This is going to be the death of Mac-based software. Why bother making an OS X based version, when you can tell your customers to reboot into their Windows partition and run it there?
He means stable, as in not changing very much. I can gaurentee you that in 10 years, you'll be able to buy an x86 based PC running some form of Windows. And chances are, 90%+ of the binaries that run on Windows XP right now will run on that computer. I can also gaurentee that you'll be able to buy some x86 hardware 10 years from now, and install some flavor of Linux on it. And chances are, just about every open source Linux program that runs on a Linux system right now will compile on it.
But, in 10 years - who knows what hardware platform Apple will be running. Will their current OS be compatible with OSX PPC? How about OSX x86? Will Apple even exist in 2015? And if they do exist, are they going to be selling anything other than iPods?
Go ahead and buy the Macs now if you need them. Apple won't be dropping support of the PPC machines anytime soon. I'd like to get a Mini, and probably still will. Just because something newer comes out doesn't mean that your current machine turns into crap.
He specifically said he was looking for a stable platform. Why switch to PPC Macs now, when you know that when you are ready to replace those Macs in a few years, you'll be switching yet again to another platform? Might as well either stick with Windows, or switch to something that'll be around for a while, like Linux for x86.
Who says that Apple can't use both AMD and Intel processors, using the best processor for the job? Companies like HP and eMachines have computers with AMD and Intel processors, why not Apple?
For example, PowerBook, iBook, Mac Mini: Intel Pentium-M PowerMac: AMD64 or Intel Pentium D iMac: AMD64? eMac: AMD Semptron
Well, Apple still has a huge problem. With their announcement that PPC is being phased out, who is going to want to buy one of their existing (and costly) PPC computers which will be obsolete very soon? I expect sales of the current Macs, especially the PowerMac and the PowerBook to plummet.
The transition was so difficult for the audio and video industry, that for many people it STILL hasn't happened. You can find workhorse macs running OS9 in nearly every recording studio and post production house in LA.
My guess is that a lot of these places, after getting burned multiple times from Apple, are going to seriously consider upgrading to commodity PCs whenever the upgrade finally happens.
In fact, after a bit of quick footwork, this will be a beautiful position for Apple to be in. Look, they can say, this is what you can do with a Pentium -- if you have OS X. Look, kids, same hardware has your Windows box, but not one single virus, no crashes, no maleware...
Or it might be: Look, my box has the exact same hardware, costs half as much, and has games and applications written for its OS. Why would I get a Mac?
It would be the end of Apple. Very few people would buy an Apple to run Windows when they could do the exact same thing on commodity hardware for a fraction of the cost.
Still, what would you suggest they do in that situation? She clearly was not going to leave her vehicle. The only options I can are blocking her vehicle in and waiting for her to change her attitide and give up, or letting her go - suspended license and all. The way I see it, a quick tazering was an appropiate response to arrest her quickly and in a safe manner for all involved.
Except that speed limits are typically.66 to.75 the actual maximum safe speed for any stretch of road. Being in control of your vehicle means not hitting things or people, and not leaving the road. Speed is only relevant by association with those.
I'm guessing you are refering to highways, because I would say that's definently not true for residental areas.
Touchpads are much better because with the correct driver you can do everything with a touchpad that you can with a mouse/trackball including click, drag, and click/drag lock without using even the buttons. A truly solid state device with no moving parts. Apple does one better by allowing you to scroll using 2 fingers on the pad without the use of dedicated regions.
How do you put up with it? Everytime I have to use a trackpad, I'm always doing shit that I didn't want to do (and a lot of it can't be undone easily, like dragging icons off the dock). I'd much rather have the trackpoint.
If you look at the numbers, the shift from desktops to laptops started a bit earlier on the Mac. Probably because Apple got the battery life situation under control sooner (Intel wasn't doing so well there a couple years ago), and support for wireless networking was really solid. Plus, Mac users tend to pick up on these sorts of trends a bit sooner; they're mostly a self-selected group, which means they're more likely to actually care about computing than the Wintel masses, and as such they're typically a bit ahead of the curve, on average.
That's probably because the Mac laptops are pretty reasonably priced compared to their x86 counterparts, while the Mac desktops are way overpriced. It's no surprise to me that Apple has been selling more laptops than desktops for a while now.
I built my first computer about 4 years ago for my parents using an ECS board, at the time people on the review site said it was a decent board for a great price, I bought its and the thing is still working wonderfully, 3 years ago I bought one for myself, this time the reviews showed that the ECS boards were crap and that if you got a working one you should kiss the ground and clap your hands. Mines worked wonderfully for me, I'm about the replace the whole system(I've upgraded the cpu and ram since then but its getting old) and I don't think I would touch ECS again, I bought 3 boards for friends of mine. 2 of the three had to be taken back the next day because a slot wouldn't work or an on board componant like built in lan wouldn't work. And out of the three boards I think all had to be scraped after the warrenty. They were horrible. It was a nice board to have when it came out , had a 1.1 ghz duron in it, then upgraded to my current 2200+ XP processor.
My one experience with ECS was a computer I bought when the Cyrix 6x86 PR200 (no MMX) was the chip you'd find in the bottom of the line bargain basement whitebox. To this day, the computer is still completely stable. Cheap stuff like ECS is really hit and miss though, now I rather spend a little more money and get something that's less of a gamble.
As a student doing the same thing, I just had multiple computers. Nice one at school, an older one at home. An external harddrive to haul data around. Worked great.
1) the very need for such tests means that current 2.6.x kernels are very unstable - this means that Linux currently does not have any stable version - not good
If you think that the 2.6.x kernels are unstable, you can use the 2.0, 2.2, or 2.4 kernels. All those versions are still being maintained, and they are definently stable.
The 54 icons is due the unusable MS menu system which makes your seldom used, but very important programs disappear. The one place where you can keep an eye on your icons and ensure that they don't disappear on you, is on the desktop...
Go into the Start Menu and Taskbar settings, and turn off "Personalized Menus". Then you don't have to deal with Windows deciding how your start menu should look (which has to be one of the dumbest things Microsoft has ever come up with in terms of UI).
You blame Apple for the dominance of Windows & Intel? To use a bad car analogy, that would be like blaming Chevy for the all the people killed in exploding Ford Crown Vics because Chevy discontinued the Caprice. While you're at it, why don't you blame the makers of BeOS, IBM (for OS/2), Cyrix, and AMD?
I have 2 21" CRTs at 1280x1024 and don't see any reason to upgrade to LCD until I can have higher resolution than that, on both displays. Or I could just get one of those $3000 Apple displays, and have a bigger desktop all in one piece, with no divider down the middle.:-)
1280x1024 is not that high of resolution. Most people run their 21" CRTs at 1600x1200 or more. You can buy 17" LCD screens for about $300 now that run at 1280x1024, and 1600x1200 will run you about $600.
But, if for whatever reason (bad eyes?), you like to run low resolution on a large display, you are probably best sticking to CRTs for now.
I've never had problems running two CRT computer monitors side by side (one TV and one monitor will cause havoc though). Perhaps it has to do with different refresh rates?
Except that if you actually read the linked page, the numbers he quotes are percentages of hosts, not work done. How fast the computer is crunching through work units is irrelevant.
Mac hardware's nothing special - it's primarily the software that makes Macs so great in comparison to a typical Windows/Linux/BSD PC. Why the heck would anyone buy a Mac and then install a Linux on it? Just doesn't make sense.
How come Mac users say something like this, then in the next breath go on about how PPC is a superior platform to x86?
It sounds like someone doesn't use Windows very often. Contrary to popular belief, keeping a Windows box malware-free* is not hard if you know what your doing and use some common sense.
*Unless you count tracking cookies, which affect all platforms.
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This is going to be the death of Mac-based software. Why bother making an OS X based version, when you can tell your customers to reboot into their Windows partition and run it there?
My guess is that it goes something like this:
Grunt 1: *scans package* "That's strange."
Grunt 2: "What is it?"
Grunt 1: "This package doesn't belong here, it should of been delivered a week ago."
Grunt 2: "That's really odd."
Grunt 1: "What should I do with it?"
Grunt 2: "I don't know."
Manager: *walks over* "There's some extra room on that truck over there. Just chuck it in and someone else can take care of it."
Grunts 1, 2, & Manager together: "Excellent! High five!"
He means stable, as in not changing very much. I can gaurentee you that in 10 years, you'll be able to buy an x86 based PC running some form of Windows. And chances are, 90%+ of the binaries that run on Windows XP right now will run on that computer. I can also gaurentee that you'll be able to buy some x86 hardware 10 years from now, and install some flavor of Linux on it. And chances are, just about every open source Linux program that runs on a Linux system right now will compile on it.
But, in 10 years - who knows what hardware platform Apple will be running. Will their current OS be compatible with OSX PPC? How about OSX x86? Will Apple even exist in 2015? And if they do exist, are they going to be selling anything other than iPods?
Go ahead and buy the Macs now if you need them. Apple won't be dropping support of the PPC machines anytime soon. I'd like to get a Mini, and probably still will. Just because something newer comes out doesn't mean that your current machine turns into crap.
He specifically said he was looking for a stable platform. Why switch to PPC Macs now, when you know that when you are ready to replace those Macs in a few years, you'll be switching yet again to another platform? Might as well either stick with Windows, or switch to something that'll be around for a while, like Linux for x86.
Who says that Apple can't use both AMD and Intel processors, using the best processor for the job? Companies like HP and eMachines have computers with AMD and Intel processors, why not Apple?
For example,
PowerBook, iBook, Mac Mini: Intel Pentium-M
PowerMac: AMD64 or Intel Pentium D
iMac: AMD64?
eMac: AMD Semptron
Well, Apple still has a huge problem. With their announcement that PPC is being phased out, who is going to want to buy one of their existing (and costly) PPC computers which will be obsolete very soon? I expect sales of the current Macs, especially the PowerMac and the PowerBook to plummet.
The transition was so difficult for the audio and video industry, that for many people it STILL hasn't happened. You can find workhorse macs running OS9 in nearly every recording studio and post production house in LA.
My guess is that a lot of these places, after getting burned multiple times from Apple, are going to seriously consider upgrading to commodity PCs whenever the upgrade finally happens.
In fact, after a bit of quick footwork, this will be a beautiful position for Apple to be in. Look, they can say, this is what you can do with a Pentium -- if you have OS X. Look, kids, same hardware has your Windows box, but not one single virus, no crashes, no maleware...
Or it might be: Look, my box has the exact same hardware, costs half as much, and has games and applications written for its OS. Why would I get a Mac?
It would be the end of Apple. Very few people would buy an Apple to run Windows when they could do the exact same thing on commodity hardware for a fraction of the cost.
Still, what would you suggest they do in that situation? She clearly was not going to leave her vehicle. The only options I can are blocking her vehicle in and waiting for her to change her attitide and give up, or letting her go - suspended license and all. The way I see it, a quick tazering was an appropiate response to arrest her quickly and in a safe manner for all involved.
Except that speed limits are typically .66 to .75 the actual maximum safe speed for any stretch of road. Being in control of your vehicle means not hitting things or people, and not leaving the road. Speed is only relevant by association with those.
I'm guessing you are refering to highways, because I would say that's definently not true for residental areas.
Touchpads are much better because with the correct driver you can do everything with a touchpad that you can with a mouse/trackball including click, drag, and click/drag lock without using even the buttons. A truly solid state device with no moving parts. Apple does one better by allowing you to scroll using 2 fingers on the pad without the use of dedicated regions.
How do you put up with it? Everytime I have to use a trackpad, I'm always doing shit that I didn't want to do (and a lot of it can't be undone easily, like dragging icons off the dock). I'd much rather have the trackpoint.
If you look at the numbers, the shift from desktops to laptops started a bit earlier on the Mac. Probably because Apple got the battery life situation under control sooner (Intel wasn't doing so well there a couple years ago), and support for wireless networking was really solid. Plus, Mac users tend to pick up on these sorts of trends a bit sooner; they're mostly a self-selected group, which means they're more likely to actually care about computing than the Wintel masses, and as such they're typically a bit ahead of the curve, on average.
That's probably because the Mac laptops are pretty reasonably priced compared to their x86 counterparts, while the Mac desktops are way overpriced. It's no surprise to me that Apple has been selling more laptops than desktops for a while now.
I built my first computer about 4 years ago for my parents using an ECS board, at the time people on the review site said it was a decent board for a great price, I bought its and the thing is still working wonderfully, 3 years ago I bought one for myself, this time the reviews showed that the ECS boards were crap and that if you got a working one you should kiss the ground and clap your hands. Mines worked wonderfully for me, I'm about the replace the whole system(I've upgraded the cpu and ram since then but its getting old) and I don't think I would touch ECS again, I bought 3 boards for friends of mine. 2 of the three had to be taken back the next day because a slot wouldn't work or an on board componant like built in lan wouldn't work. And out of the three boards I think all had to be scraped after the warrenty. They were horrible. It was a nice board to have when it came out , had a 1.1 ghz duron in it, then upgraded to my current 2200+ XP processor.
My one experience with ECS was a computer I bought when the Cyrix 6x86 PR200 (no MMX) was the chip you'd find in the bottom of the line bargain basement whitebox. To this day, the computer is still completely stable. Cheap stuff like ECS is really hit and miss though, now I rather spend a little more money and get something that's less of a gamble.
As a student doing the same thing, I just had multiple computers. Nice one at school, an older one at home. An external harddrive to haul data around. Worked great.
1) the very need for such tests means that current 2.6.x kernels are very unstable - this means that Linux currently does not have any stable version - not good
If you think that the 2.6.x kernels are unstable, you can use the 2.0, 2.2, or 2.4 kernels. All those versions are still being maintained, and they are definently stable.
The 54 icons is due the unusable MS menu system which makes your seldom used, but very important programs disappear. The one place where you can keep an eye on your icons and ensure that they don't disappear on you, is on the desktop...
Go into the Start Menu and Taskbar settings, and turn off "Personalized Menus". Then you don't have to deal with Windows deciding how your start menu should look (which has to be one of the dumbest things Microsoft has ever come up with in terms of UI).
You blame Apple for the dominance of Windows & Intel? To use a bad car analogy, that would be like blaming Chevy for the all the people killed in exploding Ford Crown Vics because Chevy discontinued the Caprice. While you're at it, why don't you blame the makers of BeOS, IBM (for OS/2), Cyrix, and AMD?
I have 2 21" CRTs at 1280x1024 and don't see any reason to upgrade to LCD until I can have higher resolution than that, on both displays. Or I could just get one of those $3000 Apple displays, and have a bigger desktop all in one piece, with no divider down the middle. :-)
1280x1024 is not that high of resolution. Most people run their 21" CRTs at 1600x1200 or more. You can buy 17" LCD screens for about $300 now that run at 1280x1024, and 1600x1200 will run you about $600.
But, if for whatever reason (bad eyes?), you like to run low resolution on a large display, you are probably best sticking to CRTs for now.
I've never had problems running two CRT computer monitors side by side (one TV and one monitor will cause havoc though). Perhaps it has to do with different refresh rates?
Except that if you actually read the linked page, the numbers he quotes are percentages of hosts, not work done. How fast the computer is crunching through work units is irrelevant.
Also, a lot of students use PCs because they are too poor to afford a Mac.
That's something I've never understood.
Mac hardware's nothing special - it's primarily the software that makes Macs so great in comparison to a typical Windows/Linux/BSD PC. Why the heck would anyone buy a Mac and then install a Linux on it? Just doesn't make sense.
How come Mac users say something like this, then in the next breath go on about how PPC is a superior platform to x86?
It sounds like someone doesn't use Windows very often. Contrary to popular belief, keeping a Windows box malware-free* is not hard if you know what your doing and use some common sense.
*Unless you count tracking cookies, which affect all platforms.
I've also got an IBM XT that stopped working around 1998. Hopefully someone will start a class action suit for that as well!
I doubt it. Yours is the only IBM XT that I have heard of failing.