Apple has abandoned the market segment for people who like the flexible tower form factor but don't want to pay an arm and a leg, a segment that's very well catered to by nearly every other PC manufacturer.
I'm willing to bet that they ditched the segment simply because it was so over crowded. Apple doesn't want to deal with people who are playing with their computers. They want people who are happy to be locked into a proprietary solution.
For a bit of a "real world" example of what a "professional Mac" really costs, I'll share an antecdote from where I work. We just hired a new Director of Communication who is going to oversee the Creative Services, PR and Marketting departments. They are all Mac users in that part of the world so we needed to buy the director hardware and software that is compatible with what they are using. When all was said and done, the position got a G5, 23 inch monitor, Adobe CS3 and some other misc. software. The cost was close to $9000. I've bought brand name (HP) workgroup file servers with Windows Server 2003 CALs for less than that.
Mmm.. to be fair, he did look at more than the mac mini, and mostly limited his remarks there to it being too little hardware to really support the OS.
I found it interesting that 512MB of RAM was too little hardware. I often times read comments from non-Windows users where they gripe about how you need a gig of RAM to make Windows XP run well. I guess that argument just went out the Window. =) I'm not so sure about what the memory requirements are for Vista, but I figure it's probably 2 gigs. I remember needing 64MB to get Win95/98 to run well and that was at a time when coming from DOS/Win3.11 you'd be lucky to see 32MB of RAM in a workstation.
Reading this article reminds me of the first time my parents got a huge phone bill because I was swapping warez. It didn't take too long after that for me to figure out what 950s were. Ahhhhh, the good old days.
You're a tool and I'll take the -1 hit for pointing it out. Auto Update isn't going to download files the machines you twit. The trojan uses auto update functionality to download additional malware. If auto update was off, it wouldn't matter because you failed to secure the box properly in the first place and let the trojan in.
If you setup the box right and let the user run as a normal user account, Windows is pretty freakin secure these days. I have set up a bunch of boxes for people like my sister, the kids of some employees at my clients, and my parents. Everyone except my parents uses Myspace, Facebook, IM clients, the whole nine yards. Yet oddly enough, the only "tech support" call I've had to deal with in the last six months was from my sister because SHE COULDN'T INSTALL SOFTWARE BECAUSE SHE WASN'T RUNNING AS ADMINISTRATOR.
Sorry, you failed it when you said "group policy". Who the hell actually uses that?
Anybody who knows anything about administrating a Windows network uses Group Policy. Hell, you can even run a local policy on the workstation even if it isn't connected to a domain controller.
Thanks for the reply. Your system isn't too far off of what I'm running. P4 3ghz, 1GB, GeForce 6800 256MB. Looks like I just need to pick up another SATA drive and then I'm off the races. At least I can always fall back to XP if necessary. Do you have any tips for setting up a dual boot? Despite having some experience with partition managers dating back to DOS 6/Windows 95 days, I still managed to wipe out my XP partition the last time I tried to install Ubuntu.
The sad thing is that I can pretty much bet there is a think tank out there that did some stastical analysis and concluded that the revenue lost from those who hate ads enough to not purchase a game were compensated for by the potential ad revenue generated.
Oh, so you like to play lots of different kinds of characters instead of sticking to a few tried and true ones? You play on multiple servers instead of one single server? You're socially permiscious, like new experiences, get bored of the same old thing after a while? Why not travel to Dubai? =)
The reality of the situation is that YOU are the same person on a deeper, subconscious level no matter if you're playing a game, or hanging out in real life. While you are playing online you might manifest different aspects of your personality in different ways. However, marketing can still be targetted to THAT portion of your personality. To think of it another way, if you're in your online world and view that as an escape from "real life", you'd probably be even more succeptible (sp?) to ads that target your "online" persona than you would be to ads that try to engage your RL persona. In other words, if you saw something that reminded you RL, you'd reject it because it was breaking your fantasy experience. But if you saw something to the effect of, "Raiding is taxing. Redbull gives you the wings you need to make it through that next boss fight."... you might consider, "Ya, some caffeine would be good right now. Better go get some Redbull."
There is a term for doing that, but I'm not quite sure what it is. I think it's called "mind share." You see it during big sporting events, where companies like BASF will advertise. They aren't really trying to sell their product. They're just making sure that you know that they're out there. Advertising Mountain Dew just serves to reenforce to the consumer that they really did make the "right" choice, and it rewards their behavior.
Unless of course they're some sort of emo non-comformist who gets turned off by the thought of "everyone else" doing what they do.
Because from a neurological/psychological point of view, you have some deep seated structures in your brain that emerge as patterns in your behavior that you probably aren't even consciously aware of. The fact that Google is going to analyze that kind of stuff is pretty scary, but uber cool at the same time. It would be interesting to work with the folks involved in NLP research at Google.
How does it run compared to Windows (in terms of FPS?). Do you have some references on what the tweaks are in WINE and the WOW directory? WoW is pretty much the only game I play these days and if I could get that working, I might consider switching. Well WoW, and I need a VPN client that I can connect to Sonicwalls at my client sites with, but I'm pretty sure I can figure that one out.
Once it's more of a target, you'll see a gain in attacks. Not only that, but recently any exploits to a *nix based system weren't as publicized as Windows, due to the pure hate of Microsoft.
The deal is that nearly all of the Unix exploits were being done back in the early 1990s when *nix boxes were the only boxes on the internet for the most part. As much as I live by Microsoft software, the reason that people are going after it instead of Unix isn't because it's a bigger target. It is because the *nix world has already been there and done that. They've had their trial by fire and came out the other side of it. Microsoft is STILL learning the hard way. By the time I had my Win 3.11 box on the net with a 14.4 SLIP connection, my friends who were running Slackware and BSD had been there for a couple of years already.
I've often wondered the same thing. When the financial institutions started sending out "Credit Monitoring" services I was incredulous. It's ridiculous that you have to pay extra to have them monitor your credit file for you.
Thats what I'm doing. I've been playing with computers since I was 8 and I've been doing IT professionally for over a decade. These days most of my free time is spent practicing tai chi, kung fu and embracing Daoist philosophy. I eventually hope to move to Colorado where I will open a temple where I can help others who want to walk the same path.
When I read your comment I thought about how domain name registrations were originally free. Because of that, people went out and registered huge swaths of domains. If ARIN just gives out IPv6 address space, what is to prevent every geeek and their mom from running out and grabbing some of it just because it is there to be had?
No. I'm trying to say that 85% of the world is running a Windows infrastructure and if you're developing to target that infrastructure using Visual Studio, then your backend web server is going to be IIS 6.
It isn't. It's significantly better than IIS 5. But when you compare it to free offering, you have to wonder why'd you spend the money for IIS if you can have Apache for free. That is, unless you develop in Visual Studio want to integrate with what say... 85% of the servers in the world are running?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm willing to bet that they ditched the segment simply because it was so over crowded. Apple doesn't want to deal with people who are playing with their computers. They want people who are happy to be locked into a proprietary solution.
For a bit of a "real world" example of what a "professional Mac" really costs, I'll share an antecdote from where I work. We just hired a new Director of Communication who is going to oversee the Creative Services, PR and Marketting departments. They are all Mac users in that part of the world so we needed to buy the director hardware and software that is compatible with what they are using. When all was said and done, the position got a G5, 23 inch monitor, Adobe CS3 and some other misc. software. The cost was close to $9000. I've bought brand name (HP) workgroup file servers with Windows Server 2003 CALs for less than that.
I found it interesting that 512MB of RAM was too little hardware. I often times read comments from non-Windows users where they gripe about how you need a gig of RAM to make Windows XP run well. I guess that argument just went out the Window. =) I'm not so sure about what the memory requirements are for Vista, but I figure it's probably 2 gigs. I remember needing 64MB to get Win95/98 to run well and that was at a time when coming from DOS/Win3.11 you'd be lucky to see 32MB of RAM in a workstation.
Pirates has arguably gotten better with subsiquent releases. Or at least, the sequels haven't STRAIGHT SUCKED in comparision to the original.
Your documents interoperate you.
Reading this article reminds me of the first time my parents got a huge phone bill because I was swapping warez. It didn't take too long after that for me to figure out what 950s were. Ahhhhh, the good old days.
Everyone who comes in here and poo-poos on the contest should keep that in mind.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=144e54ed-d43e-42ca-bc7b-5446d34e5360&displa ylang=en
"The Remove Hidden Data Tool"
One of the girls upstairs in the PR department ran into the same problem today. It took all of three minutes on Google to find the solution to the problem.
If you setup the box right and let the user run as a normal user account, Windows is pretty freakin secure these days. I have set up a bunch of boxes for people like my sister, the kids of some employees at my clients, and my parents. Everyone except my parents uses Myspace, Facebook, IM clients, the whole nine yards. Yet oddly enough, the only "tech support" call I've had to deal with in the last six months was from my sister because SHE COULDN'T INSTALL SOFTWARE BECAUSE SHE WASN'T RUNNING AS ADMINISTRATOR.
Anybody who knows anything about administrating a Windows network uses Group Policy. Hell, you can even run a local policy on the workstation even if it isn't connected to a domain controller.
Thanks for the reply. Your system isn't too far off of what I'm running. P4 3ghz, 1GB, GeForce 6800 256MB. Looks like I just need to pick up another SATA drive and then I'm off the races. At least I can always fall back to XP if necessary. Do you have any tips for setting up a dual boot? Despite having some experience with partition managers dating back to DOS 6/Windows 95 days, I still managed to wipe out my XP partition the last time I tried to install Ubuntu.
The sad thing is that I can pretty much bet there is a think tank out there that did some stastical analysis and concluded that the revenue lost from those who hate ads enough to not purchase a game were compensated for by the potential ad revenue generated.
And the associated ads for Valtrex.
Oh, so you like to play lots of different kinds of characters instead of sticking to a few tried and true ones? You play on multiple servers instead of one single server? You're socially permiscious, like new experiences, get bored of the same old thing after a while? Why not travel to Dubai? =)
The reality of the situation is that YOU are the same person on a deeper, subconscious level no matter if you're playing a game, or hanging out in real life. While you are playing online you might manifest different aspects of your personality in different ways. However, marketing can still be targetted to THAT portion of your personality. To think of it another way, if you're in your online world and view that as an escape from "real life", you'd probably be even more succeptible (sp?) to ads that target your "online" persona than you would be to ads that try to engage your RL persona. In other words, if you saw something that reminded you RL, you'd reject it because it was breaking your fantasy experience. But if you saw something to the effect of, "Raiding is taxing. Redbull gives you the wings you need to make it through that next boss fight."... you might consider, "Ya, some caffeine would be good right now. Better go get some Redbull."
Unless of course they're some sort of emo non-comformist who gets turned off by the thought of "everyone else" doing what they do.
Because from a neurological/psychological point of view, you have some deep seated structures in your brain that emerge as patterns in your behavior that you probably aren't even consciously aware of. The fact that Google is going to analyze that kind of stuff is pretty scary, but uber cool at the same time. It would be interesting to work with the folks involved in NLP research at Google.
How does it run compared to Windows (in terms of FPS?). Do you have some references on what the tweaks are in WINE and the WOW directory? WoW is pretty much the only game I play these days and if I could get that working, I might consider switching. Well WoW, and I need a VPN client that I can connect to Sonicwalls at my client sites with, but I'm pretty sure I can figure that one out.
when i rebooted and realized windows was gone i shit a brick.
It was... When I rebooted and realized my warez were gone, I got pretty bored. =)
The deal is that nearly all of the Unix exploits were being done back in the early 1990s when *nix boxes were the only boxes on the internet for the most part. As much as I live by Microsoft software, the reason that people are going after it instead of Unix isn't because it's a bigger target. It is because the *nix world has already been there and done that. They've had their trial by fire and came out the other side of it. Microsoft is STILL learning the hard way. By the time I had my Win 3.11 box on the net with a 14.4 SLIP connection, my friends who were running Slackware and BSD had been there for a couple of years already.
There's no sense in making the user suffer or declaring them an enemy combatant.
I've often wondered the same thing. When the financial institutions started sending out "Credit Monitoring" services I was incredulous. It's ridiculous that you have to pay extra to have them monitor your credit file for you.
Thats what I'm doing. I've been playing with computers since I was 8 and I've been doing IT professionally for over a decade. These days most of my free time is spent practicing tai chi, kung fu and embracing Daoist philosophy. I eventually hope to move to Colorado where I will open a temple where I can help others who want to walk the same path.
When I read your comment I thought about how domain name registrations were originally free. Because of that, people went out and registered huge swaths of domains. If ARIN just gives out IPv6 address space, what is to prevent every geeek and their mom from running out and grabbing some of it just because it is there to be had?
No. I'm trying to say that 85% of the world is running a Windows infrastructure and if you're developing to target that infrastructure using Visual Studio, then your backend web server is going to be IIS 6.
It isn't. It's significantly better than IIS 5. But when you compare it to free offering, you have to wonder why'd you spend the money for IIS if you can have Apache for free. That is, unless you develop in Visual Studio want to integrate with what say... 85% of the servers in the world are running?