
Thanks to World of Warcraft running on the Mac, I am *finally* rid of all of the PeeCees, and down to two computers total: iMac G5 for all of my I/O intensive and/or static connection activities and my laptop to run said activities and do everything else.
When Apple releases a video equivalent of Airport Express and iTMS I will pretty much be in nirvana and be able to further simplify my setup.
Not if. When.
(a) 7-8 years is the better part of a decade. How is that a stretch, unless you are unable to grok simple math?
(b) It's not "over-dumbing": it's called Human Interface Guidelines. Apple pretty much wrote the book on it. Oh wait, they did write the book on it:
The book is called Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines (Apple Technical Library) . It was published over a decade ago, if we can agree that 12 years > 10 years.
Based on your post, I'm not entirely sure.
Dear Michael Dell:
No you haven't.
They are not even close to the same size. The Dells you speak of are underpowered pieces of crap that are poorly made and poorly supported by the vendor. We bought a couple hundred of them at my old job, and they ended up being used as Citrix client boxen for the severely inept, and they sucked at that. Most of them ended up in RMA limbo with Dell within 90 days.
Please try talking about something you actually know about rather than throwing around some vague assertions. If you are going to compare a Wintel hardware manufacturer with Apple, the best comparison is probably Sony. They don't have anything close to the mini. They will in 2006. It will be called the Playstation 3 or something like that.
I love Dell fanbois: The ones I worked with were so happy when they got a music player too: a couple of them actually had the gall to refer to them as "iPod Killers".
They made nice backpacks. Now they make nice paper weights. The fanbois bought iPods. They were strangely quiet about it. Now they are spending a lot of time on the Apple website and pricing KVM switches. No doubt for something that they're going to stick on top of their towers.
I've been using Apple's since 1981, Mac's since '83 (developer - Lisa actually). I'd comment on your other nonsense but I've fed the trolls enough tonight.
I'm assuming you meant Apples not Apple's. ... and you're ill-adwised whipping out your resume(CV) around here. From the sounds of it, you're probably one of those assholes still trying to squeak along using cyberdog on your LC 475 buffed out to 64MB of RAM.
I would also suggest looking up the word troll within the context of posting on the web: I wasn't trolling. Assuming I was trolling, you're the only idiot who bit: congratulations. I'll send you an ADB->USB adaptor so that you can use your dirty 800 year old keyboard on a Mac mini.
It's obvious that you can't write. Please at least learn how to read.
Now shut up and get back under my desk.
No. Those are Apple's second worst enemies.
Apple's worst enemies are the people who predicted Apple's demise when they stopped shipping with floppies.
Then predicted Apple's demise when they started using USB.
Then predicted Apple's demise when they completely changed their OS.
Then predicted Apple's demise when they stopped supporting their venerable OS and declared it dead.
There are people who have predicted Apple's demise since 1984 when they came out with that useless Graphical Interface thingy. People will always complain about what Apple doesn't do. Have fun. I've been using Apple product for years: the only apps I've ever needed to run that I couldn't run in emulation or run an Apple equivalent were games. That's it.
Ultimately Doom 3 is pretty, but just another Doom. HL 2 is pretty, but just another HL, and frankly I'm over staying up late shooting 13 year old stat whores in the head.
Since World of Warcraft plays just fine on my Aluminum PowerBook, I have no need for a PeeCee, and I'm kept more than busy by that, HomeWorld 2, and all the games on my XBox and Playstation2. Other than that, Word runs fine, Excel runs fine, vi runs fine, and at work I use Remote Desktop Connection to view Outlook on my now headless POS Dell, which allows me to use both 20" LCDs on my G4.
We are now into the 5th year of the 21st century. Shut up about the mouse and the keyboard already. if you must run Windows or wish to run an inferior *nix window manager, feel free.
I'll take my Mac. And I'll take one of those Mac minis too. Personally, I think miniMac is a cooler name, but Steve didn't call me first.
I miss ClarisEmailer. I also miss the Claris HTML app: FileMaker integration and far less bloated/more useful than anything else out at the time. I can't remember what it was called. I still think that Word 5.1 is and was the best WP app for the Mac. Fortunately I now have vi =)
I know it' s only 3 weeks before MWSF but let's all act like adults here: if I want fanboi I'll go to PowerPage.
I got all excited at the prospect of PowerPage finally getting shuttered. Don't let me down like that.
We already are.
I'd love to know.
RESIGN.
Sure beats the shit out of the babbling, specious analogies, and hypocrisy coming from the peta camp. If peta feels justified in killing animals for any reason then they need to stop complaining when others do it. Googling "peta hypocrite" gives about 4,300 hits. Googling "peta lie" gives about 54,500.
Should be enough to keep you busy for a while.
My favorite?: http://www.activistcash.com/organization_overview. cfm/oid/21
Oh, and here's my favorite Ingrid quote: "Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we'd be against it."
Fuck peta.
Regards,
A peta-hating vegetarian
Season 2, Episode 1.
All about peta.
You'll shut the fuck up when you realize what a bunch of hypocrital, eco-terrorist shitbags they are.
But thanks for the off-topic faggotry, and reminding me why I hate (other) vegetarians.
Resign.
And please, whatever you do, don't go all "emo": it's so insincere after your original post.
I've worked on both sides of the process: QA and Engineering. Clearly you haven't. In a lot of smaller shops, it's the QA team who gets the support escalations: have you ever had to handle a support call? Have you ever had to handle a support call on an application where the loss of data resulted in loss of revenue?
Give it a try sometime.
It's guys like you who are the reason why so much engineering is moving overseas. I have yet to meet an engineer whose throughput, quality of work, or revenue stream warranted acting like an insufferable prick: you are likely no exception. There's a lot less of a time-difference dealing with offshore developers when you don't have to factor in a bunch of bullshit ego-massaging and team-building meetings in order to get an engineer to fix a bug. Some of us grownups have to actually answer for quality of deliverables, deadlines, etc. The fact that you went Captain Sensitive on me because my response was too violent for you is cute: I'm sorry if I upset your tummy.
I left the game industry in 1994 because I decided I wanted to work with adults and take home twice the money: I have yet to regret that decision.
By the way, you're right: if it wasn't for Engineers like you, there'd be no need for QA.
Imagine that.
Do you realize that your shitty, entitled, way too much encouragement from parents that should have beaten you once or twice and sent you to bed early has turned you into just another myopic code monkey who wouldn't know a best practice if it came up and punched them in the face?
I spent the last 7 years as an engineer working on "Award Winning" software: I went BACK to QA/User Support because I got tired of having to spend 60+ hours a week not punching people like you in the face.
No one on earth cares about their "status" among engineering departments? If your code sucks, fix it or find another job.
I'd suggest enrolling in a business communications (or one of those other "soft skills" courses) so that you can learn to be somewhat less of of a complete prick on your inevitable job interview.
From what I hear it's a crap job market for engineers. I wouldn't know.
Roll for initiative or get under my desk...
no. It's not. The Theorem is that as the length of the discussion progresses, the probability of somebody invoking Hitler or the Nazis approaches 1.
I'm not even going to bother correcting your spelling. Then someone would call me a 'spelling nazi' and we'd end up in some hellish Godwinian wormhole. Where I'd still be right.
I didn't see anything punny on Yahoo.
Or, would you go back to one OS?
I bought a PeeCee way back in order to play Half-Life (and HomeWorld, and AHL/CS...). I've since decided that I'd rather just play console games than deal with the forced hardware upgrades in order to stay on the bleeding edge. Games are really the only PeeCee applications that I can't run on a Mac: VirtualPC and Citrix will let me run any other PeeCee app I've needed to run.
There are more than a few people I know who primarily exist on Macs who own a PeeCee purely for gaming and Kazaa Lite.
Wrong. There's something in the UCC in the United States called the "Implied Warranty of Merchantability" which is based on English Common Law, so I'm assuming it's the same in the UK.
[RANT]
There are a number of legitimate, legal reasons why, as consumers, we are legally protected from circumventing software (including music and film) that has been intentionally crippled to prevent our fair use. I would strongly suggest checking out the EFF's website (www.eff.org) and arming yourself with more information, especially if you live in the United States[/RANT]
The RIAA and MPAA Congressional Concubines are once again attempting to hide restrictive legislation behind a certain child welfare act: this legislation will make copyright infringement a criminal offense. Coupled with legislation that has already been passed, you could in theory be brought up on criminal charges for simply having a copy of peer-to-peer sofware on your computer, especially if you had a couple of mp3s and didn't have their corresponding CDs.
Keep making cracks about the RIAA and the MPAA all you want: this starting to become not funny.
No more apres-burrito posting for me :-p
Since it's a DVD-R it's going to have to. I've had my PS2 since launch and have had no problems with it, nor have I heard of consoles The PSX looks cool, and it's got great stats for an appliance.
The market isn't gearheads who can build it themselves with two tin cans and some gaffer's tape: it's for people that would like to combine their appliances into one box. As I paid $200 for my PS2 and $500 for my EMR-E60 when it came out, I don't see this as being badly priced.
Then again, I own a Mac.
Precisely. This is more than likely where the market pressure will be felt the most strongly.
Our team has built an app that among other things, allows our producers to preview acquired video (we're talking way upstream of rough cuts, btw.)
The biggest feature request is to be able to access the app from home, which is doable as long as you've got pipe and can VPN in.
Your average Executive Producer isn't going to be doing that.
A handheld video device can create some new challenges (especially from a security standpoint) but they are all solvable -- a device that required me to authenticate with my SecureID would be sweet...
If you have an A/V out then you're outputting to a DLT projector and a 5:1 home theater system if you so choose... can you imagine a player that you could dock to your TiVo, transfer files, and carry around with you?
Of course, in the consumer market the parent poster is probably right.
ehh..... I dunno.
I didn't really see the point in carrying around 5,000 mp3s with me until I bought my iPod. Now I'm looking at buying a second one just to make my home folder machine portable :-)
An avPod would sell like crazy: especially to all of the Volvo/Audi driving soccer parents who are making movies every time their darling baby angel blinks and putting them up on their .Mac web pages.
I'd go buy one today. I've got over 20 GB of music videos that I would love to be able to carry around in a small form factor and plug into my home theater as easily as I can with my iPod.
Nicely put... unfortunately I can't use my mod points in this thread :-)
The thing that's always been interesting to me about working in software development and IT is how intellectually inflexible people can be. I will never forget when I was first motivated to learn Unix a few years back and I made the mistake of asking for an OS recommendation. Even more fun was when I asked "emacs or vi?".
But it's a chicken/egg thing.
laff.
No.
Any publicity is not good publicity. FUD is not good publicity.
Why do you think Mac people became/are percieved as being so fanatical?
Years of bad publicity. And Steve Jobs. And Guy Kawasaki. Try Googling "Guy Kawasaki" or "mac evangelism".
Before there was Linux, the mindshare fight was between Redmond and Cupertino, and it was nasty. God forbid anyone *ever* cast any aspersions toward Apple or pointed out any imperfections in Apple hardware or software. They would get tons of hate-mail, really ridiculous over-the-top stuff. That was *evangelism*, which of course brought about even more negative publicity for the Mac and Mac users. The media's quarterly forecasting of Apple's demise certainly wasn't good publicity.
Unfortunately I don't think the average Penguinista has learned the evangelism lesson.
I work with people who love nothing more than an article slamming anything even vaguely Linux-related, and will clip and distribute this article just for the sake of inflaming the Penguinistas I work with. Where it gets unfortunate is when people make business decisions based on these kinds of biases.
That's the only real benefit of being a Penguinista over a Macintosh Evangelist: you don't have to pay as much for the privilege of being perceived as some kind of weird fanatic by your average Redmond-worshipping blockhead.
All of it is platform bigotry, and ultimately it's a bad thing. There's no one hardware or software platform that's perfect for every circumstance, although my Mac is damn close :-)
People who say things like there are better things than sex need to get more practice time in.
There's a lot of biology behind making sex just about the greatest thing ever.
It's called survival of the species.
Do your part! Get out and procreate!