Guest post by I started out as a Mac user in about 1985 in a world which will be totally unfamiliar to almost all readers of OSNews. You wrote out your stuff by longhand, and a secretary typed it on a word processor. If you were lucky and able to manage it, you could dictate it. But you did not dictate into a dictating machine, because these were big heavy and expensive. You dictated it directly to someone who could ‘take shorthand’. If you had a PC, it ran DOS. You looked for your files, and moved them around, started applications, one at a time, from the command line, and the command line was not pretty, it was green on black. On one long term assignment, our department computerized. The guy we had put in charge fought IT over the issue, and won, and we got Macs. After a trial of competitive packages, we bought Microsoft Word. I had come from the old mini-computer world, and it took me a few days to find the gui something more than a pointless obstruction that stopped me seeing what was really going on. But I did, and became a committed Mac user. I returned to home office, and insisted on having one. It was the early days of Windows, though most people were on DOS. I said to IT that I wanted to be able to cut and paste between applications. They scratched their heads and said that probably they could arrange that in Windows…and then gave up. I used the Mac they agreed to buy for me, and I was happy and productive. During those years, there was never a problem on a Mac that I couldn’t fix myself, and I could claim to know the function of pretty much every file on the system. It was a real end user manageable and controllable platform. And of course, it had Hypercard. Hypercard was an enormous liberation. With Hypercard, anyone with intelligence and persistence could learn to program, and produce things they and their friends could use, as they learned. The years went by, and while Macs never had huge market share, they had enough to remain a viable choice. Office became the standard, and the Mac and the PC versions were interchangeable. Windows arrived at 3.1; MacOS was still far more stable, and far easier to use. Mac users were enthusiastic, but not fanatical, and the two main issues between them and IT were price, and closed source. IT wanted to be able to buy hardware from where they liked, and they wanted to have a lot of suppliers of parts. In a single source, closed environment, where everything was proprietary from the keyboard and mouse connectors on up, they felt deprived of any bargaining power. It was take or leave it, and they couldn’t tolerate having the company infrastructure dependent to such an extent on one supplier. Like most Apple users at the time, I did not really understand the objection. I really didn’t care where my machines came from, or how much they cost. What interested me was how usable they were. But keep this thought in mind, because I found that you have to care. Macs had always been more expensive, and the gap widened with time. By the time I bought an LC and then a Centris for my partner’s small office, and a Centris for a writer friend, Macs probably cost twice as much for comparable speed and disk capacity. But as long as Windows was 3.1, the usability advantage more than outweighed the speed and price problems. And as long as it was 3.1, Apple had enough market share to ensure availability of applications. In addition, in those days, there was something to the quality hardware argument. Apple machines had scsi drives and nubus cards. It really was higher quality stuff. The built in networking worked flawlessly, was fast enough, and was super easy to set up. However, when we arrived at Win95 amd then Win98; it was clear that the world had started to change. Apple hardware was now steadily moving to standard PC hardware – pci cards, ide drives. The hardware quality argument had vanished. We had the disastrous Performas, the 4400. Mac market share fell year on year, and the supply of software was drying up. My business planning tools were no longer being updated or were becoming unavailable in Mac versions. In addition, with OS 8 and 9, stablity fell behind. Win98 was a great advance in stability over 3.1, but OS8 and 9 were a step back compared to 7.6.1. What about ease of use? By now I had acquired a Windows laptop with Win 95, and also had a Mac laptop. The Windows laptop was smaller, lighter, faster, and had much longer battery life. I still have it and still use it, in fact. The Mac laptop fell by the wayside years ago. So much for long lives. The ease of use gap appeared to be narrowing. Win 95 looked a lot better than 3.1, felt a lot better, was a lot easier to navigate and manage. With Win 98, I felt we were at parity. Different, but parity. I bought one of the new pastel iMacs, but with some irritation. You noticed that the disk was smaller and the memory less than would have come with a PC. The one button mouse was a constant irritant, as was the lack of the right click facilities. It occurred to me that there would be no upgrade path for this one. It would be throw out the whole thing and buy another one. You couldn’t reuse the screen. I began to wonder whether the reason that Mac people kept their machines for so long had less to do with durability, than cost. But it was familiar. By now, I was using Windows 2000 at work, and this seemed to be better than parity. You had a genuine multi-user capability. It was fast, it almost never crashed. It looked perfectly acceptable. Increasingly, OS 8 and 9 were starting to look dated and hobbyist. It was around 2001 or 2002. I bought a beige tower. I paid well under half what a new tower Mac of equivalent performance would have cost. My friends muttered darkly about component quality. I checked. It came with components that were, if anything, higher end than those that Apple was using. I told them. They looked dubious, but couldn’t refute it. My new machine shipped with XP. It was very fast, it had lots of memory, the disk was absolutely huge, there was lots of software, and I found the user interface different but perfectly acceptable. It was much more complicated than the old Classic, the wizards got on my nerves, but at some level it just worked. The sense it gave me was that the hardware and the software were what Apple people call integrated. There was a well known set routine for installing new hardware, plug in and insert driver disk, after which, it just worked. It was the same with all hardware. Well, with the exception of wireless LAN, which gave me as much trouble on Windows as on Mac. I carried on reading about Apple and Macs. And I carried on using my iMac. When you have been a committed user and advocate of a platform for so long, your interest doesn’t just vanish overnight. Market share had continued to decline, prices had continued to be high. Jobs had returned, however, and the company stabilized. I became increasingly aware, as the Jobs resurgence got under way, of a curious and disturbing phenomenon. It was hard to say exactly what was happening to Apple, but whatever it was, it made one deeply uneasy. Perhaps the first sign was the appearance of the LCD iMac. Why, one wondered, do we have a round base? How much did that cost? What real use is it? The Cube was another worry. A friend of mine, who had been a senior manager in Apple Europe, bought one. Then he found to his surprise and dismay that he couldn’t use his screen with it, and had to buy a completely new screen. The connectors were not standard. Why? You had to wonder, was the inability to source hardware from anywhere but Apple great for the buyer and for Apple, or just great for Apple? Was it even all that good for Apple? My wife bought me a new Apple keyboard and optical (one button) mouse as a present. The price was at least 4 or 5 times what comparable PC components would have cost, and for what? The new towers came out in pretty shades of pastel and perspex and sounded like jet engines taking off. We kept hearing about the superiority of the PPC; the advertising claims, which seemed incredible, became more strident, and finally were ruled to be false by the UK authorities. My friend’s Cube looked elegant and different, but was underpowered and pretty soon was overheated. It seemed that we had a combination of two things which may appear to have little to do with each other: a reliance on lifestyle marketing, and consequently lifestyle product design, and a continuing committment to locking the hardware and software together, and locking the customer into Apple hardware. The result was higher prices for less performance, but heavier marketing, and marketing of a different sort. When you joined Internet forums on which Apple was discussed, you became aware of an even more disturbing but related phenomenon. I only later realised what it was. The symptom was an increasing rudeness and intolerance and hostility towards any other platforms. And it was couched in lifestyle terms. Windows machines were ridiculed for being boring beige boxes. Windows users were the subject of snobbish jibes. Contemptuous references to Walmart appeared. Macs kept being compared to high end designer brands, in particular to cars. If you chose differently, it was because you had no taste, no class. BMWs appeared to have a particular fascination for the Mac aficionado. You didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The chorus of people who seemed to think that Macs were high class, and that buying them was a route to social mobility, was astounding. Could there really be so many people who were so naive about how social class really works in America? And could so many of them be Mac users? I shivered a bit at the thought. You could understand why Hypercard had withered, if this was now Apple’s target market. Finally at the end of the period, one would see flat out lies, and a chorus of abuse when they were refuted. Posters would assert that Macs were cheaper, peformed better, had better components, when it was clear that they were more expensive, performed worse on most benchmarks, and mostly had the identical components. In some ways, they had worse ones. Lifestyle marketing had entered the design process and corrupted it. We now had cases made of dysfunctional material, with interiors arranged for aesthetic appeal rather than cooling efficiency or noise reduction. We had wild and silly claims about productivity. We had a constant rewriting of history. For example, it was now admitted that OSX 10.0, which at the time had been greated with applause for its enormous superiority, had been a total dog. This was because the newest greatest thing was 10.2 or 10.3. Similarly, PPC had been the latest and greatest, but after the switch to Intel, it was admitted to have also barked and walked on all fours on occasion. We were told that Linux required you to edit endless configuration files by hand, that XP crashed all the time and was riddled with hardware problems from driver incompatibility. It defied all one’s experience. It was simply false. But whenever one objected, a chorus of personal abuse followed. At the end of this period the Intel macs were released. The fact is, they run Photoshop in emulation mode, and very slowly. Point this out, and you will be told how unfair you are being. Unfair to who or what? It’s just a fact. If you want to run the package, it is all that matters. But on the forums, to allude to inconvenient facts has become an act. You are defining yourself publicly as an enemy of the people if you do it, on however small a scale. You could see something very odd happening if you joined the macfixit or macintouch forums, and compared what was said there to what is said outside. The public face is one of hysterical praise. In the public world, the hardware and software are perfect and work perfectly together, and Apple service is second to none and the choice the company gives is all the choice anyone ever needs. In the internal world among friends, the hardware is hot, noisy, poor quality, there are main board problems, memory problems, the software doesn’t work properly with it, peformance is a real issue, Apple is unresponsive and dismissive and has very patchy customer service. The intellectual contortions people forced themselves through on these issues were and are extraordinary. Take for instance the assertion, apparently seriously made, that a MacIntel machine and its OS are one thing, whereas a Dell and its OS are two things. Therefore it would be as irrational for Apple to allow its OS to run on other hardware as it would be for Honda to agree to sell its cars as a collection of parts. What is the proof of this identity? The fact that Apple does not sell the OS separately from the hardware! Or we had what may be called the Mont Blanc argument. It goes, in parody form, Mont Blancs are actually cheaper than PaperMates. It is just that Mont Blanc does not give you the chance to buy less product and spend less money. What extra does Mont Blanc force you to buy? Well, all that packaging and the fine presentation case. But that doesn’t make them more expensive, it just makes them sell for more! Or the even more bizarre argument that Apple has higher average margins than Dell not because it has higher markups, but because its average purchase value is higher! Apple’s market share was always on the rise, but never actually increased much. It was always going to dethrone Microsoft, maybe next year. It was said to have 15-20% of the installed base, though it only had had 3% of shipments for years. (Don’t ask if this is even possible). This obviously showed shipments were not a reasonable measure of market share and meant nothing. It must be some kind of anti-Apple conspiracy to continue recording them. I had experienced this sort of thing before. It reminded me of the constant intellectual contortions and the bewildering and disillusioning shifts of the Party Line on the Far Left during the fifties and sixties, where there was a similar gap in portrayals of the East Bloc. In private, the OstBloc had problems. In public, the GDR’s athletic success was a clear sign of the superiority of its system. It was not a comfortable comparison. Truth, you felt, has less to do with all this than devotion. But to what? I found the idea of devotion to a company, come what may, very difficult to relate to. I looked at the industry outside Apple, and was struck by the way that hardware competition had reduced prices and increased availability. The rise of Linux and free software was gathering pace. The Gutenberg project was making progress. As the Apple defenders became increasingly shrill in defence of their chosen company and its chosen model, it seemed to me that the quite different one which was coming to dominate the industry was delivering a revolution in the affordability and availability of computing power, and access to information. Apple was a parasite on this revolution. It used standard cost-reduced components. But it took the savings as margin or marketing expense or to pay for expensive custom packaging, and did not pass them on to its customers. Meanwhile, the open model was quietly eliminating what in the UK had been anxiously referred to as the Digital Divide. In search of a transportable, quiet machine for my wife, I bought a Shuttle and assembled it from barebones. In the afternoon that it took, I thought hard about hardware quality. The thing was perfectly made and thought out, jewelry was the comparison that came to mind. The heat pipe cooling all fitted together neatly, and when booted up, was almost silent. It was surprisingly cheap, and very easy to work on. This, I thought, is what the first iMac could have been, if they had not been so hung up on having that circular base. What to put on it though? I had XP, but I had liked Windows 2000 and we had a copy from an old machine. I installed it. It worked fast and predictably. But we were getting worried about security problems, and I had been experimenting with Linux for some time. After a little while on Windows, I took us first to Suse and then to Mandriva, running Gnome in both cases as the desktop. It was a revelation. The quantity of software, the configurability of the system, the helpfulness of user groups, the amount of information available, the cheapness and performance of the hardware. Open hardware, it turned out, and an open OS that one could run on the hardware of one’s choice, was the great contribution of our industry to personal freedom. It had reduced prices and improved quality in an amazing way. It had made computing power open and affordable. It had given control back to the user. I said to my friends, if I was going to be running a gui over Unix, why not just go to Linux and skip all the proprietary irritations? OSX and XP in their later releases seemed increasingly designed to appeal to viewers of desktops in shops, and calculated to infuriate anyone who had worked at it long enough to want configurability and shortcuts. Gnome in contrast, for the ordinary user, ‘just worked’ and stayed out of the way. My writer friend moved to Linux too, when his Mac expired. He spent a quarter of what a new Mac would have cost him, partly because he reused his old screen until big flat LCDs came down in price. Unaccountably, he preferred KDE! I carried on reading on the net. The disturbing trends increased with the emergence of the iPod as the saviour of the company. The locking of hardware to software to purchases recreated the worst anti-choice aspects of the original Mac platforms. The advertising campaigns seemed to be encouraging the attitudes of what I was beginning to hear described as the MacZealot or MacFanatic faction. There were increasing expressions of contempt for alternatives, and worse, for people who made alternative choices. And finally, we had the OSViews saga on OS News, when it seemed that from day to day the number of hysterical pro-Apple postings soared, huge numbers of phantom memberships appeared, and all postings with any dissent were abusively moderated down. Finally it was traced and stopped. It was with this episode that I finally realised that the phenomenon is not simply harmless eccentricity. How could devotion to a company have driven one person, or group of people, so crazy that they thought this a reasonable way to behave, and one that would do Apple any service? It is exactly not like devotion to the Amiga or BeOS, which strikes me as a harmless, goodnatured enthusiasm we should all feel good about. It is a positive hatred of any sort of ‘thinking different’. If you listen to the views expressed, they are in fact totalitarian and authoritarian. You will hear that choice is bad, it just confuses people. That it is good for you to have a limited and monopolised range of hardware that will run your OS. That all people want is one thing that works, not to be driven crazy by multiple alternatives that don’t. You’ll hear that DRM is fine for Apple to use, though bad for anyone else to use. Because it will help Apple succeed. You’ll hear that for Apple to tie its software to its hardware to its content to its music purchasing service is perfectly acceptable in the cause of giving the user a seamless experience. It is in fact better for the user if Apple has a monopoly. They will only ever use their monopoly power to your benefit. You will hear constant tirades of abuse of Microsoft, Linux, Dell, and their users, and for the whole open hardware business model that has created a PC industry that has done so much for intellectual freedom and the affordability of computing in the last 10 years. The Apple fanatic, in addition to being obsessed by BMW cars, hates the open business model which has reduced Apple to a niche supplier, at the same time as it has benefited the world and society, and that is why the open hardware model and its exponents come in for particularly vociferous abuse. You will hear applause for the Apple legal department which sues everyone in sight at a moment’s notice for alleged infringements of copyright or trade secrets, and seeks to bully journalists, and claims to be able to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate members of the legitimate or illegitimate press. And sues even when the alleged infringements consist of linking to a site displaying the company’s own service manuals! If the thinking of the Mac fanatics were applied to the political process in the Western Democracies, we would have one party rule with a Dear Leader who would be in place for life, and the only books allowed would be those not on the Index. They would be the only ones you could read with the special viewers the State publishing company supplied, or buy with the local State currency. Surely however, all this is just the supporters club? Surely this has nothing to do with the company or its products? Alas, no. I am saying that there is a close connection between Apple and the wilder shores of OSViews. Apple is like an extreme right wing political party, that denies racism, while condoning the expression of extreme racist attitudes in its supporters as understandable. The extremism of Apple’s supporters is only its own marketing line taken to absurd and offensive lengths. Apple more or less gently mocks the buyers of other products. Its supporters abuse them as low class redneck idiots and talk about ‘Windoze’ and ‘Micro$oft. Apple says nothing. I am also saying that the alienating tone of the Apple marketing materials and their use by the fanatics is a deliberate choice on the part of the company. Apple knows it is alienating people who are not members of the cult, and accepts, perhaps even welcomes it. Their aim is to foster a sense of being a persecuted superior minority among their users. They are happy for the faithful to proselytize in a manner calculated to offend, because the point of the proselytizing is not to gain converts, but to retain those you already have, by making them suffer abuse for their beliefs. Cognitive Dissonance will do the rest. While it may seem to many rather unreasonable to base one’s choice of computers on the antics of other buyers, this is why refusing to buy anything made by Apple has come to seem to me almost a moral issue. It is not just that the products have come to put lifestyle marketing ahead of performance. It is not just that they are overpriced. It is that Apple as a company behaves in ways that are morally questionable. It encourages its most frenzied adherents in offensive utterances and behaviour, and in the expression of abusive snobbery. Like all totalitarians, it believes it needs to control us and limit our choice for our own good. If the Apple model were to come to predominate in our industry, it would be an end of consumer choice, and shortly after that, would bring sharp limits on intellectual freedom. Its marketing stance, and the attitudes it seeks to foster in both adherents and opponents, are actually an abuse of its adherents. The fanatics are mad. But who has encouraged and exploited them in their madness? From being a company that introduced products which freed many of us from the restrictions on usability that the early command line imposed, it has come to be a company which is in spirit and practice opposed to almost all of the freedoms that have since come to define our industry and our society. And so, I probably will never buy another Mac again.
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I agree on the fact that Apple products may be overpriced and that the attitude of the company may be quite annoying (modeled on its chief, I’d say); and I subscribe 100% on the fact that OSX is just simply dumbed down because “choice scares”.
But I honestly think that the hardware they sell is of a very high quality and I don’t regret buying my iBook. And running linux on it
/ I don’t regret buying my iBook. And running linux on it
//
er … you bought an iBook to run linux? Glad you don’t handle my finances.
If it’s not the broadcom wireless it’s not a bad investment.
It’s one of the more affordable laptops which you don’t wonder if it’ll suddenly crap out on you; or it was 6 months ago, but laptops have come down a lot this last year.
Yup, when I bought my iBook a bit over a year ago I wasn’t looking for an Apple. All I wanted a small (12″ screen) laptop with good battery life, wifi and reasonable performance. The iBook was much cheaper than any x86 laptop fulfilling those criteria. I’ve stuck with OSX mainly because it hasn’t yet annoyed me enough to make me want to change.
The broadcom wireless (you mean the Airport Extreme, right?) is supported on linux now. Development on the driver is still going on, but I’m using that driver already for a couple of months now, so it is definitely working for me.
Apart from the running linux thing (even being a linux user myself linux as primary OS on a PPC isn’t the best choice for me)
You think that the iBook it’s expensive? I often hear that mac are overpriced, but find me a noetbook like the ibook 12″ at the same price!!
Some machine are expensive (like the powerbook 12″) but other not, and are simply better that sameprice machines
I know… My iBook’s only problem in the 2+ years I have owned it is a misaligned combo drive due to me dropping it on the floor from my couch. My battery has lost its life, but that happens when you use a machine every single day for hours at a time.
My P laptop was in the shop 5 times for a week at a time. I think it speaks for itself.
I found running linux on a PPC to be complete hell. Just getting a JRE to install took me far longer than it should have. I’ll keep running ubuntu on my Dell Inspiron than put up with that any day (although I wouldn’t mind using a Mactel).
I use Fedora Core PPC and Gentoo PPC on 2 ibook G3.
It works OK but compilation for Gentoo PPC and yum/yumex on FedoraCore PPC take a lot of time.
Apple did sell expensive hardware at high prices with a slow slow CPu …
I used Linux on these systems because MacOs X was so damned slow …
I miss on these systems things such as Flash (swf) support in browsers – Blame it on Macromedia – and
Vmware …
Clearly I will buy a DualCore (Asus or Acer) to be more productive (and will consider Asus or Acer)
with PCLOS + Debian …
SL/
This entire editorial serves to justify a punch line, rather than the editorial arriving at any meaningful conclusion.
What article did you read? Or are you just trying to prove his point?
And does anyone find it odd that this is the only comment that this guy posted? As well as him opening a new account today just to post it?
So what, I had to sign up the first time I wanted to comment about an article I thought was bunk. A lot of people just read the news and don’t bother commenting because of all the pointless trolling.
I agree.
And no I am not a Mac groupie! I have not owned or used a Mac since the early nineties.
After crowning on and on for 5 pages, the author on the last page paragraphs says he has a moral, yes moral, obligation not to buy any another Mac due to the culture of some Mac users. (And his belief that Apple fosters this culture.)
Bottom line, you buy any computer and OS to accomplish tasks. If it does what you want and at a price you can accept, you buy it and use it. Nothing else really matters.
I get sick of people whining about the price difference. People don’t complain with the same fevour when car made by GM is more expensive than a very similar car made by Chysler. Or that Sony DVD player is more expensive than a DVD player made by Apex, even though they share common components. Or how about tires where noname tires which are made by the brand name companies just relabeled are sold at difference price. Seems the same elist culture you question about Mac users exists in computer users in general.
I think in the progress of moving to a disposable electronic industry, the quest for cheap has actually hurt us in many ways. (A topic itself)
These opinion articles are no different than the cutlture of Mac users you question. Instead of talking about how the Mac worked for you, you and others are too worried about the guy down the street and what he has. OMG, he paid 20% less and his CPU runs 20% faster. Whoa is me. My spreadsheet calulates a microsecond slower!!
I would hate to live my life aways looking beside me to compare things to others. Does it do what you want/need and can you accept the price? If yes buy it and be happy, if not, don’t buy it. To try to influence people on any other factors is just stupid.
It’s a rant or, more nicely, an opinion, but it’s not an editorial really.
If a person buys and uses something or does the opposite because of someone else’s idealism, there is something missing.
I’m not a fanboy of any certain product but I use a lot of different items and have brand loyalty. Still, the world changes–change with it.
…but for reasons totally different from yours. I’m not a longtime Apple or Mac user (though I’ve had run-ins with the platform(s) since the mid-1980s and have owned a Mac in the past). I’ve been predominantly a *nix user for about six years, before which I largely used PC- and MS-DOS (never really bothered to switch to Win9x).
I’ve come to the conclusion that dealing with alternative operating systems just isn’t worth the hassle. The choice of an OS shouldn’t be comparable to religion. Nor should distaste for a particular business practice lead one to using an inferior solution out of spite.
So I recently switched to Windows 2000 (XP doesn’t run on my ages-old hardware). I’ll be buying a new machine to run Vista next year.
How can you run on a Windows PC? if you are a real Nix user windows i in your way at every step and has a file system that is overly bloated with layers which cause one to scream.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Could you elaborate?
I predict you will buy another mac within 2 years.
You don’t have to buy another Mac. That is entirely your choice. Just don’t assume you have any right to tell me that I shouldn’t buy one.
Just don’t assume you have any right to tell me that I shouldn’t buy one.
Where does the author say you shouldn’t buy one? He only explains why HE will not buy one. He doesn’t try to impose his not-Mac-buying on you.
Edited 2006-05-10 20:22
Where does the author say you shouldn’t buy one? He only explains why HE will not buy one. He doesn’t try to impose his not-Mac-buying on you.
The author never quite says it, no. And I didn’t claim such things were said. However, he clearly almost says it at the end when he starts proclaiming that his desire to not buy any Apple products is “almost a moral issue.” As soon as it becomes a moral issue for someone it gets twisted into the mighty concepts of “right” and “wrong” and soon after that we have people trying to tell other people what to do and think for “their own good.”
Unless, of course, he’s reasonable enough to know that different people will have different views of right and wrong. Simply because he deems apple wrong does not immediately mean he’s going to attack you for supporting them….
Maybe the chances are higher, but this does not mean it’s definitely going to happen. Simply because we live in such a polarized society does not mean we must continue the mac-win-linux/democrat-republican left-right polarizations that do nobody any good…
If you do not feel that this guy is trying to tell all others not to buy a mac ,
explain to me why he is publishing it ……
If i do not want to buy the Honda …….I will not try to tell everyone else not to buy a Honda
I am astonish …..is it a correct english word ????
Aramis
Because this is a web forum and people use web forums to present their opinions to those with similar hobbies?
If you do not feel that this guy is trying to tell all others not to buy a mac ,
explain to me why he is publishing it ……
If i do not want to buy the Honda …….I will not try to tell everyone else not to buy a Honda
In the free and normal world people publish articles about why they won’t buy Hondas, Toyotas, or especially Renaults, Citroens and Alfa Romeos all the time. Do not presume to ask “explain to me why he is publishing it” in that Animal Farm manner, just because it’s Apple he’s talking about.
Again, another comment that proves the author’s point in so many ways sadly.
It’s a five page editorial on why he won’t buy another Mac, or rather five pages of self-righteous digital dogma implicating to its readers that they should follow along.
The bottom line is: Apple has no right to tell people to shut up unless it infringes on Apple’s ability to conduct profitable business. So far, that’s all they’ve done, and wouldn’t expect them to go any further.
Apple has no right to tell people to shut up unless it infringes on Apple’s ability to conduct profitable business.
I didn’t realize the First Ammendment had an “…unless that speech interferes with a corporation’s right to profit” clause.
Revealing trade secrets and redistributing copyrighted material is not protected by the First Amendment. FOIA, 5 U.S.C. Section 552(b) states that “Private commercial or trade secret information” is exempt from government disclosure. If the U.S. government can’t legally disclose it, what makes you think somebody with a web page can?
See other post.
Edited 2006-05-11 03:04
“And so, I probably will never buy another Mac again.”
Well, I probably will.
How the hell an empty comment like that is modded to +5? Too much Mac wanking…
I have a hard time believing a 5 page rant about apple fanboys got onto osnews, but since it was, I am inclined to voice my opinion of the piece.
I found that there were significant portions of the document that sounded earily like orgainzed troll comments. Little bits thrown in under-breath like his friends cube that was underpowered and “was overheated” sound more like someone venting than making a point. It seemed like a lot of these points were also inaccurate.
He also seems rather hung up on his imac being non-upgradable, but has no problem buying multiple laptops. Odd. And of course, the easy question is why didn’t this occur to him before he wrote the check.
But alas, his real issue is with the actions of the fanatacs. And this is the major flaw of this article appearing on osnews. It has NOTHING TO DO WITH OS’s. This is an elaborate blog post that no one would read if it made it on a personal blog. It has zero technical merit and hangs to a person’s views of a company’s marketing tactics and its internet fanboys.
The author writes “While it may seem to many rather unreasonable to base one’s choice of computers on the antics of other buyers..”.
To retort: Yes it is unreasonable. Moronic actually. As was the fact that you dedicated 5 pages to trying to justify a moronic point. Grade F.
wow! I’m glad I didn’t write that piece! Ouch. :-p
“Little bits thrown in under-breath like his friends cube that was underpowered and “was overheated” ”
Do you KNOW the history of the Cube?
It had cache problems from the outset and it DID overheat. I had 12 of them in my office and we had to return them all. So, perhaps he DOES know what he’s talking about?
I have a hard time believing a 5 page rant about apple fanboys got onto osnews,
In that case, you must have only read the final 2 pages of the 5 the article offers. There’s a lot more to it than fanboys.
Little bits thrown in under-breath like his friends cube that was underpowered and “was overheated” sound more like someone venting than making a point.
This is true. I know of many universities and colleges who have had umpteen problems with these things – and Apple’s support is less than perfect. These places have a 15% to 20% failure rate of Macs, and Apple’s support is worse than Dell’s. Explain that one.
To retort: Yes it is unreasonable. Moronic actually. As was the fact that you dedicated 5 pages to trying to justify a moronic point. Grade F.
Grade G to you. You’ve seen at least some elemants of truth in what’s been written and written a moronic comment in reply, rather than respond to the main points.
In fact, you’ve unwittingly proved his point. Something concrete that is actually happening in the real world has been pointed out, and a Mac fan comes in, defends Apple to the hilt, denies that your problem is a real problem and labels you as a troll. Grade A on that one ;-).
I have a hard time believing a 5 page rant about apple fanboys got onto osnews
You must not frequent OSNews.
Waste of my time. I was with him for well over half the article. But it fell completely flat as the author’s arguments degraded to pot-shots at now irrelevant downfalls to Mac ownership and “morals.”
Yeah – I was following the author just about through the first half of the piece and it is good in that part. Then it turns into a rant that is no better than anything you can see on Mac, Linux or other battlefield forums. Good start, but the finish is very weak and unconvincing – proud owner of Dell, Acer, PowerBook G4 and MacBook Pro.
Good thing is that we all have choices and can pick a platform that suits us best.
…you don’t want another Mac because you want “OS choice”, “hardware choice”, and you don’t like some of the smug attitudes of posters in Mac forums.
To that I say:
1. Have you ever actually been in a Windows forum or a Linux forum? I see the same religious arrogance no matter what the OS. Boys will be boys.
2. Perhaps you haven’t heard that Apple no longer uses proprietary display connectors, proprietary keyboard or mouse connectors, proprietary ram, proprietary motherboards, or proprietary anything. You really need to modernize your attitude about Apple’s hardware components and the interfaces its systems use. There’s nothing your beige tower can run that your Intel Mac can’t. Macs are now every bit as “IBM-compatible” as a bargain basement eMachine.
3. You have more “OS choice” on a Mac than you do on any Shuttle you built yourself, since it can run Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
Additionally, in response to your whining about price: Cost comparisons have been done to death that show Mac systems are on fiscal par with Dell, Gateway, Sony systems, etc., when you match them feature for feature. Yes, you can get a bargain basement machine at Wal-mart for $300, but it doesn’t come with all of the features of the $599 Mac mini. And all the Mac systems have one feature you can’t get on any other PC: The ability to run OS X as well as Apple’s amazing pro and consumer software packages.
Also, you may want to check out iLife (iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, iWeb, iPhoto, etc.) which ships free with every Mac. It’s really a lot of fun, very useful, comes free with a Mac. There’s nothing comparable on Linux or Windows. You didn’t mention it, so it sounds to me like you may still be stuck in the “computers are for word processing and spreadsheets” mentality that Apple is trying to get people away from.
So basically, use whatever you want. I don’t really care what your next computer is going to be any more than you care what mine is going to be. But if you’re going to make arguments to back up your decision, please make sure those arguments are not completely outdated. I really couldn’t find any substance in your article.
What a lot of people seem to not realize (and from your post you are such a person), not everyone _wants_ or _needs_ iLife and the other software included. And *gasp* not everyone wants to run OS X. So if you take those two “strong points” out of the price equation, you see that a similar spec custom built or off the shelf machine is better value.
There is just no point in paying for something that you neither need or want, and it is kind of getting old arguing that iLife is such great value when most people have trouble using Word.
As to your “nothing comparable” on Linux or Windows, this again goes back to personal preference. If I want a simple image viewer on Linux, I can grab one of the many available. Such a “non-standard” program on Mac would likely cost money or have some sort of shareware license. So just because you consider iPhoto the end all of apps doesn’t mean everyone else does.
Freedom of choice (and price) on Mac is not good at all, and I personally find that a huge huge limiting factor.
You are right , if you do not need a Mac , do not buy it ….. I totally agree but , please do not say I do not need one …..
Aramis
Freedom of choice (and price) on Mac is not good at all, and I personally find that a huge huge limiting factor.
Since a Mac can run all OS X software, has an X11 compatibility layer for UNIX/Linux apps to run right inside OS X, can dual boot into Linux or Windows, and can run Windows in virtualization inside OSX, you really can run any piece of Windows, Linux or Mac software on an Intel Mac. So what do you mean about freedom of choice not being good on a Mac? Get a Mac, you can run whatever you want on it.
As for the cost, yes a $599 Mac mini might be more expensive than a bargain-basement eMachine or something you built yourself, but it’s also much smaller than a an eMachine or any shuttle you would build yourself, dead silent, and has great included features like built in wifi/bluetooth/gig ethernet/firewire, etc…so it really is a good value as I see it. For people who want to build their own systems, a Mac will never be for you. Nor will you like a Dell or a Sony or a Lenovo, for that matter. But luckily for Apple & friends, very few people are into building their own systems these days.
I do, however, agree with the previous poster that you can’t enjoy a mini on 512MB RAM. Unless you’re doing only the most basic stuff, you’ll want at least a gig. Personally, I max out the RAM on any system I use, even a PC running Windows. (Mac mini maxes out at 2GB RAM)
Good point. If you don’t want OS X and iLife good – buy what you want.
I believe the author of the original comment forgot to mention something what seems natural for all Mac users and that is that the iLife applications are INTEGRATED. No other package on Windows or Linux offers this level of integration and I really looked. There is a lot of great point solution software for both Windows or Linux, but no suite that seamlesly integrates picture, video and music. Again if you don’t need this you have a choice to go elsewhere and buy what you want.
As anything in life it comes to personal preference. You can chose Lenovo, Dell, Apple or any other machine to run whatever you want. Only if you want OS X and other OS’s on the same machine you can get it only on Intel Mac.
3. You have more “OS choice” on a Mac than you do on any Shuttle you built yourself, since it can run Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the number of Linux distributions that runs on PowerMac is less than 5. You also have NetBSD. I further believe that the number of Linux distributions which do /not/ run on an x86/AMD64 box is at best equal to the number of non-x86 platforms out there. Out of more than 300 distros, that leaves about 300 which run on X86.
So, on a PC, you can run upwards of 300 Linux distros, plus all the BSDs, various flavours of DOS, Win9x, 2K, 2K3, XP, and MacOS (via PearPC), Minix, SyllableOS, BeOS, Haiku, Solaris, OS2/eCosStation, and via emulators ITS, AROS, AmigaOS, Mac OS Classic…
When I was at school, 5 was about 295 short of 300. And I was never even any good at maths.
I believe he was referring to the new Intel Macs.
The BSDs sometimes have compatibility issues with some Intel hardware (i.e. much more than Linux).
Heaven help you if your only choice to run both OSX and *BSD doesn’t boot on Apple’s chosen “Commercial Off the Shelf” x86 hardware.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe the number of Linux distributions that runs on PowerMac is less than 5.
I guess you haven’t heard about the whole Intel switch thing that’s going on, huh? Can’t blame you…the press has been really quiet about it.
Also, you may want to check out iLife (iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, iWeb, iPhoto, etc.) which ships free with every Mac. It’s really a lot of fun, very useful, comes free with a Mac. There’s nothing comparable on Linux or Windows.
You mean,”nothing comparable on Windows”. Many Linux distributions ship with much, much, much, MUCH more free, high quality open source software you can even imagine.
“You mean,”nothing comparable on Windows”. Many Linux distributions ship with much, much, much, MUCH more free, high quality open source software you can even imagine.”
Sorry, I have to respond to this one. I use Windows, OS X and A number of Linux distributions. I have to say that Joe average Windows user would not be able to use all that high quality open source software you speak of. Free is not a good price if it sits there unused because the user can’t figure out how to make it work.
With Windows they can purchase software that they can figure out. With a Mac the software comes with the system. 200 applications to do the same job are of no use if you can’t make one of them do exactly what you want to do.
Free is not a good price if it sits there unused because the user can’t figure out how to make it work.
Neither is expensive. I don’t have XP anymore because Linux does all I need, and therefore having XP on the laptop as well would waste space. I can barely compile a kernel, and use KDE. I put SuSE on the laptop because it installs faster and easier than Gentoo, which I have on my desktop/server. [So does Linus Torvalds, btw. Not {flux,black,open}box. Not WindowMaker. Not wmii.]
If my non-tech-savvy friends and family couldn’t figure out amaroK I’d think they’d been bodysnatched.
Personally I can’t wait until the KDE libs get a stable release on XP, so they can ditch Media Player for amaroK. They already use Firefox. I was surprised to learn yesterday they’ve already all ditched IncrediMail (which used yet another proprietary format for mail, nothankyouverymuch) for Thunderbird.
Oh, and about the name: On my SuSE box, amaroK is listed as Media Player (amaroK) in the KDE menu. If I set it up for my family I could get it to say just Media Player. To run amaroK at the commandline you type amarok. To run Windows Media Player at the commandline you type C:someoddpathwmplayer If they knew you don’t have to type the extension, they’d wonder why Windows treats “files” and “programs” inconsistently.
Yeah, Linux is hard, alright.
Argh. Couldn’t edit.
The “So does Linus” comment referred to KDE.
” I was surprised to learn yesterday they’ve already all ditched IncrediMail (which used yet another proprietary format for mail, nothankyouverymuch) for Thunderbird. ”
First, let me say thanks for keeping the discussion civil. And I can’t tell you how much I despise Incredimail. 🙂
Second, the programs you mention are not the problem. I agree anyone can use them on Linux as easily as the Windows equivalents. Unfortunately most people I know want to view, edit and print their photos and the last time I looked GIMP was not the easiest program to use. Also, burning is not nearly as transparent in Linux so that poses a problem as well. And when it comes to editing video/audio neither comes close to the ease with which it is handled under OS X.
I know a lot of people who would probably use and like Linux, but I would have to set it up for them and also maintain it. Admittedly, there would be fewer problems than most have under Windows. Don’t get me wrong, I do like Linux but when I want to do video/audio tasks I use OS X. I just wish there was a native Mac port of Evolution.
Your idea of the “average user” must be different from mine. I’m not thinking of people who edit photos. Having said that, k3b and GIMP work fine for me, though I understand a lot of people used to Photoshop hate the latter. As I have never used PS, I can’t comment.
Of course, if you’re used to using cdrecord to burn cd’s in Linux, i can understand why you might hate it.
A windows port of Evolution would be nice, too. I don’t particularly like Thunderbird.
// free, *high quality* open source software//
HAHAHAHAHAHA … whew!
Good one. The “high quality” part of that sentence had me laughing out loud. Thanks for the joke of the day!
I’ve used linux. I haven’t found anything that compares to iMovie, iDVD or Garageband.
Then you haven’t used it for more than five minutes, I presume?
I’ve never used iMovie, iDVD, or Garageband. Neither have 95% of the computer-using population of the world.
What a load of rubbish. All of that Open Source software that runs on Linux (using the POSIX API) runs just as nicely on MacOSX Tiger. I spend a large amount of time hacking open source on my Mac, sometimes for me it’s just a very pretty Unix box.
But other times, I want to create a movie, where I can import music from my music collection, or from one of my own creations in a music authoring package, or import photos seemlessly from my photo collection. When done, and I want to publish that film on the Web, or on DVD, to share it with friends and family, I don’t waste my time trying to configure all of my open source packages to play nice together, or even just to play together period, I just go straight for MacOSX.
If you want all of the flexibility and power of Linux, and yet want to retain the ease of use of a true GUI interface, there is only one game in town – Mac.
MY beige tower can run eComStation, OS/2, BeOS, Haiku and ZETA. The Intel Macs can’t. Probably won’t in the future either. Also applies to every bit of software those platforms can run.
Sweeping generalised statements are what causes articles like this and comments like yours. The world isn’t just Win / Lin / OSX. I think that is one of the points in the articre, choice of OS, which is hey, software!
Also, you may want to check out iLife (iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand, iWeb, iPhoto, etc.) which ships free with every Mac. It’s really a lot of fun, very useful, comes free with a Mac. There’s nothing comparable on Linux or Windows.
Pricewise, no, there certainly is nothing comparable in Windows. In Linux, it’s all free so pricewise they are the same.
As for the software itself, on Windows I’ve used Cool Edit Pro and find it more powerful but much more difficult to use than GarageBand. It’s actually more comparable to Logic on the Mac. Fruity Loops Studio is closer to the loop-based simplicity of GarageBand while still being much more versatile, and more affordable than Cool Edit Pro. In Linux there is Audacity, which is simply a wave editor, albeit a very powerful one. To my knowledge there is no loop-based audio software comparable to GarageBand available for Linux. If there is, I would be extremely interested in trying it out.
There’s better software for web publishing on the Mac than iWeb. It’s called RapidWeaver, but alas it also is not free. iWeb is a close second to RapidWeaver in useability and functionality, and being free it is of course the only option for many people. In Windows, you have Nvu (free), Serif WebPlus (older versions are freeware), and I’m sure a whole host of other free-to-cheap web publishing suites. However, none of them seem to have the simplicity and ease-of-use that RapidWeaver and iWeb have. Linux has Nvu as well, and other similar apps like Bluefish, Screem, Quanta Plus which are all very powerful html editors.
iMovie has a free alternative built into Windows XP called Windows Movie Maker, but WMM is nowhere near as powerful as iMovie. There are several other programs available to Windows that are low-cost or even “free” if you receive them with video-capturing hardware. In Linux, I’ve heard of Kino but never used it, as I have no need for such software. It is, of course, free.
iDVD seems to be a very complete and easy to use DVD mastering program. Its only drawback that I could imagine is that it is tied to an Apple-branded SuperDrive. To my knowledge, you cannot use it with non-Apple burners. I found this out the hard way on my Mac Mini when I tried to use it with a USB DVD burner. I now no longer own the Mini but I would like to fully explore iDVD one day. There are several DVD mastering packages available for Windows, all are commercial software with moderate to high cost. Linux, once again, has Kino.
iPhoto I will take issue with. It was outdone by a large margin by Google’s Picasa 2 software. Not only is Picasa much easier to use, it is a lot faster and more stable than iPhoto. It is very intuitive and makes organizing and sharing photos a no-headache-process. I can’t say that for iPhoto; I spent more time trying in vain to get iPhoto to do what I wanted than should have been necessary. On Linux, you have digiKam and Lphoto, both almost as easy and powerful as Picasa and still better (in my opinion) than iPhoto by far.
I don’t miss my Mac (anymore), I don’t miss iLife as I only really used Garageband, and my friend who got the Mac from me is very, very happy with it. I am just as happy with Windows for World of Warcraft and Doom 3, and Linux for everything else. I won’t be buying another Mac; it was a fun ride but in the end I needed the versatility of Linux and, though I hate to say it, the need for gaming keeps Windows on my other hard drive. Software isn’t my only reason though; to my knowledge I cannot get a Mac with the graphics power of my system (GeForce 6600GT), or for that matter the upgradeability. Literally every piece of hardware on my desk is upgradeable in some way. Even with an Intel Mac, that is not possible. Besides, I’m poor, and I cannot afford another Mac even if I wanted to. I applaud Apple for creating the best OS I’ve ever used, and I wish them well in the future, but I will not be a part of that future.
// Besides, I’m poor,//
You’re “poor” … yet you can afford a GeForce 6600 GT vid card, and a WoW monthly subscription, and Doom 3?
me wishes I were so destitute.
Yes, I am poor. I saved up for four months for the $200 video card, which I only recently bought. Doom 3 has been $20 for quite a while now; I had wanted to buy it since it came out but I’m not paying $50 for any game (WoW was a gift). And yes, it hurts my budget to pay the $15/month for World of Warcraft, but that’s less than most cigarette smokers pay for their addiction. I make less a month than most of you make in a week, but I know how to budget and am willing to put off a big purchase and save up for it. And believe me, $200 is a very big purchase for me. I still wonder if I made a good decision spending that much money on entertainment. If I weren’t poor, it wouldn’t be an issue.
Next time, think before you belittle someone about their financial situation.
//Next time, think before you belittle someone about their financial situation.//
Sorry, pal, but next time you should realize that 99.9% of REALLY POOR people would never be able to afford a computer in the first place, much less spend $200 (which is double what I spend on FOOD in a month) on a freakin’ vid card.
Quit feeling sorry for yourself.
You are that poor, but you obviously can afford a computer too, perhaps even a Mac? Since you are posting here, I assume you are using a computer of some sort. I smell a troll; I’m done with this conversation.
iDVD seems to be a very complete and easy to use DVD mastering program. Its only drawback that I could imagine is that it is tied to an Apple-branded SuperDrive. To my knowledge, you cannot use it with non-Apple burners.
That’s not true anymore. The iDVD that comes as part of iLife ’06 is not tied to Apple’s DVD burners. In fact, you can now install and use iDVD on Macs that don’t even have DVD burners, which you couldn’t do at all with the older versions of iDVD.
Thank you for the updated info. I wasn’t aware the limitation had been lifted, and frankly I’m surprised Apple took such a move, considering their past issues with hardware/software lock-in.
Oh and to clarify: iDVD was installed by default and would run on my Mac Mini, which didn’t have a SuperDrive. However, I (obviously) couldn’t burn my projects to DVD, even with an external burner. I never bothered trying iDVD in iLife ’06.
I enjoyed this article – NOT because it bashed Apple, but because it told the full lifespan of a Mac user that started from long ago. The reference to Amiga and BeOS was well spoken in that it pointed out that neither of these user communities planned world-domination, but rather actually ‘thinking differently’ (a marketing claim made by a company whose software allows for little diversity in itself). I’ve heard many times about the ‘PC users have no taste’, but I commented on that before – beauty is NOT skin (or case) deep.
And it wasn’t a punch line – did you even read the article? Macs are good for some things, but there are so many downsides to them, and this is my rant: proprietary plugs!
Bastardized DVI connectors? USB plugs with a metal tab that prevents you from using USB-compliant (but non-Apple) devices? Round serial ports? Oddball-square laptop SCSI connectors? Sub-mini microphone jacks? RJ-45 keyboard plugs? – then 4-pin (but non-ps2) keyboard plugs? – then USB keyboard plugs? Crippled IDE cables?
I doubt any company in history has created – and then obsoleted this many proprietary connections. Most PCs still have the same set of connectors – VGA, PS2, parallel, serial, USB, ethernet, and 1/16 audio jacks. This is a major reason why Mac sales have never reached their full potential – people DO want choice, choice of monitor, keyboard, HECK a two-button mouse…
Macs are great for some things, but without hardware choice many people have little option but to buy a PC – like it or not.
Please go to the Apple store, look at the specs of the hardware that they’re offering, and tell me what “proprietary plugs” exist on a Mac mini, an iMac, or a MacBook Pro.
I know you won’t, because THERE AREN’T ANY ANYMORE.
The “no hardware choice” argument is dead and tired. It would be like me saying I’m not going to buy a Mac because I need a UNIX command line and OS9 didn’t have one. It’s 2006 my friend, join us.
If the best reasons you guys have for hating Apple are that their systems were sucky and proprietary in the ’90s…well then those aren’t really valid reasons, are they?
Please go to the Apple store, look at the specs of the hardware that they’re offering, and tell me what “proprietary plugs” exist on a Mac mini, an iMac, or a MacBook Pro.
I know you won’t, because THERE AREN’T ANY ANYMORE.
The key word there is ‘ANYMORE’. Saying this doesn’t happen anymore doesn’t cut it. Why has this happened, you may ask. Because the PC world got that part right and FORCED APPLE INTO IT through shear economics. It would never have been done otherwise.
If the best reasons you guys have for hating Apple are that their systems were sucky and proprietary in the ’90s…well then those aren’t really valid reasons, are they?
They still are sucky and proprietary – in different ways. iTunes, iPods, Apple’s support, DRM, changing to a different, arguably even more sucky, hardware problem which necessitates that people emulate their current software so that it runs dog turd slow…… The list is endless.
Oh yer, and Macs are damn slow – even on Intel hardware. Oh, but of course the benchmarks that were produced recently only apply to statistical software and those of use who’ve experienced the slowness of the desktop from 8 (and even 10) onwards are just imagining things. There can’t possibly be anything in that…….
Edited 2006-05-10 23:28
“They still are sucky and proprietary – in different ways. iTunes, iPods, Apple’s support, DRM, changing to a different, arguably even more sucky, hardware problem which necessitates that people emulate their current software so that it runs dog turd slow…… The list is endless. ”
And of course MS does nothing of a proprietary nature with their software and does not support DRM? They are just pissed off because it is one category they haven’t managed to yet lock up. And all your other comments could be just as well applied to the PC at one time or another. They all would like to lock you into their line of software and equipment.
I have no problem with macs… just every jerkhole that gets his cock in a twist when I say i wouldn’t shell out the dough for one.
There’s a good reason they’ve gotten rid of these types of plugs, people hated them. And while many of the external plugs have finally been stabilized (it’s only taken, what – 2 decades to do so?) the PCI card collection is not as vast as that of PCs. Yes, many of these PCI devices have Mac drivers – but that’s only about 30-40% of the cards out there (granted, this number has slowly risen) and when a person asks me what a good machine for video editing would need – I don’t recommend Windows, I don’ recommend IBM, I recommend a PC – because it has THE MOST compatability with modern computer hardware. You can’t change the past, I agree with you on that – but it does explain why Apple’s history has been so anemic.
and when a person asks me what a good machine for video editing would need – I don’t recommend Windows, I don’ recommend IBM, I recommend a PC – because it has THE MOST compatability with modern computer hardware.
What are you talking about? What does that even mean?
You don’t recommend an IBM-compatible PC, you don’t recommend a PC running Windows, but you recommend a PC (a personal computer) because it is the most compatible with modern computer hardware? WTF? I can’t make any sense out of that. I feel bad for the people you purport to give advice to.
As far as what you should recommend to someone who wants to do video editing, you need to take into account that there’s more to video editing than hardware. Apple has fantastic consumer and professional tools for video editing, they consider it a core of their business. So what if there may be more pieces of hardware with Windows drivers than Mac drivers? You aren’t going to have any trouble finding Video editing equipment that is Mac compatible. Any video capture/input device/camera that’s worth buying is Mac compatible.
While I don’t at all understand the advice you’re giving to people who come to you asking what they should use for video editing, if you’re recommending Windows, I really feel you’re doing a disservice to them. As someone who has done video editing on both systems, the Mac software is far, far easier to use than anything I’ve seen on Windows.
“What does that even mean? ”
– It means that I don’t rely on any ONE company for my needs. “I don’t recommend IBM” means that I don’t recommend IBM, I would recommend AMD, Soyo, Gigabyte, even Dell – just NOT IBM (I thought I was pretty clear on this). Many Apple users are still referring to PCs as IBMs – this is SO COMPLETELY WRONG! Just because they started it, doesn’t mean they’re still the ONLY game in town – but because Apple users only really have ONE game in town, they think this applies to the rest of the world. “I don’t recommend Windows”, means that if they have the luxury of an OS choice – THEY SHOULD PROBABLY USE IT. I really don’t feel like spending half of a paycheck on ‘quality’ software when there is free stuff everywhere, so I often recommend Linux for those that are unsure of what they want to do with their machine (Linux = Not Windows, how much explaining did that need?).
A PC is a blank slate that you get to color whatever you want. I’m happier when draw what I want rather than accept a painting from someone else.
> There’s a good reason they’ve gotten rid of these
> types of plugs, people hated them.
In your opinion, of course. I’ve never hated anything about Mac plugs. Life is far too short!
> And while many of the external plugs have finally
> been stabilized (it’s only taken, what – 2 decades
> to do so?) the PCI card collection is not as vast as
> that of PCs.
Plugs have been just as unstable on the PC side. The probelem was resolved more quickly because the clones were emulating the IBM models (mostly.) But PCI, ISA, EISA, Plug and Play, VESA Local bus? Stable? Maybe from about 1996 onwards.. maybe. Bare in mind that the Mac, though using different standards, has been stable as long. The only difference was that Macs dropped LEGACY support more quickly. PC’s are still kow towing to the masses over than.
> Yes, many of these PCI devices have Mac drivers –
> but that’s only about 30-40% of the cards out there
> (granted, this number has slowly risen)
If the manufacturer doesn’t write a driver, what do you expect to happen? If the manufacturer refuses to publish the datasheets for their cards, its pretty much impossible to legitimise the process required to gain the necessary info to hack a driver up. Linux only gets away with it because technically the direvers are free IMO. If Linus started to chage for drivers that have been reverse engineered, I wonder how long a law suit would be away?!
> when a person asks me what a good machine for video
> editing would need – I don’t recommend Windows, I
> don’ recommend IBM, I recommend a PC – because it
> has THE MOST compatability with modern computer
> hardware.
Hmmm. The “PC” would include Macs. An IBM compatible PC would be what you mean. “Personal computer” is not a term restricted to intel IA32/x86 based hardware.
I would recomend a Mac simply because the software and hardware is already there out of the box. But then that’s me.
> You can’t change the past, I agree with you on that -> but it does explain why Apple’s history has been so
> anemic.
Apple’s history has been a bumpy road, especially in the mid 90’s, but all companies have their ups and downs. The connectors had little to do with this.
‘Hmmm. The “PC” would include Macs. An IBM compatible PC would be what you mean.’
The days of trying to pedantically sort out the usage differences between an “IBM compatible PC” and “personal computer” has long gone. IBM hardware line-up includes more than just Intel MPUs these days, so technically “IBM compatible PC” doesn’t really have any relevance anymore.
To further drive the point home, Apple recognizes the widely accepted meaning:
http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/
I agree with ApproachingZero. That statement makes no sense whatsoever. I can only imagine you mean commodity hardware running a free OS, which doesn’t abbreviate to “PC.”
Sun might be able to compete for the proprietary plug award, it’s so irritating trying to get their older hardware going.
I guess with x86 Macs the special connectors seem to be going away, which is always a step in the right direction.
My 1999 Sawtooth Powermac uses all standard PC connectors as well. I have a regular VGA flat panel cheapo monitor, my regular keyboard works with it (although I am using the Apple keyboard because I like the size and layout of it), using a regular logitech wireless three button mouse, samsung printer, canon scanner, regular harddrive I popped out of my Pentium 3 desktop…..I fail to see the authors point about proprietary plugs. I unplugged all of the hardware from my Compaq desktop and plugged it right back into my Powermac, and it all seems to be working.
Here’s why I’ll never buy another PC….because I don’t like running DOS! Sheesh.
The proprietary plugs have been gone for years on the Powermacs.
Someone else made a comment about bastardized DVI connectors….but fails to mention that DVI supports more bandwidth and it is becoming more and more available on PCs as well.
Hmmm…
RJ-45 keyboard plugs were from the 1980’s. The original Mac had them, not anything recent. We’re talking the classic all-in one Mac 128’s and such.
Round serial ports: Just because the PC standardized on a specific connector, don’t believe it is the only option!! In 1984, the serial connector on the Mac was no more non-standard than the RJ-45 keyboard plug. The other notable thing about the Mac is that it does not use the RS-232 standard. IIRC it is RS-422. Why should an RS-422 connection use a DB-9??
4-pin (non PS/2) plugs – now you’re bing extremely stupid. PS/2 is a standard protocol invented by IBM. AFAIK it is pretty much designed to carry only keyboard type data – essentially its a bit of a serial hybrid. ADB is a BUS. With ADB you can connect any ADB devices to your Mac. Admittedly, this was mainly keyboards and mice, but other devices were available. Joysticks, Graphics tablets and ISTR MIDI interfaces. ADB was proprietry, but NeXT, for example, used it on their computers. In fact NeXT had their speakers (sound box) running off of ADB. ADB could have done some of what USB now does – maybe a little less well, but it was certainly a more interesting concept than PS/2.
USB keyboards – this is a troll. You know well why Apple moved to USB for their Keyboards and Mice. They dropped all the other bits you complained about.
As for the SCSI – adapter’s my friend.
Audio Jack – well my 4 Mac’s all have standard audio Jacks. My Classic (68000), 6100, 9500 and Beige G3. So that statement does not ring true through out the entire Apple history.
Crippled IDE cables? You mean, IDE cables that only allow master and no slave devices? That was the hardware, the ROM. Nothing to do with IDE cables, connectors or indeed IDE hardware. The Mac ROM was fixed at some point in the latter G3 era.
Most PCI cards would work on a Mac if they adhered to a standard the Mac could use. Older PCI Macs admittedly use a farily old PCI spec, but a lot of the PCI cards that don’t but should work, are quirky and have drivers that tweak windows or have BIOS that are specific to the PC/Intel hardware. I’ve successfully used USB 1 and USB 2 cards from a PC, NIC’s and Matrox Millennium 2 graphics cards (after reflashing to a Mac BIOS) in my Macs. In fact, anything with out a BIOS has worked fairly well.
And finally: Monitors – buy an adapter. Keyboards/mice, but a PS/2 to USB adapter. As for the 2 button quip – my G3 uses a 2 button USB mouse quite happily, thanks.
Wow… rant.
Okay, first off – I TOLD you I was ranting, didn’t I?
I work with new and old Macs all the time, so I reserve myself the right to do so.
“ADB is a BUS.”
– Good for ADB, bad for me. The last thing I need is yet another keyboard interface.
“With ADB you can connect any ADB devices to your Mac.”
– Gawd, I should hope so!
“USB keyboards – this is a troll.”
– You’ve left out the notched-metal socket, conveniently. Just because they don’t make them anymore doesn’t mean the ones they did make just majically disappeared.
“Audio Jack”
– You clearly haven’t looked at the microphone plug on the back of a G4. Examine one, please.
“Nothing to do with IDE cables”
– Take a careful look at the middle of the ribbon in the G3 and G4 (blue and silver ‘handle case’ models) and you’ll see that they’ve stamped-out a conductor for some reason. Should I worry about this, probably not too much, but I do. Sorry for the duress, but having non-standard IDE ribbons makes me uncomfortable.
“Monitors – buy an adapter”
– I shouldn’t HAVE to BUY and adapter. Period.
“my G3 uses a 2 button USB mouse quite happily, thanks.”
– So does mine, and you’re welcome. But we both BOUGHT AFTERMARKET MICE, didn’t we? hmmm? I know it’s not really Apple’s fault for that archaeic lawsuit by IBM and MS, but it’s still an inconvenience.
“4-pin (non PS/2) plugs – now you’re bing extremely stupid.”
– And you’re “bing” extremely rude, for no reason I might add. It seems that BeOS took all the nice users with it when it left Apple hardware. The Mac community has become more and more violent towards the rest of the computer world (ESPECIALLY on OSNews). This is sad to me, because I remember the Apple userbase USED TO be kind, helpful, appreciative, cooperative, and understanding. But something went very wrong in the upgrade path… I believe it is a side-effect of Steve Jobs’ “Reality Distortion Field”.
“Wow… rant.”
– Yes, I ranted. And just to warn you, I’ll probably do it again.
Peace out.
Amiga could have been here today.. But MS had their hands in its demise. I spoke to as friend who had worked with Amiga for a number of years, including the Gateway years. Being in the Gateway complex, visits from MS were common. When MS saw what the Amiga guys were working on, pressure was applied to Gateway to kill off the technology. Go figure.
USB plugs with a metal tab that prevents you from using USB-compliant (but non-Apple) devices?
They still do this. When I had my Mini, I got tired of the bluetooth keyboard so I bought an official Apple USB Keyboard. I noticed a little dent on the USB connector, but it fit just fine in the USB port so I paid it no attention. The keyboard came with a USB extension cable which at first I didn’t use for the keyboard. I figured I’d use it for my thumb drive so I wouldn’t have to reach around to to the back of the Mini to plug it in. Well, guess what? The extension cable had a tab that prevented you from plugging anything into it that didn’t have a matching dent. The keyboard, of course, has this dent. So, you can only use the otherwise-standard USB extension cable that YOU OWN with the Apple keyboard, not with your other hardware. That irked me to no end, I assure you.
Wow, that sucks, I didnt realize they had proprietary plugs. I guess every Apple has a lot to learn…
A friend of mine, an editor loved his 17 inch powerbook with the G4 processor. It was loaded to the hilt with upgraded options and cost him a pretty penny as well. He even purchased Final Cut Pro and he was a total Macolyte till one day the laptop started to overheat so bad that it would crash incessantly. I think one of the fans died. So we went to the Mac store in Sacramento and in SF to get it looked at. First off when he sent it in, they replaced the mobo and then when it came back it wouldnt work. And also they deleted FCP of his hard drive and later he couldnt install it back on in there. And then he asked for a copy of FCP since his copy wasnt there anymore and he even provided proof of the product key but they refused. So he lost his laptop and lost his editing suite. He was even told to go talk to a lawyer because he wanted a replacement for the laptop that was just a very expensive paperweight. SO needless to say he is pissed. But lo and behold today they are sending him a specced up dual core 17 inch laptop! I was shocked! So I guess good things come to those who kind of keep at it for a bit. I was pretty pissed at Apple but this is a nice gesture. But I think he is done with Apple and he switching back to XP and so on so he is gonna sell it on Ebay and get a Sager or something with a 64 bit processor.
If he bought Final Cut Pro, why did he need Apple to put it back on there?
As far as I’m aware, one cannot simply download FCP and then purchase a registration from Apple, you have to buy the boxed item. If he loses his physical property, surely it’s his problem?
Of course, if you mean that FCP wouldn’t install from the disk again, then he had a perfectly decent reason to complain.
This is way too long and quite poorly written. Please keep trash like off of the front page.
I would also like to point out that they never had pastel colored towers. Get your facts straight. They went from beige G3s, to the highlighter colored G3 tower, to the dark blue/green (hardly pastel) and silver-grey G4s, to the silver G5s.
Another note to the “Proprietary plugs” guy. They have created a number of proprietary interfaces, and they were generally not that great, but don’t spread your own speculation as fact, please. Besides, pick up a mac today and you’ll find USB (standard), Firewire (standard), and DVI (standard) or mini dvi (comes with converter to standard DVI). You can buy any keyboard or mouse you want.
I would also like to point out that they never had pastel colored towers.
Isn’t this pastel?
http://retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/m_g3twr.jpg
No, that’s not pastel. That is the “highlighter” colored G3 tower. You could also call it an “electric” blue. Pastel colors are light, almost washed out looking. The color of those towers is almost exactly the opposite of a pastel.
Not at all. Technically, pastels have soft hues (pale colors). The color in question isn’t pale by any stretch of the imagination.
Thom, are you kidding? That’s the highlighter blue I mentioned. It was way to garish to be considered a pastel.
Why are we worried about cosmetics, when the insides matter, I know this is an old argument, but dang Microsoft, use that 50 Billion to write something that is not so prone to spyware, for example: I am looking at a message that says: “STOP! WINDOWS REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION…..” an operating system that is SOOOOOOOOOOO opposed to open source(unike Apple, they should go open source completely, they only support the unix side) it sure does seem like everytime you turn around some donut has written another program that seems infiltrate more deeper than most programs should…why do people do that?…..
and what is up with those ServicePacks, I bought a High-Speed USB card the other day, and the software to run High Speed wanted SP1! Why, why does it matter….?
I have yet to run into this problem with Mac OS X…
I am just sayin’
Oh, windows is still the best for gaming I will give you that, its mostly the hardware though…..
Edited 2006-05-12 12:08
Yes, they removed these plugs – that doesn’t change history. I’ve got an entire room here at work with all sorts of ill-conceived Apple incarnations – that’s not speculation, my friend. It’s taken a near-collapse of the Apple corporation for Steve J to admit that being different isn’t necessarily a good thing. “MacIntel” was supposed to happen after Hell froze over.
So, today – they have standard plugs. But they didn’t for some time. Sorry for looking around my room and pointing this FACT out.
harsh words, but some truth there. honestly, the apple legion of devotees to the “One True Computer” can be worse at times than a herd of gentoo ricers and ubuntu fanatics (relax guys, I use (and like) macs (like right now) as well as linux the majority of the time myself). it’s a wonder folk don’t realize that personally insulting people who *gasp* use a different system from yours won’t win you many friends.
and really, why does one care _that_ much anyhow… especially since we’re not talking about any larger social cause or something, that you can ascribe to the free software movement (agree with it or not). what exactly is the cause behind supporting apple (or any company that you neither own stock in or work for) to that level of emotional vituperation? worldwide promotion of excellent colour schemes? really, what?
I’ll admit though, while I like what the mac + osx has to offer me as a home user (work is different, gotta be linux there for me), the practices of the company itself (nevermind the annoying fanboys for a moment) do disturb me. it limits my enthusiasm for the platform to the level of actually promoting it (linux/free software give me the warm fuzzies however 😉 this is especially true for me since apple have teamed up with intel. I don’t actually see myself ever buying one these things new however, so I guess apple’s only getting limited funds from me. I’m not actually paying for most of this stuff, the uni I work at has a very heavy mac presence, so I kind of get it for free (or close thereto).
I do agree that for my work , I do not know if the Mac could be feasable , usable …..Would Apple be reponsive to bugs ……? I doubt it …..
But , for my personal use ……….WOW! What a computer …….
Understanding , easy , user frienly ……anything ….
That is my cup of tea …..
I have touched Irix , Solaris , Linux ,Vax, PDP11, Unix , Mac , Window 2000 , XP , 3.1
Os 6, 7, 8, 9 ….. Amiga , OS-I6502 , Cromenco…….Z81 …..
My most adorable PC was my Amiga 1000 first ……..
My MACmini second for now …….
And not far my G5 ………
Aramis
It’s the only place I can get a pretty, perfectly working Unix laptop.
*moans that it doesn’t use X11 like he wants it to*
I think the real reason for the anger is focused around http://www.microsoft.com. See, here’s what happened:
1980’s to 1995: They’re a “second rate contender” shipping DOS and Win 1-3.x.
1995: They’re a “first rate contender” showing up Macintosh with a decent beta OS they call a release: Windows 95.
1998: They patch up 95, make it slower and a lot more stable. Showing that yes, Wintel can manage bad memory protection where Mac can’t.
2000: They ship Win2k, making the grave mistake of not calling it a consumer OS but a “professional” one and they ship ME (another 9x piece of garbage) for the consumers. People use it as a consumer OS anyway. It’s good, and really shows up Apple.
2001 (or thereabouts): Mac ships OS X; a solid system with a nightmarishly slow Mac/NeXT GUI. Microsoft ships WinXP.
2002-2006: Mac OS X becomes pretty stinkin’ awesome. Microsoft ships nothing, and people aren’t switching.
It’s that last period that’s irritating. I think people feel like Redmond wins on non-technical merits. And hence they’re mad. They want people to use their favorite platform because they don’t want to see it abandoned like OS/2, BeOS, and Amiga.
You can’t really blame them for that.
I apologize in advance if my history is slightly off.
Just to clarify: OS/2 is still formally supported by IBM.
🙂
Just to clarify: OS/2 is still formally supported by IBM.
No it’s not.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=13107
Yes, it is. Standard support != all support. Most corporate OS/2 customers (and there are still a surprising number of those) have their very own support contracts negotiated with IBM, and little folks like me get support from SSI (who in turn gets fixes and such directly from IBM) for our eCS installations.
According to Bob St. John, support from IBM is expected for a while yet. The current published “End of Service” date is 12/31/2006 (over seven months away), but chances are that even that could be extended again as it has in the past, and of course individual organizations are not limited to that date even if it doesn’t change.
As I said, OS/2 is still formally supported by IBM. I stand by that statement.
Edited 2006-05-10 22:31
Actually, OS/2 is still supported AFAIK: but it’s on a per-contract basis, which probably costs rather a lot.
However, if you are an eComStation user, then you get all the updates to the kernel, drivers etc for free.
With regards the Apple article itself: I have come across zealots on pretty much all platforms that I have used: they are never witty and rarely wise, yet nor do they represent the majority of users.
Yessir! and eCom is shaping up nicely! Name change does’t mean it’s not still around.
It sounded like a long winded rant to make a couple of minor points that have been around for a long time. But there were also a lot of generalizations and personal opinion thrown in to boot (altho’ there is nothing WRONG with personal opinion).
The author seems to have good capabilities in computer software and hardware, which maybe makes him excellent “user”; but what the author didn’t see is the whole picture of computer industry users needs. You have those people who want to cut the IT cost to minimum and who do not like to configure and know about the inner workings of systems and rather prefer to spend time on productivity and who requires also the highest security all in one sigle packaged system, well such people will end up best served with Mac OSX.
Now, there should exist also people who want to learn about the OSs from A to Z while they study for their computer classes in their universities and who need OS that can challege them to the max and teach them about its inner workings and they want it to be stable and open source be be able to see the source code and learn from it, and for those people Linux(or the like:Solaris,BSD,…) is the answer.
And still there should exist also those people who don’t have much time to configure their systems to the max and don’t have the enough money to spend for an Apple, or maybe who need to run a program which doesn’t exist for other platforms or maybe who have an IT infrastructure for troubleshooting and support or maybe who need to play every new title game released with the best hardware in terms of speed and moore and for those people Windows is a good platform.
So, what is wrong from the author of this article is that he want to cancel a platform’s importance because his demands were shifted to anothe platform during years; and for him I say open up your eyes and brain and think about the others with “different” demands; and pray for even more platforms to come to fit others demands who still didn’t find the platform that suits their wishes.
Edited 2006-05-10 20:51
“The author seems to have good capabilities in computer software and hardware, which maybe makes him excellent “user”; but what the author didn’t see is the whole picture of computer industry users needs. You have those people who want to cut the IT cost to minimum and who do not like to configure and know about the inner workings of systems and rather prefer to spend time on productivity and who requires also the highest security all in one sigle packaged system, well such people will end up best served with Mac OSX.”
Okay, I’ll have to admit that I am a little confused by this one. I am an avid Linux user but, in corporations, Windows seems to rule. I am not sure how Macs would lower IT costs (granted, I don’t have a deep knowledge of Macs). I would think hardware costs would be higher. Also, there would be an issue of fewer software options so, this would drive costs higher, as well. Then, of course, if you are like my company, you have specialty software (for accounting, supply chain, human resources, etc.) which may not even run on Mac. This would mean special code rewrites/custom code or the use of emulators which, again, would drive up the cost of ownership.
So, I guess I would have to ask how this would lower IT costs. I’m not trying to belittle your argument. I’ve just never heard of Macs lowering TCO among industry users.
It is exactly not like devotion to the Amiga or BeOS, which strikes me as a harmless, goodnatured enthusiasm we should all feel good about.
Yeah like 10 years ago maybe. As someone that still owns an Amiga it pains me to say that what remains of the Amiga devotees are mostly trolls and blowhards these days, flaming each other non-stop. ( Edit: IMHO YMMV etc. )
I am also saying that the alienating tone of the Apple marketing materials and their use by the fanatics is a deliberate choice on the part of the company. Apple knows it is alienating people who are not members of the cult, and accepts, perhaps even welcomes it.
My PC-using collegues often tell me how funny they think the new and old Apple commercials are. In the average office even the non-techies joke about how terrible Windows is, so that stuff does resonate with a lot of people.
I must say I disagree with 90% of this editorial, but then again I am a switcher.
Edited 2006-05-10 20:50
“Another note to the “Proprietary plugs” guy. They have created a number of proprietary interfaces, and they were generally not that great, but don’t spread your own speculation as fact, please. Besides, pick up a mac today and you’ll find USB (standard), Firewire (standard), and DVI (standard) or mini dvi (comes with converter to standard DVI). You can buy any keyboard or mouse you want.”
Speculation? Those are facts. They never respected standards, and because now they do doesn’t invalidate the previous point.
Speculation? Those are facts. They never respected standards, and because now they do doesn’t invalidate the previous point.
Um, yes it does, unless your next system is going to be something circa 1999 off eBay. Apple made mistakes with the proprietary plugs they created in the 80s and 90s, and have taken steps to rectify that. Their current models do not use proprietary plugs of any kind. What more can they do to appease you?
If you were in the market for a Dell, would you judge their current offerings by what they were selling in the ’90s?
I had 8 people in my office today to look at it. And I only mentioned it to one person. And we’re a Dell shop. Yes, I paid more money for it than a somewhat comparable Dell. But I’d never consider anything other than a Mac. It’s just not worth the small savings to run Windows.
Yeah, that’s why shallow people buy Macs, alright. So that their shallow friends can sit around all day shallowly gawping at it.
OK, I will admit that not every Mac user is like that. Like the rest of the population, I’m sure a good proportion of Mac buyers buy their computers to use them.
I just started buying Macs. Well a Mac.
The Mac Mini was what got me. No propietary connectors, a good price and a great UI on top of Unix. Yum.
I ran Linux exclusively from 1998 – late 2000 (switched to w2k) … those years were a bad strech of time for a starving student wanting a computer. Windows 95/98 was horribly unstable (espcially on the cheap ass hardware I could afford), Macs were horribly expensive (and propietary). Linux was good for me at the time … I had pretty simple requirements: development tools for my assignments, an mp3 player, and a web browser (opera was the best choice at the time because mozilla wasn’t yet ready).
I still make heavy use of windows as part of my job (hell, I admin w2k/w2k3 servers). They aren’t horrible, but there is a lot in there that annoys me.
Anyway, I think that my point was that there probably hasn’t been a better time to buy a Mac than right now. They’ve finally got it right. Affordable, standards complient with loads of great software.
Perhaps you should re-consider your stance.
Mac’s have a fair share of zealots; second only to Linux.
The HARDWARE is more expensive but you gain other perks in the total package (if you DISAGREE with that OPINION you probably use a PC).
When PC’s offer something competitive to OS X (officially supported and legal) I’d sure as hell buy a PC. But this is all a matter of personal experience and opinion. To others [insert Linux distro] fills the bill quite nice, to me, I feel Linux falls WAY short. BeOS could-a-would-a done the job, but alas it’s gone now.
I know there is an “OS X tax”, but until a PC can offer more than it does I’m willing to pony up.
Mac’s have a fair share of zealots; second only to Linux.
ROTFL. Oh, please. If there are more Linux zealots than Mac zealots, perhaps it’s because more people can AFFORD (and therefore USE) Linux?
If Linux zealots were halfway bad as Mac zealots, Firefox and Thunderbird and OpenOffice and cygwin would NEVER have been ported to Windows.
The HARDWARE is more expensive but you gain other perks in the total package (if you DISAGREE with that OPINION you probably use a PC).
And if you AGREE with that “OPINION” you probably use a MAC. I’m sorry, were you TRYING to make a “POINT”?
“If Linux zealots were halfway bad as Mac zealots, Firefox and Thunderbird and OpenOffice and cygwin would NEVER have been ported to Windows.”
Yeah, because we all know Windows zealots don’t exist, and if they did they wouldn’t port those apps.
> “If Linux zealots were halfway bad as Mac zealots, Firefox
> and Thunderbird and OpenOffice and cygwin would NEVER
> have been ported to Windows.”
>
>> Yeah, because we all know Windows zealots don’t exist,
>> and if they did they wouldn’t port those apps
Discount out the noise and the zealots. Think about the developers. If you were involved in writing these apps, wouldn’t you want as many people as possible to use them? Linux != Firefox, Thunderbird, OOo etc., and it’s a far stretch to equate the availability of these apps to other platforms as a measure of zealotry. It is also a far stretch to think that your average Windows zealot would port these apps just because they are zealous about Windows. You might well find that the developers of these apps don’t care to take sides.
I think you missed my point a la sarcasm. I was simply indicating that it is silly to assume an application won’t get ported to Windows because Linux developers won’t do it. I only used Windows zealots as an example because they had not been discussed yet. Equal time, I say.
“You might well find that the developers of these apps don’t care to take sides.”
That’s rarely true. I develop applications that run on Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows; and I take sides based on technical merit all the time. I would say most developers only develop for either Windows or UNIX/FOSS, and that by default is taking sides.
“I think you missed my point a la sarcasm. I was simply indicating that it is silly to assume an application won’t get ported to Windows because Linux developers won’t do it. I only used Windows zealots as an example because they had not been discussed yet. Equal time, I say. ”
Sorry, my bad regarding mis-reading the sarcasm.
“That’s rarely true. I develop applications that run on Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows; and I take sides based on technical merit all the time. I would say most developers only develop for either Windows or UNIX/FOSS, and that by default is taking sides.”
Sure, but you develop for the platforms to further your applications’ install base, not to further these platforms’ agenda (for lack of a better word).
“you develop for the platforms to further your applications’ install base”
Not really. Only a few applications make it to all platforms. Most applications are unique to each platform, again, based on the system’s technical merits. These technical merits are what keep me biased for writing certain applications for only certain platforms. If I’m writing scientific visualization software it’s going on a *X (Mac OS X, *NIX) system, whereas corporate business software goes on a Windows system. I’m all for furthering a platform’s agenda if the platform is really good at something.
In my experience Windows zealots are closed-source zealots.
So no, they probably wouldn’t.
That’s funny. How would an open source zealot be anymore motivated to develop for a closed source platform than a closed source zealot develop for a closed source platform? Someone’s porting the applications to Windows, and as far as I can tell it’s Windows platform developers (even if some of them just happen to also be open source developers).
You misunderstand. I’m saying that an open source zealot would not develop for a closed-source platform, and the reverse. TB, FF, and OO.org would in that case not be developed for Windows or anything else by closed-source zealots, because they’re open source.
I’m not misunderstanding you at all. You’re right when you say, “an open source zealot would not develop for a closed-source platform, and the reverse” but that’s not what you’re really talking about. You’re talking about open source software on a closed source platform. You’re mixing up the software with the developer. I don’t see the disparity of a closed source zealot developing open source software on a closed source platform. The zealousness is tied to the platform, not the software, hence the terms Windows zealot, Mac zealot, Linux zealot, etc.
This argument relies too much on a false premises. Free software was developed to be portable to platforms from proprietary UNIX vendors long before Win32 ports were of any significant importance. Part of the whole point is that free software can go where the users are, regardless of where that is, and permit them to have the source code for the programs they use available to them for modification. The recent importance of the Win32 simply reflects that a large number of people use Windows, and yet still desire free software. Every time a Windows user picks a piece of free software (OO.org, Firefox, Gimp, etc) over a proprietary piece of software, they become that much more free. It’s less time they spend using the proprietary equivalent, less time they enrich the closed formats or broken standards of those equivalents, and if the software is portable the more able to express platform choice they are in the future.
The proverbial “linux zealot” isn’t even necessarily a developer of anything.
I’m not sure you’re even talking about the same thing. Which argument? All I was saying was that even a Windows zealot could potentially port open source software to Windows, because it’s Windows he cares about. That relies on what false premises?
“The proverbial “linux zealot” isn’t even necessarily a developer of anything.”
Since when did “Linux zealot” become proverbial? I don’t hear people talking about Linux zealots all the time. When is any zealot necessarily a developer of anything? Zealot and developer are not interchangeable. The context of the discussion was of zealot developers.
I mean the argument between twenex and yourself.
I don’t hear people talking about Linux zealots all the time.
They’re “talked about” in every tech forum. If you don’t see it, it’s only because you don’t want to or because you don’t read such forums. It has been a whipping boy for at least the eleven years that I’ve been a linux user.
Zealot and developer are not interchangeable. The context of the discussion was of zealot developers.
And the discussion of free software existing on Windows because of how “bad” “linux zealots” are is a false premise. This discussion has been essentially pointless because it’s stemmed from an initial point of view that is simply wrong. Twenex’s argument, for a lack of a more succinct way of putting this, was bunk.
‘They’re “talked about” in every tech forum.’
In EVERY tech forum?! What’s the proverb?
‘And the discussion of free software existing on Windows because of how “bad” “linux zealots” are is a false premise.’
I think you misread what twenex said. He said, “If Linux zealots were halfway bad as Mac zealots.” If there was a false premise involved, it would be about Mac zealots, not Linux zealots.
‘Twenex’s argument, for a lack of a more succinct way of putting this, was bunk.’
I agree, but I still don’t see how your contribution reveals that.
In EVERY tech forum?! What’s the proverb?
Yes, every tech forum. You might remember this thing called the Internet, which normal folk discovered somewhere around 1997 or so. Well, it turns out lots of Linux companies had IPOs that made Linux a topic of discussion in far-reaching realms. I’m sure you can think of one such forum where there has never been a reference to “linux zealots?”
I think you misread what twenex said. He said, “If Linux zealots were halfway bad as Mac zealots.” If there was a false premise involved, it would be about Mac zealots, not Linux zealots.
The false premise is that there is any relationship between “zealots” and the porting of software.
I agree, but I still don’t see how your contribution reveals that.
My “contribution” is pointing out that your entire argument is pointless because it argues a point that is based upon a false premise. Your commentary about “Windows zealots” as a counter to his comment about “Linux zealots” is worthless, because there is no relationship between degrees of “zealotry” and the porting of software. You can continue to use a false premise to make irrelevant counter-arguments all that you want, but your discussion is insignificant because it has no basis in reality.
Oh, you mean like these zealots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_zealotry
You still haven’t said what the proverb is. So would you say all “* zealots” are proverbial? What knowledge of a person does one automatically attribute to a Linux zealot that can’t be attributed to any zealot? You might want to show some prior art:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22proverbial+linux+zealot%2…
‘My “contribution” is pointing out that your entire argument is pointless’
Your contribution thus far has been just another pointless argument, since you didn’t just come right out and say that twenex was saying bunk.
You still haven’t said what the proverb is. So would you say all “* zealots” are proverbial?
I suggest that you learn the meaning of proverbial.
Your contribution thus far has been just another pointless argument, since you didn’t just come right out and say that twenex was saying bunk.
As far as I can tell I did come out and say that twenex’s argument was bunk, along with the entire discussion that followed. My usage of the word “argument” was apparently ambiguous to you. I am not participating in an argument to the best of my knowledge. I have been clarifying my intended meaning so that you might understand the futility of the discussion and the pointlessness of the arguments within it that amount to little more than mental masturbation. If I am participating in an argument do let me know so that I can exit it.
“I suggest that you learn the meaning of proverbial.”
pro·ver·bi·al adj.
1. Of the nature of a proverb.
2. Expressed in a proverb.
3. Widely referred to, as if the subject of a proverb; famous.
prov·erb n.
A short pithy saying in frequent and widespread use that expresses a basic truth or practical precept.
So again, what knowledge (basic truth or practical precept) of a person does one automatically attribute to a Linux zealot that can’t be attributed to any zealot?
‘My usage of the word “argument” was apparently ambiguous to you.’
Generally speaking, ambiguity stems from lack of context. You provided no context when you stated, “This argument relies too much on a false premises” because all you followed up by saying is that porting free software has no connection to zealotry. I wasn’t discussing a connection between porting free software and zealotry. I still don’t think you have any idea what was being discussed evidenced by your recent comments, ‘there is no relationship between degrees of “zealotry” and the porting of software’ and ‘Your commentary about “Windows zealots” as a counter to his comment.’
Nobody was talking about “degrees” of zealotry. My summarization, “All I was saying was that even a Windows zealot could potentially port open source software to Windows, because it’s Windows he cares about.” still stands. That has nothing to do with “bad Linux zealots”, “degrees of zealotry”, or any connection whatsoever of zealotry to porting free software. In fact, my statements serve to support that there isn’t any connection. A Windows zealot has no problem porting free software, so obviously there’s no connection. Isn’t that amazing.
You also seemed to miss this post I made:
“I think you missed my point a la sarcasm. I was simply indicating that it is silly to assume an application won’t get ported to Windows because Linux developers won’t do it. I only used Windows zealots as an example because they had not been discussed yet. Equal time, I say.”
So again, what knowledge (basic truth or practical precept) of a person does one automatically attribute to a Linux zealot that can’t be attributed to any zealot?
If you can look up a word and still not understand its meaning then I am of unfortunately little use to you; either you’re a foolish or you choose to be intentionally foolish.
Generally speaking, ambiguity stems from lack of context. You provided no context when you stated,
I provided sufficient information that in the context of the thread seems perfectly sensible to me because I use the threaded view, you simply responded in a hyper-defensive manner due to the myopia of your own participation because you assumed that I was talking about some specific aspect of your post rather than the pointless back-and-forth that is plainly irrelevant because the explicit and assumed premises of twenex’s argument are confused.
Nobody was talking about “degrees” of zealotry.
If Linux zealots were halfway bad as Mac zealots, Firefox and Thunderbird and OpenOffice and cygwin would NEVER have been ported to Windows.
Yeah, because we all know Windows zealots don’t exist, and if they did they wouldn’t port those apps.
In my experience Windows zealots are closed-source zealots.
That’s funny. How would an open source zealot be anymore motivated to develop for a closed source platform than a closed source zealot develop for a closed source platform?
Here there is a clear hierarchy of zealousness being stated to exist by twenex. It relies on the relationship between the “open source zealot” and the “linux zealot” (overlapping groups) presupposes a correlation between zealotry and the porting of software (which is then attributed to a greater degree to Mac zealots), presents the implication that Linux zealots are of a lesser degree than Mac zealots because they port software to Windows, while Mac zealots do not. In response a counterexample of the Windows zealot is presented to place the Linux and Mac zealot on “equal footing.” The conflation of “open source zealot” and “linux zealot” is further perpetuated to further the notion that Windows zealots do not explain the existence of such ports thus reaffirming the position that Mac zealots are “worse” than Linux zealots because they do in fact port this software to Windows. The “open source zealot” switch is then accepted and then the question turns to why an open source developer would be more likely to develop for a closed platform than “closed source zealot,” further straying the subject into a different realm and switching the subject from open source software to software in general as twenex implies rather obviously that “closed source zealots” don’t develop open source software.
To which I state the whole argument is pointless because it relies on various flawed premises, state the motivation for the “open source zealot” to develop for closed platforms, mention the long-standing precedent to highlight the separation between the platform zealots and open source developers, and finish by mentioning the confusion between developers and linux zealots that underlies twenex’s original comment and thus the entire useless argument.
In fact, my statements serve to support that there isn’t any connection. A Windows zealot has no problem porting free software, so obviously there’s no connection.
Suggesting that a Windows zealot has no problem porting free software does nothing to suggest that there is no relationship between platform zealotry and the porting of aforementioned software. All it serves to accomplish is to counter the assertion that linux zealots are responsible for such porting by suggesting that Windows zealots could perform the porting, thus sewing doubt as to the original assertion as to why Linux zealots are not as bad as Mac zealots.
I still don’t think you have any idea what was being discussed evidenced by your recent comments
I am starting to think that despite participating in this discussion yourself you aren’t aware of the actual discussion. An idea that truly perplexes me.
‘I am of unfortunately little use’
I concur.
‘Here there is a clear hierarchy of zealousness’
Clear within the range of “bad” to “good” but not within the range of zealotry. Twenex didn’t say, “If Linux zealots were half as zealous as Mac zealots.” You can keep that leap of logic to yourself.
‘To which I state the whole argument is pointless because it relies on various flawed premises’ … ‘Suggesting that a Windows zealot has no problem porting free software does nothing to suggest that there is no relationship between platform zealotry and the porting of aforementioned software.’
To which I state you’re still not getting it. I mean, you almost get it.
‘All it serves to accomplish is to counter the assertion that linux zealots are responsible for such porting by suggesting that Windows zealots could perform the porting’
Yes. That’s all I wanted to accomplish, but of course that isn’t enough for you. Brilliant!
‘thus sewing doubt as to the original assertion as to why Linux zealots are not as bad as Mac zealots.’
No. I didn’t say anything about Linux zealots not being as bad as Mac zealots. I don’t know how you arrive at this conclusion. This again markedly demonstrates you don’t understand what I was saying, hence my defensive post. Another recap for the impaired:
[sarcastic tone]
1. “Yeah, because we all know Windows zealots don’t exist, and if they did they wouldn’t port those apps.”
2. “I was simply indicating that it is silly to assume an application won’t get ported to Windows because Linux developers won’t do it.”
3. “Someone’s porting the applications to Windows, and as far as I can tell it’s Windows platform developers (even if some of them just happen to also be open source developers).”
4. “I don’t see the [unlikeliness] of a closed source zealot developing open source software on a closed source platform.”
Now for what you said:
“Part of the whole point is that free software can go where the users are” … “a large number of people use Windows, and yet still desire free software.” – That’s pretty much what I covered in quote #3.
If you had simply left out: “This argument relies too much on a false premises.” this whole extracurricular debate would not have taken place. All you did was expand on what I was already saying but with a monologue about free software.
‘An idea that truly perplexes me.’
Don’t hurt yourself.
“ROTFL. Oh, please. If there are more Linux zealots than Mac zealots, perhaps it’s because more people can AFFORD (and therefore USE) Linux?”
I think it would be more accurate to say the percentage and not the numbers are higher. There are more Linux zealots out there because there are more Linux users out there. And there are more Windows zealots because of the vastly larger number of Windows users. From my experiences the percentage of zealots seems to be consistently distributed across the spectrum. 🙂
From my experiences the percentage of zealots seems to be consistently distributed across the spectrum. 🙂
I’d agree with that, though if you mean that then you’ve mixed up:
the percentage and not the numbers are higher.
OK, what I was trying to say is that the percentage of zealots seems to be about the same regardless of the OS. This would mean that the more popular OS would numerically have more zealots because it has more users. Personally, I have never found one OS that would do everything I want to do. Though I have to admit if BeOS had been able to continue it might have come close by now. 🙂
Just like some PC’s some Mac’s are going to have problems, hardware or software. Macs are more expensive due to developmental costs. Less people use it so R&D has to push more money into it. That’s mainly the reason why more developers like windows, because more units will be sold = More money. I have noticed that Mac hardware has dropped in quality and I hope at some point Apple will address it. I’m not as upset as the author, because I’ve seen my fair share of bad PC equipment. I enjoy using MAC OS X alot more than Windows or Linux. I use my MAC for video editing, music recording and photo stuff. I use my Linux box for servers and routers and my Windows box? We’ll, if its not running games, I personally think Windows is useless to me. Each platform can do something better than another as well as each OS. It’s entirely up to you. I agree about DRM, but Microsoft does it too. Yes Apple does things that piss me off, but so does Microsoft and sometimes Linux too. I love Macs, but when a day comes that it doesn’t do the things I want them to do, I simply vote with my feet. Companies change, their products change and I change. Welcome to the IT industry!
I finally made the switch to a dual core mac mini a few weeks ago.
I tried to make a go of it at work, as I was going to use the MS remote desktop functions to do any windows applications that I had to use.
Further, as I was already using OOo, thunderbird, firefox, etc., I figured the learning curve to be minimal (it was, Mac’s are simple that way).
And, OK, maybe I switched with the Intel inside too early. Thunderbird wasn’t native, camino was (and seemed nice)….but overall, with 512mb ram, performance was not good, not good at all, considering even the mac mini has decent hardware.
But the worse part was OOo, holy crap is that suite bad on MAC. OK Neooffice might be an option when ready for intel, but in the meantime I have to deal with super slow performance, accessing in through the “x” icon on the dock, and NOT the OOo icon. Plus the fonts look like crap, same as Damn Small Linux (not a knock for them, but the mac should be better!). Apple should spend some time making OOo better on Mac, even if it pisses off MS.
I had other issues, like not the remote desktop not working as well as I had hoped, and limited to one connection at a time.
So, out with the mac at work, in with the used Small form factor XP machine, older P4 2ghz. And, I’m back to a fast machine running my fav opensource apps and remote desktop the way it is designed to…..and guess what? I just realized that I have only 256mb installed at the moment!
So, having done the mac thing (I am going to give it some time, using it at home), I don’t quite get it. It’s not the uber linux type system that some say, it’s not better than XP for productivity (with similar specs), if one is familar with XP. Hopefully it is good at media stuff, as that would be my home use….if it isn’t, I’ll have to sell it to a mac-head on ebay!
And, OK, maybe I switched with the Intel inside too early. Thunderbird wasn’t native, camino was (and seemed nice)….but overall, with 512mb ram, performance was not good, not good at all, considering even the mac mini has decent hardware.
You should have gotten a PowerPC mini, which would have done everything you wanted, including a more native OOo (Neoffice/J) or MS Office if you wanted.
If you go for the early adopter stuff, you have to live with the headaches.
There IS a thunderbird for Macintels BTW ( http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/X86_software )
And why replace it with a Windows PC when you could dual boot Windows ?
Quote from Tyr.:
You should have gotten a PowerPC mini, which would have done everything you wanted, including a more native OOo (Neoffice/J) or MS Office if you wanted.
If you go for the early adopter stuff, you have to live with the headaches.
There IS a thunderbird for Macintels BTW ( http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/X86_software )
And why replace it with a Windows PC when you could dual boot Windows ?
End Quote
Ah, yes, Boot Camp
Interesting, but I always knew that if the Mac worked well, I would want to look at virtualization. But, why buy an expensive XP or XP pro license when you can buy a used small form factor WITH the XP pro license for less. I did the math, dual boot made no sense.
The problem / benefit with Macs is that they don’t lose value quickly….I might have tried the g4 mini….but if it’s not heavily discounted, but go with a decidedly slower processor. The good news is that if I sell, I haven’t lost much, and gained the knowledge of trying!
Well, you’ll probably be missing out on the good stuff: You see, you tried to use the same applications for OSX (OO.o, Thunderbird, Firefox) as exists for Windows or Linux. It does sometimes work but not always. In the case of OO.o, the port just plain stinks.
I’m betting you were also grumbling a bit about why it’s so hard to run apps maximized in OSX when it’s so easy in XP. 🙂 There are reasons for that.
The thing with OSX is that if apps are not written in Cocoa, they just run like crap or sometimes about adequately, but the experience would be no better than when using XP. You are not taking advantage of OSX at all.
You could try using Pages instead of OO.o, an application written in Cocoa which takes full advantage of OSX capabilities. It’s a jillion times faster and offers better text rendering. It imports Word documents very quickly and can convert them to PDF much better than OO.o can. Really it’s like night and day. Of course it’s not open source, but that’s how things are.
Or study the power of the deceptively simple TextEdit, the “equivalent” to Windows’ Wordpad, except it does a whole lot more, like read Word documents and export to PDF, built in spell checking and can use OSX services to almost extend it to be a full word processor.
Try some Cocoa based apps. I assure you they run much better than most ported apps that are not cocoa-fied. A good one could be Camino, which is a cocoa-fied Firefox.
Or to see the real power of Cocoa, download the demo version of Omnigraffle and try making a few charts in it. Where would you find such an app for XP?
Try using Preview.app to edit PDFs, copy/paste images from here to there to anywhere in Pages or TextEdit or make new images. It’s beautiful and only OSX can do this. So many things are so fast and easy to do which are nearly impossible or difficult without extensions in XP. Unfortunately you won’t discover that within the first five minutes. It takes weeks and months to discover all the details.
Oh, and learn the keyboard shortcuts. There are a ton of them.
Edited 2006-05-10 22:15
Oh, and learn the keyboard shortcuts. There are a ton of them.
I’ve made this point before, but it’s too good not to make again, expanded.
I thought Macs were meant to eliminate esoteric keyboarding? [such as “copy file” to do the dishes, I mean, copy a file] So why does the Mac have not only esoteric keyboard shortcuts, but esoteric keys? Command-V (or is it Option-V?) for Paste? Where in the word “paste” is there a letter V?
Is there even a consistent difference between the use of Alt, Ctrl, Command and Option?
And how can users too stupid to use a two- or three- or ten-button mouse ever be expected to cope with an 80+ key keyboard?
So why does the Mac have not only esoteric keyboard shortcuts, but esoteric keys? Command-V (or is it Option-V?) for Paste? Where in the word “paste” is there a letter V?
Since these particular shortcuts were first used on the mac it is the rest of the world that’s esoteric. Also “V” looks like a mark you would make an paper to indicate an insertion between 2 words, not to mention it is right next to the keys for cut and copy.
Also “V” looks like a mark you would make an paper to indicate an insertion between 2 words, not to mention it is right next to the keys for cut and copy.
Which is so blatantly obvious that I had to ask.
Since these particular shortcuts were first used on the mac it is the rest of the world that’s esoteric.
That’s like saying that all extant democracies are esoteric, because they’re representative democracies and the Ancient Greeks, being the first to develop democracy, used the direct form.
Edited 2006-05-10 23:38
Is there even a consistent difference between the use of Alt, Ctrl, Command and Option?
I can’t cover it all, but here are some examples:
Ctrl-key works with shells. This is very nice, because Ctrl-C is a common operation in a shell to stop a program. Unfortunately on standard PC keyboards, this collides with the Copy shortcut.
Doesn’t on a Mac keyboard, since the Cmd-key is mapped to such operations.
Ctrl-key can also alter the behaviour of the keyboard navigation keys
It even behaves like old-style UNIX cursor navigation and text editing with Ctrl+F, B, D, etc. in normal text fields.
Alt-key provides alternate chars for letters.
Alt-key also alters the behavior of the mouse buttons and is sometimes used in combination
Cmd-key is basically what Ctrl does on a PC keyboard. It provides access to most keyboard shortcuts. It’s also what you press to call up popup menus when you have a one-button mouse.
I think the design is very consistent and complete. There is no “Windows-key”, a key that you only use for a few things under Windows, where the Cmd-Alt-Ctrl trio provides hundreds of combinations to access things through the keyboard.
And how can users too stupid to use a two- or three- or ten-button mouse ever be expected to cope with an 80+ key keyboard?
They don’t have to. They’ll use a one button mouse to slowly navigate the menus and press the clearly labeled buttons, icons, etc. They have almost the same amount of access as those who know all the keyboard shortcuts.
The rest of us who know what we’re doing can hook up a 27 button mouse and an airplane cockpit for a keyboard.
OSX scales very well with the skill of the user.
They don’t have to. They’ll use a one button mouse to slowly navigate the menus and press the clearly labeled buttons, icons, etc. They have almost the same amount of access as those who know all the keyboard shortcuts.
You’re forgetting that some people use the keyboard to type! 🙂
There are probably more touch-typists in the world than efficient three-button-mousers like myself.
What I always tell people when teaching them the X, C, V tricks is the X looks like scissors, so you’d cut, the C means copy, and the V looks like a glue bottle tip that you’d paste with.
I personally never use those as I use a touchstream. Even if I wasn’t using the touchstream, I use the dvorak layout, so those are weird shortcuts for me anyway.
So why the round base ? I think the look of Apple computers brings something essential, a presence, a sense of style, personality. This is something sorely lacking from PCs, even your Shuttle. I’ve seen them up close – nice, but put one next to a mini in a store and see which one people walk up to to touch.
All the best computers had personality, the c64, Amiga and Apples (at least the Macintosh and everything since the original iMac). This is also why people are still keeping their Amigas and Apple Cubes and yet throw out their PC’s regularly. When was the last time you heard someone say “I have a vintage Dell” ?
I can’t believe how often this argument is used, as if style or “personality” mattered at all for _getting work done_. You know it’s pretty much straw man time when you are pulling out the “but but it looks better!” arguments.
People can walk up and touch a mac mini because the rest of the Linux (and even Windows) world is busy working and not caring about the specific tint and shade of their case.
I can’t believe how often this argument is used, as if style or “personality” mattered at all for _getting work done_. You know it’s pretty much straw man time when you are pulling out the “but but it looks better!” arguments.
People can walk up and touch a mac mini because the rest of the Linux (and even Windows) world is busy working and not caring about the specific tint and shade of their case.
Yeah that’s why case-modding is big-business and skinning is considered an essential part of every interface these days, because people don’t want their computer to have style and personality.
Your home doesn’t need personality or style to live in it, but it makes it a hell of a bit nicer. Why not do the same for your computer, you spend enough time in front of it (well I do at least).
I can’t believe how often this argument is used, as if style or “personality” mattered at all for _getting work done_.
“Style” and “personality” have nothing to do with driving from home to the office, yet people make their car purchasing decisions based on precisely those factors.
“Style” and “personality” have nothing to do with covering our genitalia, keeping us from freezing to death, or getting work done at the office, yet people make their clothing purchases based on precisely those factors.
“Style” and “personality” have nothing to do with keeping a roof over your head, keeping you dry and safe at night, yet people make their home buying decisions based on precisely those factors.
Why should we consider things like style and personality in every other thing we purchase and choose to surround ourselves with, EXCEPT for computers?
Do you throw a hissy fit when someone supplies you with a bog-standard biro or, Jobs forbid, a pencil?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t stare at a pencil all day.
Besides, Apple’s industrial design is more than just good looks. It’s also about usability and ergonomics. It’s one of the reasons the iPod is so successful. The last two Macs that I’ve owned I can open up to upgrade RAM or hard drives within literally a second (without tools) and physically make the upgrade within seconds more because Apple does an intelligent job of laying out its motherboard components. In other words, Apple generally adheres to clean designs, inside and out. That attention to detail will obviously cost a few more dollars.
Most new dells come with same easy access features, I used a dell pc at work in 2000 and it was jus as easy as our g3 and g4 towers to work on, and that was 6 years ago
That’s one thing Apple needs to learn – I didn’t particularly like my Dell Inspiron 3800 laptop (hate Windows, can’t make Linux see the wireless card), but I did like the little drawer on the side, that held the hard drive. I bought a larger drive, unscrewed one large screw, and pulled the old drive out. I replaced the old drive with the new one, partitioned, formatted, and installed my OSes, and was done.
Try installing a hard drive in an iBook… I’d still rather use the iBook 101 times out of 100.
It’s true that the attention to detail in hardware is variable across PC clonemakers, but then that would be true if there were Apple clones, too. A lot of people seem to think Apple HW is getting shoddier.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t stare at a pencil all day.
I don’t stare at the case all day, either. The monitor, yes. I have a nice setup on the KDE desktop, imo.
“A lot of people seem to think Apple HW is getting shoddier.”
A throw-away statement. Consumer Reports would disagree.
“I don’t stare at the case all day, either. The monitor, yes.”
Sometimes people want to stare at both to save space: iMac.
Under this monitor is a SparcStation 20. Damn sight bigger than an iMac2 base. Hardly gets noticed.
You picked on someone because of their argument for social commonplace and acceptance of design. Just what are you trying to add by stating you have a SparcStation 20? Sun’s Sparc line isn’t commodity hardware. Sun takes as much pride in their industrial design as Apple. I bet, “Hardly gets noticed” is just the comment Sun wants to hear from its users about its design.
Personally, I prefer the Sun Fire T2000. I don’t have any preference for their workstation models.
I run it as a hobby. I use the PCs for real work.
The chorus of people who seemed to think that Macs were high class, and that buying them was a route to social mobility, was astounding. Could there really be so many people who were so naive about how social class really works in America? And could so many of them be Mac users? I shivered a bit at the thought. You could understand why Hypercard had withered, if this was now Apple’s target market.
Apple’s market share was always on the rise, but never actually increased much. It was always going to dethrone Microsoft, maybe next year. It was said to have 15-20% of the installed base, though it only had had 3% of shipments for years. (Don’t ask if this is even possible). This obviously showed shipments were not a reasonable measure of market share and meant nothing. It must be some kind of anti-Apple conspiracy to continue recording them.
That is pretty funny. I don’t know if the numbers are true or not, but it sounds plausible.
How does Thom manage to find these writers who write long winded articles that make no sense by people who have no real experience with Macs? Especially current Macs? It’s just amazing. Whats this about Mac people and BMW’s? Some sort of fascination? Thats just plain weird. I’ve been using Macs since 1984 and never noticed any such thing probably because it doesn’t exist. Then he trots out the old faithful strawmen such as one button mice that are easily replaced or Mac users being mean on forums. Puh-lease. If i wanted to take the time to dissect all the mistakes in this article and explaining why they are wrong it would be longer than the original article.
Last week I got a C64 (breadbox) for my Commodore collection..
if you know the MMC64, its a SD/MMC cartridge that can load games from D64 images/ and plays SID music..
(a 1GB SD can hold about 6000 disk images…
” )
my commies still work.. (the tech manuals did a GREAT job)
no installations, no virus, no complicated OS/software, no worries about security..
I don’t need a (new) mac.. but I need a (native) C= core for my C-one..
Off-topic, but I just use an emulator and one of these great retro-joysticks : http://www.vesalia.de/e_competitionusb.htm
There’s simply no substitute for being able to use a real joystick for your retro gaming pleasure 🙂
I got a million of reasons to disagree with this person …..
I do not think this article is acceptable ….too bias …..too personnal ….
He is acting like the guy saying what should the computer do for me more than what can I do with this computer ,,,,,Think about this …..
Aramis
Until I read the last page (pure gold for crybabies). Shame on you.
Grats to the author for being a truly pathetic person. The author must be proud of himself to have posted an article entirely composed of whining, moaning and meaningless drivel.
Not one of you has managed to refute his arguments.
A Mac Mini comparable to a similarly-priced PC?
BWHAHAHAHAH!
And WHY do I have to pay the FULL PRICE for an OS *upgrade*?
And WHY do I have to pay the FULL PRICE for an OS *upgrade*?
Because they have to pay someone to create it for you?
It’s still cheaper than a new Windows version (assuming there is a new Windows version someday. XP only seems cheap since doesn’t have to be replaced for 5+ years.)
It’s still cheaper to upgrade a registered version of Windows than it is to buy it. Yes, I know Microsoft could probably bring the price of an upgrade down to £2 or even $2 and not make much of a dent, but that isn’t the point.
The point is that Apple have forced people to upgrade to a new architecture twice in 10 years, three times in fifteen. That’s the equivalent of switching from XP to Linux, then from Linux on the PC to Linux on the PowerMac, then from Linux on the PowerMac to OS X on the PowerMac. Except much more expensive.
It gets even worse if you go back in time to ’84. Yes, Apple did provide an upgrade path for LISA customers, but for the value of $10,000 in the early eighties I should damn well THINK so. They also made the Apple II more Mac-like. But AFAIK they never provided a Mac that could run Apple][ programs. In fact it was the distinct lack of Apple][ compatibility that sunk the Apple///
“The point is that Apple have forced people to upgrade to a new architecture twice in 10 years,”
Odd, when was anyone forced to upgrade? I’m happily using a G4 Powerbook right now and I don’t see anyone from Apple dragging me to the Apple Store to buy a new machine. Looks like you can even still buy G4 and G5 computers from the Apple store. Heck, they’re even releasing all of their software as “universal” binaries specifically so you don’t have to upgrade. Where is this “forcing” occurring exactly?
Well, it’s more to do with peripherals and other software.
Get a new version of Photoshop that doesn’t work on old hardware? upgrade. (OK, MS is as bad for this as Apple).
Going from SCSI to IDE? Tough. ADB to USB? ditto. Notice that you don’t get the same benefits as PC users, for one thing because (for example) ADB and USB are both designed to be plug and play (whereas serial ports weren’t); for another because not nearly the same amount of hardware is released with Mac compatibility.
“The point is that Apple have forced people to upgrade to a new architecture twice in 10 years, three times in fifteen.”
Nope, only two. 680×0->PowerPC in 1995 or so was the only other Mac hardware transition.
” But AFAIK they never provided a Mac that could run Apple][ programs.”
They actually sold an Apple II compatibility card. I remember running Apple II software on the old Macs in grade school.
I only skimmed the article so I can’t comment on what the writer said. All I can say is that Windows annoys me to no end and Mac OS X doesn’t. And while yes, you don’t have the near-limitless choice or rock-bottom prices (though I find that consumer-level Macs to hold a decent value), I’m perfectly happy with my iBook. It’s a tradeoff, and some people are willing to take it. </Capt. Obvious>
“And WHY do I have to pay the FULL PRICE for an OS *upgrade*?”
Since XP professional is much closer to OS X than XP home is I can only presume you prefer to pay $200 to upgrade Windows over $130 to upgrade OS X…
Oh, and I forgot, with the $200 you have to be able to prove you have a previous version of Windows, since it is only an upgrade and not the full version, and you are REQUIRED to activate it with MS if you want to use it longer than 30 days.
And you are forgetting that if you want to take that version of Windows, uninstall it, and then install it on a different machine you have to jump through the hoops. Yeah, that Windows update is a real bargain.
You’re welcome to read my other posts, at least one of which will tell you, I don’t run Windows either. I don’t like it, never have, (AmigaOS without memory protection crashed less than “Windows Be-all-and-end-all Spend-the-military-budget-of-a-small-European-country-to-launch-it, AKA Windows95) and thank God, don’t have any use for Windows-only software, except at work.
All I have to do to buy OSX is buy a £500+ computer to go along with it.
//You’re welcome to read my other posts, at least one of which will tell you, I don’t run Windows either. I don’t like it, never have … AKA Windows95)//
Uh … Windows has changed just a *tad* from 95 to XP SP2.
You don’t have to prove anything when you upgrade windows, as the install detects the exisiting install of windows and UPGRADES it, how simple is that? IF you don’t have windows installed, and try to use and upgrade disk, you are SOL, but that is because it is an upgrade disk.
You also do not have to jump through hoops to install your copy of windows on a new machine, you just install it and let it activate over the net, no hoops required. If you are being sneaky you can actually install it on several machines, just not at the same time. if you install it on new hardware more than x times in a given time period (I can’t remember the criteria, as I only ran into the limit once, and was rebuilding my computer like a madman, I believe it was 6 or 7 times), you have to phone them, say the computer died, and they will give you a new code, 2-3 minutes total time on phone.
So it seems obvious to me that you have never upgraded a windows xp box lately, or have never have at all.
How does that relate, in any way, to the monetary cost of upgrading? Well, there’s phone calls, I suppose.
Sorry, got the wrong end of the stick. Ignore just above.
“You don’t have to prove anything when you upgrade windows, as the install detects the exisiting install of windows and UPGRADES it, how simple is that? IF you don’t have windows installed, and try to use and upgrade disk, you are SOL, but that is because it is an upgrade disk.”
OK, let’s see how far you get user your method after replacing the HD with a brand new larger HD and doing a clean install of the upgrade. With OS X all I have to do is boot from the CD and off I go. But then why would anyone ever need to do a clean install of Windows.
The $130 OS X does not provide a price break for previous versions, true. But when you go out and pay $300 for the full XP Pro you expect to be able to upgrade when the time comes. And $200 for the upgrade version is no bargain either.
I got my first Mac in ’86 and I’ve had a bunch since (mostly refurbs) including a IIfx, a Cube, and a couple of clones.
When I got back into programming seriously (early 90’s), Mac was what I had. I wrote a lot of shareware in 680×0 assembler, and was a major league Mac evangelist (5 years straight as a User Group president.)
Somehow things changed until it just isn’t fun to be part of it any more. OSX was a major disappointment: my last fulltime Mac job involved porting to OSX 10.0 (neither my project, my development tools, or (realistically) the OS were really usable before 10.2.) Most of the new, hyped, 3rd party hardware and software turned out to be tenth rate and barely supported. Apple hardware quality has massively deteriorated in the last 10 years, and all the cool new technology (from Cocoa on)… it’s hard to get excited about stuff I can’t use because it supports the latest version of OS X only (a small part of a small market.)
I’ve had to work on Windows a lot to make a living, and I’m not a big fan of that either. Linux now has everything I need except a market for my work; if I didn’t have to sell bytes for a living, I’d be perfectly happy there. When my G5 finally dies, I may be done with Apple too.
You wouldn’t happen to still have that IIfx, would you?
I’m so glad that we can have a fair discussion about comparing a brand new PC with Windows XP with a beige Mac tower which was likely from the pre-1997 era.
All I could gather from the five-plus pages is that the author was bitter for spending loads of money on really old Macs with outdated software when he could have followed what most of us have successfully done: Use what we have and keep following the Mac market until a compelling new system comes out that meets all of our needs.
I may not have spent as much money on Macs as the author (I have owned over six Macs) but I only bought a system when I found a good price/performance mix. I can’t believe the author bought a beige Mac tower in 2002; That’s magnitudes worse than the poor sap who buys a Mac two weeks before a major Macworld Expo (and Apple releases a better system for the same price).
That being said, the Windows PC that I built from scratch cost me about $299 and my Linux server cost me about $249. I use the Windows box for the two or three non-Mac games I like (two of which have recently been ported to the Mac) and my Linux server just hums along doing its daily tasks. However, when I come home I jump onto my Apple Powerbook because it does everything I need for video/music/web, and the nightly World of Warcraft itch.
Over all I thought this was a good article, even if I don’t agree with all your conclusions.
In particular, if you sign on to any of the News Groups specific to almost any OS you will be greeted with the same problem you noted on the Mac forums. Post any comment that can be construed to be negative and you will be attacked. So in that respect it is not a Mac only phenomenon.
As for price you have to look at what you want to use the system for. For some people the included software can make up for the difference in cost between Mac and Window PC’s. I leave out Linux here because it still has a ways to go to be ready for the average non computer literate person.
For what I use my Mac for the cost of the software I would have to buy under Windows would totally offset the extra cost of the Mac. I have used both platforms for what I do and have found the Mac to be far easier and so I get the job done quicker.
Windows can be quite stable as long as you set it up and leave it alone. If you start adding and removing a lot of software you better know how to maintain it, which the average user does not. I work on Windows systems that have been running for a number of years without having to be reinstalled. These are the systems that are used for the same routine tasks everyday and do not have the software constantly changing.
As for buying a new Mac, I will wait until time to buy a new system before deciding. If I am still into my video/audio editing projects I will probably get another Mac. If I am no longer doing that I may consider building my own system again and going with Linux. Anyway, I enjoyed your article.
In particular, if you sign on to any of the News Groups specific to almost any OS you will be greeted with the same problem you noted on the Mac forums. Post any comment that can be construed to be negative and you will be attacked. So in that respect it is not a Mac only phenomenon.
Now THAT is true.
As for price you have to look at what you want to use the system for. For some people the included software can make up for the difference in cost between Mac and Window PC’s. I leave out Linux here because it still has a ways to go to be ready for the average non computer literate person.
I’ll leave out Macs, because I don’t know much about using them.
Windows is at least as unready for the desktop as Linux is now (maybe not in the past, but now).
Oh, I’ll openly admit that if I standardized the family on Linux, I’d be doing most of the administration.
So why is a distro that has almost no graphical administration tools (Ubuntu) growing so rapidly, when there are so many distros with YaSTs and DiskDrakes coming out their ears?
Depending on the computer I’m using, I use Gentoo (harder, if probably less time-consuming, than Ubuntu to configure) or SuSE (easier than Ubuntu to configure, though YaST is pretty slow.
My family have been using PCs for about ten years now. Before that it was Amigas. (R.I.P.) My parents can use (MS) Office, Outlook Express, IE, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Photoshop, Illustrator, IncrediMail, Firefox, and Thunderbird. My father can defragment his PC. When their email had to be set up to use the same settings in TB as IncrediMail, it fell to me to do it. If there’s something they and I don’t know how to do, it falls to me to grope around menus looking for it.
In short, I standardized my family on Windows, and I’m still doing most of the administration.
If the “average desktop user” is using Windows, then the average desktop user is acquainted with people in whose company they could cope with Linux. Maybe not Slackware, but some Linux.
It looked like a well written article to me…
I have never used a desktop mac and probably never will as :
1) I like to tinker with the inside of my comp.
2) I dislike paying premiums for looks/brand/hype (at least for comps parts).
3) I dislike the “we are better than windows/linux users” attitude.
4a) windows xp works fine and is quite stable.
4b) There is more (commercial/leaders) software on windows than on Mac/linux/etc…
4c) There are more people using windows and probably more people developping for windows
5) I think that Apple will be in a pinch after people start buying less ipods (competition is bound to gain ground in the mp3 player market) and what will they do next (won’t their difficulties endanger their software market/etc..) ?
6) I get the feeling that people using macs are spoiled (mac=it just works
) so, when they are confronted with a problem, they are at a loss…
(whereas windows users have a long history of surviving problems…lol…what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger !)
“(whereas windows users have a long history of surviving problems…lol…what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger !)”
Actually, you are incorrect on this point. It doesn’t make the average Windows user stronger, it gives me a little extra cash and makes me stronger. 🙂
“(whereas windows users have a long history of surviving problems…lol…what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger !)”
>Actually, you are incorrect on this point. It doesn’t >make the average Windows user stronger, it gives me a >little extra cash and makes me stronger. 🙂
True ! My asumption was only correct for the windows people who like to build/set up their comp.
It isn’t true at all for the average joe user.
🙂
“>Actually, you are incorrect on this point. It doesn’t >make the average Windows user stronger, it gives me a >little extra cash and makes me stronger. 🙂
True ! My asumption was only correct for the windows people who like to build/set up their comp.
It isn’t true at all for the average joe user.
🙂 ”
What I get the biggest kick out of is going to someone’s house when they have a problem and they tell me they have been on the phone with “Tech Support” for hours and couldn’t resolve the problem. Had one the other day. Went in and looked up the device in Device Manager. Item was disabled. Uncheck box and system works fine. Total time about 60 seconds. I think Tech Support is a bigger problem than what OS is running inside.
2) I dislike paying premiums for looks/brand/hype (at least for comps parts).
Personal preference, but I don’t think the premium is that high.
3) I dislike the “we are better than windows/linux users” attitude.
Untrue. (IMHO)
4a) windows xp works fine and is quite stable.
Opinions vary wildly on this one, that’s all I’m going to say.
4b) There is more (commercial/leaders) software on windows than on Mac/linux/etc…
But there’s still enough for OSX if you’re not afraid to try something different.
4c) There are more people using windows and probably more people developping for windows
1.3 billion chinese eat dog
5) I think that Apple will be in a pinch after people start buying less ipods
I don’t think that will happen, even if it does they have money in the bank a good reputation (vs MS) and creative people. They’ll manage.
[/i]6) I get the feeling that people using macs are spoiled (mac=it just works
) so, when they are confronted with a problem, they are at a loss…[/i]
Among the mac-guys I know there are 3 unix sys-admins (counting myself 🙂 That’s an unfair generalisation.
“6) I get the feeling that people using macs are spoiled (mac=it just works
) so, when they are confronted with a problem, they are at a loss… ”
Let’s see, according to the latest Consumer Reports survey Apple tops the list in Tech Support again. They also came in with needing the fewest repairs in the desktop category and were only one point below Sony and IBM in the laptop category. That would seem to indicate they have reason for that attitude. And when my keyboard went bad on me while under warranty they shipped a replacement out at their expense the next morning. And I was not at a loss about what to do.
“6) I get the feeling that people using macs are spoiled (mac=it just works
) so, when they are confronted with a problem, they are at a loss… ”
>Let’s see, according to the latest Consumer Reports >survey Apple tops the list in Tech Support again. They >also came in with needing the fewest repairs in the >desktop category and were only one point below Sony and >IBM in the laptop category. That would seem to indicate >they have reason for that attitude. And when my keyboard >went bad on me while under warranty they shipped a >replacement out at their expense the next morning. And I >was not at a loss about what to do.
Lol man, you don’t get the point at all !!!!!!!!!!
This isn’t about customer service.
When my comp breaks, I diagnose the problem then I go buy another part myself and I set it up (the hardware and software parts)….
Whereas I think (if I’m not mistaken) that you are entirely relying on Apple support if your comps breaks
(opening it voids the warranty, right ? ).
If your comp doesn’t start anymore, you have to send it to Apple support and wait for them to repair it and send it you again, right ?
4a) windows xp works fine and is quite stable.
>>Opinions vary wildly on this one, that’s all I’m going to say.
Well, staying up for 2 months is enough for me
Don’t need more for my desktop.
That sentence wouldn’t be true If I was running a server (I would then use linux or solaris or a bsd).
4c) There are more people using windows and probably more people developping for windows
1.3 billion chinese eat dog
Well…dog might actually be good. Rats too. I’ll have to taste it if I go to china…
Hey…I’m french and I eat snails and frogs. So I guess I score the point here
What I meant was that…the more people/developper that use an oses…the more you are likely to see new software sprouting/being available.
I mean…it motivates (there is money to be made) the developpers to code for the platform
>Among the mac-guys I know there are 3 unix sys-admins >(counting myself 🙂 That’s an unfair generalisation.
Man…you aren’t the average mac using person…(I am quite sure that you are much better than me at comps as it’s your job and I’m a maths teacher)
Remember that the people that read osnews or slashdots article are usually a bit more knowledgeable about comps (we are all geeks !
)that the people out there 
Just watch the new Apple commercials. That’s why a lot of people buy Macs and BMWs, They are smarter and more cultured than you and they think you are an idiot for not realizing what a lout you are.
…..waiting for mac mini without on board graphics!
People buy Beemers because 1. they are German and 2. they look like they go fast. I doubt people buy them because it looks good because honestly Beemers dont look that good.
…and you attempt to sell me a “lifestyle,” I’ll be politely showing you the door (although not before expending some considerable effort to remove my boot from your ass).
Kudos sir! Very well stated!
Although, to be fair, I’ve noticed a distressingly similar evolution of the Linux userbase over the last 4 years or so.
I like my Mac because of the OS. I use it for college work which is mainly Java programming but I also write shell and perl scripts. I also write papers on it, browse the web, listen to my music collection, IM, watch films etc. People buy Macs for a whole bunch of reasons. People do stuff with their Macs that people do with their PCs.
I find it ironic that people criticise Mac owners for being elitist and then slag off Mac owners for being slaves to fashion or for choosing form over function.
The two aren’t incompatible. Unlike OSX and Windows.
First off, thanks for the pat on the back of the BeOS community. It was a nice surprise coming across it on page 4.
Contrary to several other commenters’ beliefs, I think the article is generally well-written and is researched sufficiently to make a point. I can come up with various pretty recent examples of the decline in Apple computer quality. However, in order to have avoided some negative comments on your article, having included some positive approaches would have been advisable.
I support your opinion on most claims, although I cannot find myself agreeing with your conclusion, as well as a few minor details.
Other than that… thanks for the interesting read.
My problem with Apple is arrogance, and sometimes hostility, towards it’s own loyal cult.
Examples include:
1. Apple sueing bloggers/journalists from one of the independent Apple sites for publishing info about upcoming releases (that was otherwise secret). Sure, I can appreciate the fact that they want to keep stuff secret until Jobs can look all cool at the Apple show announcing it. Marketing schtick is well understood. But to sue your own supporters, simply because they got leaked info (not their fault) and published it, in enthusiastic support of Apple products, is arrogance and hostility beyond imagination.
2. Apple threatening to sue a user who published a copyrighted picture from an Apple technical manual, when that user discovered why the latest Mac (super duper – forget what product title it had) was badly overheating, and only wanted to show fellow users why, and how to fix it. Apple should have been publicly thanking and rewarding that user, for saving their pathetic @ss, and helping them diagnose a rather inexcusable, pathetic product flaw (so much for the so-called Apple quality hardware). Instead, in the their arrogance and hostility, they threaten to sue the user who helped save their behinds. Disgusting.
3. I hate Steve Jobs. There, I said it. I hate Steve Jobs. He’s a complete @ssh0le. He treats his employes like dog meat, over working them to the bone, then takes all the credit for their slavish work. I’ll give him credit for marketing savvy, however. That’s how he saved Apple from doom – I mean, the iPod and iTunes offer absolutely nothing above and beyond what other similar products do, but Jobs hired U2 and Eminem for iPod commercials, and joila’, iPod is the domminant product in it’s category.
Apple are SCO with a better, shinier product and more sycophantic press.
I chuckled at the BMW analogy, since I have first-hand experience of both. Expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, expensive (or impossible) to get parts for – all with a wiff of cheap burning plastic in the air. Or should that be cheap burning thermal paste?
“I chuckled at the BMW analogy, since I have first-hand experience of both. Expensive to buy, expensive to maintain, expensive (or impossible) to get parts for – all with a wiff of cheap burning plastic in the air. Or should that be cheap burning thermal paste?”
BMW’s come with full service for 5 years. When I had my 3 series I’d take it in just for them to install new wiper blades and top of the fluids. They’d even give me a rental for a day. How exactly is all maintenance included expensive to maintain?
My views are similar in many areas. It was a nice read although it was more a personal comment than an article.
PS: I hate my Macs.
1.Really all it comes to is what you are going to use your computer for. If your going to be running a word processor, then get a PC. However you are planning on running graphic intensive programs or any kind of digital media editing software your going to have to get a mac. Although many PC’s can run editing software none of them will compare with the proformence a mac can get out of it.
2.You really do need to modernize what a mac has. Everything a mac has IS better. All the components are higher end. Thats why they are so expensive.
3.Macs are very upgradable now. They take standard RAM. The only thing that may be considered not standard is the DVI plug for the displays, but even those are becoming standard.
Everything a mac has IS better. All the components are higher end…Macs are very upgradable now. They take standard RAM
So I guess standard RAM has to pass through the famous Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field before it becomes higher end, eh?
you go tiger…
Oh, OSNews guys, please read the article before posting it, the title and article is up there with the best trollable blogs and is totally designed to get over 100 comments… There have been a lot of these comming down the pipeline which have nothing to do with the OS and everything to do with emotion…
well among the comments I somehow note he had a point about mac zealots.
As far as I know the only pc I wanted to buy for style was SGI station.
I’m not a regular user of apple product ( I tried the ipod but soon after switched to a psp ).But I advise some of my friend to buy mac because I know they’ll “feel” safer with this choice.
I’m quite surprised that apple didn’t get sued for monopoly practice for shipping safari/i-life/Quickime with OS-X
with no instruction on how removing safari for example ( a big compagny got sued all over the world for such behavior ) or even quicktime.
I use windows 2000/NT4 at home as they currently are the less bloated and most stable win32 OS, and I did rely on a lot of win32 dev tool to work.
But I strongly believe on the success of linux, because of all the hassle and obcurity windows and mac os will give to users, windows by being more and more restrictive for normal windows users (heck µsoft cannot include a decent firewall because of potential monopoly suit), and OS-X by being bug riddled while offering more and more possibilities to users.
And for a dev, OSX seem like a nightmare, slugish console, GUI Toolkit based on Objective-C rather than C++, limited choice of Platform specific IDE, less than stellar java performance ( anyone working with eclipse on OSX ??), and yeah the only thing OSX server seem good at is storage area.
But somehow Apple got a point, adverage joe would feel safer with a Mac, why ? because he’s limited, thus protected from himself putting garbage on his computer.
oh and I beleive there is an article on osnews about the “RTFM guys” that would lift the same debate about linux.
“It is that Apple as a company behaves in ways that are morally questionable.”
Are you saying that you prefer Microsoft and pay for its products because of it is a morally responsible company? Wow, that makes a lot of sense, especially considering this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/business/2000/microsoft/635689….
http://www.rafferty.org/msschools.php
_______________________________________________________
“[Apple] encourages its most frenzied adherents in offensive utterances and behaviour, and in the expression of abusive snobbery.”
So in your eyes, Microsoft is a collection of humble, endearing engineers who lead by good will and intellectual example. Well, you must have missed this about their CEO:
http://www.ntk.net/media/dancemonkeyboy.mpg
http://www.ntk.net/media/developers.mpg
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4682732953797887474&q=ballm…
______________________________________________________
“Apple is like an extreme right wing political party, that denies racism, while condoning the expression of extreme racist attitudes…”
So you are using abusive and offensive terminology to characterize what you perceive to be someone else’s intolerance. Here’s a word for you – “hypocrite”.
______________________________________________________
“You’ll hear that DRM is fine for Apple to use, though bad for anyone else to use. Because it will help Apple succeed. You’ll hear that for Apple…”
Maybe you should change channels. There are a lot of opinions out there. Choose wisely. Don’t blame Apple because you listened to someone making wild accusations and then turn around to make your own wild accusations.
________________________________________________________
“The quantity of software, the configurability of the system, the helpfulness of user groups, the amount of information available, the cheapness and performance of the hardware.”
Well, I find that Mac users are very helpful in the very same “macfixit or macintouch forums” that you found so disgusting. Quantity of software has nothing to do with quality of software. Besides, Apple hardware is now truly the most compatible hardware out there. There’s a ton of information out there about Apple hardware and software. Again quantity has nothing to do with quality. Finally, you make the same ill-conceived argument about cost. Here’s something that will help you sort things out:
http://www.systemshootouts.org/
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/02/14/pricecomparison2/index.php?…
Basically, you can buy a $300 Windows PC. You cannot buy a $300 Mac. Good for you. However, I doubt that there truly are that many people who end up spending only $300 on their machine. Make the same argument against a high end Dell; why would anybody buy a Dell for $3000 when they can own one for $300? Its about feature parity, longevity, and productivity. The original iMac will run OS X. Your old Win98 machine will not run XP, Longhorn, Vista… An iMac comes with the hardware and software to do video conferencing within minutes out of the box. An iMac handles music, photos, video, web publishing, internet hosting, etc. with ease, and it’s all well integrated. If you don’t believe me, here are some other opinions:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05334/614968.stm
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1369024,00.asp
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1811081,00.asp
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1756079,00.asp
______________________________________________________
“I looked at the industry outside Apple, and was struck by the way that hardware competition had reduced prices and increased availability.”
Do you remember how Intel forced USB ports into PC motherboards in the mid to late 90s? If so, you might also remember that nobody on the Windows side used them until Apple created the USB market by abandoning all legacy ports. Please don’t encourage any more people to buy parallel devices.
______________________________________________________
Finally, one only has to look so far before your rant falls flat on its face:
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-computers/desktops-l…
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117530,00.asp
having read only part of pages 1 and 5, i still feel like i wasted my time. nothing more than some guys overly verbose, very dull rant, why is this on osnews at all?
The author is a troll. I use XP at work; he can not be referring to the same product I use. It rarely crashes the WHOLE system, but the apps do not work well together due to Windows’ poorly documented API’s and switching BETWEEN apps– when they don’t hang–is frequently glacial. Cut and paste– 20 year old technology does NOT work reliably– I never know if I will be able to “cut”, nor if it will paste properly without an error message. And the text handling is HORRIBLY. Doesn’t anybody in Redmond know anything about antialiasing?
I’ve been using windows since windows 3.0, and I have never seen an error message when trying to cut or paste. Perhaps it is the apps you are using, or the way the admin (could be you) mucked up the system. I also use antialiasing on my XP boxes, it’s called cleartype, but needs to be turned on, it’s in the display control panel app, under appearance -> effects. try it.
I like the article, because HE is telling what HE does not like about Mac’s. I like as well, that the article starts about his first Mac and goes on till today.
I used Mac OS X in the past and personaly I don’t like the system. If I would work longer with it, then I would probably start to live with the problems I faced when using Mac OS X or I would realize that they are not real problems. But I don’t want to take the time for learning to work with another system.
I am much more happy with my Linux system (using since 1997 Linux as my main OS).
However… I know people wich are so happy with Mac OS X and are extremly productive with Mac OS X. They know all the shortcuts from the keyboard and mouse and and and… When they work on the Mac, then it is very hard to follow them. They are fast and productive. Putting those people on a Windows or Linux system is no fun. They behave like me on the Mac. They can work, but they are no way that fast as with the Mac.
I accept that and I don’t judge on them. They like Mac OS X and that’s all. They don’t hate Windows or Linux. They just use Mac and are very comfortable with it.
What I disslike about some other Mac users I know is that they allways keep telling me how bad Linux is (they know I use it) and that Mac is the best thing on earth. Okay. That’s fine with me. But why do they keep putting me down with my choice of OS? I am very much open minded and don’t judge on them because of their OS.
The funny thing is, that most of those fanatic Mac users I know are new users on the Mac platform. They worked years and years with PC’s and now, out of nowhere they switched to Mac and they want to tell me that PC’s are bad and Mac’s are god’s gift to the computer user. This are the same people wich where telling me (years agoo) how great and super and whatever… PC’s/Windows is and how bad Unix/Linux is. And now? They use a Unix-Based system and now PC’s are bad. This are the same people wich told me how bad my non-x86 system is and how super-duper their brand new x86 PC’s is (at the time they used it) and then years later they buyed PPC systems and out of nowhere x86 was/is bad and PPC is the best of the best.
You can imagine how much I had to smile, when Apple announced they will switch to x86?
Anyway… I started to disslike all those zealots/fanatics. No matter if Windows, Linux, Mac, whatever… I don’t like them all! If they need a peace of software to enrich their character, then they have no character!
PS: Sorry for my bad english.
PPS: Mac OS X is a nice system. It’s just me who is not comfortable with it. But I never worked more then a bunch of days with it. But I still think, that Mac OS X is a good system. The same goes for Windows or any other OS. I don’t judge some one on his choice of OS. At the end is the person at the keyboard and the mouse who makes the work done on a computer. A perfect system does anyway not exist.
PPPS: A Mac may be more expensive then other systems, but who cares? I have buyed x86 Notebooks from IBM wich where 6’000 CHF and I still work on such a system (after 5 years). If I do the math (6’000 / 12 / 5) then this is about 100 CHF a month. This is nothing! I have earned more money then 100 CHF a month because of using such a system. And I don’t think that Mac are more expensier than that (maybe they where in the past but not today). It all depends how you look at the price.
Yep… the moral of the story is, zealots suck.
I own a Dell Inspiron 5150, Apple Powerbook 12in, and a custom built Athlon 64 box, and a Intel PIV box. All of my X86 machines have or do run SUSE linux, and my powerbook ran Fedora 4 breifly. Overall I have to say that I like my little powerbook the best. Except for the screen it is probably the best built, most stable, and while it isn’t the fastest machine it does get by fast enough. Now, XP is a world ahead of 9X, but it still can’t stay up for 21 days straight like my powerbook and linux machines, and MAC still has more mainstream software then linux.
My Windows XP box has been up for 28 days, no problems, and I took it down to put in more ram, before that it was up for 96 days. I generally use ubuntu, or freebsd, but if your XP box can’t stay up for 21 days, maybe it’s the hardware or the drivers
who cares… another lame article… if you don’t want to buy another “whatever” who gives a crap …really..
Also, why I’ll probably never buy another Mac…It’s hard to resell. Very hard, I still can’t get rid of mine and it’s like new. Lol.
OS News not found.
Pretty good article. A couple good insights that I’ve agreed with for a while. But for some reason americans are bug-eyed cultish about everything – their fairy-tale religions, their politics, the music they like, their skin-color, their dietary habits… I guess it’s only natural that it includes their taste in computer brands.
The author complains that Mac users diss other platforms and then proceeds to flame them (and diss their platform). No wonder the comment count rocketed up. 140 frags (so far) for OSnews. GG. But shallow article.
As a Windows user, I get branded as a comformist.
As a linux user, I get branded as a FOSS zealot.
As a Mac user, I get branded as a stupid, non-techie, just falls for looks user.
As a BSD user, I get branded as an elitist schmuck.
Now, I wonder, which one am I?
These are all just shallow stereotypes. I work as an open source developer, but I am more than happy to pay for a piece of software if I perceive enough value in it. I have built numerous PCs and took pride in the fact that I saved a fair bunch of money by doing it myself. I also bought a PowerBook and thought that it was worth every cent I paid for it.
We need some balance here. The Mac community sucks? I think you’ll find that there are zealots in all the communities out there. Communities are at their best when they first start out. Then it’s all downhill from there as the noise increases.
PCs are ugly/POS/crap quality? I would be offended if someone said that to me. I carefully chose the parts that went in my PCs, and I built them myself. And how about the VAIOs? Don’t they look pretty sweet?
Macs are overpriced and only stupid people would buy them? Well, it’s all about perceived value. I think that my PowerBook is valuable to me, thank you very much. There are plenty of people out there who buy VAIOs, are they stupid as well?
Balance and lucidity. That’s what we need.
Don’t feel too bad.
As a BeOS/Zeta user, I’m branded as ‘living in denial’.
I agree with you completely.
“I’m branded as ‘living in denial’.”
No, that’s Amiga users
To the best of my knowledge, my father still uses a Commodore 64. What stereotype would that be? I’m looking for creative entries.
He’d be branded as a stoned hippie (living in the stoned age
C64 users nowadays would be hairy 30-something HardSID music-scene Germans or hairless Sweed 1337 demo-sceners
As a former mac zealot, I enjoyed the article very much. I’m pleased to say that I learned from my former zealotry.
Now I use GNU/Linux. Most of the reasons I prefer GNU/Linux are completely meaningless to most other people. Most of the reasons I used to suggest Macs were preferable turned out to be meaningless to most other folks too.
No platform is “the best” – they all have pros and cons.
It’s nice that Apple is using commodity hardware these days. Too late for me, but nice.
… but seem to have missed the BMW which was supposed to have come with Apple ownership.
I’d like to upgrade from my 1999 Chevy Venture minivan. Can someone send me a link to the Apple/BMW rebate coupon, please?
As an aside: I also have several Ubuntu boxes. Which car is most appropriate for Linux zealotry?
a HMMV, a Volvo, a truck or a tank – you have a choice!
hmmmm, I was thinking about that… and I’d have to say Volkswagens. Not the A3/A4 VWs built after 1993; those are most definitely Mac cars. But anything before that — A1/A2 cars, and of course the Beetle and the Kombi — those are true Linux cars. You need to tinker with them to keep them running happily, but it’s quite all right because you enjoy doing it anyway. Most of the parts are standard and interchangeable, but you’d better have a full kit of metric socket wrenches and the Bentley shop manual!
wait — I’ve just described myself. Ha!
I liked the write up. The main advantage Mac OS have over Windows, or should have, is the tie to specific harware. It is far easier to ensure reliability and consistency if the hardware is consistent. However, as noted in the article, that you are penalized if you buy the appropriate hardware from anyone other than Mac is annoying.
While I have always liked Macs as a carry over from using them in college for music production, I have found Windows far better for the variety of options one has over Mac with regards to hardware and, even, software.
Would I buy a Mac if I had the money? Eh, maybe, but I doubt it, especialyl as the years go on.
While I always question the inclusion of opinion pieces as articles on the site… I have to agree with every word.
I’m a PC guy – weaned on hand coding Z80 machine code, took my first steps on CP/M and cut my teeth on Xenix.
NEVER have I seen a company as underhanded, sleazy or devoted to ‘our way or the highway’ as Apple; and that’s coming from someone who was AROUND for the era where DEC, Wang and IBM were the big players. I see repeated praise for their ‘quality’ that I’ve NEVER seen in any of their products which tend to be rinky, poorly thought out and have more corners cut than the worst frankenputer some fifteen year old pieced together out of dumpster scraps using a milk-crate as the case. (the iBooks with insulating foam instead of heat sinks come to mind)
I’m not saying Windows or Linux don’t have their problems, but I’ll stack the hardware quality of the average white-box against anything apple made any day. (Unless it’s a dell or packard bell – those suckers DO make apples look well engineered)
….n/m
Edited 2006-05-12 00:38
I think in general Apple does a very good job of industrial design, and I expect their hardware is top notch.
I will very likely have a new Vista PC, plus a new MacIntel tower when they come out, plus I have several Linux boxes running around.
Each platform has pros and cons just like everything else.
Windows – Great for games and office, primary JAVA development environment. BSOD happens, though.
Mac – Great for iTunes, iLife, iWork. Parental controls are great. Safe for the little tykes. Using iWork for most office functions. OOo is bad on any platform. Parallels is very cool.
Linux – Great for running JBOSS, VMWARE, lots of cool stuff here that I like to tinker with. Left Gentoo because it takes too much work to keep it up to date. Moved to SUSE and I like it, but it does not do everything. Printing still terrible. Open Office is terrible and primitive.
There is a disturbing trend in computing, namely, hardware is getting much more complex.
It’s really hard to build home computers these days. You have to be careful to get the right MB, GPU, CPU, and other components. It’s generally expensive to get good components from good vendors. DELL and Apple do this work for me and it’s worth it. I would lean towards Apple because I love OS X. With Darwin Ports it’s much like my old Gentoo.
So I will probably never build another PC, rather, I will buy DELL to run Windows and Linux and MacIntel for my main platform.
As an aside, my current MacIntel running right by my XP machine has shown me that my Mac has just about unlimited uptime whereas the XP box seems to need to reboot pretty often due to updates or crashes.
My Ubuntu web server has 6 month uptime. Why does Windows crash so much? One of my PCs used Media Center to record shows, but this is highly unstable. I converted the box to MythTV and I ran fine. But MythTV file formats are not readable anywhere else. I am planning to switch to Eye TV for Mac.
I have 7 computers at home. Counting VMs, I am running about 20 operating systems. I love Linux and Mac OS. OS X is the perfect synthesis of UNIX and GUI, I just love it. The Apple software has inspired my software design and made me re think my own GUIs. I go to Mac to see how they designed different components. Just look at iTunes – it works well.
I think Windows has many issues that make it hard to love, but I still need it. Mostly to stay compatible with my work place. We have decided that when my wife’s PC laptop dies, we’ll get a Mac for that as well.
The article really did not convince me that Apple is bad. I think they do a good job designing their hardware. They make very quiet devices. I don’t buy all the noisy comments. Just go to CompUSA and check it out, they are very quiet. I have a Sager laptop, and it works, but you get what you pay for. I just want computers that don’t crash and easily stay updated without a lot of rebooting.
i know its a bit off topic but..
is it possible to put my favorite distro (slacky) on a future intel ibook?
if so i would love to buy a shiny black ibook. if it even comes out.
thankx
Thank you all for reading and commenting.
1) You are right, its too long.
2) Its not intended to be so much a rant, more as a confession. How a true blue Mac Evangelist from the earliest days came to turn against Apple. For many, including me, it was more than a computer, and leaving it was more than just buying a different coloured box.
3) OS choice, and the model under which OS and computers are sold, is no longer a technical matter. It has become THE critical ingredient in people’s access to intellectual freedom. This is why to write about the softer issues at some length. Really understanding the implications of this was key. You may not care about this stuff now, or think the connection important, but you will one day. Yes, I have used and worked on current Macs. Still do. Its not about that.
4) Why do the zealots matter? Not in themselves. But because of the intimate connection between lifestyle marketing, lifestyle product design and the quality and performance issues this brings, the closed model, high prices, and free access to computing power. Seeing that all these are a connected part of Apple’s journey to its present positioning was also key. Zealotry is not an accidental feature of the Apple landscape, as it is of most other platforms.
5) I’m very, very sorry to hear the Amigans are descending into squabbling and flame wars! They were always a bright spot in the alternative OS landscape.
OS choice, and the model under which OS and computers are sold, is no longer a technical matter. It has become THE critical ingredient in people’s access to intellectual freedom.
What part of YOU HAVE MORE OS CHOICE ON AN INTEL MAC THAN ANY OTHER COMPUTER don’t you understand? Seriously, why is that so hard to grasp?
Any random computer: Linux + Windows + hobby OSes
Any Intel Mac: Linux + Windows + OS X + hobby OSes
If OS choice is such a big deal to you, I think you should get a Mac. Unless you don’t want to have the “choice” to run OS X on your computer.
It’s not hard to grasp. It’s simply untrue. See my earlier post on the subject.
It’s not hard to grasp. It’s simply untrue. See my earlier post on the subject.
Your “earlier post on the subject” is completely moronic, because you compare the number of Linux distros that run on PPC (you say 5) to the number that run on X86 (you say 300), and conclude that Macs only run plus or minus 5 OSes while PCs run plus or minus 300.
You complety IGNORED the fact that Macs use X86 processors now, the last remaining PPC systems Apple sells will be completely phased out in about 4 more months.
So let’s make this simple for you to parse: Whatever # of operating systems run on any random X86 box, we’ll assign the varible Y to that #. Are you with me so far? Number of OSes you can install on your Dell or your Shuttle = Y.
Now, since an Intel Mac can run all of the same OSes that you can install on your Dell or your Shuttle, in addition to OS X, the # of OSes that you can install on your Intel (x86) Mac = Y+1
Get it yet? Y+1 > Y. Therefore you have more “OS choice” on an Intel Mac than any other personal computer you can buy.
It’s really not that hard to grasp unless you continue to refuse to believe x86 Macs exist.
Edited 2006-05-14 11:44
Not all Linux distros work equally well on all commodity x86 computers. x86 Macs are still proprietary, because of EFI.
Now, how many Linux distros did you say are known to work on x86 Macs?
Not all Linux distros work equally well on all commodity x86 computers. x86 Macs are still proprietary, because of EFI.
A firmware update to Intel Macs released by Apple at the same time Boot Camp was released added BIOS support to their EFI firmware.
thank you very much for this article. i completely disagree that this article doesn’t belong on OSNews. Mac is an OS and Apple is the company making said OS and if you ask me, that’s OS News if I ever heard any. loved what you had to say, thanks again.
I’m not sure why there is even a debate – XP crashes far too often for anyone to be satisified with it.
I was, just now, playing Starcraft on XP. I was about to use my Protoss force to crush the Zerg, when my plans were foiled. No, it wasn’t the Zerg Overmind! XP just locked up.
I have no idea why – at least under Linux I can probably get a log entry or somehow narrow down the issue. A quick check of the Windows event viewer reveals — nothing! Maybe I should go back to WIN2K. Oh yea, the interface looks like crap. I like nice interfaces. Do I get more work done? Actually, I do get more done when the user interface is aesthetically pleasing. And my dual NIC PC crashes when I run WIN2K. And it’s running 64 bit. I get a full 4 GB virtual space for each application, which is nice when running VMs. Going back to WIN2K is really not an option.
I really think OS X is the answer. If Apple releases OS X for standard PC hardware, I would probably still buy Mac. I think in the long run the hardware product will be better than other vendors. If you hated Performa – just go buy a modern Celeron. It’s the same thing! So PC vendors are doing it, too, only bigger and badder than Apple ever dreamed of. PC hardware is not that good. You’ll find that about 15% of components fail during burn in. I’m tired of being QA for component makers. Again, Apple and DELL do a good job for me. BTW, I buy DELL Precision Workstations.
As for confessions, I think the posters were right when they say that modern Macs are much better. I think the confession should be that the author did not check out current facts before writing.
I did not respect Apple much back when they had < 1 GHz machines when the rest of the world had > 2 GHz machines. But now, with the switch to Intel, I am very jazzed about Macs and as I said before, my own research and testing have left me feeling VERY good about Apple.
I can’t find a compelling reason why all my future new PC purchases would not be from Apple.
That was a great trolling post. Two Thumbs up.
I was about to defeat the Overmind, and it was like bleep bleep bleep bleep and it devoured my Carrier fleet. It was a real bummer.
Now THAT was a quality post. Then proceeds to make cult fan sites about some dude who’s PC crashed during the last stages of Starcraft.
Thanks for the laugh.
>> I’m not sure why there is even a debate – XP crashes far too often for anyone to be satisified with it.
Oddly enough, the only time XP crashes on me is when I’m doing something stupid, like clicking yes on a activeX installation (which should NEVER be done IMHO, ActiveX needs to die horribly) or running decade old software that is not fully NT4+ codebase compatable.
>> I was, just now, playing Starcraft on XP. I was about to use my Protoss force to crush the Zerg, when my plans were foiled. No, it wasn’t the Zerg Overmind! XP just locked up.
Oddly enough, SPEAKING of decade old (or close to it) software that isn’t 100% NT4+ codebase compatable… Just be glad it runs at all, and the reason it runs is the endless backwards compatability hacks Microsoft has been including in their operating systems since Windows 95 – which of course is the real root of the instability problems most everyone has on the windows platform.
I have a uptime on my XP box that amazes most people, being in the >1 year mark with the exception of windows update reboots and one physical move of the box – how do I do it you ask? Simple, I have a list of software that isn’t allowed ANYWHERE NEAR this workstation:
Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express – grab by the balls and pull shortly after installation of the OS.
Nortons, Symantec or McAfee ANYTHING – 98% of the computers that come into my shop for instability problems or ‘acting absurdly slow’ I wipe these steaming pile of ……. and the machine is FINE. I swear most of the ‘windows maintennance cycle’ of reformat/reinstall the OS is caused by these and not the OS itself.
Java – Call me paranoid, but I just don’t trust it. I was infected with Java viruses in the early days of Java, and have never really trusted it since. It’s slow, unstable, drags the machine under on processing, frankly the inconsistant UI’s of the applications come off as unprofessional and annoying, not to mention I have yet to find a single java crapplet that I cannot get equivalent functionality out of a native application on Windows.
Chat Clients – Yahoo’s is the worst offender, but they are all getting pretty bad. Desktop shortcuts and favorites entries for things you don’t want, applications installed in the background without your permission… I seriously thought we were PAST this nonsense. I use GAIM or Trillian (depending on the host OS I booted to) so I can handle all the protocols AND not burden my computer with their crap.
I’ll stop ranting and get to my point (I could go on for hours about software that SHOULDN’T be run) – 99.99% of the time people blame Windows for crashes, but how do you know the fault lies with windows and not the POS application you were running? Let’s face it, windows has a larger install base of applications and backwards compatability layers to things you probably SHOULDN’T be running on a modern machine.
How stable is MacOS 7 through 9 compatability under OSX again? MacOS 1 through 6? How about backwards BINARY compatability in Linux? In linux you don’t have the source for an old application, you are totally SCREWED – and even if you have the source if nobody is maintaining it anymore you might be up the creek without a coder.
Meanwhile under Windows XP I can run the old 23k DOS Visicalc off the original binary from 1982 on a baseline install. (even if ntvdm does start chewing resources like a rabid wombat)
It’s all a matter of what you want to DO with your OS – and let’s face it, you were talking gaming… I’m reminded of the old phrase “For the first month you own a Macintosh you’ll be amazed by what it can do; for the rest of your life you’ll be amazed by what it can’t do.” – or as Alt-Ctrl-Del (the webcomic) put it “There are no Mac gamers”
Let me cry you a river…
I don’t see why it is such a bad thing to want to have a Platform rather then a Product. Sure MS Windows and the generic hardware that comes with it is cheap but there are too many vendors involved to get a seemless working solution. Companies like Compaq, Hp, IBM and even Dell all have there own “Platform” however none of them design any of the software the systems ship with. Sure they manipulate it, add functionality etc but it is still the same business model as Apple. The author wants “Choice” and “Open Standards” and “Outside the box” thinking but how many PC Vendors write Linux drivers? How many have Linux support? Very few and of those very few they do very little. Most of the work is doen by dedicated reverse engineering coders who have the real “Open Standard” in mind. Apple has a solution, as does Sun and the recently Chapter 11 SGI amoungst others. It was a “Platform”; Hardware and Software were designed with each other in mind not just as a generic set of “options” that give users “Choice”. Being able to know every piece of hardware, every system config possibility and every angle of the respected OS allows them to integrate it all. Makes for ease of administration and support not having to interact with 100s of vendors. Whether it be Dell, Apple, IBM or HP they all want you to make them your “Wal-Mart” (One Stop Solution) the only difference with Apple is that they have control over both aspects of this … Software and hardware which is an advantage in my eyes where others see it as “Limiting”. Sure they may dictate most aspects of things but not without customer feedback. How would they have a product that was even worth investing in if they didn’t cator to their clients needs?
Exactly for the same reasons of this author.
Too much linux fanboy, always criticizing others OSes, and the funniest, when they have finished to, they start criticize themselves to know which use the *best* distribution.
…why he will PROBABLY never buy another Mac? I certainly don’t.
Apple will need to open their hardware to cloning if it is to survive. Also it will need to license MacOS X x86 to OEM vendors.
Contrary to those who say they are not going to buy another Apple, I am thinking of buying my first one.
Just wanted to say that this is a wonderful personal reflection on the state of things. It is so as it is written. The pattern is there! Nobody can deny it. Apple is playing with peoples minds through adverts and it is sad to see that some really follow.
Again, great, great commentary!
Odisej
Seems like the author compares mac fanatics to nazi’s… At least that’s what I read when thinking about it (page 4 and 5).
…people are recommending this article.
Recommend the Sun Containers article or something. At least that has content!
Well first, this was a wonderfully rigorous test of the moderation system. Frankly, the most interesting thing about this article wasn’t the article itself or the comments, but how the comments were moderated.
(My only conclusion is that, much as I love osnews.com, moderation here is completely useless.)
Beyond which this article and discussion should be archived somewhere with a discussion of our times and our relation to technology.
What one can ascertain:
Don’t EVEN TRY to complain about zealotry of ANY OS, because man, when you call the woodpeckers out of the closet for any platform, they will SWARM. I mean, look at this stack of comments. We are *woodpeckers* man, and we never stop pecking.
People get downright OFFENDED and EMOTIONAL whenever someone disses their platform, to the point that I don’t know what can rationally be gleaned from any discussion like this. That’s not to say they shouldn’t take place of course; but these kinds of things really are the pro-wrestling of the technical community. If not this, we’d be arguing about gun control or the US’s foreign policy or abortion or something, and if you think OS arguments are tedious, well…
If you’re posting bitterly about what trash an article is and how you stopped reading:
(*) It obviously got a rise out of you, so it wasn’t as disposable as you claim. I don’t buy your little ruse. It’s just like, if you respond *plonk* to a troll in a long thread, guess what? You’ve been trolled.
(*) You’re not fooling anyone, you read the whole thing because you ENJOY the bitterness and anger it causes you. You probably read it twice, chopped the article up into a line and snorted it, or maybe injected it because you love the hate. This is the internet; we’re all addicted to our own outrage – don’t feel bad.
And, grasshopper, when you’re sick of Windows crashing and its many layers of cotton between you and the OS itself, and you’re tired of being asked to pay through the nose for everything from the OS itself to dippy nagware screensaver rotaters, maybe you’ll move on to the Mac where you will again be raped monetarily. And maybe the authoritarianism is different; Microsoft is Nero, but Steve Jobs is Napoleon, and there is little room in Steve Jobs’s heart for anyone but Steve Jobs (Tupalev).
And maybe you’ll get sick of that, and the ZEALOTS everyone talks about and you’ll install Linux and have to deal with more zealots, disorganized mob rule, and half-finished applications. You’ll be annoyed at the video editing selections and the lack of decent DVD authoring tools but you’ll find several “promising” half finished applications to address these needs which will abandoned once the developers graduate and have to spend time working a job to pay rent. But it’s all free and you can just learn C++ in your copious free time and finish em. It’s all good.
Me, I use Linux, and I take my beatings and frustrations and I curse and I hit things and I LOVE IT BECAUSE I CANNOT ESCAPE COMPUTERS NO MATTER WHAT I DO.
Our only option is to choose our master, or like, drop out, man.
It says jump, and I say “how high?” just like you Mac users do when Steve Jobs tells you how much you love what he’s offering you. Or when the world in general tells you there’s really no alternative to Windows (and which is the majority opinion). You’re kind of stuck with it. And you’ll like it.
I will see your one button mouse and raise you one half-assed word processor. In fact I’ll raise you that and a year’s worth of viruses, worms, and a tabless browser.
Perhaps we all need to Walk the Earth and take up Eastern religions or something.
Do you realize how many people have been killed and lives ruined by preventable causes while this thread has been going on?
Don’t think I’m lecturing. I’m sitting here typing this stupid comment to throw on the heap of the 200 others. It’s just food for thought.
One last thing:
What’s the deal about being disturbed by Mac zealots? Who listens to, thinks about, or takes Mac zealots seriously anyway? It’s like complaining about Scientologists.
See, that was a joke; I’m kidding, and some of you got outraged and you thought, I’m gonna angrily respond to this Linux bastard. Deep down though you’re thanking me for the opportunity to express your outrage, disgust, and vent spleen at the hypocrisy you know I am capable of because you are – we all are, completely capable of it. This site and another well known site like it are daily proof.
This is the gift I give to you, dear Mac users. I expect to be repaid in kind the next time a Linux article rolls around. So keep those keyboards cleaned, fingers nimble, and mice ready to go!
This message is not a troll. However much it may look like one; it’s not. Now I have screens and screens of compiler output to stare at for about 45 minutes while I install yet another supposed “DVD authoring applet.”
Leave me in peace you bastards. (No I’m kidding; flame me plz. Srsly.)
YEEEAAAAAAA boooooooooyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!
” I got so much trouble on my mind
I refuse to lose
Here’s your ticket
Hear the drummer get wicked
The crew to you to push the back to Black
Attack so I sat and japped
Then slapped the Mac(Intosh)
Now I’m ready to mike it
(You know I like it) huh
Hear my favoritism roll “Oh”
Never be a brother like to go solo
Lazer, anastasia, maze ya
Ways to blaze your brain and train ya
The way I’m livin’, forgiven’
What I’m givin’ up
X on the flex hit me now
I don’t know about later
As for now I know how to avoid the paranoid
Man I’ve had it up to here
Gear I wear got ’em goin’ in fear
Rhetoric said
Read just a bit ago
Not quittin’ though (…)”
Public Enemy, “Welcome to the Terrordome
more here: http://www.publicenemy.com/index.php?page=page5&item=3&num=60
ah ahah aha aha hahah aha.
How is that for a reply to your GREAT post.
Yup dating myself.
Even Flav would smack us all down if he knew that this discussion even existed, what with 911 still being a joke and all.
Rock.
You do realize that there are more support options available than “standard support”, right?
but what the f–k is this?
I’ll just pick one incredible dumb sentence:
“Its supporters abuse them as low class redneck idiots and talk about ‘Windoze’ and ‘Microsoft.”
Oh yeah, because NOONE else says that! oh wait, except for, you know, EVERYONE. Heck, even Windows users say it.
The last page makes my brain hurt and how this “article” got recommended 27 times is a mystery. Are you people on crack? Bad crack? Dishwashing powder?
…many comments made just prove the author right. Another part of the comments proves that some people have just left the Kindergarten. Maybe everyone should add their age to their comments. This would make it all even more entertaining.
Nah, my opinion on the author wouldn’t change. The author and his many comments just proved how he’s a buffoon. If the last page don’t convince you then…
No one said, your opinion should change. And I was only saying that many, although not all comments here prove him right. That is a bit scaring and funny at the same time.
And what he states at the last page is his very own opinion, not mine. Everyone is entitled his opinion and I agree with many of the things he wrote, although not on all points. And: I am a Mac-user, too.
I am will be buying two new Mac OS X computers in the near future, upgrading to Vista on my AMD64 box, and upgrading Ubuntu on my server.
I just use what I want.
My current WinXP Prof. 64bit doesn’t crash, my iBook has never crashed, my Linux box has never crashed.
Hmm..back to having fun for me.
And is, by and large, very accurate IMNSHO – well done.
Macs in the past, but you didn’t think the price of new Macs was worth it, Windows 2000 worked “well enough,” and you were happy with your Windows boxen.
I’ve used both platforms for years, and I still despise Windows. I despise the spyware/adware issue, above all, and will not subject myself to that on my machines. Compared to the author’s assertion, I’ve RARELY found Windows to be “plug n play.”
I like Linux, but I’ve tried installing a wireless card on two or three laptops running various distros, and never had it work. I don’t have time for that. Control panels are just gui frontends for command-line apps, and don’t seem to solve the problem I’m having at the moment (one desktop refuses to change resolution from 1024×768, which was too high for the old monitor I have). It just would not change, no matter what I tried.
When I tell my iBook to change resolution, it CHANGES. It’s usually fast enough (a G3 800) and though I have a few issues, I enjoy using it. I go help a friend or family member with their Windows machine, I TOLERATE it, I don’t like it.
I am not going to debate the points of this article. By the number of responses I guess it hit the nerve it was intened to hit.
I’ve used Apple hardware and now I manage the Apple server for a department-level group on campus. I see the hardware no differently than I do Intel. Both are proprietary but are part of the computer market.
Diversity is a good thing and so is competition in the marketplace.
I am planning to drop YellowDog onto it for managability.
why he doesn’t like a product!
1) First of all, it sounds liek a very boring article and
2) If you need 5 pages to persuade someone agaionst a product then your argument is very weak, am I wrong?
P.S. I didn’t even read the article
BURN HIM!!!!!!!!
Consumers have been taken for a ride for a long time, be it Apple, Microsoft or any other company for that matter. Innovation requires failures, Apple’s effort to innovate has costs it’s customer’s a lot and sometimes has cost Apple it’s customers. I don’t think that any commercial company would like to invest on a product they know would be a failure, failures of Apple were not necessarily due to bad or flawed design. If quality was the measure of success Microsoft would not be ruling the market. Apple was a different company ten years ago from what it is now. Plenty of things have changed, one cannot even compare MacOS (classic) to OS X for that matter. Apple is trying to gaim it’s way back to market and would have to do that by delivering good quality products.
I use HP computer at office and a PowerMac at home, it does not matter if it’s a pc or a mac as long as it does the job. We the consumers are not here to take sides but choose the best option, if Apple offers good hardware buy Apple, otherwise choose something else. All computers get redundant after sometime, technology would have failures, it’s inescapable. Not buying something because it’s made by Apple or Microsoft or any other company is just not mature. Judge the company on basis of it’s product, predespositions are irrational.
Edited 2006-05-11 13:40
I just skimmed the thing, but is their last experience back in the late 1990s? And somehow their opinion rates an article?
This is an interesting article and I think it was written to stimulate discussion and debate. Firstly, knocking the English used is wrong – that is the person so leave it.
I’ve got a Mac Mini and a PowerBook which are both PowerPCs. Discussions about running all three OSs is good but the large majoirty of Mac users can’t since they don’t have the latest Intel macs. In the UK, I can never see Mac becoming as popular as in America (exchange rate?). An iMac is around £900 and most cosnumers would never pay this now you can get a resonable PC with flat screen for £500 (ignoring specs are normal consumers don’t really care and don’t need all the power).
I live Linux and the whole idea is great – I can see it taking off whereas I can’ see the Mac platform doing this because of the propriety amchines. There a lot of ‘MacZelots’ that are fanatic about their machines and I can’t see why. Linux I can understand – you are challenging most things you know/believe in by going ‘free’ but Macs are just a company and machines. Is it really thinking differently? Linux is. Mac isn’t. In 1 year time, I wonder whether Linux will have overtaken Mac as the ‘second platform’…
This was a funny article, proving that you can always find someone who can run against the tide.
This is probably the Worst Time Ever to leave the Mac community, simply because of the Unix underpinnings.
The author should pick up:
O’Reilly’s “Learning the bash Shell” 3rd edition soon.
The Mac opens you up to another world.
Learn OS X, then you can easily move into:
OpenBSD
Linux
Solaris
HP-UX…
Or,
Open the Terminal and type: man sort
Or,
OS X’s Search capability with Spotlight…
Again,
had you planned to move off the Mac, you should have done it during OS 8.
Oh, he’s running a “Kit” pc and Linux…
For the rest of us, a Powerbook and OS X are the best option.
This is the best commentary I have ever read. I have ADD and you managed to hold my attention through all 5 pages.
As a linux user who lives with a mac zealot, I am all to familiar with what is described in this article. He jumps on the slightest things my linux box does wrong (such as having multiple sound systems), but when I comment on anything about the mac, I’m being “unfair and cruel”.
He conviced me to buy a mac mini (somehow), and it was great but since I built my new linux tower I just don’t use it any more. Look for it on ebay soon.
Alex
You are willing to go completely to Linux despite the lack of MS Word. You are willing to use Windows despite the constant onslaught of malware. Using a Mac, however, is out of the question because you don’t like Apple’s marketing.
Thats all just plain rediculous. Linux is terrific, but its not for the average computer user yet. I installed Ubuntu and Suse on a ThinkPad and found it fast and stable, but it took a lot of effort to power management to work and a lot more effort to make DVD movies play. All of that absolutely pales in comparison to having reformat complex documents because I have to use a non-Microsoft Word Processor. Yes, OpenOffice will open Word docs, but it doesn’t natively support them, rather it converts them, often jumbling the formatting in the process. Open a legal pleading in OpenOffice and have fun trying to get the line numbers to work again. Enjoy watching your charts break. The best part is, Windows users who view your OpenOffice documents in Word will have the same annoyances as they reformat your work. In the end, that is just too big an obstacle, only solved by running Word for Windows on Linux, another complicated and difficult thing to set up.
Of course, you could run Windows and watch all that antivirus and anti-spyware stuff slow your system down as much as many of the viruses that get through do.
So I sit here on my 3-year-old PowerBook which has never had a virus, it isn’t blazing fast, but its fast enough. Word documents exchange freely between me and my Windows-using counterparts without any reformatting required (the joy of native file format), and of course, it just works.
My office has four Macs and one PC (for the annoying few websites that just won’t run on anything other than IE 6 – talk about proprietary). We don’t have any IT expenses because the Macs are so simple that none is needed. I set up the whole office on a wired network in less than 2 hours; 1:50 of running cable, 9 minutes and 45 seconds configuring the PC, 45 seconds to turn on the Macs
So I sit here on my 3-year-old PowerBook which has never had a virus, it isn’t blazing fast, but its fast enough. Word documents exchange freely between me and my Windows-using counterparts without any reformatting required (the joy of native file format), and of course, it just works.
See, this is the problem with Linux ‘Kit’ builders,
they NEVER expense their time. We all should be kit builders, and spend hours and hours researching the video card, audio card, network card, motherboard, processors, memory, Learn linux from scratch and DIY…
Look at the TIME he spent on this pointless rant.
Here’s the real lesson:
Users are different, with different needs.
Time is money. I’m a lawyer, not a Linux technician. I make money by representing my clients, but lose money if my workday is spent removing the latest malware or trying to reformat a word document that didn’t like the conversion process.
I couldn’t resist.
By Tyr. (1.82) on 2006-05-10 21:14:10 UTC
“When was the last time you heard someone say “I have a vintage Dell” ?”
I have a vintage Dell.
🙂
No really, I do.
Dimension XPS p200
It runs (ran) Rhapsody DR2 famously.
This was worth the read:
“… it was now admitted that OSX 10.0, which at the time had been greated with applause for its enormous superiority, had been a total dog. This was because the newest greatest thing was 10.2 or 10.3. Similarly, PPC had been the latest and greatest, but after the switch to Intel, it was admitted to have also barked and walked on all fours on occasion.”
Moof!
So true.
Speaking of dogs, I’ll use this occasion to ask, this being OS NEWS, does anyone HAVE this:
OFF TOPIC (but desperate)
I’ve recently bought Mac OS X Server 10.0, it seems finding (just the) updates you need before OS X Server 10.3 is hit or miss.
In one example I’m trying to find:
Mac OS X Server 10.0.4 Update: Document and Software
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120035
http://download.info.apple.com/Mac_OS_X/062-8318.20010702/0z/10.0.4…
Dumps you at:
” This URL is no longer used. If you get to this page, please go to:”
http://www.info.apple.com/export/
… do strange loop.
I’m not real clear if 10.0 Server is update-able to 10.1 Server with the OS X 10.0-10.1 update CD for the regular OS X to which you may then UD to MacOSXUpdateCombo10.1.5, they mixed it up so you can’t tell – or I can’t tell.
Mac OS X Server 10.1: Chart of Available Software Updates:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42741
See what I mean?
Even OS X Server 10.0.3 Update would suffice.
END OFF TOPIC
Seems to me this was just a personal attack on Apple users… and that makes an editorial/opinion?!?
It’s amazing how blind the contributor is to his own hypocrisy.
After just 2 years and a half, the hard drive of my
12″ powerbook died. This is from a laptop which close button has the paint chipped off and overheats.
I had a compaq presario with a k6-300 processor which lasted with me for 8 years until i sold it (and it worked properly)
Whine issues. Core logic boards. Bad thermal paste in boards. Overheating. Repair permissions. Premium prices for underperforming hardware (ppc years)
Need i continue? I bought the laptop for OSX, which i like because i like linux and wanted a good GUI with the command line.
In my experience, mac hardware is inferior in quality.
YMMV.
why? because I have to suffer with them at school already. I have never used a mac and actually LIKED them! Plus why buy em when you can go to school and use them as much as you want
which isn’t much because I hate using them
What next, will this guy be Flaming Toll Brothers,
about how expensive there houses are? Will we here him flame GM about how expensive cars are?
Why is it always the Mac community that’s got to attract these wackos?
Econ 101: People Trade Money for Time.
Time isn’t free. It’s also got a utility cost.
Thom, I’m boring… :-O
Apple is a great company… by having complete control of all their hardware (even though prices may be a bit higher.. maybe a lot higher) they are able to produce the best….
multimedia players the world has ever seen.
Nothing better than the Ipods and the Ipod Video units out there!
Umm.. as for the computing side (O/S and hardware) … one out of two isn’t bad.. hell there are a lot of pro baseball players who would kill to have that average.
Edited 2006-05-11 19:15
Before I got linux, I wished they made OS X for PC & honestly why don’t they? Macs were to expensive, just to get cause you are tired of the Windows holes & bugs/viruses. Why not get linux from a store for much much cheaper? That is what I did a few years back, went & got SuSE home 8.0. Besides the software install pain, it is great. On mac I know you drag & drop to install, but that is it. Plus Mac people are a bit like a cult really. Oh & the Mac has to have special video cards to right. Well I am not missing the lack of software.
It is amazing to me how many articles I find on the subject of Mac vs the PC, when both are Personal Computers.
I use every OS I can get me hands on….
but when you have a machine running Windows XP Pro, and you have a kernal dump on you, 4 times in one month,
enough is enough….
I have had one virus on my Windows achine, and it was my fault for trying to find a crack for winamp….so I cant blame Microsoft for that…..and having BlackIce as my firewall is not a bad idea….
If Mac OS X were the major OS, then it would have just as many viruses and such, written for it……
I just wish Microsoft would use all of that money it makes and write something a little less bulky….
Who needs 50-60 million lines of code?
Mac OS X: 2.5 million
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1601482,00.asp
http://www.xhovemont.be/archive/2005/12/07/1072.aspx
http://www.jmusheneaux.com/61c.htm
http://www.jmusheneaux.com/index06.htm
http://www.hilditch-architect.com/HTML/WhyMac.HTML
On the other hand, I would never use a Mac to play games on, windows do that well, but for video editing, and other critical things I dont want to have to redo often (I have had Final Cut Pro Crash on me a few times) I have to use a Mac, besides, its like two opertating systems in one (BSD!) which I love…
I have choices I just prefer the Mac…
why? its to long, and I learnt nothing from it other than on persons point of view…
I still won’t 😀
I had a bit of a different progression through the computing saga. I started with Windows 3.1/Dos and then moved to Win95. I was irritated by how unstable and restrictive it was, and how it had no non-expensive/free development tools, and moved to Linux. I learned to program on Linux and I loved Linux at first but got tired of the constant tinkering and recompiling / library conflicts that existed at that time (I used early slackware). When Windows 2000 came out I tried it. Windows 2000 was great and stable and, in my opinion, the best OS and era that MS has ever had. It slowly degraded into XP and I started running into the occasional spyware problems and OS deterioration that made it necessary to reinstall every 6-12 months to keep things running fast. It might not have helped that I work in IT supporting XP by day and had to support FUBAR family XP installs/problems by night. I became jaded to XP and went looking again for alternatives.
Instead of going back to Linux (I tinkered briefly with Fedora and OpenSUSE)I saw a really great deal on a refurb PowerBook 12″ on Amazon and snatched it up on impulse 6 months ago. It was by the time that the Intel conversion had been announced but I already had a desktop for gaming and just wanted a small laptop for internet/ssh connectivity, MS Office and that sort of thing when out in the field and figured that a 1.5Ghz G4 had to be good enough for that, it was the last and greatest generation Powerbook G4 instead of the first generation Intel, and the price was right (~$1000) for a ultraportable laptop.
I have absolutely loved OS X and the quality of the PowerBook. The machine just feels solid – both in it’s OS and in it’s case/hardware. Everything just works. It has all of my favorite unix tools from my Linux days as well as MS Office and more commercial support. The OSX interface is a hell of a lot better than gnome/kde. To install an app you just drag it to to the Applications folder and to remove it you just drag it to the trash. No registry – no problems. It has been a breath of fresh air. It is nice, light and small when traveling but when home I plug in my 19″ Dell LCD with the DVI and a KB/Mouse and it is like a desktop. It has 4-5 hours of battery life with a reasonable screen brightness. I have – in short – never been as happy with a computer…
I agree that the Apple desktop offerings may not be as compelling as many of the PC but when it comes to laptops, which you can’t upgrade anyway, Apple has done things right. If they can replicate this form factor with a Core Duo and decent graphics they might sell me on a new Mac pretty soon…
The author’s contention that your choice of computer whether to buy an Apple product is absurd. It’s highly likely that the author buys many products on a regular basis with more questionable moral short comings that alledged condesension.
It’s extremely hard to buy gasoline that from a company that is not associated with horrible behavior by oppresive regimes in real totalitarian countires where they extract the oil. For exmample, Unocal in Burma or Shell in Nigeria. The horrible behavior we are talking about here is murder.
Or food. Unless the author’s a vegitarian, it’s extremely difficult to eat 100% of your meat from sources where cruel practices are not used. Shopping a t Whole Food solves the problem for home cookie but what about restaurants? Unless one is rich enough to consistantly eat at very high end restaurants, the meat almost certainly has cruelty issues.
Even as a vegitarian, the impacts of conventional fertializers and pesticides are enormous. There’s a giant dead zone in the Gulf of Mexcio from run in the Missippi. Even if you don’t care about the environment , this dead zone involves famers who created the run off destroying the livihoods of fisherman of the area without any compensation (free market types can chew on that for a while).
The beautiful thing about a competitive market is consumer choice and I don’t care if the author ever buys an Apple product again. However, the case that there is a moral issue involved is ridiculous.
I don’t need to read all this bull… I have both macs and pc and I can testify that back when the pcs were PIII at 800mhz, my B&W G3 450 mhz was just as fast in Photoshop than the PC and the G3 does not have Altivec, so the PPC was obviously superior.
I tried the same machines with Paris, a $3,000 equipment bundle that runs on both and the Mac was far faster and most importantly, displayed no artifacts on the windows as they move. Which was important because of all the mixers, ect.
I’ve also installed games and they never worked properly or at all. It got to the point where I just didn’t try anymore… Yeah, the PC has tons of games, well guess what, THEY DON’T WORK! So what’s the damn use. I rather have 10 games that do work, than thousands that don’t!
I installed XP on the same machine and I had to reinstall because in the middle of an upgrade the machine crashed and could not be brought back to life. This has never happened to me on the mac and I’ve had them since the Clone ages.
This does not include all the call I get from friends that have to re-install because some freaking germ has infected their machine…
Should I go on????? Wake up!
So I stand behind the Apple claims that they were faster, more stable and I do not intend to buy another PC ever. Unless apple goes under, which I doubt.
They have been noice at a point, but a very brief point. The same goes for the hinges on the PowerBooks, cause the new ones ROCK!
… and trust me, I have people here at work that use Dells and not only did all the letters on the keys dissapear withing a couple of months, (my powerbook is 4 years old and the keys are perfect!), but the hinges on the Dell broke as well… So what is your freaking point?
So I don’t know what this guy has been smoking, but as far as I’m concerned, and I SPEAK FROM EXPERIENCE, the pc does NOT compare.
Case closed!
You do make an excellent point, albeit in a near-zealot-like fashion. Macs tend to be better made physically than any PC, especially when it comes to laptops. The thing is, you pay more for the luxury of a laptop that will last practically forever. I’d rather save money buy purchasing a laptop that may only last 3-5 years before hinges start breaking and such, but by then I’m ready for a new laptop anyway as they are not very upgradeable. If I buy a Mac, I spend several hundred dollars more for a laptop that is comparable in performance but much better built. Physically, it will last twice as long before it starts to fall apart. But it will be long before that time comes that I will need something with more modern hardware. That’s just me though; everyone’s needs are different and for some people, one laptop is all they will ever need in a 10 year span. For those people, a Mac makes sense as it will indeed last that long.