Admit they can't compete on their own, and put their people behind the OpenOffice project.
First of all, the product isn't even out yet, so saying that iWork isn't competitive seems a bit premature. Second of all, if Apple is too inept to make an native productivity suite that's better than OpenOffice on OS X, then they've already lost. OOo can't even begin to do what we've so far of iWork, and it takes advantage of none of the advanced features of OS X. They'd have been better off shipping AppleWorks 7.
$35.00??? You can get a Logitech Wireless keyboard/mouse combo for $25.00 from Buy.com.
Sweet heavens, man, you're right! How could I have been such a fool! Here I am, thinking people are going to be upset that they'd have to pay $35, when, in reality, they'd only have to spend $25! That's practically zero, so it totally invalidates my point! Because, you know, the average consumer scours the internet for deals instead of just going to Circuit City. (That's where I got the figure from, but this was before you blessed me with your insight.)
I simply can't allow you to waste your bargain-shopping skills here when there are so many switchers spending $35 on keyboards at this very moment. Go! Go, for the good of the city!
USB keyboards are readily available and cheap. Adding two PS2 ports to the Mac mini would have taken up a pretty good chunk of the backplane for very little gain.
I want to agree, but consider this--my family's eMachines uses a PS/2 keyboard. So does my roommate's Dell. These aren't top-of-the-line machines by any stretch, but they're not too old. The appeal of swapping a tower for the Mac mini is diminished ever-so-slightly if you have to go out and buy a $35 keyboard. Especially if you don't know that when you buy the Mac, and don't find out until you go to plug it in.
Don't get me wrong, I think the Mac mini is great, but I hear PC users bitch about this kind of thing all the time.
Count to 10. Now count to 100. The times differ by a factor of two? Think on that, Mr. Knuth, and get back to me. Honestly, though, it really doesn't matter. Unless it's O(1), then my point stands.
But I'm not going to win this, and we're going to argue semantics for the rest of the thread, so I'll just quit now. The reason, folks, that Canadians get their voting results quicker is not because there are fewer votes to count, but because American high school graduates are innumerate.
That's what you say if you want "+5 Insightful," right?
Check my math here, but America would also have nine times the people to do the counting.
Sure, but it's not a matter of just counting. If five hundred people are counting five hundred objects, they all simultaneously count their share in the same amount of time it would take one person to count a single object. But then those five hundred people have to get together and combine their results--that's where the time comes in.
So nine times as many people do nine times as much counting, and then require nine times as much...time...to combine their results.
Guess the Celebrity Jeopardy reference wasn't as funny as I thought, by the way.
I think the public will accept a few minor tweaks to how they operate, and for whats allowed, but the problem at the moment is how well will sites render in the new version?
should Microsoft maintain that backwards compatibility, or bite the bullet now to clean up their act?
They wouldn't have to choose. Since version 5 on the Mac, IE can tell if it's looking at a modern, compliant site, or your typical mangled site. It does this by checking for a DOCTYPE declaration. Not sure which windows version introduced this functionality, but it's there, too. Back in the day, IE had to emulate old Netscape weirdness, and DOCTYPE switching was what the IE 5/Mac team came up with to deal with the problem you mention.
Now, Netscape 4 bugs aren't really the problem. It's IE bugs that need to be emulated. More often than not, Mozilla and Safari bork pages because they can't emulate IE perfectly.
Microsoft wouldn't have that problem. MS knows *exactly* how older versions of IE (mis)behave. If Microsoft really wanted to, they could make IE 7 the best browser ever.
Whether this is good or not for the web depends very much on how serious these "improvements" are. Microsoft doesn't like web standards anymore, because it knows that standards are good for the underdog.
When I sell people on Firefox, features like tabbed browsing are big selling points. No one ever comes back to me and says, "Gosh, Chris, those obscure demos at meyerweb.com work great now, thanks!" because if they cared about standards, they'd already be using Firefox.
It's the tabs and the popup blocker that have managed to push IE usage on my site down to 12.6% (!), with the very pleasant side effect of me not having to mangle my markup. If IE gets those interface features before it gets real standards compliance, it may wind up being worse for developers, because people can get tabs in the browser that works with their online banking.
The classic Mac OS lasted what, 17 years? If Apple has plans of keeping the OS X codebase around that long, then it was wise for them to consider the power of future machines.
To use a trivial example: windows still resize slow on a G5, right? But they're "double-buffered" or whatever--and we'll still see the benefits of that even more five years from now, when a machine comes out that can resize them in real time.
Was it within Apple's grasp to make windows resize faster? Of course--but they'd have to compromise, and those compromises would still be around in five years, even though the hardware would make them unnecessary.
I worked at Circuit City last summer, and, as a switcher-in-the-making, I got all excited when I found out about the Apple reseller down the road. First time I ever tried to start a conversation, he made some stupid comment about my Circuit City shirt, then lectured me about how Apple would *never* release a computer with an IBM processor in it.
Since he was the only game in town, I referred customers to his shop whenever we didn't carry a product they needed, but warned them that he was kind of a dick--without actually using that word, of course. It's funny, though, because people would come back and say, "Hey, you know that guy you sent me to? What a dick!"
By the way, what ever happened to those rumors about IBM making the new processors for Macs? Those ever pan out?
Well, I'd like to say that I think it's really cool that a Mac developer is so enthusiastic about his project that he's going this far to get the product out.
But check out this excerpt from gcc's man pages:
-arch arch Compile for the specified target architecture arch. The allowable values are i386 and ppc. Multiple options work, and direct the compiler to produce ``fat'' binaries including object code for each architecture specified with -arch. This option only works if assembler and libraries are available for each architecture speci- fied. (APPLE ONLY)
Aww man...all my moderation's going to be undone in this discussion now. Well, to the person who said something funny up there: Good job.
You seem to be implying that we'd have to use Windows for some reason or another. I use a Mac at home, a Mac in the computer lab at school. The Mac lab is great...it's never full, because it terrifies people.
Haha, amusing story if anyone cares. I'm in the Mac lab at school today, and there's this African-American guy clad in NYCE trying to eject a floppy disk. This white guy (read: dork) notices, and launches into a discussion about how intuitive Macs are, and how you can just will them to do as you please. Wouldn't let it go, either. Just imagine Professor Frink evangelizing the HIG to 50 Cent.
Crap, the white guy is probably reading this right now...
Haha, oh, is that right? It's good to see that somebody finally figured out what to do with them. If this law passes, I'm buying stock in Sears, Roebuck, and Co.!
In the consumer space, I see the "best-of-breed" software for just about every category of applications.
Great. Now I'm all confused again. Here I was dismantling my PowerBook for parts, and I figured I'd give slashdot one more looksie, and now you're telling me that Macs are a viable platform?
No, no. I'm done...I can't be bothered with all this critical thinking. Everyone I know uses Windows, so it must be better. It's time to switch back and start capitalizing MAC.
omg lol 1 buttn mouse is teh sux
Ahhhh...that feels better. Anyways, anyone want to buy a TiBook? It hasn't been used much, except for Photoshop.
No, the parent is right. I have no good software for my Mac, and neither do you.
It's about time we faced the cold, hard truth and got on with our lives. And to think, before I read the comments on this article, I thought OS X was a viable platform! If only his comments had been available sooner, I could've saved months of despair and just bought an eMachines instead of a Powerbook...
Slashdot Mirror
No. As a general rule, authors are known for writing books ;)
He's an author. Make sense now?
I simply can't allow you to waste your bargain-shopping skills here when there are so many switchers spending $35 on keyboards at this very moment. Go! Go, for the good of the city!
Don't get me wrong, I think the Mac mini is great, but I hear PC users bitch about this kind of thing all the time.
You're missing the point.
The iPod is just bringing Apple into the public eye; the computers are selling themselves.
Count to 10. Now count to 100. The times differ by a factor of two? Think on that, Mr. Knuth, and get back to me. Honestly, though, it really doesn't matter. Unless it's O(1), then my point stands.
But I'm not going to win this, and we're going to argue semantics for the rest of the thread, so I'll just quit now. The reason, folks, that Canadians get their voting results quicker is not because there are fewer votes to count, but because American high school graduates are innumerate.
That's what you say if you want "+5 Insightful," right?
So nine times as many people do nine times as much counting, and then require nine times as much...time...to combine their results.
Guess the Celebrity Jeopardy reference wasn't as funny as I thought, by the way.
I think the public will accept a few minor tweaks to how they operate, and for whats allowed, but the problem at the moment is how well will sites render in the new version? should Microsoft maintain that backwards compatibility, or bite the bullet now to clean up their act?
They wouldn't have to choose. Since version 5 on the Mac, IE can tell if it's looking at a modern, compliant site, or your typical mangled site. It does this by checking for a DOCTYPE declaration. Not sure which windows version introduced this functionality, but it's there, too. Back in the day, IE had to emulate old Netscape weirdness, and DOCTYPE switching was what the IE 5/Mac team came up with to deal with the problem you mention.
Now, Netscape 4 bugs aren't really the problem. It's IE bugs that need to be emulated. More often than not, Mozilla and Safari bork pages because they can't emulate IE perfectly.
Microsoft wouldn't have that problem. MS knows *exactly* how older versions of IE (mis)behave. If Microsoft really wanted to, they could make IE 7 the best browser ever.
Whether this is good or not for the web depends very much on how serious these "improvements" are. Microsoft doesn't like web standards anymore, because it knows that standards are good for the underdog.
When I sell people on Firefox, features like tabbed browsing are big selling points. No one ever comes back to me and says, "Gosh, Chris, those obscure demos at meyerweb.com work great now, thanks!" because if they cared about standards, they'd already be using Firefox.
It's the tabs and the popup blocker that have managed to push IE usage on my site down to 12.6% (!), with the very pleasant side effect of me not having to mangle my markup. If IE gets those interface features before it gets real standards compliance, it may wind up being worse for developers, because people can get tabs in the browser that works with their online banking.
Since the only division of Apple making any serious money is iPod/iTunes, I do not think Apple will play nice.
Actually, I've recently discovered that Apple makes quite a bit of other products, including both wired and wireless computer mice!
On a whim, I also decided to purchase the Apple Powerbook, an oddly-named device which serves to bridge the gap between mouse and iPod.
That's the way I always saw it, too.
The classic Mac OS lasted what, 17 years? If Apple has plans of keeping the OS X codebase around that long, then it was wise for them to consider the power of future machines.
To use a trivial example: windows still resize slow on a G5, right? But they're "double-buffered" or whatever--and we'll still see the benefits of that even more five years from now, when a machine comes out that can resize them in real time.
Was it within Apple's grasp to make windows resize faster? Of course--but they'd have to compromise, and those compromises would still be around in five years, even though the hardware would make them unnecessary.
I can never get sarcasm to work right on slashdot. I'm just thankful that I got modded "Interesting," instead of "friggin' idiot".
I have like ten AC comments that are modded "troll" and are followed by rants and cursing...At least you were polite, Daniel.
I really do like Apple, slashdot! Why can't you see that?!
Yeah, pal, I feel your pain.
I worked at Circuit City last summer, and, as a switcher-in-the-making, I got all excited when I found out about the Apple reseller down the road. First time I ever tried to start a conversation, he made some stupid comment about my Circuit City shirt, then lectured me about how Apple would *never* release a computer with an IBM processor in it.
Since he was the only game in town, I referred customers to his shop whenever we didn't carry a product they needed, but warned them that he was kind of a dick--without actually using that word, of course. It's funny, though, because people would come back and say, "Hey, you know that guy you sent me to? What a dick!"
By the way, what ever happened to those rumors about IBM making the new processors for Macs? Those ever pan out?
Oh good. And now, to top it all off, someone who actually knows what they're talking about beat me to it. Good job to you, too, shamino0 :)
But check out this excerpt from gcc's man pages:Aww man...all my moderation's going to be undone in this discussion now. Well, to the person who said something funny up there: Good job.
If he's using Safari, or any Cocoa app for that matter, then yes. Maybe he's using IE 6 in VPC :)
Um..I don't use Windows as a second OS.
You seem to be implying that we'd have to use Windows for some reason or another. I use a Mac at home, a Mac in the computer lab at school. The Mac lab is great...it's never full, because it terrifies people.
Haha, amusing story if anyone cares. I'm in the Mac lab at school today, and there's this African-American guy clad in NYCE trying to eject a floppy disk. This white guy (read: dork) notices, and launches into a discussion about how intuitive Macs are, and how you can just will them to do as you please. Wouldn't let it go, either. Just imagine Professor Frink evangelizing the HIG to 50 Cent.
Crap, the white guy is probably reading this right now...
God damn it. Here I am trying to make *you* look like a retard, and I can't even close the freaking tag.
I guess I really should have used the Preview button.
this is why they make aircompressors
Haha, oh, is that right? It's good to see that somebody finally figured out what to do with them. If this law passes, I'm buying stock in Sears, Roebuck, and Co.!
I am joking, of course! ;)
I'd never part with this thing!
In the consumer space, I see the "best-of-breed" software for just about every category of applications.
Great. Now I'm all confused again. Here I was dismantling my PowerBook for parts, and I figured I'd give slashdot one more looksie, and now you're telling me that Macs are a viable platform?
No, no. I'm done...I can't be bothered with all this critical thinking. Everyone I know uses Windows, so it must be better. It's time to switch back and start capitalizing MAC.
omg lol 1 buttn mouse is teh sux
Ahhhh...that feels better. Anyways, anyone want to buy a TiBook? It hasn't been used much, except for Photoshop.
No, the parent is right. I have no good software for my Mac, and neither do you.
It's about time we faced the cold, hard truth and got on with our lives. And to think, before I read the comments on this article, I thought OS X was a viable platform! If only his comments had been available sooner, I could've saved months of despair and just bought an eMachines instead of a Powerbook...
Haha, okay, well then I'm a retard. There's what, five replies so far telling me that I'm wrong?
I guess I'll have to wait until my university updates the client. As of now, I can still only download the older version.