The Mac is not really a competing platform, OSX requires a $400-$2500 hardware dongle and has arguably far less growth potential than Linux. Linux is on the rise in the enterprise and in government, in many cases a mandatory switch target from Windows. It is in microsoft's interest to ensure customers are dependent on Office on Windows as it increasingly (excepting Exchange) the only suite keeping their enterprise customers on the platform altogether.
Where ease of use is concerned OSX is enjoyed more by full-time owner-operators than casual users. This stands out in a class-room situation where (in my experience) students coming from Windows take some two-weeks of guided support getting used to OSX, whereas KDE takes them little more than a day. As a teacher that has to work with both platforms from time to time, OSX lags heavily in this area, whereas KDE really gains.
I don't know about the 'market share' you talk of, but Linux, for whatever reason, is still the fastest growing operating system and this is certainly visible in the arts/educational sector.
Where feature-creep is concerned I would certainly not want to see KDE's amazing 'customiseability' compromised - this really gets the kids excited. On a multi-user system they'll do whatever they can to make it their own.
I think you'll find that the desktop search tool Beagle, was in development long before Spotlight was even announced. So, if at all, it would appear both Spotlight and Tenor took their cues from Beagle.. not that it matters at all, of course.
Don't even get me started on the Finder's utterly, utterly useless "alt-tab" - what a pointless piece of crap. You simply _CANNOT_ switch windows with it, only applications! Great, you can switch focus to the most recently used window in one app or the most recently used window in another, but there is NO FUCKING WAY you can change amongst those app's windows without using the mouse and going to the "window" menu or using "expose" (all involve several distracted seconds on that bastard touch-pad mouse thing).
Well it's about time someone else said it. This alone makes OSX utterly frustrating to use. Apple really does have some nasty and bizarre assumptions about this thing called 'useability'. KDE is sensible out of the box but should it not suit you in any way you can massage it until the point it suits you. Now there's a useability idea.
Were there a single proprietary application I would want to run, I might have had a reason to retain OSX on my PPC machine. And if there was about anything about the dock and or Aqua itself I miss, I'm sure I could easily simulate/improve upon it using something like this or this or this.
I'm largely talking about laptops. That said the G5 tower I was working with heavily until recently was well laid out but certainly nothing special where componentry is concerned - anyone that has actually built their own PC tower from parts can open up a G5 tower and tell you that. They'll also tell you it does look fantastic from the outside. This said IBM's G5 PPC chip is where the real appeal lies.
Apple makes a brand, not hardware, and a very good brand at that. Don't imagine a plant in Cupertino, rather imagine a massive smoking assembly complex in Taiwan churning out 20 models of laptop simultaneously, one of which is an 'Apple'.
Regarding your customer satisfaction surveys, I think it's great that so many are happy with Apple's customer service (as your link covers), though it has little bearing on what people are actually buying. I have no idea how Apple's workstations fare in a similar context. I certainly won't be ordering another one (especially given OSX's poor memory management) and the fact their next spread of workstations will likely be Pentium 4's with intelligent haircuts.
Well, yes, that's what a lot of us, many of us Apple users, do deny. We have opened the cases, and looked at what's in them, and we just do not see it. We see the same drives, opticals, memory, psus, graphics cards as in our Dell boxes. We see main boards manufactured by, I think, Asus. We don't see any particularly wonderful layout of the components. We don't even see in general better cooled or quieter cases.
You're correct, there is very little difference in this so called 'Apple hardware' especially given the manufacturers are not in fact Apple, but Asustek and Quanta - the former outselling their own so called 'PC' laptops to Apple branded computers 10 to 1.
It is largely a well propogated myth that 'Apple hardware' is in any way better than that of other brands and there can certainly be no real claim of innovation in the industrial design department outside of superficial stylistic impositions on case and chassis design. Where cooling is concerned it can safely be said that the powerbooks are perhaps the most poorly designed of any portable's I've come across; many colleagues in fact prop their's up on a book just to allow for air to circulate underneath the thing.
Meanwhile, a good project like Blender scrapes and begs for a measly 500 bucks.
Link please.
Blender is doing just fine, the Blender Foundation increasingly receives funding (recently for a film project employ several artists), is used in educational programmes and was recently the platform used to storyboard the film Spiderman2.0.
Blender and Maya may be in similar markets, but their economic and distribution models are entirely different.
Blender was free, closed-source software for some years. No doubt DAZ will also make the decision to emancipate themselves in order to grow in time with their users.
Eg. "You are absolutely and totally free to choose between any of one of these 7 options."
Reminiscent of the current American democratic system - provide the user with options at all and regardless of whether either/any are actually valuable to them, they will endeavour to make a choice, arguing vehemently amongst themselves as to which is better and why.
Moreso, while they are making up their mind they aren't looking at real, vaulable options.
Of course there'll be alot of material to get through before you really can decide "Which Windows is best for your Family?". We'll see a plethora of vacuous price-point-performance comparison guides in Toms Hardware and technology journals, six more Windows magazines with baby-lego-block-bar-graphs and serious looking well fed men in mug shots standing beside them.
An extra wall in the maze, another flavour of cheese.
I think you are right. it basically equates to "You cannot use our stuff if you're taking us to court."
A rare occurrence, but it does seem today that The Register's journalism actually clarifies something:
He was speaking to El Reg after an article on Reuters quoted him as saying that anyone who patented software would be prevented from using free software. Greve says this is not quite what he was getting at:
"The basic idea is that if someone uses software patents against a Free Software program under the GPL, he might lose the right to distribute that particular software, to use it for their products. We have no interest in restricting the way people can use and develop software."
Seems <COUGH>MSNBC</COUGH>
gave this a little spin..
"Let me introduce you to one of the greatest mysteries of our time: After more than 20 years of research, development and competition in the field of HCI, not one single leading operating system developing company has come up with an OS that utilizes the four corners of the screen."
A National Disaster is clearly an excellent opportunity to trial new R&D in the field; harsh environmental conditions, long uptime, contingencies at a maximum - like a 'warzone' really. It would seem Bush has chosen to test future battle tech on his own people at home rather than random foreigners or US folkabroad. He doesn't miss a beat does he?
Anyway, I guess these sonic cannons are cheaper than food, shelter and tear-gas or else he surely would have.. nevermind.
Just like linux sucks on desktops and rocks on servers, Mac OS X sucks on servers and rocks on desktop
Well founded assertion there, and so rigorously argued. I especially like that part where you say:
Just like linux sucks on desktops and rocks on servers, Mac OS X sucks on servers and rocks on desktop
You, yes you could be the voice of change for millions of Linux desktop users. Users that choose sub-standard, agonising desktop conditions purely out of stubbornness, political revelry and pride. As you so eloquently conclude, it is time we shrug off these false convictions and confess the relative benefits of each platform; so that with clarity of judgement we can be make informed response-able decisions, choosing the best tool for the job:
Just like linux sucks on desktops and rocks on servers, Mac OS X sucks on servers and rocks on desktop.
Safe to say none of these users (myself included of course) have ever tried OSX else surely they would have switched already. We need to get your message out there.
I'm working on the t-shirt. You just keep on your toes and jot down anything that comes into your head. You never know, it could be truly Insightful.
That is why OS X is "so freakin' easy" for people to use, because it's been designed to be from the start.
Easy compared to what? In my experience teaching across both KDE/Linux and OSX I see University students taking around a day to become very comfortable with KDE yet after a week teaching students new to OSX I am still getting fundamental useability questions, especially surrounding mouse/selection useage and the 'Finder'.
Currently I try and avoid teaching on OSX machines; student adaptation simply takes far too much class time. Once they do adapt however, they generally enjoy themselves, though there are always many that simply don't seem to grokk OSX at all.
Admittedly most of these users come from Windows.. which is... where most computer users are already.
KDE appears to understand this very well.
More and more I'm of the opinion that OSX isn't an ephiphany or beacon of Useasbility, in the general sense, so much as a relatively successful marketing campaign telling us it is.
As one student asked, "I've lost my program, is this what the Finder is for"?
You can't because an iMac doesn't have an eject button on the drive.
Worse, I once lifted the CD door flap on a G3 tower and could clearly see the eject button on the Toshiba drive underneath. Apparently the eMac's are the same. It was right next to the similarly innaccessible volume dial.
I had the distinct feeling I wasn't supposed to see that. There I go again, thinking different sigh.
That said, no one in the feature film industry considers Final Cut Pro to be a standard, in fact MainActor on Linux is a far more widely adopted platform AFAIK.
With a sig as ridiculous as your's I don't know why I bother - but here goes:
Does Linux have a equivalent of the Windows "Add/Remove Programs" control panel?
Yes, and my sister that deeply dislikes computers finds un/installing software in 'Yast' easier in SuSE9.2 than she ever did in Windows. She said "I like how I don't have to go to websites to find programs." There it is, her only comment on Linux in all it's apparently rabid, tendrilous, mind boggling complexity.
Of course those that would rather not learn something new will of course never enjoy this and will constantly complain about the relative lack of similarity Linux package management systems have with that of Windows or Apple systems - both of which I find messy and troublesome having used Linux for several years.
On any debian-based system I find 'apt-get remove <programname>' faster and less troublesome than the poor "double-click-to-rip-its-guts-out" windows un-installation method, which typically leaves gore scattered throughout the filesystem.
Slashdot Mirror
The Mac is not really a competing platform, OSX requires a $400-$2500 hardware dongle and has arguably far less growth potential than Linux. Linux is on the rise in the enterprise and in government, in many cases a mandatory switch target from Windows. It is in microsoft's interest to ensure customers are dependent on Office on Windows as it increasingly (excepting Exchange) the only suite keeping their enterprise customers on the platform altogether.
Folks he is right.
We must unfix these needless shackles, shackles that hold back the worlds fastest growing operating system from being the
That's not very nice!
Where ease of use is concerned OSX is enjoyed more by full-time owner-operators than casual users. This stands out in a class-room situation where (in my experience) students coming from Windows take some two-weeks of guided support getting used to OSX, whereas KDE takes them little more than a day. As a teacher that has to work with both platforms from time to time, OSX lags heavily in this area, whereas KDE really gains.
I don't know about the 'market share' you talk of, but Linux, for whatever reason, is still the fastest growing operating system and this is certainly visible in the arts/educational sector.
Where feature-creep is concerned I would certainly not want to see KDE's amazing 'customiseability' compromised - this really gets the kids excited. On a multi-user system they'll do whatever they can to make it their own.
I think you'll find that the desktop search tool Beagle, was in development long before Spotlight was even announced. So, if at all, it would appear both Spotlight and Tenor took their cues from Beagle.. not that it matters at all, of course.
Were there a single proprietary application I would want to run, I might have had a reason to retain OSX on my PPC machine. And if there was about anything about the dock and or Aqua itself I miss, I'm sure I could easily simulate/improve upon it using something like this or this or this.
See SPIN for an older project in this vein.
Penguins always come in numbers. Get used to it.
"What does a kid care about the OS? He wants something cool to play with!"
Show me the game you made on your PSP; 'Fun' and 'Making' are not mutually exclusive.
I think you've missed the point of this device - the successor of the hugely popular GamePark 32.
I'm largely talking about laptops. That said the G5 tower I was working with heavily until recently was well laid out but certainly nothing special where componentry is concerned - anyone that has actually built their own PC tower from parts can open up a G5 tower and tell you that. They'll also tell you it does look fantastic from the outside. This said IBM's G5 PPC chip is where the real appeal lies.
Apple makes a brand, not hardware, and a very good brand at that. Don't imagine a plant in Cupertino, rather imagine a massive smoking assembly complex in Taiwan churning out 20 models of laptop simultaneously, one of which is an 'Apple'.
Regarding your customer satisfaction surveys, I think it's great that so many are happy with Apple's customer service (as your link covers), though it has little bearing on what people are actually buying. I have no idea how Apple's workstations fare in a similar context. I certainly won't be ordering another one (especially given OSX's poor memory management) and the fact their next spread of workstations will likely be Pentium 4's with intelligent haircuts.
You're correct, there is very little difference in this so called 'Apple hardware' especially given the manufacturers are not in fact Apple, but Asustek and Quanta - the former outselling their own so called 'PC' laptops to Apple branded computers 10 to 1.
It is largely a well propogated myth that 'Apple hardware' is in any way better than that of other brands and there can certainly be no real claim of innovation in the industrial design department outside of superficial stylistic impositions on case and chassis design. Where cooling is concerned it can safely be said that the powerbooks are perhaps the most poorly designed of any portable's I've come across; many colleagues in fact prop their's up on a book just to allow for air to circulate underneath the thing.
Link please.
Blender is doing just fine, the Blender Foundation increasingly receives funding (recently for a film project employ several artists), is used in educational programmes and was recently the platform used to storyboard the film Spiderman2.0.
Blender and Maya may be in similar markets, but their economic and distribution models are entirely different.
Read on here.
Perhaps if they opened their code they could begin to compete with the free and open-source offerings.
Compare DAZ to Blender/Yafray
Blender was free, closed-source software for some years. No doubt DAZ will also make the decision to emancipate themselves in order to grow in time with their users.
Eg. "You are absolutely and totally free to choose between any of one of these 7 options."
Reminiscent of the current American democratic system - provide the user with options at all and regardless of whether either/any are actually valuable to them, they will endeavour to make a choice, arguing vehemently amongst themselves as to which is better and why. Moreso, while they are making up their mind they aren't looking at real, vaulable options.
Of course there'll be alot of material to get through before you really can decide "Which Windows is best for your Family?". We'll see a plethora of vacuous price-point-performance comparison guides in Toms Hardware and technology journals, six more Windows magazines with baby-lego-block-bar-graphs and serious looking well fed men in mug shots standing beside them.
An extra wall in the maze, another flavour of cheese.
The Register
I think you are right. it basically equates to "You cannot use our stuff if you're taking us to court."
A rare occurrence, but it does seem today that The Register's journalism actually clarifies something:
He was speaking to El Reg after an article on Reuters quoted him as saying that anyone who patented software would be prevented from using free software. Greve says this is not quite what he was getting at:
"The basic idea is that if someone uses software patents against a Free Software program under the GPL, he might lose the right to distribute that particular software, to use it for their products. We have no interest in restricting the way people can use and develop software."
Seems <COUGH>MSNBC</COUGH> gave this a little spin..
<cough>http://www.symphonyos.com/</cough>
A National Disaster is clearly an excellent opportunity to trial new R&D in the field; harsh environmental conditions, long uptime, contingencies at a maximum - like a 'warzone' really. It would seem Bush has chosen to test future battle tech on his own people at home rather than random foreigners or US folk abroad. He doesn't miss a beat does he?
Anyway, I guess these sonic cannons are cheaper than food, shelter and tear-gas or else he surely would have.. nevermind.
Well founded assertion there, and so rigorously argued. I especially like that part where you say: You, yes you could be the voice of change for millions of Linux desktop users. Users that choose sub-standard, agonising desktop conditions purely out of stubbornness, political revelry and pride. As you so eloquently conclude, it is time we shrug off these false convictions and confess the relative benefits of each platform; so that with clarity of judgement we can be make informed response-able decisions, choosing the best tool for the job: Safe to say none of these users (myself included of course) have ever tried OSX else surely they would have switched already. We need to get your message out there.
I'm working on the t-shirt. You just keep on your toes and jot down anything that comes into your head. You never know, it could be truly Insightful.
Cross-dressing is nothing to be ashamed of. Plug-in the real you here.
Easy compared to what? In my experience teaching across both KDE/Linux and OSX I see University students taking around a day to become very comfortable with KDE yet after a week teaching students new to OSX I am still getting fundamental useability questions, especially surrounding mouse/selection useage and the 'Finder'.
Currently I try and avoid teaching on OSX machines; student adaptation simply takes far too much class time. Once they do adapt however, they generally enjoy themselves, though there are always many that simply don't seem to grokk OSX at all.
Admittedly most of these users come from Windows.. which is
KDE appears to understand this very well.
More and more I'm of the opinion that OSX isn't an ephiphany or beacon of Useasbility, in the general sense, so much as a relatively successful marketing campaign telling us it is.
As one student asked, "I've lost my program, is this what the Finder is for"?
I had the distinct feeling I wasn't supposed to see that. There I go again, thinking different sigh.
This may be the pro-level suite you mean. More here.
That said, no one in the feature film industry considers Final Cut Pro to be a standard, in fact MainActor on Linux is a far more widely adopted platform AFAIK.
With a sig as ridiculous as your's I don't know why I bother - but here goes: Yes, and my sister that deeply dislikes computers finds un/installing software in 'Yast' easier in SuSE9.2 than she ever did in Windows. She said "I like how I don't have to go to websites to find programs." There it is, her only comment on Linux in all it's apparently rabid, tendrilous, mind boggling complexity.
Of course those that would rather not learn something new will of course never enjoy this and will constantly complain about the relative lack of similarity Linux package management systems have with that of Windows or Apple systems - both of which I find messy and troublesome having used Linux for several years.
On any debian-based system I find 'apt-get remove <programname>' faster and less troublesome than the poor "double-click-to-rip-its-guts-out" windows un-installation method, which typically leaves gore scattered throughout the filesystem.