Apple to lead fanbois 'Back to the Mac' Next Wednesday, October 20, Apple will host an invitation-only event on its Cupertino campus that is apparently intended to remind its iOS-obsessed fan base that, yes, it still makes personal computers. Jobs & Co. sent out invitations this Wednesday to a media soirée entitled "Back to the Mac" — and in true Jobsian fashion, …
No, seriously, buy one. It's clear you've never used one.
I have worked with MS products since MS DOS 3.20, and from Worries for Workgroups all the way to Vista. Which is when I decided to write a book, and bought a Mac. As an aside, I have also used almost all common UNIX variants on the planet, and started with Linux when Slackware still came on floppies and the whole "URL" concept had not been invented yet.
Since I bought the Mac, I have redefined "*using* Windows as *suffering* Windows because, sorry, it can't hold a candle to the usability of the Mac, only marred by the lack of navigation keys. I don't get interrupted by yet-another-update every possible time of the day, and it works the moment I open the lid (MacBook). And when I'm ready I close the lid. Simple. It never loses a setting - with Windows I have to define monitor size and position every time I as much as sneeze, and I have long given up supporting friends with their machines because I want to keep them as friends.
With Macs it just bloody works.
If I then look at the cost of my Sony VIAOs (on which you lose hours erasing all the crap that Sony likes to pollute its installation with), a MacBook is actually cheaper, and it's damn good engineering.
And *if* I use Windows, it's like returning to London and waiting for an hour for your luggage - you get instantly reminded why you left. It was worth it.
Actually, the most irritating thing about the Mac is the realisation I could have done this a lot earlier. The second irritation is that I may be seen as a fanboy - like your reaction. It's what kept me off Macs until now (and I had Linux) - I have as little time for indiscriminating idiots as anyone else in my specific profession. However, credit where credit is due. It works, and less worries about virus infections is also helpful - which is why I have seen a number of Swiss private banks switch over to Macs. For me, that trend may continue.
It's not perfection, but it's damn close to what I want a computer to be: useful. With Windows, that purpose has gradually been eroded over the years, and I'm through paying for software that is actually perpetually in beta test. I have work to do.
So there.
A Bugatti Veyron also has damn good engineering... cant Justify the price of that... or of Apple computers. It really is that simple. Having seen the number of times the Macbook pro my partner owns has been back to Apple, I have concluded that they seem no more reliable than the cheaper x86 PCs.
Nice.. I'll grant you that... but over-priced. If they ever come down to a more realistic level... Id seriously look into moving over - but until then Ill stick with my old Toshiba and Suse.
Mines the coat with the empty pocket...
If someone has a half decent job, a mortgage and a car, chances are that a slight tweak to their budget would allow them to get a Mac if they wanted one. Just getting the 1.8l instead of the 2.0l. or a 3 year old car instead of a 2 year old car would save you that kind of money.
Almost nobody can afford a Veyron. You're comparing things that are three orders of magnitude apart.
Partners current civil service pay cheque doesnt run to list on a new mac , and thats with a 12 year old 1.2 litre car.
My point was that when people justify the ridiculous cost of a MacBook by pointing to engineering - my response is that the price tag of that is as unrealistic to the average home user as a Veyron is to the average driver.
Its overpriced.. even mac users I know are honest enough to admit that.. Id love to know what it really costs to build one... I suspect the margin on them is far greater than the speculated 30%
My £2400 MacBook Pro 17" is *good* value for money. It's an excellent device, very fast, loads of storage and memory. It also costs a lot less than the tools in a plumber's van.
As a *professional* I don't care a jot about what amateur users think or purchase. As a *professional* I care passionately about being given the choice to purchase a decent high-end machine.
Please go down to Dixons and buy your £500 plastic, dog-slow, crapware-laden, pig-ugly, large, heavy, unreliable, shell of a computer that runs WinDos. I'm very happy to use a device that makes me feel good every day I use it.
Or, to put it into your words, you drive your 12 year old 1.2 litre car; I'll drive my new Range Rover (albeit that they're hideously ugly).
'less worries about virus infections is also helpful - which is why I have seen a number of Swiss private banks switch over to Macs. For me, that trend may continue.'
If that trend does continue, the benefit will be lost as ot will actually be worth writing malware and viruses
Also all of Sony's stuff is overpriced - so whats your point!
Finally, you admit to moving to Vista at some point, then moan about using beta software when the issuse with Vista were well known before release.
'If that trend does continue, the benefit will be lost as ot will actually be worth writing malware and viruses'
That argument has little credibility. In the late 1990's, Mac OS 9 had many viruses and both a lower number of machines and a lower percentage market share than the current MacOS incarnation. Were your argument to hold water then the current version of OSX /should/ have more viruses and malware than OS 9 ever did.
who speak in a manner that reminds us of the good old MAC vs PC flamewars.
with all your experience, if you "suffer" windows, you're not worth your salt in IT, it's as simple as that. Even IT professionals that *never* work with windows, can use it just fine. stating the "facts" like you do sounds an awful lot like the "facts" i stated during those flamewars. i got older though. i realised there's no "better" OS, all of them have their perks and all of them have their downside. dismissing Windows makes no sense, just because you seem to be unable to properly work with it doesn't mean it's the same for everyone else.
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@Oliver Jones
"A tickbox in the mouse properties, labeled "Disable mouse acceleration".
You know - like the one in Windows?
"
You chose the wrong example there... There are over 60,000 search results for 'winxp disable mouse accel'.
It seems that even tho there is an option for turning off mouse accel in windows, it does not actually turn off mouse accel. Funny that right? Something in Windows not working as expected?
Interesting amount of thumbs up there, thanks.
I'll sum up my response in one message:
My Windows expertise: present, but irrelevant. That's the whole point, the Mac does the work so I don't have to (partly simply by design). I *know* how to keep a Windows box secure as I've been in this fight for the last 20 years or so, but it's a full time job all of its own. That's *not* what I call a modern OS, even Windows 7 STILL needs anti-virus training wheels to go anywhere near the Net. My problem is that most of my friends do NOT know how to keep a machine safe, so there's no way I will recommend a Windows box for them.
From a usability perspective, it's just different. Some things are better, some things I don't like (lack of cursors, Skype having different windows), and some things stay the same, like confirmation windows popping up where you can't see them so you think an application has hung.
Straightjacket feeling: initially, yes. Until you work out where the controls are. I have on one laptop Windows XP, Ubuntu and OSX, because I thought I needed it. Here's how you find out just how much crap Microsoft finds to replace each week: keep a machine offline for 2 weeks, and watch what you have to fight through before you can work. I actually force the Mac to update every so often because years of Windows has made me nervous :-)
Yes, I do simple Office things on this Mac. It has Omnigraffle to replace Visio, the whole iWorks because I was curious, MS Office because the Mac version is still usable (you can keep the ribbon, thanks), Truecrypt, a whole compiler setup to port some Linux programs I like, a VPN to London because I watch things on BBC's iPlayer when abroad, and I mostly use a Logitech Anywhere MX mouse because I find it easier than the trackpad to draw things. Oh, and did I mention it automatically backs up when I'm at home because I have a hard disk hanging off my access point? It just does it, easy.
So, in summary, it works for me, despite me knowing what I'm doing in Windows, Unix and Linux. To me, that is the only criteria after value for money...
> No, seriously, buy one. It's clear you've never used one.
Quit swimming in the cool-aid. To know it is not necessarily to love it.
> With Macs it just bloody works.
Only if you have very simple needs.
If you stray the slightest bit off the garden path then things quickly get nasty. It no longer "just works". This could be slightly interesting devices or use cases that the people in Cupertino didn't account for.
This is why VLC is such a popular MacOS download. It makes up for the self imposed limitations of Quicktime. It's a lot easier than sorting out Quicktime plugins manually and dealing with variations that the pundit community might shout you down for wanting.
Tit.
"Quit swimming in the cool-aid" As opposed to the crap that Stallman spouts? I love how a blatant fanboy like JEDIDIAH has the temerity to accuse someone else of drinking the "Kool-aid" (NB JEDIDIAH: Note the spellig. If you going to slag someone off with a tired meme, at least get it right!)
"Only if you have very simple needs." WTF is that supposed to mean? Are you really suggesting Linux is better because it harder to use*? Fuckwit.
"This could be slightly interesting devices or use cases that the people in Cupertino didn't account for." Such as?
"This is why VLC is such a popular MacOS download. It makes up for the self imposed limitations of Quicktime. It's a lot easier than sorting out Quicktime plugins manually and dealing with variations that the pundit community might shout you down for wanting." VLC is popular on *all*
platform for the same reason and 'sorting out Quicktime plugins manually' is simply a matter of adding and removing .component files from a folder!
*Linux, Mac and Windows are all about the same in terms of usability. Each has it's strong points, and each has it's limitations.
Expensive - yes.
Value for money - yes.
Personally I wouldn't buy one (I like to tinker and hack), but for the average person (who can afford the initial cost) Apple products are a better choice than just about any Windows based equivalent* and probably work out at the same price (if not cheaper) in the long run.
You may not agree with me and that's fine. We all have different needs, values and pockets. A company shifting that many units cannot be "crap" and it's certainly not "overpriced" as the market evidently accepts that price. If you don't like the price/ethos/whatever - simple don't buy one.
*There is no Linux equivalent as yet it's almost impossible to buy Linux boxes from a major OEM without sacrificing a goat to the great IT gods.
PC:
- slightly cheaper hardware (within the same PC performance class not by more than $200 typically, and at the top end Macs are in fact cheaper, sometimes even than building one as the 27" iMac is an example)
- lots more time investment
- expensive software than mostly can only be used on 1 licensed machine (Have to buy office Pro now to use Exchange, Apple does this free out-of-the-box for example). Very little can be done on a PC without investing in additional software, especially for photo/video editing which is the big hot thing with families.
- very low or zero resale value after just 3 years.
- lots of stuff works with it, but very little legacy software works with Windows 7, about as much works with a Mac, have to virtualize windows on windows to have full compatibility.
- Desktops are more flexible, but most lower end ones are not as upgradable as commonly believed, and since most have all the ports common people would add in the end, very few ever get more than a HDD or RAM upgrade in their life cycle, especially in business and simple home (non-game) deployments.
Macs:
- slightly more expensive hardware. No bottom end options under $600. Expected for nothing less than multimedia use cases so that's OK (drop to web-only use cases, and Mac OS doesn;t do anything Linux or Windows, or a smartphone can't), its a market they care nothing for and choose not to compete in).
- easy to set up, easy to maintain, easy to recover from software issues. Mostly effortless, and backed by world class support (that will actually support the OS, not just break-fix for parts).
- Most Mac Software is family licensed or not encumbered by DRM at all, and is licensed for any one mac concurrently, not a single install on one machine (there is a difference). Office is not required to access Exchange servers meaning the Student and teacher office edition provides the same functionality to a Mac user as the pro version costing $200 more does to a PC user. US upgrades also cheaper and no "pro" version there at all. Stock software accommodates the needs of the vast majority of users.
- resale for as much as half the original purchase price after 3 years is COMMON. (check eBay...) Replacing a Mac with a new one factoring in resale is almost guaranteed to cost less than buying a new PC, even one of inferior performance.
- Legacy apps through rosetta. Windows not only also runs on it for legacy app support, but Coherence visualization actually makes that easy (treat a Mac and a VM as a single machine, not 2 separate systems, including winning Office on a Mac as if it was installed native without ever seeing Windows 7 underneath, and most games can even play inside a VM).
- memory upgrades are a snap, HDDs in most models (though ample external HDD options make that a non-issue). Less flexible hardware except in the pro series. If you need GPU flexibility, or specialied IO cards, a Mac is not for you. Thankfully less than 1% of people who buy a PC ever change a GPU so its not really a big deal unless you;re the slim market who play PC games or work in sciences (and then a Mac pro if often on par pricewise to top end water cooled rigs anyway).
In the Power days, Macs were priced very high and had very little compatibility. If you didn't need one, you didn't buy one. Current Macs are prices very close to competing hardware and often run Windows with better performance than similarly priced PCs. As they continue to gain popularity, software vendors are coming back to mac as well. Native 64bit, every model with a GPU, 8+GB RAM support in every model, VT on every chip, GPGPU and more. Blizzard and bungie are releasing every game going forward on Mac and PC. Even Microsoft/Turbine have multiple Mac games, and are coding Halo for Mac OS X as we speak.
Macs cost a bit more up front, but over time actually have as much as 66% of the TCO, given a 5 year lifespan. Businesses, not that most internal legacy apps have Java and SOA front ends, are starting to see they're easy to maintain in networks (ADP is an awesome tool suite), have native AD and LDAP support, and can save the cost of MS Office deployment for a large user base. Downtime is less, patching time is less, Security hardening scripts are simpler, meeting DOD standards is easier. Macs on dekstop actually make more sense than Linux, and Mac minis draw very little power, make little noise, and cost LESS than Dell or Lenovo Business marketed SFF PCs. Governments and school districts figured that out a few years ago. Walstreet is learning.
Microsoft loves it too (since 80% of Macs end up with Windows and half of those with Office, and the majority of home PCs come only with OEM and free licenses. its a fact that the average Mac is more profitable to Microsoft than the average Dell sold to a home or college user. They're 100% behind apple, and moving more and more of their product line to Mac native.
Where did you get this fact from?
While I agree with most of what you have written, your statement quoted above is twaddle.
I support between 70 and 80 Macs - only 2 of them have windows on them in VMs. None of them use bootcamp. 2 of them run an Access database and sage accounts using Wine.
There are five Macs in this place. Accordingly, 4 of those should be running windows. But they don't - and never will.
There's no way it could be called that, it's just such a lame sounding release.
Perhaps the graphic is insinuating that Apple are turning their backs on the 'feline' name convention?
Perhaps it'll just be plain old "Mac OS 11" ?
Perhaps it'll be "Mac OS X Simba" or "Mac OS X Lion King" or "Mac OS X Loopy Lion" and news that Apple are teaming up with Canonical and will be releasing a Linux based Mac OS.
You just can't re'lion the rumour mill...
That disparity died with the Intel Mac evolution. A HDD is a HDD. RAM is not proprietary. The only expensive part in a mac is typically the motherboard. Guess what, try buying a motherboard from Dell or anyone else; better get out the lube, you're about to learn a new fetish... The Apple slimline DVD writers used in iMacs and Laptops cost a bit more, but so do laptop drives in general. The repair cost is in line with any other OEM, and many of the parts are obtainable on NewEgg as industry standard. The Intel Motherboard used in the power Mac is a server board and costs $465 from Tiger Direct if you wanted to build your own machine. It's only $389 as an apple replacement part.
Also, warranties from apple are cheap.
"Guess what, try buying a motherboard from Dell or anyone else;"
Well I suppose that if you were doing your own maintenance and were mind-numbingly stupid enough to buy Dell kit, that would be an issue. If you really must buy proprietry kit you should take the warranty, leave fixing it to those wot built it and stick to simple upgrades yourself.
If, on the other hand, you'd done the sensible thing and bought machines built with generic OEM components.....
A mobo costing "only" $389? I know boards *can* cost that much, but I've never spent more than half that. Including taxes and shipping. Way to shoot down your own argument!
"The uni I work for just got quotes to replace a PC lab. Due to the specs required for win7, the individual machines are actually more expensive than an equivalent iMac."
WHAT?
Sorry mate, that has *got* to be bullshit. I'm no Windows fan, but Win7 runs nicely on everything I have that used to run XP (they all still dual-boot Kubuntu). This desktop cost half what a basic iMac costs, and it runs Win7 just dandy. My laptop cost £500 three years ago - it's not even that nice - and it runs Win7 just dandy.
Either Apple are suddenly selling iMacs for half what they were before, or someone at your Uni's been bullshitted mate.
Companies and schools do not buy bottom of the line machines, because of contracts and bids, they buy a bit ahead of the curve. Keep in mind, those machines not only need to run Win7, but 4 years from now they STILL need to run it, without any IT hands touching the boxes for upgrades. The labor to add 2 RAM sticks on 1500 machines is not worth it, they pay more and include it now. The SFF and simply machines sold by Dell and HP and Lenovo for schools and businesses are $1100-1400 per workstation (monitor included), plus the business warranty with is more expensive than retail ones. You can upgrade a home PC for free, a school pays $50-110/hour for that privileged, upgrades are verbotten. They buy mid grade business machines, not cheap PCs.
EDU pricing for a 22" iMac is about $1,000 per machine (less in bulk), and that machine is significantly more powerful than required for the job, but in 4 years will probably meet minimum requirements, and that Mac can connect to Exchange servers for free and runs a $99 student copy of office. Apple's business warranty on that machine is $249 same as the retail one. A PC with Windows Pro (required for domain management) costs about $800 with an EMT64 VT enables i5 and 4GB of RAM (a typical machine being put out now under business pricing), plus a monitor ($200), Office Pro to connect to Exchange ($349 before volume discounts, probably $229), and a warranty from Dell under business licensing on that package will likely be $299. Thats several hundred more expensive. In fact, for the difference, they could get Windows on that machine in parallels for legacy app support. I'm not even including back-office IT management tools which are licenced per client (ARD is licenced per site regardless of number of machines and is WAY cheaper), Corporate AV versions, and more.
This is not BS. I'm a contractor who currently works IT for some large companies, and 2 years ago I was with a reseller doing large business and government bids. I've never sold a desktop station for under $1250 configured. I could easily sell macs for less than PCs to almost any school or business.
Whoever does procurement at the uni you're in needs a hefty boot in the scrotum then.
Typing as a university employee, the cheapest iMac Apple offer is just under £750 with academic discount. That assumes a bog-standard configuration, no Applecare, and minimum spec (1GB of RAM, which will result in it being a painfully-slow piece of rubbish when you do anything even slightly system-intensive with it). In contrast, a bog-standard D*ll desktop and 20" monitor can be had for ~£400, including 3-year on-site NBD warranty.
> Due to the specs required for win7, the individual machines
> are actually more expensive than an equivalent iMac.
What specs? A Quad Core with 4G and a very respectable GPU will set you back less than a Mini.
The idea that anyone would need to spend more than an iMac for a secretary's PC is simply absurd.
If you are not trying to cram components into a laptop sized chassis, PC parts are dirt cheap.
Well put Richard 81 re: "One of these days"
Apple made stuff appealingly popular as opposed to niche top-enders and look what happened.
Was the world ready for it?
(My ans: Yes)
Was Apple ready for it?
(My ans: Both Yes and No. It seemed to have underestimated demand just a bit)
Should Mac remain elite niche top-end OR go popular?
(My ans: Go Popular as doing so has done Apple no harm a lot of good and catapulted it to an undreamt of mega-leage the likes of which seemed impossible not so long ago.)
At the Apple: Go on Apple! You know it makes sense yes?
Maybe it is a reference to "Lion's Share", which Apple seems to command in just about every place it matters lately. In case you haven't noticed Rik – lately, Apple is deep, deep into the consumer mainstream and that makes calling millions of Apple customers "Fanbois" seem condescending to a lot of non-techie folk (who happen to buy a lot of Apple gear), no matter how happy they are with the product.
They ship with Apple's GUI and an X server. You can then install Parallels or VMWare or whatever and run Windows apps alongside your OS X and X11 apps, right there on the same desktop. The issue isn't whether the Mac can run the software you want, it's whether it is cost effective to do so — especially if you're having to buy a Windows licence after already having bought the whole computer.
> They ship with Apple's GUI and an X server. You can then install Parallels or VMWare
> or whatever and run Windows apps alongside your OS X and X11 apps
No, not really. These things are power hungry and memory hungry. You're either going to be creating a big fat VM with enough room for the AltOS to run properly or skimping so much that it's crippled. If you have a proper VM, that's going to impact the performance of your under-build Mac. This is assuming that your machine even supports running a VM with the proper requirements for the guest OS.
My post said "the Mac can run all current software, it just isn't the cheapest way to run Windows software". Your argument is that I'm obviously wrong because a suitable Mac would have an associated cost. I suggest you think a little harder about the conversation.
I'm typing this on a 2006 Core Duo MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM. I'm able to work quite happily with Windows XP running through either Parallels or VirtualBox. At work I have a 2008 iMac. Basically the same comment applies there, but substitute Windows 7 for Windows XP.
Macs tend to be pretty anemic when it comes to memory and 2G really doesn't cut it for this sort of thing despite your declarations to the contrary. People taking you at your word are bound for a pretty rude experience.
Saying that there is some "associated cost" really glosses over the magnitude of the situation rather horribly.
Someone has to eventually grow the balls to do this.
An ARM based device would be a lot cheaper than an x86 device. First off the chips are Smaller/Lighter/Cheaper (SLC) , next the thing uses less power therefore a SLC battery and SLC powers supply circuits. No fans therefore SLC. No heat sinks, therefore SLC. No battery power needed to run fan therefore SLC...
The only reason to put x86 in a netbook etc is to run Windows. So long as you don't want to do that then ARM is the way to go.
How about Apple, Microsoft and the misc Linux houses get together and create Lionux 7? That way anyone who shows any fanatical preference at all for a particular OS, over and above selecting whichever one will suit their particular budget and application requirements, will SHUT THE FUCK UP AND LET THE REST OF US GET ON WITH USING WHATEVER HAPPENS TO WORK BEST FOR US.
Since moving to Mac a few years ago, its been refreshingly different to see a steady succession of improvements, none of which has caused me anything like the pain and frustration I moved away from. A small Linux server manages our shared date & the only 'support' request I get is to switch the printer on, now and again.
Should I need it, I have Windows XP stripped of its Windows Genuine Disadvantage, all ports to Microsoft blocked & anything else that annoys me removed, to run in its own virtual box.
I quite frankly couldn't care less if others used PCs, Linux, BBC micros or count bogeys on the end of a string as we use what works best for us.
If Apple tried to accelerate their change in share of PCs and servers, they would have to do it by producing more types of model at different (lower) price points.
They would reduce their margin on PC hardware from the 30% or so it is today.
As a business, they would start to look more like Dell or HP or Nokia. Incredible fragmentation and a range of offerings that continuously morph into one another so smoothly that, if they were fossils in the record palaeontologists would cream their pants at the completeness of the "transitional species".
Increased staff for support/ sales/ manufacturing and all the bureaucracy that goes with it.
Or, they can watch as World + Dog catches on to the idea that netbooks are just smaller (cr)aptops, and keyboards are a PITA to deal with compared to being able to use your fingers directly and a soft keyboard when you absolutely have to write something. Then sell you an iPad as you help to kill that class of PC.
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I realised my iMac was 3 years old the other day. It was the cheapest 20" model when I bought it at £799. I upped the memory from Crucial at the time for about £30 and recently upgraded the hard drive to a Tb for about £50. It's on pretty much all day every day, has a USB TV card, and acts as a music and video server. As others have said, it just works. It hasn't slowed down noticably, it still feels snappy and I can't see any need to replace it for some years yet. Oh, and it still looks great.
Before that I had a self built Shuttle SFF PC, with high end processor, and a widescreen monitor that wasn't cheap at the time. It was never pretty. The LCD failed after 3 years, the PC was supplied with memory that didn't work properly with the motherboard so bluecreened regularly for the first year and even after it was replaced was still unreliable. The USB was flaky. The OS required rebuilding more than once during it's life and the montherboard failed inside 4 years. I couldn't wait to see the back of it.
Looking round the office here 3 year old windows machines are slow and cranky. No-one wants to keep them. My year old laptop runs XP like a dog and gets slower with each security patch. XP still needs a regular rebuild.
Your 1 year old laptop runs XP like a dog? My 6 year old PC (self-built) runs it like a dream.
I find the things that really bring Windows machines to a crawl are services and processes installed by 3rd party software. Adobe and Apple software are particularly guilty of this eg: Adobe Speed Launcher, iTunes Helper, Quicktime Taskbar.
"The uni I work for just got quotes to replace a PC lab. Due to the specs required for win7, the individual machines are actually more expensive than an equivalent iMac. Note that these are general PC labs so are mainly used for word processing etc"
Really? I've got a 3 year old bottom of the range Toshiba notebook (pentium 2*1.7GHz, some ATI chipset/graphics from the stone age) that runs Windows 7 fine aero included.
In fact anything that isn't a netbook runs WIndows 7 just fine.
I suggest your Uni switch suppliers.
Didn't they make computers once?
When I switched to a Mac from Windows I was expecting some kind of silky-smooth apotheosis of the desktop user experience.
Instead I got a lappy that has to be run without its battery to stop it overheating and crashing, a file manager that regularly decides to reindex the (small) disk and steal 100% of processor cycles, and a graphics system that can barely play video properly.
The two Mac lappies here average a battery life of nine months.
iTunes is Satan's own music manager. I'd like to access my iPhone's file system in the same way that I can in Windows. I'd like to play Flac files. I'd like to access my own music on my own drives without going through an indexing process. But I'm not allowed to.
On a mixed network OS X can't find my NAS, and half the time it can't find my Windows machines.
Windows XP has no problems finding my Mac. Or my NAS. Or my Windows machines. So I organise my Mac files using Directory Opus.
All this - and more - for only 150% the cost of an equivalent PC.
Someone really needs to take OS X outside and shoot it.
I honestly can't see the point of touch screen computers apart from the obvious point of sale type. I can see the use of touch for phones and tablet devices but for full blown computers a mouse is better. if the imac had proper Stylus control for graphic use it would be a killer but can't see it really,
Sitting here, Macbook 15" unibody, running a proper (tyvm MacPorts) development environment of Apache, PHP, MySQL/Postgres, ViM, SSHFS to the production boxes, git/subversion...the list goes on. Any laptop I got needed a full, real set of GNU-ishness on it to WIndows is immaterial.
Perfect.
And I can kick back and watch some downloaded BBC iPlayer shows at home, surf and email with a nice UI.
Again, perfect.
And it's super-light for my daily commute-via-motorcycle, which was a big, big factor in my decision.
All the OS X releases?
I've used OS 9, a real Mac OS.
They are due an OS 11 / OS XI
"Since 2002, Mac OS X has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems. It is the successor to Mac OS 9, the final release of the "classic" Mac OS, which had been Apple's primary operating system since 1984."
via Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X
Wikipedia is Wrong. MAC OS9 did not exist in 1984, maybe 1999 though.
They were sued as someone else had an OS9.
Of course Apple, iPhone, iPad, Newton, Mac are all names belonging to other things first.
Mines the one with a copy of NT3.1 in the pocket on 40 floppy disks.
Expensive, but usable. The last time I saw a Consumer Reports (Which? equivalent) rating Macs were listed near or at the top in terms of overall reliability. They are appliance computers.
I personally don't like them. I don't like the UI and I don't like the way they dress everything up. I used to prefer the Windows UI and help system but Win7's UI is a mess -- its horrible. I'm a 'real' user, though, the sort of person who opens up the terminal (shell) on the Mac to get stuff done, so its probably just me. So even though I don't like them it doesn't stop me from recommending them to people who need a computer and don't want to screw around with it, just use it.
For day to day stuff you can't beat Linux. It just grinds away 24/7, never missing a beat. I have had some success getting ordinary users to try it. There's a lot of negativism about it, especially from the computer shops who see their regular 'rebuild the drive' business disappearing, so its difficult to get traction but since Linux is in just about every embedded box these days it doesn't matter -- people end up using it anyway.
OK, it won't really be an OSX/Ubuntu hybrid, even though Ubuntu put the window controls on the 'Mac side' last release.
I was on the verge of buying Snow Leper + a nice new & faster HDD for my Macbook in the hope of curing the beachball of boredom, but now I'm wondering if it's worth waiting. Guess it's less than a week until the announcement, although I suspect they'll not actually ship until next year some time.
As for the Mac vs PC wars, it's all a bit silly, really. They're ALL effectively PCs, all subject to their own sets of OS-induced ills (and apparently all subject to the cumulative slow-downs that I thought affected only windows PCs). If a Mac makes you happy and productive, great. If you find it somewhat inhibitory (as I do) then find something else that works well. Sure the hardware is flaky (just like every other PC) but once you've made the investment you're probably better off dual-booting than flogging the wretched thing and taking the hit.
Paris, because she's quite attractive really, but sometimes a dumb choice (like a Macbook).
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