See, this is the thing. To a lot of us they are not funny at all. They are just a bunch of smug fanatical people telling us how much better they are than us. Now, what the hell do they expect us to do with that? They don't care. They are actually talking to each other, but for some crazed reason its important to them to do it in front of the rest of us.
It is weird. And what it makes me feel is a rising distate and dislike for them. It doesn't make me think they're 'cool', whatever that is. It makes me want to have nothing more whatever to do with them ever.
And this is a former mac user and advocate speaking. What effect do you think it has on the outside world?
This is just the stupidest and most internally focussed sort of stuff you can imagine. It shows as clearly as you would ever want the collusion between Cupertino and the Maczealots who turn so many people off Apple. You're a corporate IT guy watching this stuff, you think: keep those guys out of here.
I don't get it at all. Perfectly reasonable computers. Why make a career out of turning people off buying them?
And its commercials like this, and even more, the whole mental attitude that lies behind them, that have totally turned me off Apple and Macs. I wonder if this is the idea? Like some kinds of extreme minority religious cults, what they really want to do is provoke the rest of the world to insult them, thereby in a weird sort of way, confirming their minority status?
Well, who knows, who cares, but its a total turn off.
Right, but the argument is, you don't have to compete on price. It's that there is a designer brand space for machines running Windows. It may be that to Mac people, not running Windows is distinctive and cool, but to the vast majority of the world, its just an inconvenience. This designer Windows segment is probably at least as big or bigger than the current Mac segment. Argument is, this segment just wants Windows on a designer box. So go after it. Go after the existing OSX market as well. The argument would be, the evidence is that it is doable, that the lost OSX sales will not be very great if there will be any.
Its not going after Dell's market at all. Its going after a different bit of the designer brand segment. Now, I know that Apple people don't like this way of looking at things, but I suspect that in Cupertino, this is how conversations go.
Whether Apple sales would actually collapse if they let the OS go is an interesting question. Its always struck me as odd that the same people who argue that buying hardware and OS from one source is the key to the Apple selling proposition and user experience, also argue that Apple loyalists would instantly forsake it for cheaper hardware given the chance. Both cannot be true. I suspect however they are right about the desire for cheap hardware, and that Apple consequently ought to both license Windows and keep OSX tied to their own hardware.
I think it possible that for many people, the main reason they do not buy Macs is that they come with OSX. If they came with Windows, they would probably buy. It is a bit as if Vuitton luggage came with the proviso that you had to fly only Air Nigeria. It would hurt sales. Now there are those, around 3% of the world's computer buyers, who think Air Nigeria is the worlds greatest airline.
There are also those who say, this is great luggage, but I would really prefer American. It goes where I want to go. I don't want to hear it yet again about Air Nigeria. I just want to go where I want to go, with the airline of my choice, and with the luggage I like.
If I have to give up one of these, sorry, its going to be the luggage.
What he is suggesting is, go after the 97%. Why is this so stupid?
Oh, I forgot, its the integrated experience you get when you take your Vuitton luggage on board that color coordinated aircraft. Well, it may be wonderful for you, but I don't care about it.
....If they sell hardware only, they get killed on price.....
Well no. No more than Louis Vuitton gets killed on price. For designer brands, price is part of the marketing mix. Higher is essential.
The more I read the chorus of disapproval and dismissal with which his thoughts have been greeted, the more I realised that as usual the conventional wisdom misses the point. I know he is usually fairly silly, but that is when he writes about things he knows too little about. His point in this case does not depend on understanding technology, but on knowledge of human nature, big companies, and markets.
His main point is, if you are a company the size and nature of Apple, you do not simply launch BootCamp on a whim. It is a major decision, internally. So they will have scenarios and objectives. What could they be? His answer is, to find things out. Then he speculates on what they could want to find out, and what they may actually be finding out.
They will also have a followup plan. What could that be?
One of the things they may find out is that people would buy more Macs if they did not come with OSX on them. I realise that everyone on/. will instantly dismiss that, which is exactly why it is worth thinking about. Because it is not you guys who would buy them if they came without OSX. No, but maybe there is a really important numerous market segment that would. It could be. Now, suppose they did find that out, what would they do?
His answer is, if they thought they could contain the damage, they would take the money and run. His answer to whether the damage seems containable is that so far it does seem likely. There would be some, but the current base would probably shout and scream and stamp their feet and then settle down to their dinners again. They have swallowed Intel, and now they have swallowed BootCamp. They will probably swallow the next one too, if its pitched right.
You all have to realise, this has nothing to do with whether you all like XP or OSX. It has nothing to do with the 'integrated experience' and what you all think makes Apple great. It has to do with some very cold blooded guys sitting in quiet rooms who do not give a damn about your feelings or what you think is great, but who are trying to figure their way through the future. The only thing they worry about is whether enough of you will walk. Dvorak is saying, the evidence they are getting is no.
Never mind who said it, or what silliness he has said in the past. This is really an interesting and penetrating set of thoughts. Yes, I agree, from an unlikely source.
Interesting parallels with Macintosh and Windows in the earlier gui wars... The unbeatable edge there which could not be matched turned out to be discounted open sourced commodity hardware. Good enough, not as good, but good enough for the market, is right and very much to the point.
You will want TreeAge and Crystal Ball. Both are Windows only.
This is the usual problem. You can find the obvious stuff. Its the non-obvious stuff that is missing. There is, for instance, no boat design software.... But that's just an example. You're fine if all you want to do is office, mail and iLife, don't bother looking, there is going to be no real difference.
"I'm not gonna buy an expensive Mac when I can grab that $300 Dell box and run OS X on it."
I think this is true, and true for the great majority of mac users.
But you have to admit, it is in total contradiction to the Great Mac Myths. One is always reading that Macs are not really more expensive, that the integrated experience is different better and what really counts and sells, that its like BMWs and Chevvys...
And at the same time, one hears quite devoted Apple people saying that the OS should not be opened, because they and everyone they know will just buy the cheapest hardware they can find and run OSX on it, and that will bankrupt Apple.
All these firmly held Mac beliefs cannot be true at once!
Its an interesting reaction. But the question is, when the market share has doubled or tripled (and by the way, that will be a very big revenue number indeed), what exactly is it that will have done that?
Its the issue that separates the sheep from the goats, isn't it? Are you an Apple fanatic, in which case all that counts is revenue and share, and you will be happy if the scenario is, MacOS falls a bit, and all the extra is made up by guys buying Macs and putting Windows on it.
Or are you a MacOS fanatic, in which case that will be a total disaster, and the only thing that will satisfy you will be having those guys buy it and use MacOS.
The evidence may be rather in favor of the Apple fanatics, rather than the Mac fanatics. It may be that the great barrier to buying Mac hardware, for the 'rest of us', is actually MacOS. So now, they can sell the hell out of the hardware at last. It may be that Cupertino has finally woken up to that. Maybe what they see out there in front of them is Dell. Maybe the next step will be to say, OK, don't buy OSX if you don't want it, just order it with Windows.
Be careful, you may get what you wish for! You may actually see share tripling. But not the share you wanted.
Whatever the EULA says about what you cannot or must run either OS on, it will be unenforceable, especially in the EU, and in fact, it will be worse, it will be positively unlawful. It will be similarly unlawful to attempt to stop people running Office under Wine.
Not only will it be unlawful as a condition, because it attempts to impose post sales restrictions on use, force linked sales, and violates consumer protection legislation. No, worse than that, in the UK it will be actually unlawful and a violation of consumer protection legislation to assert in the packaging that the restrictions are binding.
Whatever it says in a Eula, neither a Eula nor any other kind of contract, can allow a supplier to impose terms on a buyer which are unlawful in the jurisdiction of sale.
And no, you have not licensed it, you have bought it. Look up the court cases in the EU in which people have been judged to have licensed not bought or the reverse. The supplier does not retain it on his books. He cannot depreciate it. It does not revert to him after a period. There are no periodic payments. If it barks like a dog and walks like a dog its a dog. If Microsoft sold it or if Apple sold it. Makes no difference.
I mean, poor little Apple has not got its share by illegal means unlike some but by making better products, so its entitled to it.
Who would want to run an iTune on anything other than an iPod anyway, it would be like putting a lawnmower engine in a Ferrari.
We don't want choice of what machines to play music on, we just want one good machine.
The unique selling point is the integrated experience, its the whole system, the iPod, the iMac, the iTunes, its not any one of them, its the whole thing.
They are no more expensive than comparably equipped competitive products, its just that they sell for more because they give you more.
Anyway, you can play them on other machines if you really really want to, though why you would is beyond me.
Well, now someone got all that out of the way, maybe we could have a discussion...? Because the implications are quite serious, not just for music. For the whole lockin approach. Once one country adopts this, first, it will be impossible to contain within its borders. Second, it will be impossible to contain it to music. It could get real interesting.
One, a decent outlining function in the WP. Drag and drop of sections and auto renumbering.
Two, the functionality of Filemaker v4 in Kexi. That is, make up a form with calculation fields, forced choice from popup menu, drag and drop layouts - all the stuff that makes it possible for an ordinary user to do an application in FM in a half hour, and that will take him....how long in Kexi?
Do both of these, and it will be an absolute killer.
There is also a bit of an issue with the spreadsheet. A while ago I had to open one consisting of 2500 rows and about 40 columns. The only open source spreadsheet that would really handle it was OO. So they maybe need to look at performance issues on the spreadsheet. But for most refugees from Works, its probably fine as is.
Lots of charities are in this situation. They have IT ambitions which the cost of licensing new software and buying new hardware will just rule out at once. They have security worries about W9x. It is also embarrassing to have to say you are teaching people on it. On the other hand, W9x and the office suites of the day run much more snappily and with more modern features than any Linux distro you can load on a W95 or even W98 machine. You can get DSL to work fast, but it doesn't have the apps. You can get stripped down Debian with fvwm or windowmaker or even enlightenment to run, but you really cannot give people an education in modern computing with Kword running under fvwm, its as bad as W9x. We probably like it a lot better, but to the external world its a strange sort of dog. You will have more objections from everyone.
The answer is either to swallow and stay with Windows until more cash becomes available, or to go to LTSP or Skole Linux on the oldest machines first. However, going to LTSP means having a robust backup strategy for the server, and cutting the machines over very carefully till you hit performance limits. This is what I would do. I would say to the school, yes, you are right to be concerned about both security and obsolescence (assuming that's what they are concerned about), and yes, upgrading it all will be expensive, so don't. But, there is something you can do to improve the experience and buy you a few more years on the old hardware, and it will be an interesting and educational project for the older computer science kids in addition. And it will let you use donated hardware much better as it comes in.
The most important thing is to make them aware that it is not risk free. One assumes that what is in place now does work, and probably will carry on working for the next year or two. There are real risks in cutting the machines over.
Two very important things: don't be the only expert. Make sure the whole installation is done with other people who can take over if need be. Also, have a quick way back in case of need.
Reasoning like this: if they sell OSX in the same way Windows is sold, they will roughly have to match the pricing structure. Maybe not exactly, but they can't be three or four times the price. So if an OEM copy of CP is 50-100, and includes all the service packs, OSX will have to as well. However, at the moment, the purchaser pays for the dot upgrades for OSX, and this must be very profitable at 100 or so a crack. Surely, this pricing policy won't be viable any more if they are trying to expand the market into the current Windows market?
Install Debian, just the packages you want, with Windowmaker and xfe. It will run just about acceptably on a P2 with 64M, and KOffice will be usable. Nothing else except Puppy will run acceptably. I've tried Vector, various slackware flavours, elive (which is very nice by the way), stx, mandriva with all kinds of lightweight desktop including icewm or xfce. Even so, this is nothing like as snappy as W98. Even on a K6 500 nothing except Puppy (not yet tried Debian/WM) will run at anything like acceptable speed. The problem is not memory, because this one has 512M. The problem is processing.
Puppy runs, but aesthetically its not much better than W98.
So, probably the correct solution for these old machines is to make them into thin clients. You can partition the machine using OpenVZ, and have whatever desktops you want running, as well as servers screened off from the users. Haven't done it yet, but mean to shortly.
However, you have to be pretty in need to struggle with this stuff in an era where you can buy the small older Dells and Compaq SFF machines for around $50 with P3 500s.
By contrast, when you get to P3 256M, it doesn't really matter, almost anything will run.
"Apple is an example of one of the very VERY few companies that actually produce new products. Their list of successes is beyond belief and dwarfs their competition. The rest of business is so bereft of this ability it is truly astounding. Apple innovates. Everyone else follows."
No company can long survive the enthusiasm of fans like these.
However, also in the UK, every vote cast is traceable back to the person who cast it. There is a unique number on every ballot, which is written on it when you take your ballot paper having showed up at the polling booth. Now, I am sure that under any government we have had up to now, no-one ever checks any of this, and I am sure that all the papers are shredded after the polls. But like all potential abuses of liberty, what you have to worry about is not the current generation of politicians, but some as yet unknown successor.
Everyone is entitled to like and dislike what he likes, and I make no criticism whatever of your choice of computer, for your parents or for yourself.
What I do not believe, and will not let go unchallenged, is the statement that OSX is somehow more integrated with its hardware than any other OS. It simply is not.
No amount of abuse is going to change the simple fact that if you get a usb drive and plug it in, whether it is in OSX, XP or Linux, it will be auto mounted and appear on the desktop or in My Computer. Similarly, no amount of abuse is going to change the fact that when you unpack 95% of the world's computers with XP, the hardware is perfectly well integrated. It just works. No amount of abuse is going to change the fact that OSX uses drivers just like all OSs do.
I am a Mac user too, its not a question of hostility to Apple, it is about not alienating the rest of the world by talking obvious nonsense!
"However you only tend to see blind loyalty and striking out at any disent on the doomed platforms."
Very perceptive. You could add that the blind loyalty etc feeds the spiral. The more ordinary people come to associate the minority platform with fanatical attitudes, the less inclined they will be to buy it. It is getting harder and harder to recommend Macs these days because of it - regardless of the merits of the platform, because of the social implications.
It is very curious that the fanatics do not seem to understand that their tactics are actually alienating potential users and losing Apple business, and so making more likely the outcome they profess most to dread. There were some egregious examples of this recently on OSNews.
You cannot help wondering, reading the posts on forums such as this one, whether the Mac Zealot aim is to convert or is really to alienate. There seems to be a sort of masochistic pleasure taken in alienating the rest of the world and provoking their hostility, and then complaining about the Mac Haters... Weird stuff.
Why would Michael Dell care one way or the other? Not going to affect his business.
Then we have the irrationality about dual booting. Mac people seem to prefer it. The argument given is that if you can boot into Windows, the mac native versions of apps will no longer be developed.
Whereas, if you can much more conveniently run those same apps in virtual mode using Windows in a virtual environment, this will have no effect?
The practical effect will be that the easier it is to run Windows on mac, the less likely people are to demand OSX native apps, and so virtualisation is a greater threat than dual booting.
Which makes me think the real objection to dual booting is a religious one.
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See, this is the thing. To a lot of us they are not funny at all. They are just a bunch of smug fanatical people telling us how much better they are than us. Now, what the hell do they expect us to do with that? They don't care. They are actually talking to each other, but for some crazed reason its important to them to do it in front of the rest of us.
It is weird. And what it makes me feel is a rising distate and dislike for them. It doesn't make me think they're 'cool', whatever that is. It makes me want to have nothing more whatever to do with them ever.
And this is a former mac user and advocate speaking. What effect do you think it has on the outside world?
This is just the stupidest and most internally focussed sort of stuff you can imagine. It shows as clearly as you would ever want the collusion between Cupertino and the Maczealots who turn so many people off Apple. You're a corporate IT guy watching this stuff, you think: keep those guys out of here.
I don't get it at all. Perfectly reasonable computers. Why make a career out of turning people off buying them?
And its commercials like this, and even more, the whole mental attitude that lies behind them, that have totally turned me off Apple and Macs. I wonder if this is the idea? Like some kinds of extreme minority religious cults, what they really want to do is provoke the rest of the world to insult them, thereby in a weird sort of way, confirming their minority status?
Well, who knows, who cares, but its a total turn off.
Right, but the argument is, you don't have to compete on price. It's that there is a designer brand space for machines running Windows. It may be that to Mac people, not running Windows is distinctive and cool, but to the vast majority of the world, its just an inconvenience. This designer Windows segment is probably at least as big or bigger than the current Mac segment. Argument is, this segment just wants Windows on a designer box. So go after it. Go after the existing OSX market as well. The argument would be, the evidence is that it is doable, that the lost OSX sales will not be very great if there will be any.
Its not going after Dell's market at all. Its going after a different bit of the designer brand segment. Now, I know that Apple people don't like this way of looking at things, but I suspect that in Cupertino, this is how conversations go.
Whether Apple sales would actually collapse if they let the OS go is an interesting question. Its always struck me as odd that the same people who argue that buying hardware and OS from one source is the key to the Apple selling proposition and user experience, also argue that Apple loyalists would instantly forsake it for cheaper hardware given the chance. Both cannot be true. I suspect however they are right about the desire for cheap hardware, and that Apple consequently ought to both license Windows and keep OSX tied to their own hardware.
I think it possible that for many people, the main reason they do not buy Macs is that they come with OSX. If they came with Windows, they would probably buy. It is a bit as if Vuitton luggage came with the proviso that you had to fly only Air Nigeria. It would hurt sales. Now there are those, around 3% of the world's computer buyers, who think Air Nigeria is the worlds greatest airline.
There are also those who say, this is great luggage, but I would really prefer American. It goes where I want to go. I don't want to hear it yet again about Air Nigeria. I just want to go where I want to go, with the airline of my choice, and with the luggage I like.
If I have to give up one of these, sorry, its going to be the luggage.
What he is suggesting is, go after the 97%. Why is this so stupid?
Oh, I forgot, its the integrated experience you get when you take your Vuitton luggage on board that color coordinated aircraft. Well, it may be wonderful for you, but I don't care about it.
....If they sell hardware only, they get killed on price..... Well no. No more than Louis Vuitton gets killed on price. For designer brands, price is part of the marketing mix. Higher is essential.
The more I read the chorus of disapproval and dismissal with which his thoughts have been greeted, the more I realised that as usual the conventional wisdom misses the point. I know he is usually fairly silly, but that is when he writes about things he knows too little about. His point in this case does not depend on understanding technology, but on knowledge of human nature, big companies, and markets.
/. will instantly dismiss that, which is exactly why it is worth thinking about. Because it is not you guys who would buy them if they came without OSX. No, but maybe there is a really important numerous market segment that would. It could be. Now, suppose they did find that out, what would they do?
His main point is, if you are a company the size and nature of Apple, you do not simply launch BootCamp on a whim. It is a major decision, internally. So they will have scenarios and objectives. What could they be? His answer is, to find things out. Then he speculates on what they could want to find out, and what they may actually be finding out.
They will also have a followup plan. What could that be?
One of the things they may find out is that people would buy more Macs if they did not come with OSX on them. I realise that everyone on
His answer is, if they thought they could contain the damage, they would take the money and run. His answer to whether the damage seems containable is that so far it does seem likely. There would be some, but the current base would probably shout and scream and stamp their feet and then settle down to their dinners again. They have swallowed Intel, and now they have swallowed BootCamp. They will probably swallow the next one too, if its pitched right.
You all have to realise, this has nothing to do with whether you all like XP or OSX. It has nothing to do with the 'integrated experience' and what you all think makes Apple great. It has to do with some very cold blooded guys sitting in quiet rooms who do not give a damn about your feelings or what you think is great, but who are trying to figure their way through the future. The only thing they worry about is whether enough of you will walk. Dvorak is saying, the evidence they are getting is no.
Never mind who said it, or what silliness he has said in the past. This is really an interesting and penetrating set of thoughts. Yes, I agree, from an unlikely source.
Interesting parallels with Macintosh and Windows in the earlier gui wars... The unbeatable edge there which could not be matched turned out to be discounted open sourced commodity hardware. Good enough, not as good, but good enough for the market, is right and very much to the point.
You will want TreeAge and Crystal Ball. Both are Windows only.
This is the usual problem. You can find the obvious stuff. Its the non-obvious stuff that is missing. There is, for instance, no boat design software.... But that's just an example. You're fine if all you want to do is office, mail and iLife, don't bother looking, there is going to be no real difference.
"I'm not gonna buy an expensive Mac when I can grab that $300 Dell box and run OS X on it."
I think this is true, and true for the great majority of mac users.
But you have to admit, it is in total contradiction to the Great Mac Myths. One is always reading that Macs are not really more expensive, that the integrated experience is different better and what really counts and sells, that its like BMWs and Chevvys...
And at the same time, one hears quite devoted Apple people saying that the OS should not be opened, because they and everyone they know will just buy the cheapest hardware they can find and run OSX on it, and that will bankrupt Apple.
All these firmly held Mac beliefs cannot be true at once!
Its an interesting reaction. But the question is, when the market share has doubled or tripled (and by the way, that will be a very big revenue number indeed), what exactly is it that will have done that?
Its the issue that separates the sheep from the goats, isn't it? Are you an Apple fanatic, in which case all that counts is revenue and share, and you will be happy if the scenario is, MacOS falls a bit, and all the extra is made up by guys buying Macs and putting Windows on it.
Or are you a MacOS fanatic, in which case that will be a total disaster, and the only thing that will satisfy you will be having those guys buy it and use MacOS.
The evidence may be rather in favor of the Apple fanatics, rather than the Mac fanatics. It may be that the great barrier to buying Mac hardware, for the 'rest of us', is actually MacOS. So now, they can sell the hell out of the hardware at last. It may be that Cupertino has finally woken up to that. Maybe what they see out there in front of them is Dell. Maybe the next step will be to say, OK, don't buy OSX if you don't want it, just order it with Windows.
Be careful, you may get what you wish for! You may actually see share tripling. But not the share you wanted.
Yes, but you do need the annual software upgrades at $100+ a pop. More than pays for the anti virus...
What you need, and all you need, is Tellico.
Whatever the EULA says about what you cannot or must run either OS on, it will be unenforceable, especially in the EU, and in fact, it will be worse, it will be positively unlawful. It will be similarly unlawful to attempt to stop people running Office under Wine.
Not only will it be unlawful as a condition, because it attempts to impose post sales restrictions on use, force linked sales, and violates consumer protection legislation. No, worse than that, in the UK it will be actually unlawful and a violation of consumer protection legislation to assert in the packaging that the restrictions are binding.
Whatever it says in a Eula, neither a Eula nor any other kind of contract, can allow a supplier to impose terms on a buyer which are unlawful in the jurisdiction of sale.
And no, you have not licensed it, you have bought it. Look up the court cases in the EU in which people have been judged to have licensed not bought or the reverse. The supplier does not retain it on his books. He cannot depreciate it. It does not revert to him after a period. There are no periodic payments. If it barks like a dog and walks like a dog its a dog. If Microsoft sold it or if Apple sold it. Makes no difference.
I mean, poor little Apple has not got its share by illegal means unlike some but by making better products, so its entitled to it.
Who would want to run an iTune on anything other than an iPod anyway, it would be like putting a lawnmower engine in a Ferrari.
We don't want choice of what machines to play music on, we just want one good machine.
The unique selling point is the integrated experience, its the whole system, the iPod, the iMac, the iTunes, its not any one of them, its the whole thing.
They are no more expensive than comparably equipped competitive products, its just that they sell for more because they give you more.
Anyway, you can play them on other machines if you really really want to, though why you would is beyond me.
Well, now someone got all that out of the way, maybe we could have a discussion...? Because the implications are quite serious, not just for music. For the whole lockin approach. Once one country adopts this, first, it will be impossible to contain within its borders. Second, it will be impossible to contain it to music. It could get real interesting.
Neither one of them has to do with the gui.
One, a decent outlining function in the WP. Drag and drop of sections and auto renumbering.
Two, the functionality of Filemaker v4 in Kexi. That is, make up a form with calculation fields, forced choice from popup menu, drag and drop layouts - all the stuff that makes it possible for an ordinary user to do an application in FM in a half hour, and that will take him....how long in Kexi?
Do both of these, and it will be an absolute killer.
There is also a bit of an issue with the spreadsheet. A while ago I had to open one consisting of 2500 rows and about 40 columns. The only open source spreadsheet that would really handle it was OO. So they maybe need to look at performance issues on the spreadsheet. But for most refugees from Works, its probably fine as is.
Lots of charities are in this situation. They have IT ambitions which the cost of licensing new software and buying new hardware will just rule out at once. They have security worries about W9x. It is also embarrassing to have to say you are teaching people on it. On the other hand, W9x and the office suites of the day run much more snappily and with more modern features than any Linux distro you can load on a W95 or even W98 machine. You can get DSL to work fast, but it doesn't have the apps. You can get stripped down Debian with fvwm or windowmaker or even enlightenment to run, but you really cannot give people an education in modern computing with Kword running under fvwm, its as bad as W9x. We probably like it a lot better, but to the external world its a strange sort of dog. You will have more objections from everyone.
The answer is either to swallow and stay with Windows until more cash becomes available, or to go to LTSP or Skole Linux on the oldest machines first. However, going to LTSP means having a robust backup strategy for the server, and cutting the machines over very carefully till you hit performance limits. This is what I would do. I would say to the school, yes, you are right to be concerned about both security and obsolescence (assuming that's what they are concerned about), and yes, upgrading it all will be expensive, so don't. But, there is something you can do to improve the experience and buy you a few more years on the old hardware, and it will be an interesting and educational project for the older computer science kids in addition. And it will let you use donated hardware much better as it comes in.
The most important thing is to make them aware that it is not risk free. One assumes that what is in place now does work, and probably will carry on working for the next year or two. There are real risks in cutting the machines over.
Two very important things: don't be the only expert. Make sure the whole installation is done with other people who can take over if need be. Also, have a quick way back in case of need.
Reasoning like this: if they sell OSX in the same way Windows is sold, they will roughly have to match the pricing structure. Maybe not exactly, but they can't be three or four times the price. So if an OEM copy of CP is 50-100, and includes all the service packs, OSX will have to as well. However, at the moment, the purchaser pays for the dot upgrades for OSX, and this must be very profitable at 100 or so a crack. Surely, this pricing policy won't be viable any more if they are trying to expand the market into the current Windows market?
Maybe I'm missing something.
Install Debian, just the packages you want, with Windowmaker and xfe. It will run just about acceptably on a P2 with 64M, and KOffice will be usable. Nothing else except Puppy will run acceptably. I've tried Vector, various slackware flavours, elive (which is very nice by the way), stx, mandriva with all kinds of lightweight desktop including icewm or xfce. Even so, this is nothing like as snappy as W98. Even on a K6 500 nothing except Puppy (not yet tried Debian/WM) will run at anything like acceptable speed. The problem is not memory, because this one has 512M. The problem is processing.
Puppy runs, but aesthetically its not much better than W98.
So, probably the correct solution for these old machines is to make them into thin clients. You can partition the machine using OpenVZ, and have whatever desktops you want running, as well as servers screened off from the users. Haven't done it yet, but mean to shortly.
However, you have to be pretty in need to struggle with this stuff in an era where you can buy the small older Dells and Compaq SFF machines for around $50 with P3 500s.
By contrast, when you get to P3 256M, it doesn't really matter, almost anything will run.
"Apple is an example of one of the very VERY few companies that actually produce new products. Their list of successes is beyond belief and dwarfs their competition. The rest of business is so bereft of this ability it is truly astounding. Apple innovates. Everyone else follows."
No company can long survive the enthusiasm of fans like these.
Fair comment!
This is true.
However, also in the UK, every vote cast is traceable back to the person who cast it. There is a unique number on every ballot, which is written on it when you take your ballot paper having showed up at the polling booth. Now, I am sure that under any government we have had up to now, no-one ever checks any of this, and I am sure that all the papers are shredded after the polls. But like all potential abuses of liberty, what you have to worry about is not the current generation of politicians, but some as yet unknown successor.
He is making a valid point, and you have just illustrated it perfectly.
How many people do you think will read this comment, and say to themselves, yes, these Mac people are my kind of folks, I must check it out?
How many will read it and say, got to stay well away from this craziness?
Do you really not understand the effect these kinds of assaults have on people's perceptions of Apple?
Everyone is entitled to like and dislike what he likes, and I make no criticism whatever of your choice of computer, for your parents or for yourself.
What I do not believe, and will not let go unchallenged, is the statement that OSX is somehow more integrated with its hardware than any other OS. It simply is not.
No amount of abuse is going to change the simple fact that if you get a usb drive and plug it in, whether it is in OSX, XP or Linux, it will be auto mounted and appear on the desktop or in My Computer. Similarly, no amount of abuse is going to change the fact that when you unpack 95% of the world's computers with XP, the hardware is perfectly well integrated. It just works. No amount of abuse is going to change the fact that OSX uses drivers just like all OSs do.
I am a Mac user too, its not a question of hostility to Apple, it is about not alienating the rest of the world by talking obvious nonsense!
"However you only tend to see blind loyalty and striking out at any disent on the doomed platforms."
Very perceptive. You could add that the blind loyalty etc feeds the spiral. The more ordinary people come to associate the minority platform with fanatical attitudes, the less inclined they will be to buy it. It is getting harder and harder to recommend Macs these days because of it - regardless of the merits of the platform, because of the social implications.
It is very curious that the fanatics do not seem to understand that their tactics are actually alienating potential users and losing Apple business, and so making more likely the outcome they profess most to dread. There were some egregious examples of this recently on OSNews.
You cannot help wondering, reading the posts on forums such as this one, whether the Mac Zealot aim is to convert or is really to alienate. There seems to be a sort of masochistic pleasure taken in alienating the rest of the world and provoking their hostility, and then complaining about the Mac Haters... Weird stuff.
Why would Michael Dell care one way or the other? Not going to affect his business.
Then we have the irrationality about dual booting. Mac people seem to prefer it. The argument given is that if you can boot into Windows, the mac native versions of apps will no longer be developed.
Whereas, if you can much more conveniently run those same apps in virtual mode using Windows in a virtual environment, this will have no effect?
The practical effect will be that the easier it is to run Windows on mac, the less likely people are to demand OSX native apps, and so virtualisation is a greater threat than dual booting.
Which makes me think the real objection to dual booting is a religious one.