Ok, so I specced out two computers with similar performance yet one will last longer than the other? Please explain other than it's too expensive to upgrade the Mac as much people do to PCs. The old PC stuff can hold up just as well as old Mac stuff.
One recent example comes to mind: Collegue has an old Wallstreet Powerbook. With every new version of X it got faster.
Now show me a five year old Notebook where XP is running faster on than 2000, Me, or '98.
That is just online multiplayer games that can be tracked (and during non-prime hours). It doesn't even include single player PC games or MMORPGs which would be considerably larger.
I guess most of the High intensity 3D Games that need the faster CPU, GPU & Memory are Mature games.
You don't need all that power for Solitaire.
How else could NVIDIA and ATI afford to do the research and development on new GPUs every 6 months if the people that bought them (the PC gamers) were negligible when it comes to sales?
The same way that car manufactueres can afford to race in the FormularOne or any other series: Brand image, and of course some of those technologies will over time translate into the "street" products.
You won't see many FormularOne cars being sold, not even the McLaren F1
The number of PC sales is up, but it is not for the hard core gamer, it is for the people who use it at home for their surfing, emailing and spreadsheet. Maybe some photo editing but that's about it. If they can play the occasional game they are happy.
The number of PC gamers is in the millions, and they do make an impact on hardware sales.
Considering the amount of PC users out there, yes you are, like it or not, but if you buy the next incarnation of an NVidia card will have no effect on what's in the next PC. "It's good enough" is all that the masses want, there might be a couple of ten thousands of the newest NVidia card sold world wide, but in comparision to the millions of lower end cards that are being installed into all the other PCs it means nothing.
I would be happy to see your justification for a Mac costing the same as a similiarly equiped PC.
The fact that you most likely will have the Mac around in a couple of years while your Dell is rotting away somewhere.
I am still amazed at how well some of the old Mac stuff is holding up these days.
A LOT of people play games. I'm not even saying it's the majority, but those people that do play the latest games are upgrading their hardware 2-3 times more than the average user. I mean how much CPU power do you need for email, internet, and quicken vs UT2004 and Battlefield 1942.
True enough, but if you put it into context / percentage wise not that many people are doing that. How many people (outside of your little gamer circle) do you know who upgrade their computers constantly to be able ot play games?
I race Triathlons, most of the people I am surrounded by are Triathletes too. If I use that worldview I can argue that people are extremely fit, spent 8K or more on their road bikes and think a two hour run is nothing to sweat about. In fact the reason soo much calories are consumed is because we need to fuel.
Of course my statement is as wrong as yours, looking at the whole picture. But from my little group of friends it is 100% true.
Careful with generalization. The Games aren't really driving the market anymore, simply because these days most people who have computers don't use them for gaming anymore. Though I admit it was true a couple of years back.
True, the iMac would be easier to cool, but it is also "consumer grade", I don't think they want to undermine the high end Notebook market (where the profit margine is probably a lot higher) by cramming the G5 into the iMac just yet.
How much time between the PowerMac G4 and the iMac G4? Two or three years?
Let's hope so. But I guess we'll first see it in the Powerbook.
And I am not so sure about the heat issue, as I had a look the other day into the G5 and the one thing I noticed was the huge cooling module on top of the CPU module, not to forget that they even had air flow channels set up to make sure the air gets circulated.
The Price thing is not true anymore. For quite some time.
If you end up putting all the same things into the PC that you have in the Mac you'll end up roughly at the same price, minus OS X.
So games are driving new HW purchases? That's like saying that the Indy and Nascar are driving car sales, it is only true for the ones who do race / drive fast or play games SERIOUSLY.
The majority of computer users and car drivers really doesn't care about it, neither does the majority of computer gamers.
BTW, exactly because I didn't want to buy a new PC every couple of months just to play the latest and "greatest" 3D shooter I switched to the console, at least for the $500 I spent on it (back then) I have something that'll work for another year or two without me being forced to buy a new Graphics card, install an OS patch etc.
Sure, a G5 iMac would be cool. Well, actually not.
If you have ever looked inside a G5 tower you'll realize they have heat problems in there.
I don't think we'll see an upgrade to the G5 line for the iMac in quite some time, first I expect them to figure out how to cram the G5 into the Powerbook.
Right now I have a G4 iBook and love it, but I guess once the second Generation of G5 PBs is rolling around I'll upgrade.
Works like a charm. MPlayer never made me happy exactly because of the crappy installation.
VLC on the other hand does all that, nicely and works on my Mac AND on Windows AND on Linux AND Solaris etc. And mostly out of the box, just some RPMs to install in Fedora.
The other day I installed Fedora Core 1, and out of curiosity connected my A300 to it, opened the Camera Tool that came with it, and low and behold, it found the camera, allowed me to download the images and manipulate them in GiMP.
Granted, it was a bit more clicking than in MacOSX, but by far not as complicated as it was just a year or so ago.
What in God's name were they doing with all that computer hardware? It's a website with a database. In a single picture there were several (five?) Sun Enterprise level servers, any one of which could do everything by itself.
One word: Redundancey.
Second: You don't want to cluster a fucking huge database and a webserver etc. together, you split it up.
You most likely want to have more than ONE web and db server (again redundancy).
Then you're talking about Storage for all the MP3 files, so you add a disk array or two.
And if you're really paranoid: You build it all over again on the other side of the country.
Being in Canada now for four years I have to admit I am fascinated by the whole Quebec thing.
For once the current issues where the liberals apparantly gave tons of money to Quebec to play nice, then the fact that Quebec within Canada is actually rather independent already.
Looking at all of this I have to conclude that Quebec already got the cake and is eating large parts of it too.
What exactly it is that Quebec hopes to gain by seperating from the rest of Canada is somewhat beyond me.
Seriously...no matter what platform you are on, there is at least one built-in mail client. The mail app that came with OSX sucks, and should be replaced with Mozilla;
That I can't agree with. I take mail.app any day over Thunderbird... I have both on the system but think Mail works better. Especially since 10.3
Dare I say at the risk of downward moderation and flaming, that the US 'hands off' approach to business is working quite well in comparison to EU countries, where the recent recession hit much harder, largely blamed on overly beaurocractic governments that ensure companies are inflexible in changing economic times.
Dare I say that you are comparing apples with oranges once more and that at the end of the day both economies are roughly at the same footing?
The reality is that business is more an art than a science anyways, despite what all the MBAs are trying to tell you.
Not likely it would be a seller. For three months out of the year it's not worth it, and they count on the fact that 99% of the people don't show up after the first month.
Slashdot Mirror
True enough, now you just forget that even though the US is the largest SINGLE Market, the world is still a lot bigger.
They'll just sell the products somewhere else.
Welcome to the Global Economy.
One recent example comes to mind: Collegue has an old Wallstreet Powerbook. With every new version of X it got faster.
Now show me a five year old Notebook where XP is running faster on than 2000, Me, or '98.
Percentage of Mature-Rated Games Sold in 2003 Declines
I guess most of the High intensity 3D Games that need the faster CPU, GPU & Memory are Mature games.
You don't need all that power for Solitaire.
The same way that car manufactueres can afford to race in the FormularOne or any other series: Brand image, and of course some of those technologies will over time translate into the "street" products.
You won't see many FormularOne cars being sold, not even the McLaren F1
The number of PC sales is up, but it is not for the hard core gamer, it is for the people who use it at home for their surfing, emailing and spreadsheet. Maybe some photo editing but that's about it. If they can play the occasional game they are happy.
Considering the amount of PC users out there, yes you are, like it or not, but if you buy the next incarnation of an NVidia card will have no effect on what's in the next PC. "It's good enough" is all that the masses want, there might be a couple of ten thousands of the newest NVidia card sold world wide, but in comparision to the millions of lower end cards that are being installed into all the other PCs it means nothing.
M.
The fact that you most likely will have the Mac around in a couple of years while your Dell is rotting away somewhere.
I am still amazed at how well some of the old Mac stuff is holding up these days.
True enough, but if you put it into context / percentage wise not that many people are doing that. How many people (outside of your little gamer circle) do you know who upgrade their computers constantly to be able ot play games?
I race Triathlons, most of the people I am surrounded by are Triathletes too. If I use that worldview I can argue that people are extremely fit, spent 8K or more on their road bikes and think a two hour run is nothing to sweat about. In fact the reason soo much calories are consumed is because we need to fuel.
Of course my statement is as wrong as yours, looking at the whole picture. But from my little group of friends it is 100% true.
Careful with generalization. The Games aren't really driving the market anymore, simply because these days most people who have computers don't use them for gaming anymore. Though I admit it was true a couple of years back.
True, the iMac would be easier to cool, but it is also "consumer grade", I don't think they want to undermine the high end Notebook market (where the profit margine is probably a lot higher) by cramming the G5 into the iMac just yet.
How much time between the PowerMac G4 and the iMac G4? Two or three years?
Let's hope so. But I guess we'll first see it in the Powerbook.
And I am not so sure about the heat issue, as I had a look the other day into the G5 and the one thing I noticed was the huge cooling module on top of the CPU module, not to forget that they even had air flow channels set up to make sure the air gets circulated.
The Price thing is not true anymore. For quite some time.
If you end up putting all the same things into the PC that you have in the Mac you'll end up roughly at the same price, minus OS X.
So games are driving new HW purchases? That's like saying that the Indy and Nascar are driving car sales, it is only true for the ones who do race / drive fast or play games SERIOUSLY.
The majority of computer users and car drivers really doesn't care about it, neither does the majority of computer gamers.
BTW, exactly because I didn't want to buy a new PC every couple of months just to play the latest and "greatest" 3D shooter I switched to the console, at least for the $500 I spent on it (back then) I have something that'll work for another year or two without me being forced to buy a new Graphics card, install an OS patch etc.
Sure, a G5 iMac would be cool. Well, actually not.
If you have ever looked inside a G5 tower you'll realize they have heat problems in there.
I don't think we'll see an upgrade to the G5 line for the iMac in quite some time, first I expect them to figure out how to cram the G5 into the Powerbook.
Right now I have a G4 iBook and love it, but I guess once the second Generation of G5 PBs is rolling around I'll upgrade.
Use VLC.
Works like a charm. MPlayer never made me happy exactly because of the crappy installation.
VLC on the other hand does all that, nicely and works on my Mac AND on Windows AND on Linux AND Solaris etc. And mostly out of the box, just some RPMs to install in Fedora.
I think it's almost there.
The other day I installed Fedora Core 1, and out of curiosity connected my A300 to it, opened the Camera Tool that came with it, and low and behold, it found the camera, allowed me to download the images and manipulate them in GiMP.
Granted, it was a bit more clicking than in MacOSX, but by far not as complicated as it was just a year or so ago.
Then he obviously didn't do his homework.
Well,
if you have the money for a luxury car then you should also have the money to pay for repairs, no?
One word: Redundancey.
Second: You don't want to cluster a fucking huge database and a webserver etc. together, you split it up.
You most likely want to have more than ONE web and db server (again redundancy).
Then you're talking about Storage for all the MP3 files, so you add a disk array or two.
And if you're really paranoid: You build it all over again on the other side of the country.
Try this.
Of course, news.google.ca is your friend.
Yeah well, it's called "Social Engineering". If that is paired with a lack of ethics you get managers and politicians or project managers.
Never, the thing you seem to remember is a statement to the effect that the tactics Bush is using are eerie similar to the tactics Hitler was using.
And if you think that statement is not true you might want to get a good history book some time.
For once? ;)
You have never experienced the North American Cellphone market, have you?
Being in Canada now for four years I have to admit I am fascinated by the whole Quebec thing.
For once the current issues where the liberals apparantly gave tons of money to Quebec to play nice, then the fact that Quebec within Canada is actually rather independent already.
Looking at all of this I have to conclude that Quebec already got the cake and is eating large parts of it too.
What exactly it is that Quebec hopes to gain by seperating from the rest of Canada is somewhat beyond me.
That I can't agree with. I take mail.app any day over Thunderbird... I have both on the system but think Mail works better. Especially since 10.3
I don't have a home phone. I am hardly there.
My cellphone bill runs at ~$60/month all included...
The matter of fact is: A home phone would cost me only slightly less and it would pretty much be useless to me.
How did you know?
Don't hate me because I am tall!
Well,
let me put it to you this way: Things are all in porportion with me.
As for the Support of M$.
Well guess what: If you buy a PS2 you support the PSX Monopoly, if you buy a Gamecube, you support the Nintendo Monopoly.
You can't win on that. And I use my XBox actually for games.
I loved the original controller. Perfect size, could play with it for hours without cramping.
:(
The new one (S Controller) is smaller, not as comfortable for me.
SNES, PSX etc. controllers? Too small for my hands, I just freaking cramp if I play longer on them.
Too bad that they stopped producing the original controller
Dare I say that you are comparing apples with oranges once more and that at the end of the day both economies are roughly at the same footing?
The reality is that business is more an art than a science anyways, despite what all the MBAs are trying to tell you.
Not likely it would be a seller. For three months out of the year it's not worth it, and they count on the fact that 99% of the people don't show up after the first month.