It's to write an article whose accuracy is impeccably true by discussing the opponents and proponents in the controversy in a factual way.
Unfortunately, this principle breaks down outside of the scientific community when it comes to topics in one of two areas:
a) emotionally, especially religious, matters, because people who seriously believe that their eternal happiness or damnation depends on it regularily pull out all the stops when it comes to convincing others. The seemingly simple act of just identifying the facts is suddenly very difficult and faces opposition. And since WP doesn't allow original research, and religious nutjobs have no shortage of links, books, articles and other "sources" to point to, it quickly becomes a matter of who can spend more time on getting the article about Noah's place of birth right - a hundred people on the Internet with a vague interest in history, or a dozen fanatics who would kill for it if only they could?
b) fringe topics that require rare special knowledge. No, WP policy is again no help, because in many controversial areas of, say, science on the edge of current knowledge, even presenting a balanced summary of current theories requires expert knowledge. How many people could have written an article about string theory in the 1980s? How many of them were even mostly unbiased, as in not having their own pet theory to push?
WP is not a democracy, as it yells so often, but it does take a lot of the bad parts of democracy. You can't vote on the colour of the sky, and you can't set the value of Pi in a talk page discussion.
Articles like these are exactly where the Britannica, for example, shines in comparison to WP. As a simple test, compare the very straight and clear "Creationism" on Britannica Online with the jumbled mess full of politically motivated deals on choice of words that you find on Wikipedia and that quite frankly is more confusing than enlightening.
I'll see if anyone can come up with a DRM system that does not restrict my rights. If someone does, I will applaud him for completing a task I consider almost impossible. But then, we never thought humans would actually fly a thousand years ago, and talking to someone who is hundreds of miles away would have been magic for most of history. So, I'll wait - but I won't hold my breath. It'll probably require telepathic computers or something unimaginable.:-)
Who knows, it may yet work - if it manages all rights, not just the distributors rights. For example, I want my user rights to be just as important - if it fails, it has to fail "open". If the company goes out of business, I must still be able to use the stuff I paid for. Likewise, it must automatically unlock/decrypt the content when the copyright term is over and the stuff enters the public domain.
Treat my rights as a consumer as equally important as the rights of the distributor, and we can talk about DRM. It's probably still a stupid idea, but as long as the "R" in DRM is entirely one-sided, remind me why I should even consider it as an option?
Comparing apples to oranges. Well, to other Apples actually, but what the heck.
The mini is a great machine for the living room, and why would you want to put a MacBook there? The form factor is different, pretty much everything else about the hardware is different. We live in an age where the old PC mantra of "one user, one machine" isn't true anymore. Today, most of us own several computers already - if I count my phone, I have 3 at home and 2 at work plus a few servers out there. Ten, even five years ago, with that count I would've been an extreme nerd. Today, that's not so unusual anymore.
we can debate usability all day, but in the end it is preference
No, it is not. I even named the ISO standard that defines it. It has its own scientific field (HCI), you know, papers, conferences, all of that (been there, done that).
But at least we now quantitatively know that an Apple computer costs more than a dell with the exact same internals.
If you need to switch between applications quickly, or operating in multiple applications at once, you might as well be scratching calculations onto a rock with a chisel.
So you have used Macs, but have never heard of Expose (which MS has cheaply and badly copied in W7) or of the simple fact the Cmd-Tab has the same functionality as Alt-Tab in windos, or that a click on the dock icon will switch, or about Quicksilver, Spaces or many of the other options available?
Not to even mention universal drag&drop and the tiny fact that windos is the OS where fullscreen maximized appears to be the intended default, while Macs (like Linux) have a true window concept and maximizing is the rare exception?
expert in usability??
Your opinion, no matter how often repeated, does not become truth. Please go into the outside world and look for references. You will find that among experts, the HCI of Apple is much lauded. It is not without shortcomings, but there's a reason Microsoft copies a whole lot of it. In fact, it's funny in a tragic sense that you praise the usability of an OS that has copied pretty much all of its UI design from the other OS that you claim sucks.
I said learning windows is more useful in life, business, and everywhere else in life
And you are dead wrong. That is one particular skill, one that will be outdated usually before or shortly after the kids enter the workplace. The UI of windos, MS Office, etc. changes so dramatically with every release, that retraining to a new version is often only marginally less expensive than training for, say OpenOffice. Again, your personal opinion doesn't matter. Ask people responsible for corporate training activities. All those Excel and Word courses are full of people who are not exactly seeing a computer for the first time in their lives, you know?
why the fuck would you waste millions of taxpayer dollars paying double what you need to for something that most people consider to be a lot worse than the competition?
Because it isn't. Both worse and more expensive. The price is mostly due to Apple not playing in the low-end market. Time and time again, every time a new Mac comes out and the usual MS shills whine how expensive it is, people here on/. make the comparison and go and customize a Dell or HP or whatever other brand machine to the same specifications - and they always and up roughly at the same prize (a little more or less, usually within a few %).
As for "a lot worse" - again, your personal opinion means nothing in the context of a school destrict decision. Cite reliable sources or statistics, or stop claiming your opinion is the majority opinion.
Dollar for dollar, a windows system goes further per dollar.
Prove it. Numbers, data, facts. No matter how often you repeat a lie, it doesn't become true. If it is true, you will have no trouble finding a study, reliable comparison, or run the numbers yourself. Until then, it's a baseless claim, nothing more.
You can subjectively argue that apple products are better, but just like my opinion, yours too is just an opinion.
My claims are pretty specific. For example, I claim OS X has a much better usability than any windos release. You want to discuss about usability with me? Go ahead, read ISO 9241 and we'll talk point-by-point.
I tried to use an Apple system at some point in high school,
Ah, so your entire dissatisfaction is because you once used an unfamiliar system and were surprised it didn't instantly work as well as your customized home environment?
Yes, I understand. I also agree we shouldn't be doing these newfangled "cars" thing. They are so difficult compared to horses.
Would you have purchased exports and endorsed the Nazi party in Germany just because they made good quality, fast moving tanks?
If I were in the need of some really good tanks, well obviously yes. One less they can use themselves. Which is only one place where your comparison shows its weaknesses.
You believe Apple to be evil, so you don't buy from them. Fine, your decision. Just don't try to claim you have found a universal truth, it is still your opinion and nothing more.
Should the buying decisions of a school destrict be based on subjective evaluation of corporate conduct? Frankly, if you want to put corporate conduct into the equation, at least use an objective measurement. How about: Not buying from companies who have been actually convicted in a court of law of unlawful behaviour in the marketplace?
Not even remotely close, and NOTHING any current Apple product can do even comes close to filling in the terrible lack of utility. [...]
And so on and so forth. You're throwing out a bunch of personal evaluations. To your misfortune, you disagree with almost every expert in the field when it comes to useability. There's a reason windos fills the Interface Hall of Shame.
Apple has a hell of a long way to go to catch up to the productivity and functionality of windows.
A friend of mine is currently out of a job. How much are they paying for posting defensive advertisement? Or is it just free copies of whatever?
You CAN write good installers for Windows software, I've seen it done.
Yes, but MSI isn't one of them.
I see OS X programs using installers, too, and it makes me cringe. The default way, fortunately, still is "drag this icon to your Applications folder". Of course, the best part is that uninstalling is just the reverse, drag to trash. On windos, uninstalling is a horror trip and half of the crap leaves something behind.
Linux still doesn't have reliable inter-app drag & drop (neither does windos). The package managers are mostly good, but installing a 3rd party tool that's not in the repository is not something you'd challenge a non-geek with. There's more.
I'm saying that as someone who did give his mother a Linux PC, and set it up so she could use it. I'm speaking from experience. Do you?
No, it isn't. But sometimes you have to force to allow choices. Math, languages, science and history class are not choices as well - but we understand that a basic understanding of these is a requirement for meaningful choices later in life.
OK windows 7 does WORK, and works GREAT. And combined with Office 2010 it is way ahead of anything MAC has to offer for productivity suite.
Have you every actually, seriously, for more than 10 minutes, tried something else?
Numbers blows Excel out of the water in anything you'd want to use a spreadsheet for. Now I know Excel is getting massively abused for stuff that should really be done on a database or a dedicated tool, and Numbers doesn't offer that kind of "flexibility". But you do sound a lot like a paid MS shill. Yeah W7 works. Roughly the way that W95 should've. The UI is unbelievably clunky. Ask anyone who knows something about HCI. Seriously.
If it's not the job of education to support monopolies then there shouldn't have been an O/S requirement at all. Maybe something more along the lines of "It must make a.doc file and a.xml file since that is the format we grade our papers in".
Yes, in a computer science class that would be the solution. Now imagine a fine arts student. Now imagine the amount of tech support you need to explain to 1000 of them what a.doc and what a.xml file is and how they find out if the program of their choice does that, and why no this version of MS Office generates an incompatible file format, and and and and...
This is a school, not a geek headquarter. They want to get work done, not worry about crap.
Really, if you want to reduce diversity, in order to get a manageable baseline where everyone has the same environment, then Apple is the sane choice. On windos, even different versions of the same office suite create incompatible files. And we all know how very different two Linux installs can be.
Oh, so they create their own little mini monopoly within their school so they can justify their preference on computing platforms.
And your problem with that is what, exactly? They also have "monopolies" on textbooks in that they "force" students to use the textbook they choose, not allow everyone to use his or her own. I assume that in class they want to concentrate on the task at hand, not busy themselves with constant tech support because it works slightly different on kid As machine and for kid B the shortcuts are different while kid C has a different window manager and so on and so forth.
But on a side note, though. I don't know what rock you live under, but Windows systems really do work.
Yes, barely, slowly and obnoxiously. I use them at work and at home for gaming. W7 is a small step upwards from XP. But it's still the same old garbage. Maybe I've studied too much user interface design and HCI for my own good, but if you know anything about user interfaces at all, then using windos is pure torture.
No, it is the job of education to provide knowledge.
That was the case in the 80s, when (presumably) you and me went to school. My girlfriend is becoming a teacher, so I know a bit about current education. Skills, empowerment, abilities are a lot more important than knowledge today. Knowledge is cheap - use Google, Wikipedia, whatever. Understanding is more important. Being able to acquire knowledge and understanding is key.
Windows may have the majority of the market, but it is good. If all of the papers that need to be written have the same functionality as the MS Office series, and operate in the same file formats,
So you want to spend tax dollars to deepen the lock-in? You can't be for real.
Apple uses its OS to create a monopoly on the culture of its users, regulating how and where they get their programs (at least for the iPhone, iPad, and iPods).
You may have noticed this discussion is not about iPhone, iPad nor iPods. So your argument is what, exactly?
As for functionality per dollar? Windows is the best value for the dollar.
Impossible. By pure math, if a competing product is available for free (Linux, *BSD, etc.) then you can not beat it in any "per dollar" comparison.
Sadly, your wonderful little reality is very impractical, the compatibility is just not there.
You are funny. My wonderful little reality is both wonderful and very real. And gaming is the only use I have left for windos. If Steam continues to add good games, not much longer.
If the only stuff you install is 20 GB games, that is true. For smaller tools, the clickathlon on windos is just horrible. Yes, I want to allow this installer to install stuff, that's why I double-clicked it, you know? Yes, I want to launch. Yes, in my system language. Next, Next, Next, Yes, Yes, Next, Next, yes give me a shortcut, no don't install this extra crap, yes, no, next, next, shit, fuck off, next, now where's the damn thing gone to? Register later, next, next, yes, no, aargh...
Because they want tools that work, not tools where you have to work so they get the fuck out of your way and let you get something done. Seriously, by the time I'm done installing some software on W7, I'm already done installing, launching and have started working on a document on OS X.
Plus: Especially because windos dominates the corporate world, education should show kids that there are also alternatives. It is not the job of education to support monopolies. It is the job of education to show kids the possibilities out there, so they can make informed choices.
Besides, what can a Mac do that Linux can't when it comes to schoolwork?
Not be a hassle.
This is for students that are not studying computer science. They shouldn't waste their time on what is essentially just a tool. The tool should just work, and right now, Macs get the most points in that category.
That said, using a unified platform is not a bad idea, but why make students buy heavily marked up hardware? Why not Netbooks with Linux?
Because these computers are meant to be tools, not toys. The students should work with them, not work on getting them to work. Don't get me wrong, all my servers run Linux, but if you ask me what a non-techie who wants the machine to not be in his way should buy, I'll recommend a Mac, too. The stuff just works, out of the box, and in almost 30 years of computers, I've not seen something that gives me less trouble in my daily work.
The main reason, in my mind, to upgrade is being able to effectively use 64-bit machines fully--and have more than 4GB of RAM.
Aside from the memory, I have yet to see one advantage of W7 64bit over XP 32bit, running on this same machine. I do see a lot of disadvantages, though, with crappy apps and games not supporting 64bit, or not fully (I've seen several that run just fine once installed, but the installer doesn't work on 64bit, go figure).
I've upgraded one machine to W7. Don't see much of a reason to upgrade the other. Aside from a few minor improvements, there really isn't all that much in W7 that is compelling. And in all the things that matter to me - user friendliness, software available, performance, in that order - it is just as bad as the other crap out of Redmond.
Yes, MS has put in incentives - IE8 (which I don't use), DX10/11 (which really doesn't make all that much of a difference so far) and probably a couple others.
It still doesn't handle misbehaving applications well, it is still obnoxious in everything it does (where is the "I know, you've told me 500 times, now fuck the fuck off and leave me alone!" button?) and the UI is at least as much an abomination as every other version.
Slashdot Mirror
It's to write an article whose accuracy is impeccably true by discussing the opponents and proponents in the controversy in a factual way.
Unfortunately, this principle breaks down outside of the scientific community when it comes to topics in one of two areas:
a) emotionally, especially religious, matters, because people who seriously believe that their eternal happiness or damnation depends on it regularily pull out all the stops when it comes to convincing others. The seemingly simple act of just identifying the facts is suddenly very difficult and faces opposition. And since WP doesn't allow original research, and religious nutjobs have no shortage of links, books, articles and other "sources" to point to, it quickly becomes a matter of who can spend more time on getting the article about Noah's place of birth right - a hundred people on the Internet with a vague interest in history, or a dozen fanatics who would kill for it if only they could?
b) fringe topics that require rare special knowledge. No, WP policy is again no help, because in many controversial areas of, say, science on the edge of current knowledge, even presenting a balanced summary of current theories requires expert knowledge. How many people could have written an article about string theory in the 1980s? How many of them were even mostly unbiased, as in not having their own pet theory to push?
WP is not a democracy, as it yells so often, but it does take a lot of the bad parts of democracy. You can't vote on the colour of the sky, and you can't set the value of Pi in a talk page discussion.
Articles like these are exactly where the Britannica, for example, shines in comparison to WP. As a simple test, compare the very straight and clear "Creationism" on Britannica Online with the jumbled mess full of politically motivated deals on choice of words that you find on Wikipedia and that quite frankly is more confusing than enlightening.
I'll see if anyone can come up with a DRM system that does not restrict my rights. If someone does, I will applaud him for completing a task I consider almost impossible. But then, we never thought humans would actually fly a thousand years ago, and talking to someone who is hundreds of miles away would have been magic for most of history. So, I'll wait - but I won't hold my breath. It'll probably require telepathic computers or something unimaginable. :-)
Public domain doesn't mean they aren't allowed to sell it
No, but it does mean I am allowed to copy it - so a "fair DRM" system has to let me, basically, disable itself.
Good point, yes. I didn't intend to list all rights, I was shooting for examples. Obviously, the list is a lot longer, with fair use and all.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA! -- (Big media meeting reading your comment)
BwuahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! -- (me after reading their latest whining about piracy while I look for stuff on torrentz.com)
It's a free market, right? Supply and demand, sales occur where the two meet. Only in the 101 primary school version is price the only factor.
Agreed. One of the reasons I put a Mac Mini into my living room was that it used to be dirt cheap for what it was offering.
Who knows, it may yet work - if it manages all rights, not just the distributors rights. For example, I want my user rights to be just as important - if it fails, it has to fail "open". If the company goes out of business, I must still be able to use the stuff I paid for. Likewise, it must automatically unlock/decrypt the content when the copyright term is over and the stuff enters the public domain.
Treat my rights as a consumer as equally important as the rights of the distributor, and we can talk about DRM. It's probably still a stupid idea, but as long as the "R" in DRM is entirely one-sided, remind me why I should even consider it as an option?
Comparing apples to oranges. Well, to other Apples actually, but what the heck.
The mini is a great machine for the living room, and why would you want to put a MacBook there? The form factor is different, pretty much everything else about the hardware is different. We live in an age where the old PC mantra of "one user, one machine" isn't true anymore. Today, most of us own several computers already - if I count my phone, I have 3 at home and 2 at work plus a few servers out there. Ten, even five years ago, with that count I would've been an extreme nerd. Today, that's not so unusual anymore.
we can debate usability all day, but in the end it is preference
No, it is not. I even named the ISO standard that defines it. It has its own scientific field (HCI), you know, papers, conferences, all of that (been there, done that).
But at least we now quantitatively know that an Apple computer costs more than a dell with the exact same internals.
Oh yes, for one example.
If that's all it takes to convince you, look:
Dell notebook - $1075 vs. Apple MacBook - 815 (ca. $997). And the Dell has a smaller harddrive (no larger one available), no built-in camera, DVD reader not writer, etc.
So, in your own words, at least we now quantitatively know that an Apple computer costs less while having better specs than a dell. ;-)
If you need to switch between applications quickly, or operating in multiple applications at once, you might as well be scratching calculations onto a rock with a chisel.
So you have used Macs, but have never heard of Expose (which MS has cheaply and badly copied in W7) or of the simple fact the Cmd-Tab has the same functionality as Alt-Tab in windos, or that a click on the dock icon will switch, or about Quicksilver, Spaces or many of the other options available?
Not to even mention universal drag&drop and the tiny fact that windos is the OS where fullscreen maximized appears to be the intended default, while Macs (like Linux) have a true window concept and maximizing is the rare exception?
expert in usability??
Your opinion, no matter how often repeated, does not become truth. Please go into the outside world and look for references. You will find that among experts, the HCI of Apple is much lauded. It is not without shortcomings, but there's a reason Microsoft copies a whole lot of it. In fact, it's funny in a tragic sense that you praise the usability of an OS that has copied pretty much all of its UI design from the other OS that you claim sucks.
I said learning windows is more useful in life, business, and everywhere else in life
And you are dead wrong. That is one particular skill, one that will be outdated usually before or shortly after the kids enter the workplace. The UI of windos, MS Office, etc. changes so dramatically with every release, that retraining to a new version is often only marginally less expensive than training for, say OpenOffice.
Again, your personal opinion doesn't matter. Ask people responsible for corporate training activities. All those Excel and Word courses are full of people who are not exactly seeing a computer for the first time in their lives, you know?
why the fuck would you waste millions of taxpayer dollars paying double what you need to for something that most people consider to be a lot worse than the competition?
Because it isn't. Both worse and more expensive. The price is mostly due to Apple not playing in the low-end market. Time and time again, every time a new Mac comes out and the usual MS shills whine how expensive it is, people here on /. make the comparison and go and customize a Dell or HP or whatever other brand machine to the same specifications - and they always and up roughly at the same prize (a little more or less, usually within a few %).
As for "a lot worse" - again, your personal opinion means nothing in the context of a school destrict decision. Cite reliable sources or statistics, or stop claiming your opinion is the majority opinion.
Dollar for dollar, a windows system goes further per dollar.
Prove it. Numbers, data, facts. No matter how often you repeat a lie, it doesn't become true. If it is true, you will have no trouble finding a study, reliable comparison, or run the numbers yourself. Until then, it's a baseless claim, nothing more.
You can subjectively argue that apple products are better, but just like my opinion, yours too is just an opinion.
My claims are pretty specific. For example, I claim OS X has a much better usability than any windos release. You want to discuss about usability with me? Go ahead, read ISO 9241 and we'll talk point-by-point.
I tried to use an Apple system at some point in high school,
Ah, so your entire dissatisfaction is because you once used an unfamiliar system and were surprised it didn't instantly work as well as your customized home environment?
Yes, I understand. I also agree we shouldn't be doing these newfangled "cars" thing. They are so difficult compared to horses.
Would you have purchased exports and endorsed the Nazi party in Germany just because they made good quality, fast moving tanks?
If I were in the need of some really good tanks, well obviously yes. One less they can use themselves. Which is only one place where your comparison shows its weaknesses.
You believe Apple to be evil, so you don't buy from them. Fine, your decision. Just don't try to claim you have found a universal truth, it is still your opinion and nothing more.
Should the buying decisions of a school destrict be based on subjective evaluation of corporate conduct? Frankly, if you want to put corporate conduct into the equation, at least use an objective measurement. How about: Not buying from companies who have been actually convicted in a court of law of unlawful behaviour in the marketplace?
Not even remotely close, and NOTHING any current Apple product can do even comes close to filling in the terrible lack of utility. [...]
And so on and so forth. You're throwing out a bunch of personal evaluations. To your misfortune, you disagree with almost every expert in the field when it comes to useability. There's a reason windos fills the Interface Hall of Shame.
Apple has a hell of a long way to go to catch up to the productivity and functionality of windows.
A friend of mine is currently out of a job. How much are they paying for posting defensive advertisement? Or is it just free copies of whatever?
You CAN write good installers for Windows software, I've seen it done.
Yes, but MSI isn't one of them.
I see OS X programs using installers, too, and it makes me cringe. The default way, fortunately, still is "drag this icon to your Applications folder". Of course, the best part is that uninstalling is just the reverse, drag to trash. On windos, uninstalling is a horror trip and half of the crap leaves something behind.
Linux just works, and it just works RIGHT NOW.
For you and me - tech people.
Linux still doesn't have reliable inter-app drag & drop (neither does windos). The package managers are mostly good, but installing a 3rd party tool that's not in the repository is not something you'd challenge a non-geek with. There's more.
I'm saying that as someone who did give his mother a Linux PC, and set it up so she could use it. I'm speaking from experience. Do you?
No, it isn't. But sometimes you have to force to allow choices. Math, languages, science and history class are not choices as well - but we understand that a basic understanding of these is a requirement for meaningful choices later in life.
OK windows 7 does WORK, and works GREAT. And combined with Office 2010 it is way ahead of anything MAC has to offer for productivity suite.
Have you every actually, seriously, for more than 10 minutes, tried something else?
Numbers blows Excel out of the water in anything you'd want to use a spreadsheet for. Now I know Excel is getting massively abused for stuff that should really be done on a database or a dedicated tool, and Numbers doesn't offer that kind of "flexibility". But you do sound a lot like a paid MS shill. Yeah W7 works. Roughly the way that W95 should've. The UI is unbelievably clunky. Ask anyone who knows something about HCI. Seriously.
If it's not the job of education to support monopolies then there shouldn't have been an O/S requirement at all. Maybe something more along the lines of "It must make a .doc file and a .xml file since that is the format we grade our papers in".
Yes, in a computer science class that would be the solution. Now imagine a fine arts student. Now imagine the amount of tech support you need to explain to 1000 of them what a .doc and what a .xml file is and how they find out if the program of their choice does that, and why no this version of MS Office generates an incompatible file format, and and and and...
This is a school, not a geek headquarter. They want to get work done, not worry about crap.
Really, if you want to reduce diversity, in order to get a manageable baseline where everyone has the same environment, then Apple is the sane choice. On windos, even different versions of the same office suite create incompatible files. And we all know how very different two Linux installs can be.
Oh, so they create their own little mini monopoly within their school so they can justify their preference on computing platforms.
And your problem with that is what, exactly? They also have "monopolies" on textbooks in that they "force" students to use the textbook they choose, not allow everyone to use his or her own. I assume that in class they want to concentrate on the task at hand, not busy themselves with constant tech support because it works slightly different on kid As machine and for kid B the shortcuts are different while kid C has a different window manager and so on and so forth.
But on a side note, though. I don't know what rock you live under, but Windows systems really do work.
Yes, barely, slowly and obnoxiously. I use them at work and at home for gaming. W7 is a small step upwards from XP. But it's still the same old garbage. Maybe I've studied too much user interface design and HCI for my own good, but if you know anything about user interfaces at all, then using windos is pure torture.
No, it is the job of education to provide knowledge.
That was the case in the 80s, when (presumably) you and me went to school. My girlfriend is becoming a teacher, so I know a bit about current education. Skills, empowerment, abilities are a lot more important than knowledge today. Knowledge is cheap - use Google, Wikipedia, whatever. Understanding is more important. Being able to acquire knowledge and understanding is key.
Windows may have the majority of the market, but it is good. If all of the papers that need to be written have the same functionality as the MS Office series, and operate in the same file formats,
So you want to spend tax dollars to deepen the lock-in? You can't be for real.
Apple uses its OS to create a monopoly on the culture of its users, regulating how and where they get their programs (at least for the iPhone, iPad, and iPods).
You may have noticed this discussion is not about iPhone, iPad nor iPods. So your argument is what, exactly?
As for functionality per dollar? Windows is the best value for the dollar.
Impossible. By pure math, if a competing product is available for free (Linux, *BSD, etc.) then you can not beat it in any "per dollar" comparison.
Sadly, your wonderful little reality is very impractical, the compatibility is just not there.
You are funny. My wonderful little reality is both wonderful and very real. And gaming is the only use I have left for windos. If Steam continues to add good games, not much longer.
If the only stuff you install is 20 GB games, that is true. For smaller tools, the clickathlon on windos is just horrible. Yes, I want to allow this installer to install stuff, that's why I double-clicked it, you know? Yes, I want to launch. Yes, in my system language. Next, Next, Next, Yes, Yes, Next, Next, yes give me a shortcut, no don't install this extra crap, yes, no, next, next, shit, fuck off, next, now where's the damn thing gone to? Register later, next, next, yes, no, aargh...
Because they want tools that work, not tools where you have to work so they get the fuck out of your way and let you get something done. Seriously, by the time I'm done installing some software on W7, I'm already done installing, launching and have started working on a document on OS X.
Plus: Especially because windos dominates the corporate world, education should show kids that there are also alternatives. It is not the job of education to support monopolies. It is the job of education to show kids the possibilities out there, so they can make informed choices.
Besides, what can a Mac do that Linux can't when it comes to schoolwork?
Not be a hassle.
This is for students that are not studying computer science. They shouldn't waste their time on what is essentially just a tool. The tool should just work, and right now, Macs get the most points in that category.
That said, using a unified platform is not a bad idea, but why make students buy heavily marked up hardware? Why not Netbooks with Linux?
Because these computers are meant to be tools, not toys. The students should work with them, not work on getting them to work. Don't get me wrong, all my servers run Linux, but if you ask me what a non-techie who wants the machine to not be in his way should buy, I'll recommend a Mac, too. The stuff just works, out of the box, and in almost 30 years of computers, I've not seen something that gives me less trouble in my daily work.
The main reason, in my mind, to upgrade is being able to effectively use 64-bit machines fully--and have more than 4GB of RAM.
Aside from the memory, I have yet to see one advantage of W7 64bit over XP 32bit, running on this same machine. I do see a lot of disadvantages, though, with crappy apps and games not supporting 64bit, or not fully (I've seen several that run just fine once installed, but the installer doesn't work on 64bit, go figure).
You beat me to it.
I've upgraded one machine to W7. Don't see much of a reason to upgrade the other. Aside from a few minor improvements, there really isn't all that much in W7 that is compelling. And in all the things that matter to me - user friendliness, software available, performance, in that order - it is just as bad as the other crap out of Redmond.
Yes, MS has put in incentives - IE8 (which I don't use), DX10/11 (which really doesn't make all that much of a difference so far) and probably a couple others.
It still doesn't handle misbehaving applications well, it is still obnoxious in everything it does (where is the "I know, you've told me 500 times, now fuck the fuck off and leave me alone!" button?) and the UI is at least as much an abomination as every other version.