So I should have to spend a few hundred bucks on a video iPod just to be able to watch what I paid for on a TV? No thanks. I gave the legit video business a fair shot. They messed it up. Until they get rid of DRM I will either record TV shows or get them off of Usenet.
Huh? Are you for real? Are you really saying that the content on a DVD is not encrypted?
You sir, are a retard. DRM _is_ encryption. The keys for a DVD happen to be on a DVD _player_. It just happens to be that it is very easy to get those keys. CSS (Content Scramble System) keys are licensed to manufacturers who incorporate them into products, like a DVD player. CSS just happened to be a weak 40-bit stream cipher. The newest version AACS (Advanced Access Content System) has basically been beat to crap as well. Just read some past/. stories.:-)
I think people might have answered your question. Just in case...
GPG is totally open. You can see the code. However, seeing the code means nothing. My key is secret, so you won't be cracking my encrypted files very easily just because you can see the code to Gnu GPG (redundant I know). My GPG encrypted files are pretty darn safe, even though you can "see the code".
Seriously, how many people out there think that "seeing the code" means you "ownz" it? I have been a programmer for more than a decade. Just seeing code means crap, especially when it comes to encryption. In fact, the best encryption is open source, where you can, OMG, see the code. Now if you had my keys... well that would be another story:-)
Huh? Apple has everything right where they want it.
Spare me the Apple fan-boys...
In the past 4 months, I bought a nice 17" Intel iMac and a nice Intel Macbook. With upgrades the two have cost me more than $3,200 USD. So any Mac-Boy that complains about what I am about to say should stand out to the intelligent amoung us:-)
Apple DRM... Where to begin? It sucks. Jobs makes statements about how the "music" industry should change from DRM. Well, I haven't had many problems with Apple's DRM when it comes to music. Yeah, Apple DRM on music sucks. However, you can at least burn an audio CD and grab ogg/mp3/aac files from your music CD.
However, I have gotten burned big-time from Apple this past year from buying TV shows. I have paid Apple way too much money to get several seasons of my favorite shows. Now when I try to convert those shows to watch on my 50" HDTV instead of my little 17" iMac, well, Stevie Jobs will not "let" me. What kind of crap is that?
I paid for this stuff! It is not like I am trying to convert some p2p avi to DVD. I just want to be able to watch the 3 seasons of "The Office" and the other show I have bought off of iTMS on my HDTV!!!
I will never buy anything from Apple again. Period. No hardware, no software and especially no content.
Don't lock down the content I buy from you and expect me to be happy.
I would not have cared if Apple locked down _all_ the TV shows I bought from them... if I could burn a DVD/VCD to watch on my TV.
However, as it is, the DRM on the content from iTMS is way out of line.
As I stated above, I have spent close to $4,000 USD in 4 month on Apple stuff. So please, spare me all the Apple zealots who just want to shill for Apple.
I liked Apple before I actually had to deal with their limitations.
Right now, my Intel iMac it triple booted with OS X, Ubuntu and WinXP. I spend all of my time on the iMac in Ubuntu and boot to WinXP for some fun games. I haven't booted to OS X for a while now.
If there is anyone out there thinking about getting a Mac. Well, I would say to hold off on that. Just build-your-own, save a boat load of money and dual-boot with Linux and WinXP. You will have the best of the geek-world and the gaming-world.
This guy (or his company) are sponsored by MS. So he comes out and says nothing too bad about Vista.
I have an MSDN Universal account and have had access to Vista for a long time. It has been a beast. I need to run VS 2003 and VS 2005, both suck on Vista. I need to run a local copy of SQL Server 2000, it sucks on Vista. I need to run a local copy of MySQL, it sucks on Vista. etc. There is a lot to not like about "Vista". MS shills don't need to reply.
So the US Postal Service should be responsible for all of Kaczynski's bombs? That's a great idea!
I think you are taking the GP's post to the extreme. I think he meant that "common carrier protection" should be limited. Limited in the sense that if the "common carrier" does not impose _any_ restrictions (within some _sane_ safety limit like no explosives) then that
"common carrier" _should_ be protected. However, many ISP's are now NOT acting like "common carriers". They are restricting services and bandwidth based on their perceptions of "importance" or ways to "maximize profits".
Sorry, to me that does not qualify as a "common carrier" to be protected. If my ISP did not block any port, or restrict bandwidth in any way, I would be the first one at their defense to state that they have truly acted as a common carrier. Sadly, that is not the case for most ISP services. They "prioritize" services based on what _they_ think deserves more bandwidth. In other words... what the ISP can gain maximum profit from for the lest bandwidth.
IMO, if an ISP wants to limit bandwidth in _any_ way, they should not have common carrier protection. Period.
While I agree with you about staying _away_ from this crappy, MS-Only, Canada-Only site. I don't think "Boing Boing debunks" anything.
From the Boing Boing site:
if you hit their web page on a Mac, you get this screen. In which they tell you they use Windows Media and claim they're incompatble with Macs because they can't use FairPlay (ah, that old myth again!) (emphasis mine).
How is it a "myth" that no other site can use "Fair"Play? Seriously? No other site can sell "Fair"Play crap. I personally have been stung by "Fair"Play crap. I have never bought WMA, MS-Only crap, and never will. However, I have bought 3 seasons of "The Office" off of iTMS, only to have it freakin locked down. I won't be buying any "Fair"Play junk again. I won't be buying _any_ DRM crap again. I am tired of some corp freak telling me where or how I can watch content I _PAID_ for.
Sorry if I went off on a tangent here, however, _NO_ audio/video content available from Apple is any more "free" than WMA crap. It is all DRM encrusted crap to me. Meant to restrict me as a _customer_.
Well, the #1 non-DRM format is MP3. It costs money to license MP3 since the patent is still valid. MP3 is probably no less, cost-wise, than crappy WMA. So I don't see any cost advantage to go with MP3.
The only advantage to a non-DRM format, cost wise, is if enough of the highest selling content is available without crappy DRM. I believe more people would be willing to buy non-DRM content than restricted content. I know I personally would buy music if there were no DRM.
You are way off man. The Ferrari emblem is copyrighted so I would need to buy that from them. However, the "look" of the car is not. Haver you never heard of a kit car? They are perfectly legal. You can make them as fast as you want (within street legal limits). You can build one your self or buy a "turn key".
Okay all you folks who said, "I'd pay for music rather than steal it" if they would just remove the DRM now's the time to go visit puretracks.
I just did. Everything on the homepage is only in WMA format. No thanks. In fact, 96% of all their music is in crappy MS-Only WMA. Oh, the site also says: "We apologize, but www.puretracks.com is only available to Canadian residents. If you are a resident of the USA, please click here to access our American store.".... WMA-Only!!!
Your suggestion doesn't make sense to me. This Candada-Only store is offering _very_ few songs in a non-DRM format. What percentage of those songs are any good? Are they the most purchased songs? I bet the non-DRM songs are among the least purchased. Seriously, how many people will buy a song by Uncle Goober singing I "widdled a piece of wood on the porch" just because it has no crappy DRM? So IMO, PureTracks will see very little purchases of the non-DRM songs and then the RIAA will have "ammunition" and say "see, no one want non-DRM encrusted music".
Give me a call when there is actually _real_ content available to _all_ people in a non-DRM encrusted format. Then I will start buying (big time). For now, I will spend my money on that Russian site:-)
I bought crappy DRM encrusted content. I purchased all three seasons of "The Office" (at $2 a pop) off of iTMS. I have been trying to get my wife to watch the show since I really like it. However, she will not sit in my office with me and watch it on my 17" iMac and she won't watch it on our 13" Macbook. We have a 50" HDTV and a 32" HDTV. Why can't I burn those episodes to a DVD to watch on a real TV? Because of DRM. I stopped buying any content from iTMS because of this.
That will happen as soon at the government OKs the deal. The OK happens when some politicians are given brib^H^H^H^H campaign contributions. Capitalism at its finest!!!
So MS gives China the source code to MS Windows. China starts to attack all the flaws it finds. Government people scratch their heads and still say to use crappy closed source, proprietary, MS-Only software!
Now if the US government used mostly Open Source software, this would not be an issue. The code would be available. The exploits would be found. Fixes would come quick. Not only that, being Open source, the governments top programmers could just fix the crap themselves.
So why exactly does the US Government use crappy closed sourced code from MS? How much money is changing hands behind-the-curtains?
For example, a CIO I worked under advised us that we could increase the efficiency of our database-driven app by reading the records in a random-access manner, rather than processing the whole "file" of orders sequentially each time we wanted to retrieve a record.
Oh man... I just spit something out of my nose! Did anyone correct your CIO? To me this sounds like the last time this dude had _any_ knowledge of IT, it was with COBOL/CICS type stuff.
I have worked for 3 fortune xxx companies. None of the CIO/CTO have know _anything_ about IT. Nothing. All have been business people that were transfered from some other department. A lot of the bigger companies like to play "musical manager" where the "upper" level management gets moved around so they know more roles of the company. This gets them promoted faster... go figure.
I just recently went through a corporate re-org. The new CIO is actually a "financial" chick (though her knowledge there is _very_ limited) and has as much knowledge about computers as my 84 year old grandmother-in-law, seriously! Maybe she slept with the right people? Oh, and I don't mean that to be some anti-feminist. Our previous CIO was a real retard, I was surprised if he could even log in properly with a username and password.
P.S. I am saying all of this as a senior programmer, not a system admin. I felt sooooo bad for my good friends that were admins. Damn, those dude had to deal with a lot of crap.:-)
remember, Bill Gates said he would end spam. As a "trusting" MS user, I believe him. So, since spam has ended, I don't know what these "systems" guys are complaining about. Geeez.
$400??? That is a pretty nice deal. Thanks. The only problem I have is, how speedy is the G4? My brother-in-law is a pro photographer and has a G5 tower and always says how my 17" 2.0 GHz Intel iMac is much faster. If I spend money on a tower, I want some modern speed, I don't need top-of-the-line processors, but I don't want to feel like I am running a 500 MHz P III.
Awww, did some one say something you don't like about your boyfriend Stevie? So sorry. It has nothing to do with can I afford them or not. I can, thank you. However, it comes down to are they _worth_ the price Apple charges. IMO, hell no. Apple goes from the iMac to the Mac Pro. That leaves out a huge cost gap for many customers.
The Mac Pro just costs too much for what most prosumers would want. I wold love something better than the iMac I _bought_ and something less than the higher-end Mac Pro. Apple just doesn't offer that.
Sorry if that makes you made. I am sure Stevie will only spank you two times. Though I bet you would like Stevie to spank you more, wouldn't you?
As I said in my earlier post, I have spent more than $3,000 on Apple stuff in the last 4 months. Why do you Apple fan-girls get your panties all wet if someone says a negative about Apple?
Oh, and P.S. converting to time zones may seem complex from a system design point-of-view. However, from a programming point-of-view it is pretty easy. If the code is made generic, there is no real big deal. Look at the target time zone, look at the current time zone, what is the _current_ offset, convert (I am generalizing here). No big deal really. Time zones have been handled well for a long time now from a programming perspective. If you work with programmers that have problems converting time zones, hire new programmers. Most of the major development frameworks handle time zone stuff for the programmer any way.
Most apps do not need to work in hundreds of time zones. Commercial software may need to work in more time zones, but the majority of corporate business apps do not need to work in many time zones. The last app I did for a big corp runs in Central, but is only ran from Eastern. So the software only needed to convert all times to Eastern. Pretty simple stuff.
There are more differences to the MBP and the MB. The processor speed difference doesn't matter much at all. The MBP has a _much_ faster hard drive. Hard drive speed makes a _huge_ difference for laptops. My MB hard drive is driving me crazy at how slow it is...
In the last 4 months I have bought an Intel Macbook for about $1,100 USD and an Intel iMac for about $1,300 USD. How about instead of this dumb little laptop, you give _paying_ customers like me a _real_ mid-tower option that doesn't cost more than $1,200 or so? I love your hardware and OS X is very nice. Being Intel based lets me boot WinXP and Linux, which I like very much.
I have always built my own PC systems for a lot less then what I paid you. Please give me, a paying customer, an affordable mid-tower that I can upgrade the graphics card, etc. While I really like my 17" iMac, I hate not being able to upgrade my video card to something better. If the available computers from Apple does not change, I will not be buying from you again. I will stick to a regular, home-built PC (or even one bought from Dell) and just use WinXP and Linux on it. OS X did not give me enough incentive to give up my options to upgrade. While I think OS X is very nice, it is certainly not that much better as a GUI than Linux/WinXP to give up my options to be able to upgrade the computers I have bought from you.
Steve, if you are listening, give your customers an upgradeable Intel-based mid-tower please.
Before all the mac-heads start screaming about the Mac Pro, please spare me. It is way over priced for most needs. I am a computer programmer and I have always needed better hardware, however I have _never_ spent as much on a Mac Pro for a PC I have built or bought, ever. The Mac Pro seems to be more high-end for graphics stuff, which I do not do.
Again, I have spent more than $3,000 USD in the past 4 months or so on Apple stuff. I will never do it again, unless I can get an _affordable_ and upgradable mid-tower from Apple. The two Intel Macs I have will work for me for the next 1 1/2 years - 2 years or so. However, after that, if Apple doesn't offer a consumer affordable, upgradeable mid-tower, they just lost a customer.
P.S. I know many other programmers that bought your products over the last year or so that feel the same as me. The ball is in your court Apple. You can go back to being a niche product for graphics and audio dudes or you can really give MS some kicking competition. Just listen to your customers for once and give us an upgradeable mid-tower at an affordable price.
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So I should have to spend a few hundred bucks on a video iPod just to be able to watch what I paid for on a TV? No thanks. I gave the legit video business a fair shot. They messed it up. Until they get rid of DRM I will either record TV shows or get them off of Usenet.
The legal service is called a VCR with a timer set.
I wish I had mod points for you sir :-)
:-)
Though, most Apple shills will just put their fingers in their ears to what you have to say
You sir, are a retard. DRM _is_ encryption. The keys for a DVD happen to be on a DVD _player_. It just happens to be that it is very easy to get those keys. CSS (Content Scramble System) keys are licensed to manufacturers who incorporate them into products, like a DVD player. CSS just happened to be a weak 40-bit stream cipher. The newest version AACS (Advanced Access Content System) has basically been beat to crap as well. Just read some past
I think people might have answered your question. Just in case...
:-)
GPG is totally open. You can see the code. However, seeing the code means nothing. My key is secret, so you won't be cracking my encrypted files very easily just because you can see the code to Gnu GPG (redundant I know). My GPG encrypted files are pretty darn safe, even though you can "see the code".
Seriously, how many people out there think that "seeing the code" means you "ownz" it? I have been a programmer for more than a decade. Just seeing code means crap, especially when it comes to encryption. In fact, the best encryption is open source, where you can, OMG, see the code. Now if you had my keys... well that would be another story
You are way out of touch buddy. See the other comment to your post. QTFairUse has been making a fool of the whole Apple DRM stuff. :-)
Huh? Apple has everything right where they want it.
:-)
:-)
Spare me the Apple fan-boys...
In the past 4 months, I bought a nice 17" Intel iMac and a nice Intel Macbook. With upgrades the two have cost me more than $3,200 USD. So any Mac-Boy that complains about what I am about to say should stand out to the intelligent amoung us
Apple DRM... Where to begin? It sucks. Jobs makes statements about how the "music" industry should change from DRM. Well, I haven't had many problems with Apple's DRM when it comes to music. Yeah, Apple DRM on music sucks. However, you can at least burn an audio CD and grab ogg/mp3/aac files from your music CD.
However, I have gotten burned big-time from Apple this past year from buying TV shows. I have paid Apple way too much money to get several seasons of my favorite shows. Now when I try to convert those shows to watch on my 50" HDTV instead of my little 17" iMac, well, Stevie Jobs will not "let" me. What kind of crap is that?
I paid for this stuff! It is not like I am trying to convert some p2p avi to DVD. I just want to be able to watch the 3 seasons of "The Office" and the other show I have bought off of iTMS on my HDTV!!!
I will never buy anything from Apple again. Period. No hardware, no software and especially no content.
Don't lock down the content I buy from you and expect me to be happy.
I would not have cared if Apple locked down _all_ the TV shows I bought from them... if I could burn a DVD/VCD to watch on my TV.
However, as it is, the DRM on the content from iTMS is way out of line.
As I stated above, I have spent close to $4,000 USD in 4 month on Apple stuff. So please, spare me all the Apple zealots who just want to shill for Apple.
I liked Apple before I actually had to deal with their limitations.
Right now, my Intel iMac it triple booted with OS X, Ubuntu and WinXP. I spend all of my time on the iMac in Ubuntu and boot to WinXP for some fun games. I haven't booted to OS X for a while now.
If there is anyone out there thinking about getting a Mac. Well, I would say to hold off on that. Just build-your-own, save a boat load of money and dual-boot with Linux and WinXP. You will have the best of the geek-world and the gaming-world.
Peace
This guy (or his company) are sponsored by MS. So he comes out and says nothing too bad about Vista.
I have an MSDN Universal account and have had access to Vista for a long time. It has been a beast. I need to run VS 2003 and VS 2005, both suck on Vista. I need to run a local copy of SQL Server 2000, it sucks on Vista. I need to run a local copy of MySQL, it sucks on Vista. etc. There is a lot to not like about "Vista". MS shills don't need to reply.
I think you are taking the GP's post to the extreme. I think he meant that "common carrier protection" should be limited. Limited in the sense that if the "common carrier" does not impose _any_ restrictions (within some _sane_ safety limit like no explosives) then that "common carrier" _should_ be protected. However, many ISP's are now NOT acting like "common carriers". They are restricting services and bandwidth based on their perceptions of "importance" or ways to "maximize profits".
Sorry, to me that does not qualify as a "common carrier" to be protected. If my ISP did not block any port, or restrict bandwidth in any way, I would be the first one at their defense to state that they have truly acted as a common carrier. Sadly, that is not the case for most ISP services. They "prioritize" services based on what _they_ think deserves more bandwidth. In other words... what the ISP can gain maximum profit from for the lest bandwidth.
IMO, if an ISP wants to limit bandwidth in _any_ way, they should not have common carrier protection. Period.
From the Boing Boing site: How is it a "myth" that no other site can use "Fair"Play? Seriously? No other site can sell "Fair"Play crap. I personally have been stung by "Fair"Play crap. I have never bought WMA, MS-Only crap, and never will. However, I have bought 3 seasons of "The Office" off of iTMS, only to have it freakin locked down. I won't be buying any "Fair"Play junk again. I won't be buying _any_ DRM crap again. I am tired of some corp freak telling me where or how I can watch content I _PAID_ for.
Sorry if I went off on a tangent here, however, _NO_ audio/video content available from Apple is any more "free" than WMA crap. It is all DRM encrusted crap to me. Meant to restrict me as a _customer_.
The only advantage to a non-DRM format, cost wise, is if enough of the highest selling content is available without crappy DRM. I believe more people would be willing to buy non-DRM content than restricted content. I know I personally would buy music if there were no DRM.
You are way off man. The Ferrari emblem is copyrighted so I would need to buy that from them. However, the "look" of the car is not. Haver you never heard of a kit car? They are perfectly legal. You can make them as fast as you want (within street legal limits). You can build one your self or buy a "turn key".
Your suggestion doesn't make sense to me. This Candada-Only store is offering _very_ few songs in a non-DRM format. What percentage of those songs are any good? Are they the most purchased songs? I bet the non-DRM songs are among the least purchased. Seriously, how many people will buy a song by Uncle Goober singing I "widdled a piece of wood on the porch" just because it has no crappy DRM? So IMO, PureTracks will see very little purchases of the non-DRM songs and then the RIAA will have "ammunition" and say "see, no one want non-DRM encrusted music".
Give me a call when there is actually _real_ content available to _all_ people in a non-DRM encrusted format. Then I will start buying (big time). For now, I will spend my money on that Russian site
I bought crappy DRM encrusted content. I purchased all three seasons of "The Office" (at $2 a pop) off of iTMS. I have been trying to get my wife to watch the show since I really like it. However, she will not sit in my office with me and watch it on my 17" iMac and she won't watch it on our 13" Macbook. We have a 50" HDTV and a 32" HDTV. Why can't I burn those episodes to a DVD to watch on a real TV? Because of DRM. I stopped buying any content from iTMS because of this.
That will happen as soon at the government OKs the deal. The OK happens when some politicians are given brib^H^H^H^H campaign contributions. Capitalism at its finest!!!
So MS gives China the source code to MS Windows. China starts to attack all the flaws it finds. Government people scratch their heads and still say to use crappy closed source, proprietary, MS-Only software!
Now if the US government used mostly Open Source software, this would not be an issue. The code would be available. The exploits would be found. Fixes would come quick. Not only that, being Open source, the governments top programmers could just fix the crap themselves.
So why exactly does the US Government use crappy closed sourced code from MS? How much money is changing hands behind-the-curtains?
It was supposed to be a joke... A bad one :-)
May you be blessed my son
Oh...Boy!!!
:-)
I have worked for 3 fortune xxx companies. None of the CIO/CTO have know _anything_ about IT. Nothing. All have been business people that were transfered from some other department. A lot of the bigger companies like to play "musical manager" where the "upper" level management gets moved around so they know more roles of the company. This gets them promoted faster... go figure.
I just recently went through a corporate re-org. The new CIO is actually a "financial" chick (though her knowledge there is _very_ limited) and has as much knowledge about computers as my 84 year old grandmother-in-law, seriously! Maybe she slept with the right people? Oh, and I don't mean that to be some anti-feminist. Our previous CIO was a real retard, I was surprised if he could even log in properly with a username and password.
P.S. I am saying all of this as a senior programmer, not a system admin. I felt sooooo bad for my good friends that were admins. Damn, those dude had to deal with a lot of crap.
God, it makes me sick.
remember, Bill Gates said he would end spam. As a "trusting" MS user, I believe him. So, since spam has ended, I don't know what these "systems" guys are complaining about. Geeez.
$400??? That is a pretty nice deal. Thanks. The only problem I have is, how speedy is the G4? My brother-in-law is a pro photographer and has a G5 tower and always says how my 17" 2.0 GHz Intel iMac is much faster. If I spend money on a tower, I want some modern speed, I don't need top-of-the-line processors, but I don't want to feel like I am running a 500 MHz P III.
Awww, did some one say something you don't like about your boyfriend Stevie? So sorry. It has nothing to do with can I afford them or not. I can, thank you. However, it comes down to are they _worth_ the price Apple charges. IMO, hell no. Apple goes from the iMac to the Mac Pro. That leaves out a huge cost gap for many customers.
The Mac Pro just costs too much for what most prosumers would want. I wold love something better than the iMac I _bought_ and something less than the higher-end Mac Pro. Apple just doesn't offer that.
Sorry if that makes you made. I am sure Stevie will only spank you two times. Though I bet you would like Stevie to spank you more, wouldn't you?
As I said in my earlier post, I have spent more than $3,000 on Apple stuff in the last 4 months. Why do you Apple fan-girls get your panties all wet if someone says a negative about Apple?
Oh, and P.S. converting to time zones may seem complex from a system design point-of-view. However, from a programming point-of-view it is pretty easy. If the code is made generic, there is no real big deal. Look at the target time zone, look at the current time zone, what is the _current_ offset, convert (I am generalizing here). No big deal really. Time zones have been handled well for a long time now from a programming perspective. If you work with programmers that have problems converting time zones, hire new programmers. Most of the major development frameworks handle time zone stuff for the programmer any way.
Most apps do not need to work in hundreds of time zones. Commercial software may need to work in more time zones, but the majority of corporate business apps do not need to work in many time zones. The last app I did for a big corp runs in Central, but is only ran from Eastern. So the software only needed to convert all times to Eastern. Pretty simple stuff.
There are more differences to the MBP and the MB. The processor speed difference doesn't matter much at all. The MBP has a _much_ faster hard drive. Hard drive speed makes a _huge_ difference for laptops. My MB hard drive is driving me crazy at how slow it is...
In the last 4 months I have bought an Intel Macbook for about $1,100 USD and an Intel iMac for about $1,300 USD. How about instead of this dumb little laptop, you give _paying_ customers like me a _real_ mid-tower option that doesn't cost more than $1,200 or so? I love your hardware and OS X is very nice. Being Intel based lets me boot WinXP and Linux, which I like very much.
I have always built my own PC systems for a lot less then what I paid you. Please give me, a paying customer, an affordable mid-tower that I can upgrade the graphics card, etc. While I really like my 17" iMac, I hate not being able to upgrade my video card to something better. If the available computers from Apple does not change, I will not be buying from you again. I will stick to a regular, home-built PC (or even one bought from Dell) and just use WinXP and Linux on it. OS X did not give me enough incentive to give up my options to upgrade. While I think OS X is very nice, it is certainly not that much better as a GUI than Linux/WinXP to give up my options to be able to upgrade the computers I have bought from you.
Steve, if you are listening, give your customers an upgradeable Intel-based mid-tower please.
Before all the mac-heads start screaming about the Mac Pro, please spare me. It is way over priced for most needs. I am a computer programmer and I have always needed better hardware, however I have _never_ spent as much on a Mac Pro for a PC I have built or bought, ever. The Mac Pro seems to be more high-end for graphics stuff, which I do not do.
Again, I have spent more than $3,000 USD in the past 4 months or so on Apple stuff. I will never do it again, unless I can get an _affordable_ and upgradable mid-tower from Apple. The two Intel Macs I have will work for me for the next 1 1/2 years - 2 years or so. However, after that, if Apple doesn't offer a consumer affordable, upgradeable mid-tower, they just lost a customer.
P.S. I know many other programmers that bought your products over the last year or so that feel the same as me. The ball is in your court Apple. You can go back to being a niche product for graphics and audio dudes or you can really give MS some kicking competition. Just listen to your customers for once and give us an upgradeable mid-tower at an affordable price.