'Perfect Storm' of Mac Sales on the Horizon? 669
fkx writes to mention an eWeek article suggesting that, finally, the PC-using public is going to 'get' the Mac. According to the article, the new advertising, increased functionality of OSX, and Intel-based machines are all raising the profile of Apple's machines to new heights. From the article: "However, this cycle isn't your usual processor upgrade cycle that comes every time Intel or Advanced Micro Devices tweaks a process. This is a major shift that affects all parts of the Mac customer-developer-vendor ecology. Longtime Apple watchers can count two earlier events of similar magnitude. The first such transition occurred in March 1994 with the arrival of the PowerPC architecture. The Motorola 680x0 architecture that had served the Mac platform for a decade was quickly supplanted by a set of new, more powerful machines. "
Its probabbly true. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:3, Interesting)
upgrading hardware (Score:4, Interesting)
For the last two decades I've always upgraded my machine by piece-mail. A new case, a new HD, a new mobo, a new video card.... So at every purchases it's only been a few hundred at most.
And how do you upgrade just the cpu/mobo without upgrading ram or the hd? I've got an old HP I'd like to upgrade but when I upgrade my cpu/mobo I'll hav to upgrade my ram and more than likely my hd as well as both the bus and the hd interface will be different. As my graphics card may not be compatible with a new mobo I may have to upgrade it as well. I don't see how over a preiod of more than several years you can upgrade a piece at a tyme.
FalconRe:Its probabbly true. (Score:4, Interesting)
There's another thing. If you want a second machine to your desktop, a laptop doesn't need to be a screamer to be very useful, nor does it need to run the same operating system. In fact, having two different kinds of machines can be pretty darn cool. So, try some old iBook or something; that's my advice if you want to sample the world of OSX. As long as you have over 512MB, even an old 600MHz iBook G3 machine is plenty for the basic browsing and email.
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not sure it's wholly a waste of time, if it's also your hobby - and of course, once you get a Mac, you spend half your time evangelising them on the Internet, making up for the time saved in not tweaking hardware / Windows.
Whatever floats your boat, I guess. (Score:3, Insightful)
I know quite a few people that do similar things, and it really seems like they spend more time futzing with their cobbled-together systems and trying to decide what to upgrade next, than actually doing stuff with them and just enjoying having something that works the way it's supposed to.
I'm not advocating a 'disposable culture' here, just saying that it seems to make a lot more sense to me to save up money for a while, get something that's really nice and you'll
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally, as someone who grew up with PCs in the 90s and has fixed too many computers to count, I find the idea today of dealing with the innards of a PC as archaic and obsolete an idea as having to turn a crank to start your car.
Re:Its probabbly true. HDMI (Score:5, Interesting)
MSFT is strongly pushing DRM for video content whereas Apple so far has been silent on the matter. I do not foresee Apple making a sharp about face and forcing HDMI down our throats at this stage in the game. If you value your freedom of fair use, I would suggest looking at Apple.
Re:Its probabbly true. HDMI (Score:5, Insightful)
The content industry said that HDCP will be required for legal full-resolution playback on content with the ICT set (nothing now, but at some point (supposedly 2010 or later), all of the content on the winning HD format). So either support it or you can't play. Blaming Microsoft is either really ignorant or really fanboyish. Apple will require it too, the only difference that Apple controls its hardware so well that it should be fairly transparent to the end-user, unlike PCs where we tend to have a lot more give. Of course, displays are the one area where Apple products tend to have that give, but at least with the notebooks and iMacs, you can be damned sure that the display will be connected by an HDCP-compliant connection when they're packing a next-gen optical drive. I wouldn't be especially surprised to see Apple to be giving the Mac Pro an HDCP-compliant output at WWDC, or upgrading their Cinema displays for the same. Microsoft just writes the software - they have NO control over the hardware it goes on - so they take flak when these inconsistencies occur. If it was all well-done, everything with digital output and/or input would have been compliant for the start, and none of us would have been any the wiser since it's all transparent. But it's not, and Microsoft makes an excellent scapegoat. Blame Sony, they're the ones that actually helped come up with the stupid idea (with many others I'm sure, but they're also an excellet scapegoat) - just like CSS and AACS, but those two (well, we'll wait to see with regards to the latter) are transparent enough that it's usually not much of an issue.
Re:Its probabbly true. HDMI (Score:4, Interesting)
Out of curiousity, which of the two companies is actively selling DRM encumbered video? [apple.com] I agree, HDMI is a terrible thing, another opportunity to charge people more in exchange for hardware that does less and in the process help stamp out fair use. But Apple's no more our friend in this than Microsoft.
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:5, Insightful)
A MacBook will last you probably about five years. That is about $18 per month.
Most porn sites cost more than that.
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:3, Interesting)
> they can find on Dell.com.
That's a completely bullshit argument.
In the first place, you can do a Mac mini for $500-$700 and it comes with lots of valuable, full-license software that the $500-$700 Dell doesn't have. There are also used Macs for sale on eBay and they are easy to buy because if you add a retail Mac OS X Tiger you can very easily figure out the exact capabilities that a particular used system wil
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is really a tired and quite frankly useless argument. If I had money for a computer, I had money for an Apple. Perhaps I chose to use the money for something else, and buy a cheaper computer, but that is no different from buying a cheaper pair of shoes, cheaper car, cheaper whatever. If you need a PC, fine get one. But as in everything else, v
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:4, Funny)
So, you're telling us that it took you half an hour to learn how to drag and drop?
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:4, Informative)
> including in the Cache folder and Preferences folder in most cases.
Yeah but they are text files with stored preference settings. Leaving them there is much less harmful than accidentally deleting something you need later. If you want to get rid of them, though, it is easy to identify them either manually or with Spotlight (by searching for the trashed app's name or developer).
Also when you run an uninstaller in MS Windows it still leaves cruft in the Registry which is more potentially damaging to the system than the left-behind preference files on the Mac. And just the fact that you're not dealing with an installer on the Mac means one less app that can mess with your system.
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:4, Informative)
If you can't close a disk image it's because of some file on the image that is in-use. You either opened a file on the disk or ran an application from the disk. Try closing open applications that may be the culprit. If that doesn't work then restart the machine.
Not allowing you to eject a disk that is in-use is safer than allowing you to eject a disk with an open file. This helps to avoid file and disk corruption.
Select the file, hit the return key, type in the new name. It's pretty simple and quick to do. The problem is under Windows hitting the return key OPENS the file so you probably never thought of trying this.
I'm unable to duplicate your problem. I shift-selected a ton of files and then went back and command-clicked on the ones I didn't want selected (I'm using the standard key settings for a Mac here). At no point did my selection changes open any files no matter where I clicked. You say you re-mapped your keyboard, maybe whatever you used to do that messed around with something. The control key on a Mac usually simulates a right-click when used in combination with a left-click, perhaps in remapping things you managed to provoke some sort of odd behavior.
As both a Mac and a PC user I find the Mac interface to overall be more intuitive to use. However, this can be completely different if you are ingrained in your old PC habits and ideas. Old PC habits are hard to change and that can turn the Mac experience into something you are fighting against daily.
uninstalling (Score:3, Insightful)
And to uninstall a program, while it might seem like a no-brainer to drag an application to the trash to uninstall it, that does not get rid of it if you've added it to the dock. For more advanced users that's not a big deal, but it's certainly not more "intuitive" than using an uninstall applet that gets rid of everything - start menu shortcuts and all - in one swat.
How often have you uninstalled software running on Windows? Unless the uninstaller is well written uninstalling software always leaves lit
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:3, Informative)
I mean really, is mounting a dmg file (which shows up as a drive on your Mac), then opening your application folder and dragging an icon into it really simpler than just double-clicking an executable to install it?
I think you meant "double-clicking an executable and then clicking through three to twelve installation screens". So yes, in my experience "installing" an application on Mac OS X is m
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:5, Insightful)
The first generation of Apple products generaly comes with some issues, so it's wiser to wait for the first revision. It happened with my iBook, first generation Snow, the maiboard fried on the first 2 weeks... and also, it was not "OSX ready", since it came with only 64MB, 8MB of video and a slow 66MHz bus... the first revision fixed all these issues.
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:4, Informative)
2. They will fix them for you. If you have a problem, call them. They aren't very public about it, but what good would that do anyone, since they fix them?
3. I have a MacBook Pro, rather than a MacBook, but it doesn't seem to run very hot to me. I'd think the MBP would running warmer.
I had one of the first MacBook Pros, and the only issue I had was my battery went bad. They sent me a new one without a problem.
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:3, Interesting)
So Apple marketing has a few putzes. Their computers and software are still pretty sweet.
Re:Its probabbly true. (Score:4, Insightful)
Most folks just want to sit down and use a computer that works- and for those who don't have a large budget and are looking to get away from Windows for most aspects of their computing, then the Mac mini fits in with that.
Unfortunately, Apple is still stuck doing these marketing campaigns because of computing stigma's left-over from the 1980's. I still have clients who think that they need to do all this special stuff to send a Mac user a word document. This is why they make very obvious and deliberate statements in their advertising, because most folks don't even realize what Macs have to offer.
I used to enjoy building "winux" boxes, in addition to playing around with my Macs. Now I don't have the time, so I have an 17" iMac with a 3 year warranty and 5 different operating systems on it. I know for the next 3 years I don't have to worry about buying anything other than RAM, because if it breaks, its covered. Sure the marketing is coarse, but man, who cares- look at all the other crappy advertising out there, like for example, (Dude, your getting a Dell!)
They're Right (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They're Right (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They're Right (Score:4, Interesting)
When I came down in the morning. The defrag had apparently failed to complete, and the system was frozen. I powercycled it, and when it came back up, I was no longer able to log in (I'll look up the specific error code from my notes and reply with it). Throwing the disk into another workstation, I was able to mount the partition, and found dozens of DLL files had mysteriously disappeared from my system32 folder, including some of the important ones used to process a login.
Not knowing what exactly was missing and needed replacing, I bit the bullet and bought a Windows 2K OEM CD, as I'd misplaced my own (yes, I really did misplace it - I've certainly pirated Windows before, but not in this case). I ran through a reinstall, and Win2K was back to normal, minus the dragginess I'd seen prior. Bit Rot Happens, we all know that, but this was a direct correlation to running a defrag and watching system files disappear into the ether.
Re:They're Right (Score:5, Informative)
You'll love it, especially if you love the command line environment of Linux. Being able to have both the great GUI and name applications (like Photoshop) as well as a true Unix subsystem and command line you can use were a big factor in switching to the Mac for me.
You mention defrag, and that is one thing I've never understood. In the time I've been using Windows, it has never run well without 3rd party software. In the 95/98/ME days defrag was probably important, but I found that a little program called MemTurbo make the system feel like it just booted all the time. It would somehow clean up leaked memory, or force specific things to be paged, as well as defragment the memory allocations.
Then Windows 2000 came along and it no longer needed that program (hooray!). But NTFS just gets SO fragmented SO fast. Without a 3rd party program (Disk Keeper, set to defrag during screen saver) then any system that gets quite a bit of use will slow to a crawl pretty fast in my experience.
Vista is supposed to have that built in, so I wonder what users will need next to keep the OS running smoothly.
Re:They're Right (Score:4, Informative)
The thing is, he WAS talking about things that are specific to the Mac, it's just that what you're seeing as two functionally separate things are, on a Mac, a single integrated feature. Yes, under a good Linux you can jury-rig a major app to run under Wine, and you can run unix command line tools.
But on the Mac, you can run that major application, and a command-line tool, and they interact with each other in a completely supported manned. You could script Photoshop using normal Bash commands (via OSAScript) under OSX, and you could write an Applescript to export information from Photoshop directly into four different ImageMagick processes running in separate terminal windows. Of course there's much more mundane stuff, like dragging and dropping between applications and command lines.
That's the sort of thing Mac users mean when they say how great it is to have a real Unix with great commercial software together on the same box. It isn't just about the convenience of not having to SSH or KVM to another system to run the full variety of apps you may need during a day's work, they become an actual SYSTEM working together in a unified way that no other OS I know of can match with any amount of hacking.
Re:OSX is missing good remote access, though (Score:3, Informative)
OS X isn't for hardcore F/OSS people. I run some F/OSS, but mostly commercial software or freeware. That said, I'll try to answer you as best I can.
No X11 like forwarding. Apple does have some sort of remote desktop, but I'm not sure how it works, and I think you have to pay for the client. That said, I just use VNC to access my Mac. I do it almost daily. I found a free VNC server (OSXVNC, I think) and it works great. It's not quite as clean as true X forwarding, but it works great. It's a fair complaint,
It's too late for the public... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry to upset you. Mod me down.
Re:It's too late for the public... (Score:4, Insightful)
Again, the public.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Again, the public.... (Score:5, Funny)
That's the issue. My parents (in their late 70s/early 80s) decided to get a Mac when they decided they liked the idea of getting a video camera and doing some video editing and DVD authoring. The bundled software simply sold them on the idea. Dad subsequently got a USB music keyboard just because he enjoyed the idea of playing with Garageband.
But yes, their old Windows 98 box was fine for e-mail. I'm not sure about their porn-surfing habits.
Re:Again, the public.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of years ago I would have agreed with you on this. One aspect that has changed in many people's lives is the entry of a wide variety of digital toys. Digital cameras, video cameras with hard drives, digital music players, and the stack of other goodies flooding the retail chains. Today the computer at home is an important resource for bringing all these things together, as well as the other stuff you mentioned.
Apple has positioned itself pretty well in this regard, as the company producing the computer that is built to deal with this. I suspect that they'll be better positioned to take advantage of this over the next couple of years than Microsoft will be.
Please note, I'm anything but an Apple fan boy. What the heck do I know though? I think KDE on FreeBSD is the bestest game around!
Re:Again, the public.... (Score:5, Insightful)
And then there was the iPod.
I think you're underestimating the market and an entire generation of people. Young, the desire to be hip, and lots of disposable income. It's a marketer's dream. Computing will only continue to be more integrated into everyday life. And if you don't think somebody won't capitalize on making it a status symbol I think you're sorely mistaking. Apple is definitely on the way to capturing it.
Re:Again, the public.... (Score:5, Informative)
When it comes to laptops, though, there are different factors. Suddenly size, weight, battery life, and even appearance (well, for the fashionistas among us) come into consideration. And do I need to point out that a 17" widescreen notebook from Apple weighs about a pound less than one from anyone else?
This January, Apple's share of the US laptop market stood at 6% - about double its share of the desktop market.
This July, Apple's share of the US laptop market stood at 12% - double where it was in January.
Apple has projected that as universal binaries of more applications for "creative pros" become available, that share could go higher.
Maybe they'll continue to do better in notebooks than desktops.
Re:Again, the public.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably so. However, don't count out the desktop, though. There are lots of graphics artists that can't wait for whatever machine will replace the PowerMac G5. It will probably be released at WWDC in about three weeks. That's when the pros will start upgrading.
Re:Again, the public.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Again, the public.... (Score:3, Informative)
Most folks want a nice computer that lets them word process, surf the web and/or look at digital pictures. You may be a geek. Many folks here may be geeks. But most people don't care about the computer itself, only a few applications.
Re:It's too late for the public... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's too late for the public... (Score:2)
Maybe if Macs could run the consumer's old Windows stuff seamlessly (i.e., without a reboot and a copy of the latest version of Windows, which the consumer probably doesn't have if (s)he's replacing an old machine) it would be a more appealing opt
Re:It's too late for the public... (Score:4, Insightful)
Aren't you mixing your statements there ?
The mac will be (slightly) more expensive, a *lot* easier to use, and it'll work a lot better without all those nasty viruses, spyware, trojans, you-name-it.
The pc will be (slightly) cheaper, just as hard to use as the previous one, and just as vulnerable (Vista notwithstanding)
A lot of people are going to go for the "upgrade" to the Mac, I think.
Whether it's a real (I think it is, actually) or a perceived upgrade doesn't make much difference at this point - perception is all. It's interesting that most people "get by" with their PC, but "love" their Macs though - that tells me they're getting more from their Mac than they were getting from their PC. Certainly my non-scientific non-representative anecdote (My mother, sister, and brother
Simon.
Re:It's too late for the public... (Score:5, Informative)
Someone did the math awhile ago, I can't find the link, but you're just plain wrong. The Mac is maybe $50 or $100 more than a comparable PC. And you'll be repurchasing software with Vista anyhow -- or living through the hell of the security dialogs.
That's assuming you actually have lots of software which can't simply transfer a license to the Mac.
And for twenty years, they've been changing things. You're going to have to retrain about as much to learn to use Vista as you will to use a Mac.
I admit there are problems, but would you like to tell me which one you think makes a Mac worse than a PC?
Sorry? It's not as open as I'd like, but as far as I know, you don't get ANY source code with Windows.
Target, yes. But it really is more secure. Prove me wrong, though, if you dare. I'll put my Mac on any network you like and let you hit it with anything you want.
Vista is just now starting to do some of the things that OS X has had for years, in terms of security.
The vast majority of computer users own less than $100 worth of software, and the price difference is also less than $100. Geek Squad charges $129-229 every time you screw up your PC. After just a couple of those, it's already cheaper to make the switch.
Personally, I don't think it's as useful as, say, a mass exodus to Ubuntu would be. But at least I can easily set up SSH, use Perl, and all that good stuff without hours of hassle, so I'd be happy with people using a Mac.
Anyway, get back to Digg. Your 12-year-old MS apologist friends miss you.
Closed architecture? (Score:4, Funny)
Hmmm... Let's see. Looking at my "old" five-year-old G4 Powerbook.
PC Card interface (PCMCIA)
USB
Firewire
Ethernet
DVI
S-Video
ATA (IDE) hard drive interface
Laptop SDRAM
Yup. That's a closed architecture if I've ever seen it. Not.
The new laptops have standard laptop DDR memory as well. As a special bonus, I didn't shell out for the Airport card; I have a Microsoft-brand 802.11g PC Card wireless interface installed instead. (It was lying around and therefore free to me.) No extra drivers to be installed. It just ran under OS X as an airport device. How exactly could this laptop be any more open? Have you changed your Dell or IBM laptop motherboard lately for a 3rd party replacement? How about the CPU?
And the desktops are even worse! AGP and PCI on the motherboards. What were they thinking? Next thing you know, they'll be moving to PCI-X in the next generation.
The 1990s called. They want their "Macs are a closed architecture" whines back.
Re:evidence? (Score:5, Interesting)
The mac has a long and established history of well-behaved apps, inter-operating via the OS. Nothing else comes close to the level of standardisation for all the commonplace things (cut/paste, print, preferences, user-customisable toolbars, menu layout, window management, etc. etc. etc.) It's a far more stable (as in: unvarying) environment for apps to co-exist.
Hell, you can run the whole thing with a mouse with only one button.. Twice as easy as anything else [grin]
I think though, it comes down to the well-behaved nature of the apps/developers, and the level of thought that has gone into how to make apps useful - have you seen the *size* of the Apple human-interface guidelines book ?
Take the menubar being always at the top of the screen - not everyone likes that (personally it bugs me to have to traverse two wide-screen displays to get to the File menu), but it means it's "infinitely deep". You can slam the mouse as fast as you like to the top of the screen and it'll still hit the menubar on a mac. Now I've seen people do the same thing on a PC (video-editing app), but they made it 1-pixel-in (presumably the border for a full-screen window took 1 pixel or something). Now it's nowhere near as easy to use... There are a myriad of little things like that, where it's been thought about on the Mac, and the lesson doesn't seem to have been transferred to any of the competitors.
Or hell, I could be wrong.
Simon
Re:Here's some evidence (Score:4, Informative)
1) "Fitts' law is a model of human movement, predicting the time required to rapidly move from a starting position to a final target area". Unless you never select anything from the menu, it applies. For every GUI-user you show me who has never selected a menu-item, I'd be able to find hundreds who had.
2) Did you get the bit about "infinite depth" ? That the edges of the screen make it easier to locate the mouse because of no possibility of overshoot ? Seems completely obvious to me, but hey! Actually it seems bloody obvious to others, too [asktog.com]
3) If it's easier to do something, that's a better usability. End of.
Game, set, and match.
Re:evidence? (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe you misunderstand? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, the vast majority, of windows users will stay with windows, no question. But there is always that segment of the market which will be shopping for a new PC soon, and may consider a Mac.
How large could that segment be? 5% would be huge. If Apple could get another 2% - 3% of upcoming PC sale, Apple's sales would double. Clearly that is very significant.
Very true (Score:5, Interesting)
At least in my college-age demographic it is. I'm seeing a HUGE desertion of PC's in favor of the MacBooks (the MBPs are a little bit out of the range of the average college student). It's going to be a good year for Apple.
College is typically five years ahead of the rest (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, though, College is where the main 'adoption' of new systems takes place, so it makes sense that colleges would get it first. Mac and Linux are used there much more than in the 'mainstream' world.
Good. (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Mac Minis making a giant wave, and the boat... almost... makes it...
makes sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Summary (Score:2)
PC before. This shows that Mac Sales are going to explode.
Nothing to see, move along.
Perfect storm of perfect storms (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Perfect storm of perfect storms (Score:3, Funny)
Part of the pie chart represents "just kicking it" (Score:5, Funny)
Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
With the Compaq you can opt for an AMD Turion 64 w/ATI graphics chipset instead of the Intel and it's CHEAPER. The Mac has the built-in camera but the Compaq has the option of a built-in Lightscribe DVD+-DL burner for $25 more.
Yes, the Mac is more fashionable but the big point is going to be OS X -- will the general public (i.e. -- not Apple fanboys) be willing the make the switch at a 30% premium?
-Charles
Re:Competition (Score:5, Informative)
An interesting question!
I don't exactly qualify as 'general public' having been using Linux exclusively for the past few years, but I have finally decided to check out what all this talk about OS X is. And I grew up on PCs - I remember when I was like four years old and fucking around at the DOS prompt (like I knew what was going on =P).
A few of my friends have Apple hardware, and they really like how 'OS X just works'. So after months of seeing my boss' Macbook Pro, I've decided to get one myself (after the conference, of course).
And I realize I'm paying a *lot* for a Macbook Pro. I could get something almost as nice for 30% cheaper, as you pointed out. But I am willing to pay the premium for OS X, after not spending *any* money on Free software for the past few years.
Re:Competition (Score:2)
Ah, oops. Well, my qualm with the Macbook is that the graphics card is not all that exciting. It's some integrated Intel crap. While I'm not fan of ATI, the proper graphics card is really worth a lot to me.
Re:Competition (Score:5, Informative)
And I'd be willing to bet that Compaq is at least 30% bigger than the Macbook. Find one with similar specs and dimensions and you'll find the price will go up. You pay for miniturization.
Odd you picked Compaq. Ususally people find some Dell to compare it to and neglect to point out that the Dell is 70% greater volume.
Re:Competition (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Competition (Score:2)
Re:Competition (Score:2)
Re:Competition (Score:3)
The first thing I did was install Kubuntu and never booted into Windows at all. As you said, it is all in the software and that is what gets it done for me.
Now that I look, the
I for one (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple does seem to be getting 'up in our faces' alot more lately. Their new tv ads are a huge slap in the face to Microsoft, and may actually be the thing to get people wondering. Their only downfall is their prices, you see a Macbook, who's behind it, some clean cut suited up fellow sipping latte at starbucks.
Not likely. (Score:2)
Re:Not likely. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the one Mac criticism that I agree with. I switched despite it. I just didn't play enough games on my computer to have that hold me back to Windows. That said, Macs are behind in that respect. Boot Camp improves it, so does the switch to Intel (Macs, especially the laptops, were horridly underpowered). The graphics card issue still needs to be addressed.
There are quite a few people who only play casual games, and the Mac is fine for that. If you want it enough, you can use Boot Camp. Most of the ot
Is this where I get on the bandwagon? (Score:4, Interesting)
More than that, the next iteration of OSX promises to be more efficient while Vista is likely to be far less effecient, need way more resources, and still suffer the same fates as my previous Windows machines.
Beyond all that, have you seen the Mac stuff? It's so cool looking!
Not hardly (Score:3, Insightful)
It's comming... if only Apple would let it (Score:5, Insightful)
I've got to say, I love my Mac. I used to love 'em, switched to PCs during the late Windows 3.1 timeframe, and then switched back last year.
Macs are growing, and they are growing fast. Apple's US laptop market-share DOUBLED in the last six months. Now one in eight laptops sold in the US are Macs. For an alternate OS, that is huge. And because the MacBook was released during the middle of that period, there was a disclaimer with those numbers that the trend will very likely continue.
And why not? Mac laptops are sexy. They look great. They have almost every feature you could want (I still don't understand why for such a media friendly company, they don't have media-card slots). They are light. They are thin. They are quiet. It amazes me that many new Dells and such have to have their fans on all the time and it's quite audible. When they dare to do anything complex, a little jet-plane enters the room. My Mac (admittedly a G4, although I hear the recent Intels aren't bad at all) is dead silent. It took me like 2 weeks to realize there was a fan in the thing (not that I was looking). When going full-tilt with graphics, it's about as loud as most people's Dells and such are at idle.
Macs have had (and still do) a few issues. Graphics cards is a major one. I hope the switch to Intel helps this more, because my 1 year old laptop has a sorry graphics card compared to what was available on PCs at the time (Radeon 9700 or 9800).
That said, the stars are converging for Apple. They have HUGE brand trust and are "cool" thanks to the iPod. Their hardware looks and performs excellent. The OS is amazing. I've been running Vista for about 18 months in the form of Tiger. When Vista comes out, I'll get Leopard and be ahead again. I help neighbors and such with computers and I can't tell you how many problems could be solved with a Mac. "I want to edit movies." If you had a Mac, you'd have all you need thanks to the amazing iLife. But they were on a PC so they had to buy a FireWire card, video editing software, DVD burning software, and none of it was as easy to use as the Mac software. I know people who can't find their files. They just don't get the filesystem organization (you've seen 'em: everything in My Documents). Spotlight would save them so many hassles. I've set them up with Google Desktop... but it's no the same. Spotlight is integrated into EVERYTHING. Even the standardized File dialogs.
Then there is the Intel switch. Biggest complaint from people I've told about Macs in the past? "Then I have to buy all new software." This is people who run everything from just a handful to expensive things like Photoshop. Now with Intel, you can get a Mac and run those programs though Parallels or dual-booting. End up not liking the Mac (I doubt it), you can run Windows FULL TIME. You have very little to lose for what you stand to gain. If this was available when I was looking, I would have bought a Mac about a year earlier.
Games could use a focus. Apple REALLY needs to advertise the OS. The latest ads were a good start, but I show people my Mac and even little things (the keyboard and screen responding to ambient light) wow them. Apple needs to get people to know about this stuff. Then there is stuff like Exposé that just blows their mind. They have seen NOTHING like it on the Windows side (as opposed to things like Spotlight that have rough equivalents).
My biggest problem with Apple for the last 4 years or so (both as an observer and now as a user) has been their lack of advertising of OS X. They seem to be stuck with an almost word-of-mouth sales techniques. Maybe with recent moves (more stores, going into Best Buys and using Apple personnel to run the Mac section) will help.
The Mac market is already exploding. Just wait to see what happens after WWDC. With the real power desktops out, I wonder how much their market share numbers will jump. What will Leopard do (especially if they advertise it). What will happen in Back-To-School season (between the MacBook and their recent free-iPod-with-Mac-purchase programs), and Christmas?
what an odd view (Score:3, Interesting)
Magical Torrent of Upgrades in this case is solely rests on new Intel platform's shoulders, that should invite "switchers" (I keep seeing ads for Mac with big "NOW RUNS WINDOWS!" stickers on top), which makes me think it won't be a "torrent", it will be a stream. And Vista and Mac OS X mean very little for this stream
Doesn't Anyone Know What Proprietary Means? (Score:5, Informative)
NuBus is hardly proprietary. It is the IEEE 1196 standard originally developed at MIT. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Apple picks standards that nobody else picks (Score:4, Interesting)
DEC operating systems for the most part use variable-record files with one record per line and either a 1 or 2 byte count plus an optional carriage control word per record.
CP/M and MS-DOS used CR/LF, but that was kind of an accident caused by the fact that every program was implementing its own I/O.
Apple and OS/9 and most mainframes that didn't used record-oriented files used CR, because that matched how FORTRAN behaved.
UNIX uses LF, because that's what the ANSI standard specified, but that was an "obscure standard that nobody else picked". I think they did the right thing because it happens to be very useful for a number of other reasons... but if it wasn't for UNIX gaining popularity it'd have gotten nowhere.
I made the switch a couple of weeks ago (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, wait, wrong meeting.
I made the switch a couple of weeks ago, but the interesting thing I'm noticing is that the tech community, the network admins and programmers, are going to be the last ones to make the switch, and that's why it's going to catch us geeks off-guard.
In my day job, I'm a SQL Server administrator. I rely on MS tools to get my job done, and I can't do my job on OSX - or at least, I couldn't until Parallels came along. Boot Camp is a nice idea, but since I have to have SQL Server Management Studio running all day, dual-booting would mean I'd have a shiny laptop running Windows. Big flippin' deal.
Most of the guys around me said, "Why make the 'switch' when all you're doing is running Windows AND Mac OSX all the time? How can that possibly save you time or energy?" Well, it doesn't - it involves more work - but I'm having a great time doing it. As I write this, my keyboard is glowing. That's coolness.
All of us network admins and infrastructure managers rely on more Windows-centric tools than we'd like, more stuff tying us down to Windows longer than our end users. The end users seem to use more generic applications like Office, and they're able to make the switch even faster than the supposedly high-tech guys.
Normally, when a Big New Thing comes out, the geeks are the first one to make the jump. Apple's making it so easy to make the switch that the push is coming up from the end users. Attention, Windows network admins: there are probably people right now in your organization thinking about making their next computer an Apple. Be prepared when they start asking support questions like, "Which of our applications don't run on a Mac, and why?"
I could definitely see it happening this time. (Score:3, Interesting)
One other thing Apple seems to be doing is reducing the importance of a structured filesystem. If you open iPhoto, you see a set of photos, not a list of filenames. Same with iTunes. Something that I think computer people forget is that "normals" don't care about computers. Business users want to do their jobs and leave. Home users want to fill their iPods, and send pictures of the kids to Grandma. Making it so users don't have to remember how to navigate through a folder structure or other "computer stuff" really makes it easier to use.
I don't know what will make it into the final version of Vista, but I'm sure they're going to take a stab at this too. Now all Apple has to work on is convincing people that the Mac is worth the premium price they get for it. That seems to be the #1 argument I hear about why someone would choose a Windows box over a Mac.
Mac is the best platform... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a Java and Ruby (on rails) programmer. I've dropped windows about 2 years ago, and used various flavors of linux in this meantime (debian, ubuntu, gentoo and ubuntu again). Less than one year ago I bought my first mac (mac mini).
Java development in Windows is "standard", in linux is good and in Mac it is great. You have the same tools [myeclipseide.com] as Windows or Linux and, since java is "portable", all other tools (frameworks) works fine. The difference between Windows and Linux/Mac is that Windows restricts you *a lot*. Ex.: I put all my libs in just one place, and make sym links to them in the projects I need. In Windows, its not possible (afaik) (yes, a simple example, but try to keep the libs updated on a windows box...) . And the difference between Linux and Mac is performance. *Usually*, a Java application runs faster on Mac than on Linux, because the Java VM in Mac is done by Apple, meaning that its built by the ones who knows the OS. In Linux, as you certainly know, is a certain pain to install Java (you need to follow one or another howto to get things working), and the performance is *usually* worse than in a Mac, because the VM is done by Sun, which is concerned mainly in getting things working. Yes, they care about performance, but not that much
When programming with Ruby, Mac is really awesome. Again, Windows looses here. In Windows, you have a set [sourceforge.net] of tools [radrails.org] (editors/IDE's) that also exists in other platforms, but its performance is poor (afaik). Also, some Ruby libs requires some sort of compilation (mysql, rmagick,
Besides these work-related details, you also get an OS that just works, with enough applications [versiontracker.com] to do what you usually do on a PC, a good terminal (I definitely cannot use the "cmd" anymore), a more than nice UI and so on... And for people who asks me "why use a mac", I just ask the same: "why use a Windows". There is no reason to use Windows. I can't find something that Windows does better than Mac (ok, I left an space here for some +5 Funny comments).
But yes, there *are* reasons to use Linux instead of Mac. Specially if you want "all the freedom you can get", if you don't want to spend a penny in software or simply don't care about the UI.
Of course, I talked about just the OS itself. The hardware *is* more expensive, specially here in Brazil (macs comes from US, which means they are taxed in *only* 100%). But if you think a bit better, it probably worth. In my case, I spend more than 10 hours/day looking at a computer, so, it certainly worth for me
And I'm sorry, this would be a single-line comment, but it simply grows
He's right, I'm on the verge... (Score:3, Interesting)
You see, I'm a contractor who specializes in Windows solutions. Microsoft technologies are my livelihood. Microsoft is all over my resume: MCAD certified, a member of BaltoMSDN, etc... I attended a few DevDays and even spent the money for a Universal MSDN subscription back in 2004. But tell me I'd be a PC guy 15 years ago, and I would have said you were crazy.
Not until late 1991 did I change my plan of tossing out my Apple ][e for a Macintosh and instead went with a 386dx-40. Maybe it was the stack of VGA games, or Deluxe Paint Animation's power, but after seeing a 386 run... I knew it was where I wanted to geek out. And I think that for awhile it was the right choice. But no longer...
Despite the programs and speed for my AMD64 it's still not as "cool" as the Mac's I use at my church every Sunday. I don't know how to quantify what this "cool" is, but I'm sure the fact the GUI paradigm is both simple & slick, and I can drop down into a Unix Shell feeds the geek in me. The fact Parallels exists for Mac is what has convinced the "IT consultant" within me (who needs Microsoft tools to pay the mortgage) that a not-too-painful transition path is possible.
Last year I bought a mini-mac for my TV. I love that machine.
After WWDC I plan to purchase a 17" Mac laptop pimped out with a lot of RAM and Parallels.
Hopefully in two years I can be adding insightful posts about being a Mac Developer using XCode.
The Mac Commercials are 100% correct... (Score:3, Insightful)
The truth is, Windows sucks. Its a peice of shit. Windows 32bit... should be dead. We should all be running 64bit windows, Not VISTA 32bit.
Microsoft is going to continue the 32bit mistake, with vista.
Microsoft has no balls when it comes to progress. They dont take risks. They worry about everyone running dos applications from 89. It's time they stop caring about 32bit, 16bit app support and cut the cord. Go all 64bit Vista, force the stupid hardware manufacturers to deliver 64bit drivers, and not 32bit drivers.
I'm tired of Microsoft. I really am. There is no innovation. They take forever to release an operating system, and its never anything new. Vista will have a new ui... and will require me to buy a new pc... yay. I hope it offers more than that...
Linux isnt ready...
The MAC is.
I've been saying this for a while, due to the success of IPOD... people have a perception of quality when it comes to Apple produc ts. They will pay more for it because they understand that it works better, and their IPOD was so dam cool.
Apple has balls, they really do innovate... Microsoft will do just fine with Vista, but many people will go Mac. I'll join them someday as well. I can not stand Microsoft products. Just look at Their media player attempt. Its garbage. Its version 11 and they dont have a good media player. Sure its trying to copy Itunes (quite poorly) but its a horrible video player. It has terrible playback controls and functions. Its a toy. Media Player Classic beat it years ago, as did winamp, and quicktime (on the mac) quicktime pc sucks). The dam media player is version 11. Version 1-10 sucked... 10 dam versions... and now 11... ? IT still sucks.
Microsoft does not make software will everyone in mind. They dont care what people need from their software... they design it, how they feel you should use it. Maybe thats why it takes them so long to code an os. They dont listen to the people yelling at the door... they ignore them and make whatever they want, and whatever the MPAA/RIAA want them to do.
Its apparent that Jobs was always correct about Microsoft. They steal ideas after they're safe to do, and they always do it poorly.
That is more true than ever, the evidence is 98, 98SE, Mill, 2000, XP, Vista, Media Player 11, IE etc. They are late to the party because they cant do it right... and it takes them forever to even get close.
I've had enough of this crap.
The fact that vista is 32bit is the last straw. Microsoft cant progress us into the future because they're a lame duck. They're holding back 64bit because the average user can get away with 32bit and 4gigs ram max, and a cripple ware os.
At OSCON, nearly everyone had a Mac (Score:3, Interesting)
Not at OSCON. At my two talks, I had about 90% Macs in the audience. The amount in the hallways was a bit higher. I bet in the unlikely case that my Mac died, I could have asked for a replacement laptop with the latest Keynote and got more than one offer in either talk. Obviously, I was not as l33t as normal, and this is unacceptable. Maybe a nice black MacBook Pro would be a good choice for fashion victims like me. Apple, you listening? 15" Aluminum Powerbooks are too plebian!
Short story, though - In the highly desirable "O'Reilly geek" segment, Apple has won. Yay!
Andrew
It's a nice thought, but ... (Score:3, Interesting)
And think about the likelihood that Microsoft, if it were actually faced with sales defections, would not sell Vista below cost in order to retain market share -- and then consider your answer in the light of what they have done with the Xbox (and will do with Zune).
Look back at the demise of OS/2, which had only a modest price premium over Windows 95 or Windows 3.1, and was snuffed into oblivion largely by the disdain of the consumer -- both public and corporate. While factors like Microsoft's forcing Windows to be the default install and squeezing the competition off the store shelves was a big factor, those things did not prevent users from purchasing a copy of OS/2 and installing it. The herd mentality was what killed OS/2.
Same thing with the promise of Linux taking the corporate world by storm. Here we have a situation where companies could skip a hardware upgrade, saving millions just by that alone, and avoid forever the annual or biannual Windows refresh and site licensing fees, which is an even larger amount over the long haul -- and how many have done just that?
For Macs to be successful in this devoutly desired "perfect storm" of sales, a large chunk of the herd will have to convert both hardware and software to something different and unfamiliar to them, forsaking the familiar comfort of viruses, worms and malware for clean simple straightforward apps that operate a bit differently.
How many corporations are capable of changing to a Mac platform, even one that runs Windows via either Boot Camp or Parallels, when they have entire support organizations dedicated to the premise of a seamless Windows world as far as the eye can see?
They will cheerfully pony up the ginormous amounts of cash to replace their entire hardware install bases in order to upgrade to Vista, based on the premise that they are "saving money" by not having to purchase 3rd-party anti-virus programs, or some other similarly vacuous concept. And John and Jane Publicus will merrily follow in kind with their home systems, because "that's what they run at work". The notion of needing only software that can read and write the same format documents is just beyond them.
I say this as a long-time Mac owner, so I know whereof I speak. A "Perfect Storm" of Mac sales is a marketing fantasy, nothing more. Ripples in the sales picture between 3% and 6% (or 8% or 9%) are just that -- ripples in the sales picture. For Macs to re-gain a market share in the double digits would require a substantial fraction of the herd to break away, and for herd animals, that just doesn't happen. They get concerned and agitated at the thought of leaving the herd, and most that do will eventually return to it.
Free will and rational thought are illusory concepts that have no place in human societies. Just take a look at the front pages (via pixels or atoms) of any major newspaper and ask if this is the logical, rational way in which the world seems to work.
Beam me up Scotty -- there's no intelligent life on this world.
Re:Count me in (Score:2)
Re:The commertials are funny, though disingenuous (Score:2)
My favorite is the Mac commercial that says "you can even run Windows on a Mac," despite:
So after spending $1400+* on a MacBook, you have to drop another $200 to try and run Windows in a completely unsupported fashion? Sign me up!
* Price includes $300 for a warranty, because everyone needs a warranty for their laptop
Re:The commertials are funny, though disingenuous (Score:2)
Now you could say that those people don't matter. That the ads are for newbies, those uninterested in computers, who just want things to work. But I would say that what may be more important is that all of those newbies seek their computer advice from their techie friends.
Every newbie friend I have that has talked abo
Competition is good (Score:3, Insightful)
It's another set of eyes attempting to tackle the same problems. The 2 companies in competition may copy the good features of each other, or they may decide that they can do it better by heading back to the drawing board, and come up with a new way to tackle the problem.
Either way, we win.
Re:Sorry, not for me (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft: DRM specifically allows refusal of all copying and burning, secure video channels, secure audio channels and supports the upcoming HDMI fiasco.
Apple: No validation when you install the OS, or at any point afterwards. (There is a hardware validation, but the user is never presented with it.)
Microsoft: Key validation requiring
Re:My wife's next laptop os a MacBook Pro (Score:2)
Macs aren't 64-bit anymore (Score:2)
Re:Family (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, I can understand the reticence since you're not talking about work, and you truly don't have experience with Macs since you don't have one yourself.
Unfortunately for you, while keeping your family on Windows (presumably) means you won't be caught unawares whenever problems come up, it means you will have a lot more time taken up by it--whether it's simple maintenance or fixing something that's broken. Goodbye personal time.
I convinced my friend's mom to get an iMac to replace her aging PC, with the promise that I'd be available to help whenever she had problems. She's only called twice with Mac-specific issues, once when she got confused about the password box, and the other about the Mac version of Excel. She's been VERY happy with her Mac, even gave it an nickname based on how quiet it ran.
In turn, my "support calls" after getting her set up have amounted to just a few hours in the last 8 months, and I don't have to support the steaming pile of garbage that Windows too often is. I already waste too much time in a Windows admin role at work (it's not even my main job), the last thing I needed was to blow any of my personal time on it as well.
Re:Family (Score:4, Informative)
Take it from someone who learned Mac administration by myself first, and only started for Windows in 2000. By all rights it should be much harder for a Mac guy to pick up Windows admin skills, but I did, and without any MSCE certification courses either. I picked up most of these skills with no Windows PC of my own, so my situation is like yours, in reverse.
Your concerns about not being able to walk your grandmother through stuff is valid, but possibly misplaced given your examples. If you're physically at your grandmother's, as I said you'll figure them out fairly fast.
If you mean *talking* her through stuff over the phone that's different, so here's my suggestion (applies for Mac or Windows); I've set up and used the free (as in beer) and very user-friendly Bosco's Screen Share (http://www.componentx.com/ScreenShare/ [componentx.com]) with my friend's mom the couple of times she's needed help. It allows me to see or even control her screen (I set it up so she must click OK these requests; I can't just login any time I want). Much more efficient than describing a problem by words alone.
Parent flamebait but I'll bite. (Score:5, Insightful)
I see.... so tried is a new euphemism for pirated?
Paradimes in OSX that suck: 1) To eject a CD-ROM, USB-key, or external storage, I drag it to the trash. That seems illogical to me.
I think the word you were looking for was "paradigms". Drives are dragged to the trash because you are not only ejecting the media but you are writing the file system buffer back to the drive (in the case of read/write media) and deleting its cache. With XP, you are also supposed to eject USB devices before disconnecting them for the same reason.
2) To install a program, I "click-and-drag" it to my "hard drive". I had to google how to install something in OSX. Double-clicking the downloaded file yielded some puzzling prompt I can't recall.
First of all, did it occur to you to RTFM? Second, you are not "installing" anything but rather copying the application bundle from the disk image for folder on the desktop to your applications directory. I call FUD on this one since most applications will run from a disk image let alone from the desktop. You should not expect it to behave like windows.
3) Driver management is a nightmare. Sure, it works great with Mac hardware, but who wants to be locked into one brand? Oh wait, Mac-happy fan-boys do.
What driver management? Oh wait, you are running a pirated/cracked version on your Dell. Did you expect it to work on your Dell? Locked in? How do you like the WMA ecosystem and being locked into windows?
4) OSX feels like an OS that is 50 feet thick. And by that I mean it feels like there's layer upon layer of abstraction, as if it were trying to protect me from seeing how a computer really works. So you are saying that you do not like user friendly OS design and Object Oriented systems? If you want to hack away, go to http://developer.apple.com/ [apple.com] and read the documentation. Install the Developer tools and play with Interface builder. The power of the OS is all there for developers to extend. I think you are confusing complicated interfaces with "power". Open up a terminal windows and fill your boots.
5) OSX is not very business friendly. It doesn't fit business-logic.
What an absurd statement. Could you quantify that? By business friendly do you mean MIS friendly? Is it too damn easy to use that you are afraid business people might just use their computers are tools without needing so many MSCE's on their payroll?
6) The bundled applications were inferior. Give me Outlook Express over Apples default mail application any day. That thing was an utter, illogical, painful experience to configure.
More FUD and bullshit. You have got to be kidding me. Mail in Tiger has features features in common with Outlook 2003 like message grouping by topic threads. What is there to configure beyond email accounts and signatures?
7) OSX is slow. Seriosuly, it's just not as snappy as winXP. Granted, I was running OSx86 on a Dell laptop, but I've used OSX on a mac before, and it really is a little laggy from all the superflorous garbage it distracts you with. "Ooooh, dancing icon. Thor like!"
Yeah, having a GUI with a GPU accelerated compositing engine can be a bit slower than a simple bitblitter graphical stack like GDI+. Try out Vista and you will see how it is not as snappy either when running the Aero Glass interface.
To anyone who is considering buying a Mac: Try using OSX first!
That is one thing we can agree on. I would also suggest people try out Vista before blindly upgrading to it.
In my honest opinion, I think Windows Vista will pave over OSX when it's released.
Right. Do you even know anything about the current state of Vista compared with what was promised at PDC 2003? I use XP more than I use OS X simply because that is what I use at work and I used XP at home until the end of 2002. I'm afraid that your "experience" with a
pirated
X86 Tiger install does not qualify you to critique the OS X.Re:Sorry, not happening (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe PILE is the key term? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bzzt. Thanks for playing. [PDF] [ibm.com] You're right, though. Lots of IBM software is not available for Mac OS X. Like Lotus Notes [ibm.com] and ViaVoice [nuance.com].
I'm not going to disagree with you about software availability. However, I think what you'll find is that you may have problems finding a "brand" that you're comfortable with. Everyone's favorite example: AutoCAD. Of course, there are plenty of CAD solutions on the Mac. However, if you must use AutoCAD for some reason, you're out of luck. This is true for games--a particular example of branding. If you're the sort of person who has to play the latest hottest game as soon as it comes out, you're out of luck on the Mac. For example, I got Star Wars: Battlefront for Mac OS X this past Christmas. It shipped in July 2005--about 10 months after the Windows release. So it certainly wasn't the hottest game by the time I got to play it. I still like playing it, though.
Well, some of your concerns are just plain wrong.
Again, in the consumer realm on the software side, I think you're taking about games. Everything else is covered. In that realm, suggest they buy an Xbox 360 or Wii for the kids to play games with. Mom & Dad will be happier about not having to kick the kids off the computer anyway.
Hardware, I'm a bit lost on. What do you mean "breath of hardware upgrades" for consumers. Are you saying that you can't upgrade memory, hard disks, or video cards on a Mac? Sorry, Macs use industry-standard hard drives. If anything, the problem with Macs are that they tend to be ahead of the curve, so you might have to buy Serial-ATA drives instead of a cheapo ATA/66 hard drive and that will cost you more money. Same with memory--the iMac uses PC2-5300 memory which is more expensive than other types. For example, a 1GB upgrade is about $165. For a Dell XPS200, 1GB of PC2-4200 memory is $120.
From the business software side, I might agree. But, before I do, I'd point out that Macs are cheaper for a business to support than Windows. So, obviously, the more Macs you have, the cheaper it will be. So suppose we ask this question: What job positions require Windows PCs?
Receptionist? That job is mostly about e-mail, etc. All available on Mac. Sales? Again, e-mail, etc. Perhaps some database access for looking up inventory and such, which can be done via the web. Macs have web browsers, so that should be fine. So we could switch Sales. Marketing? Ooh...lots of graphics and such. Plenty of room for Macs in marketing. General Management? Show me a software category that is used by general management that is not available on the Mac.
Engineering? Well, if you're developing Windows software, you need some Windows machines. There are also some great tools for other engineering disciplines which are not available on the Mac. Fair enough. Engineering keeps it Windows machines.
Accounting? There's accounting software for Macs, believe it or not, but I'll let them keep their Windows machines. There are some great accounting solutions for Windows.