We'll see if that continues for another 6 months. Their actions over the last couple of weeks, combined with the lackluster Mac lineup this generation, might put a dent in their growth.
Yes. But then he can't imply that he's "suffering" on OSX because he's forced to buy Apple if he wants a pretty machine.
Just more proof that Apple has become a vanity brand. Shame, Snow Leopard is a decent OS (I would know, I use it 40+hr/wk but it hasn't been a mandatory platform for me for over a year now), but Lion and Mountain Lion are playing into the vanity theme. When the updates stop flowing in for Snow Leopard, Apple finds themselves off my buy list; for now, they're just near the bottom.
I'm not a driver dev, so I'm really (almost) talking out of my ass with regard to the porting process, but my point was that it wouldn't require the complete rewrite MBCook was alluding to. It doesn't take a driver dev to figure that much out. In fact, I'm betting that I could pull off one driver per month of full-time work with just the source to the 32-bit drivers and a proper build environment. Apple's driver devs, who should also be a fair bit more familiar with the hardware than I am, should be able to perform at at-least that level.
TL;DR: There's no excuse, even if the hardware vendor won't release the source. They can contract the vendor to provide binaries, or, knowing both the old and new interfaces (since they created both), code a compatibility layer and add a line to "About This Mac" indicating that performance may be degraded when that layer is in use. Much preferable (to the consumer) to being forced to buy a new machine.
Walk through the code and pad any 32bit values with an extra 32 0's and compile as 64-bit. Damn, that's tough. Certainly as difficult as a complete rewrite, eh?
They take them back for "recycling". And most of them probably do get recycled. The retina MBPs? They get "recycled". They haven't been caught yet because, well, nobody's brought one in for recycling.
Recyclers can deal with glue, yes. They deal with it by prying the glued pieces apart, damaging both sides in the process. This typically doesn't matter, because both sides are being recycled, so damage is not an issue. When one of the sides is a lithium polymer battery with a 1/2mm aluminum skin, which will erupt into flame if breached, damage is suddenly an issue.
It's the new machines we're discussing, here. The ones where the *lithium* battery is glued to the *aluminum* case, over top of the *plastic* keyboard and *glass* trackpad. None of these materials can be recycled together and it is impossible to remove the battery, to separate them for recycling, without rupturing it and starting a lithium fire. I'll let you do your own math in the fused screens they're using now.
"Your terms - blackberry cracked screen - do not have enough search volume to show graphs."
In my experience, the results would include "my blackberry still works, despite its cracked screen" or "my dog ate the left half of my blackberry curve and cracked part of the screen, but it still works perfectly despite the exposed internals". That second one's a true story, happened to a coworker 3 years ago. He still uses it.
So you're saying a Linux PC is more fragile, physically, than that same exact PC running windows? If Linux frustrates you to the point that you're hitting your machines hard enough to damage them, might I suggest you stop using it?
Joking aside, thank you for that second paragraph. You've summed up my feelings toward Apple's current offering better than I'v been able to. Perfectly, actually. The only difference is that I've never bought a Mac, I use OSX for work and my experience with the platform over the time I've used it had gotten me to place Apple on the top of my buy list (shortly after buying my current Toshiba laptop). I'm in the market again, but the direction Apple has taken has moved them to the bottom of my buy list, just above eMachines. It looks like Asus is gonna win this round.
I have to ask you, do you keep a few hot spares around? If not, how do you handle bad RAM or failed storage? You can't open up an AIR to service it and the fastest turnaround I've seen for replacing these parts under warranty if 3 weeks. Do you just make your workers revert to paper and pencil when something fails, because you don't have a spare machine ready to go? Or do you hand them one of the hot spares you failed to factor in to the long-term cost of ownership? Did you factor in lost productivity while a machiine is out of service for upwards of around a month? With that Dell laptop, you swap in the RAM or HDD, and 5 minutes later you're up and running. Yes, this requires that you have spares of these parts, but let me ask you, what costs less, 2 MacBook Airs, or 4 sticks of RAM and 2 hard drives?
You've made a business case for using Macs, but you've based it on flawed thinking. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying your thought process for arriving at that decision is wrong. You may be right, but you'll have to properly evaluate the pros and cons of both systems to prove it.
Useless anecdote: My $400 PC laptop has had fewer hardware problems than either of the $3000 17" MacBook Pros I'm in daily contact with. Note that I said either, meaning taking them separately, compare my laptop to this MBP, fewer problems; compare it to that one, yup, fewer problems. Of course, you're welcome to insinuate that I'm comparing the number of issues with one machine to the combined total issues of two, but as I've just explained, I am not.
Slashdot Mirror
"PC" means a computer descended from the original IBM standard.
So, a Mac, then?
Cray begs to differ.
The complaint wasn't refresh rate or color reproduction, it was resolution. It's damn hard to find anything over 1920x1200 in any size LCD.
I have a computer from 1997 that runs a browser from last week just fine, thank you.
If you include the iPad in the list of android devices, rather than iDevices, yeah. :)
We'll see if that continues for another 6 months. Their actions over the last couple of weeks, combined with the lackluster Mac lineup this generation, might put a dent in their growth.
Yes. But then he can't imply that he's "suffering" on OSX because he's forced to buy Apple if he wants a pretty machine.
Just more proof that Apple has become a vanity brand. Shame, Snow Leopard is a decent OS (I would know, I use it 40+hr/wk but it hasn't been a mandatory platform for me for over a year now), but Lion and Mountain Lion are playing into the vanity theme. When the updates stop flowing in for Snow Leopard, Apple finds themselves off my buy list; for now, they're just near the bottom.
Apple as in Mac and iDevice, or Apple as in Mac? If it's the former, then include Android devices in PC sales. If it's the latter, well, damn.
I'm not a driver dev, so I'm really (almost) talking out of my ass with regard to the porting process, but my point was that it wouldn't require the complete rewrite MBCook was alluding to. It doesn't take a driver dev to figure that much out. In fact, I'm betting that I could pull off one driver per month of full-time work with just the source to the 32-bit drivers and a proper build environment. Apple's driver devs, who should also be a fair bit more familiar with the hardware than I am, should be able to perform at at-least that level.
TL;DR: There's no excuse, even if the hardware vendor won't release the source. They can contract the vendor to provide binaries, or, knowing both the old and new interfaces (since they created both), code a compatibility layer and add a line to "About This Mac" indicating that performance may be degraded when that layer is in use. Much preferable (to the consumer) to being forced to buy a new machine.
Professional quality tools last 10-20 years, minimum.
Walk through the code and pad any 32bit values with an extra 32 0's and compile as 64-bit. Damn, that's tough. Certainly as difficult as a complete rewrite, eh?
iTunes? App store? I don't think people using their computers professionally are the Lion or Mountain Lion target market.
+5, Funny
No.
They take them back for "recycling". And most of them probably do get recycled. The retina MBPs? They get "recycled". They haven't been caught yet because, well, nobody's brought one in for recycling.
Recyclers can deal with glue, yes. They deal with it by prying the glued pieces apart, damaging both sides in the process. This typically doesn't matter, because both sides are being recycled, so damage is not an issue. When one of the sides is a lithium polymer battery with a 1/2mm aluminum skin, which will erupt into flame if breached, damage is suddenly an issue.
Until you fuse them together like the new MBP displays.
Old machine: Yes.
New machine: No.
It's the new machines we're discussing, here. The ones where the *lithium* battery is glued to the *aluminum* case, over top of the *plastic* keyboard and *glass* trackpad. None of these materials can be recycled together and it is impossible to remove the battery, to separate them for recycling, without rupturing it and starting a lithium fire. I'll let you do your own math in the fused screens they're using now.
In my experience, the results would include "my blackberry still works, despite its cracked screen" or "my dog ate the left half of my blackberry curve and cracked part of the screen, but it still works perfectly despite the exposed internals". That second one's a true story, happened to a coworker 3 years ago. He still uses it.
So you're saying a Linux PC is more fragile, physically, than that same exact PC running windows? If Linux frustrates you to the point that you're hitting your machines hard enough to damage them, might I suggest you stop using it?
Joking aside, thank you for that second paragraph. You've summed up my feelings toward Apple's current offering better than I'v been able to. Perfectly, actually. The only difference is that I've never bought a Mac, I use OSX for work and my experience with the platform over the time I've used it had gotten me to place Apple on the top of my buy list (shortly after buying my current Toshiba laptop). I'm in the market again, but the direction Apple has taken has moved them to the bottom of my buy list, just above eMachines. It looks like Asus is gonna win this round.
I have to ask you, do you keep a few hot spares around? If not, how do you handle bad RAM or failed storage? You can't open up an AIR to service it and the fastest turnaround I've seen for replacing these parts under warranty if 3 weeks. Do you just make your workers revert to paper and pencil when something fails, because you don't have a spare machine ready to go? Or do you hand them one of the hot spares you failed to factor in to the long-term cost of ownership? Did you factor in lost productivity while a machiine is out of service for upwards of around a month? With that Dell laptop, you swap in the RAM or HDD, and 5 minutes later you're up and running. Yes, this requires that you have spares of these parts, but let me ask you, what costs less, 2 MacBook Airs, or 4 sticks of RAM and 2 hard drives?
You've made a business case for using Macs, but you've based it on flawed thinking. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying your thought process for arriving at that decision is wrong. You may be right, but you'll have to properly evaluate the pros and cons of both systems to prove it.
What can an Apple PC (yes, they are) do that a non-Apple PC can't? Before you say "Run OSX", my toshiba does that just fine.
I've looked hard. I've not found many.
Useless anecdote: My $400 PC laptop has had fewer hardware problems than either of the $3000 17" MacBook Pros I'm in daily contact with. Note that I said either, meaning taking them separately, compare my laptop to this MBP, fewer problems; compare it to that one, yup, fewer problems. Of course, you're welcome to insinuate that I'm comparing the number of issues with one machine to the combined total issues of two, but as I've just explained, I am not.
I don't think the people of San Francisco appreciate being made the butt of your jokes.
The current CEO may have been running things, but you can bet your ass he was taking input from Jobs when he was around.