Funny you should mention this. Spider Robinson wrote about this sort of response Heinlein seems to get from some women. (and remember, Heinlein's novels were largely written before 1980...hell, mostly before 1970. Attitudes have changed....and mostly seem to catch up with Heinlein, frankly.)
See his article "RAH, RAH, R.A.H." which you can find a copy of on the Heinlein Society site:
(2) "Heinlein is a male chauvinist." This is the second most common charge these days. That's right, Heinlein populates his books with dumb, weak, incompetent women. Like Sister Maggie in "If This Goes On--"; Dr. Mary Lou Martin in "Let There Be Light"; Mary Sperling in Methuselah's Children; Grace Cormet in "--We Also Walk Dogs"; Longcourt Phyllis in Beyond This Horizon; Cynthia Craig in "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag"; Karen in "Gulf"; Gloria McNye in "Delilah and the Space-Rigger"; Allucquere in The Puppet Masters; Hazel and Edith Stone in The Rolling Stones; Betty in The Star Beast; all the women in Tunnel in the Sky; Penny in Double Star; Pee Wee and the Mother Thing in Have Space Suit--Will Travel; Jill Boardman, Becky Vesant, Patty Paiwonski, Anne, Miriam and Dorcas in Stranger in a Strange Land; Star, the Empress of Twenty Universes, in Glory Road; Wyoh, Mimi, Sidris and Gospazha Michelle Holmes in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress; Eunice and Joan Eunice in I Will Fear No Evil; Ishtar, Tamara, Minerva, Hamadryad, Dora, Helen Mayberry, Llita, Laz, Lor and Maureen Smith in Time Enough For Love; and Dejah Thoris, Hilda Corners, Gay Deceiver and Elizabeth Long in "The Number of the Beast--. "[1] Brainless cupcakes all, eh? (Virtually every one of them is a world-class expert in at least one demanding and competitive field; the exceptions plainly will be as soon as they grow up. Madame Curie would have enjoyed chatting with any one of them.) Helpless housewives! (Any one of them could take Wonder Woman three falls out of three, and polish off Jirel of Joiry for dessert.) I think one could perhaps make an excellent case for Heinlein as a female chauvinist. He has repeatedly insisted that women average smarter, more practical and more courageous than men. He consistently underscores their biological and emotional superiority. He married a woman he proudly described to me as "smarter, better educated and more sensible than I am." In his latest book, Expanded Universe--the immediate occasion for this article--he suggests without the slightest visible trace of irony that the franchise be taken away from men and given exclusively to women. He consistently created strong, intelligent, capable, independent, sexually aggressive women characters for a quarter of a century before it was made a requirement, right down to his supporting casts. Clearly we are still in the area of delusions which can be cured simply by reading Heinlein while awake.
and
(2) "Heinlein can't create believable women characters." There's an easy way to support this claim: simply disbelieve in all Heinlein's female characters, and maintain that all those who believe them are gullible. You'll have a problem, though: several of Heinlein's women bear a striking resemblance to his wife Virginia, you'll have to disbelieve in her, too--which could get you killed if your paths cross. Also, there's a lady I once lived with for a long time, who used to haunt the magazine stores when I Will Fear No Evil was being serialized in Galaxy, because she could not wait to read the further adventures of the "unbelievable" character with whom she identified so strongly--you'll have to disbelieve in her, too. Oddly, this complaint comes most often from radical feminists. Examination shows that Heinlein's female characters are almost invariably highly intelligent, educated, competent, practical, resourceful, courageous, independent, sexually aggressi
Actually, if you want see to an excellent movie adaptation of a SF book, that follows the book almost exactly, take a look at the movie "Colossus:The Forbin Project" (sometimes called just one or the other). Then read the book by D. F. Jones, or vice versa. Very, very close, faithful adaptation of an excellent book.
Sorry, but anyone, ANYONE, who buys any multifunction device (on a PC or a Mac) deserves the pain they get. Same rules as buying a TV with a VCR or DVD player in it (or both). I guarantee you'll be without BOTH eventually while one is being fixed (usually the player, the think with the moving parts), and probably end up either buying a separate player, or a new TV, or even both. You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.
And 99% of people prefer a multifunction device? What a load of bull. I don't know ANYONE with a multifunction device (well, not anymore, a few HAVE foolishly tried 'em...and now have the same wisdome I do. The rest of us smart enough not to buy 'em in the first place.)
We never said ALL devices will work, anyway. Most of the ones that don't tend to be junk, though. The stuff that supports the standards work fine on the Mac. Anything that doesn't is non-standard and will give you problems on your PC too, sooner or later. In terms of printers....if they don't support both Mac and PC, they're probably a crappy brand or model and will cause you problems on a PC too. Not always, of course, some companies just decided to be PC only. That's fine....plenty of other vendors will take up the slack!
Re: HP printers requiring specific versions of OS X. Maybe they require a specific minimum version...so what? Later versions keep working. My Canon printer purchased 2 or 3 OS X verisons back still works fine on 10.4. The HP printer I bought for my mother's Mac works on OS 9 and OS X.
And just because the box doesn't say it works, doesn't mean it won't. I've used many a device that doesn't say that it supports Mac on the box on my Macs, they are working just fine.
Nope, never use Linux in my life. I've owned and used Macs since 1984. Currently still have most of them, including my original 128k Mac (with Plus upgrade). I've got a closet with about 30 Macs (most of which have been saved from the trash bin, in fact.) And I've hooked up all sorts of stuff "off the shelf", including Windows-only modems (the connector wasn't the same...I had to get an adapter from Radio Shack), etc to my Mac with no problems. Also to other people's Macs. My PC at work is what's been the pain in the ass, frankly.
Soviet Union of computing....what a crock. I do stuff whatever damn way I want on my Mac and hook up whatever I want and it works. 100%? No, of course not. But I've had much less problem hooking up peripherals to my Mac than my PC at work. Quite often it's the SAME stuff, too. I've brought in keyboards, wireless mice, memory card readers, PDA docks (Palm and WinCE), thumb drives, you name it. NONE of these devices were made by Apple (although Apple's hardware generally works quite well with PCs as well as Macs too.)
And I've upgraded my current PowerBook G4 1Ghz with a non-Apple dual layer 8x dvd burner, and a non-Apple 120GB hard drive. At my desk, I've got an iPod firewire dock, a USB thumb drive, a Palm dock, a wireless keyboard and mouse (USB) and trackball, a Canon digi cam and USB printer all hooked up. All are plug-and-play, few or no third party drivers even needed.
My old PowerBook G3 had a ton of third party drives in it's two drive/battery bays. In addition to the Apple CD drive, DVD drive, and diskette drive, I added a third party Zip drive, a third-party hard drive bay (bought empty and I added my own drive to it, the drive I replaced when I upgraded the internal HD), etc. I replaced the original 4GB hard disk with a 14GB then a 40GB. I upgraded the RAM, I even added a processor upgrade card. All non-Apple. Since the G3 model I had didn't have USB or firewire, I just bought off-the shelf PCMCIA USB and Firewire cards (didn't even mention Mac support), plugged 'em in and they worked. Doesn't sound like "Apple's way or the highway" to me, bud. I added a PCMCIA WiFi card and the original Apple AirPort base station and the Mac supported the third-party WiFi Card with no third party driver needed (under OS 9). Upgraded to OS X when it came out.
USB is a piece of shit on PCs, even under XP All of the USB devices hooked to my PC at work were originally used used on my Mac. Getting 'em to work on the PC has been a pain in the ass. The Windows drivers they shipped with don't work on XP, and even when I found them online and downloaded, they didn't work well. On the Mac, there is no driver needed, I just plugged it in. And to remove them, I just unplugged 'em. Windows freaks out when you unplug something USB and often when you plug something in (or even move it to a different port!) Microsoft doesn't even support the WinCE PDA docks on the Mac (that took additional software, available from not one but TWO different sources, actually....but not Microsoft, who in the past has supported the Palm but NOT their own Windows CE PDAs on Macs....what idiots!) When I used a WinCE PDA on the PC, it lost track of the PDA-to-PC pairing THREE times and fubared all my data. This has never happened with the Palm. I finally gave up on Windows PDA, which are truly awful compared to Palm PDAs.
I'd say that the above examples pretty much shoots your opinion to flinders, bud.
In fact, I'd have to say your claim that you're a Mac user or ever have been is a masquerade.
Hah...just as I finished this, one of the Mac vs PC Apple commercials just came on TV. Perfect!
> A) availability: Most retailers don't carry Macs. Especially now that Apple has its own retail stores. Apple is now a competitor. And Apple has very strict limits on what prices 3rd party vendors can sell their computers for. That's why you never see a (new) Mac sold anywhere for more $5 less than Apple's own price.
Good point. About the only good one you make, though.
> B) price: You pay more for the Apple name. Yes, you also pay more because the cost of the PC is partially subsidized by promotional software, some of which may or may not be useful. In any event, for $500, which would you want? A Mac mini that doesn't even come with a DVD burner, keyboard, mouse, or monitor? Or would you rather have an Athlon64-based system with a DVD burner, keyboard, mouse, and everything you need and probably even a 15"-17" LCD monitor thrown in?
I'll take a Mac, every time. I use and program Windows PCs for a living. Because of that, I won't have one for my main machine. I've got an old PC at home that picked up cheap on the off chance I needed it for something work-related but I literally never use it. Haven't even turned it on after installing it, in almost a year. Waste of money.
> C) compatibility: You can't even buy a printer that doesn't work with Windows. It's not hard to find one that doesn't work with Mac. It's nice to know that whatever you buy will just work. Printers are a big problem here in that some printer drivers only work with certain point releases of Mac OS X. Others work, but are 10 times slower than on Windows (I offer up my Brother MFC-3820CN as proof of this). And multifunctions/all-in-ones may not have all functionality available on Mac.
Bollocks. While I've not doubt there are some printers for which their might not be drivers YET, the Mac comes with CUPS, which has drivers for many printers you couldn't even find drivers for the PC for from the original vendors anymore. Thus getting a lot more use out of your existing (or PC) printer for which you've probably lost the driver CD anyway. On the Mac there is often no driver CD needed. It works out of the box! It's that way for my current printer. While it came with drivers years ago, they are now built in to CUPS.
As to multi-function printers....any one who buys a multi-function device is an idiot, pure and simple. Have one part fail and lose ALL the functions while you get it fixed? Ridiculous. Even if space is a consideration....it's not THAT big a consideration with the advent of plug-and-play USB devices. Just unplug your scanner or card reader or whatever and store it in a cupboard until you need it, instead.
> D) upgradeability: Unless you're talking about a PowerMac G5, Macs have no internal expandability. What are you supposed to do if your computing needs change? Pay Apple to do the upgrade for you? You can't even install memory in a Mac mini without special expertise! Forget about upgrading an optical drive or a hard drive. How about upgrading the onboard video to something more current? Not even a remote possibility in a Mac because there are no expansion slots!
Bollocks. Most consumers do NOT upgrade their PCs. EVER. They buy a new one in a few years and either throw away the old one or give it to their kids. Only gamers and geeks are interested in upgrading. Most folks would do just fine with either an iMac or a similar "all in one" PC.
> E) people like freedom: With a PC, you have your choice of manufacturer, a greater choice of options (both BTO and aftermarket), and the knowledge that you probably know someone who is good with PCs. And if you don't, any computer place (other than the Apple Store, naturally) can service it for you.
Again, Bollocks. Most people buy the basic box and that's it. Again, only geeks and gamers are interested in lots of options/upgrading. While personally I'd agree that options are nice, I'm a geek. In my experience with normal folks, too many options actually CONFUSES them when it comes to computers.
> I think you forget that CDs have DRM as well, so you can't just rip anything to any player.
Actually, very few CDs have DRM. In the USA anyway. And after the Sony Rootkit firestorm, I think most labels will think twice and back away slowly from DRM on CDs. Too many pissed off customers, and too many pissed off vendors having to deal with all the complaints from their customers.
Apparently you HAVE either (a) been in a coma or (b) don't live in the USA or other countries with the equivalent of the US's Digital Millenium Copyright Act...
And you think that because it happened to you it happens to everyone? Ridiculous.
I've purchased about seven Macs in the last 20 years, the last one purchased about 3 years ago, and only one had any early problems (the previous PowerBook G3 I owned before the G4) and that was fixed quickly and easily and permanently. I still have that old G3 and it works fine, eight years after I bought it. Also have had several different models of Newton and iPod. No hardware problems whatsoever with any of those, either.
But at least I realize that my experience doesn't mean that other's WON'T have problems, of course, and I'd never assume it did, as YOU are doing.
Frankly, if you've having that much trouble, you've got to be doing something wrong to your equipment, abusing it or perhaps your location just has bad power, etc. The one time I was having weird crashes on a unit, I noticed a drastic drop in weird crashes when I put a UPS in the between them and the wall power outlet. Wish I could get a UPS on my Windows PC at work....Windows and Office are always crashing in weird and unique ways. That can't ALL be Microsoft's fault, can it?
However, of the several folks I know who have Macs, none have had any hardware failures. Software problems happen occasionally, but are also rare. The PC users I know are always dealing with problems one sort or another, usually viruses, spyware, crappy discount hardware or drivers causing problems.
I haven't had but ONE kernel panic in the entire 3 years of owning my current PowerBook G4. Even apps rarely crash (and, surprise surprise, the ones that usually do are Microsoft apps, or F/OSS apps like Firefox.)
Of course, people are always pushing Apple to make "cheaper" Macs. And so now they are. And you know what that does to quality.....perhaps that's starting to finally affect Apple. Good, fast, cheap...pick any two.
The did produce it. I have a portable MD DATA drive still from many years ago. It was slow and proprietary and the drives used a disk format and didn't support any of the standard OS disk maintenance and repair tools.
Junk. Which is probably why you haven't seen one.
The only think I liked from Sony in recent memory was the Clie NX* PDAs and even the had some silly proprietary stuff/limitations (that third parties managed to work around, thankfully.)
Have you actually ever used a Newton? I still have four of them (one in each form factor except the eMate) and NONE of them have a screen cover that doubles as a stand.
The 1xx form factor and the 2xx do have flip back screen covers, but that's it -- NONE of them are designed to or can be used as a stand.
(Well, there was the trick on the 2xx unit of rotating the screen to landscape, putting the screen cover on the desk and sticking a rubber block erase between it and the Newton itself....but that's NOT an intentional design and you have to carry around an eraser....)
The 1xx units had the screen cover on the top not the side and while you might try to use it like an easel to hold the unit up, it sure wasn't stable. Not surprising, since it was a screen cover not a stand...
> I'll take my business to the little guys (Free/Open Source) who DO get along. (That's not to say OSS gets along all the time, but they do more frequently than closed source
Yeah right, sure they do...that's why there are a zillion different Linux distros on intel chips alone that all vary only slightly....and several different slightly different desktop managers....and so on and so on.
Too much choice can be a BAD thing too and Linux is a perfect example. "WHICH Linux do I pick?", says Joe AverageComputerUser, "There are so many? Ah, the heck with it, I can't tell. I'll just buy Windows."
Hell, this is even a problem on (PowerPC) Macs....there are at a bunch of Linux distros there too, (Ubuntu, SUSE, YellowDog, MkLinux, etc,etc maybe more that I can't think of.)
OSS is even MORE likely to fall into the "take my ball and go home" trap. Too many chiefs, not enough workers.
Dead on? No: dead horse. As in "beating a dead..."
Three percent? No. Despite what the MS and Linux fanbois want to clam, the current Mac market share is almost 7% and growing, and that's SALES, NOT installed base. Installed base is obviously higher, around 15%-20% according to estimates. And no, these are not stats from Apple, who never talks about such things.
So the main reason there aren't any Mac viruses and very few Unix/Linux viruses (in comparison to Windows) is not availability of units to infect, there are millions and millions. It's because virus writers are 99.9% of the time dumb little jerks or crooks with who have little or no real computer skills, writing it on a cheap PC clone in their bedroom, or are already somewhat slimy felons or maladjusted individuals.
Hell, most of the PC viruses are just variations on a few major themes, too, again because of the lack of skills of the virus writers. There are around 100,000 Windows viruses and NO MacOS X viruses simply because it's much, much more difficult to write a virus or worm of any sort on Mac OS X or other Unixes and very very easy to do on Windows. The folks who can write Mac or Unix software can usually make a lot more money and get a lot more kudos writing useful software than wasting time screwing around writing viruses.
And then there's the fact that most of the Unix and Linux boxes are servers, not user machines, so you can't even taken advantage of the "Click me" method of spreading. Also, Mac OS X warns you if you try to open an executable attachment.
Can Mac users get a virus or worm? Sure, anything is possible. It simply isn't likely. And even if there is one, it'd usually have to get past system authentication to do anything but wipe out a user's home folder, if it was written like the typical Windows style virus. The ones that get through most of the security holes are MUCH harder to craft (even on Windows).
So after 5 years of OS X and zero viruses, Mac users are just not losing any sleep over it. Should we? Maybe, but it's been our experience that most anti-virus products cause more problems than the viruses do!
I understand the motivation of these article authors. It's three part:
1. Bringing it up is always sure to generate a lot of hits and visibility, since they generally don't present all the facts, or current facts, or have done any research or present any historical perspective. They're not wrong, but so far history has shown they are just crying "wolf" too many times. Until there IS a virus, wasting our time.
2. They may be shills for the anti-virus vendors, who aren't making much money on Macs since their annual subscriptions not having any updates for FIVE YEARS or more are looking to be a bad value.
3. They are anti-Mac and just trying to spread FUD.
4. The last (and least) reason is that there IS a minor concern. Not that any of these articles ever presents the full facts or details.
I'll start to worry about viruses on the Mac as soon as there is one. To some that may seem to be too late, and perhaps I'll regret it....but why destablize my machine now with crapware from Symantec and others? Hell, as I recall even Apple stopped providing anti-virus tools with.Mac because it caused more problems than the risk of viruses did. Symantec tried to resort to FUD tactics to up sales of their virus software and subscriptions a while back because most Mac owners just didn't see the need for it anymore. It's widely know that most Mac owners don't use it. So either the virus writers dont' know the facts, or are trying to write them and just don't have the skills. Likely it's a bit of both.
And chances are, even if there WAS a virus, it would get past the anti-virus stuff anyway, so why worry until there is something to worry about? Instead we're bombarded by this FUD several times a year for the last five or six years...and still no malware on the Mac. Among the best anti-virus methods aro
Actually, Warner Brothers (but not JMS and probably not the actors) has made bundles of money off the B5 DVDs. There were also quite a few novelizations.
B5 didn't get as heavily into marketing as Star Wars and (to a lesser extent) Star Trek, but then again, that wasn't JMS's goal anyway.....
It's not ALWAYS about the money, guys, despite what corporate America believes.
"It would undercut the sales of the Mini but not Apple's high-end machines".
Ummmmm.....no. It WOULD undercut the sames of ALL Apple's machines. This isn't an opinion, it's what ACTUALLY HAPPENED BEFORE when Apple licensed the MacOS to cloners in the 90's. It'll happen again if they do it again.
And the reason people aren't buying the Mini as much as they might is that it's running a G4, not a G5 chip, primarily. Which Apple probably did on purpose too, so as not to cannibalize their OWN sales themselves.
Do you think the cloners would agree to that sort limitation on THEIR hardware? Of course not. And one wonders if the Dept. of Justice might start eyeing Apple if they required such a limitation?
The reason the ROKR is limited to 100 songs, as I understand it, is that it's memory card (or perhaps it's the SMS card?) can only hold that much. Add more memory, add more songs, or switch out songs with the card. The ROKR does have a TransFlash memory card, according to the Motorola web site:
Someone points out elsewhere on this thread that their iPod Shuffle only hold about 150 songs. Seems about right, no conspiracy theory or attention grabbing headline needed. The ROKR is equivalent to the flash-based Shuffle or Nano, not the hard-drive based main iPod line. Take off your tinfoil hats, folks.
I also see that Motorola has announced (yesterday) the RAZR V3i (among several other new RAZR models) that ALSO supports iTunes like the ROKR does. It has a memory card slot too, unlike the older RAZR:
I think the upcoming Motorola SLVR and possibly PEBL models may do the iTunes thing too. The SLVR is basically a flat "candy bar" style RAZR, and the PEBL is basically a low-end el-cheapo RAZR See the :
Most of the Motorola phones support MP3 playing too, and have for some time. It's just the iTunes interface/software, AAC and Fairplay-protected-AAC file format support that's new in the ROKR and RAZR V3i. (They might've supported AAC before, since it's an open standard, part of MPEG4; I haven't checked.)
The announcement of the RAZR V3i yesterday was PERFECTLY timed for me -- I was JUST about to go switch to Cingular (maybe last night) and get a RAZR to finally replace my ancient decrepit Motorola StarTAC or get the CDMA version of the RAZR from Verizon later this month (see the RAZR V3c, also recently announced) Probably Cingular, though, as they don't restrict the BlueTooth OBEX profile and Verizon limits you to headset-only Bluetooth. Then I saw the V3i announcement. I'd have been SOOOOO pissed; the one major thing I didn't like about the older RAZR was that it didn't have a memory card slot. The V3i does have one.
Wrong. Check your facts. Apple's market share is rising. It's up from 4% to 6%, and they are still in the top 10 computer companies in terms of units sold.
You're just quoting back the same old FUD the Apple bashers like to quote.
Guess what. Apple's still here, and doing well. Deal with it.
...actually, the major portion of their revenue DOESN'T come from the iPod. It comes from the Mac. If you're investing in stocks, you need to learn to read their quarterly statements!
As of their last quarterly report:
Mac CPUs: $1.611 billion (and growing, up by 48%) Mac Software: $294 million Peripherals: $295 million TOTAL: $2.201 billion
iPod: $1.212 billion (and also growing, up 220%) Other Music products: $265 million (iTunes and iPod accessories I assume) TOTAL: $1.477 billion
So their Mac business is growing well, and their NEW iPod business is growing even more. We should all have such problems, eh?;-)
And none of them can do a thing about memory bandwidth, lack of PCI Express or AGP or any of a dozen other features that have or will become available in PC mainboards in that 2-year timeframe. You might pay for a G5 but you're still only getting slightly faster G4 performance - Oh well!
Possibly. Possibly not. It depends on the upgrade you buy. Can you prove this statement? I proved mine with site references. Let's see your site references. If not...then maybe, maybe not. Put up or shut up.
Mac users love to spend lareg amounts of money for little gain.
You've done extensive research in cost/benefit ratios of Mac processor upgrade cards, have you? Let's see your research! Truly, I'm interested.
Apple doesn't deny the 5% market share figure - why do you?
Apple doesn't comment on it all, actually.
It's personally a pet peeve of mine, because statistically, it's baloney. I can tell that much even though it's been 20 years since my last statistics course in college. Anyone who's taken a statistics course and looked into the marketshare vs installed base issue (or even thought about it a bit) would know it's baloney.
Oh...and by the way, Apple's (ahem) "market share" may be LESS. I'm *sure* it is in certain markets...and not others. And that's my point. That 5% figure you've heard so often for so many years is totally bogus, bud. It changes. A lot. And it's not an OVERALL figure, either, although most people seem to think it is. (That's part of the reason it's a pet peeve. It's not only wrong, it's not even good statistics!)
Re-read my message....the reasons why the 5% figure you see so often is totally inaccurate and silly to use are there...lets see if you can figure 'em out. Careful, don't strain yourself.
Again, it wouldn't surprise me if that 5% is too high, in these days of el-cheapo POS PC clones you can buy at Walmart. It wouldn't surprise me if it was MORE than 5% overall. The point is, WHO KNOWS? There's NO WAY to determine the installed base of Macs *or* PCs. Picking some specific (and it IS a specific) marketshare is bogus as most of the (business) press seems to do is misleading because THERE ARE SO MANY DIFFERENT MARKETS. Quoting that 5% as if it's the TOTAL marketshare is not only inaccurate, but foolish. And I've seen no overall market share totals. That 5% figure isn't a total. But people persist in using it as such.
Hell, Apple's in the top 5 computer companies in the US market in terms of computer sales most of the time. Or at the very least in the top 10. I just saw the latest figure the other day and it was in the #5 spot. But that's not the same as market share OR installed base.
>>You really think a completely unrepresentative sample of houses visited is concrete proof of anything except that you were browsing in the Castro?And you're hardly qualified for any judgement of Macs vs. PCs, you Dell-using sheep.
Sorry, bud: You demonstrate your lack of intelligence and poor logic again. The company I work mandates Dells for non-servers, for the same silly reason most companies do and most folks on this thread do (supposedly they save a few bucks) and that mandate is even for programmers. I'd prefer something else (and no, I don't mean a Mac, although I wouldnt' say no to one either), but I don't have control of that so you can't blame me for the company being as sheep-like as most companies are. It's all about the mightly quarterly profit, aint it?
But again, you can't compete on facts or experience, so you insult instead. I notice you didn't give any info about YOUR experience.
Mine is almost 25 years of programming computers of all types from IBM mainframes, to DEC minis, to a wide variety of different brands of PCs, to Macs, and more. And yours is? I'm guessing you're typing your response on the non-Dell brand of PC your mommy bought you, personally. Grow up.
Our company servers are Compaqs/HPs. We do have a few ha
Dang....Slashdot removed the "not equal" sign from my text. Silly me.
I was trying to say "market share does not equal installed base" but I used the less-than+greater-than signs used by programs to mean "not equal". Kinda screws up your sentence structure when those get removed....
Someone needs to smarten up the HTML tag filter in this thing so that it ignores that one!
Then you haven't thought about it. You would love a CD-ROM-less unit in a school. Aside from saving money, schools LOVE being able to buy 'em without CD-ROMs. Keeps the kiddies from screwing 'em up, don't you know!
Also useful in an office full of computers where you don't want your users installing CD's full of the latest games or Windows viruses. All our Dells at work have CD-ROMS...what a waste. All they are used for is playing music CDs. The software installs are all done off the network.
You can net-boot Macs from a server. Schools love this, especially. Useful in businesses too.
If you do need a CD-ROM for some reason such as installs, just hook up a USB or Firewire external one temporarily.
re: $399 PCs. Do those include monitors? Decent ones? The eMac does. Do they include networking, etc?
And anyone low-balling computers in schools or busines deserves what they get in support costs. Don't forget to consider THAT as well.
You're liable to spend more in support keeping POS $399 computers working than you save.
Cheap has TWO meanings in English. Watch out you don't get caught by the negative one.
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Funny you should mention this. Spider Robinson wrote about this sort of response Heinlein seems to get from some women. (and remember, Heinlein's novels were largely written before 1980...hell, mostly before 1970. Attitudes have changed....and mostly seem to catch up with Heinlein, frankly.)
See his article "RAH, RAH, R.A.H." which you can find a copy of on the Heinlein Society site:
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/works/articles/ rahrahrah.html
The two relevant passages:
(2) "Heinlein is a male chauvinist." This is the second most common charge these days. That's right, Heinlein populates his books with dumb, weak, incompetent women. Like Sister Maggie in "If This Goes On--"; Dr. Mary Lou Martin in "Let There Be Light"; Mary Sperling in Methuselah's Children; Grace Cormet in "--We Also Walk Dogs"; Longcourt Phyllis in Beyond This Horizon; Cynthia Craig in "The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag"; Karen in "Gulf"; Gloria McNye in "Delilah and the Space-Rigger"; Allucquere in The Puppet Masters; Hazel and Edith Stone in The Rolling Stones; Betty in The Star Beast; all the women in Tunnel in the Sky; Penny in Double Star; Pee Wee and the Mother Thing in Have Space Suit--Will Travel; Jill Boardman, Becky Vesant, Patty Paiwonski, Anne, Miriam and Dorcas in Stranger in a Strange Land; Star, the Empress of Twenty Universes, in Glory Road; Wyoh, Mimi, Sidris and Gospazha Michelle Holmes in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress; Eunice and Joan Eunice in I Will Fear No Evil; Ishtar, Tamara, Minerva, Hamadryad, Dora, Helen Mayberry, Llita, Laz, Lor and Maureen Smith in Time Enough For Love; and Dejah Thoris, Hilda Corners, Gay Deceiver and Elizabeth Long in "The Number of the Beast--. "[1] Brainless cupcakes all, eh? (Virtually every one of them is a world-class expert in at least one demanding and competitive field; the exceptions plainly will be as soon as they grow up. Madame Curie would have enjoyed chatting with any one of them.) Helpless housewives! (Any one of them could take Wonder Woman three falls out of three, and polish off Jirel of Joiry for dessert.) I think one could perhaps make an excellent case for Heinlein as a female chauvinist. He has repeatedly insisted that women average smarter, more practical and more courageous than men. He consistently underscores their biological and emotional superiority. He married a woman he proudly described to me as "smarter, better educated and more sensible than I am." In his latest book, Expanded Universe--the immediate occasion for this article--he suggests without the slightest visible trace of irony that the franchise be taken away from men and given exclusively to women. He consistently created strong, intelligent, capable, independent, sexually aggressive women characters for a quarter of a century before it was made a requirement, right down to his supporting casts. Clearly we are still in the area of delusions which can be cured simply by reading Heinlein while awake.
and
(2) "Heinlein can't create believable women characters." There's an easy way to support this claim: simply disbelieve in all Heinlein's female characters, and maintain that all those who believe them are gullible. You'll have a problem, though: several of Heinlein's women bear a striking resemblance to his wife Virginia, you'll have to disbelieve in her, too--which could get you killed if your paths cross. Also, there's a lady I once lived with for a long time, who used to haunt the magazine stores when I Will Fear No Evil was being serialized in Galaxy, because she could not wait to read the further adventures of the "unbelievable" character with whom she identified so strongly--you'll have to disbelieve in her, too. Oddly, this complaint comes most often from radical feminists. Examination shows that Heinlein's female characters are almost invariably highly intelligent, educated, competent, practical, resourceful, courageous, independent, sexually aggressi
Actually, if you want see to an excellent movie adaptation of a SF book, that follows the book almost exactly, take a look at the movie "Colossus:The Forbin Project" (sometimes called just one or the other). Then read the book by D. F. Jones, or vice versa. Very, very close, faithful adaptation of an excellent book.
The book also has two sequels.
Sorry, but anyone, ANYONE, who buys any multifunction device (on a PC or a Mac) deserves the pain they get. Same rules as buying a TV with a VCR or DVD player in it (or both). I guarantee you'll be without BOTH eventually while one is being fixed (usually the player, the think with the moving parts), and probably end up either buying a separate player, or a new TV, or even both. You can pay me now, or you can pay me later.
And 99% of people prefer a multifunction device? What a load of bull. I don't know ANYONE with a multifunction device (well, not anymore, a few HAVE foolishly tried 'em...and now have the same wisdome I do. The rest of us smart enough not to buy 'em in the first place.)
We never said ALL devices will work, anyway. Most of the ones that don't tend to be junk, though. The stuff that supports the standards work fine on the Mac. Anything that doesn't is non-standard and will give you problems on your PC too, sooner or later. In terms of printers....if they don't support both Mac and PC, they're probably a crappy brand or model and will cause you problems on a PC too. Not always, of course, some companies just decided to be PC only. That's fine....plenty of other vendors will take up the slack!
Re: HP printers requiring specific versions of OS X. Maybe they require a specific minimum version...so what? Later versions keep working. My Canon printer purchased 2 or 3 OS X verisons back still works fine on 10.4. The HP printer I bought for my mother's Mac works on OS 9 and OS X.
And just because the box doesn't say it works, doesn't mean it won't. I've used many a device that doesn't say that it supports Mac on the box on my Macs, they are working just fine.
Nope, never use Linux in my life. I've owned and used Macs since 1984. Currently still have most of them, including my original 128k Mac (with Plus upgrade). I've got a closet with about 30 Macs (most of which have been saved from the trash bin, in fact.) And I've hooked up all sorts of stuff "off the shelf", including Windows-only modems (the connector wasn't the same...I had to get an adapter from Radio Shack), etc to my Mac with no problems. Also to other people's Macs. My PC at work is what's been the pain in the ass, frankly.
Soviet Union of computing....what a crock. I do stuff whatever damn way I want on my Mac and hook up whatever I want and it works. 100%? No, of course not. But I've had much less problem hooking up peripherals to my Mac than my PC at work. Quite often it's the SAME stuff, too. I've brought in keyboards, wireless mice, memory card readers, PDA docks (Palm and WinCE), thumb drives, you name it. NONE of these devices were made by Apple (although Apple's hardware generally works quite well with PCs as well as Macs too.)
And I've upgraded my current PowerBook G4 1Ghz with a non-Apple dual layer 8x dvd burner, and a non-Apple 120GB hard drive. At my desk, I've got an iPod firewire dock, a USB thumb drive, a Palm dock, a wireless keyboard and mouse (USB) and trackball, a Canon digi cam and USB printer all hooked up. All are plug-and-play, few or no third party drivers even needed.
My old PowerBook G3 had a ton of third party drives in it's two drive/battery bays. In addition to the Apple CD drive, DVD drive, and diskette drive, I added a third party Zip drive, a third-party hard drive bay (bought empty and I added my own drive to it, the drive I replaced when I upgraded the internal HD), etc. I replaced the original 4GB hard disk with a 14GB then a 40GB. I upgraded the RAM, I even added a processor upgrade card. All non-Apple. Since the G3 model I had didn't have USB or firewire, I just bought off-the shelf PCMCIA USB and Firewire cards (didn't even mention Mac support), plugged 'em in and they worked. Doesn't sound like "Apple's way or the highway" to me, bud. I added a PCMCIA WiFi card and the original Apple AirPort base station and the Mac supported the third-party WiFi Card with no third party driver needed (under OS 9). Upgraded to OS X when it came out.
USB is a piece of shit on PCs, even under XP All of the USB devices hooked to my PC at work were originally used used on my Mac. Getting 'em to work on the PC has been a pain in the ass. The Windows drivers they shipped with don't work on XP, and even when I found them online and downloaded, they didn't work well. On the Mac, there is no driver needed, I just plugged it in. And to remove them, I just unplugged 'em. Windows freaks out when you unplug something USB and often when you plug something in (or even move it to a different port!) Microsoft doesn't even support the WinCE PDA docks on the Mac (that took additional software, available from not one but TWO different sources, actually....but not Microsoft, who in the past has supported the Palm but NOT their own Windows CE PDAs on Macs....what idiots!) When I used a WinCE PDA on the PC, it lost track of the PDA-to-PC pairing THREE times and fubared all my data. This has never happened with the Palm. I finally gave up on Windows PDA, which are truly awful compared to Palm PDAs.
I'd say that the above examples pretty much shoots your opinion to flinders, bud.
In fact, I'd have to say your claim that you're a Mac user or ever have been is a masquerade.
Hah...just as I finished this, one of the Mac vs PC Apple commercials just came on TV. Perfect!
> A) availability: Most retailers don't carry Macs. Especially now that Apple has its own retail stores. Apple is now a competitor. And Apple has very strict limits on what prices 3rd party vendors can sell their computers for. That's why you never see a (new) Mac sold anywhere for more $5 less than Apple's own price.
Good point. About the only good one you make, though.
> B) price: You pay more for the Apple name. Yes, you also pay more because the cost of the PC is partially subsidized by promotional software, some of which may or may not be useful. In any event, for $500, which would you want? A Mac mini that doesn't even come with a DVD burner, keyboard, mouse, or monitor? Or would you rather have an Athlon64-based system with a DVD burner, keyboard, mouse, and everything you need and probably even a 15"-17" LCD monitor thrown in?
I'll take a Mac, every time. I use and program Windows PCs for a living. Because of that, I won't have one for my main machine. I've got an old PC at home that picked up cheap on the off chance I needed it for something work-related but I literally never use it. Haven't even turned it on after installing it, in almost a year. Waste of money.
> C) compatibility: You can't even buy a printer that doesn't work with Windows. It's not hard to find one that doesn't work with Mac. It's nice to know that whatever you buy will just work. Printers are a big problem here in that some printer drivers only work with certain point releases of Mac OS X. Others work, but are 10 times slower than on Windows (I offer up my Brother MFC-3820CN as proof of this). And multifunctions/all-in-ones may not have all functionality available on Mac.
Bollocks. While I've not doubt there are some printers for which their might not be drivers YET, the Mac comes with CUPS, which has drivers for many printers you couldn't even find drivers for the PC for from the original vendors anymore. Thus getting a lot more use out of your existing (or PC) printer for which you've probably lost the driver CD anyway. On the Mac there is often no driver CD needed. It works out of the box! It's that way for my current printer. While it came with drivers years ago, they are now built in to CUPS.
As to multi-function printers....any one who buys a multi-function device is an idiot, pure and simple. Have one part fail and lose ALL the functions while you get it fixed? Ridiculous. Even if space is a consideration....it's not THAT big a consideration with the advent of plug-and-play USB devices. Just unplug your scanner or card reader or whatever and store it in a cupboard until you need it, instead.
> D) upgradeability: Unless you're talking about a PowerMac G5, Macs have no internal expandability. What are you supposed to do if your computing needs change? Pay Apple to do the upgrade for you? You can't even install memory in a Mac mini without special expertise! Forget about upgrading an optical drive or a hard drive. How about upgrading the onboard video to something more current? Not even a remote possibility in a Mac because there are no expansion slots!
Bollocks. Most consumers do NOT upgrade their PCs. EVER. They buy a new one in a few years and either throw away the old one or give it to their kids. Only gamers and geeks are interested in upgrading. Most folks would do just fine with either an iMac or a similar "all in one" PC.
> E) people like freedom: With a PC, you have your choice of manufacturer, a greater choice of options (both BTO and aftermarket), and the knowledge that you probably know someone who is good with PCs. And if you don't, any computer place (other than the Apple Store, naturally) can service it for you.
Again, Bollocks. Most people buy the basic box and that's it. Again, only geeks and gamers are interested in lots of options/upgrading. While personally I'd agree that options are nice, I'm a geek. In my experience with normal folks, too many options actually CONFUSES them when it comes to computers.
> I think you forget that CDs have DRM as well, so you can't just rip anything to any player.
Actually, very few CDs have DRM. In the USA anyway. And after the Sony Rootkit firestorm, I think most labels will think twice and back away slowly from DRM on CDs. Too many pissed off customers, and too many pissed off vendors having to deal with all the complaints from their customers.
Apparently you HAVE either (a) been in a coma or (b) don't live in the USA or other countries with the equivalent of the US's Digital Millenium Copyright Act...
And you think that because it happened to you it happens to everyone? Ridiculous.
I've purchased about seven Macs in the last 20 years, the last one purchased about 3 years ago, and only one had any early problems (the previous PowerBook G3 I owned before the G4) and that was fixed quickly and easily and permanently. I still have that old G3 and it works fine, eight years after I bought it. Also have had several different models of Newton and iPod. No hardware problems whatsoever with any of those, either.
But at least I realize that my experience doesn't mean that other's WON'T have problems, of course, and I'd never assume it did, as YOU are doing.
Frankly, if you've having that much trouble, you've got to be doing something wrong to your equipment, abusing it or perhaps your location just has bad power, etc. The one time I was having weird crashes on a unit, I noticed a drastic drop in weird crashes when I put a UPS in the between them and the wall power outlet. Wish I could get a UPS on my Windows PC at work....Windows and Office are always crashing in weird and unique ways. That can't ALL be Microsoft's fault, can it?
However, of the several folks I know who have Macs, none have had any hardware failures. Software problems happen occasionally, but are also rare. The PC users I know are always dealing with problems one sort or another, usually viruses, spyware, crappy discount hardware or drivers causing problems.
I haven't had but ONE kernel panic in the entire 3 years of owning my current PowerBook G4. Even apps rarely crash (and, surprise surprise, the ones that usually do are Microsoft apps, or F/OSS apps like Firefox.)
Of course, people are always pushing Apple to make "cheaper" Macs. And so now they are. And you know what that does to quality.....perhaps that's starting to finally affect Apple. Good, fast, cheap...pick any two.
Don't forget Windows, too...
Nah. Terran days and Arean days.
The did produce it. I have a portable MD DATA drive still from many years ago. It was slow and proprietary and the drives used a disk format and didn't support any of the standard OS disk maintenance and repair tools.
Junk. Which is probably why you haven't seen one.
The only think I liked from Sony in recent memory was the Clie NX* PDAs and even the had some silly proprietary stuff/limitations (that third parties managed to work around, thankfully.)
Microsoft has no business in the workplace until it opens up it's software to competition.
"It isn't avoidable.....such as OS", my eye.
What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Have you actually ever used a Newton? I still have four of them (one in each form factor except the eMate) and NONE of them have a screen cover that doubles as a stand.
The 1xx form factor and the 2xx do have flip back screen covers, but that's it -- NONE of them are designed to or can be used as a stand.
(Well, there was the trick on the 2xx unit of rotating the screen to landscape, putting the screen cover on the desk and sticking a rubber block erase between it and the Newton itself....but that's NOT an intentional design and you have to carry around an eraser....)
The 1xx units had the screen cover on the top not the side and while you might try to use it like an easel to hold the unit up, it sure wasn't stable. Not surprising, since it was a screen cover not a stand...
Really? Took me all of 2 minutes to find a lot of examples, WITHOUT even using Google.
u el/2100-1010_3-5242487.html?tag=macintouch
t er+heights/2100-1008_3-5070403.html?tag=nl
How about the U.S. Army building a supercomputer cluster from 'em?
http://news.com.com/Apple+sells+supercomputer+seq
And several university's such as this one doing so too:
http://news.com.com/Apple+shooting+for+supercompu
Many, many Hollywood studios and special effects houses are using them as well, such as these and many more:
The makers of Jarhead:
http://www.apple.com/pro/film/murch2/
The maker of Underworld Evolution
http://www.apple.com/pro/film/lumapictures/
And how about the Minneapolis Star/Tribune
http://www.apple.com/itpro/profiles/startribune/
and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
http://www.apple.com/pro/design/atlantajournal/
and Harvard Med School:
http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/harvardmed/
and MANY other examples at :
http://www.apple.com/pro/archive/ (this pageis especially good)
http://www.apple.com/pro/
http://www.apple.com/itpro/
http://www.apple.com/server/
Nuclear Rector? Clergy gots atomics!
> I'll take my business to the little guys (Free/Open Source) who DO get along. (That's not to say OSS gets along all the time, but they do more frequently than closed source
,etc maybe more that I can't think of.)
Yeah right, sure they do...that's why there are a zillion different Linux distros on intel chips alone that all vary only slightly....and several different slightly different desktop managers....and so on and so on.
Too much choice can be a BAD thing too and Linux is a perfect example. "WHICH Linux do I pick?", says Joe AverageComputerUser, "There are so many? Ah, the heck with it, I can't tell. I'll just buy Windows."
Hell, this is even a problem on (PowerPC) Macs....there are at a bunch of Linux distros there too, (Ubuntu, SUSE, YellowDog, MkLinux, etc
OSS is even MORE likely to fall into the "take my ball and go home" trap. Too many chiefs, not enough workers.
Dead on? No: dead horse. As in "beating a dead..."
.Mac because it caused more problems than the risk of viruses did. Symantec tried to resort to FUD tactics to up sales of their virus software and subscriptions a while back because most Mac owners just didn't see the need for it anymore. It's widely know that most Mac owners don't use it. So either the virus writers dont' know the facts, or are trying to write them and just don't have the skills. Likely it's a bit of both.
Three percent? No. Despite what the MS and Linux fanbois want to clam, the current Mac market share is almost 7% and growing, and that's SALES, NOT installed base. Installed base is obviously higher, around 15%-20% according to estimates. And no, these are not stats from Apple, who never talks about such things.
So the main reason there aren't any Mac viruses and very few Unix/Linux viruses (in comparison to Windows) is not availability of units to infect, there are millions and millions. It's because virus writers are 99.9% of the time dumb little jerks or crooks with who have little or no real computer skills, writing it on a cheap PC clone in their bedroom, or are already somewhat slimy felons or maladjusted individuals.
Hell, most of the PC viruses are just variations on a few major themes, too, again because of the lack of skills of the virus writers. There are around 100,000 Windows viruses and NO MacOS X viruses simply because it's much, much more difficult to write a virus or worm of any sort on Mac OS X or other Unixes and very very easy to do on Windows. The folks who can write Mac or Unix software can usually make a lot more money and get a lot more kudos writing useful software than wasting time screwing around writing viruses.
And then there's the fact that most of the Unix and Linux boxes are servers, not user machines, so you can't even taken advantage of the "Click me" method of spreading. Also, Mac OS X warns you if you try to open an executable attachment.
Can Mac users get a virus or worm? Sure, anything is possible. It simply isn't likely. And even if there is one, it'd usually have to get past system authentication to do anything but wipe out a user's home folder, if it was written like the typical Windows style virus. The ones that get through most of the security holes are MUCH harder to craft (even on Windows).
So after 5 years of OS X and zero viruses, Mac users are just not losing any sleep over it. Should we? Maybe, but it's been our experience that most anti-virus products cause more problems than the viruses do!
I understand the motivation of these article authors. It's three part:
1. Bringing it up is always sure to generate a lot of hits and visibility, since they generally don't present all the facts, or current facts, or have done any research or present any historical perspective. They're not wrong, but so far history has shown they are just crying "wolf" too many times. Until there IS a virus, wasting our time.
2. They may be shills for the anti-virus vendors, who aren't making much money on Macs since their annual subscriptions not having any updates for FIVE YEARS or more are looking to be a bad value.
3. They are anti-Mac and just trying to spread FUD.
4. The last (and least) reason is that there IS a minor concern. Not that any of these articles ever presents the full facts or details.
I'll start to worry about viruses on the Mac as soon as there is one. To some that may seem to be too late, and perhaps I'll regret it....but why destablize my machine now with crapware from Symantec and others? Hell, as I recall even Apple stopped providing anti-virus tools with
And chances are, even if there WAS a virus, it would get past the anti-virus stuff anyway, so why worry until there is something to worry about? Instead we're bombarded by this FUD several times a year for the last five or six years...and still no malware on the Mac. Among the best anti-virus methods aro
Actually, Warner Brothers (but not JMS and probably not the actors) has made bundles of money off the B5 DVDs. There were also quite a few novelizations.
B5 didn't get as heavily into marketing as Star Wars and (to a lesser extent) Star Trek, but then again, that wasn't JMS's goal anyway.....
It's not ALWAYS about the money, guys, despite what corporate America believes.
"It would undercut the sales of the Mini but not Apple's high-end machines".
Ummmmm.....no. It WOULD undercut the sames of ALL Apple's machines. This isn't an opinion, it's what ACTUALLY HAPPENED BEFORE when Apple licensed the MacOS to cloners in the 90's. It'll happen again if they do it again.
And the reason people aren't buying the Mini as much as they might is that it's running a G4, not a G5 chip, primarily. Which Apple probably did on purpose too, so as not to cannibalize their OWN sales themselves.
Do you think the cloners would agree to that sort limitation on THEIR hardware? Of course not. And one wonders if the Dept. of Justice might start eyeing Apple if they required such a limitation?
The reason the ROKR is limited to 100 songs, as I understand it, is that it's memory card (or perhaps it's the SMS card?) can only hold that much. Add more memory, add more songs, or switch out songs with the card. The ROKR does have a TransFlash memory card, according to the Motorola web site:
0 ,,117,00.html
0 ,,130,00.html
http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/product/details/
Someone points out elsewhere on this thread that their iPod Shuffle only hold about 150 songs. Seems about right, no conspiracy theory or attention grabbing headline needed. The ROKR is equivalent to the flash-based Shuffle or Nano, not the hard-drive based main iPod line. Take off your tinfoil hats, folks.
I also see that Motorola has announced (yesterday) the RAZR V3i (among several other new RAZR models) that ALSO supports iTunes like the ROKR does. It has a memory card slot too, unlike the older RAZR:
http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/product/details/
I think the upcoming Motorola SLVR and possibly PEBL models may do the iTunes thing too. The SLVR is basically a flat "candy bar" style RAZR, and the PEBL is basically a low-end el-cheapo RAZR See the :
http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/product/archive
site for details on these models.
Most of the Motorola phones support MP3 playing too, and have for some time. It's just the iTunes interface/software, AAC and Fairplay-protected-AAC file format support that's new in the ROKR and RAZR V3i. (They might've supported AAC before, since it's an open standard, part of MPEG4; I haven't checked.)
The announcement of the RAZR V3i yesterday was PERFECTLY timed for me -- I was JUST about to go switch to Cingular (maybe last night) and get a RAZR to finally replace my ancient decrepit Motorola StarTAC or get the CDMA version of the RAZR from Verizon later this month (see the RAZR V3c, also recently announced) Probably Cingular, though, as they don't restrict the BlueTooth OBEX profile and Verizon limits you to headset-only Bluetooth. Then I saw the V3i announcement. I'd have been SOOOOO pissed; the one major thing I didn't like about the older RAZR was that it didn't have a memory card slot. The V3i does have one.
Wrong. Check your facts. Apple's market share is rising. It's up from 4% to 6%, and they are still in the top 10 computer companies in terms of units sold.
You're just quoting back the same old FUD the Apple bashers like to quote.
Guess what. Apple's still here, and doing well. Deal with it.
...actually, the major portion of their revenue DOESN'T come from the iPod. It comes from the Mac. If you're investing in stocks, you need to learn to read their quarterly statements!
;-)
As of their last quarterly report:
Mac CPUs: $1.611 billion (and growing, up by 48%)
Mac Software: $294 million
Peripherals: $295 million
TOTAL: $2.201 billion
iPod: $1.212 billion (and also growing, up 220%)
Other Music products: $265 million (iTunes and iPod accessories I assume)
TOTAL: $1.477 billion
So their Mac business is growing well, and their NEW iPod business is growing even more. We should all have such problems, eh?
And none of them can do a thing about memory bandwidth, lack of PCI Express or AGP or any of a dozen other features that have or will become available in PC mainboards in that 2-year timeframe. You might pay for a G5 but you're still only getting slightly faster G4 performance - Oh well!
Possibly. Possibly not. It depends on the upgrade you buy. Can you prove this statement? I proved mine with site references. Let's see your site references. If not...then maybe, maybe not. Put up or shut up.
Mac users love to spend lareg amounts of money for little gain.
You've done extensive research in cost/benefit ratios of Mac processor upgrade cards, have you? Let's see your research! Truly, I'm interested.
Apple doesn't deny the 5% market share figure - why do you?
Apple doesn't comment on it all, actually.
It's personally a pet peeve of mine, because statistically, it's baloney. I can tell that much even though it's been 20 years since my last statistics course in college. Anyone who's taken a statistics course and looked into the marketshare vs installed base issue (or even thought about it a bit) would know it's baloney.
Oh...and by the way, Apple's (ahem) "market share" may be LESS. I'm *sure* it is in certain markets...and not others. And that's my point. That 5% figure you've heard so often for so many years is totally bogus, bud. It changes. A lot. And it's not an OVERALL figure, either, although most people seem to think it is. (That's part of the reason it's a pet peeve. It's not only wrong, it's not even good statistics!)
Re-read my message....the reasons why the 5% figure you see so often is totally inaccurate and silly to use are there...lets see if you can figure 'em out. Careful, don't strain yourself.
Again, it wouldn't surprise me if that 5% is too high, in these days of el-cheapo POS PC clones you can buy at Walmart. It wouldn't surprise me if it was MORE than 5% overall. The point is, WHO KNOWS? There's NO WAY to determine the installed base of Macs *or* PCs. Picking some specific (and it IS a specific) marketshare is bogus as most of the (business) press seems to do is misleading because THERE ARE SO MANY DIFFERENT MARKETS. Quoting that 5% as if it's the TOTAL marketshare is not only inaccurate, but foolish. And I've seen no overall market share totals. That 5% figure isn't a total. But people persist in using it as such.
Hell, Apple's in the top 5 computer companies in the US market in terms of computer sales most of the time. Or at the very least in the top 10. I just saw the latest figure the other day and it was in the #5 spot. But that's not the same as market share OR installed base.
>>You really think a completely unrepresentative sample of houses visited is concrete proof of anything except that you were browsing in the Castro?And you're hardly qualified for any judgement of Macs vs. PCs, you Dell-using sheep.
Sorry, bud: You demonstrate your lack of intelligence and poor logic again. The company I work mandates Dells for non-servers, for the same silly reason most companies do and most folks on this thread do (supposedly they save a few bucks) and that mandate is even for programmers. I'd prefer something else (and no, I don't mean a Mac, although I wouldnt' say no to one either), but I don't have control of that so you can't blame me for the company being as sheep-like as most companies are. It's all about the mightly quarterly profit, aint it?
But again, you can't compete on facts or experience, so you insult instead. I notice you didn't give any info about YOUR experience.
Mine is almost 25 years of programming computers of all types from IBM mainframes, to DEC minis, to a wide variety of different brands of PCs, to Macs, and more. And yours is? I'm guessing you're typing your response on the non-Dell brand of PC your mommy bought you, personally. Grow up.
Our company servers are Compaqs/HPs. We do have a few ha
Dang....Slashdot removed the "not equal" sign from my text. Silly me.
I was trying to say "market share does not equal installed base" but I used the less-than+greater-than signs used by programs to mean "not equal". Kinda screws up your sentence structure when those get removed....
Someone needs to smarten up the HTML tag filter in this thing so that it ignores that one!
Then you haven't thought about it. You would love a CD-ROM-less unit in a school. Aside from saving money, schools LOVE being able to buy 'em without CD-ROMs. Keeps the kiddies from screwing 'em up, don't you know!
Also useful in an office full of computers where you don't want your users installing CD's full of the latest games or Windows viruses. All our Dells at work have CD-ROMS...what a waste. All they are used for is playing music CDs. The software installs are all done off the network.
You can net-boot Macs from a server. Schools love this, especially. Useful in businesses too.
If you do need a CD-ROM for some reason such as installs, just hook up a USB or Firewire external one temporarily.
re: $399 PCs. Do those include monitors? Decent ones? The eMac does. Do they include networking, etc?
And anyone low-balling computers in schools or busines deserves what they get in support costs. Don't forget to consider THAT as well.
You're liable to spend more in support keeping POS $399 computers working than you save.
Cheap has TWO meanings in English. Watch out you don't get caught by the negative one.