I was present at one of the first trials of this technology, before the bugs were worked out.
We installed new cubicals and had them wired for both ethernet and electricity. The electrician made a mistake and wired the electricity to the ethernet terminals - 220 volts.
Fortunately it burned out the ethernet cards in the local and server computers before it did any more damage.
If I remember correctly, market share is calculated
from the total number of computers sold. This is fine with PC's that have to be replaced every 1.5 years or so. However, Macs they tend to be used much longer than that.
One of Apple's biggest markets is 'artistic' or
'creative' users. Once those people spend the time and energy to learn a computer, they stay with it. It still does the job they paid for it to do, why replace it just because there is something newer and faster?
The Macs in our house are 3.5 and 8 years old and both are still used every day!
Market share does not reflect this longer life span of Apple computers. To accurately show the ratio of Macs vs PCs being used, some measure of useful life time must be included in the calculation, not just number of units sold. I would expect the acutal 'usage share' of Macs to be between 10% and 20%, just because the Macs have a much longer useful life.
Maybe the cost comparisons between Macs and PCs should also be adjusted to reflect this difference. Would you rather pay $1000 for a PC that needs to be replaced no later than 2006 ($500 per year) or $1500 for a Mac that can still be doing the job you bought it for in 2010 ($250 per year)?
One of the (many) reasons that the various *ix's are better than the Massive Microsoft Monolith is that most programs are designed to do one thing (and only one thing). That means that most *ix programs come with a simple (read: stupid) user interface, usually from the command line or from STDIN/STDOUT. (Frequently, they have both.)
Therefore, some digigeek can write the program that does the bit manipulation and only speaks geekish, but someone interested in User Interfaces can write an application that provides a clear and functional interface. The connection between the two may be a System call or a Pipe. What a simple and powerful idea: the developers that understand bits and hardware write the part that interests them and those that understand users can write the parts that interest them! The connection between the two is a standard interface.
In Gates' world, everything is part of a single entity - Microsoft. If someone wants to add a new feature or improve an interface, that person must understand the entire monolith. User interfaces are completely controlled by M$. Although this guarantees a minimum acceptable interface, it leaves no room for growth.
I have always thought the simple interface idea was one of the most powerful features of *ix. This is the reason there are multiple shells in *ix. It allows the possibility that programs with poor user interfaces can be easily improved, with encapsulation (wow, just like OOA/D).
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We installed new cubicals and had them wired for both ethernet and electricity. The electrician made a mistake and wired the electricity to the ethernet terminals - 220 volts.
Fortunately it burned out the ethernet cards in the local and server computers before it did any more damage.
(That may be why the reduced it to 13V ;-)
If I remember correctly, market share is calculated from the total number of computers sold. This is fine with PC's that have to be replaced every 1.5 years or so. However, Macs they tend to be used much longer than that.
One of Apple's biggest markets is 'artistic' or 'creative' users. Once those people spend the time and energy to learn a computer, they stay with it. It still does the job they paid for it to do, why replace it just because there is something newer and faster?
The Macs in our house are 3.5 and 8 years old and both are still used every day!
Market share does not reflect this longer life span of Apple computers. To accurately show the ratio of Macs vs PCs being used, some measure of useful life time must be included in the calculation, not just number of units sold. I would expect the acutal 'usage share' of Macs to be between 10% and 20%, just because the Macs have a much longer useful life.
Maybe the cost comparisons between Macs and PCs should also be adjusted to reflect this difference. Would you rather pay $1000 for a PC that needs to be replaced no later than 2006 ($500 per year) or $1500 for a Mac that can still be doing the job you bought it for in 2010 ($250 per year)?
The large rats were featured in "The Killer Shrews" (1959) and look a lot like dogs wearing spray paint.
One of the (many) reasons that the various *ix's are better than the Massive Microsoft Monolith is that most programs are designed to do one thing (and only one thing). That means that most *ix programs come with a simple (read: stupid) user interface, usually from the command line or from STDIN/STDOUT. (Frequently, they have both.) Therefore, some digigeek can write the program that does the bit manipulation and only speaks geekish, but someone interested in User Interfaces can write an application that provides a clear and functional interface. The connection between the two may be a System call or a Pipe. What a simple and powerful idea: the developers that understand bits and hardware write the part that interests them and those that understand users can write the parts that interest them! The connection between the two is a standard interface. In Gates' world, everything is part of a single entity - Microsoft. If someone wants to add a new feature or improve an interface, that person must understand the entire monolith. User interfaces are completely controlled by M$. Although this guarantees a minimum acceptable interface, it leaves no room for growth. I have always thought the simple interface idea was one of the most powerful features of *ix. This is the reason there are multiple shells in *ix. It allows the possibility that programs with poor user interfaces can be easily improved, with encapsulation (wow, just like OOA/D).