Is Apple Doing All It Can to Beat Vista? 773
aalobode writes "The New York Times is running an article on the narrowing window that Apple has for beating Microsoft's Vista. According the Times, not enough has been done to capitalize on the Mac user experience versus the 'world of hurt that is Vista'. It also points out that that restructuring of Apple leaves ambiguities about Apple's exact commitment to the computer end of its business. The article calls MS Vista's certified vendors, developers and driver writers a flywheel that takes a while coming up to speed - and then becomes unstoppable."
service pack (Score:5, Insightful)
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OS X looked so much cleaner than XP, but I really don't see that there is much about OS X that rates it over Vista.
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I can see the new Mac vs. PC commercials Mac is a hip Metrosexulal type and PC is bratty kid sister type who's constantly saying things like "should you be doing that", "I'm telling MOM what your doing, I don't thnk you asked permission" or "Suzy said you'll get cooties if you open attachments"
Re:service pack (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, let's be honest -- Vista isn't bad. It may not be as pretty as OS X, but it's got the most attractive UI Microsoft has ever produced, and on modern hardware it runs beautifully fast, is very stable, and is far more compatible with previous versions of Windows than anyone gives it credit for. (On compatibility, I just can't help remembering all the whining that went on when XP was released and didn't run all DOS programs perfectly. We've been here before, guys. We got over it.)
Note that, far from being a Microsoft shill, I'm saying this as someone who divides most of his computing time between Ubuntu and Solaris, and has a Mac Mini perched on top of his primary desktop PC. I use Vista when I want to play games or to test programs on Windows. I'm a pragmatist who values having different tools for different jobs... and I have to say, I wish there were more of us around. This constant bickering and zealotry is nothing if not tedious.
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Running "beautifully fast" on modern hardware is what it's supposed to do. You don't get extra credit for not fucking up. Running "beautifully fast" on modern hardware is somewhere between "I've never been to jail" and "I shower daily" on the list of human accomplishment. Not that bragworthy.
By the same token, it was years after XP came out that it was worthwhile to switch from Windows 2000. Maybe Vista will be worthwhile around the time Windows 7 comes out.
Not even for people on Software Assurance (Score:2)
I think it will see resistance even after SP1, even from customers who've paid for it twice over under Software Assurance.
When you can't get the people who've already paid for it to install it, what does that say about it?
Re:service pack (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, I don't know, Apple products? Ableton products? Native Instruments products? Steinberg products? Propellorhead products? Corel products? Quartz? Colour matching built right into the drawing engine? A whole slew of audio, video, modeling, graphics, typesetting and printing (as in not your rgb inkjet) and media applications?
"UI looks as funky (if not funkier), more available software, albeit most of it is OSS or free."
"Looks". Heh. It's never been about how the UI looks. The UI is more or less the same as it's been since System 7. It's about how the UI _works_, it's about how the UI acts and feels, it's about integration, simplicity and slickness. It's about doing what it does and doing it responsively with a minimal resources. I'll guarantee you that KDE won't be nearly responsive on a 233 G3 w/ 192mb ran as Tiger was. Only people who don't actually use Macs figure that it's how the UI looks. (and I'll concede, I think Enlightenment 17, and certain KDE setups are allot prettier, but neither works as NextStep did, and OS X does.) These are the same people who pitch compiz as the greatest thing since the colour monitor, sure it looks pretty, but it in no way boosts functionality, and all it exists for is to look pretty. And lets not forget the CLI, all the power under the hood of a full-out POSIX compliant BSD core, and weather or not you ever actually use the command shell is entirely a matter of preference and choice, and that's how it *should* be.
"more available software, albeit most of it is OSS or free."
Again, it's fairly clear you've never actually used a Mac. Fink (apt for Darwin), and DarwinPorts offer the free software. What, you thought the POSIX compliant, BSD core was for show? Ad don't forget all the wonderful non-free software availible for the platform. How's that for choice, you get your pick from the best of both worlds.
"The only good thing about Macs is the look of the case, and even THAT is a matter of taste."
SGI cases were prettier, but I digress. If all you're doing is checking emails, word processing and some dev work, Ubuntu is fine. But once you get to any level of _serious_ creative work, Macintosh is the only viable option left with the demise of Irix. And let's not forget the bit about everything working with minimal hassle on the Mac. Ever tried using a graphics tablet as your core pointer in Ubuntu? Or using a KAOS pad? Or just about any higher end, vaguely exotic multimedia hardware, for that matter? Yeah, I didn't think so.
Just as an FWI, I've used various Unices for the past 15 years (Irix, Solaris, AIX, Free/Open BSD, Interix, Linux, and Darwin/OSX) Linux for close to 10. But there's this way of thinking tat doesn't seem to be too common these days, "using the best tool for the job". Linux has it's uses, serious creative work isn't one of them. It may be good enough for what YOU do, but don't assume that everyone else's needs match your own. And for fuck's sake, if you're going to criticize something, use it first. You read like one of those pointless Linux distro reviews that bases the whole thing on the install sequence, then offers a generic gnome screenshot, and somehow thinks there's anything even remotely useful in the article.
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I'm afraid that for the majority of Linux users, there is nothing more to their experience than this, and maybe tooling around in cfg files for 25 hours before they are finished and have nothing left to do with their computer after setting it up. That's something of a norm for hobbyist OS's. The fun comes from the challenge of making it all work and once you've completed that, well, there is IRC for a while...
It took me some time to realize that was going on with my own Linux interests. And it's fine, but for real computer uses this isn't fun anymore. When it takes several hours of research and hacking to make any random new thing work, the OS isn't doing its job anymore. It's this aspect of Linux that made me pick OS X.
With those who stick with Linux, despite how many obviously and infuriatingly stupid design choices are made, with some of the most painfully conservative backers and developers, you get this response that it's somehow the solution for every problem. It's human nature, it seems, as programmers tend to do the same thing with the one or two languages they know.
When the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.
When the only OS you accept is a disorganized mess, then every use for an OS is acceptably accomplished with immense hassle, religious indoctrination, and massive time consumption.
With this mode of thinking you can come to expect every positive point you make about another OS to receive baffling responses of "you can do that just as easily with..." Furthermore, don't even bother mentioning Windows doing a better job at anything, ever, unless you want to induce so much frothing at the mouth that the whole discussion fills with foam.
Of course, at this point you'll get all the beautifully pointless tautological arguments about how things are bad because they don't work on The One OS. How could you possible want to use anything besides Ogg since clearly that's the best choice as now that so many distributors of Linux have become fearful of patent issues, they will no longer distribute support for MP3. In fact, mp3 is clearly the worst choice because Ogg is the best choice because Linux is the best choice because RMS told you so.
Seriously, there is little or no basis in these arguments. That coupled with an intense fear of participating in the market to acquire anything, software, or media alike, results in some very bizarre "discussions" about what's good at what in the OS world.
And remember, this is an online discussion which means people are far less likely to yield to logical retorts. When these discussions happen in person, they tend to go more succinctly to the real issue at hand. After point and counterpoint for a while, anyone who I talk to about this issue "Why use OS X vs. Linux vs. Windows" always boils down to "It costs too much for mac hardware to use the OS." Yeah, there's a price barrier. Save your money folks, it's worth waiting a little longer. I cannot believe the blind resistance to paying for good software or hardware. I don't understand why these guys are so afraid to buy things. You would think they would value their time enough to pay a little cash to recuperate so much of their time. But, I guess that leads back to my first paragraph in this response, so I'll leave it at this.
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Um. I bought my hardware for my PC, and my laptop, and they're both quality machines without paying Apple prices. Apple sells the brand as much as the hardware. We're talking about a company that charges $200 more for a black MacBook (with some trivial HDD upgrade).
As for paying for quality software -- I run Ubuntu on both machines. I did not spend 25 hours with config files in either case, and I didn't struggle to make it work then do nothing with the computer. Saying that the majority do and then "have nothing left to do" is simply erroneous. I feel that Ubuntu is better quality software than Windows XP, and much better than Vista.
Now, for some other points from your post:
When it takes several hours of research and hacking to make any random new thing work, the OS isn't doing its job anymore. It's this aspect of Linux that made me pick OS X.
I don't know when the last time you used Linux was, but it never took me several hours to get anything working in Ubuntu. Slackware, yes, but that's why Slackware isn't recommended for those new to Linux.
With this mode of thinking you can come to expect every positive point you make about another OS to receive baffling responses of "you can do that just as easily with..."
Well, of course. Why should someone use features easily available in one OS to praise another?
Furthermore, don't even bother mentioning Windows doing a better job at anything, ever, unless you want to induce so much frothing at the mouth that the whole discussion fills with foam.
Other than games, I can't think of anything Windows is better for...
In fact, mp3 is clearly the worst choice because Ogg is the best choice because Linux is the best choice because RMS told you so.
This sort of backhanded sarcasm may be why you get foaming at the mouth. The reason they don't distribute MP3 by default is because most Linux distributions don't profit on their releases, and can't afford to get around the patent issue. Also, considering there are a great many Linux users who dislike RMS, accusing them of blindingly following him might tick them off a bit. I know that line ticked me off a little. I usually use Ogg, but I could give a fig what RMS says.
Seriously, there is little or no basis in these arguments.
And little in yours, as well. Most people who use Linux aren't into "religious indoctrination." I imagine many who use Linux also dual-boot, and thus, at some point paid for software.
Also, considering all your talk about paying for software, I certainly hope you pay for all your music and other entertainment and don't pirate anything...
Re:service pack (Score:4, Interesting)
In the OGG situation, think of it this way: everyone can use OGG. EVERYONE. Apple, Microsoft, everyone. The reason they don't? Because they can just support MP3 (which at some point may decide to charge out the ass for its use), WMA, whatever. If we could get the majority of consumers using OGG, Microsoft and Apple would have to jump on board and we are guaranteed interoperability from any platform be it free or not. You will never get that with proprietary patent-encumbered formats. That's a darn good reason to encourage the use of OGG if you ask me.
As far as OSX goes - I own a mac mini. I used OSX, and it frustrated me. I did not appreciate the way many decisions were made for me and many options were hidden. It took me a lot longer to get simple things done. I installed Ubuntu on it and appreciated having full power to do what I want.
So no, it doesn't always boil down to "a mac costs too much, blah blah" - I bought a mac, it frustrated the shit out of me, I stuck Linux on it and I've never looked back.
You're right that the open source community has a lot of zealotry, but believe it or not it also has a lot of legitimate fans won over by time saved and problems solved.
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I guess I'm not in the majority of Linux users, then. After getting the cfg files all worked up, I
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The point with Compiz is that is is a compositing window manager platform. Compiz isn't the effects. Compiz is the platform. Even GUI people seem to miss this.
You cannot hail OS X GUI and dismiss Compiz in the same sentence. Compiz is what brings things like Exposè, window grouping, "live" thumbnail preview etc. to the OSS world. Those things are doubtless useful in the sense that they let you do your work more efficiently. If you get stuck on viewing Compiz as the "spinning cube that nerds take screenshots of", you'll be missing the point. Of course, one has to drill down through the configuration and disable all those flashy no-good effects such as flaming windows and windows that pop up on cube rotation, water, snow, etc. etc. Such things will happen when you have a bunch of talented people working on a software product that lets you do cool stuff; you can't expect everybody to focus on usability only. Still, usability is what lies at the core of Compiz.
The most important thing about Compiz, for the GUI people at least, is that it is an open architecture which you can use to design and usability-test different GUI paradigms. We shouldn't be afraid of trying out new things, even if we are aware that they may never become mainstream. Many GUI paradigms never became "mainstream"; heck, even Mac's "one-menu-bar-at-the-top-of-the-screen" paradigm is not mainstream, if you count its occurrences in the entire population of desktop/laptop computers worldwide! And yet it is considered more usable. Therefore, GUI people should be happy that they now have a toy to try out new paradigms for themselves.
Re:service pack (Score:5, Interesting)
God bless you.
Slashdot is full of people who type plaintext for a living and seem to think that that is all anyone does with their computers. As long as there's a working keyboard driver, they're happy. The suggestion that I (or my friends who do design, or my parents who use enterprise software, or my colleagues who do stats) could make do with Linux is laughable. In my case, I have a very hard time even using a Mac, because of the statistical packages I use, only SPSS (which I use infrequently, but is essential) has a Mac version, and it doesn't even run on Intel (yet). I have all these packages running on XP in VMware Fusion on my Mac laptop (which I have been extremely impressed by).
Further, I'd like to point out that those "pointless Linux distro reviews" never explain how to get, say, your nVidia card to spit out more than 640x480 (the problem which stymied me last time I tried Linux), or how to get wifi to work, or any of the real problems you actually have after install.
Bah. My sig is sufficient to communicate my basic opinion.
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Re:service pack (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit. First of all: This is not about Linux not being all you make it out to be. Your depiction seems accurate, and desktop Linux distributions are continuously improving. This is about Macs being put down. I've used a Mac for a number of years now, sliding over to using it full time (in the place of Windows + Linux where I used Linux mostly for server stuff) and I can testament that it's not just about the look of the case.
The number one reason I use a Mac is not to get to act all "look at me, I'm special" or to pay more for my computers. It is because of the applications and the operating system. Some of the third party Mac applications are, in my opinion, unsurpassed in their genre on any platform. Like the app I'm writing this in - NetNewsWire, a feed reader (full disclosure: I'm a beta tester, but I'm not saying nice things because I'm a beta tester, I'm a beta tester because I like the app so much). Generalization is dangerous, but paying more attention to detail, especially in the user interface, seems more pervasive on Mac OS X than on any other OS.
I am a developer. I'll admit it: my bread-and-butter today is (and has been for the last year or so) .NET. I love Perl and Ruby and PHP, and I can use them as good on OS X as on any other OS (and significantly easier than on Windows). But I also really like Cocoa and Objective-C, and I believe it's a good example of what .NET could have become had they actively tried to keep the class count down. You can't really claim "marketing" or "RDF" on developer APIs - you start to notice as soon as you use it, and while Cocoa might seem eclectic at the start, it works really well.
There's also a level of chutzpah in the frequent OS updates that I appreciate, even if I have to shell out $129 before rebates every two years or so. When was the last time your OS added automatic backups with one-button setup (and easy full-disk restoration), a layer animation engine and resolution independence in an update? They're also following existing standards (like CalDAV, Open Directory and soon ZFS) - or creating extensions or new standards and publishing them and open source implementations (like HFS+ and launchd) - almost across the board (yes, except for anything possibly involving DRM where they have to deal with the **AAs; I don't like that any more than anyone else). I think the best thing I can say about the operating system and software is that I'd rather use Mac OS X in a regular PC than I would use Ubuntu or Vista in a MacBook.
There's tons of valid points of criticism for Apple, for their computers and for Mac OS X. None of this passes me by unnoticed. QuickTime Pro and .Mac upsell offers are persistent and horrible, for one thing. They're not perfect. But putting off Macs and Mac OS X by the blanket statement "The only good thing about Macs is the look of the case" is simply unfair.
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But I must ask: did you try to research the "OS X" way to do it before you tried the Linux way to do it? If you didn't, why not? Because a quick search for NFS in Mac Help brought up four topics about mounting network shares; Go -> Connect to Server in Finder and entering "nfs://servername/pathname". You're now going to say that "well, then it won't connect on startup", at which point I will ask you to go into System Preferences, Accounts, select your account, go to the Login Items tab, click the + button and choose the mount.
The reason I asked the first question was because it wasn't much harder in OS X than in UNIX variants that use fstab - if you're used to fstab, it's a minor inconvenience to push a bunch of buttons, and if you're sitting down in front of any sort of UNIX for the first time (or the second time), editing a text file to do so simply isn't going to occur to you. This doesn't make your experience with OS X any less annoying in hindsight, of course, and it doesn't mean that you had a worse time with it than with Gentoo. And it certainly doesn't mean that OS X is now on equal footing with Gentoo as a capable OS for you personally. Your investment in how Linux traditionally works and where you go to edit, install, configure and fix things is only partially applicable on OS X, for example. But it's something to think about.
Additionally, not to cast any blame, and just to clarify, if you happened upon a Firefox extension that didn't work with your applications on Gentoo, but that worked with applications on Windows or OS X, you wouldn't blame Gentoo, you'd think that the Firefox extension was written with another platform in mind, and find an alternative. Naturally.
Re:service pack (Score:5, Interesting)
You say that no matter what you did, you couldn't get to mount NFS shares on her Macintosh. Did you try the following steps:
1. Go to the Finder.
2. Select the "Mac Help" item in the "Help" menu.
3. Type in "NFS share" into the search box and hit the return key.
4. Follow the instructions given?
Re:service pack (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, I'm typing this post on my Ubuntu Fiesty desktop. That said, I've also got a MacBook running OSX, which I absolutely love. The reason why I have a Mac? It's all about the apps. Most of the apps that I use on a regular basis in my workflow are free, awesome, and Cocoa or otherwise Mac-only. I'm thinking particularly of Quicksilver, Journler, iGTD, and Skim. There just aren't apps of these types that work this cleanly (and work *together* this cleanly) available for Ubuntu (at least, afaik--I'm happy to be proven wrong).
That said, there are some apps that I run on my Ubuntu box that beat the pants off of anything with a similar function for OSX. Amarok, for instance, so far outstrips iTunes (and anything else I can find for OSX) that it's not even funny. Long story short? As to the question: "Why buy a Mac when you can have Ubuntu?" The answer is: Get the best tools for the job. It just so happens that, for many of the jobs that I do (and the way I like to do them) the best tools I've found are available only for OSX.
Logic Studio (Score:3, Interesting)
The stability of the audio playback justifies the purchase of a Mac alone. Not to mention that Logic Studio is immensely powerful and only costs a few hundred dollars when it used to be a thousand.
Those who like to be creative and not mess around with techie issues all day would be wise to forget Vista, you'll never get it working reliably as a music composition and recording workstation. Especially considerin
Re:service pack (Score:5, Insightful)
That is crazy talk.
If your main application, the core of your computing, is a text editor, then Ubuntu is a gift because you can run your text editor on an entirely free stack and have a much better experience than Windows. For a Web engineer for example, the text editor, Apache, PHP, Firefox, and Unix are killer apps and all free.
But if your main application is anything with graphics or publishing or audio or video you are so much better on the Mac. That's where the tools are for that stuff. In the same way that Ubuntu makes your text editor better by adding Apache, PHP, Firefox, and Unix, the Mac adds all kinds of stuff to your Photoshop, or publishing tools, or music or audio tools. Your 32 channels of 24-bit 96kHz digital audio don't glitch on the Mac, and your 24-bit mixes play in all of your apps, and your virtual effects and instruments work in all of your apps, and you can run two Digital Audio Workstations at once (e.g. Logic and Live, which I do) and they share your pro audio hardware automatically and everything just works. You make music you don't do any IT, that is done at the factory. They spent the last 20 years building in support for pro audio, how long has Ubuntu been working in music and audio?
Photoshop and an Art Tablet and a Mac and a visual artist is on top of the world, takes above 20 minutes to set that all up from scratch, the majority of the time you are watching the Photoshop installer run. When you're done it all just works, even RGB color spaces are managed for you. And you can fly around the interface with the one-button Art Pen and no mouse. The Art Tablet is $299 and includes a coupon for the full Photoshop for $299 more, and a MacBook is $1200 and you want for nothing. That's the full pixel airbrush nirvana. If you have to take a second job to make up the difference from an Ubuntu system then do it. Even if you are a beginner, if you apply yourself for three years with that $1800 art toolkit you'll be working professionally with them somewhere for real money. The $1800 you paid will make your friend's college loans look ridiculous.
It's way past time to get over the idea that all computers are the same. They're more different than ever. Offering Ubuntu as an alternative system for media work, music and audio, video, graphics, publishing, that is just doing a huge disservice to those users, pretending Ubuntu has something to offer them. It's also doing a disservice to the Ubuntu project who are offering a really good system to an entirely different set of users.
Re:service pack (Score:4, Informative)
For one, they pushed the development of preemptible and low-latency Linux kernel to make it possible to do low-latency stuff, even on relatively aged hardware. Mac OS X's micro-kernel architecture is potentially superior in this regard because you can easily go hard real-time with micro-kernels (Linux is a monolithic kernel), but Linux kernel is more suitable than Windows XP for running audio applications because of these improvements.
They also obsoleted OSS (open sound system) and came up with ALSA [alsa-project.org], which makes it easier to support new sound devices from the developer's point of view. ALSA supports a range of consumer to professional sound cards, just like CoreAudio. It just works.
Another notable framework, JACK [jackaudio.org], goes beyond CoreAudio by providing audio routing between applications, like ReWire. JACK is also available on Mac OS X, except it is less robust than on Linux. Thrashing can cause audio drop-out because Mac OS X kernel can't lock pages in real memory.
Finally, if you ever considered audio production work on Linux, you definitely know about Ardour [ardour.org] at some point. It's the hard work of Paul Davis, working on it unemployeed and full-time for many years. Ardour also runs on Mac OS X, by the way, because of the generous nature of Linux developers for offering you a choice.
If you do mostly recording, then you can get by on Linux quite sufficiently. If you do a lot of synthesized stuff like Reason or NI, then you'll be disappointed. There is simply no comparable app on Linux.
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On the other hand, Linux has a lot of architecture catch-up on the graphics stack. Cairo [cairographics.org] recently has some talk about supporting more color spaces than RGB. However, the lack of end-to-end color management is a serious issue. Colors you see on the screen simply will look different when printed out. The colors are also not even consistent from monitor to monitor.
One thing I'm really impressed with Mac OS X is its monitor calibration. It lets you fine tune gamma by inspecting the monitor response in highlight, mid-tone and shadow for red, green and blue. I can easily color-match two monitors by different manufacturers.
Mac OS X also has superior built-in typesetting support, completely unparalleled by any operating system, and this is available in any application even TextEdit. In TextEdit, you can already turn on common ligatures like "fi" and "fl" as you type. In comparison, you must insert ligature glyphs manually when using Microsoft Word. Mac OS X supports more typesetting feature than that. For example, the Hoefler font has an archaic font variant with a "long s" (so congress looks more like congrefs where the f has shorter middle bar---the s at the end of the word remains the usual form because the long s is a contextual ligature that happens only in the middle of a word) and the "st ligature" (there is a small hook that goes from the top end of s to the top stem of t). Needless to say, contextual ligature is a crucial feature to support scripts like Arabic.
Mac OS X definitely has received a lot of attention in the aesthetics that goes way beyond eye candy.
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The number of games that work perfectly under Wine is dwarfed by the number of native Mac games. Wine is seriously overrated.
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At Photoshop conferences I always get asked by PC users "how long does Photoshop take to start up on the Mac?" and I'm like "I don't know, I just leave it running all the time" and one guy asked me once what "lightweight image editor" do I use when Photoshop is not running. Again, it's always running. Why would it not be running? "System resources" was the answer. If Photoshop is not running and you need an image editor, why wouldn't you run it? "Takes a long time to start up." Meanwhile at those same conferences, the Photoshop+Mac users are talking about airbrush techniques and color correction philosophies. Guess who is really getting work done?
world of hurt? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been tempted to buy a Mac, but I game - and for the cost of a 17" Imac with pretty crappy video, I recently built a Core2 Quad 2.4ghz, 2gb ram, 500gb disk, Geforce 8800GTS, etc.
If apple were to release a PowerMac chassis at a slightly less inflated price, i'd be pretty keen... but double the cost of what I built? No thanks...
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How about buying a mac mini for work and multimedia and the game system of your choice for gaming? Wouldnt be more expensive and is way more fun.
Yours,
Somebody happy with a mac mini and a wiiRe: (Score:2)
How about buying a mac mini for work and multimedia and the game system of your choice for gaming?
Because consoles have never been good replacements for the types of games that PC gamers usually like to play, I'd imagine.
Re:world of hurt? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:world of hurt? (Score:4, Informative)
http://davidweiss.blogspot.com/2006/04/tour-of-microsofts-mac-lab.html [blogspot.com]
Sure it is their Mac labs, but to see 150 together is quite something.
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And the Understatement of the Year Award goes to ... [drumroll] ... smash!
Wow, watch me get modded down for contradicting a low-ID! For great justice just install Ubuntu.
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I have both on my laptop. Vista is nice, but there's no question about which OS runs faster, is more stable, and doesn't hog as much resources. I've got 1 GB of RAM, and that's not enough for Vista + OpenOffice, antivirus, browser, etc. However, it IS plenty enough for Ubuntu 7 with the aforementioned apps + Compiz... and I don't get unsolicited updates, virus, etc on Ubuntu. If I had my embedded dev-apps on Linux, I wouldn't keep Vista on my disk.
YMMV.
Re:world of hurt? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not a question of how many issues there are, its a question of perception. Neither 98 nor XP were significantly different at 1 year old compared to 3 years old, but the perception of them changed massively in that time.
In all likelyhood that pattern will repeat with Vista.
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By its third year 98 had evolved into 98SE (where usb support was introduced), the peripherals that people had been using before 98 now largely were supported in 98 so it wasn't to shell out gobs of money to replace all of your hardware, and Office 97 and Works were both on the market and being viewed as usable AND useful by the marketplace.
Arguably the most significant changes by year 3 of 98/98SE were not with the OS but with soc
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It's not the OS that changed, it's the ecosystem.
Common complaints with Vista:
Name one of those things that won't be fixed as the ecosystem develops. NV
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Steve picked the Phone over the PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Steve picked the Phone over the PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Steve picked the Phone over the PC (Score:5, Interesting)
How is that? Agreed, when I'm on the move I will naturally turn to handheld devices that can offer basic services (multimedia playing, communication, web browsing). But there's no way I'm going to resort to them when I need actual work done, or for serious entertainment purposes. They're good to keep you going from one place to another, but for productivity's sake I will need to sit at a desk, use a full size keyboard, a normal mouse, and enjoy a large screen and sensible performance. And if I want to watch movies or play games I will also require the kind of hardware that doesn't travel easily.
Furthermore, that desktop computer paradigm itself is very hard to surpass. There are specialized devices that offer niche services (multimedia players, game consoles, handhelds, laptops), and there are desktop computers, which can be used for anything. That versatility is very hard to throw aside. Niche devices come and go, but a universal purpose device like the desktop computer will be around for a lot of time.
The only possible change I foresee is extreme miniaturization, which would at some point reduce the desktop computer to something like a pen that you take out of your pocket, place on the desk and it expands to a full size interface (keyboard, mouse, display, or all in one). Perhaps using holography and motion sensors. But for all practical reasons that kind of thing is a long way from the mainstream.
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I can connect my camera to a TV and show the pictures and movies I've made. I can connect an MP3 player to a sound system.
Why would I want a bastard "smart" system like the one you describe? It's just a waste of processing power.
Portable stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
I was never too thrilled about their iMac, it seems that in the desktop arena, Apple design does not give so much of an edge, and their only advantage (and disadvantage) is their OS.
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The fact that they still include things like floppy drive, IDE devices, serial and parallel connections on motherboards is a perfect example. There is a market out there I'm sure for such things, but anyone that upgrades every year or two has moved on and won't be looking back.
Maybe it's too much to ask that they completely drop support for those in the software, but as far as hardware get rid of it already. They can al
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Re:Portable stuff (Score:4, Interesting)
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Because there are not enough standards in computing....Most business need a simple accounting package that will handle GL, AP and AR. They invest in let's say Accpac for DOS and they customize their reports for it. They have no need for Accpac for Windows. As the years advance and we find ourselves in 2007, the systems which run this software are no longer available. There is no productivity gain in any of the new software because it gives
of course it's not (Score:2, Insightful)
I know, I know - the hardware is where Apple makes most of its money, but I think they could also make a fair bit from a licensing scheme similar to that of Windows - "OSX Certified" stickers could place a premium on parts like motherboards, network cards, sound cards, and the like.
Apple can't really say that their OS only works on their hardware any more, because it's quite easily hacked to run on anything, so
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Bingo, unfunk.
I would buy OSX in a second if I could run it on my hardware. That's why this article is sort of wide of the mark. Apple will never be able to really compete with Vista (or Microsoft) as long as they insist on being a hardware company before all. The fact that OSX seems to have taken a back seat in Cupertino to all the little consumer electronics does not bode well for the future of the mac platfo
Re:of course it's not (Score:5, Insightful)
Without a monopoly no matter how gained selling just an OS will fail. Apple is worth more than Dell because they keep things locked down, and stay out of the cut throat market of cheap hardware.
Re:of course it's not (Score:4, Insightful)
And from this, we can draw the inference that Apple just doesn't want to tackle Vista head-on. They've got a model that works; it's given them (mostly) happy customers, a fabulous brand image, happy shareholders, and several hojillion dollars in the bank. Why would they want to risk their brand image and their long-term profitability by diverting the resources to run on a zillion different hardware platforms?
Someday OS X (or its successor) will come out for all PCs. But that's (probably) not going to happen while PC hardware still a big profit center for Apple.
Apple is not widely avbl. or supported outside US (Score:3, Insightful)
In the US, in any market; the marketshare is something like this:
Top 3 or 4 vendors: 80%
All the rest share the balance 20%
In Europe, I believe in all sectors except the IT sector, the top vendors collectively share less than 50% market share - thanks to strict measures to combat monopoly and anti-trust issues.
In India (where I live) the only desktop s/w that as any sizable usage is Tally (a financial accounting s/w). All other appln. s/w have a very fragmented marketplace; and it's nearly a 50-50 split between desktop,
Last week, I was evaluating a PACS solution for the hospital I consult with - and a s/w vendor suggested Osirix - an open source app. that works only on Mac hardware. We will be implementing this shortly. A few years back, SGI had products in this niche, but they have disappeared now (I used to work for an SGI dealer).
Apple did try to set up shop in India, but strangely packed up and dismissed the thought a few months later. Unless Apple build up their presence in the hardware segment; they will not be a meaningful alternative to the Windows world - Vista or otherwise. Except in miniscule niche segments perhaps.
Re:Apple is not widely avbl. or supported outside (Score:2, Offtopic)
Here's an idea: get newspapers to write free ads! (Score:4, Interesting)
As a lifelong Apple fanboy (all Apple since 1982, thanks), I can say without a doubt that there's not been a better time to be an Apple fanboy in 20 years. We actually have some street cred now. IT departments no longer laugh dismissively at the idea of perhaps a Mac in the office, maybe. (Though corporate America is a long way from embracing Macs. And Apple originally lost the PC war because most consumers bought what they had at work for home (and, hey, it was a little cheaper).) People are actually buying Macs. Sales are up; growth is up. The article makes a big deal of Apple not starting its relationship with Best Buy soon enough to gain a retail presence. Hello? NYT, two years ago Apple barely had the cred and was still working on retail presence for the iPod. I bought my iPod at Target; I've vowed never to buy so much as a blank CD at Best Buy after some of its shady business practices, and if Apple wanted to just make the Mac available to more people, it'd sell them everywhere the iPods are sold. How far away is that? Well, they'd have to be able to make enough Macs to put them there, but I bet we'll see it someday.
apple doesn't care about beating windows (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultimately, to take any significant chunk of the PC space, apple would need to start releasing hardware on a much smaller profit margin in order to compete with Dell, Gateway, Acer, and Lenovo. This would destroy Apple's profits and company, as the Apple clones fiasco empirically demonstrated.
On the other hand, Apple's current strategy of releasing high profile hardware to a niche market has done phenominally well for them. They've stayed profitable, and have boosted their marketshare to an incredible high compared to historical values.
If you'd bought apple stock and google stock at the time google went IPO, your apple stock would have outperformed your google stock by 3 or 4 times. Apple is doing *very* well and has no incentive to move away from their current low volume, high profit margin strategy. They are essentially skimming the creme of the consumer crop with their products.
Comparing Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
All of the GNU/Linux distributions may be confusing, but they honestly offer different strengths and weaknesses, so don't expect there to be a single Unified_Linux_Sans_RMS any time soon. People and bussinesses pay money for goods & services that they value, but Apple an
Love the Mac - PC's still rule in Corporate (Score:2, Interesting)
Just wondering out loud - do Blackberries work with OS X? Hmmm.... looks like you can synch with and Exchange server and OS X.
http://www.pocketmac.net/products/pmblackberry/ [pocketmac.net]
We currently have a consulting group that manages our Exchange server - they only suppo
Macs in Best Buy (Score:2)
I was surprised the other week to see an Apple section in my local Best Buy, out in the open and obvious and stuff. Which was nice, because I wanted to buy a mini-DVI adapter. There was even a big sign by the door advertising this new ad
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Another thing(coming from a 100+ user all Apple/Linux shop) that Apple does that doesn't work well with corporate environments is that they make it impossible to go back to previous OS X versions once a new one has been released. If history has anything to say, any new macs that come out a
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What are you talking about, you can buy yourself a copy of Tiger through The Apple Store [apple.com].
/Mikael
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Platform of choice. (Score:5, Insightful)
Silly people. Jobs was talking about this numerous times.
Apple never targeted broad audience. True, it can sell to very broad audience, but still Apple prefer to have few but loyal customers.
What also crossed my mind, is difference between Windows/Vista and Mac OS X. How does MacOS becomes platform of choice? Because you have to choose MacOS (as well as Apple hardware) by yourself. This establishes kind of barrier. But people who would cross the barrier are people who made their choice. The barrier works both ways: it takes some money investment to cross it (acquire hardware/software) and it takes some paining experience to come back to Wintel (which lacks all the polish, integrity and utility of Apple offering). But still, you are to make the choice by yourself.
And now ask yourself, who of us had chosen Windows?? Right, nobody. It's the thing which came preinstalled.
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And now ask yourself, who of us had chosen Windows?? Right, nobody. It's the thing which came preinstalled.
I chose Windows. Yes, it came preinstalled on my Compaq Presario back in 1995, but I got rid of it as soon as I found out about Linux.
That lasted about six weeks before I got fed up with the lack of application support for it back then, and ever since, I've been hopping between a lot of different 'alternative' operating systems and Windows. Currently I'm multibooting between Windows XP, Ubuntu 7.01 and OSX.
Windows gets about 90% of the useage.
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I manage a few Suse and Ubuntu servers, so this would go for them as well.
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Apple never targeted broad audience. True, it can sell to very broad audience, but still Apple prefer to have few but loyal customers.
Is that his actual opinion though, or an excuse for a poor market share to calm their users? Are we to assume Steve Jobs never try to spin obvious disadvantages in market share to his adv advantage, but for example Microsoft often do?
I understand that making OS X generally available would reduce their profit margin, but what you're saying isn't about that, but that they don't want to make a big profit from their products from a larger audience? What advantage lies in that? If the audience is no longer very
Apple can't sell HW to everybody (Score:4, Insightful)
OSX can replace Windows only if Apple sells it as Microsoft does, but that means becoming a software company and compete with other manufacturers for the hardware, and likely lose the HW market. Remember what happened when Mac clones started to be successful in the past? Apple shut them down.
Probably Apple is still not interested to change its business model and is happy with OSX being a niche OS, maybe a large niche, but still a niche compared with Windows market share. After all the revenues aren't that bad and MS has no particular reason to look at them as particularly dangerous. I suppose they're thinking, we're making a lot of easy money now, so why take risks and change?
Re:Apple can't sell HW to everybody (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with EVERY market-share study is they are diluting the Mac presence by including their count in areas they have no interest in being. Whereas a PC is a cheap whore that will do anything for money, Macs tend to be made for personal/home use. If Apple wanted to get into the big businesses, I doubt they'd ship things not needed in big business, such as iTunes and GarageBand. To fix this misrepresenatation of Mac market share, why don't these consulting firms just look at a category called "personal computing" or "home computing". I'm sure Apple would be closer to the 20% range in the States, and closer to 50% in metropolitan areas.
I CAN use a Mac at work, but trying to get all the tightly controlled computer things to work on my Mac (even in Windows mode) isn't worth it. Not because the computer doesn't play along well, but because the tech idiots at work freak out and act like I'm some sort of anti-christ hooking up a MacBook Pro to a windows network. If they'd let me, I'd just do it myself, but these control freaks have to write a work order up for something as simple as hooking my laptop up to the LAN-drop if I move cubicles for the day.
In short, Apple doesn't want to dominate the corporate because it would diminish the quality of their home-user products, and the IT world doesn't like the threat of losing their power.
Re:Apple can't sell HW to everybody (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I have been in charge of IT (for a small company, granted) and I have to say, your post reflects a fundamental, dangerous, and regrettably common misunderstanding of what corporate IT is for. The purpose of IT is not IT; the purpose of IT is to enable users to get things done. And if users can get things done better on Macs, then by God, it's IT's job to support those Macs. And "support" does not mean willful ignorance -- the latter, unfortunately, being what a lot of shake'n'bake IT techs show any time the word "Apple" is mentioned in their presence.
The world of hurt that is vista (Score:3, Funny)
An old Penny Arcade shows Tycho in a wrestling ring being beat to a pulp by a guy labeled "Windows XP upgrade" (ok the picture is allegorical) and he's calling out to Gabe, "Why? You told me this would be easy, an hour at most! My world is pain!"
And Gabe replied, "Sometimes when you want to hurt someone very badly you have to tell them terrible lies."
Lock-Ins and the All Might Dollar (Score:2, Interesting)
Troll (Score:5, Insightful)
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Article doesn't give all the facts (Score:4, Insightful)
Vista is a sh!t, but you will use it anyway. (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO Vista is a sh!t. But, IMHO, you are doomed to use it anyway.
Below is all my IMHO, folks. Be friendly, don't take me as troll. But you still doomed to see Vista, no matter how shitty Vista is. Because:You would say what is the proposal? Let's try to think. ;-) In my opinion:
P.S. I am MacOSX, Solaris, Linux and BSD advanced power user and developer of software for more than 10 years. Don't tell me soap stories about "nice Linux Desktop", please. Just fucking please.
And they need too why? (Score:4, Insightful)
What matters to Apple is whether Apple is doing well as a company. They don't really have to care what's happening to MSFT. In fact, I'd expect that AAPL tends to go up at about when MSFT goes up because a large percentage of the stock price is based on the industry rather than the company.
huh? (Score:4, Funny)
wishful thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
And that isn't even taking into account technical issues and missing functionality in their software platform. Having a nice looking desktop user interface and being able to talk a good talk on UNIX compatibility isn't the same as having a software platform that people can use in a corporate environment.
Overall, despite all the bluster, I don't think Apple is even aiming for Microsoft's market. Apple is happy to skim off the high margin, low volume market. Right now, they can afford to say "your wallet is too small", or "we don't do that" and send customers away. If they want to compete with Microsoft, they need to meet the needs of the vast majority of users--corporate, home, and engineering--and they need to do so on price, performance, functionality, features, and compatibility, and they don't. They aren't even trying or even making the investment (Apple's R&D investment is comparatively small).
Hoping that Apple can take over the market quickly because Microsoft stumbled with Vista is wishful thinking--taking market share away from Microsoft is a slow, steady process. Apple makes it particularly hard on themselves because they have created a bottleneck by being the single hardware vendor that runs their software, and by not giving an inch on compatibility with Windows.
The article is rife with errors (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's start with his sales figures. "The Mac's *worldwide* market share was 3 percent as of June 2007, according to Roger L. Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, a consulting firm in Wayland, Mass." (Emphasis mine) Worldwide market share is a poor indicator of Apple's markets. It is mostly a US-focused company and will stay that way in the near future. In the US, Apple's market share is around 5-6%, according to the most recent figures I could find. More importantly, the growth rate is more than four times higher than the industry growth rate, 32% vs. 7.2% (IDC estimates via Apple's latest quarterly report). It doesn't take long for that kind of second order effect to dominate. Comparing the market share now (after the events of the 1990's) to Apple's market share when its mainstay was the Apple II is really bad analysis. I would expect better from the author, a professor of business who presumably knows basic microeconomics.
His figures for the share of computers in use are suspect as well. "Funny thing, though: based on the ratio of Windows and Macs actually in use, no gains can be seen for Apple. The Mac's share of personal computers has actually edged a bit lower since Vista's release in January, and the various flavors of Windows a bit higher, according to Net Applications, a firm in Aliso Viejo, Calif., that monitors the operating systems among visitors to 40,000 customer Web sites." Measuring OS usage share by measuring browser hits is a seriously flawed methodology. There are know sources of bias that lead to higher than actual market share figures for Internet Explorer on Windows, including sites that require users of other browsers to spoof the user agent header, measuring usage on sites that have ActiveX elements that drive away non-Windows users, and extra files being sent to Internet Explorer in order to work around problems in the IE rendering engine. Furthermore, the author is looking at the wrong figures and the drop that he's looking at is statistically insignificant anyway. The figures that he refers to are 4.68% (2007Q1) vs. 4.63% (2007Q2). Windows Vista was released to the general public on January 30, 2007. Thus, the base figure he should be using is 4.06% (2006Q4), which predates the release of Vista. A simple statistical test based on the Net Applications market share figures for 2004Q4 through 2007Q2 shows that a 0.05% difference is not statistically significant. Heck, any reasonably trained economist should be able to eyeball this and say that given that trend, a 0.05% difference is not statistically significant.
As far as the whole Best Buy thing goes, the author completely misses the point behind Apple opening its own retail stores. Apple tried for years to work with CompUSA, Sears, Best Buy, and other consumer electronics retailers to sell Apple computers to the masses. Each attempt was a dismal failure, as the personnel at the retailers could not sell something as complex as Apple's equipment. They were barely able to sell TVs. The only sort-of, kind-of successful experiment in there was the store-within-a-store at CompUSA, which was done by putting Apple employees into CompUSA stores. Even that didn't work too well, as the Apple section got lost in the middle of all of the other stuff. Apple is trying again to expand it's retail reach, but I would put the odds against it. Big box retailers' emphasis on low price and minimal service is completely at odds with how to sell Apple computers.
"Apple has not even begun to try to re-enter another domain from which it had withdrawn its Mac sales teams: large corporations." That would be news to Apple's entire Enterprise Sales team -- several hundred people. I work with them on a daily basis, even now. They've been there all alon
Re:The article is rife with errors (Score:5, Insightful)
uhm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple NEEDS a mid-range head less system and...... (Score:4, Interesting)
The mini is overpriced priced and the laptop hardware in it drives costs up and still has the real old gma 950 in it and all systems should have a super dr.
The imacs are not that much better while they do use a desktop HD, the laptop ram, cpu, slot loading DVD RW, and video push the price up. Also the smaller size of the new imacs mean that high-mid and high end video cards are out as well as more then one hd and you are stuck if it's build in screen.
The Macpro is over 1 and half years old and is still at the same price and same setup base system 7300 gt and only 1gb of ram and $300 to go to 2gb apples prices, OWC has it for $100. But still $100 a gig? Also the raid card for it is rip $1000 for a 4 port sata only raid card?
The mid-range system can replace the high end mini with on board video or a low end video card g33 / g35 chipset and pci-x 16 slot for video with x4 slot for other cards and desktop parts.
maybe have high end system for gameing with dual video cards x38 or NV chipset.
Or you can have a dual dual macpro with the low end xeon cpus and the new chip set with ecc ddr2 2/3 ram.
The mini can be dropped in price making it a very low end system.
well.. duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
The author talks about not taking advantage of this small window of opportunity to attack Vista. He also goes into great lengths about all the fabulous things Apple has already done to position itself as an alternative to Vista including the transition to intel processors, the fantastic ad campaigns, and the refinement of OS-X. Although he only says that "the official Mac line is that it has gone swimmingly" which seems imply falsehoods, he does manage to mention that sales are up over 30% across the board!
To me this sounds like unprecedented growth and execution, not a failure.
He then answers his own unproven assumption (that Apple isn't doing enough) by expressing "what could be done" as:
- ramping up their retail presence
- offering more for corporations.
But these two things are exactly what Apple *has* been doing for the last couple of years. In fact, Apple's focus has been so intent in these areas that it's on the verge of dropping the ball this year on a number of other issues as a result. How could Apple could ramp up the retail expansion any faster than they already have lately without stumbling? How could they focus any more on their high end and back-end server stuff for corporate environments with Leopard? Being certified as UNIX this year doesn't give them enough cred? Coming out with a fully exchange compliant server and simultaneously offering it's own end to end solution to compete with exchange server based on open formats and open source code is not enough? Coming out with a brand new corporate smart phone to challenge RiM is not enough?
Apple is already going through intense, rapid expansion on all fronts probably more than at any time in it's history and the very issues he mentions are already already major focii of their expansion plan.
I'm not saying it's a stupid article, but it's kind of pointless in that all it really does is restate some recent history, (MS took five years off and OS-X has come in from the cold), add some overly obvious business advice, (expand retail, expand markets, consolidate marginal markets), and then it just kind of wrings it's hands and worries about how far Apple can get before the "giant flywheel" of Vista gets it.
I'm worried about the flywheel too, but I fail to see what more Apple can do on any of these fronts that it isn't already doing. In particular, expanding retail locations any faster than it already is, would be a dangerous course for Apple and in the end probably bad business advice.
Mandatory comparison with Porsche (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a little German car maker you might have heard of named Prosche. They make sehr viel money. Their stock is doing sehr gut. They don't really care about market share. Now, nobody bothers them about this or writes little essays about how Porsche will never catch up with Toyota or GM, because everybody understands they are playing for profit, not market share. For some reason, many people don't understand this with Apple. They keep talking about market share.
Apple has no debt. They are making lots of money -- okay, so is Microsoft. Their stock is up, what, 70 per cent this year -- Microsoft's has been dead in the water for years. Apple has two different product lines that are doing fine: Computers and iPods. They are working on a third, the iPhone. Microsoft has two products of the same type, Windows and Office, that make money. Everything else they have touched, like the Zune and the Xbox, has been a financial disaster.
Let Microsoft keep its market share. Apple is making money and making its shareholders happy. Like Porsche.
the elephant in the room (Score:4, Insightful)
You are not doing all you can to defeat Vista as long as you will not sell it in direct competition with Vista. That means, on OEM hardware.
Now, that may or may not be the right thing for Apple to do. But until they do that, they are not even trying to compete with Vista.
Why is this so hard to see?
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I used to write my GUIs with Qt or GTK but I now have a job writing Cocoa applications in Objective-C and I like it! I have to write less code than before, I have the bindings system and all the Cocoa framework for me so, yes, Objective-C is a PITA to learn when you begin but once you understand how to use it, it's a very powerful tool.
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Objective-C is only hard to learn if you don't already know Smalltalk, and I don't think I'd trust a developer who doesn't know Smalltalk to write OO code, even if they never use the language for real work.
If you're enjoying Cocoa, you might want to take a look at GNUstep; it implements Foundation and AppKit (and a few other frameworks) for generic *NIX systems (and Windows, although the Windows port is not very well supported). If you don't use Quicktime or the Core* APIs, you can often port code quite
Objective C is a far nicer language than .NET (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people come late to Objective C, it's only really used on the Mac, and the [method syntax] throws people off (though I don't think it's any worse than a C programmer seein
Re:Neither can compete with the cost of Ubuntu! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Neither can compete with the cost of Ubuntu! (Score:4, Informative)
It's not for everyone, but I like the flexibility and the cost. I don't have to buy Windows to play the game for example, or boot out of my main OS either. I should disclose I'm the guy that wrote a few patches and HOWTOs for Wine games. If you can follow simple instructions and have an Nvidia GPU that supports OpenGL 2.1+ you're set for the most part. I'm waiting for reports from AMD ( ATi ) users to see if the new drivers have any effect on the dismal performace and support of OpenGL and more specifically GLSL. The more choice for GPUs on Linux the better.
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Re:Neither can compete with the cost of Ubuntu! (Score:4, Funny)
If it really did give me the "Vista experience", I would be running FreeBSD instead.
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badum-ching!
Before I get flamed, I'm a HUGE FreeBSD fan, but until recently the lack of Java support really made FreeBSD on the desktop not be a viable option.
I'm thinking about giving DesktopBSD or PC-BSD a try soon though, now that the Java thing is all figured out.
Re:Neither can compete with the cost of Ubuntu! (Score:5, Funny)
Why!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why why why why why why why why why why whywhy why why why whywhy why why why whywhy why why why whywhy why why why whywhy why why why whywhy why why why why!!!!!!
I have been a PC user at work and a Mac user at home for the past, oh 20+ years, and I've never thought to myself (while sitting at home)...."Gee, I wish I had that crappy computer from work here at home too!" Now that my company gives me a PC
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There are plenty of 'techie friends' out there recommending Macs-- even guys who making their living supporting Windows. If the people asking for recommendations are not hardcore gamers, advising them to get a Windows box is the dumbest thing you could do, unless you like getting constant support calls when you'