One thing you should know is every DVD player for IBM laptops are the same. The only differences are:
A) The bezel, which are interchangable on drives manufactured by the same company. ie an LG DVD drive for a 390 is exactly the same as an LG DVD drive for an A20, they just have different bezels, which can be switched around.
B) The connector. The base DVD drive has the same connector, but some models will have an additional adaptor attached on the end. Simply remove or switch the adaptors, and you can interchange drives.
C) Some models have extra plastics or are mounted in a bracket. These are easily removed.
As part of my job, I'm constantly pulling old drives out of 380s and 390s and switching bezels to bring a higher end model (A20's and T20's mostly) back to 100% working condition. All you have to do is ensure the two drives are manufactured by the same company.
So, in 1996, when the average computer sold for over $3000, and the average monitor was a 15" for $300, that wasn't waay out of the spending range for mere mortals. Yet 7 years later, Apple prices their high-end tower at $3000, and now suddenly this is waay out of the spending range for mere mortals?
BTW, using Kingston's 1GB Kits, you could get 4GB of RAM for an extra $1260.
I would say what made Apple successful was the whole ease of use factor. Put the CD in the drive, hold down the "C" key, turn machine on. Machine boots off of CD. Click the install icon, provide a few simple responses and info, and your OS is installed. No "detecting hardware...found something...don't know what it is...do you have a driver for this ? piece of hardware?" that you get with windows, and certainly not like linux installs. Configuring the network has always been straightforward as well, with all the relevant fields in one place, and easily accessible. Appletalk was self configuring, as is the new Rendezvous technology. No BIOS settings to mess around with, and you don't NEED to know the command line aspect of OS X. How many Windows users actually know how to maintain Windows properly (ie msconfig, the registry, etc). With the mac OS, you had the extensions folder before OS X, and the extensions manager made managing extensions easy for even the novices. OS X takes care of it's own maintenance. The whole UI guideline is just an extension of Apple's commitment to delivering highly complicated and advanced technology in an easy to use package. If you want Linux to take over the desktops of the average user, you need to make it easy to use. This means making it like an appliance! You turn it on, you click to check your mail, click to surf the web, click to type a document, click to check your appointments, click to print, and then turn it off. Want to add a (video conferencing camera/scanner/DVD burner/joystick)? Great! Plug it in, pop in the CD, click the icon, and it's installed. Windows has the edge over Linux because it's a giant bag of drivers and installers so that most users can usually install their own peripherals. Linux is more stable, more secure, faster, and cheaper, but it still isn't even remotely easy to use! The average user does not want to have to learn any type of CLI. Period.
Are you a moron, or just a troll?. How can you argue that by Apple claiming the G5 as a personal computer, that automatically limits the comparisons they can make to what every other manufacturer classifies as a personal computer (namely a single CPU Intel/AMD machine in your opinion). The fact is, Apple compared the G5 to dual Xeons and claimed it as the fastest personal computer. Whether or not it is doesn't really matter, they're making the claim against the best Intel has to offer. As far as what constitutes a personal computer, that's going to vary for every buyer! A writer doesn't need a Pentium 4 or high-end graphics, whereas a digital photography hobbiest would definitely want a powerful CPU and lots of RAM, and a gamer would want the best video card he could get etc. The only limitation as to what constitutes a Personal Computer is the word "Personal". My computer can be completely different from yours, yet still be a "personal" computer, even if I choose to buy it from a vendor's "workstation" category.
Or you could just buy an FM transmitter for your iPod, and then play your AAC's from your iPod to ANY FM radio. And the installation is much easier than installing a new CD/MP3/WMA deck. Oh, and the iPod will hold hundreds of CD's worth of music so you don't have to waste hundreds of dollars on blank media and you don't have to lug around a CD carry case or go through the hassle of changing CDs while driving, etc. By the way, what happens to your WMA playing car stereo when the next version of WMA comes out and isn't backwards compatible?
Oh, that's simple. You'll have to buy the NEW Rio Player that has WMA9 support. Of course, the new Rio is only supported by the NEW version of Windows, so you'll have to upgrade your operating system too. By the way, the new version of Windows will require a motherboard with WMA9 DRM support, so you'll have to buy a new system too.
Because I just went to Apple's web site, and 1100 G5 dual CPU machines at their regular price would cost me a whopping 3.3million bucks! WTF!!!! How did VT get such a sweet deal? Then, to find out how I was really getting shafted by Apple, I went to Dell.com and configured a Dell 650n workstation as follows: dual 2.4GHz Xeon CPU's, 512MB DDR266 Non-ECC RAM (Apple's is DDR400), 160GB IDE HD (Apple's is Serial ATA), 48XCDRW (Apple's is a DVD-RW), ATI Fire GL (Apple's is a Radeon 9600), RedHat Linux, and the price for 1100 of these only came to 3.2901million bucks! What a ripoff those G5's are! Apple's close to $10000 more expensive! And who cares if the G5 has Firewire 800 and the Dells only have Firewire 400? Or that the Dell only supports 4GB instead of 8GB like the G5? Who would ever need more than 4GB anyway? I can't believe Apple's still in business! It's just a matter of time before people catch on and realize these G5's are a ripoff and Apple goes out of business.
This sounds right up Microsoft's alley. DRM'd to the hilt, authorization from a central server before you can download from anywhere, and paying for everything, etc....
Bzzzt. Sorry, Buddy.
Quality is NOT measurable. By your way of thinking, a quality computer is the newest fastest processor, and when it's released the quality of all that came before it is diminished. That's not how it works. There's quality machines, and there's crap machines, and performance has nothing to do with it.
Yes. Everyone plays catchup with Mac all the time.
That's why Mac dominates the desktop market.
Apple dominates the desktop publishing market. Apple and Avid dominate the pro-video editing market (and if you think Macs are overpriced, you won't believe what Avid charges). Apple is the single largest vendor of professional audio editing machines in the music business. The only market Apple doesn't have significant market share is in the low-end desktop market, which is used for word-processing, spreadsheets, and accounting software. Apple makes high-end machines with good margins to fuel their R&D. The low end of the desktop market is a cutthroat, bloody mess! Look at Compaq, Packard Bell, AST, NEC, and many others who lost their shirts. Dell is the only company doing well in it because they don't do the R&D thing. Not. They are too expensive and proprietary.
Hmmm....I have an old 8500 with a PowerPC 604 CPU. I can upgrade this machine to a G3 or a G4. I also have an old Pentium II machine which can be upgraded to...a faster Pentium II, but not an AMD processor, nor a Pentium III or Pentium IV, because Intel's CPU slots are PROPRIETARY . Apple embraces more open standards than Microsoft or Intel. As far as the price, I think I get my money's worth and more from the various Macs I've owned. If price is the only consideration you have when purchasing, then you should be blasting Intel, praising AMD, blasting Windows, and praising OSS. Just because they have a few innovative products doesn't mean they are the benchmark.
Apparently they are, since this article was about Sony's new 12" Powerbook Killer. There's quite a few articles that get posted about company X's 17" Powerbook killer or company Y's all-in-one like an iMac but it's Wintel blah blah blah. I cite the G5 as a neat system, but not innovative in the current market.
Yeah, 'cause everyone is using a 64-bit CPU that's backwards compatible with 32-bit software, 1GHz frontside bus, PCI-X expansion slots, Firewire 800, Gigabit Ethernet, High-speed Wireless, and 16GB/s of bandwidth between the CPU's and the system controller. I do consider the iPod innovative, as well as most of their laptop's designs.
Might as well mention the iMac, since it won so many design awards for being innovative. So, let's see...that's the laptops, the iPod, the iMac, and maybe, just maybe, the G5 desktop. Which is their entire product line. Look at processor speeds on desktop systems over the past few years. It's already a rather foggy memory the last time I looked at a Mac's specs and thought 'wow, the PC market really needs to play some catchup!'. The last one I was impressed with were the PowerPC clones, actually. They moved pretty quick compared to PC's of the same price. But that was like '94 or '95..
This is total crap. The G3 kicked the Wintel machines butts. The G4 was where the PC world finally caught up. On launch, the G4 kicked the P3's that were shipping at the time. But Motorola was unable to deliver the speed bumps to keep up, and then the P4 was out and the G4 was left behind. The G4's vector processing engine is still far superior to anything Intel has, which is why it's been used for so many Blast implementations. In the case of laptops, I agree in this particular case, but as for other configurations forget it.
For the price of a new G5 I could have a monster of a PC that would make the G5 look like last year's PC except for the pretty case that matches a cinema display. Is that worth the extra money? Nah, I'll stick with Lian Li cases for now.
Maybe you should do a little more reading. The high end G5 beats the best PC you can build right now with dual Xeon CPU's, and by the time you add all the features the G5 has, the price comes out to within a couple of hundred bucks of the G5. Plus you get OS X. Plus the G5 is much quieter than a dual-CPU PC. Yeah, you can get a G5 with dual CPU's.. Whoopee. For that
Since this topic seems to have gone way off base without ever answering the question of whether.NET scales or not, I thought I'd throw in the Mac suggestion. You get the "point, click and go", you have the option of using Unix (a great platform to learn Unix as you go by the way), and OS X Server scales incredibly well. In fact, the Appleseed setup (Apple's equivalent to a Beowulf cluster) is a one page tutorial that even a novice could set up! And before anyone starts complaining about hardware costs, remember that MS licensing makes the.NET solution more expensive than the Mac solution. Sure, Linux is cheaper software/hardware/license, but you definitely need the sysadmin, which adds significant costs.
Since Apple runs on one platform and only one platform PPC.
I guess you were unaware that Darwin (being the foundation of OS X) is currently running on x86 hardware. http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/6. 0/release.html The only thing that runs on one platform is the GUI known as Aqua, and I'm sure Apple has an x86 version of this as an emergency backup plan.
Ever heard of Neo? It's a Mac version of the Kazaa client, developed by Michael Thole in 2002. Unfortunately it doesn't support the rampant spread of computer viruses plaguing the PC clients. Us Mac users are always getting ripped off!!!
Sorry, you're wrong. Biege G3 Desktops can be picked up now for under $100. So for the purpose of the comparison, the differences in cost of the hardware is negligible.
First off, Apple notebooks aren't much more expensive than PC notebooks, especially since most PC notebooks force you to buy the MS license anyway. In fact, Apple's high end notebooks are way cheaper than IBM/HP/Toshiba high end notebooks. Secondly, what makes you think his IT people know anything about linux, or that they have the time to do this? Third, just because the initial cost of linux is zero, doesn't mean it's free. It takes time to install/configure/learn/etc and often time is more valuable than money, especially for a CTO. Finally, KDE/GNOME and OpenOffice + Evolution are not even close to OSX and Office for X. If you put the KDE/GNOME laptop and the Apple laptop in front of a non-technical user and give them a month to play around with both, Apple would win hands down.
Apple has better than Beowulf, they have Appleseed. All the power of Beowulf but with the ease of Apple; 1 page manual for Appleseed, 200+ pages for Beowulf.
As for the Win32 layer, Apple used to have a PC Compatibility card, which was an x86 CPU/RAM/Video board for certain models that allowed you to run Windows on your Mac. I think it's time Apple reintroduced this option.
government mandated, installed, and controlled services/companies don't provide services users want, when they want them, and how they want them. They provide services THEY THINK users want, whether users WANT THEM OR NOT, and generally, not how users want them in the long run. Trust me, I live in Canada, where our Federal government has a long history of getting their fingers into businesses they shouldn't be in! The results are poor delivery of services, with budget overruns, no or little accountability, and higher taxes. The only thing the government should be involved in is making rules to ensure everyone plays fair. Privatization done right brings competition, and competition delivers the best bang for the buck!
Some interesting facts to consider regarding the death of the Newton: the announcement of the killing of the Newton came hot on the heels of the cash bailout from Microsoft, which also happened to be right around the launch of Windows CE. There were rumors that one of the conditions of the Microsoft bailout was that the Newton die. The fact that Jobs killed the Newton is quite puzzling, since the product was highly acclaimed.
Nowhere on that link you submitted does it say the Mac version is SHIPPING. In fact, when you go to Macsoft's main page, it still says "Look for Master of Orion® III on shelves in Autumn 2002". I highly doubt Macsoft could do a conversion and release it the same day as the original.
1. Upgradeability. Hahahaha, you say, x86 architecture is so much more upgradeable than Apple. Well, the fact is I can get G3 upgrades for Apples manufactured in 1994, and G4 upgrades for Apples manufactured in 1997. Can you get a P3 for an old 486? NOT!
2. Better Architecture. While this isn't true of every model, Apple machines generally have a better architecture than the x86 world. Specific examples include: ethernet integrated into the system controller, thereby eliminating all network traffic from the PCI bus, and: PCI bus on a Mac is 266MBps vs 133MBps on an x86 board.
3. First on the scene with new technologies. Apple has always made a habit of pushing new technologies into their product. Firewire debuted in 1999 on an Apple machine, and only this year is it a big thing in the PC world. USB was another technology that was done by Apple before anyone else. Ethernet has been built-in to every powermac since 1994. Apple was also first to introduce DVD burners. The end result is a machine that often has cutting edge technologies that don't become mainstream for several years.
There are several other advantages, such as Apple being in control of both hardware and software, etc, but the end result is Apples tend to remain useful longer than PCs. (I'm sure Microsoft and Intel have something to do with this as well, but I won't get into that).
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One thing you should know is every DVD player for IBM laptops are the same. The only differences are:
A) The bezel, which are interchangable on drives manufactured by the same company. ie an LG DVD drive for a 390 is exactly the same as an LG DVD drive for an A20, they just have different bezels, which can be switched around.
B) The connector. The base DVD drive has the same connector, but some models will have an additional adaptor attached on the end. Simply remove or switch the adaptors, and you can interchange drives.
C) Some models have extra plastics or are mounted in a bracket. These are easily removed.
As part of my job, I'm constantly pulling old drives out of 380s and 390s and switching bezels to bring a higher end model (A20's and T20's mostly) back to 100% working condition. All you have to do is ensure the two drives are manufactured by the same company.
So, in 1996, when the average computer sold for over $3000, and the average monitor was a 15" for $300, that wasn't waay out of the spending range for mere mortals. Yet 7 years later, Apple prices their high-end tower at $3000, and now suddenly this is waay out of the spending range for mere mortals? BTW, using Kingston's 1GB Kits, you could get 4GB of RAM for an extra $1260.
I would say what made Apple successful was the whole ease of use factor. Put the CD in the drive, hold down the "C" key, turn machine on. Machine boots off of CD. Click the install icon, provide a few simple responses and info, and your OS is installed. No "detecting hardware...found something...don't know what it is...do you have a driver for this ? piece of hardware?" that you get with windows, and certainly not like linux installs. Configuring the network has always been straightforward as well, with all the relevant fields in one place, and easily accessible. Appletalk was self configuring, as is the new Rendezvous technology. No BIOS settings to mess around with, and you don't NEED to know the command line aspect of OS X. How many Windows users actually know how to maintain Windows properly (ie msconfig, the registry, etc). With the mac OS, you had the extensions folder before OS X, and the extensions manager made managing extensions easy for even the novices. OS X takes care of it's own maintenance. The whole UI guideline is just an extension of Apple's commitment to delivering highly complicated and advanced technology in an easy to use package. If you want Linux to take over the desktops of the average user, you need to make it easy to use. This means making it like an appliance! You turn it on, you click to check your mail, click to surf the web, click to type a document, click to check your appointments, click to print, and then turn it off. Want to add a (video conferencing camera/scanner/DVD burner/joystick)? Great! Plug it in, pop in the CD, click the icon, and it's installed. Windows has the edge over Linux because it's a giant bag of drivers and installers so that most users can usually install their own peripherals. Linux is more stable, more secure, faster, and cheaper, but it still isn't even remotely easy to use! The average user does not want to have to learn any type of CLI. Period.
Are you a moron, or just a troll?. How can you argue that by Apple claiming the G5 as a personal computer, that automatically limits the comparisons they can make to what every other manufacturer classifies as a personal computer (namely a single CPU Intel/AMD machine in your opinion). The fact is, Apple compared the G5 to dual Xeons and claimed it as the fastest personal computer. Whether or not it is doesn't really matter, they're making the claim against the best Intel has to offer. As far as what constitutes a personal computer, that's going to vary for every buyer! A writer doesn't need a Pentium 4 or high-end graphics, whereas a digital photography hobbiest would definitely want a powerful CPU and lots of RAM, and a gamer would want the best video card he could get etc. The only limitation as to what constitutes a Personal Computer is the word "Personal". My computer can be completely different from yours, yet still be a "personal" computer, even if I choose to buy it from a vendor's "workstation" category.
I have no problem with the 128K radio stations. Maybe it's just your computer that's worthless.
Or you could just buy an FM transmitter for your iPod, and then play your AAC's from your iPod to ANY FM radio. And the installation is much easier than installing a new CD/MP3/WMA deck. Oh, and the iPod will hold hundreds of CD's worth of music so you don't have to waste hundreds of dollars on blank media and you don't have to lug around a CD carry case or go through the hassle of changing CDs while driving, etc. By the way, what happens to your WMA playing car stereo when the next version of WMA comes out and isn't backwards compatible?
Oh, that's simple. You'll have to buy the NEW Rio Player that has WMA9 support. Of course, the new Rio is only supported by the NEW version of Windows, so you'll have to upgrade your operating system too. By the way, the new version of Windows will require a motherboard with WMA9 DRM support, so you'll have to buy a new system too.
Because I just went to Apple's web site, and 1100 G5 dual CPU machines at their regular price would cost me a whopping 3.3million bucks! WTF!!!! How did VT get such a sweet deal? Then, to find out how I was really getting shafted by Apple, I went to Dell.com and configured a Dell 650n workstation as follows: dual 2.4GHz Xeon CPU's, 512MB DDR266 Non-ECC RAM (Apple's is DDR400), 160GB IDE HD (Apple's is Serial ATA), 48XCDRW (Apple's is a DVD-RW), ATI Fire GL (Apple's is a Radeon 9600), RedHat Linux, and the price for 1100 of these only came to 3.2901million bucks! What a ripoff those G5's are! Apple's close to $10000 more expensive! And who cares if the G5 has Firewire 800 and the Dells only have Firewire 400? Or that the Dell only supports 4GB instead of 8GB like the G5? Who would ever need more than 4GB anyway? I can't believe Apple's still in business! It's just a matter of time before people catch on and realize these G5's are a ripoff and Apple goes out of business.
Therefore, this machine is NOT twice faster than the Linux Networx cluster.
Drawing a definite conclusion from a guess about the setup? Perhaps you should research a bit more before adding your 2 cents.
This sounds right up Microsoft's alley. DRM'd to the hilt, authorization from a central server before you can download from anywhere, and paying for everything, etc....
For the same reason people buy Porsches when they can get a faster car for less.
Bzzzt. Sorry, Buddy. Quality is NOT measurable. By your way of thinking, a quality computer is the newest fastest processor, and when it's released the quality of all that came before it is diminished. That's not how it works. There's quality machines, and there's crap machines, and performance has nothing to do with it.
$110? You're way low! The card is $200 at Circuit City. My distributor cost is $155!!! If you can get it for $110, I'll order a couple dozen at least!
Yes. Everyone plays catchup with Mac all the time. That's why Mac dominates the desktop market.
Apple dominates the desktop publishing market. Apple and Avid dominate the pro-video editing market (and if you think Macs are overpriced, you won't believe what Avid charges). Apple is the single largest vendor of professional audio editing machines in the music business. The only market Apple doesn't have significant market share is in the low-end desktop market, which is used for word-processing, spreadsheets, and accounting software. Apple makes high-end machines with good margins to fuel their R&D. The low end of the desktop market is a cutthroat, bloody mess! Look at Compaq, Packard Bell, AST, NEC, and many others who lost their shirts. Dell is the only company doing well in it because they don't do the R&D thing.
Not. They are too expensive and proprietary.
Hmmm....I have an old 8500 with a PowerPC 604 CPU. I can upgrade this machine to a G3 or a G4. I also have an old Pentium II machine which can be upgraded to...a faster Pentium II, but not an AMD processor, nor a Pentium III or Pentium IV, because Intel's CPU slots are PROPRIETARY . Apple embraces more open standards than Microsoft or Intel. As far as the price, I think I get my money's worth and more from the various Macs I've owned. If price is the only consideration you have when purchasing, then you should be blasting Intel, praising AMD, blasting Windows, and praising OSS.
Just because they have a few innovative products doesn't mean they are the benchmark.
Apparently they are, since this article was about Sony's new 12" Powerbook Killer. There's quite a few articles that get posted about company X's 17" Powerbook killer or company Y's all-in-one like an iMac but it's Wintel blah blah blah.
I cite the G5 as a neat system, but not innovative in the current market.
Yeah, 'cause everyone is using a 64-bit CPU that's backwards compatible with 32-bit software, 1GHz frontside bus, PCI-X expansion slots, Firewire 800, Gigabit Ethernet, High-speed Wireless, and 16GB/s of bandwidth between the CPU's and the system controller.
I do consider the iPod innovative, as well as most of their laptop's designs.
Might as well mention the iMac, since it won so many design awards for being innovative. So, let's see...that's the laptops, the iPod, the iMac, and maybe, just maybe, the G5 desktop. Which is their entire product line.
Look at processor speeds on desktop systems over the past few years. It's already a rather foggy memory the last time I looked at a Mac's specs and thought 'wow, the PC market really needs to play some catchup!'. The last one I was impressed with were the PowerPC clones, actually. They moved pretty quick compared to PC's of the same price. But that was like '94 or '95..
This is total crap. The G3 kicked the Wintel machines butts. The G4 was where the PC world finally caught up. On launch, the G4 kicked the P3's that were shipping at the time. But Motorola was unable to deliver the speed bumps to keep up, and then the P4 was out and the G4 was left behind. The G4's vector processing engine is still far superior to anything Intel has, which is why it's been used for so many Blast implementations.
In the case of laptops, I agree in this particular case, but as for other configurations forget it. For the price of a new G5 I could have a monster of a PC that would make the G5 look like last year's PC except for the pretty case that matches a cinema display. Is that worth the extra money? Nah, I'll stick with Lian Li cases for now.
Maybe you should do a little more reading. The high end G5 beats the best PC you can build right now with dual Xeon CPU's, and by the time you add all the features the G5 has, the price comes out to within a couple of hundred bucks of the G5. Plus you get OS X. Plus the G5 is much quieter than a dual-CPU PC.
Yeah, you can get a G5 with dual CPU's.. Whoopee. For that
Since this topic seems to have gone way off base without ever answering the question of whether .NET scales or not, I thought I'd throw in the Mac suggestion. You get the "point, click and go", you have the option of using Unix (a great platform to learn Unix as you go by the way), and OS X Server scales incredibly well. In fact, the Appleseed setup (Apple's equivalent to a Beowulf cluster) is a one page tutorial that even a novice could set up! And before anyone starts complaining about hardware costs, remember that MS licensing makes the .NET solution more expensive than the Mac solution. Sure, Linux is cheaper software/hardware/license, but you definitely need the sysadmin, which adds significant costs.
I guess you were unaware that Darwin (being the foundation of OS X) is currently running on x86 hardware. http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/6. 0/release.html The only thing that runs on one platform is the GUI known as Aqua, and I'm sure Apple has an x86 version of this as an emergency backup plan.
Ever heard of Neo? It's a Mac version of the Kazaa client, developed by Michael Thole in 2002. Unfortunately it doesn't support the rampant spread of computer viruses plaguing the PC clients. Us Mac users are always getting ripped off!!!
Sorry, you're wrong. Biege G3 Desktops can be picked up now for under $100. So for the purpose of the comparison, the differences in cost of the hardware is negligible.
In fact, many windows crashes are not caused by Windows, but by bad RAM C'mon, don't you mean bad RAM is caused by Windows repeatedly crashing?
First off, Apple notebooks aren't much more expensive than PC notebooks, especially since most PC notebooks force you to buy the MS license anyway. In fact, Apple's high end notebooks are way cheaper than IBM/HP/Toshiba high end notebooks. Secondly, what makes you think his IT people know anything about linux, or that they have the time to do this? Third, just because the initial cost of linux is zero, doesn't mean it's free. It takes time to install/configure/learn/etc and often time is more valuable than money, especially for a CTO. Finally, KDE/GNOME and OpenOffice + Evolution are not even close to OSX and Office for X. If you put the KDE/GNOME laptop and the Apple laptop in front of a non-technical user and give them a month to play around with both, Apple would win hands down.
Apple has better than Beowulf, they have Appleseed. All the power of Beowulf but with the ease of Apple; 1 page manual for Appleseed, 200+ pages for Beowulf. As for the Win32 layer, Apple used to have a PC Compatibility card, which was an x86 CPU/RAM/Video board for certain models that allowed you to run Windows on your Mac. I think it's time Apple reintroduced this option.
government mandated, installed, and controlled services/companies don't provide services users want, when they want them, and how they want them. They provide services THEY THINK users want, whether users WANT THEM OR NOT, and generally, not how users want them in the long run. Trust me, I live in Canada, where our Federal government has a long history of getting their fingers into businesses they shouldn't be in! The results are poor delivery of services, with budget overruns, no or little accountability, and higher taxes. The only thing the government should be involved in is making rules to ensure everyone plays fair. Privatization done right brings competition, and competition delivers the best bang for the buck!
Some interesting facts to consider regarding the death of the Newton: the announcement of the killing of the Newton came hot on the heels of the cash bailout from Microsoft, which also happened to be right around the launch of Windows CE. There were rumors that one of the conditions of the Microsoft bailout was that the Newton die. The fact that Jobs killed the Newton is quite puzzling, since the product was highly acclaimed.
Nowhere on that link you submitted does it say the Mac version is SHIPPING. In fact, when you go to Macsoft's main page, it still says "Look for Master of Orion® III on shelves in Autumn 2002". I highly doubt Macsoft could do a conversion and release it the same day as the original.
1. Upgradeability. Hahahaha, you say, x86 architecture is so much more upgradeable than Apple. Well, the fact is I can get G3 upgrades for Apples manufactured in 1994, and G4 upgrades for Apples manufactured in 1997. Can you get a P3 for an old 486? NOT! 2. Better Architecture. While this isn't true of every model, Apple machines generally have a better architecture than the x86 world. Specific examples include: ethernet integrated into the system controller, thereby eliminating all network traffic from the PCI bus, and: PCI bus on a Mac is 266MBps vs 133MBps on an x86 board. 3. First on the scene with new technologies. Apple has always made a habit of pushing new technologies into their product. Firewire debuted in 1999 on an Apple machine, and only this year is it a big thing in the PC world. USB was another technology that was done by Apple before anyone else. Ethernet has been built-in to every powermac since 1994. Apple was also first to introduce DVD burners. The end result is a machine that often has cutting edge technologies that don't become mainstream for several years. There are several other advantages, such as Apple being in control of both hardware and software, etc, but the end result is Apples tend to remain useful longer than PCs. (I'm sure Microsoft and Intel have something to do with this as well, but I won't get into that).