That is a myth that PC manufacturers are currently riding all the way to hell. A typical PC these days is made up of components that were spec'ed by Microsoft (without input from Intel, since 1999), OS and application software by Microsoft, curvy box and branding by Gateway/Dell/HP/etc, hardware construction by far east subcontractor. It is exactly the same with the XBox, except the curvy box and branding are now also done by Microsoft. Same with Microsoft UltimateTV, same with the upcoming Microsoft HomeStation (XBox with keyboard, mouse, and MS Office "HomeStation Edition").
Microsoft has long-since taken over the PC and made it the "Microsoft PC". Apple and Microsoft are pretty much the only vendors with unique products in the PC space. Users want Apple or they want Microsoft, and anyone else is generally incidental. People have been buying Microsoft PC's for years, then stripping off Windows (which they paid for) and telling themselves "this is a generic, open PC that I have here". Check out the Windows logo on your keyboard... it's a Microsoft PC. Change all the Compaq, HP, Gateway logos on boxes out there to Microsoft logos and the constraints that the box makers are under ("thou shalt ship only Windows") begin to make sense.
My wife recently bought a new handheld, and she preferred Palm over HandSpring because using Windows and then a Mac had taught her that getting the OS with the hardware and from one company is a better experience. When faced with the choice of a cheap Microsoft PC or a cheap Gateway PC featuring Microsoft Windows, people are going to go with Microsoft in droves. They will know that their box and bundled apps will be TOTALLY supported in the next OS rev (just like a Mac), and they will flock to it.
> PC manufacturers have to be more careful,
> because the product has to be supported by
> other hardware
Macs also have to be supported by other hardware... Mac users have printers, scanners, MP3 players, CD/DVD burners, USB devices of every description, FireWire this and that. USB and FireWire and PCI and AGP are in both Macs and PC's. Connectivity is king these days, and Apple has plenty of that... even the little $1299 subnotebook-sized iBook has modem, Ethernet, FireWire, USB, VGA out, TV out, audio out, and AirPort (802.11) wireless. It also includes high-quality software for actually using these hardware features. If you need more capabilities, you can easily install third-party software by dragging a single icon from a CD or similar to your hard disk. "Uninstalling" means dragging that same single icon to the Trash. There is a huge Mac community to continue to support with each new Mac, and that includes third-party software and hardware makers. Even hardware makers that don't make Mac drivers... you can plug a FireWire hard disk into a Mac and it just works, even if the hard disk was made for a PC and is formatted with FAT32.
> and *all* the different OSes (which usually
> means M$ Windows).
A new box from Gateway is no more guaranteed to run Linux than a new box from Apple. They both run Linux, and you generally have to get the go-ahead from your distro's author before you know it is going to work on a brand-new box. Only Windows and Mac OS are fully supported, on Microsoft and Apple PC's, respectively. Anything else has turned into repurposing hardware, and that's why Linux and BSD face such a hard time... Linux boxes are generally Microsoft PC's that won't run the latest Microsoft OS (XP is not recommended on anything pre-2000 due to BIOS issues). Many Mac users are now running Linux for the first time on old Macs that won't run OS X (1997 and earlier).
Talking about "generic PC's" or "open PC's" these days is just being a Microsoft apologist. They own it, and have owned it for a while. Soon, they will actually put their name on the front door (on the box) instead of just on the deed (their contracts with PC manufacturers).
>> Why wouldn't you want a firewire external
>> harddrive?
> Price. Firewire is a better high end technology,
> but it cost more to implement.
Not true.
> If USB 2.0 becomes common, then external
> USB 2.0 drives should cost less than firewire ones.
That is a big IF. FireWire is already common and cheap.
> If the performance is suficient with USB 2.0,
> why pay for firewire.
Performance won't be sufficient with USB 2.0. FireWire was designed to be a peer-to-peer multimedia LAN. USB 2.0 was designed to be a way to get mouses and keyboards plugged into computers. USB still requires that a computer be part of the device chain; with FireWire, a FireWire camcorder and VCR can talk to each other without a computer. There is much more to this than just making both standards faster.
FireWire is not just here NOW, it was here YESTERDAY. There is no place-your-bets atmosphere on FireWire, just incredibly happy and productive users doing things they used to only dream about.
I can't believe I'm replying about a one-button Mac mouse in 2001, when Macs have been using plain USB mouses for three years, and Mac OS X features native support for a ton of USB peripherals, no drivers needed, including multi-button USB mouses. The Mac API for mouse buttons features support for 99 buttons if you want it.
The short answer as to why Apple ships one-button mouses is that 70% of their users like the one-button mouse and continue to use it throughout the life of their Mac, while the other 30% of their users prefer something else. The 30% is split amongst trackball users, scroller lovers, 2-button former-Windows users, 3-button X-Windows users, people who want a specific mouse for gaming, people who want a mini-keyboard on their pointing device, etc. The 30% who don't like the default mouse have vast, cheap, third-party options. This is the perfect way for them, because they would not likely all be satisfied with one kind of mouse anyway. If Apple ships a two-button mouse, the X-Windows people will freak out about it, especially now that Mac OS runs X-Windows natively; if they ship with a scroller, some will complain; without it, others will complain. So they ship an easy mouse for everyone that most people are satisfied with; and you can go to Fry's and buy any other mouse you want and it will just work with your Mac and Mac OS X.
I have also read in a number of places that MOST Windows users don't use the second button on their mouse; this jibes with Apple's figures that 70% of their users don't want a second button.
This debate falls under the category of things geeks think are essential and non-geeks just find to be either extraneous and somewhat confusing or totally uninteresting and always in the way. In other words, if you've ever used a Unix command line, then have the humility to believe that Apple actually knows better than you how to ship iMacs for Grandma.
There are a number of other reasons why Apple continues to ship a one-button mouse as standard:
most beginners find a one-button mouse much easier to use when they are learning computing
the Mac OS user interface has traditionally only required one button, so there are a number of Mac users who have never used anything else
the fact that Macs ship with one-button mouses means that third-party hardware and software developers can never expect a user to have more than one button, just as they are never to expect a user to know how to use the command line; as a result, users aren't forced to use a second button... it is always optional
maintaining one-button navigation of the OS keeps it ready for tablet use (a no-button stylus that you tap against the screen to register a click is the easiest stylus to use; a stylus with a one clickable button is second-best; a multi-button stylus is way, way, way harder to explain and to physically use)
Mac OS has a pervasive, context-sensitive menubar across the top of the screen that users quickly learn to hit with a quick flick of the mouse... being able to pop-up a context menu under your cursor is just not as valuable in Mac OS as elsewhere
a single button Trackpad on a notebook where a Control-click is the same as a right-click means your hands stay on the keyboard more as you work, and your Trackpad button can be large and be used by both righties and lefties
there is a whole slippery slope of tech writing jargon that you avoid on the Mac: "right-button (unless you have your buttons swapped)"; "click (not right-click)"; "left-click (if you're right handed)"; "context-click" (many users don't know what that means)... on the Mac, it is just "point and click"
Altivec is shining plenty already. Look at the speed of MPEG-2 encoding on a G4. I am also able to run a very large number of realtime audio plug-ins on a G4/733... really amazing performance. High-quality MP3 encoding at 8x on a PowerBook G4 500 owes something to Altivec. Altivec is fucking great.
CPU's are such a cock thing. Integration and connectivity are what's usually lacking in a personal computer.
Apple can tune a system from stem to stern, which is why 10.1 is so ridiculously much faster than 10.0... they've had time to tune it for each system. It runs really fast on old iBooks with a RAM upgrade. Their software knows what their hardware is doing and vice versa, it's all one system. Drivers and updates can be set to download automatically from Apple, for everything that came installed on the box. A 20MB online WebDAV disk is also included, and free IMAP email. Integrated. DVD burning Mac has all the stuff you need to go from camcorder to your own DVD, and it's easy enough that little kids can use it.
All Macs have AirPort (802.11), FireWire (1394), modem, VGA, USB, Ethernet. PowerMacs also have gigabit Ethernet, DVI, PCI, AGP. Stuff goes in and out very fast and in lots of ways. Mac OS X also seamlessly switches between different networks, so you can plug a PowerBook into Ethernet and it will get the Internet like that, and unplug the Ethernet and it will automatically switch to AirPort if it's available, if not it will look at the modem, etc. until it finds a connection. If it doesn't find one, it doesn't complain to you, and it's easy to set your preferences for how this works. USB and FireWire storage, MP3 players, printers, and other hardware don't need additonal drivers beyond what comes with the OS. Mac OS X speaks NFS, SMB, and AppleTalk file sharing. That kind of stuff saves you so much more time than a 75 watt monster CPU that is slower for many tasks than a 14 watt G4.
No, many of the same AGP cards work on both Macs and PC's... there are definitely folks who are using PC Nvidia cards in their Macs, although sometimes they have to update the card's firmware or something. Maybe what's confusing about the way the slot in a PowerMac looks is that there is also some stuff there for Apple Display Connector (a high-end DVI connector) that powers the display through the graphics adapter and with a single cable for DVI, USB, and AC power.
> Would I be able to continually upgrade parts
> cheaply with a PPC based machine.
Yes. Usually the same parts. Same RAM, PCI cards, AGP video cards, FireWire and USB devices, Ethernet networking, etc. CPU upgrades are available for almost every Mac model... I'm not sure if they're worthwhile, given that you can sell a Mac used and get good money for it and just buy the updated version of your machine (mid-range PowerMac, for example) and get lots of new features in addition to CPU speed.
With a Mac, a big feature is the large number of well-integrated features and simple software updates and support, so that raises the initial price... you get a lot of hardware and software features all at once as a starting point. The included software is not just promotional LE versions of obscure apps, but is actually really top-notch stuff that provides real solutions and is heavily supported. So you have a DVD-RW/CD-RW drive built into your Mac, and it comes with iMovie and iDVD so that anyone can go from camcorder to DVD video disc, with a full motion-menus DVD interface, and it encodes MPEG-2 very quickly at very high quality. It costs for that stuff, and it's part of every PowerMac except the lowest-end one. This is best-of-breed stuff, worth buying the box for just by itself, not a hook to sell you another version that really works. You get a lot.
That doesn't stop you from adding extra stuff if you need it, though. I use two PowerMacs... one has a Pro Tools PCI audio card in it, and 1.5GB RAM, and the other has a PCI ATA RAID card in it and 200GB of hard disks (they sit in four spots in the bottom of the case so they stay cool, and are really easy to install thanks to the way the door opens and other internal design features on PowerMacs). There is so much stuff on PowerMac mobos (including 802.11 wireless, 1394 FireWire, gigabit Ethernet) that you don't usually have to add too much more, except for SCSI, pro audio adapters (lots of vendors for these), RAID, video or MPEG processors or whatever, or multiple video cards (I think Mac OS X might be limited to only two video cards right now, but Mac OS 9 will run with more). Basically, you have fewer choices of vendors than with Microsoft, but you almost always have a few great choices in each category, and the stuff works first time and is easy to install. For creative stuff, Mac support is often better, and software more mature or full-featured. Software wise you can run every kind of Mac app (68k, PPC, Carbon, Cocoa), Java2, and BSD Unix apps. It comes with Apache, emacs, Perl, etc. etc.
I used to like to get into a box and get my hands dirty, but I am spoiled now by hot-plugging FireWire drives and having them just work, and installing PCI cards and at the most having to install a driver with a one-click installer. I have USB stuff: Wacom tablet, MP3 player, scanner, printer, camera, etc. and FireWire hard disks, DV camera. You can have a Mac and still have it all. The market is smaller, but Mac users buy a lot of peripherals and software and such, so Mac users are buying a lot of FireWire hard disks and such and support is great. I have a Ricochet USB modem that I used on a bunch of Macs, running Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. Support was built into both systems.
Macs have long working lives. You just get your software updates from Apple (they update automatically if you want), and a Mac keeps on working. Mac OS X (especially version 10.1) is running really well on two and three year old Macs, and it's a major jump in functionality over the previous version of the OS. Macs are often found to have lower total cost of ownership.
A cool Mac hardware site is http://www.xlr8yourmac.com
The IBM Power chips ARE the same architecture. That's where the "Power" in "PowerPC" comes from. IBM and Motorola both make PowerPC's (IBM makes all the iMac CPU's).
> You obviously arent aware that apple is pulling a
> 30% profit margin on every machine shipped.
I read somewhere once that Apple's margins also include their software, which obviously has a higher profit margin than hardware. Gateway and Dell do not have equivalent products to Final Cut Pro, which is the most popular pro DV editor, which sells for $1000 and is considered to be very cheap. Apple also is huge in DVD authoring, and their DVD Studio Pro also sells for $1000 and is considered to be very cheap. AppleWorks, WebObjects, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, iMovie... they are quite a software powerhouse.
So Gateway and Dell's profit margins are all on low-margin hardware, while Apple's profit margins are on a mix of low-margin hardware and high-margin software. It would make sense that Apple's overall profit margin would then be higher than Gateway and Dell's. The OS is an expense for Gateway and Dell (money paid to Microsoft), but it's a profit for Apple (they get Microsoft's share of the profit on a Gateway or Dell box, in other words). The mobo is an expense for Gateway and Dell (money paid to Intel), but it's a profit for Apple, since Apple does its own mobo designs. They also have licensing profits that they get from technology that they invented, like TrueType fonts and laser printers and Firewire. And they have retail stores now, too, that will figure in the equation in the near future.
> Their entry level iMac is around $900, and entry
> level PC is around $500.
The features just don't compare. The iMac has a ton of stuff that you're not getting in a $500 PC, everything from hardware features, to bundled software, to future support. Integration, ease of use. Mac OS X is no Windows Me, either.
If the user chooses, Macs update all of their software components automatically once a day/week/month. You leave an iMac alone and your video drivers, security patches, OS updates, updates to bundled apps, etc. all just show up on their own, popping up to ask for your approval to install, with descriptions of what they do, all vetted by Apple. Then major OS updates are one-click installers that just work, without driver issues and long serial numbers and activation, and every other one is free. You don't get stuff like that in a $500 PC. It costs money to develop that kind of thing. There are dozens of features like that in an iMac or any Mac.
There's just no equivalent Mac to a $500 PC, except for maybe a used Mac (which are still very useful since you know the bundled software is all updated and supported and drivers are not an issue).
> They may have been on the right track with the
> i-Mac, but they didn't keep up the push by
> upgrading rapidly and continuing to reduce
> prices, and that one too has languished.
Apple is selling over 300,000 iMacs every quarter. They shipped more iMacs in summer 2001 than in any other quarter. It is a cash cow. That's why there is no flat panel version yet. They'll probably go to a complete redesign with flat panel when they can also do something else special with it, like go to G4 and booting Mac OS X as default.
> at one point i-Macs were flying off the shelves
> nearly as fast as Wintel hardware
The iMac is actually the best-selling PC model ever. If you're not familiar with them, there are a lot of features that you don't expect, or even think about. It's not a regular old computer stuck in a cute box... it's silent, all the ports are easy to access, it can act as an 802.11 base station for 10 notebooks, RAM is installed in a special RAM-only door, the optical drive is slot-loading, it has FireWire and iMovie and a high-quality software bundle. Incredible stability in Mac OS X, too. So, they are really a great solution to a lot of problems for many people, in spite of perceived flaws such as a smallish display, and a misconception that a 500-700MHz G3 is not fast.
> It does NOT cost as much to develop OSX as it took
> to develop W2K! Apple took the Code straight from
> the BSD and NextStep projects. Apple saved a
> crapload of money thanks to the BSD guys, and
> quite frankly I'm still waiting to see Apple give
> anything substantial BACK to the BSD community.
You are completely misguided, here. The Microsoft TCP/IP stack is a direct lift from BSD, bit-for-bit. There is a ton of BSD stuff in Windows, but it is hidden away. It's not something that Microsoft promotes as a feature. But that's perfectly within their rights... that's how the BSD license is supposed to work.
Apple promotes the fact that BSD Unix is a key feature of Mac OS X, even down to praising the TCP/IP stack and Apache and similar, and they include a full-featured command line shell and a bunch of BSD utilities and text editors like Pico and Emacs, etc. They ship developer tools for free inside the Mac OS X box, including gcc and such, and offer them as free downloads, and generally make it easy for newbies to discover these tools and open source technologies. Apple has contributed back to the community by releasing an open source BSD-based Unix called Darwin, which includes a lot of NeXT features, Apple's QuickTime Streaming Server, and runs on PPC Macs and IA32. Darwin 1.4 is what Mac OS X 10.1 runs on. QuickTime Streaming Server is open source and runs on Darwin, Mac OS X, Linux, and NT. It is by far the cheapest way to stream video (no fees at all), and it also is the highest-quality. They also contribute code to BSD projects, and are involved with IEEE 1394 (FireWire), HyperTransport, 802.11 (AirPort). I think they are also working towards more interoperability between Darwin/Mac OS X and other Unix systems, including Linux. Apple's QuickTime file format is the basis for MPEG-4 as well. Apple also heavily promotes MP3, bundling a really high-quality, full-featured app that makes it easy for anyone to rip and burn CD's. They support a ton of standards. Mac OS X is the most compatible OS ever... Mac apps, modernized Mac apps, Java2, BSD, Cocoa (formerly OpenStep) all run on Mac OS X (and all the Intel stuff runs in VirtualPC on Mac OS X, too). It's a developers dream. Not to mention that some fundamental computing things like GUI window regions, drag and drop, and lots of other stuff that is commonly seen in every GUI, originally came out of Apple (no, there were no overlapping windows or drag and drop at Xerox Parc).
They include a lot of stuff, is all. There is no bare-bones system. The $2500 PowerMac has a SuperDrive (DVD-RW/CD-RW), and iDVD software that enables anyone to make beautiful DVD interfaces, and software-encodes your media into MPEG-2 at 2x (and in the background while you make the interface when running on OS X) and burns a disc that plays on consumer DVD video players. It also has iMovie, which is the most popular consumer video editor, and is easy to use without reading a manual. And Mac OS X, Java2, FireWire, optical mouse, AirPort (802.11) antennaes, AirPort software (for acting as a base station for a wireless LAN), CD-burning software, BSD Unix, iTunes MP3 and CD-burning music management app, easy open case, takes 1.5GB RAM (installs in 3 seconds). They also use the high-end DVI connector that also carries USB and AC power (you can get a cheap adapter to turn it into plain DVI as well) so you plug the display on and you're done and it auto-configures itself right down to color management through the OS and apps. It has 2MB L3 cache. Gigabit Ethernet is standard, too, and really useful to Apple's customers. There is also an amp inside that works with some matching Harmon Kardon speakers you get for $49 that look like little glass spheres and sound good. Low power consumption can't be ignored either... the CPU's requiring 15% of the power and cooling of their Intel and AMD counterparts really makes a difference in power costs long-term, in California at least. The power supply in the box also powers the display, which is nice. Fewer cables and heat.
You just get a lot at each of their price points. There aren't any screwdriver shop Macs, and no bare bones boxes. The iMac is their low end box, and it's also sort of their flagship box, and has AirPort and FireWire and iMovie and iTunes and Mac OS X and AppleWorks and a big software bundle of games and such. If you want a cheap Mac, you buy last year's iMac on eBay, or inherit a Mac from a friend who has higher performance needs than you or money to burn or both. If all the stuff that comes with a Mac doesn't interest you, then get a cheap Microsoft PC, or build one yourself and run Linux or BSD.
You're guaranteed support for all of the hardware in future OS releases for quite some time (including video drivers and such), and Macs retain their value pretty well and sell used for good prices. They typically have long working lives and great stability. Highly upgradeable, too, even the CPU's in most cases. They all take a lot of RAM and have FireWire.
MHz is important for existing customers... if you have a G3 300 and you're wondering if you're missing something by not getting a new system, it's plain that a G3 700 or a dual G4 800 is a faster system. It's still the same CPU architecture, running the same applications, so the comparison of MHz numbers probably has a corresponding performance benefit.
Comparing to a P4 by using MHz is not nearly as useful, as shown by the Media Cleaner Pro and Photoshop comparisons that the 733MHz and 867MHz PowerMacs keep winning (Apple, Macworld, PC Magazine, TechTV). They are also much faster for software MPEG-2 encoding for DVD's, because Altivec is like a dedicated 128-bit DSP chip. The G4 outclasses the P4 in some things, and the reverse is also true. If you're doing creative work, video, audio, graphics, DVD, then a Mac is great because the G4's strengths play to those apps. Not surprising since those are Apple's key customers, and they work to support those needs. In situations like gaming I can see where you're better with a P4 for a straight gaming box, all things considered.
The 64-bitness of the G5 shouldn't slow it down on 32-bit code, because apparently they planned for 64-bits from the very start with the Power architecture. There's always been an expectation that this would happen, so the 32-bit stuff is supposed to run full-speed, without some kind of "compatibility mode" overhead.
There have been 64-bit Power processors for a long time, of course, just not in desktop machines.
> BeOS seemed to check all the same boxes as
> MacOSX, except for the "Suck up to Steve Jobs
> because we're just as easily taken in as everyone
> else in the industry" box.
C'mon, man. In 1996, BeOS couldn't even print. It wasn't multiuser, it wasn't POSIX, it hadn't reached 1.0, and Be had very few customers and no profits. NeXT machines also used ADB keyboards and mouses (same as the Macs of the day), supported the HFS+ file system, and had other common features with the Mac. In fact, the original NeXT project started at Apple, and the project and team left with Steve Jobs to form NeXT.
NeXT came back into the fold in 1996... it was an easy merger to make. Considering how unhappy Sony was with the stability of the eVilla (BeIA), and that BeOS no longer exists, it seems a little strange to still be pushing BeOS over NeXT.
> Now, if you knew a machine that was 50% faster
> in clockspeed than the current model was just a
> month or two away, wouldn't you want to wait?
> I would. And that's pretty much the last thing
> Apple really needs at the mement.
Apple is profitable right now, and has been for 11 of the past 12 quarters. They also have 4.2 billion dollars in cash. They're hardly in the position of "that's the last thing they need right now."
The PowerBook G4 is actually the next machine that's due to be revised (any minute now) and that will get them through to January easily (there probably won't be G5 notebooks for 6-12 months after the G5 desktops ship. There is also an LCD iMac that's not too far off (possibly with a G4). Mac OS X 10.1 at the end of September will also probably drive more Mac OS X upgrade sales and more hardware purchases. They are in great shape to get from here to a January/February G5.
Ha ha ha... games are not written to the lowest common denominator... games often push hardware to its limits. Macs have "fat binaries", though, so it is easy for a developer to ship a single app that actually has multiple versions, each one optimized for a different processor or OS version, and the OS sorts that out. The user doesn't have to know or care. Any app that is CPU-intensive has long since supported Altivec.
Current 3D hardware perfectly solves yesterday's problems. Apple is building really new stuff... it makes sense that current 3D hardware is missing one or two things that you would ideally like to have. The next generation of 3D hardware now has some new problems to solve. This is called "moving forward". Still, Mac OS 9.1 and Mac OS X 10.1 have similar GUI speed on the same hardware.
> The point remains though, a GUI that uses more
> resources than most of the programs you want to
> run is pretty worthless.
That's true.
Has nothing to do with Mac OS X, though, since that is plainly not the case with Mac OS X.
Even if it was, taking a performance hit is acceptable when you move to a new generation of technology that has many new advantages (eg. bitmap printers to PostScript printers). Apps are already taking great advantage of OS X's buffered windows so that your document window doesn't have to be redrawn when you drag another window or a panel over it. There are lots of other advantages that will be realized over time.
> The iMacs won't be suitable OS X boxen until
> they have a G4.
That just isn't true (maybe for 10.0.x, but not 10.1). I'm running 10.0.4 on a G3 PowerBook ("Pismo") with 512MB of cheap, cheap RAM (half its capacity) right now, and there is nothing wrong with the graphic or app speed. Most iMacs are faster than this box, since iMacs have full-speed desktop hard drives, and 16MB graphics RAM (instead of 8 in a Pismo).
In fact, graphics are wickedly fast, even with only an 8MB graphics adapter, and they're also fully 32-bit and crisp as anything... like real life. There aren't any bells and whistles to turn on or off... that guy is a troll. Even with a third-party tool, the adjustments that you can make are cosmetic, and not performance-based (except maybe choosing scale instead of genie or suck as the minimize effect, which saves you a few milliseconds when you minimze a window... scale is supposed to be the new default because of that). It's when you create a new window that you get a short wait cursor, or try to make the very unfinished Finder do two things at once that you get a long wait cursor and start to feel like you are wading in quicksand. It feels unoptimized, and with the reported speed improvements in 10.1 (3.5x on everything), I would guess that 10.0.x really is unoptimized.
Go figure that the first PDF-based window server, on a heavily rewritten consumer and pro OS that now has five applications environments (Carbon, Classic, Cocoa, Java, and BSD Unix) instead of maybe 2.5 in Mac OS 9 (Carbon, Classic, and almost-Java) would need six months of shakedown in the hands of users in order for Apple to see what needs tuning and where.
This PowerBook has only crashed once since Mac OS X was installed in April 2001, and that bug has already been fixed. It's a rock.
People who pick on a supposed lack of apps conveniently forget that Mac OS X runs about 90% of all Mac apps every written, and that the Carbon API is on both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. Photoshop is not running in Carbon yet, but it's running fine in Classic. The next rev will run in Carbon. When your shipping app is running fine on Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, it takes some of the pressure off a port. Most developers seem to be wanting to make a big splash with really fine-tuned Carbon apps that take advantage of some Mac OS X-only features, such as what Microsoft is doing with Office, rather than rush out their native versions.
Nice that the transition to 64-bit G5 looks like it will be as easy on the user as the transition from G3 to G4. Even easier on the developer than supporting Altivec (which isn't hard). I can't wait to see what a 1.6GHZ G5 with 10 pipelines performs like (P4 is 2GHZ but has a huge 20 pipelines). I love the performance of my G4/733 workstation already, software encoding high-quality MPEG-2 at 2x, running ridiculous numbers of real-time audio plug-ins, etc. A dual-800 G4 does MPEG-2 encoding at 1x, so these new G5's will open up whole new areas of performance. (Note: "encoding", not "decoding".)
What's the minimum software that you'd have to replace in order to de-Microsoft a typical PC?
I don't think the average frustrated Windows user wants to stop running IE and MS Office. You don't have to replace those. Users probably like most of their other applications, too. What most people want to stop is that the whole shooting match is dependent on Microsoft Windows. It gets better, or it gets worse, according to Microsoft. Any security in Windows is always open to Microsoft's applications. Features come and go and are reliable or unreliable based mainly on who is currently having their air supply cut off, etc. It's a drag.
One of the nice things about switching from using Windows full-time to using a Mac full-time is that suddenly Microsoft is just another software company. Replacing the core of Windows with something non-Microsoft could give Windows users that feeling that they can really hold Microsoft accountable for their dirty tricks and just switch off the Microsoft software if they want to, without losing their computer's functionality and capabilities. At least you could close IE when you wanted to, and run an Adobe or other app on a non-Microsoft foundation, perhaps with better performance as well.
Imagine a Windows software installer that you run, and after a reboot, the computer functions in basically the same manner, except that it can function with all of the Microsoft apps shut off. They are running a non-MS kernel and certain systems that are acting as a traffic cop or conscience for Windows. You can run IE or any MS app, but they are in their own processes and effectively being contained from any scripting mischief or whatever.
Wouldn't this be a good way for the Linux kernel to get onto more machines full-time? If it could replace the NT kernel and the user could still keep their apps at least... a huge selling point. People can write to other API's later as time goes on, like Apple moving to the Cocoa API by just putting it out there, and developers can adopt it as they please. In the meantime, people still have a lot of Win32 apps that they want to use on their PC's, and Carbon apps on their Macs. If somebody wants to replace Windows with Linux in great numbers then getting the Win32 API going might be just as important to their vision of Linux as having the Carbon API and the Classic environment is on Mac OS X. Computers exist to run the apps that are on them RIGHT NOW. To be able to switch to Linux and still use all those old Netscape and SmartSuite and DOS game discs you have from 1997 might be cool for some people. Also, the Enhanced CD's in people's music collections have Mac versions and PC versions. The PC versions are Windows versions. If Linux were to replace Windows tomorrow, then adding support for those CD's would be a priority. Whatever replaces Windows (if anything) would probably have to make that level of commitment to the PC platform's non-Unix past, so why not just enable the stuff to be run natively?
These guys at Trumpet don't seem to look at it as OS and applications and who owns what. If you think of the user's PC, the Trumpet core OS product was replaced by yet another Microsoft core OS product. Now Trumpet is working on new core OS products that replace some of Microsoft's at the user's discretion. Even if they only replace the functionality of Windows 95, then that gives them an instant application base that is very large. Also, they would give Windows developers a reason to stick to core Win32 stuff and make good cross-platform code in order to run in both places, even just for the principle. If you are making subnotebooks or something, why make one with Pocket Windows when you could make a Microsoft-free Windows95-compatible Pentium-class subnotebook that runs real Windows and DOS apps (not all of them, but LOTS) with excellent performance? There are interesting things going on when you can get the Win32 application base or a subset of it without having to build your business on Microsoft.
We've been on the slippery slope for years. A "crime" is not something you commit against your fellow man, it's a beaurocratic catch-all term for anything that it was once politically expedient to outlaw. Possessing MDMA can get you 10 years, and no lawmaker ever voted on that... MDMA was just lumped in with other drugs that people in power didn't like and/or their corporate constituents couldn't compete with. No Constitutional amendment started the Drug War, which both started and ended Alcohol Prohibition. We have been lawless for a long time and are getting more and more lawless with each new law that is passed. There's no underlying tenet that explains why hemp is so illegal and the alcohol, tobacco, and Nylon(TM), Valium(TM), etc. that has replaced hemp for most people is not. Valium(TM) is more addictive; Nylon(TM) is not environmentally responsible. Nobody dies from smoking pot and yet doing so alone in your house is a very dangerous act solely because your fellow man will send in cops to commit you to prison where you will be raped and tortured.
The number of people who celebrated freedom at Woodstock in 1969 is dwarfed by the number of people who were ruined by Prohibition and the Drug War in the 20th century. The US puts more people in prison than any other country. The majority of prisoners are there for consensual crimes... they just offended an aristocrat or religious leader's sensibilities is all. They did something "heathen" and they went to jail for it. At the same time, we all pretend that the Constitution is actually followed... we pretend that all of our laws are Constitutional when it is plain that very few actually are.
b) Restrictions on my privacy but being reasonably assured that paedophiles will be eliminated from the society before they rape children.
I'll always choose the option b)
Your children are much more likely to be raped in prison than they are on the public streets. Your children are much more likely to go to prison because of face recognition cameras (combined with the incredible number of laws we have). Ergo, face recognition cameras actually increase your children's chances of being raped.
Keep in mind that most people in prison in the US today never victimized another person. If your children are decent and ethical they are still in danger of going to prison. Your daughter can get 10 years for taking LSD with her friends at a Phish concert in an effort to party just like Grandpa. Your son might do time for coding up a software program that enables blind people to read e-books. Either way, they will be raped long and hard by other prisoners and also guards. They will be tortured. There is nothing you can do about it. It's happening right now to a million Americans who were kids to two million other Americans.
In addition, your kids are likely to fall into some kind of "undesirable" category or other at some point. Say your son is gay and is dishonorably discharged from the military because of it and then finds that he has been branded for life, recognized and stigmatized by machines everywhere he goes. Imagine a corrupt cop with a Saturday night and a bottle of Jack to kill who sits down at his computer and calls up a list of known gay people and says "which one of these guys is nearest to me now?". A few seconds later, he's heading for the shopping mall or a public street where he can pick up your son and stomp all over him for fun, or maybe arrest him for a misdemeanor and put him in the cell with a 6"5' rapist all night so he "gets what he likes" or some such shit. A database that is hooked up to a network of public and private face recognition cameras effectively has your EXACT LOCATION in it when you are within its coverage. Thousands of your fellow citizens will have the ability to pick just the right needle out of any haystack. The people who have access to this database will have awesome power over the ordinary common person. We'd better give them sidearms and six weeks of training, huh?
As for the hookers, pimps, dealers, thieves, purse-snatchers and lawyers. we'd be better off without them too
Luckily, the Fourth Reich has face recognition technology to identify and detain these undesirables that far exceeds the simple armbands and cattle cars of the Third Reich. Unfortunately, EVERYBODY IN AMERICA is a hooker, pimp, dealer, thief, purse-snatcher and/or lawyer. When we have killed or damaged enough of our brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, daughters and sons to either realize this or cripple society completely (whichever comes first), we may decide to stop just reading the Constitution and start keeping it.
Personally, I think it's better to leave the peaceful and honest people alone (hookers, pimps, dealers), and arrest the dishonest bullies (thieves, purse-snatchers, lawyers). A crime without a victim is just a blank check for the government. They can write anybody in as the accused. Combined with wide-scale face recognition systems, they can even find the guy who fits their political needs the best. "It's an election year... find me a black homosexual pot smoker with a white HIV-positive boyfriend and I'll preside over his trial and keep my Judgeship... make sure he's ugly, too, and get him in here right away."
The reality of deployment of these systems will be somewhere inbetween the worst case and best case scenarios. Where the "normal" case is will determine the systems' usefulness, but we won't determine that here on/. .
The "normal" case will be that you will either conform to the Puritan vision of the world or you will be weeded out, harrassed, arrested, lose your job, lose your home, go to prison 500 miles from your family and friends, be raped, be tortured, contract AIDS, and die a miserable and lonely person. Same as it is now, only with face recognition cameras making the whole process a bit easier for law enforcement professionals. Pretty damned unhappy prospect.
The Constitution protects you from unreasonable search and seisure. This means that DEA officers cannot kick in your door and ransack your apartment without having evidence of your wrongdoing. This means that the FBI cannot tap your phone or Internet connection without sufficient evidence against
That is what the government told you in school, but that doesn't mean it is true.
So-called "no-knock warrants" are commonplace, and about once a year in every major city in America, a unit of militarized police quite famously knock down the wrong door and obliterate an entire innocent family by mistake. More than 80% of seized property comes from people who weren't even charged, never mind convicted. How do your kids feel about that? Safe?
Did you know the US prison population doubled under President Clinton? I hope your sons or daughters are never locked up for 10 years with a rapist because they attend a rave or find that a little pot takes the edge off a stressful day better than alcohol. Because the US prison population is also 25-40% infected with AIDS, the repeated gang rapings and torture that your son or daughter suffers will quite likely turn into a death sentence. THIS IS HAPPENING TODAY TO A MILLION AMERICANS RIGHT NOW. All with the rationale of protecting children. In the eyes of the US "justice" system, it is better to be murderer than a crack user. Murderers do half as much prison time, and are individually sentenced by judges and juries with regard for the circumstances of the case; crack users do mandatory minimum sentences imposed by politicians and functionaries that have brought judges to tears when they impose them. Handing out 20 years to college kids for partying without political connections is tough stuff. Standing around debating how we can make the cops more powerful in this environment is really misguided.
Personally, I don't trust POWER WHORES to do what's right for society at large, and certainly don't trust them to do what's right for kids. Kids are only kids for 17 years, but they can be slaves forever. To someone who is 30 or 40 right now, face recognition cameras in public places are controversial; but to a 16 year old kid who has always been watched constantly wherever he goes, face recognition in public places for the rest of his life has got to be a terrible burden. There will be no adventure, only servitude and suffering and puritanism and consumerism. All those old SF movies and books that foretold a dehumanizing future now look like documentaries.
When are we going to demand that our government respects the Constitution at least? After that, they can have all the toys they want. With great power comes great responsibility. Technology is advancing at a very fast pace, and politicians are not.
In America, there are NO RULERS. This is a Republic. We are a building that is one story tall. Government may be in the basement with the plumbing, but it is not supposed to be on the roof pretending it is better than everybody else.
Slashdot Mirror
> The open nature of the PC
... it's a Microsoft PC. Change all the Compaq, HP, Gateway logos on boxes out there to Microsoft logos and the constraints that the box makers are under ("thou shalt ship only Windows") begin to make sense.
... Mac users have printers, scanners, MP3 players, CD/DVD burners, USB devices of every description, FireWire this and that. USB and FireWire and PCI and AGP are in both Macs and PC's. Connectivity is king these days, and Apple has plenty of that ... even the little $1299 subnotebook-sized iBook has modem, Ethernet, FireWire, USB, VGA out, TV out, audio out, and AirPort (802.11) wireless. It also includes high-quality software for actually using these hardware features. If you need more capabilities, you can easily install third-party software by dragging a single icon from a CD or similar to your hard disk. "Uninstalling" means dragging that same single icon to the Trash. There is a huge Mac community to continue to support with each new Mac, and that includes third-party software and hardware makers. Even hardware makers that don't make Mac drivers ... you can plug a FireWire hard disk into a Mac and it just works, even if the hard disk was made for a PC and is formatted with FAT32.
... Linux boxes are generally Microsoft PC's that won't run the latest Microsoft OS (XP is not recommended on anything pre-2000 due to BIOS issues). Many Mac users are now running Linux for the first time on old Macs that won't run OS X (1997 and earlier).
That is a myth that PC manufacturers are currently riding all the way to hell. A typical PC these days is made up of components that were spec'ed by Microsoft (without input from Intel, since 1999), OS and application software by Microsoft, curvy box and branding by Gateway/Dell/HP/etc, hardware construction by far east subcontractor. It is exactly the same with the XBox, except the curvy box and branding are now also done by Microsoft. Same with Microsoft UltimateTV, same with the upcoming Microsoft HomeStation (XBox with keyboard, mouse, and MS Office "HomeStation Edition").
Microsoft has long-since taken over the PC and made it the "Microsoft PC". Apple and Microsoft are pretty much the only vendors with unique products in the PC space. Users want Apple or they want Microsoft, and anyone else is generally incidental. People have been buying Microsoft PC's for years, then stripping off Windows (which they paid for) and telling themselves "this is a generic, open PC that I have here". Check out the Windows logo on your keyboard
My wife recently bought a new handheld, and she preferred Palm over HandSpring because using Windows and then a Mac had taught her that getting the OS with the hardware and from one company is a better experience. When faced with the choice of a cheap Microsoft PC or a cheap Gateway PC featuring Microsoft Windows, people are going to go with Microsoft in droves. They will know that their box and bundled apps will be TOTALLY supported in the next OS rev (just like a Mac), and they will flock to it.
> PC manufacturers have to be more careful,
> because the product has to be supported by
> other hardware
Macs also have to be supported by other hardware
> and *all* the different OSes (which usually
> means M$ Windows).
A new box from Gateway is no more guaranteed to run Linux than a new box from Apple. They both run Linux, and you generally have to get the go-ahead from your distro's author before you know it is going to work on a brand-new box. Only Windows and Mac OS are fully supported, on Microsoft and Apple PC's, respectively. Anything else has turned into repurposing hardware, and that's why Linux and BSD face such a hard time
Talking about "generic PC's" or "open PC's" these days is just being a Microsoft apologist. They own it, and have owned it for a while. Soon, they will actually put their name on the front door (on the box) instead of just on the deed (their contracts with PC manufacturers).
>> Why wouldn't you want a firewire external
>> harddrive?
> Price. Firewire is a better high end technology,
> but it cost more to implement.
Not true.
> If USB 2.0 becomes common, then external
> USB 2.0 drives should cost less than firewire ones.
That is a big IF. FireWire is already common and cheap.
> If the performance is suficient with USB 2.0,
> why pay for firewire.
Performance won't be sufficient with USB 2.0. FireWire was designed to be a peer-to-peer multimedia LAN. USB 2.0 was designed to be a way to get mouses and keyboards plugged into computers. USB still requires that a computer be part of the device chain; with FireWire, a FireWire camcorder and VCR can talk to each other without a computer. There is much more to this than just making both standards faster.
FireWire is not just here NOW, it was here YESTERDAY. There is no place-your-bets atmosphere on FireWire, just incredibly happy and productive users doing things they used to only dream about.
I can't believe I'm replying about a one-button Mac mouse in 2001, when Macs have been using plain USB mouses for three years, and Mac OS X features native support for a ton of USB peripherals, no drivers needed, including multi-button USB mouses. The Mac API for mouse buttons features support for 99 buttons if you want it.
... it is always optional
... being able to pop-up a context menu under your cursor is just not as valuable in Mac OS as elsewhere
... on the Mac, it is just "point and click"
The short answer as to why Apple ships one-button mouses is that 70% of their users like the one-button mouse and continue to use it throughout the life of their Mac, while the other 30% of their users prefer something else. The 30% is split amongst trackball users, scroller lovers, 2-button former-Windows users, 3-button X-Windows users, people who want a specific mouse for gaming, people who want a mini-keyboard on their pointing device, etc. The 30% who don't like the default mouse have vast, cheap, third-party options. This is the perfect way for them, because they would not likely all be satisfied with one kind of mouse anyway. If Apple ships a two-button mouse, the X-Windows people will freak out about it, especially now that Mac OS runs X-Windows natively; if they ship with a scroller, some will complain; without it, others will complain. So they ship an easy mouse for everyone that most people are satisfied with; and you can go to Fry's and buy any other mouse you want and it will just work with your Mac and Mac OS X.
I have also read in a number of places that MOST Windows users don't use the second button on their mouse; this jibes with Apple's figures that 70% of their users don't want a second button.
This debate falls under the category of things geeks think are essential and non-geeks just find to be either extraneous and somewhat confusing or totally uninteresting and always in the way. In other words, if you've ever used a Unix command line, then have the humility to believe that Apple actually knows better than you how to ship iMacs for Grandma.
There are a number of other reasons why Apple continues to ship a one-button mouse as standard:
most beginners find a one-button mouse much easier to use when they are learning computing
the Mac OS user interface has traditionally only required one button, so there are a number of Mac users who have never used anything else
the fact that Macs ship with one-button mouses means that third-party hardware and software developers can never expect a user to have more than one button, just as they are never to expect a user to know how to use the command line; as a result, users aren't forced to use a second button
maintaining one-button navigation of the OS keeps it ready for tablet use (a no-button stylus that you tap against the screen to register a click is the easiest stylus to use; a stylus with a one clickable button is second-best; a multi-button stylus is way, way, way harder to explain and to physically use)
Mac OS has a pervasive, context-sensitive menubar across the top of the screen that users quickly learn to hit with a quick flick of the mouse
a single button Trackpad on a notebook where a Control-click is the same as a right-click means your hands stay on the keyboard more as you work, and your Trackpad button can be large and be used by both righties and lefties
there is a whole slippery slope of tech writing jargon that you avoid on the Mac: "right-button (unless you have your buttons swapped)"; "click (not right-click)"; "left-click (if you're right handed)"; "context-click" (many users don't know what that means)
Altivec is shining plenty already. Look at the speed of MPEG-2 encoding on a G4. I am also able to run a very large number of realtime audio plug-ins on a G4/733 ... really amazing performance. High-quality MP3 encoding at 8x on a PowerBook G4 500 owes something to Altivec. Altivec is fucking great.
... they've had time to tune it for each system. It runs really fast on old iBooks with a RAM upgrade. Their software knows what their hardware is doing and vice versa, it's all one system. Drivers and updates can be set to download automatically from Apple, for everything that came installed on the box. A 20MB online WebDAV disk is also included, and free IMAP email. Integrated. DVD burning Mac has all the stuff you need to go from camcorder to your own DVD, and it's easy enough that little kids can use it.
CPU's are such a cock thing. Integration and connectivity are what's usually lacking in a personal computer.
Apple can tune a system from stem to stern, which is why 10.1 is so ridiculously much faster than 10.0
All Macs have AirPort (802.11), FireWire (1394), modem, VGA, USB, Ethernet. PowerMacs also have gigabit Ethernet, DVI, PCI, AGP. Stuff goes in and out very fast and in lots of ways. Mac OS X also seamlessly switches between different networks, so you can plug a PowerBook into Ethernet and it will get the Internet like that, and unplug the Ethernet and it will automatically switch to AirPort if it's available, if not it will look at the modem, etc. until it finds a connection. If it doesn't find one, it doesn't complain to you, and it's easy to set your preferences for how this works. USB and FireWire storage, MP3 players, printers, and other hardware don't need additonal drivers beyond what comes with the OS. Mac OS X speaks NFS, SMB, and AppleTalk file sharing. That kind of stuff saves you so much more time than a 75 watt monster CPU that is slower for many tasks than a 14 watt G4.
No, many of the same AGP cards work on both Macs and PC's ... there are definitely folks who are using PC Nvidia cards in their Macs, although sometimes they have to update the card's firmware or something. Maybe what's confusing about the way the slot in a PowerMac looks is that there is also some stuff there for Apple Display Connector (a high-end DVI connector) that powers the display through the graphics adapter and with a single cable for DVI, USB, and AC power.
> Would I be able to continually upgrade parts
... I'm not sure if they're worthwhile, given that you can sell a Mac used and get good money for it and just buy the updated version of your machine (mid-range PowerMac, for example) and get lots of new features in addition to CPU speed.
... you get a lot of hardware and software features all at once as a starting point. The included software is not just promotional LE versions of obscure apps, but is actually really top-notch stuff that provides real solutions and is heavily supported. So you have a DVD-RW/CD-RW drive built into your Mac, and it comes with iMovie and iDVD so that anyone can go from camcorder to DVD video disc, with a full motion-menus DVD interface, and it encodes MPEG-2 very quickly at very high quality. It costs for that stuff, and it's part of every PowerMac except the lowest-end one. This is best-of-breed stuff, worth buying the box for just by itself, not a hook to sell you another version that really works. You get a lot.
... one has a Pro Tools PCI audio card in it, and 1.5GB RAM, and the other has a PCI ATA RAID card in it and 200GB of hard disks (they sit in four spots in the bottom of the case so they stay cool, and are really easy to install thanks to the way the door opens and other internal design features on PowerMacs). There is so much stuff on PowerMac mobos (including 802.11 wireless, 1394 FireWire, gigabit Ethernet) that you don't usually have to add too much more, except for SCSI, pro audio adapters (lots of vendors for these), RAID, video or MPEG processors or whatever, or multiple video cards (I think Mac OS X might be limited to only two video cards right now, but Mac OS 9 will run with more). Basically, you have fewer choices of vendors than with Microsoft, but you almost always have a few great choices in each category, and the stuff works first time and is easy to install. For creative stuff, Mac support is often better, and software more mature or full-featured. Software wise you can run every kind of Mac app (68k, PPC, Carbon, Cocoa), Java2, and BSD Unix apps. It comes with Apache, emacs, Perl, etc. etc.
> cheaply with a PPC based machine.
Yes. Usually the same parts. Same RAM, PCI cards, AGP video cards, FireWire and USB devices, Ethernet networking, etc. CPU upgrades are available for almost every Mac model
With a Mac, a big feature is the large number of well-integrated features and simple software updates and support, so that raises the initial price
That doesn't stop you from adding extra stuff if you need it, though. I use two PowerMacs
I used to like to get into a box and get my hands dirty, but I am spoiled now by hot-plugging FireWire drives and having them just work, and installing PCI cards and at the most having to install a driver with a one-click installer. I have USB stuff: Wacom tablet, MP3 player, scanner, printer, camera, etc. and FireWire hard disks, DV camera. You can have a Mac and still have it all. The market is smaller, but Mac users buy a lot of peripherals and software and such, so Mac users are buying a lot of FireWire hard disks and such and support is great. I have a Ricochet USB modem that I used on a bunch of Macs, running Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. Support was built into both systems.
Macs have long working lives. You just get your software updates from Apple (they update automatically if you want), and a Mac keeps on working. Mac OS X (especially version 10.1) is running really well on two and three year old Macs, and it's a major jump in functionality over the previous version of the OS. Macs are often found to have lower total cost of ownership.
A cool Mac hardware site is http://www.xlr8yourmac.com
The IBM Power chips ARE the same architecture. That's where the "Power" in "PowerPC" comes from. IBM and Motorola both make PowerPC's (IBM makes all the iMac CPU's).
> You obviously arent aware that apple is pulling a
... they are quite a software powerhouse.
> 30% profit margin on every machine shipped.
I read somewhere once that Apple's margins also include their software, which obviously has a higher profit margin than hardware. Gateway and Dell do not have equivalent products to Final Cut Pro, which is the most popular pro DV editor, which sells for $1000 and is considered to be very cheap. Apple also is huge in DVD authoring, and their DVD Studio Pro also sells for $1000 and is considered to be very cheap. AppleWorks, WebObjects, Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server, iMovie
So Gateway and Dell's profit margins are all on low-margin hardware, while Apple's profit margins are on a mix of low-margin hardware and high-margin software. It would make sense that Apple's overall profit margin would then be higher than Gateway and Dell's. The OS is an expense for Gateway and Dell (money paid to Microsoft), but it's a profit for Apple (they get Microsoft's share of the profit on a Gateway or Dell box, in other words). The mobo is an expense for Gateway and Dell (money paid to Intel), but it's a profit for Apple, since Apple does its own mobo designs. They also have licensing profits that they get from technology that they invented, like TrueType fonts and laser printers and Firewire. And they have retail stores now, too, that will figure in the equation in the near future.
> Their entry level iMac is around $900, and entry
> level PC is around $500.
The features just don't compare. The iMac has a ton of stuff that you're not getting in a $500 PC, everything from hardware features, to bundled software, to future support. Integration, ease of use. Mac OS X is no Windows Me, either.
If the user chooses, Macs update all of their software components automatically once a day/week/month. You leave an iMac alone and your video drivers, security patches, OS updates, updates to bundled apps, etc. all just show up on their own, popping up to ask for your approval to install, with descriptions of what they do, all vetted by Apple. Then major OS updates are one-click installers that just work, without driver issues and long serial numbers and activation, and every other one is free. You don't get stuff like that in a $500 PC. It costs money to develop that kind of thing. There are dozens of features like that in an iMac or any Mac.
There's just no equivalent Mac to a $500 PC, except for maybe a used Mac (which are still very useful since you know the bundled software is all updated and supported and drivers are not an issue).
> They may have been on the right track with the
... it's silent, all the ports are easy to access, it can act as an 802.11 base station for 10 notebooks, RAM is installed in a special RAM-only door, the optical drive is slot-loading, it has FireWire and iMovie and a high-quality software bundle. Incredible stability in Mac OS X, too. So, they are really a great solution to a lot of problems for many people, in spite of perceived flaws such as a smallish display, and a misconception that a 500-700MHz G3 is not fast.
> i-Mac, but they didn't keep up the push by
> upgrading rapidly and continuing to reduce
> prices, and that one too has languished.
Apple is selling over 300,000 iMacs every quarter. They shipped more iMacs in summer 2001 than in any other quarter. It is a cash cow. That's why there is no flat panel version yet. They'll probably go to a complete redesign with flat panel when they can also do something else special with it, like go to G4 and booting Mac OS X as default.
> at one point i-Macs were flying off the shelves
> nearly as fast as Wintel hardware
The iMac is actually the best-selling PC model ever. If you're not familiar with them, there are a lot of features that you don't expect, or even think about. It's not a regular old computer stuck in a cute box
> It does NOT cost as much to develop OSX as it took
... that's how the BSD license is supposed to work.
... Mac apps, modernized Mac apps, Java2, BSD, Cocoa (formerly OpenStep) all run on Mac OS X (and all the Intel stuff runs in VirtualPC on Mac OS X, too). It's a developers dream. Not to mention that some fundamental computing things like GUI window regions, drag and drop, and lots of other stuff that is commonly seen in every GUI, originally came out of Apple (no, there were no overlapping windows or drag and drop at Xerox Parc).
> to develop W2K! Apple took the Code straight from
> the BSD and NextStep projects. Apple saved a
> crapload of money thanks to the BSD guys, and
> quite frankly I'm still waiting to see Apple give
> anything substantial BACK to the BSD community.
You are completely misguided, here. The Microsoft TCP/IP stack is a direct lift from BSD, bit-for-bit. There is a ton of BSD stuff in Windows, but it is hidden away. It's not something that Microsoft promotes as a feature. But that's perfectly within their rights
Apple promotes the fact that BSD Unix is a key feature of Mac OS X, even down to praising the TCP/IP stack and Apache and similar, and they include a full-featured command line shell and a bunch of BSD utilities and text editors like Pico and Emacs, etc. They ship developer tools for free inside the Mac OS X box, including gcc and such, and offer them as free downloads, and generally make it easy for newbies to discover these tools and open source technologies. Apple has contributed back to the community by releasing an open source BSD-based Unix called Darwin, which includes a lot of NeXT features, Apple's QuickTime Streaming Server, and runs on PPC Macs and IA32. Darwin 1.4 is what Mac OS X 10.1 runs on. QuickTime Streaming Server is open source and runs on Darwin, Mac OS X, Linux, and NT. It is by far the cheapest way to stream video (no fees at all), and it also is the highest-quality. They also contribute code to BSD projects, and are involved with IEEE 1394 (FireWire), HyperTransport, 802.11 (AirPort). I think they are also working towards more interoperability between Darwin/Mac OS X and other Unix systems, including Linux. Apple's QuickTime file format is the basis for MPEG-4 as well. Apple also heavily promotes MP3, bundling a really high-quality, full-featured app that makes it easy for anyone to rip and burn CD's. They support a ton of standards. Mac OS X is the most compatible OS ever
They include a lot of stuff, is all. There is no bare-bones system. The $2500 PowerMac has a SuperDrive (DVD-RW/CD-RW), and iDVD software that enables anyone to make beautiful DVD interfaces, and software-encodes your media into MPEG-2 at 2x (and in the background while you make the interface when running on OS X) and burns a disc that plays on consumer DVD video players. It also has iMovie, which is the most popular consumer video editor, and is easy to use without reading a manual. And Mac OS X, Java2, FireWire, optical mouse, AirPort (802.11) antennaes, AirPort software (for acting as a base station for a wireless LAN), CD-burning software, BSD Unix, iTunes MP3 and CD-burning music management app, easy open case, takes 1.5GB RAM (installs in 3 seconds). They also use the high-end DVI connector that also carries USB and AC power (you can get a cheap adapter to turn it into plain DVI as well) so you plug the display on and you're done and it auto-configures itself right down to color management through the OS and apps. It has 2MB L3 cache. Gigabit Ethernet is standard, too, and really useful to Apple's customers. There is also an amp inside that works with some matching Harmon Kardon speakers you get for $49 that look like little glass spheres and sound good. Low power consumption can't be ignored either ... the CPU's requiring 15% of the power and cooling of their Intel and AMD counterparts really makes a difference in power costs long-term, in California at least. The power supply in the box also powers the display, which is nice. Fewer cables and heat.
You just get a lot at each of their price points. There aren't any screwdriver shop Macs, and no bare bones boxes. The iMac is their low end box, and it's also sort of their flagship box, and has AirPort and FireWire and iMovie and iTunes and Mac OS X and AppleWorks and a big software bundle of games and such. If you want a cheap Mac, you buy last year's iMac on eBay, or inherit a Mac from a friend who has higher performance needs than you or money to burn or both. If all the stuff that comes with a Mac doesn't interest you, then get a cheap Microsoft PC, or build one yourself and run Linux or BSD.
You're guaranteed support for all of the hardware in future OS releases for quite some time (including video drivers and such), and Macs retain their value pretty well and sell used for good prices. They typically have long working lives and great stability. Highly upgradeable, too, even the CPU's in most cases. They all take a lot of RAM and have FireWire.
MHz is important for existing customers ... if you have a G3 300 and you're wondering if you're missing something by not getting a new system, it's plain that a G3 700 or a dual G4 800 is a faster system. It's still the same CPU architecture, running the same applications, so the comparison of MHz numbers probably has a corresponding performance benefit.
Comparing to a P4 by using MHz is not nearly as useful, as shown by the Media Cleaner Pro and Photoshop comparisons that the 733MHz and 867MHz PowerMacs keep winning (Apple, Macworld, PC Magazine, TechTV). They are also much faster for software MPEG-2 encoding for DVD's, because Altivec is like a dedicated 128-bit DSP chip. The G4 outclasses the P4 in some things, and the reverse is also true. If you're doing creative work, video, audio, graphics, DVD, then a Mac is great because the G4's strengths play to those apps. Not surprising since those are Apple's key customers, and they work to support those needs. In situations like gaming I can see where you're better with a P4 for a straight gaming box, all things considered.
The 64-bitness of the G5 shouldn't slow it down on 32-bit code, because apparently they planned for 64-bits from the very start with the Power architecture. There's always been an expectation that this would happen, so the 32-bit stuff is supposed to run full-speed, without some kind of "compatibility mode" overhead.
There have been 64-bit Power processors for a long time, of course, just not in desktop machines.
> BeOS seemed to check all the same boxes as
... it was an easy merger to make. Considering how unhappy Sony was with the stability of the eVilla (BeIA), and that BeOS no longer exists, it seems a little strange to still be pushing BeOS over NeXT.
> MacOSX, except for the "Suck up to Steve Jobs
> because we're just as easily taken in as everyone
> else in the industry" box.
C'mon, man. In 1996, BeOS couldn't even print. It wasn't multiuser, it wasn't POSIX, it hadn't reached 1.0, and Be had very few customers and no profits. NeXT machines also used ADB keyboards and mouses (same as the Macs of the day), supported the HFS+ file system, and had other common features with the Mac. In fact, the original NeXT project started at Apple, and the project and team left with Steve Jobs to form NeXT.
NeXT came back into the fold in 1996
> Now, if you knew a machine that was 50% faster
> in clockspeed than the current model was just a
> month or two away, wouldn't you want to wait?
> I would. And that's pretty much the last thing
> Apple really needs at the mement.
Apple is profitable right now, and has been for 11 of the past 12 quarters. They also have 4.2 billion dollars in cash. They're hardly in the position of "that's the last thing they need right now."
The PowerBook G4 is actually the next machine that's due to be revised (any minute now) and that will get them through to January easily (there probably won't be G5 notebooks for 6-12 months after the G5 desktops ship. There is also an LCD iMac that's not too far off (possibly with a G4). Mac OS X 10.1 at the end of September will also probably drive more Mac OS X upgrade sales and more hardware purchases. They are in great shape to get from here to a January/February G5.
Ha ha ha ... games are not written to the lowest common denominator ... games often push hardware to its limits. Macs have "fat binaries", though, so it is easy for a developer to ship a single app that actually has multiple versions, each one optimized for a different processor or OS version, and the OS sorts that out. The user doesn't have to know or care. Any app that is CPU-intensive has long since supported Altivec.
... it makes sense that current 3D hardware is missing one or two things that you would ideally like to have. The next generation of 3D hardware now has some new problems to solve. This is called "moving forward". Still, Mac OS 9.1 and Mac OS X 10.1 have similar GUI speed on the same hardware.
Current 3D hardware perfectly solves yesterday's problems. Apple is building really new stuff
> The point remains though, a GUI that uses more
> resources than most of the programs you want to
> run is pretty worthless.
That's true.
Has nothing to do with Mac OS X, though, since that is plainly not the case with Mac OS X.
Even if it was, taking a performance hit is acceptable when you move to a new generation of technology that has many new advantages (eg. bitmap printers to PostScript printers). Apps are already taking great advantage of OS X's buffered windows so that your document window doesn't have to be redrawn when you drag another window or a panel over it. There are lots of other advantages that will be realized over time.
> The iMacs won't be suitable OS X boxen until
... like real life. There aren't any bells and whistles to turn on or off ... that guy is a troll. Even with a third-party tool, the adjustments that you can make are cosmetic, and not performance-based (except maybe choosing scale instead of genie or suck as the minimize effect, which saves you a few milliseconds when you minimze a window ... scale is supposed to be the new default because of that). It's when you create a new window that you get a short wait cursor, or try to make the very unfinished Finder do two things at once that you get a long wait cursor and start to feel like you are wading in quicksand. It feels unoptimized, and with the reported speed improvements in 10.1 (3.5x on everything), I would guess that 10.0.x really is unoptimized.
> they have a G4.
That just isn't true (maybe for 10.0.x, but not 10.1). I'm running 10.0.4 on a G3 PowerBook ("Pismo") with 512MB of cheap, cheap RAM (half its capacity) right now, and there is nothing wrong with the graphic or app speed. Most iMacs are faster than this box, since iMacs have full-speed desktop hard drives, and 16MB graphics RAM (instead of 8 in a Pismo).
In fact, graphics are wickedly fast, even with only an 8MB graphics adapter, and they're also fully 32-bit and crisp as anything
Go figure that the first PDF-based window server, on a heavily rewritten consumer and pro OS that now has five applications environments (Carbon, Classic, Cocoa, Java, and BSD Unix) instead of maybe 2.5 in Mac OS 9 (Carbon, Classic, and almost-Java) would need six months of shakedown in the hands of users in order for Apple to see what needs tuning and where.
This PowerBook has only crashed once since Mac OS X was installed in April 2001, and that bug has already been fixed. It's a rock.
People who pick on a supposed lack of apps conveniently forget that Mac OS X runs about 90% of all Mac apps every written, and that the Carbon API is on both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. Photoshop is not running in Carbon yet, but it's running fine in Classic. The next rev will run in Carbon. When your shipping app is running fine on Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X, it takes some of the pressure off a port. Most developers seem to be wanting to make a big splash with really fine-tuned Carbon apps that take advantage of some Mac OS X-only features, such as what Microsoft is doing with Office, rather than rush out their native versions.
Nice that the transition to 64-bit G5 looks like it will be as easy on the user as the transition from G3 to G4. Even easier on the developer than supporting Altivec (which isn't hard). I can't wait to see what a 1.6GHZ G5 with 10 pipelines performs like (P4 is 2GHZ but has a huge 20 pipelines). I love the performance of my G4/733 workstation already, software encoding high-quality MPEG-2 at 2x, running ridiculous numbers of real-time audio plug-ins, etc. A dual-800 G4 does MPEG-2 encoding at 1x, so these new G5's will open up whole new areas of performance. (Note: "encoding", not "decoding".)
What's the minimum software that you'd have to replace in order to de-Microsoft a typical PC?
... a huge selling point. People can write to other API's later as time goes on, like Apple moving to the Cocoa API by just putting it out there, and developers can adopt it as they please. In the meantime, people still have a lot of Win32 apps that they want to use on their PC's, and Carbon apps on their Macs. If somebody wants to replace Windows with Linux in great numbers then getting the Win32 API going might be just as important to their vision of Linux as having the Carbon API and the Classic environment is on Mac OS X. Computers exist to run the apps that are on them RIGHT NOW. To be able to switch to Linux and still use all those old Netscape and SmartSuite and DOS game discs you have from 1997 might be cool for some people. Also, the Enhanced CD's in people's music collections have Mac versions and PC versions. The PC versions are Windows versions. If Linux were to replace Windows tomorrow, then adding support for those CD's would be a priority. Whatever replaces Windows (if anything) would probably have to make that level of commitment to the PC platform's non-Unix past, so why not just enable the stuff to be run natively?
I don't think the average frustrated Windows user wants to stop running IE and MS Office. You don't have to replace those. Users probably like most of their other applications, too. What most people want to stop is that the whole shooting match is dependent on Microsoft Windows. It gets better, or it gets worse, according to Microsoft. Any security in Windows is always open to Microsoft's applications. Features come and go and are reliable or unreliable based mainly on who is currently having their air supply cut off, etc. It's a drag.
One of the nice things about switching from using Windows full-time to using a Mac full-time is that suddenly Microsoft is just another software company. Replacing the core of Windows with something non-Microsoft could give Windows users that feeling that they can really hold Microsoft accountable for their dirty tricks and just switch off the Microsoft software if they want to, without losing their computer's functionality and capabilities. At least you could close IE when you wanted to, and run an Adobe or other app on a non-Microsoft foundation, perhaps with better performance as well.
Imagine a Windows software installer that you run, and after a reboot, the computer functions in basically the same manner, except that it can function with all of the Microsoft apps shut off. They are running a non-MS kernel and certain systems that are acting as a traffic cop or conscience for Windows. You can run IE or any MS app, but they are in their own processes and effectively being contained from any scripting mischief or whatever.
Wouldn't this be a good way for the Linux kernel to get onto more machines full-time? If it could replace the NT kernel and the user could still keep their apps at least
These guys at Trumpet don't seem to look at it as OS and applications and who owns what. If you think of the user's PC, the Trumpet core OS product was replaced by yet another Microsoft core OS product. Now Trumpet is working on new core OS products that replace some of Microsoft's at the user's discretion. Even if they only replace the functionality of Windows 95, then that gives them an instant application base that is very large. Also, they would give Windows developers a reason to stick to core Win32 stuff and make good cross-platform code in order to run in both places, even just for the principle. If you are making subnotebooks or something, why make one with Pocket Windows when you could make a Microsoft-free Windows95-compatible Pentium-class subnotebook that runs real Windows and DOS apps (not all of them, but LOTS) with excellent performance? There are interesting things going on when you can get the Win32 application base or a subset of it without having to build your business on Microsoft.
We've been on the slippery slope for years. A "crime" is not something you commit against your fellow man, it's a beaurocratic catch-all term for anything that it was once politically expedient to outlaw. Possessing MDMA can get you 10 years, and no lawmaker ever voted on that ... MDMA was just lumped in with other drugs that people in power didn't like and/or their corporate constituents couldn't compete with. No Constitutional amendment started the Drug War, which both started and ended Alcohol Prohibition. We have been lawless for a long time and are getting more and more lawless with each new law that is passed. There's no underlying tenet that explains why hemp is so illegal and the alcohol, tobacco, and Nylon(TM), Valium(TM), etc. that has replaced hemp for most people is not. Valium(TM) is more addictive; Nylon(TM) is not environmentally responsible. Nobody dies from smoking pot and yet doing so alone in your house is a very dangerous act solely because your fellow man will send in cops to commit you to prison where you will be raped and tortured.
... they just offended an aristocrat or religious leader's sensibilities is all. They did something "heathen" and they went to jail for it. At the same time, we all pretend that the Constitution is actually followed ... we pretend that all of our laws are Constitutional when it is plain that very few actually are.
The number of people who celebrated freedom at Woodstock in 1969 is dwarfed by the number of people who were ruined by Prohibition and the Drug War in the 20th century. The US puts more people in prison than any other country. The majority of prisoners are there for consensual crimes
b) Restrictions on my privacy but being reasonably assured that paedophiles will be eliminated from the society before they rape children.
I'll always choose the option b)
Your children are much more likely to be raped in prison than they are on the public streets. Your children are much more likely to go to prison because of face recognition cameras (combined with the incredible number of laws we have). Ergo, face recognition cameras actually increase your children's chances of being raped.
Keep in mind that most people in prison in the US today never victimized another person. If your children are decent and ethical they are still in danger of going to prison. Your daughter can get 10 years for taking LSD with her friends at a Phish concert in an effort to party just like Grandpa. Your son might do time for coding up a software program that enables blind people to read e-books. Either way, they will be raped long and hard by other prisoners and also guards. They will be tortured. There is nothing you can do about it. It's happening right now to a million Americans who were kids to two million other Americans.
In addition, your kids are likely to fall into some kind of "undesirable" category or other at some point. Say your son is gay and is dishonorably discharged from the military because of it and then finds that he has been branded for life, recognized and stigmatized by machines everywhere he goes. Imagine a corrupt cop with a Saturday night and a bottle of Jack to kill who sits down at his computer and calls up a list of known gay people and says "which one of these guys is nearest to me now?". A few seconds later, he's heading for the shopping mall or a public street where he can pick up your son and stomp all over him for fun, or maybe arrest him for a misdemeanor and put him in the cell with a 6"5' rapist all night so he "gets what he likes" or some such shit. A database that is hooked up to a network of public and private face recognition cameras effectively has your EXACT LOCATION in it when you are within its coverage. Thousands of your fellow citizens will have the ability to pick just the right needle out of any haystack. The people who have access to this database will have awesome power over the ordinary common person. We'd better give them sidearms and six weeks of training, huh?
As for the hookers, pimps, dealers, thieves, purse-snatchers and lawyers. we'd be better off without them too
Luckily, the Fourth Reich has face recognition technology to identify and detain these undesirables that far exceeds the simple armbands and cattle cars of the Third Reich. Unfortunately, EVERYBODY IN AMERICA is a hooker, pimp, dealer, thief, purse-snatcher and/or lawyer. When we have killed or damaged enough of our brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, daughters and sons to either realize this or cripple society completely (whichever comes first), we may decide to stop just reading the Constitution and start keeping it.
Personally, I think it's better to leave the peaceful and honest people alone (hookers, pimps, dealers), and arrest the dishonest bullies (thieves, purse-snatchers, lawyers). A crime without a victim is just a blank check for the government. They can write anybody in as the accused. Combined with wide-scale face recognition systems, they can even find the guy who fits their political needs the best. "It's an election year ... find me a black homosexual pot smoker with a white HIV-positive boyfriend and I'll preside over his trial and keep my Judgeship ... make sure he's ugly, too, and get him in here right away."
The reality of deployment of these systems will be somewhere inbetween the worst case and best case scenarios. Where the "normal" case is will determine the systems' usefulness, but we won't determine that here on /. .
The "normal" case will be that you will either conform to the Puritan vision of the world or you will be weeded out, harrassed, arrested, lose your job, lose your home, go to prison 500 miles from your family and friends, be raped, be tortured, contract AIDS, and die a miserable and lonely person. Same as it is now, only with face recognition cameras making the whole process a bit easier for law enforcement professionals. Pretty damned unhappy prospect.
The Constitution protects you from unreasonable search and seisure. This means that DEA officers cannot kick in your door and ransack your apartment without having evidence of your wrongdoing. This means that the FBI cannot tap your phone or Internet connection without sufficient evidence against
That is what the government told you in school, but that doesn't mean it is true.
So-called "no-knock warrants" are commonplace, and about once a year in every major city in America, a unit of militarized police quite famously knock down the wrong door and obliterate an entire innocent family by mistake. More than 80% of seized property comes from people who weren't even charged, never mind convicted. How do your kids feel about that? Safe?
Did you know the US prison population doubled under President Clinton? I hope your sons or daughters are never locked up for 10 years with a rapist because they attend a rave or find that a little pot takes the edge off a stressful day better than alcohol. Because the US prison population is also 25-40% infected with AIDS, the repeated gang rapings and torture that your son or daughter suffers will quite likely turn into a death sentence. THIS IS HAPPENING TODAY TO A MILLION AMERICANS RIGHT NOW. All with the rationale of protecting children. In the eyes of the US "justice" system, it is better to be murderer than a crack user. Murderers do half as much prison time, and are individually sentenced by judges and juries with regard for the circumstances of the case; crack users do mandatory minimum sentences imposed by politicians and functionaries that have brought judges to tears when they impose them. Handing out 20 years to college kids for partying without political connections is tough stuff. Standing around debating how we can make the cops more powerful in this environment is really misguided.
Personally, I don't trust POWER WHORES to do what's right for society at large, and certainly don't trust them to do what's right for kids. Kids are only kids for 17 years, but they can be slaves forever. To someone who is 30 or 40 right now, face recognition cameras in public places are controversial; but to a 16 year old kid who has always been watched constantly wherever he goes, face recognition in public places for the rest of his life has got to be a terrible burden. There will be no adventure, only servitude and suffering and puritanism and consumerism. All those old SF movies and books that foretold a dehumanizing future now look like documentaries.
When are we going to demand that our government respects the Constitution at least? After that, they can have all the toys they want. With great power comes great responsibility. Technology is advancing at a very fast pace, and politicians are not.
> the technology
> in the hands of those ruling
In America, there are NO RULERS. This is a Republic. We are a building that is one story tall. Government may be in the basement with the plumbing, but it is not supposed to be on the roof pretending it is better than everybody else.