John Droz is a Macintosh-using consultant and software developer who lives in North Carolina. When he and some other members of the community learned that the local school board was planning to scrap its Macs and standardize on Windows PCs, he decided to catalog as much information as he could on why the switch would be a bad idea. It’s the kind of treasure trove that could fuel a flamewar of epic proportions. It makes for an interesting read, and is useful for ammunition for any Mac proponents that would be interested in launching their own holy war on this issue. See it all at macvspc.info.
Dont get me wrong….I dig mac….but this guy is on crack. :-)….my intel P4 2.0 blows my buddies Dual G4 500 out of the water.
My intel was dirt cheap compared to his mac.
Your Intel P4 is also much newer than his dual G4/500.
Kids play again… It’s a matter of choice, taste, style, whatever. Why bother? Anyone?
He still makes references to the G5. LOL.
And while his comments about the early P4s are true I do not believe the later P4s have the same problems.
Still, I think Macs are overall of equal or superior quality (for a given price) and are much better machines to learn on. You can play in the sandbox or step out of it.
Yaaaawwwwwwwnnnn.
Still waiting for those linux guys to come up with something as good as jaguar, for free/little cost and runs on cheap x86 hardware.
Flame on, flame on.
Keep waiting then. “It works for me” is good enough for 90% of the linux crowd, but don’t think they won’t try to tell you it already is as usable as OS X and that it cleans your house too. Linux advocates are usually too enthusiastic to the point of outright lying.
We are still waiting for Steve Jobs to declare an official Jihad on Microsoft!
I think the lack of posts here so far kind of indicate that people are getting tired of the same old, different day arguments. Everyone is entitled to his/her own beliefs, and so we just go on and on and on…
This artical was just posted numb-nutts
The man says that a vast majority of his clients work on Macs. Frankly, I just can’t believe that. He then goes on to name 5+ professions, from which one can infer than he has more than five clients. Macs account for far less than 5% of the personal computer market, and this man is telling me that out of five, at least four are using Macs?
*COUGH* BULLSHIT *COUGH*
macvspc.info can not be found. I’ll take that as a sign to stay away.
I’ll stay out of the argument of which is better – Mac/Windows/Linux – but I will say that Windows and Linux has better coverage and is more accessible to users. Not everyone can pay the premium to get the latest Mac hardware. Mac advocates answer that by saying get an older Mac that is at least bare minimum to run OSX, or just use OS9. And that is where bad impressions are made and people generate their own negative opinions about the Mac platform.
What would really impress people is that if Apple can deliver the high quality products they’ve been boasting about and still compete with PC counterparts in the price tag.
Please no more cheesy car analogies. Most geeks don’t go out that much, they won’t know what you’re talking about.
That using the Mac saves you a lot of time. The guy’s site is proof positive that he has WAY too much time on his hands.
I think his time would be better spent protesting the student/teacher ratios and money for textbooks than over a silly OS platform debate. There are much more important discussions to be had with respect to the state of education in North America than Mac vs. PC.
10 posts in 2 minutes?
PC’s Will absolutely win over mac’s here are some reasons.
1.They are cheaper and faster than the mac.
2.The best OS maker is microsoft.No doubt about it.
3.PC’s are so ROBUST!!!!!.
4.1000000 times More software than the mac.
5.The mac is not secure you know why? because there are no viruses for the mac.Hackers use PC’s not Mac’s.Dont listen to people that say mac is more secure they are wrong.
6.Windows updates are free.Btw are apple update’s free?
7.Intel processor’s will kill apple’s(IBM)chip.The Intel prescott will be released soon.Go to these website’s
Roadmap’s.
http://endian.net/roadmap.asp
http://freespace.virgin.net/m.warner/
Windows XP wasn’t free. Go spout your partisan trash elsewhere.
BSD or Linux with Gnome or KDE! ..
And i tell you why: Because Schools should educate pupils for the future and not for the past!
They should learn being nice to people, to share and to communicate …
My 0.02€
Nice troll.
Too bad you dont have a single fact to back up any of your half-developed and unresearched claims.
Another partisan site about the Mac/PC flame war.
But how can I trust someone that is always refering to the Wall Street Journal and other non-technical revues and papers. We are supposed to talk about computer, I don’t see any pertinence with these references. It proves that he really doesn’t have a case.
I love macs in a big way. If it weren’t for my current economic situation I probably would have transitioned to macs by now. But believe me…I have no illusions about the performance of the Mac. They are dogs. Did you like how this guy actually used the “supercomputer” argument? What a sucker. Funny how this guy thinks that a math library test helps his argument about k12 education use. I wonder if he knows that you generally have to know quite a bit of machine code to ever even come close to the theoretical performance of the G4 and that pre-written apps that will take advantage of that theoretical performance are
A. Few
B. Far between
C. Not the types of apps that you find in k12 education
It kind of makes me wonder how many times the Apple marketing department shined this guys balls to get him to write something like this.
One more note…I’m actually favor Macs for k12 usage. I think that it’s the best mix of having a well supported platform with which you can still offer the more advanced students a very inexpensive (as compared to say…visual studio) development environment. I just think that this guy used all the wrong arguments.
Macs SUCK!
Macs are NOT faster than PCs. Given the top of the line of each, the PC wins hands down. Given the same cost of each, the PC still wins hands down.
Mac OS is all eye candy with Unix in the background. Learning to use the Mac will prepare the students to be productive in less than 5% of the workplace (macs make up less than 5% of the workplace, and since they dont learn the unix part, unix is not included).
I remember a time when I pressed Contrl+Apple+reset (or something like that) and the computer rebooted with the mac icon with the eyes showing its dead.
Mac software is just a mac version of PC software, and only a few of them exists.
while pc hardware is faster, thet are more expensive in the long run because the quality of the hardware isn’t as good and you’ll end up having to replace more things that go wrong.
Microsoft is by FAR not the best OS maker at all… i think you’re on crack.
A lot of hacker use Macs as a matter of fact. You think that a hacker is going to use such an insecure OS???
Mac updates are free, major revisions of the OS aren’t (same as Windows)
Right now Macs are having a problem with Motorola (not IBM) not producing fast enough chips, but that will be corrected when IBM comes out with their new chip.
Windows has more software, but does that mean that it’s better software??? nope. even with Microsoft software it’s not true. Office X or Mac has been deamed better than the Windows counterpart. And Internet Explorer 5 for Mac was so good that Microsoft PORTED it to Windows to become Internet Explorer 5.5.
More Robust? are you kidding me??
This whole TCO thing is just a way of avoiding simply admitting that Macs cost more than PCs. I mean, if you walk in to a Mercedes dealership and say, wow, your cars are twice expensive as the Hyundais next door, they won’t say “No they’re not. The TCO is less.” I wish these Mac advocates would drop these specious “TCO” bull and just argue quality like other high-end companies do. This guy sounds really stupid claiming that spending $200 more on a Mac will somehow save “$2211” over a Windows PC.
WIndows updates free?
By Anonymous (IP: —.res.umass.edu) – Posted on 2003-02-18 18:51:17
Windows XP wasn’t free. Go spout your partisan trash elsewhere.
—
What’s your point? If you have Windows XP, you get free updates to the service packs and patches. If you have Windows 2000, you get free updates to the service packs and patches.
Mac OS X is the same way. You have to pay to go from 10.1 to 10.2 (for example), but it’s free to go from 10.2.1 to 10.2.2 and so on.
1. PCs really are cheaper and faster. They also require noisy cooling. And they tend to break really fast. I’ll personally take stability and low noise over speed. That’s why I run two relatively low-end PCs. Knowing that Apple will not switch to x86 any time soon, they should at least turn to AMD for their future CPUs. This is certainly one of the low points of current Macs. They do make nifty laptops though
2. No. If you like software that spies on you (oh do flame me about it!), breaks, crashes, is prone to virus infection, etc, etc, then go for Windows, yes. I’ll take the stability of Linux over the instability of Windows. At least when things do go sour, I have the options of killing the process, killing X, switching to a virtual console and killing the runaway process from there, SSHing over from any other computer and killing the runaway process and finally I can use the sysrequest combos. On Windows you have ctrl+alt+delete and that doesnt do shit most of the time
3. PCs are in fact so robust they break down a lot. The fan on my main workstation’s CPU just stopped one day. The fan on my GPU started making weird sounds. I’ve had the HD crash, I’ve had the NIC stop working, etc, etc. I’m not saying this does not happen to Macs. But at least there is The One Company that controls most of the hardware you can use with your Mac and there is none of that PC mix-n-match shit. This makes Macs better for end-users who do not want to tweak their hardware nor overclock anything – they just want a reliable system.
4. PCs do have a lot more software. And that is caused by Microsoft’s stranglehold on the OEMs and other non-competitive strategies. And if you are referring to all the adware, spyware, trojans, viruses, worms, etc, etc then yes, the PC, most notably MS Windows has tons more software
5. The Macs do seem to be more secure. And dont believe that claim about hackers using more MS products. I can still find tons of people on dialup that have their entire C drive shared out because it was the default policy on Win9x. MS products were never engineered for security and MS knows that and has said that. Good old BGates even went as far as to tell in an interview that they’d never release a new version just to fix bugs – only to add more features. He even said that people report bugs “to look cool”. How much security can you expect from a man like that? Not to mention the number of security holes in MS products that they do not even plan to fix. Ever.
6. Upgrading from Win2k to WinXP is not free, is it now? Sure, patches are free, but if they werent, I doubt anyone would use MS Windows in the first place.
7. I think we talked enough about CPUs for now. And yes, it’s their main bottleneck right now.
Whew, answering these aol people has always been both morally and mentally stressing…
I used a Mac OS X laptop (brand new iBook) and found it quite slow. Not as slow as Windows XP on my 400MHz box with 128MB of RAM, but more like as slow as Windows XP on my 1000MHz with 192MB of ram and some programs installed.
I live in a neighborhood that requires a once a year fee of $600 (we have a pool, gym, clubhouse, landscaping, etc). I would really prefer to pay quarterly installments, and would even pay a little more than $150 every three months – say $175.00. Overall, I may pay more, but thats not the point. Not everyone has those large intial investments, especially school obards tryng to jiustify big ass bond referendums to the taxpayers.
Everything you can do on a Mac can be done faster and cheaper on a PC.
I actually think OSX is great, just can’t afford to buy a mac… I got a p4 2Ghz Dell for $700. To get that power in mac form would be over 2000.00. Apple is killing themselves.
When will they realize that the platform is irrelevant? They need to teach kids HOW COMPUTERS WORK. If you teach someone how the comptuer works, they’ll be able to apply that knowledge to any platform. You can’t just give them a script that says “1) Double-click on the third icon from the top on the left side of the screen. 2) Left-click on the File menu. 3) Left-click on the third item in that menu.” They’ll learn nothing.<p>
Macs should be the computer of choice because you can run MacOS, Windows, Linux, etc. on one box. Give the kids similar application sets on each OS and switch every day. Mondays is word processing in Windows. Tuesday is image processing on Linux. Wednesday is website design in OSX. Switch them all around so the kids get used to using many different tools to do the same job in many different environments.
Why are we even considering whether one is better than the other?
Don’t we all know already that farting around with PCs takes time and money away from the real job of educating the kids?
Don’t feed me that crap about how computers are great teaching aids for maths and sciences. By the time the teacher gets the appropriate software, installs it, teaches himself how to use it, and teaches the kids how to use it he could have got them into college level calculus using just pencil and paper.
And for those who argue that we need to get kids exposed to computers because that is the world today, my experience says otherwise. I’m going back to university for a CS degree and the kids in my classes don’t have any more idea of what’s going on in the PC than the kids when I went to school in the late ’70s, early ’80s. In fact, probably less. Back then to program or use computers you had to know assembler and what the disk operating system does. Now the OS is so easy to use that it hides the complexity.
Educators should stop wasting time on the PCs and teach the kids, teach the kids to learn , and teach the kids to enjoy learning.
PC’s Will absolutely win over mac’s here are some reasons.
1.They are cheaper and faster than the mac.
Can’t argue with that… no doubt that PCs set the price/performance curve
2.The best OS maker is microsoft.No doubt about it.
It’s hard to quantify who is the “best OS maker” but I’d say in general I have fewer stability problems with Windows than I do with OS X, which is inexcusable considering Apple is a solutions provider.
3.PC’s are so ROBUST!!!!!.
Compared to the offerings of some of the more professional solutions providers that I’ve worked with (i.e. Sun, IBM, SGI) PCs are far from robust. The components used on PC systems tend to be bottom of the barrel. While you can buy higher end PC systems, you can’t compare the quality and robustness of a PC to that of Sun.
4.1000000 times More software than the mac.
Can’t argue with that.
5.The mac is not secure you know why? because there are no viruses for the mac.Hackers use PC’s not Mac’s.Dont listen to people that say mac is more secure they are wrong.
So far OS X has an excellent security reputation, but that’s primarily due to the fact that all services are off by default. OS X has better permission handling than many other desktop Unices, but in general it seems somewhat weak.
6.Windows updates are free.Btw are apple update’s free?
Depends what you consider an upgrade. Apple has been releasing several updates for OS X, but they seem to abandon the previous version much faster than Microsoft.
7.Intel processor’s will kill apple’s(IBM)chip.The Intel prescott will be released soon.Go to these website’s
Ever since x86 went superscalar (or rather, when it went superscalar the right way with the PPro/Athlon) it was destined to be a performance leader as well. Years of pushing to do things the “right way” were rendered futile by x86’s ever increasing clock speeds.
Where x86 has continually been the leader is fabrication technologies. However, IBM has a considerable amount invested in research in this department, and will definitely be able to contend with Intel. I’d say at this point in the game it’s far too early to judge what the performance characteristics of the GPUL will be.
And in other news….yet another flamewar troll ensures that OSNews maintains a high hit quota to show its advertisers.
But if you don’t think so, just keep using your buggy, crash-prone, insecure, stupidly designed, ugly Windows. I’m just glad I escaped the Windows world.
Don’t know about you guys – but I’ve grown a beard and wear braces. “Hears a nickle kid – go buy yourself a computer” !
It’s the kind of treasure trove that could fuel a flamewar of epic proportions.
So, of course, it’s posted here.
I live in a neighborhood that requires a once a year fee of $600 (we have a pool, gym, clubhouse, landscaping, etc). I would really prefer to pay quarterly installments, and would even pay a little more than $150 every three months – say $175.00. Overall, I may pay more, but thats not the point. Not everyone has those large intial investments, especially school obards tryng to jiustify big ass bond referendums to the taxpayers.
It’s called “Saving”.
Pay your dues in quarterly installments, or even better, monthly installments to…YOURSELF! Take your $50/month for your dues, and put it in an “Annual Expenses” fund, along with your other annual payments, like your car insurance, or your property taxes…stuff that YOU KNOW you’re going to have to pay when they come due, yet they come due rarely (annually, semi-annually, whatever). Heck, toss the couple $$ per month for you magazine subscriptions.
Then, when they come due, tranfer the money out of your annual account into your checking, and write them a check.
Now, say you’d like one of those neeto iMacs at $1299. Take how ever much you’re willing to allocate to it, per month, drop it in your annual fund, and when it reaches the critical amount, voila! Macintosh.
YOU can do this because A) these large expenses become a budgeted cash flow issue, versus a cash crunch issue when things come due and you’re not ready. And B) You, as an individual are allowed to SAVE MONEY. That means that when you put $50/month towards your dues, and you place it in an interest bearing account, then at the end of the year, you’ll have $600 + interest. You pay that $600, and you get to KEEP the interest.
Your local municipalities can NOT do this. They’re (usually) not allowed to run deficits OR surplus (that interest is surplus). They’re essentially required to spend that money. Plus, while some money does come in at regular intervals, a lot comes “all at once”, meaning it’s made avaiable to them to spend “all at once”, like at the beginning of the fiscal year.
So, governments have less of an issue with cash flow (ideally) than individuals. It’s difficult for an individual to “get an advance” on their salary in January and then make it last the entire year. Rather, we tend to go from pay check to pay check. Some are better at fiscal discipline (such as saving $50 towards your annual dues monthly) than others are.
So, where you get your salary bi-weekly, the goverments get their “salary” annually, so large purchase are rarely a problem of cash flow.
This guy is the kind of person you just want to nail in gym class playing dodge ball.
In 1994 buying macs probably was the better choice. Now what wasn’t mentioned is are their current macs all of 1994 or have there been slow upgrades. If the school was planning to toss their old macs for new computers and chose windows boxes well then they are doing the right thing. Macs have good sides but most of his case was BS or old Apple propaganda.
I personaly see little need for computers in education. It’s good to have them their for computer classes, and have them availble for students to type papers but in k-12 education i see little point past that. The majority of these kids will go home to a computer anyways.
If the school is tossing perfectly good new Macs for this thne he has somewhat of a case. But if there 9 year old macs he doesn’t. No human should be forced to use OS9. Which goes into a differant point. This school maybe be wanted to get away from macs do to the upcoming drop of os9 support. Many of there computers if not most from the article will not run OSX and even then all their software won’t unless it wll run ok under classic. If the school has to ditch all that hardware and software to go to osx then going to windows and being able to use mass licenses from there other windows software would be smart.
For his macs being cheaper cause they last longer argument as other pointed out thats BS, maybe a few years ago but no more. And as it is in and educational enviroment its going to be short for any of them. If I was a tax payer I wouldn’t want them spending money on macs ether. Though I prefer them just not buying computers. One thing that also wasn’t mentioned was if they would be buying these windows machines or building them. A friend of my worked for a school district for years. That school always built their computers. They would get good deals on mass orders of parts (1000 computers at a time). And build them themselves. This saved them tons of money and ment the could insure upgradeability and make small investments in improving them. For them to keap up with repairs was also easy since repairing them would be cheap as well since they went with solid and basic parts.
//Windows XP wasn’t free. Go spout your partisan trash elsewhere.//
And Jaguar *_was_* free?
To whom?
I love how this guy completely ignores the benefits of the other side when making his arguments.
for the same reason the mac can never hold onto them ($$$$$$).
Since when do schools have any $$$$$$. I don’t know about you, but my memory of school before college was underpaid teachers, crappy old textbooks, and filmstrip projectors from the ’50s. Of course they will get sucked into windows – so what if macs are cheaper long term (if they are). All that matters is today, and a Dell is cheaper. It has to be because Dell has no R&D to speak of.
But for the same reason, Linux will take over govts and then schools. Just a matter of time. No need to play games, no need for wierd software titles. Just lots of money to save.
The only way MS could stop this would be to give windows and office to schools for almost free. Maybe they will, but I doubt it.
I’d like to point out that you get a lot of good software when you purchase a Mac and you usually only get home edition of winxp with a new PC.
It’s strange to me that schools have macs, in europe they’re rarely used and even more rarely in schools, but if they’re used over there then why not buy both pc’s and macs, obviously if pc’s are more used, then students should spend more time on those and therefore there should be more pc’s than macs, but if the school can afford it, student’s should also have some contact with macs.
As for a global option pc’s are obviously better than macs, price is better, hardware and driver support is better, and there’s allways the question of hardware upgrades wich will save some money in the future.
Macs have their lovers and haters, PCs have their lovers and haters. I am kind of neutral, I use both Macs and PCs and for a educational institution I agree Windows PCs are the best solution. More can be done on a PC than can be done on a Mac, I have worked in total Mac farms before and on PC farms before currently Im working in a mixed environment ie Suns, Alphas, x86, SGIs and a iTanium floating around here somewhere. But I found I had less problems with stability and productivity working in the PC environment. I have used OS X and OS X is not the cure all, save all that Apple and its cultists want everyone to think it is. I have a Mac I have to reinstall OS X on at least every thirty days, something I dont know what caused me to have to reformat, reinstall OS X once a month, kernel panic from hell. I have sent it off to Apple, taken it to the Apple Store and CompUSA for testing and no one can tell me what causes it. I installed YDL 2.3 on that Mac and havent had to touch any disks for 3 months now, still going strong. This guys argument over TCO is crap, maybe circa 1990’s but not now. I will never deploy a Mac as a server or use it for anything but maybe an artists workstation and if Linux keeps improving by the leaps and bounds that it has been I would not deploy a mac for anything. IMHO the PC is superior in quality and usability. Windows 95 – ME were crappy Operating systems but with Windows XP usability and user friendly surpass that of the Macintosh. As for anothers posters point of view, that the Mac has no viruses, that is because the Macintosh is not a mainstream OS, therefore virus writers and hackers do not write malicous code for the Macintosh because there is no point in doing it. Who wants to hack a computer that you cant get any useful information out of. If the Mac ever sees the enterprise then you will see a major flow of Viruses written for the Macintosh, same thing will happen for Linux and other UNIX like OS’s soon. So these arguments regarding security are mute and pointless. I live in North Carolina and I have seem many mac only schools go to the PC and Windows. We will see were the future will take us but until Apple sees that there is no future in the PowerPC architecture anymore and decides to port OS X over to the x86 I fear Apples future is very bleak, they may have been able to turn many heads with OS X but the excitement of OS X is fading fast and now many computer consultants and developers attitudes have changed to ” So What “….
While you make some good points about other platforms besides Apples and wintels, your statement about security and the PPC towards the end lost itself and you seem to make statements with any sort of factual basis…you’re an idiot!
Let’s look at two of the costliest problems a school system faces with regards to computers.
1) Lack of funds to buy computers
2) Lack of administrators to setup, maintain, and update computers
Neither Macs, nor traditional PCs, solves either of these problems. What does solve the problem is thin client computer.
Thin client computing will stretch the life cycle of a desktop machine. In my workplace, Pentium 100 machines are still valuable and used a desktop machines by productive workers. These machines, will still be useful years from now.
Thin client computer requires the administration of servers in a centralized location(s). Properly setup, they can be administered 100% remotely. That means a single admin can handle more servers, and each server is handling hundreds of desktop systems. If each desktop is a diskless workstation, the only thing to really go wrong is a network failure or a broken power supply. Any application problems can be solved by remotely connecting to the server and fixing it there. Thin client computing also makes it easier to have roaming users, tight security, and install software.
Microsoft Windows can provide an environment like this using Terminal Services built into Windows 2000, add-ons like Citrix can extend these abilities. Linux, most notably via the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) and the K12 project, can do the same. An argument can be made that Linux will not support the applications that a school needs, but that is probably not as true as the reality that many people are afraid to use an alternative. Many Oregon school systems are using Linux labs in a thin client model and have saved 1.5 million dollars in the process.
Mac OS 8, 9, or even X, cannot provide thin client computing. Thus, it will always be more expensive than a thin client model, and thin clients are what should predominately (I didn’t say exclusively) be used in a school.
Du, is it me, or this url doesn’t make any sense. This guy doesn’t know what he is talking about, for sure. Why such n article is pointed here ?????
I am not a big linux fan, but for sure, I think university and schools have to spread free softwares, because it is the best way to understand the way a personnal computer runs, etc… The free softwares are the best spirit for educationnal purposes.
About the arguments of the url, they are so naive, so bad, so false that it make me laugh.
As a former Network and Multimedia Engineer that has worked on Windows, Mac and Unix systems and built one of the first Mac-based render farms as well as having worked in Windows networked environments supporting 10s of thousands of users (consulted with Hughes/Raytheon), I can say with authority that I know my way around all of these OSes.
And I can say with that same authority that in many cases if you look at the Total Cost of Ownership and the Return on Investment, the Mac is much better.
But let’s take your points one at a time
1) Cheaper and faster? Not if you factor in ALL of the components. When the slowest component is inserted (humans), the Mac acts as an accelerator whereas the PC tends to act as a decelerator (proven in double-blind studies, even with users that had never seen a Mac before). Overall, tasks get done faster on the Mac. Again, proven in study after study. (now respond that SpecInt is the be-all and end-all for performance and chip speed is the only governing factor for system performance…)
2) Microsoft is the WORST OS maker of them all. Actually, they aren’t hardly a maker of OSes in the first place. DOS was made by Seattle Software. Windows in EVERY incarnation stunk. NT was a derivative that stemmed from the IBM collaboration. Notice on the NT boot that MS still has an OS/2 loader. Most of that OS was built by IBM (at least the parts that worked). And 2000 and XP are just MORE bad hacks to the NT code. MS coders are some of the worst OS coders in the business and write some of the sloppiest code out there. It is written in stone in the published bugs reports for the OS. Their ratio of bugs to lines of code is ridiculously high for a company with that many resources. Put it this way. If Photoshop had the same ratio of bugs, it would have died at version 4.
3) PC’s robust?!? Yeah, if you put about the same money into them as you put into a Mac. Getting some bargain, video on the motherboard, Celeron based system is NOT the same as getting a Dual G4 1.43 GHz system with an ATI 9700 with 128MB DDR RAM, though some always want to compare the two.
4) More software? Sure. I can go into CompUSA and buy one of those CDs with literally 1000s of programs. And you know what? they ALL stink. If you want to actually count USEFUL programs, rather than include bulk shareware and anything that will run on things back to windows 95, then the list is fairly homogenous except for games and that is changing (of course, I have a life with a wife and 4 children, so I couldn’t play 1/10th of the games for Mac let alone remotely explore all of the PC games, so that means nothing to me).
5) The Mac IS secure. Bottom line is that PCs get expoited so easily because it is easy to do. Macs OS 9 and before were almost uncrackable because of the complete lack of a command line (nothing to hack). With OS X and the CLI, there are added vulnerabilities, but Unix on the whole is several orders of magnitude more secure than MS (or did you just miss the recent hack OF Microsoft’s own servers recently?).
6) Free updates? At what cost? I would rather pay for upgrades that are actually BETTER than have to wait and read about how many things the update will break. Sure, OS X is still in it’s infancy, but on the whole, it is even now, better than anything from MS.
7) Again with the chips. Okay, when the Power970 comes out, it will be a fully 64 bit chip that runs 32 bit code natively beginning at 1.8 GHz and they will undoubtedly be in a multiprocessor build. Intel’s 64 bit path starts at 800MHz and emulates 32 bit code with some incompatibilities (harkening back to the days of having different versions for Win95 and NT). So, who in 6-8 months is really going to have the upper hand? As OS X goes 64 bit sooner rather than later, what will MS do and with which chip? You take lots of things for granted.
Sure, there are different tools for different jobs. And the Mac is a substantial tool in the toolbox for those that know how to use it to its fullest potential.
>Microsoft is the WORST OS maker of them all. Actually, they aren’t hardly a maker of OSes in the first place.
Oh, please, spare us.
Windows have come a LONG way from their roots, whichever their roots might have been, and all work has been done by MS. WinXP is a great OS, stable, fast and powerful. It does the job for me.
And yes, I post this with my Powerbook G4.
To start I work as a service tech for one of the largest PC manufacturers in the world. I’m not ignorant. I love Microsoft. If it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t have a job. Not much in the way of service problems for a Mac. I done both.
1.They are cheaper and faster than the mac.
*To some extent true. But you DO get what you pay for.*
2.The best OS maker is microsoft.No doubt about it.
*The best for WHAT! It’s clunky, hugh, overpowering, breaks A LOT!! What the hell are you smoking? I’m sorry I should know you are kidding.*
3.PC’s are so ROBUST!!!!!.
*Define “ROBUST!!!!!”. You mean you can upgrade them? So can I. DP G4/867, 2GB RAM, four Hard Drives (320GB total), Combo Drive, FireWire 48X16X48 CDRW, FireWire 36X12X36 CDRW, 1GB Jazz, 100MB Zip, Compaq External SCSI 12/24 DAT drive, Advansys SCSI Card, NVidea Geforce 4MX, Radeon 7000, 19″ Compaq Monitor, 17″ Apple Monitor. Still have plenty of room to add a sound card if I want. Probably won’t though. Anything I run works great.
4.1000000 times More software than the mac.
*How many word processors, variations of Quake do you need? We have most of the same things. We just need 1000000 different copies of the same things. The ones we have generally work just fine.
5.The mac is not secure you know why? because there are no viruses for the mac.Hackers use PC’s not Mac’s.Dont listen to people that say mac is more secure they are wrong.
*Why don’t you check around. I think you’ll find you are mostly incorrect. True. There are not as many viruses for the Mac do to the fact that there are fewer. Also fact it’s more difficult to write one for it that does anything really nasty.
6.Windows updates are free.Btw are apple update’s free?
* Was your update from 95 to 2000 free? How about 2000 to XP? Well it cost you and it cost us. Incremental upgrades are free for both of us. 10.1.1, 10.1.2 Free 10.1.5 to 10.2 Cost.*
7.Intel processor’s will kill apple’s(IBM)chip.The Intel prescott will be released soon.Go to these website’s
*Only Time will tell*
Iggy
You are wrong about Mac OS 9, and X not being able to act as a thin client. I have been doing this in my school lab for 3-1/2 years now. It is called NetBoot http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/netboot.html and has been available since The original Mac OS X server came out. I run this on 4-1/2 year old iMacs and not a single one them has an internal hard drive and they all run fine. You are right about one thing though, I can’t do this with OS 8. I can also use the Win2000 terminal services with my Macs http://www.microsoft.com/mac/DOWNLOAD/MISC/RDC.asp And Citrix also makes Mac software http://www.citrix.com/download/ica_clients.asp So I am able to use my Macs, booting off of a server, not its internal Hard Drive, administer it all remotely. I can run video editing programs like iMovie, and still run all of the Windows software that doesn’t have a Mac equivelant, which I find very few of, not 100000 as someone stated earlier. And I did all this at a lot less cost than it would have been if I had used Windows. And the cost isn’t in the hardware, yeah that’s less if I bought PC’s, it’s in the software. I can get unlimited licenses on my server from Apple for $500, Windows server client licenses for my school would have cost me over $20,000, which more than makes up for the additional cost of Apple hardware.
In a past job I was responsible for IT in a company that had 250 PCs and 15 Macs. The Macs were used by the graphic arts department. It took the same amount of IT resources to look after the 15 Macs as it did to look after the 250 PCs. The Macs were all identical brand new Blue G3s running OS9 and freshly installed Adobe software. The PCs were a mix from brand new (at the time) to ancient PentiumMMXes. The only way to keep the Macs working was to blow them away, install all necessary software, boot up and test, and take an image of the Hard Drive. At the sign of the slightest problem, erase the hard drive and restore the image. The longest that any Mac would last without Type 2 errors and Type 11 errors or other system bombs was 45 days. Pretty much every Mac had to be formatted and re-loaded once a month to make it work properly. These were State-of-the-art Macs with State-of-the-art software. OS9 was MILES behind Win2000 for reliability – our real-world experience demonstrated this fact hands down.
I love Macs, but I also love PCs – and an open mind is the best option. I honestly hope that OS X has solved all these problems, but I have not managed a fleet of them like I did with OS9 so I don’t know for sure.
If this document is based on the author’s experience with OS9, then I believe it is patently false. Compared to Windows 2000 and up, OS9 is beautiful crap. I’ve got gray hairs to prove it.
By Eugenia (IP: —.client.attbi.com) – Posted on 2003-02-18 21:46:28
>Microsoft is the WORST OS maker of them all. Actually, they aren’t hardly a maker of OSes in the first place.
Oh, please, spare us.
Windows have come a LONG way from their roots, whichever their roots might have been, and all work has been done by MS. WinXP is a great OS, stable, fast and powerful. It does the job for me.
And yes, I post this with my Powerbook G4.
Er he’s speaking the truth Eugenia, either you are in denial or you don’t read much up on the subject of MS’s history.
No, he is not right and you don’t even understand what I replied.
YES, Windows and DOS have their ROOTS elsewhere, BUT they have come A LONG WAY since their first days. Microsoft IS an OS development company and they have brought Windows to levels that these small conmpanies who first started them as small kernels could never have.
If I may say so, Apple used BSD and Mach to build OSX. Does that make Apple a non-OS company just because they reused previous code for their BASIS of their OS? NO my friend. Same goes for MS. WinXP is not OS/2 or VMS anymore, and WinME is not DOS *anymore*.
So, this guy used this argument that the origin of Windows is not from MS, but he FAILED to mention 15 more years of ENGINEERING done by Ms in the meantime.
One more thought to add. If people are going to post stuff that they want to claim as fact, why can’t they ever seem to link to anything. This goes mainly towards the Mac users. I am a Mac user, but I at least try to back my info up with facts. So I have to make a correction. It would not cost $20,000 for a Windows Server. Here is a breakdown of cost though.
Windows 2000 Advanced Server w/ 25 client licenses $3388
http://www.cdwg.com/shop/products/default.asp?EDC=196920
20 Client licenses $169
http://www.cdwg.com/shop/products/default.asp?EDC=200847
Exchange Server w/ 25 client licenses @2563
http://www.cdwg.com/shop/products/default.asp?EDC=245538
I cannot find the Academic pricing right now on for additional clients on exchange server.
I have 280 computers in my school. 50 teachers/staff
Server OS $3388
13 Client Packs $2197
email server OS $2563
email client (25) unknown
TOTAL $8148 plus 25 additional email client licenses
Apple server OS (unlimited) $500
A difference of $7648.
This is my opinion:
Most of the statements made apear to be opinons, very defensive ones. Statements like “Oh, yes they are!” or “Of course it’s better!” always raise defenses, don’t they?
What is the deal with Mac zealots constantly talking about how cheap PCs are, like something dies in them every other day? The only devices on any of my PCs that have a high rate of failure (and I’m talking every 2-3 years) are the hard drives, and I can only wonder how reliable these things are on Macs ?
Also, people need to lay off of this Windows ‘crash-prone’ shit – it really makes you look dumb to people that know how to use computers. Been using Win2k since the summer of 2001, and not a single blue screen yet, so now what ???
“and you’ll end up having to replace more things that go wrong”
Dude, get real. Do you honestly think I can’t build an Athlon XP or P4 based computer for half as much as your Apple and still not skimp on quality? Of course it would be faster too and I wouldn’t be tied to a proprietary OS and hardware. Just because your Apple is pretty doesn’t mean it’s better.
Did anyone think the website read like a terrible infomercial? You know the kind that shows people not smart enough to use a regular wrench, they need a magical “pressure wrench” or something stupid like that? Over-exaggerate your own strengths while down-playing your competition’s.
I have several PCs, some are in the 486SX days, but I’ve worked with 8086 computers at school! They’re all running fine, albeit a bit slow on the older ones.
All of my computers that I custom built uses brand name products, and so far has not caused me and stability problem. None of them broke down yet either. Unless you bought compaq or hp, its not likely the hardware will go bad on you.
Windows insecure? You know, that only mainly applies to people who doesn’t know how to secure themselves. I’ve gotten one virus in my lifetime, and that was in the days of DOS. My computer is on about 12 hours a day, connected to the internet. Never gets hacked. I run win2K webservers at work, no problem yet. Downtime has been 0 so far, and its been running for about half a year.
Windows crash? Maybe in the 9x and NT4 days, but win2k has BSODed only 5 times in my usage for the past three years, and windows xp none so far. I’ve had linux crash on me more than windows xp so far.
Someone who reformats and reloads Macs even when they are running OS9 shouldn’t be doing that job. Perhaps it is just because it is so damn easy to setup and run macs, that the persons in charge didn’t know better.
I have several Macs running OS9 and earlier that were never reformatted since they were bought. upgraded from OS7.5 to OS8 etc. yes, but never reformatted, running without any problems.
As OS9 is not nearly as stable as OSX they must be restarted every couple of days, and that is why OSX shines, but killing the machines by reformatting and restoring everything is like complaining that the dishes only last until supper, because they become dirty and you need new ones instead of cleaning them.
pc’s are ok, i own a new dell, but XP isn’t the gem everyone talks about. Compared to OS X(on my old imac), XP looks to cartoonish. I like aqua much better, because it’s more realistic and it has a cool edge to it and above all its unix underneath and I can run X11 on OS X.
As of now one of the minus points fo the Mac platform is the CPU. They are still in the 1.6 ghz for almost a year and I think another year while the Intel/Amd are in the 3 ghz. I pity those Mac owners.
Since McDonald’s is the most popular food, school cafeterias should serve nothing but McDonald’s food!
LOL! So true.
Why is it people have a problem with others using what they like? THEY paid for it, so why get into a debate in the first place? Different strokes, for different folks. Use what you like to get YOUR job done best. Bottom line…
my 2 cents…
This was posted to the mac sites a few months ago. This
guys “facts” are such bull that I just ignored it.
In response to better hardware. Sorry PC and macs use
the same damn components. An ATI 9700/ mac is the same
card as the 9700 PC with an bios and connector change.
Hardrives same, memory umm same. In fact sun and the big
iron uses the same memory. Apple Computer Inc. only custom
rolls cases, power supplies, motherboards. (Personally I
think rolling their own Power supply is stupid)
And that get a nice margin, this is their only real source
of income…
This war really comes down to which one you like better (on
a personal level) I would like to see Apple Computer Inc.
ship more of it’s product line into education but If
it costs more tough. And please remember that most
of the software that is custom for education, tutors
, teacher planning software etc, only ships on PC’s. And
most schools have PC people on staff.
So please people use you brain for something more than
an hair holder.
gawd.
Leslie Donaldson
“Apple’s market share is greater than that of Sony televisions, and the COMBINED shares of ALL European passenger cars sold in the U.S., including Mercedes, BMW, Volvo, Jaguar, and Porsche. (Appliance Mfgr & Market DataBook of Automotive News)”
So what does that prove other than there are more people stupid enough to buy a $4k inferior computer than a $100k inferior automobile?
PC’s Will absolutely win over mac’s here are some reasons
1.They are cheaper and faster than the mac
Not necessarily. Try making a profile 4 as good as a 17″ iMac with the same or equivelant software:-) good luck money bags.
2.The best OS maker is microsoft.No doubt about it.
This is a matter of opinion so it should be thrown out. In my opinion, they just stole their beginning and so they need to give credid to where it belongs. So they can market software:-p
3.PC’s are so ROBUST!!!!!.
Yeah they are pretty big allright. What in the heck does this mean?
4.1000000 times More software than the mac
Like you need all that crap. The mac 9 times out of 10 has the equivalent to ar a solution for that software. You allways have Virtual PC :-p
5.The mac is not secure you know why? because there are no viruses for the mac.Hackers use PC’s not Mac’s.Dont listen to people that say mac is more secure they are wrong.
Well you are a little conceeded I see here. at one time the computer of choice to hack PC’s no less was a Mac. Just because there isn’t that many viruses and worms for the mac doesn’t validate thour arguement. I would have to say that this is a poorly thought out theory.
6.Windows updates are free.Btw are apple update’s free?
APPLE UPDATES ARE FREE you moron. the UPGRADES ARE NOT!!
7.Intel processor’s will kill apple’s(IBM)chip.The Intel prescott will be released soon.Go to these website’s.
This is all hearsay and you can’t make a judgement on something that hasn’t been released yet to compare with something els that hasn’t been released yet either. I can tell you thet even the G3 (7300) chip is still more eficient in its processes than even the P4 right now. So while your 2Ghz P4 is sucking power away We will be easing the little cash out of our pockets to pay our electric bills to perform at just the same rate. and any how, how fast does it really need to be any way. Most people with computers just type!
High prices are killing Apple.
That is the one trend Apple has ignored for a long time and now is only giving lip service to lowering prices. Meanwhile, Apple loses more and more global marketshare every day.
Apple has to realize that cost of entry is far more important for most buyers than the mythical TCO numbers that are bandied about. If a buyer can’t purchase the machine, it is game over for Apple; they just lost that sale.
Everyone in the world is becoming more and more budget conscious. Apple should seriously think about creating affordable computers that are not spavined in one way or another.
–ms
I go to college and two of my friends just bought a laptop. One of them is a $3000 15″ Mac and the other one is a $2000 15″ dell.
Speed: The dell is faster, but my friend with the mac doesn’t care.
User Friendlyness: My friend with the Dell was able to configure his wireless card in 15 minutes, and he is able to surf the net at school. My other friend still doesn’t have his wireless card working after 4 weeks.
Screen: The dell has a brighter screen with a better viewing angle, and a MUCH higher resolution. The vertical resolution of the mac is 800+ pixels while the dell has a 1600×1200 screen.
Price: I don’t know about you… but a $1000 is a lot of money saved for me.
A one page manual that let’s a sixth grader set up a cluster? That’s a page I’d love to see.
(Damn, swore I wouldn’t get caught in a troll)
>PC’s Will absolutely win over mac’s here are some reasons
>
>1.They are cheaper and faster than the mac
>Not necessarily. Try making a profile 4 as good as a 17″ >iMac with the same or equivelant software:-) good luck >money bags.
Yeah right, Dual proc amd 160M scsi and I’m still cheaper.
>2.The best OS maker is microsoft.No doubt about it.
>This is a matter of opinion so it should be thrown out. In >my opinion, they just stole their beginning and so they >need to give credid to where it belongs. So they can market >software:-p
Xerox ?
>3.PC’s are so ROBUST!!!!!.
>Yeah they are pretty big allright. What in the heck does >this mean?
same hardware same relability, and the dual procs macs are loud.
>4.1000000 times More software than the mac
>Like you need all that crap. The mac 9 times out of 10 has >the equivalent to ar a solution for that software. You >allways have Virtual PC :-p
VPC is slow, and mac miss certain critical apps, It’s never
an range of software that forces the choice it’s usually
one. In the server world think Oracle.
>5.The mac is not secure you know why? because there are no
> deleted
>that this is a poorly thought out theory.
If large market share equals more people wanting to
write viruses. Apple has some security holes but no bothers
to expolit them.
>6.Windows updates are free.Btw are apple update’s free?
>APPLE UPDATES ARE FREE you moron. the UPGRADES ARE NOT!!
Equal on both points except for the 10.2?? I think thats
the number. Apple Computer Inc. needed cash
>7.Intel processor’s will kill apple’s(IBM)chip.The Intel
> deleted
>orm at just the same rate. and any how, how fast does it >really need to be any way. Most people with computers just >type!
1. AMD compares better and it is/will be faster.
2. 64 bit makes you’re programs bigger and dosen’t mean faster.
3. I work on Alpha all the time, includeing em486 so I do know 64 bit issues.
4. If typeing speed meant jack my 68B09E computer would
sill have market share.
5. Try ripping an cdrom , compiling software, and playing mp3 and reading the web. I do it but then again I have an
scsi system and a real cpu.
6. You’ve forgotten the mini-me hyperthreading.
Wow!!! Holy Cow!!! All this over a computer.
Now as someone who is a computer geek and has both Windows PCs and and an iMac at home, I agree PCs and macs are vastly different.
But as someone who has kids ages 4 and 7 that use both the iMac and the Windows PC in our home effortlessly, I have to say to them they are both computers. And I think that is were the point has been lost here.
Kids don’t care about OSX versus Windows XP, motherboards, and who has free updates, etc. etc. They just want to navigate to a menu item, click an icon and run a program. Macs and Windows PCs can both accomplish that task.
Granted the people that support the hardware and software care about all this stuff. But you can get a support staff for either platform (or both) And get this… no matter what anyone says… the total costs will be roughly the same either way you go.
So why does this guy care so much? I cannot believe the effort that was put into this website to prove why Apple is better for kids in a school. Especially when most of the kids in the school just want to use a computer and do not really care what kind.
Here is a solution… invest in both platforms. Divide certain computer classes between the apple and windows platforms. If my 4 year old daughter can use either of my machines, I think most elemetary school kid can.
More fuel to this fire…..
http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?product_code=30008…
VAIO GRZ660 Notebook
Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor, 2.4GHz, 512MB RAM, 40GB Hard Drive, 15.0-inch XGA TFT Display, 1X4 DVD-R/RW Drive, Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
Now which 15 is an better value or is it just an OS? The sony
is an better deal, better hardware, etc.
If they came with the same OS no one would buy Apple Computer Inc. products.
LFD
get a life people!
I know that if I were in charge of doing a K-12 computer lab, I’d probably be using thin client technology, most likely LTSP (as that’s what I have experience with). It’s easy to set up and amazingly scalable. That, as you can guess, means x86.
I have no problems with Apple’s machines. I like their quality components. I think OS X is a nice operating system. But, frankly, deploying a school-wide computer infrastructure is expensive, and if you can cut the costs without cutting the quality too much, I’d do it. The educational budgets nowadays really cannot handle Apple’s prices.
A carefully constructed thin client can have _very_ few moving parts. In fact, use the VIA CPUs, and you can probably get it down to just the power supply fan and the buttons on the case. If you do it like that, component quality matters, but most of the commonly failing parts will be gone. If you’re careful, you can do it at $500 or so per computer (including keyboard and monitor), which is probably one huge savings over what you’d get trying to give everyone a Mac.
-Erwos
What is it with geeks and their juvenile obsession with making pointless analogies between computing and cars? Face it, toasters or toothbrushes are just as relevant to computing as a Mercedes Benz.
My theory is it’s a product of arrested development. These guys (and notice how they are ALWAYS guys) probably spent their formative years arguing in the schoolyard about which was better, Ford or Chevy. Then they got into computers, but they never forgot their car loving roots. Unfortunately it seems, all they really know is cars and computers, so they lack the imagination to see that computing is not really analogous to anything other than computing.
Of course, it might just be that said geeks are just so overbearingly arrogant and patronising that they imagine that the only way they can get their point across to the proles (ie anyone who doesn’t understand computers (ie anyone else but them)) is to appeal to the lowest common demoninator, which in their mind equates to an intense interest in cars.
Microsoft steals. Do we really want to teach our kids that stealing is OK? That copying off the smart kids is the way to become the richest man on Earth? Do we really want more Enrons, Global Crossings, and WorldComs? PeeCee people suck.
I like the TCO argument most. In ten years of owning and maintaining my three x86 computers I have never replaced a single part due to failure; I’ve had one Apple PowerBook laptop computer and it:
A) looked beautiful .. quality of manufacture was superb, as one might expect from the same manufacturer as my Compaq EVO.
B) ran like shat, as one would expect from a piddly G4-867MHz machine. Slow? Painfully so. OSX 10.2 is a brutal pig in a silk dress. No amount of eye candy can ameliorate its sluggish performance.
C) was very fairly priced. However, desktop Apples don’t compare with Wintel boxes for price/performance.
D) was impossible to find applications for; if apps exist they are often much more expensive than Windows equivalent software.. this is partially offset by the Apple iApps.
Overall I think the “TCO argument” is specious and silly. My Compaq EVO does everything the PowerBook did, but faster and cheaper. My desktop machines sport performance that kill anything Apple has to offer, at a third the price. The only reason people buy Apple is because they like the machinery, the look, and the OS, AND they have deep enough pockets to support the habit. They’re welcome to it.
Xerox
Rip, Mix, Burn
sherlock
verses
Stacker
java
Morality and computers are not compatible, After all
Power PCs are the choice of weapons of war…….
“Microsoft steals.”
Anyone want to mention Xerox? Thought not.
“Do we really want to teach our kids that stealing is OK?”
They already use P2P to download MP3’s, so I think it’s a moot point.
“That copying off the smart kids is the way to become the richest man on Earth?”
Isn’t that what Jobs did to Woz?
“Do we really want more Enrons, Global Crossings, and WorldComs?”
How on earth is any of that relevant to the argument at hand?
“PeeCee people suck.”
Maybe, but at least we don’t swallow.
LOL … what a load of shit. Once you take a Mac addict’s ‘arguments’ and blast every one of them (especially the pathetic TCO drek), then the ‘morality’ issue comes up (basically saying that we shouldn’t use MS products because MS is immoral) … Linux zealots are the same way.
As for morality, Microsoft is immoral – granted. But then again, so is RIAA and MPAA. Does that mean you’re going to give up your CDs and movies too? What about Time Warner and its ilk .. I’m sure none of you lovers of morality have cable, do you? What about the telcos … baby Bells, hmmmm? Anybody on the ‘MS is evil’ bandwagon own telephones?
>By James Warkentin
>
>The only reason people buy Apple is because they like the >machinery, the look, and the OS, AND they have deep enough >pockets to support the habit. They’re welcome to it.
Exactly, This is the light, the truth, the way. This is the
entire argument. If you don’t love the GUI AND have the
cash go elsewhere. Mac’s are not consumer machines anymore
there an niche market. period.
(Sorry if the truth is just that, when Apple Computer Inc.
gets avove 10 percent market share for their Mac product
line then we can talk. I’ll be nice make that above 10
percent in any one country (county defined as being an
member in good standing in the U.N. ( This is just an
easy quick way to weed out stupid people. ( France dosen’t
count as an country must have an spine.))))
L. Donaldson
I am sick of this.
Why are we not talking about TEACHING OUR CHILDREN?
I personally do not give a RATS ASS which system a school uses. But I give a RATS ASS when the school board gives themselves a FAT FRICKEN raise when the teachers are struggling to teach our children with what they have.
Whatever happened to the so called BILLIONS OF DOLLARS given to the schools by the state lotteries? Where is that money really going to?
Many of todays kids can not even add simple double digit numbers in their heads. Just yesterday I saw someone who could not multiply 4×12 without using his fingers (the guy has a degree, sheesh!).
“But I give a RATS ASS when the school board gives themselves a FAT FRICKEN raise when the teachers are struggling to teach our children with what they have.”
Yeah right. The fact that kids aren’t learning is not the fault of the teachers or the school board.
The fact is that the reason kids are so dumb these days is because they don’t want to learn and there’s no amount of money that’s going to change that, when all the kids want to do is get laid and sit around the house all day playing Vice City on their PS2’s.
Apple BOUGHT GUI tech from Xerox. They PAID for it. Microsoft did not. Microsoft must make people stupid, because only their customers do not know these facts. Total morons who have kept the PC industry in the late 70s for over two decades now.
> Mac’s are not consumer machines anymore
> there an niche market. period.
They are the only solution for the consumer. That is if you want them to have a good user experience. Windows XP is still too complicated(UI wise) to use and too complex to maintain(have spent too many time fixing someone elses XP…)
Mac OS X is a pleasure to play with. Try it and you’ll never go back to clunky Windows.
As soon as teacher’s union allows for the testing and
elimination of crap teachers.
When the union allows the state to test the “product”
that goes through a 12 year manufactuering process.
when parents give a damn.
and when teachers get a real degree
O and politicians are honest.
Note: class room size = Red herring. Japan’s average
number of students per room is 30+. Most people educated
today had large classrooms.
Note: Broken home = Red Herring. Makes it so the parent
needs to do work, and see comment about parents with their
head inserted into the neither regions.
Note: BEOS would improve the learning enviroment.
Actually, Apple licensed the GUI to MS in exchange for MS producing software for the Mac. What Apple forgot to do is impose any limitations on MS’s use, and in effect gave MS perpetual use of the GUI. That’s what the Look and Feel case was all about, and ultimately why Apple didn’t win it.
Kinda makes Apple look pretty dumb too.
Can you actually point to ANY example of where Microsoft acquired something without paying for it?
…but just in walking around today in little Sonoma, CA, looking in shops and what not, I saw several iMac G3’s, and a new eMac running OS X. I saw a couple of PCs, and one had crashed (looked like Win98, though, but, still…). So, in other words:
I saw 50% Macs, and 25% of the PCs had crashed.
Truth is, I see Macs all over the place. iMacs/eMacs make great little business machines in places where you’d like your equipment to actually look nice (instead of butt ugly). If you asked me what market share Apple has, without me knowing any “real” statistics, I’d say it has about 30-40%, just based on personal observation.
Of course, what do I know. IDG is much smarter than me, I guess.
Regards,
Jared
P.S. John Droz is right. Macs DO have a lower TCO. Most PC users have problems right and left with their machines, and you damn well know it. I was a PC user up until two years ago. I went through hell everytime I wanted to upgrade a simple system component. Plug-n-Play? Plug-n-Pray was more like it! And, no, XP isn’t so much better. It’s better, but not good enough. And the “task” interface makes me want to gag.
P.P.S. Oh, and don’t pay any attention to the guy who says: “OSX 10.2 is a brutal pig in a silk dress”. He’s full of it. OS X 10.0 wasn’t that bad, let alone Jaguar. It’s just a troll thing, or something.
Jared
“Of course, what do I know. IDG is much smarter than me, I guess.”
Yup. For one thing their research methods are probably more scientific than just wandering the streets of Sonoma.
Hey! i’m a member of the Jackass clan too so I have to get involved in this debate as well. Mac’s rule! If you disagree it’s because of your religion.
and when teachers get a real degree
but this guy fails to impress me at all. I’ll stick with my Athlon (Original, yeah!), and Gentoo >:)
Mac OS X is a pleasure to play with. Try it and you’ll never go back to clunky Windows.
Actually, I have .. and I’m still using Windows, so now what? Hell, I was actually more impressed with KDE than OSX. And after taking OSX for a test drive, I can’t imagine how anyone could compare it with Windows and refer to Windows as ‘clunky.’
I seem to have had radically different experiences than most of you. I am a Mac (G4 Tower) user, but I have a WinXP box and laptop that I use for some things. Now, I’ve owned the G4 for going on 4 years, the laptop is 1.5 years old, and the box is 1 year old.
Amazingly, the G4 feels hardly dated at all. I can still run the newest programs, the newest system. It still has it’s original hardware (384 RAM, 400 mhz proc, 40 gig HD). Admittedly, it won’t be running Doom3 at full quality any time soon, but it’s sufficient for everything except power-gaming needs.
My XP laptop is…falling apart. Literally. Never, ever buy an Acer 531T. My school supplies them to all students, and we’ve had more problems with them than anything else.
The XP box, while the most up-to-date of my boxes, has had serious hardware difficulties. One harddrive has already failed, and one of the RAM chips was DOA. Not a great track record.
Now, what should really scare you is that the 4 year old PowerMac out-performs the 1.5 year old P3. I can emulate Mario 64 on my PowerMac at 1280×1024 with excellent quality averaging 32 fps. I can’t run it on my lapto (even when plugged it) at over 3 fps. And the emulator isn’t hardware accelerated on the PowerMac. Both of the XP computers crash regularly. I have never had a kernel panic on the Mac. I’ve had individual apps lock up, but SSH’ing into the PowerMac and issuing a kill command fixes that.
All in all, I would say the PowerMac has served me the best for many years. I’m looking to replace it in a year or two, but I’m in no hurry. Of all my computers, I find it works the best, despite its age.
Anyways, that’s just my little testimony to Apple’s computers. My experience has, as you can see, been very positive.
<quote>and when teachers get a real degree</quote>
I cannot speak for the education programs in all states or university systems. However, I have a degree in History and a degree in Education. I do not currently teach. Why? I hate being poor. I hate living in rent-controlled housing because I am making so little money. It just gets on my nerves that parents like their children cannot take the very smallest degree of criticism or understand that their children can do any wrong. It makes me insane the politics being played over education in most states of the USofA. It also riles me up to think of all the hate games played in the schools. The kids and parents hate the teachers who also hate the administration and the administration see both the parents and the teachers and the students as being the enemy. The real problem is not with the education that most teachers are getting in college.
The real problem is that you do not need a degree (a full degree) to teach in most states. The career switcher programs have got it all wrong. I am living proof that most people who go through the trouble of getting an education degree many times turn to more lucrative methods of employment.
Money is not the cure-all to the education problems the United States of America face. However, until society is willing to acknowledge teachers deserve a fair wage that matches the demands of their jobs, you are not going to see a real change in the quality of education.
All the people with real drive and a desire to make a decent living for themselves turn to other areas of employment. The people left reach the far extremes. The people left in the classroom are either the most dedicated wonderous people alive or the worst lazy sadistic scum you will have the displeasure of meeting.
Yes, tougher standards for teachers on the job would help and better methods for the elimination of bad teachers are badly needed. Teachers unions are bad because they oppose these things but some sort of professional organization of labor is still needed because teachers are some of the most underpaid professionals out there. Teachers need organization. They just do not need the organizations they have today.
Parents have to care. This is true. Society cannot simply demand that parents give up their children to the schools and expect the systems to teach them, feed them two meals a day and give them the moral foundation and civic foundation they need and hand the children back when they are eighteen. That is almost how many teachers feel it is nowadays. Teachers cannot just teach the basics. They have to teach all this morality, and living studies courses crap as well because the current moral support structure in our society is so out of whack. It takes a village to raise a kid because both the parents are working twelve hours a day and they can’t even trust anyone with their kids not even the neighborhood priest for goodness sakes.
Also, just because one system (the Japanese system) has success with large classroom sizes does not mean that will work everywhere. In fact, there is a large volume of data that says smaller classroom sizes do matter. I know that learned a heck of a lot more in college taking a small upper-level class as opposed to the larger freshman classes under the same professor. If you can say that was not your experience fine but you are the exception.
Teaching has become too damn political. If I say I care about classroom size then that is a moderate/liberal stance or if I say back-to-basics education agenda then I am branded conservative. It is nonsense. It is not based on facts or what is best for the children. It is based on who can attack who for what during a political campaign and it is nonsense. A school system I was substituting for in my first year out of college decided to make a modest move to more goal or objective based curriculum structure. This was branded liberal and voted and yelled down. Even though I saw the plan and it was a straight up well thought out plan.
I know that some back-to-basics movements in some north eastern states trying to turn out some of the nonsense courses creeping into the class list have been blasted out as conservative to give a reverse example.
It is wrong. Keep politics out of the classroom. Tell your politicians that teaching techniques and policies should not be broken down and labeled one by one as being conservative or liberal.
Yes, the broken home thing is a bit of Red Herring. Still, I have in my older age come of the rather shocking opinion that the vast majority of my peers who came from an intact home are much more together than my friends who came out of a single parent household with exceptions on both sides. I came from a single family home and I made it through college, have a job, a family, and all that. I always considering the wonderous power of the dual parent home to be like some myth-place that does not really exist. Like the recent Hollywood films if the parents live in the same house they should be miserable and hurtfull monsters cheating on each other all American Beauty style. As I have grown older I understand that is just being full-on cynical. Most of the 50% of the people that stay together do so because they actually care for each other.
Finally each school system has to make the best choice in terms of the computer systems that meet their need in the most efficient manner. OS religious wars should not come into play. The decision should be made based on what is best in that situation.
One reoccuring theme I see on here is this whole speed issue. Why do you need a machine that can play Doom III when it finally is released in an environment that is used to educate? Does a 2 GHz P4 make the world book encyclopedia that much better? Do you get to Oregon faster on the Oregon Trail? Schools need computers that work and don’t require a huge IT staff as they don’t have the money to support it. It’s their choice. Pay more now or pay more later. Personally, I’d pay more now as at the rate schools buy new computers, they’re going to be paying a lot in tech support before the next upgrade cycle comes around. And yes, kids these days in college actually seem more computer illiterate than they were 5 years ago. Stop worrying about teaching them how to use an OS and concentrate and teaching them what they need to get by in life.
You’re right. I wasn’t aware of Netboot. I am not the Mac admin at our company and had never heard our Mac admin mention it. Netboot does appear to allow what I mean by thin client computing.
I was aware of Citrix and Terminal Services being available to the Mac (TS with OS X). However, that did not allow the underlying OS to be a thin client solution like Netboot does, so I discounted it. What those solutions are good for is providing Win32 applications to non-Microsoft OSes. However, once you pay for that solution, you have also paid for the exact same solution on Intel Hardware using Windows, so the cheaper cost of that Intel Hardware will come into play. Meaning, the licensing to run Citrix for 100 Macs is the same as the licensing to run it for 100 Windows (or Linux) systems.
So, I conceed the point that OS X (and 9 if you say so) can be in a thin client model. That doesn’t change my main point, which is that any school should be trying as well as possible to implement a thin client solution. It is the cheapest way to provide computing services. In the case of a school system with 100’s of existing Macs, it sounds like the cheapest solution is to get some OS X servers and use Netboot to make the old Macs thin clients. Much better than spending money on new hardware whether PC or Mac.
I do not agree with your second post in some areas. Just like you wanted me to provide data about why Windows was cheaper (missing the point that I wasn’t saying Windows was cheaper, I was saying thin client is cheaper than fat), I am always amazed that people who do provide numbers provide it in the most lopsided way possible to support their point.
1) You do not need Windows Advanced Server. Regular Windows Server 2000 is sufficient, and costs around 1k.
2) Client licenses for Windows Services are $30 each, the server system above came with 10.
3) You don’t need Exchange Server. That is a powerful groupware application, and there is no equivalent for those features in the Mac or Unix world except for Lotus Notes. On the Mac side you will be using a simple smtp server, like sendmail, and you should do the same on Windows. Total cost for unlimited licensing is: free if you choose the right package.
4) Email clients are also free, if you choose the right client. A popular choice is Outlook Express. However, a web based mail program may make the most sense for the students.
However, you say you have 250 computers, and 50 staff. Assumming the staff are 50 more computers beyond the 250 for students, that makes 300 machines.
Total Cost to provide Windows on these machines along with networked services and, assuming they all have an OEM OS (just like a Mac would) is about $9700.
That’s $1000 for the server OS
And $8700 for 290 client access licenses (10 came with the server OS copy)
Anyway, thanks for the info about Netboot. I’m certainly going to check that out some more. But, my point was that Thin is good, fat is expensive. I was wrong about the Mac support of thin.
I can just see that some pc users a veryyyyyyyyy stupid. Thet think that they know everything about performance, operating system, but they are more stupid than the people who are making windows.
If you are so happy with windows, go away from here, and stop to say stupid things bigger than you.
“User of pcs and macs”
“Pay more now or pay more later.”
And here is the fundamental problem with Droz’s fight. School boards tend to operate on very tight yearly budgets. Rarely will they engage in much long term fiscal management, because next year’s budget will probably be someone else’s problem. So the TCO argument won’t have as much sway as an immediate cost benefit analysis, which will show that it is more beneficial to put X plus 50% PCs on desks than it will be just to put X Macs on desks for the same investment.
Given that a school board is funded by collected taxes, it’s inevitable that it will be more concerned with the taxpayers’ question “Why are there so few computers on school desks?” than it will be with the question “Why aren’t you following my ideaology?”
Did you notice yet, that your comments seem to hit a brick wall here? I made a remark that computers are not the most necessary items required for education, and everyone just keeps on blathering away about TCO and MHz and what computers they think schools have to have. They seem to forget that most teachers end up spending their OWN money for supplies for the kids. And not computer supplies, either; just paper and pencils and art supplies. I never understood why we even let computers in the classroom in the first place. The time taken to install and run them, train the teachers on them, get the teachers to train the kids on them is all just a MASSIVE distraction and waste(on top of other mandated programs that have more to do with political correctness than education).