What I've been up to the past week ...

[sweener2001]

psystar

... costs $125 more than my complete example system based on Newegg prices. And you can tell they opted for the $25 case.

naturally, it is a retail product, and i'm assuming you purchased at OEM prices yourself. i was just saying

[byuu]

Plus there is expose my favorite feature over windows.

Yeah, it's nice. I like the dashboard, too. Even if they did just steal it from Konfabulator.

Oh and the hardware for the mini might be a bit overpriced but people will pay a premium for miniturization and such.

A bit? A 2.2x markup for a smaller case is criminally overpriced.

I guess it's up to you guys. Would you rather remain a smug little community with a 2% market share, or would you rather make affordable, upgradeable hardware and gain a real foothold in the market? Note that the latter means more applications, more games, etc for you.

I don't know about the other Apple products, but I know the entry level iMac is $1200, and a 20" Apple Cinema display by itself retails for $600. And I hear they're using TN panels now in some models.

I just disagree with your statement

That's fine. We're all entitled to different opinions, and mine is no better than yours.

And the way osx does stuff different is nicer to most who do give it a couple of weeks time to get used to it.

I have to say, the "close button doesn't close" thing isn't so bad after using it for a while. It's especially helpful for the dock to keep the clutter to a minimum. I like both having a launcher and an "active program" icon in the same spot. Saves room, and eliminates the need for an ugly taskbar.

Still some things I can't get over. Alt+tab doesn't work, have to use ^F4. Maximize's functionality is pretty annoying. Linux has that best, you can right click and middle click to maximize in just one direction. This is immensely helpful both for using terminals and text editors.

That's probably the biggest divide. I'm a developer, you're more of an end user. Our interests are going to diverge wildly. I find Xubuntu more friendly for development, but I can see why OS X is so popular amongst the less technically savvy who are looking to browse the web, e-mail, play music and watch movies.

I think if you give it some time you'll really grow to like using osx as you essentially said you might towards the end of your post.

Oh, not a chance. I disagree with Apple's philosophy on more than just price. I'm one of those open source, anti-DRM people. Just not so in-your-face about it. There's something really awesome about having the source code to my OS, and being able to give it away to friends, legally, for free. And not having to hack out artificial restrictions is pretty nice, too.

I may bitch about how hard it is at times, eg that Logitech G15 article, but I like being able to go that deep into the OS and fix problems and such. It's kind of fun for me personally. I can understand why it wouldn't be to 99% of the sane world, however.

[joebells]

Did you know that a fair amount of osx is open source and available for download and messing with/compiling?

http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html

is the base darwin.

http://lists.apple.com/archives/Darwin- ... 00067.html

has links to the kernel and such. Now it isn't all open source like linux but a good amount is. I think the biggest part thats not open source is the graphics layer.

I consider myself to be very technically proficient, I have a bachelors in IT but I personally just prefer to use OSX as I feel it does things more intelligently, and nicely, its nice to just use it and not have to mess around with stuff, now that I have a kid especially, plus a little eye candy never hurt anyone . Linux does have alot of possibilities/choice but I still just prefer, again personal opinion, OSX. I feel its just more polished than linux plus you can't run photoshop and illustrator on linux(well without messing with wine and I'm not sure it runs the latest cs3) I could get by without those easily as I don't use them a ton, but the woman is a graphic design major she could not get by with gimp and inkscape.

The drm issue is something I'm sure the companies would rather not have to deal with as its more work for them(despite it locking people into the ipod) microsoft has it also and I'm sure if the linux crowd starts to really want to play some of that content they will have to implement drm at some point. Of course all drm will be hackable but at some point it'll probably be so hard/complicated that most will just go with it.

If you build yourself you can always get cheaper. If you price some dells(apple is higher quality than dell for sure) or others you'll find apple isn't really much of a markup if any. I know for sure they were cheaper on the mac pro configs for at least a little while. I just really get annoyed when I see that same price argument over and over.

As for alt+tab try command+tab, probably the windows key+tab actually since you probably have a windows keyboard. But there is definitely an alt tab type feature. I personally just find expose to work better/faster but you may have years of built in muscle memory also, lol. Took me a bit to get used to hitting expose and now I instinctively hit it even on windows.

But while I was kind of trying to get you to like osx I do completely understand everyone is different and you don't have to like it. I mainly just get upset over the price thing and like to show people where they might misunderstand some things since it is different.

edit: oh and command+` will switch between windows of just the application you have in focus.

edit: Oh and as far as market share they are slowly gaining, more and more people are realizing there is more than just microsoft(for most linux isn't a possibility sorry)

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.a ... uary-sales

14% of retail sales in february.

[Gil_Hamilton]

Oh and the hardware for the mini might be a bit overpriced but people will pay a premium for miniturization and such. When the mac pro came out it was cheaper than a similarly configured dell. People were really surprised. The imac also isn't too bad a deal when you consider the specs and such. When you look at the notebooks they are also a good deal, especially when you factor in the superior hardware(the scrolling trackpad is beautiful, so much nicer than the junk they put on most laptops) We'll gladly pay a slight premium for the superior os and nicer design. But thats just us.

Apple's entire desktop line is grossly overpriced. The Mac Mini is actually representative of the premium they demand across their entire desktop product line.

They are competitive in the laptop market, but that's more because laptops have higher profit margins across the board than anything else.
(We'll come back to this later)


Superior OS and nicer design?
Those are highly debatable. Personal taste prevents this from being even CLOSE to an absolute claim.

But...
Chief among my OS concerns is if I can run my commercial and non-commercial software. Which is, not surprisingly, all Windows-based, many with no equivalent Mac version. Visual flair is a lesser concern.

Apple recognizes this. BootCamp is a major bullet point in their current advertising.
Which brings us to the absurdity of buying a Mac to run Windows.


Style? I hate the gloss-white iPod look.
I find Apple's designs in general to be a prime example of form over function.

The MacBook Air is the latest offender. The entirety of it's IO is an 802.11 draft N adapter and ONE USB port.
There is no optical disk drive, no 1394 port, no eSATA port, no wired ethernet port, NOTHING aside from that one lonely overworked USB port. Everything was stripped out to meet the design goal of world's thinnest laptop. Except the revolutionary DUST COVERS(which aren't all that revolutionary, as I used to own a 486 laptop with them).*

And it kind of defeats the purpose of having the world's thinnest laptop if you have to carry a DVD drive and a USB hub around, doesn't it? And don't EVEN get me started on what happens when they make the next revision to the still-incomplete 802.11N spec.


Also: The proprietary video connector. Despite their naming it micro-DVI to imply it's actually a little-used standard, it is an Apple-originated design that is NOT part of the DVI spec any more than their older mini-DVI connector was(at least the Apple Display Connector was HONEST about being proprietary).
And as is their way, Apple charges a healthy premium for the adapters needed to get any sort of usable connection out of it.
And their DVI adapters are incapable of taking the standard DVI-I connectors, forcing consumers to find obsolete and rarely-sold DVI-D cables.

edit: Oh and as far as market share they are slowly gaining, more and more people are realizing there is more than just microsoft(for most linux isn't a possibility sorry)

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.a ... uary-sales

14% of retail sales in february.

It's more that Vista sucks, not that people are realizing MS isn't the world.
They knew before. They just didn't see a reason with OS9 being glitchy shit and XP being a "ground-up rework" and "the most stable Windows yet"(actually it's basically Windows 2000+pretty pictures and a 9x compatibility layer, but whatever).

How much of the homebrew market does Apple have?
I think it's still legally zero, given every x86-compatible copy of MacOS 10 sold includes a license agreement that says it can only be installed on Apple-branded hardware.

To determine actual market share, you have to figure what portion of the market is homebuilt.




And since the "Macs are price-competitive with everyone else's IBM PCs" fallacy was thrown out there...

From your own article:
"In unit sales, Macs represented 14 percent of sales last month, up from 9 percent for February 2007. The dollar share, however, is a full 25 percent of the market."

1/7 of the sales takes 1/4 of the dollars, and they're selling their systems for equivalent prices to the competition? I don't think so.

[FitzRoy]

I can't stand Macs, form over function is exactly how I would describe it. I think the dock is unnecessarily large and its icons protrude into windows. The blank desktop space on either side is also aesthetically odd when maximizing a window. The whole shared menu bar on top thing is also nonsense. The attempt to simplify the mouse to one button only offloaded the work to the keyboard, and it screwed up gaming pretty good. I think the following video sums it up pretty well.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1_LlvEZHwYE

Yeah, because we wouldn't to clutter the desktop by making some use out of all that empty space. Let's squeeze everything into a tidy knot instead.

I guess it's up to you guys. Would you rather remain a smug little community with a 2% market share, or would you rather make affordable, upgradeable hardware and gain a real foothold in the market? Note that the latter means more applications, more games, etc for you.

I could just about make the same argument to linux people wanting all their distros and customization. It's a total clusterfuck, could have been as simple as copying windows as closely as possible, having a single distro, having standard APIs. Development and adoption would have followed under that scenario.

[Gil_Hamilton]

The attempt to simplify the mouse to one button only offloaded the work to the keyboard

I believe you mean refusal to complicate the mouse beyond one button.

The original mouse WAS a single-button device and was INTENDED to be used alongside a keyboard, albeit a one-handed one making use of chording.

And one-button objections are dead now. Apple uses a multi-button mouse with a scroll ball.



Of course, you could also criticize Microsoft for dumbing down the mouse.
They took the 3-button solutions that existed, discarded the middle button to create a 2-button mouse, then only supported the left button in Windows.
95 actually USING the right button was awe-inspiring. But those of us with Logitech mice were still wondering when we'd be able to use that third button for system interaction instead of just in specific applications.

[joebells]

I can't stand Macs, form over function is exactly how I would describe it. I think the dock is unnecessarily large and its icons protrude into windows. The blank desktop space on either side is also aesthetically odd when maximizing a window. The whole shared menu bar on top thing is also nonsense. The attempt to simplify the mouse to one button only offloaded the work to the keyboard, and it screwed up gaming pretty good. I think the following video sums it up pretty well.

I'm sorry but you must not have actually given the mac some actual time. The dock can be made pretty darn small and or set to hide automatically. You can make it so it doesn't magnify the icons when you go over them so they won't "protrude into windows". These are all simple options not something hidden away.I find the "protrude into windows" thing to be nice though as you make your dock small so your window can come all the way to the edge of the top of the dock then when you are mousing over the dock it enlarges them just temporarily so you can see them better, so they only "protrude into windows" when you are giving your attention to them.

I already explained the desktop space thing. Its for maximizing your productivity. If you are working with a word document that is only so wide or a webpage that is set to a fixed size then that is what the maximize button will do. It will make the window the max size that it needs to be to fit all the contents instead of taking up the whole dang interface wasting space. Seriously microsoft has people thinking single app useage when we all use many multiple apps(well at least I do they dont each need to take up the whole dang screen. If I want to completely maximize an app it only takes a split second.

That single menu bar is beautiful. It really is. You always have one location to go to for your menu bar just right up at the top. Really nice for the muscle memory and such. You don't have to search for it ever. With a bunch of overlapping windows that all have the same exact looking menu its easy to accidentily click the wrong menu. No problem on OSX its always just the one menu bar in the top.

I seriously think if you used one for a couple of weeks you would see its not form over function. OSX is geared to let you get stuff done. Everything about it lets you easily manage your multiple application windows quickly and easily and really thats what we do much of the day is work in our applications windows, going between them and such. People look at the pictures of osx in action and/or use one for a brief period and don't get it. But use one seriously for a little while and you probably couldn't take it from you(said probably of course not everyone but many people).

From your own article:
"In unit sales, Macs represented 14 percent of sales last month, up from 9 percent for February 2007. The dollar share, however, is a full 25 percent of the market."

1/7 of the sales takes 1/4 of the dollars, and they're selling their systems for equivalent prices to the competition? I don't think so

They just don't compete on the bargain basement level. They don't make garbage so yeah they bring in 1/4 of the dollars. Just smart business sense to me. If you price out the machines with comporable specs, I'm talking include speakers, bluetooth, wireless, video camera, and all that the apple stuff is usually right around dell and them and even beats them sometimes.

The macbook air is an all out get it as thin as possible machine. They could easily have made it a bit thicker/heavier and put in a disk drive but thats not what they were making. They made a machine that was as light and thin as possible for people that want that. It seems to be what some people want, for a little while there the stores were selling out. If they find that people do want a drive then they can easily add it in. The macbook is already pretty thin and light so they went all out with the air.

I hate to turn this into a mac debate but I can't stand to see people that have never actually spent a bit of time learning about why it does these things that you think are stupid. If you did you'd see they are actually for a reason.

I forget where the quote is but its from bill gates and he said he was surprised at the way apple went about their inteface. He said apple would think about what the user would want to do and how they would want to do it and work on it from that perspective. He said he was surprised because at microsoft he would just put an engineer(s) on the job and say it needs to do this and this and this implement it.(I of course didn't quote it very well but thats the jist) What software do you want to use one that is designed around what the user will want to do and how (s)he'll want to do it. Or one that is just put together to get it working and then maybe adjusted a bit here and there to make it a bit nicer to use. You can tell apple does this with their programs if you spend a bit of time using them. They are made to work with you and for you.

And yes macs don't have quite as much software but I find most things a general consumer would want to do can be done on the mac and usually better. iPhoto, Garageband, iMovie, and iDVD those programs right there are stellar and so drop dead easy to use. Much better than anything microsoft puts out.

edit: and on the draft 802.11n thing come on all the manufacturers are including it, would you rather they put just G in there? draft N is the best they, or anyone in the industry right now, can do I believe. The thing can still connect over G.

[Rashidi]

Of course, you could also criticize Microsoft for dumbing down the mouse.

Yes, that was the first thing i do (well, that was more like cursing than criticizing), when i migrated to windows environment....

as i too a 3-button mouse user at that time.
my mouse package was bundled with paint-like program (the program was Image72, with an A4-scanner ready).
is there someone who know were i could look for that old (dos) program?

[Gil_Hamilton]

That single menu bar is beautiful. It really is. You always have one location to go to for your menu bar just right up at the top. ...

OBJECTION!
There is clearly a contradiction in this testimony!

Mister joebells...
Did you not say earlier that

Seriously microsoft has people thinking single app useage when we all use many multiple apps...

?
Was that statement not intended to imply that Macs are better at multitasking?

Wouldn't being able to directly select any visible application's menu without first selecting it actually BENEFIT multi-tasking? And does not the necessity of selecting an out-of-focus application before selecting it's menu make muscle memory pointless in a multi-tasking environment?

OSX is geared to let you get stuff done.

Every OS is. For somebody.
No OS is for everybody.

Everything about it lets you easily manage your multiple application windows quickly and easily and really thats what we do much of the day is work in our applications windows, going between them and such.

I can manage my windows just fine in Windows. Never had a problem with it.

From your own article:
"In unit sales, Macs represented 14 percent of sales last month, up from 9 percent for February 2007. The dollar share, however, is a full 25 percent of the market."

1/7 of the sales takes 1/4 of the dollars, and they're selling their systems for equivalent prices to the competition? I don't think so

They just don't compete on the bargain basement level. They don't make garbage so yeah they bring in 1/4 of the dollars. Just smart business sense to me. If you price out the machines with comporable specs, I'm talking include speakers, bluetooth, wireless, video camera, and all that the apple stuff is usually right around dell and them and even beats them sometimes.

I've done it before. It's even easier now that they make the exact same IBM clones as everyone else.
Hell, they don't even make their own laptops. Asus makes them.


Apple commands a price premium across the board. Right up to the top end. It's not limited to the bargin-bin market like you keep insisting.

I have NEVER seen a Mac cheaper than a comparable other-brand machine. In fact, I can usually get twice as much hardware for the Mac price if we aren't talking about laptops.

The macbook air is an all out get it as thin as possible machine. They could easily have made it a bit thicker/heavier and put in a disk drive but thats not what they were making.

EXACTLY!
Form. Over. Function.
Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?

If they find that people do want a drive then they can easily add it in.

WHERE?
There is ABSOLUTELY ZERO expandability in the Air(well, you can change the hard drive for a new one, but...). There's no space in the design to add one either.



I've already covered carrying a USB optical drive around. It's a retarded kludgy solution made worse by the fact that the Air only has one USB port, so if you need any OTHER USB peripherals(like a flash drive) you have to carry a hub too.

I hate to turn this into a mac debate but I can't stand to see people that have never actually spent a bit of time learning about why it does these things that you think are stupid. If you did you'd see they are actually for a reason.

But of course, the Windows design decisions are all rash and slapped on for no reason, right?

Explain to me briefly... Why did MacOS suddenly adopt the Windows9x three control buttons in the corner? After Windows had it for a decade while Apple mucked about with collapse to titlebar options and steadfastly refused to add any sort of maximize?


Oh, and explain to me why MacOS has historically(I'm unsure if they've changed this yet) only allowed you to resize a window from the bottom-left corner? What if I have a window on the right side of the screen,and want it wider? I see no good reason to deny arbitrary resizing directions other than "that's how we've always done it."
Don't give me the BS about maximizing being counter to multitasking, either. That's the usual Church of Mac response, but this is a wholly unrelated issue that has nothing to do with maximize whatsoever.

I forget where the quote is but its from bill gates and he said he was surprised at the way apple went about their inteface. He said apple would think about what the user would want to do and how they would want to do it and work on it from that perspective. He said he was surprised because at microsoft he would just put an engineer(s) on the job and say it needs to do this and this and this implement it.(I of course didn't quote it very well but thats the jist)

We have here a rough paraphrasing of an alleged quote from an unknown source that seems a rather unlikely public statement.

Citation needed.

What software do you want to use one that is designed around what the user will want to do and how (s)he'll want to do it. Or one that is just put together to get it working and then maybe adjusted a bit here and there to make it a bit nicer to use. You can tell apple does this with their programs if you spend a bit of time using them. They are made to work with you and for you.

Because an empty square is a clearer close command than a big X. And no one ever needs to change window sizes any direction other than down and to the right.

Windows actually does what I want.

And yes macs don't have quite as much software but I find most things a general consumer would want to do can be done on the mac and usually better. iPhoto, Garageband, iMovie, and iDVD those programs right there are stellar and so drop dead easy to use. Much better than anything microsoft puts out.

Does Microsoft do any of that stuff?
Well, I guess they might.

You have this thing called AN OPTION on Windows. Don't like how MS solves it?
Hey, there's at least thirty other ways to do it. One probably does it your way. If not, you can always fall back to something generally well-regarded, like Cakewalk.

Apple? Not so much. Well, except for Photoshop.

edit: and on the draft 802.11n thing come on all the manufacturers are including it, would you rather they put just G in there? draft N is the best they, or anyone in the industry right now, can do I believe. The thing can still connect over G.

Yes, I WOULD rather they just put G in there. I find the pressing of a draft resolution onto an unsuspecting market to be disgusting.
Especially since Apple is conveniently omitting the draft part of that phrase, leading average consumers to believe it's an actual STANDARD. It's only marginally worse than everyone else, but it's still bullshit.






I'm god-damn sick and tired of Mac users explaining how any personal preference other than their own is clearly wrong and they're the only people that REALLY know how to use computers, then going to great lengths to explain away or redirect valid criticisms. Sure, Macs do some things really well. They also COMPLETELY SUCK in some regards too.

You're an elitist shit.

[FitzRoy]

The attempt to simplify the mouse to one button only offloaded the work to the keyboard

I believe you mean refusal to complicate the mouse beyond one button.

The original mouse WAS a single-button device and was INTENDED to be used alongside a keyboard, albeit a one-handed one making use of chording.

And one-button objections are dead now. Apple uses a multi-button mouse with a scroll ball.

Mmm, yeah, that would be a better way of putting it. And I wouldn't say one-button objections are dead. How it's used by the OS and whether it's used by default matters more. It's not like this was a numerical issue at heart where Mac can just put the button in and go "welp, there we are, secondary click functionality, just as good as Windows."

And yes, I like three buttons better because I game and assign the middle for jump, but it's pretty useless for desktop use I find. So I can't criticize MS that much, but it's pretty standard now to have a clickable scrollwheel between the traditional left and right buttons.

I'm sorry but you must not have actually given the mac some actual time. The dock can be made pretty darn small and or set to hide automatically.

I admit, I only used them sparingly when I was a lab monitor in my college's music building. If I remember correctly, I tried to right click on the dock to enter the properties menu... lol, you can see where this is going. I'm sure I had to navigate somewhere, right? Too late, I was pissed.

I also hated how stuff minimized to an icon in the dock. It made it difficult to reconcile all the programs I had open, particularly if I had multiple instances of the same thing. The taskbar gives me descriptions and shows only what I have open, in the order they were opened. Why not use the bottom for that and move the program shortcuts to the desktop space? Just seems to make more sense to me.

[henke37]

And yes, I like three buttons better because I game and assign the middle for jump, but it's pretty useless for desktop use I find. So I can't criticize MS that much, but it's pretty standard now to have a clickable scrollwheel between the traditional left and right buttons.

You can't be using it to open tabs in your web browser then, I do it with it all the time.

[joebells]

The attempt to simplify the mouse to one button only offloaded the work to the keyboard

I believe you mean refusal to complicate the mouse beyond one button.

The original mouse WAS a single-button device and was INTENDED to be used alongside a keyboard, albeit a one-handed one making use of chording.

And one-button objections are dead now. Apple uses a multi-button mouse with a scroll ball.

Mmm, yeah, that would be a better way of putting it. And I wouldn't say one-button objections are dead. How it's used by the OS and whether it's used by default matters more. It's not like this was a numerical issue at heart where Mac can just put the button in and go "welp, there we are, secondary click functionality, just as good as Windows."

And yes, I like three buttons better because I game and assign the middle for jump, but it's pretty useless for desktop use I find. So I can't criticize MS that much, but it's pretty standard now to have a clickable scrollwheel between the traditional left and right buttons.

I'm sorry but you must not have actually given the mac some actual time. The dock can be made pretty darn small and or set to hide automatically.

I admit, I only used them sparingly when I was a lab monitor in my college's music building. If I remember correctly, I tried to right click on the dock to enter the properties menu... lol, you can see where this is going. I'm sure I had to navigate somewhere, right? Too late, I was pissed.

I also hated how stuff minimized to an icon in the dock. It made it difficult to reconcile all the programs I had open, particularly if I had multiple instances of the same thing. The taskbar gives me descriptions and shows only what I have open, in the order they were opened. Why not use the bottom for that and move the program shortcuts to the desktop space? Just seems to make more sense to me.

OSX had support for multiple button mice for quite a while. You could buy any 3rd party mouse that had multiple buttons and make it work. The os had the right click menu's all along just with the apple supplied mouse you would use ctrl+click to access them. A big reason they didn't support multiple mice was they didn't want application developers putting all the options for a program in the right click menu. They wanted as many options as possible to be accessible from the application itself. I agree that generally it is a much better idea to have multiple mouse buttons and it was a bit foolish on their part to hold out so long.

To change the dock options you just have to right click or ctrl+click on the divider on the dock. The part that goes between icons and their status indicators and the part that handles open windows shows as a black line pre leopard or a dashed line on leopard.

And actually windows minimized to the dock show the window contents, updated in real time, you can actually minimize a video and watch it from the dock if you really want to. And the dock has two parts. First is the left side which shows program icons, shortcuts really, it also serves as a status indicator. Below those program icons a little symbol shows when they are running. Then you have the right hand side. It shows minimized windows, actual realtime updated pictures of the minimized windows. Even nicer than windows text based taskbar I think. You can still have shortcuts on the desktop too if you want. No problem there.

FitzRoy wrote:

And yes, I like three buttons better because I game and assign the middle for jump, but it's pretty useless for desktop use I find. So I can't criticize MS that much, but it's pretty standard now to have a clickable scrollwheel between the traditional left and right buttons.


You can't be using it to open tabs in your web browser then, I do it with it all the time.

Don't forget about your shortcuts people ctrl+t(command+t on mac) will open up a tab.

joebells wrote:

That single menu bar is beautiful. It really is. You always have one location to go to for your menu bar just right up at the top. ...


OBJECTION!
There is clearly a contradiction in this testimony!

Mister joebells...
Did you not say earlier that
Quote:
Seriously microsoft has people thinking single app useage when we all use many multiple apps...
?
Was that statement not intended to imply that Macs are better at multitasking?

Wouldn't being able to directly select any visible application's menu without first selecting it actually BENEFIT multi-tasking? And does not the necessity of selecting an out-of-focus application before selecting it's menu make muscle memory pointless in a multi-tasking environment?



Quote:
OSX is geared to let you get stuff done.

Every OS is. For somebody.
No OS is for everybody.

Quote:
Everything about it lets you easily manage your multiple application windows quickly and easily and really thats what we do much of the day is work in our applications windows, going between them and such.

I can manage my windows just fine in Windows. Never had a problem with it.

Quote:

Quote:
From your own article:
"In unit sales, Macs represented 14 percent of sales last month, up from 9 percent for February 2007. The dollar share, however, is a full 25 percent of the market."

1/7 of the sales takes 1/4 of the dollars, and they're selling their systems for equivalent prices to the competition? I don't think so


They just don't compete on the bargain basement level. They don't make garbage so yeah they bring in 1/4 of the dollars. Just smart business sense to me. If you price out the machines with comporable specs, I'm talking include speakers, bluetooth, wireless, video camera, and all that the apple stuff is usually right around dell and them and even beats them sometimes.

I've done it before. It's even easier now that they make the exact same IBM clones as everyone else.
Hell, they don't even make their own laptops. Asus makes them.


Apple commands a price premium across the board. Right up to the top end. It's not limited to the bargin-bin market like you keep insisting.

I have NEVER seen a Mac cheaper than a comparable other-brand machine. In fact, I can usually get twice as much hardware for the Mac price if we aren't talking about laptops.


Quote:
The macbook air is an all out get it as thin as possible machine. They could easily have made it a bit thicker/heavier and put in a disk drive but thats not what they were making.

EXACTLY!
Form. Over. Function.
Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?


Quote:
If they find that people do want a drive then they can easily add it in.

WHERE?
There is ABSOLUTELY ZERO expandability in the Air(well, you can change the hard drive for a new one, but...). There's no space in the design to add one either.



I've already covered carrying a USB optical drive around. It's a retarded kludgy solution made worse by the fact that the Air only has one USB port, so if you need any OTHER USB peripherals(like a flash drive) you have to carry a hub too.

Quote:
I hate to turn this into a mac debate but I can't stand to see people that have never actually spent a bit of time learning about why it does these things that you think are stupid. If you did you'd see they are actually for a reason.

But of course, the Windows design decisions are all rash and slapped on for no reason, right?

Explain to me briefly... Why did MacOS suddenly adopt the Windows9x three control buttons in the corner? After Windows had it for a decade while Apple mucked about with collapse to titlebar options and steadfastly refused to add any sort of maximize?


Oh, and explain to me why MacOS has historically(I'm unsure if they've changed this yet) only allowed you to resize a window from the bottom-left corner? What if I have a window on the right side of the screen,and want it wider? I see no good reason to deny arbitrary resizing directions other than "that's how we've always done it."
Don't give me the BS about maximizing being counter to multitasking, either. That's the usual Church of Mac response, but this is a wholly unrelated issue that has nothing to do with maximize whatsoever.


Quote:
I forget where the quote is but its from bill gates and he said he was surprised at the way apple went about their inteface. He said apple would think about what the user would want to do and how they would want to do it and work on it from that perspective. He said he was surprised because at microsoft he would just put an engineer(s) on the job and say it needs to do this and this and this implement it.(I of course didn't quote it very well but thats the jist)

We have here a rough paraphrasing of an alleged quote from an unknown source that seems a rather unlikely public statement.

Citation needed.

Quote:
What software do you want to use one that is designed around what the user will want to do and how (s)he'll want to do it. Or one that is just put together to get it working and then maybe adjusted a bit here and there to make it a bit nicer to use. You can tell apple does this with their programs if you spend a bit of time using them. They are made to work with you and for you.

Because an empty square is a clearer close command than a big X. And no one ever needs to change window sizes any direction other than down and to the right.

Windows actually does what I want.


Quote:
And yes macs don't have quite as much software but I find most things a general consumer would want to do can be done on the mac and usually better. iPhoto, Garageband, iMovie, and iDVD those programs right there are stellar and so drop dead easy to use. Much better than anything microsoft puts out.

Does Microsoft do any of that stuff?
Well, I guess they might.

You have this thing called AN OPTION on Windows. Don't like how MS solves it?
Hey, there's at least thirty other ways to do it. One probably does it your way. If not, you can always fall back to something generally well-regarded, like Cakewalk.

Apple? Not so much. Well, except for Photoshop.


Quote:
edit: and on the draft 802.11n thing come on all the manufacturers are including it, would you rather they put just G in there? draft N is the best they, or anyone in the industry right now, can do I believe. The thing can still connect over G.

Yes, I WOULD rather they just put G in there. I find the pressing of a draft resolution onto an unsuspecting market to be disgusting.
Especially since Apple is conveniently omitting the draft part of that phrase, leading average consumers to believe it's an actual STANDARD. It's only marginally worse than everyone else, but it's still bullshit.






I'm god-damn sick and tired of Mac users explaining how any personal preference other than their own is clearly wrong and they're the only people that REALLY know how to use computers, then going to great lengths to explain away or redirect valid criticisms. Sure, Macs do some things really well. They also COMPLETELY SUCK in some regards too.

You're an elitist shit.

Umm first off your last comment I said it isn't for everyone several times I just said I hate when people have not actually given it a chance and just talk down on it. Look at FitzRoy he admitted that he had not actually really given it a chance. That pisses me off to no end. If you have used it a fair amount and its not for you then fine. But to put it down and deride it without having ever used it much isn't right.

As far as price look up prices I guarantee you will be surprised at the price similarities between similarly configured desktops and everything. Apple is a bit more expensive but not much more, not gobs and gobs higher like you keep going on about. Its a simple fact.

The ilife suite is insanely good and works better then pretty much anything on windows though. I didn't say microsoft didnt' have those programs but they aren't nearly as nice as the apple ones. There is also choice on the mac side. There are alot more programs for the mac than you think. Yeah they don't have all the crappy legacy applications that alot of business's unfortunately still rely on. But you can find multiple applications to do almost everything on the mac. Many of them designed and layed out better(thus generally working better) than their windows counterpart. For a general user, besides games, they can do pretty much anything on osx that they would need to.

"Well, I'd give a lot to have Steve's taste," Gates said. "You know, we sat in Mac product reviews where there were questions about software choices, how things would be done, that I viewed as an engineering question. That's just how my mind works. And I'd see Steve make the decision based on a sense of people and product that is even hard for me to explain. The way he does things is just different, and you know, I think it's magical."

Yeah they might of made a few bad design choices here and there but what company has. I still think they have way, way, way less bad design decisions that microsoft has.

As far as the air, I meant if they find people can't stand not having the optical drive then they can redesign it and add one in. But it seems that won't be a problem. The machine might not be for you or me but lots of people are buying them so they obviously got the product right for a certain market segment.

The single menu bar argument of mine still stands. Having multiple menu bars is still a hindirence I think(let me emphasize that since you seem to miss me using that over and over I didn't say it ultimately is the right thing about any of this stuff just my opinion) You have multiple overlaping windows and you can easily click the menu bar for the window right behind it instead. And you have to look for it. On osx its right at the top always. I generally don't want to click the menu bar of a program unless I'm working in that window. Very rarely will I want to straight upen a menu of a window I'm not working with.

You seem to hate macs and thats ok, I really like them. I will defend them against those that have never given them a chance and are deriding them. For sure macs aren't wildly overpriced though and thats a fact. Maybe their monitors are somewhat and some of their accessories but price out similarly specced machines and you'll find the prices aren't much different. People were going crazy when the mac pro came out. It for sure was cheaper than a similarly specced dell workstation. That is fact. I know currently they are pretty darn close in price. The imac is akin to a midrange dell and the prices again are pretty similar.

[Dullaron]

There is one problem on Mac. There not that many games sold for it. Windows have more games sold than Linux and Mac.

Mac mostly for offices and jobs. "That is what my boss told me and grandma. So you are not going to find any gamers playing games on Mac as I been told."

[Deathlike2]

I've seen too many Macs on Apple's site that are extremely overpriced, compared to anything pre-built from other vendors. I have a hard time wanting to be sold on low/mid-end graphics on a $2000 non-server Mac.

There's more hate on Apple, mostly on the marketing end of things, particular those really annoying Mac vs PC commercials. Sure they poke fun at it, but ultimately spinning issues that have also existed on the Mac platform... there's so much stuff that has been done by others prior to OS X, and yet it is continually marketed as "the newest thing since sliced bread". Plus, there was all the fun pre-Intel bashing before then. I honestly cannot trust Apple as a company, not that its products are bad, but I've never seen spinjobs bigger than what Apple has been pulling for a long time.

[I.S.T.]

The Mac Vs PC ads are nothing but lies. Each one of them contains huge, huge fucking lies.

[FitzRoy]

Look at FitzRoy he admitted that he had not actually really given it a chance. That pisses me off to no end. If you have used it a fair amount and its not for you then fine. But to put it down and deride it without having ever used it much isn't right.

I didn't deride them entirely, I gave specific criticisms and saw a trend. I mean, I used the system enough to spot immediate differences and then compared the two logically. I'm not the kind of person that rejects something better because of what I traditionally use. It's generally easy to see when simplification is taken to an extreme for aesthetic reasons and incurs insurmountable penalties.

If you want some positives for Mac, I think they do a far better job with their bundled software. MS could have thrown some money at a better dvd player, burner, a more advanced "paint" program, movie editing, etc. None of those deficiencies in XP ever really got updated, and IE was neglected for a while, too. A lot of the icons in XP were lifted from 98 and didn't get updated in any service pack, ever. I mean, MS is really out to lunch on a lot of things. Word processor obsolescence every two years? Plz. I would like nothing more than for a free solution to come along and supplant these guys or at least take a chunk of their market share, but that's not likely to happen.

[Deathlike2]

byuu, that's never going to be a fair comparison. Then again, remember Apple is currently mocking the PC in their ads for having "so many non-working components". This is somewhat true, but it's a half-truth in reality. When you buy your components, you have to have done some research on what you're buying. The fact that it is very difficult to validate every 3rd party vendor for video cards obviously gives Apple the edge, but on the other hand, you simply can't buy a video card to simply upgrade that on a Mac. That simply doesn't exist as a viably economical option.

Edit: Bleh, did a little comparison with Dell, paying for OEM prices suck ass.

[byuu]

As far as price look up prices I guarantee you will be surprised at the price similarities between similarly configured desktops and everything. Apple is a bit more expensive but not much more, not gobs and gobs higher like you keep going on about. Its a simple fact.

A picture is worth a thousand words, right?


store.apple.com


www.newegg.com

(EDIT: I reposted this (hence Deathlike2's comment above), as I accidentally chose an IDE drive the first time. Wanted to be fair and match specs.)

[joebells]

I said accessories, I consider those accessories as you get something in the computer, but dell can sometimes(depends) charge a pretty damn steep premium for those items too. Who in their right mind buys that stuff right from dell or apple anyway. I'm talking configure a computer at dell to match the specs of one at apple. They will be pretty similar alot of times. You can't just look at the price of memory and or hd from newegg and put apple down for it as all the manufacturers do it on some things. It also depends on when you do the comparison. They just updated the imacs so they are probably pretty darn close in price.

[I.S.T.]

The highest end one sadly continues the historic OEM tradition of matching top end CPU with low end or middle end GPU.

Everyone does that, and it really fucking blows.

[Deathlike2]

The highest end one sadly continues the historic OEM tradition of matching top end CPU with low end or middle end GPU.

Everyone does that, and it really fucking blows.

That's why buying OEM is insane, unless you ultimately need that extra warrenty for "comfort".

Then again, I can't even justify the selling of dual-CPU, quad-core systems... but whatever I guess. Any idiot with money who doesn't care will do it regardless... oh well.

[joebells]

http://www.dell.com/content/products/pr ... l=en&s=dhs

there is dells answer to the iMac the base model is 100 bucks more(lets point this out the Dell is 100 bucks more) for lets see.

The dell has a slower processor 2.2 compared to 2.4.

Looks like the dell has 2 gigs of memory compared to one for the base in the imac but the imac can accept upto 4 gigs and it looks like the dell has a maximum of 2 gigs. Plus its drop dead easy to upgrade the ram in the imac. One screw and a little door comes off. Then pull a lever and the old memory comes out, push in the new memory and then put the screw back in. Done.

The imac has a dedicated video card the dell has an integrated video card, no dedicated until you spend 1799. For 1799 you can buy an imac with a better dedicated video card and a 24" screen compared to the 20" dells plus a much faster cpu(2.33 compared to 2.88) plus a bigger hard drive.

So tell me what is the better deal? The apple walks all over the dell sorry. Apple no longer charges a crazy premium for similar systems.

Yes you can buy much cheaper dells than you can apple but they aren't similar systems. Apple just decides not to compete in the low end.

If I find time later I'll look at similar specced workstations. I know for sure they are pretty similarly priced(I'm talking similar bus's memory capacity, dual sockets, things like that).

[byuu]

I said accessories, I consider those accessories as you get something in the computer, but dell can sometimes(depends) charge a pretty damn steep premium for those items too.

Computer parts are computer parts. If they charge +$100 for an extra 1GB of RAM, then they're almost certainly charging $100 for the first 1GB of RAM. And at $599 entry level, that seems to be the case.

And I don't care what Dell does. I'm not forced to buy a Dell to run Windows or Linux.

[joebells]

aye carumba thats not fair at all though to compare newegg prices to apple prices. Then you can't just say apple charges an exorbatant amount you have to say they all do Dell and HP and everyone else do the same ridiculous markups. So your comments deriding apple for their high prices need to be reworked to include all OEM's instead of unfairly blasting just apple and making it sound like they are the only one.

[ZH/Franky]

You can run Mac OSX on a PC anyway. (There's a hacked version that goes by the name "osx86", if I recall).

I hear people say that this is illegal. That's false.
It's against the license agreement, not the law.

For $300, you can have a machine (that can run osx) more powerful than a mac mini, which costs about $599 I think.
And that's for an OEM machine. Build it yourself, and that 300 goes down.