Re: Apple to use Intel CPUs?

"APPLE COMPUTER INC. has been in talks that could soon lead to a

> decision to use INTEL CORP. chips in its Macintosh computer line, The > Wall Street Journal reported."

Intel chips, well, IIRC there are already two chips in my Dual 1GHZ G4 Macintosh. But not processors. Just supporting chipsets and such.

It's complete speculation that Apple wants to turn to Intel for processors. But Intel does make supporting chipsets, graphics chipsets, wifi, bluetooth, etc...

Reply to
Steve Mackay
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Look boys and girls, Cliffy has learned how to use google!

Congrats!

It still proves nothing.

Reply to
Steve Mackay

Apple hasn't used Motorola chips in quite a while.

What's happening is slow progress towards Apple getting out of the hardware business where they have always been a day late and many $ over budget. The move to put their UI on a Unix OS core was the first step in that direction. The next move will be to move to Intel chips. Eventually they will just be selling their OS to run on any generic Intel or clone) based PC.

This will actually be a good thing for most everyone since when you need a PC you'll be able to go buy an inexpensive generic Itanium (or clone) hardware platform and then pick your preferred OS to run on it from Windows, a few variants of Linux, MAC, VMS, several variants of Unix and probably a few others.

People will still have their choice of OS's while also benefiting from a common low cost hardware platform. It will also allow the single hardware platform to boot multiple OS's which would allow people in a household to share a PC while still having their preferred OS.

Everyone knows that Apple's hardware has always been overpriced compared to comparable hardware in the PC world. The move to a common hardware platform will significantly lower costs for those who wish to use Apple's OS (really UI since it's no longer an Apple OS), just as the move to PCI replaced $400 Ethernet cards with $20 ones.

Pete C.

Reply to
Pete C.

I would expect engineering types to be more careful with statements like "Apple's hardware has always been overpriced".

Even though there are a lot of conventional wisdom and BS on "cheaper", when you talk about workstations, the pricing isn't much different. My Dell M60 was priced higher than my similar 17" Aluminum PowerBook (both were over $4k). I've seen Xeon vs Mac G5 comparisons within a few hundred dollars one way or the other. iMacs have been compared favorably, too, and now the Mini isn't too bad a comparison either.

Comparing the bottom of the barrel doesn't make much sense here in the SolidWorks group. I've never met a designer or engineer using a "$500 PC". Never!

What I want is any OS, anyttime, anywhere, on any box. I'm tired of the hardware restrictions. I don't expect my hardware cost per box to go down, and indeed it might go up a bit, but I won't need 2 different machines.

Steve Jobs is anything but stupid. The day may come when the OS that is most usable and secure will gain major market share, and who knows, Steve may pull it off. Protecting the OS from rampant piracy would be a must to have a decent income off the OS, though.

Though I would love to use just Windows, I have been terminally disgusted at the shortcomings of Windows and convinced that $10s of billions of dollars can no longer "fix" an OS, when the corporate mindset is wrong-headed. I think MS has grown too large, and too dependent on a few individuals 'mantra' to succeed anymore, but that is strictly my opinion. Microsoft has taken on an almost impossible task of being everything to every client and customer, in both hardware and software. As good as their people are, I don't know if it can be done, especially with Longhorn (get rid of ambiguous dialog box entries).

Unix on the other hand, is not "rewritten" every 3-5 years. Unix has evolved, as has Linux, and the basics are time tested over decades. You can depend on Unix, and that is why so many institutions do so. Apple picked Unix for a darned good reason.

Time will Tell - Bo

Reply to
Bo

They are currently used in the PowerBooks and iBooks.

I think you do not understand apple's philosophy and business model. "Designing" the user experience is about controlling and delivering the entire package: Hardware, Software, packaging, manuals, website... it is all part of the "design" and product. Apple depends on the symbiotic relationship between the hardware and software - evolved strategically together.

Microsoft will always be at a disadvantage in this respect since they must deal with every hardware hack out there who can solder two wires together and sort-of write code that sort-of-delivers on the product promises. That is not a user centric concept at all.

Unfortunately too many people make these "inexpensive" hardware comparisons without really making genuine comparisons that look at the whole package - and what the user may actually want to accomplish with the kit. Sure, Dell or Best Buy can advertise a hot deal, but when you get into the detail, you are better off buying the Mac since they do not cheat on the features to make the price artificially low. I would rather have a functional out of the box experience rather than a never ending tweaking and upgrading experience.

Most people give have absolutely no clue what an OS is and just want to print their photos, surf the net, email, or do whatever job they have. You are talking about a small percentage of the geeks who do care and write about it on the internet. I think that is probably not an interesting market for most companies.

Sorry, that is bunk. Compare off-the shelf computers with equivalent specs for hardware and software, and this is simply not true! And even when you have 1 to 1 features, the difference in usability is the deciding factor. If it were true that apple was overpriced, I would still be willing to pay for the better, more reliable, better integrated kit any day.

Unfortunately, many of the people who bash apple and the "fan-boys" have not used or had any hands on experience with recent apple hardware and OSX. People are fans either because the drank the lemonaid, or there is something to it that makes people like it! Most people I know who have really done a hands on for a serious period of time, find that they would never go back to Windows. And what I mean by "serious time", is to allow yourself to adjust to slightly different concepts and ways of doing things. Change is always hard, and can be frustrating, but often can have beneficial results.

Here are a couple links that may be of interest:

This one is especially interesting and is very detailed / fair in it's comparisons between dell and apple systems.

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for a very long and detailed comparison between OSX and XP:
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Arstechnica has the most plausible speculation about the apple / intel rumor
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Or this funny one from Ars talking about the ultimate budget box - comes in at about 500USD... including floppy!!! Ha ha... better get a Mac Mini.
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Anyway, just wanted to stick my oar in it ;-) No offence intended.

Cheers Daniel

Reply to
daniel

Granted I haven't spent a lot of time looking at Apple products, but I don't recall ever seeing anything from Apple that I would put in the "workstation" class. The top end that I've seen I'd compare to a higher end "gamer" PC.

Well that's where things are headed as we get to the Itanium (and eventual clones). You currently have Windows, VMS and a bunch of Linux and Unix variants running on it. With Apples move to replace their inferior OS kernel with a reliable Unix kernel that puts them in a position to easily port to Itanium.

The day came and went, and I gotta tell you it wasn't an Apple OS. VMS pretty well kills the competition for stability, reliability, usability and security, but unfortunately the poor marketing of Digital and then Compaq and now HP has shown that technical superiority does not guarantee a market win.

I'm not a particular Windows fan, but I find that it can run acceptably for most things. As long as you disable / don't enable the "stupid" features it's pretty stable, not particularly memory or disk space efficient, but those are cheap commodities these days.

I use W2Kpro for my CAD work (TurboCAD), my CNC control (Mach3), my VRU (WinIVR) and even my web server since it runs on the same box as the VRU. The VRU / web server runs for months at a time without any problems.

My work machine is also W2Kpro and does nicely with a slew of WRQ Reflections telnet sessions, the usual MS office products and a Cisco VPN client.

Windows tries to do too much and succeeds in being "passable" at most. If you need better for a particular component there are plenty of third party upgrades.

You can depend on Unix - if you put a fair amount of effort into configuring it properly. Most Unix versions are pretty mediocre out of the box. Much of the popularity of Unix is due to hype more than technical superiority, similar to Windows.

I've heard more that a few management types make statements to the effect of "we need to convert X application to Windows so we can web enable it". Certainly anyone with any technical knowledge knows most web stuff originated out of the Unix world with a bit on VMS. Windows was just on the UI end much of the time.

I'd like to think that Apple finally realized that they just did not have the expertise to develop a proper OS kernel and decided to focus on their UI instead.

Indeed.

Pete C.

Reply to
Pete C.

Are they? I though they were on IBM chips these days.

Apple relies far too heavily on they styling of their packaging over the quality of what's in the package.

I'll also note that the components of their products have not entirely "evolved" together. Their most recent OS change was far from an evolution, it was an unstated admission that after all these years they still did not have the expertise to write a proper OS kernel and therefore had to adopt someone else's. Until OS-X they still did not have any memory management worth a damn.

I don't recall ever promoting Microsoft. Windows more-or-less works and when configured appropriately makes a reasonable desktop OS. Neither Windows nor OS-X are at all suitable for an "enterprise" server environment, though some folks would like you to think so.

I don't buy that argument at all. I don't see any features left out of the various midrange PCs to make them cheaper than an Apple system. Compare any brand name PC of an equal price to a given Apple system and you will find more features, more capability and in most cases more expandability. The pre installed Windows on those systems work just fine out of the box without tweaking or upgrading. Recall also that you can buy that PC and run Unix/Linux on it if you don't like Windows.

I also have a couple friends that have MACs and over the past few years they have had far more problems, both hardware and software, with those two machines than I have had with the five Windows systems that I have running.

Additionally on the PC side you have a vast array of systems to choose from ranging from consumer desktops up to fairly high end server hardware and again a number of OS choices available. The ability to pick a computer that suits your needs from small to XXL and then pick the OS that suits your needs is a great asset to the purchaser.

I don't buy that one either. If "most" people felt that way, the "internet appliance" would not have crashed and burned as it clearly did. The percentage of people who actually care about the OS and the capabilities of the system is fairly high, certainly not 100%, but far from a "small percentage".

As the market shifts people will become more aware of the OS choice and realize that PC does not automatically equate to Windows.

Nope, you've got the bunk there I'm afraid. Ethernet cards for Apple systems did indeed cost hundreds of dollars at the same time when Ethernet cards for PCs were sub $50.

The move to PCI industry wide was a big help in driving down the costs of many items like this, when a single Ethernet card can be used in a MAC, a PC, or a large Sun, IBM or Compaq/HP enterprise class system.

I have never seen any objective data showing that an Apple system was more reliable than a PC. Every MAC user I have known has had both hardware and software problems. One person I know had to send their MAC in for hardware repair several times, another had their less than 1 yr old system replaced in it's entirety. All have had many hangs and crashes.

As for usability, again I haven't seen any objective evidence of this. Much of the same software is available on either platform and functions the same on either platform. The basic UI functions of both the MAC OS and Windows are very comparable so I can't see how one can be more useable than the other.

On integration, yes the MACs are integrated, however I don't think they are better integrated. Windows tries to be pretty integrated as well, but somehow when it's windows integration it's antitrust and when it's MAC OS integration it's not. Apple also has a very bad habit of trying to dumb down standards and making their products somewhat incompatible in the process. I ran into this very issue trying to get an OS-X laptop onto a WiFi network where it was quite a hassle to get the encryption strings in properly due to Apples poor configuration interface design and misuse of terminology.

I've found just as many people who had the opposite experience, where once they started exploring the PC world the found they preferred it to MACs.

I've had enough time with MACs at various point to know that I still really dislike them. I strongly dislike their complete dumbing down of everything, and unlike in Windows where you can disable that dumbing down, you can't on the MAC.

The only good experience on OS-X I've had was pulling up the underlying Unix shell and being able to actually do things, even simple stuff like ping and traceroute. I'm thoroughly tired of MAC users sending me files with no extensions and having to look at the headers to figure out what the heck they are.

Interesting, the two comparisons that I looked at (low end and high end) both put the Dell PCs solidly as the winner for hardware. The software comparisons were not entirely objective in my opinion and there seemed to be a few errors.

How about a comparison to something other than Windows? There is more in the world than just OS-X and Windows.

Wandering the isles at Fry's today I saw a number of pretty well configured, but not "name brand" PCs for around $300.

None taken. I haven't liked anything from Apple since the II+. I tried the first Lisa and didn't like it. I tried the first MAC and didn't like it. I've tried OS-X and didn't like anything past the Unix shell window. I'm not a Windows fan either, but I find windows to be far more useable for my style of work than any MAC OS. I find the MAC OS full of the cutesy nonsense that I disable on windows.

I also really hate cutesy stylized product packaging, and this includes not just the Apple products, but also the small Sun systems and many of the home networking products. I tend to prefer the earlier Netgear products in the nice all metal rectangular packaging. Cutesy packages don't rack worth a damn.

I'd rather like the CDE on VMS as my desktop machine, but it's not very practical since a number of important bits of software I use are Windows only. The CDE on a Unix platform would be a second choice, but again not real practical.

Pete C.

Reply to
Pete C.

I think you are letting the styling get in the way of what is inside. That is part of the point - keep it simple - have the best quality components and include everything the user needs (most users), verses the dell type experience where you have to add and add to get equal features.

Is there actually something wrong with changing your mind and selecting a better strategy? Essentially, when Jobs returned to the company, he changed the strategic goals, and that is what I mean. The hardware / PowerPC strategy, the BSD OS and open source were major strategic changes.

Of course it always depends what you want to achieve and what your work is. In my opinion, if one is aiming for the broad market, having a highly engineered and user focused system that includes the maximum features out of the box, is the better user experience.

If they are using pre-OSX, then I am sure you are right. I have a colleague in my office who is still using OS 9 on a 6 year old machine. Crashes almost every day. He is about to upgrade to an iMac and 10.4. I am sure he will not have the same experience. I have 3 macs, all running OSX, and on hardware the is between 2.5 - 5 years old. No problems, no crashes other than the occasional MS office problem. OSX is another world from OS 9.

If you are going to do a specialized job, use a specialized tool. The only reason I have a PC is for SolidWorks. If I had the choice, I would run it on OSX and apple hardware since my experience is the opposite of yours - my PC are the unreliable and problematic systems.

I think internet appliance = low power. Problem is that people these days want to store music, photos, video - and you need decent hardware and software to deal with that.

I am not sure I understand this point. Unless we are talking about 13 years ago when apple used appletalk, apple has always included ethernet as a standard feature. And almost all Macs include gigabit ethernet and have for several years (10/100/1000).

Well, consumer reports may be one. But actual MTBF I have no idea. All systems can have problems, and again I have no idea if the systems you speak of are current offerings, or pre OSX. the only sure things in life are death, taxes, and computer problems. :-)

Yes, they are very similar, but it is in the subtle details that they are different. It can be as simple as something like drag-and-drop behaviour not working everywhere (PC problem) or simply having the ability to print PDFs from any application (mac feature). But these are not easily described - it really is something one has to use.

I think that has to do with market share and ability to drive your competition out of existence. Hardly an issue for apple.

Well, hard to know what your issue was - and I am not familiar with your terminology of "encryption strings". Setting passwords or WEP standards?

Often the issues I have seen windows users have are related to their expectation that it should be (or will be) more complicated than it really needs to be. Dumbing down as you put it is really just saying the starting point is that 1, it should work, 2, if the user needs, there are all the high end features available. What you describe as poor interface design may simply be what is familiar verses what is unfamiliar. All the features you need are there, just may not be where you would look on a PC.

I see that you are not the average user, and that you also have a specific way you want to work, or are familiar with working, and that's great! Not trying to make you change. That you want to use the shell indicates that you really are not a user interface type, so don't use it and stick to the shell. If you want to navigate by keyboard, do that too. For me that is the beauty of OSX - any way you want to work is fine, and at any level, pro or basic.

Regarding extensions, the mac has always hidden that archaic information from the user since users don't normally care about the document type - just want it to open, work, and print. However, in OSX extensions are shown (or optionally hidden). You should perhaps be annoyed that PCs still can only recognize a document if there is a visible extension, which is less user friendly.

To me the main point in my argument is when you look at the end of the comparisons and the pricing. For the mac it is typically one price to have all that functionality - standard. For the PC you must add this and add that, and then you have a comparable system. Many average users will not do that, and then they will find out later they must add hardware or software to get functionality, and that costs time, money and headaches.

Well... you are definitely not the target audience... definitely a hard sell. :-)

Cheers, Daniel

Reply to
daniel

Daniel, I am basically similar to you in equipment usage. Dell M60 for SolidWorks & Excel only (it virtually never goes on the Internet).

17" PowerBook for all other work.

I don't care about spending near $10k for my work hardware, and yet Pete is occassionally referring to pricing issues. I think a serious point is missed by some commentators on PC vs pc vs Mac vs Linux vs Sun, etc...

I will use whatever gives me high productivity. If the PC does it OK. If the Mac does great. If I can increase my productivity even more with PC and Mac, then that is better for me. If a couple $4.5k laptops, PC & Mac do it better than desktops, better yet.

Today, I take both laptops to a toolmaker 100 miles away and sit down to discuss quotes for a new product line and new cavity inserts for an existing product line.

Esoteric subtleties are nice as long as they are 100% reliable and they are quick. Twiddling for days or weeks is not an efficient way to run my work or my life. I have not had good luck "just installing and running" 3rd party utilities on Dell's PCs. Too often, funny things happen (even with the Win XP system, like self-generated Network connections that you can't delete, and crash the system when I try!) With the Mac, I am trying to remember the last time I bought a small Utility that didn't work. And the Mac Utilities like SnapZ Pro (screen capture) is so flexible and advanced that it puts everything else I've seen to shame.

My efficiency is right at the top of my requirements for my work, and Mac OSX has that right for me, except for SolidWorks. Dell's M60 running only SolidWorks gives me nearly 100% uptime for SolidWorks so that is terrific. It would be nice to see SolidWorks run on a Mac, but I'm not holding my breath, or really complaining.

I'll use what is most efficient as long as it is easy to get up and running. Man hours are costly, and far too many comparisons of cost (like + or - $200 to $500) NEVER take into account setup, maintenance, protection, and upgrade costs, whether in $s or labor hours.

Bo

Reply to
Bo

My experience, 5 years ago, was that if you wanted to do digital image editing, you went with a Mac because their hardware and software were the best out there for that purpose. But, if you wanted an allaround workhorse, you went with a windows PC. It wasn't that the PC was better, as much as that is where the software and the majority of users were. I have seen arguments here concerning hardware problems with Apples and PC's. It all comes down to who built it. Apple builds all of their computers, and Windows does not build any. So, a computer running windows can have hardware issues, if the hardware is not set up properly, or if there is anything that would be considered "custom" in the OS.

I don't see the point in arguing which is better, they both have strong points and weak points, the thing that may be debated are the areas where neither is particularly strong. You might as well be arguing which is better, a hybrid sedan or the largest SUV out on the market. Are you too ignorant to realize that each has their own use?

Reply to
YouGoFirst

Bo, I agree with your comments. As for taking two laptops with me... I considered that for a long time, but resisted based on the idea that I do not want to have back problems... hard enough carrying one!

Since ParaSolid is now available native for OSX as of last year, I am hopeful that someone out there is working on a innovative solid modeler that takes advantage of OSX. If it works well, I would switch. As you point out, 3rd party utilities just work on mac. Like you, I find they usually break XP. At least they realized that and added rollback states (patch the patch). I have been very impressed by some of the incredible utilities coming out for OSX recently. I especially love the fact one never really has to worry about spyware or viruses. There was a funny quote from intel today:

Also had to laugh about this review of OSX server from Bio-iT ? this guy had his 11 year old daughter install and set up the server... some nice points made.

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Cheers Daniel

Reply to
daniel

Hmmm. My pidgen English must have detracted from the content, and particularly where I noted that I use both WinXP and Mac OSX every day (along with Win2000 and Mac OS9 ocassionally).

Bo

Reply to
Bo

Today, I would say the mac is the better all-round choice ? as you say, especially for graphics, video and audio. If you have custom or legacy windows Applications, that is a deterrent to using a mac. But in most cases these days there are the same, equal, or better applications on the mac. The one major weak point is solid modelling and engineering applications. Hence my reason to have a PC. However, this is slowly changing. Just seeing eDrawings finally on OSX is an example of how good it can be.

Agreed. However, if i set up a mac, have it connected to the internet, I do not worry. If I re-instal XP with disks that are more than a month old, and am connected to the net, I better hope I am lucky and do not get a virus or other attack before I can install all the patches, or get the various 3rd party virus tools installed without problems due to their own annoying ad-ware. I am so tired of all the updates and security warning pop-ups in XP.... Talk about treating users as idiots...

like? Making toast?

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? If I am ignorant, would I be able to notice? Hmmm Anyway, I really hope I am not too ignorant.... ;-)

Reply to
daniel

Actually just the opposite - I'm not letting the styling distract me from the lack of anything compelling inside.

There is nothing wrong with following a better strategy, however it is one they should have looked at a long time ago. It also points to the fact that Apple is a UI company above all else and that they would do better to focus on their area of expertise.

The Dell (and others) systems meet those criteria as well. They provide just as good a user experience as any MAC does.

The fundamental difference is in the way the users mind operates. There are essentially two types of user minds, logical and abstract. The Windows OS is better suited to the logical type while the MAC OS is better suited to the abstract type.

The hardware platform that the OS is running on makes little difference and therefore should represent the best hardware available for the price. Again this leads to the point of companies with expertise in software (Apple, Microsoft and the various others) producing the OS and companies with expertise in hardware producing the hardware.

All of the hardware problems mentioned are with hardware that is less than 3 years old. The software problems are both from pre OS-X and post OS-X and I have not seen any noticeable difference in the rate of software complaints between the two.

I've often wondered exactly what is responsible for the fact that some users have a lot of problems with a given machine and OS and some don't.

Even years back when I had Win95 on my work machine and a fairly heavy workload with the usual MS Office products and the eXcursion X windows server I had very few issues with the system and 6-8 weeks of continuous up time without issues was common. Even when that system was rebooted it was usually not related to a problem. At the same time I had a number of users with exactly the same hardware, OS and MS products (no eXcursion) who had frequent problems and still more with that same config that didn't.

My only theory on this is that the users with frequent problems were more likely to start fiddling around with various settings they didn't understand when they were not able to get something to work the way they expected instead of looking in the help or calling support. These users may have done better in a "locked down" environment which is more readily available in W2K / XP.

I think internet appliance = medium power with most resources remoted to a service provider. I think the lack of local control is what deterred a lot of people.

As far as what people want to do these days, only the video you mentioned requires much in the way of resources. Music and photos both have pretty low resource requirements. One only needs to look at the ipods and all the other MP3 players to see how little is required.

Photos are similar, note how a basic $100 digital camera can readily store hundreds of pictures on a memory card and display them on a TV with a video input. A large number of printers can print directly from a camera memory card or even a direct USB link to the camera without any PC intervention.

The basic point is that Apples proprietary hardware is pretty much universally more expensive than a comparable item in the PC world. This was true 13 years ago and is still true today.

I've never considered consumer reports to be very objective for most of their reviews. A great many seem to be steered by their own agenda more than facts.

All my MAC references are less than 3 yr old hardware and the hangs and crashes are from both pre OS-X and post OS-X with no discernible difference in frequency.

I've never been a fan of drag-and-drop myself. I've always found that it requires more effort to make sure that windows are aligned so that drag-and-drop can work vs. right-click, copy, select next window, right-click, paste.

I'm not sure I fully understand your point about PDFs, or perhaps you don't fully understand them in the Windows world, or both.

Why would I want to print a PDF from for example - Excel?

In the Windows world I can right click on any Adobe PDF file, word DOC file, TXT file, etc. and select print from the context menu to quickly print the document without having to open any extra applications at all. Of course the Adobe Acrobat reader application is spawned in the background to process the job for printing, but that is all transparent to the user and a comparable would have to occur on a MAC as well.

Possibly one of the things your missing in the Windows world is the right button context menus since they do not exist in the MAC world. These context menus provide very fast access to commonly used functions for the particular item you click on. They are also customizable to some extent. Select a group of items, right click and select "send to mail recipient" or "add to zip file" and you 75% of the way through the process.

Perhaps, but it's not even remotely fair to criticize Windows for a lack of integration when they are being prevented from achieving that integration by the government.

If I recall it was a combination of things including their referring to encryption keys as passwords which they are not, not properly saving profiles when entered and utterly useless help on those settings.

I'm afraid I can't think of any good examples at the moment since I work with MACs as little as possible, but often the problems have revolved around the lack of access to what I would consider basic settings (network stuff, MAC address, default route, etc.) and similar.

I've never claimed to be average (or even normal). I find that in Windows it is much easier to turn off the cutesy stuff and disable the "dumb down" mode that on a MAC.

I'm afraid I don't consider file type to be archaic at all and neither does almost every OS outside of MAC.

I don't see that at all, nearly everything you are referring to is software, not hardware, and much of that is due to the government not letting Microsoft bundle additional utilities or third party software with the OS. Virtually all of this extra software is available as a free download from one place or another. There are also a number of items that are included with Windows, but are not installed by default.

Nope, I'm not much of anyone's target audience.

You'll note that I've primarily bashed Apple's hardware, where the facts clearly show that they are well behind on the price/performance curve.

As far as the OS goes, it boils down to MAC OS for abstract thinkers and Windows (or Unix/Linux/Etc.) for logical thinkers.

At this point with OS-X it really does come down to just the UI. You can have the MAC UI on top of the BSD Unix core, or you can have the CDE (or others) UI on top of the BSD Unix core. A decision of whether you need or want the UI to shield you from the true workings of the computer.

Pete C.

Reply to
Pete C.

That's the basic premise, as long as you aren't waiting for the machine all is well.

Nope, and I don't jump on the gotta have the latest greatest bandwagon hype either. A good deal of my general work is done on a P3/500 laptop with 128MB and W2Kpro. This includes some CAD work and the only time I see anything that would be better with a newer faster machine is when doing a photo realistic render. All the design/drawing keeps up without the slightest issue.

At some point I'll get a new current high end machine, mostly because I want to do some video work that my current machine isn't very good at. Email, spreadsheets, CAD, surfing, CNC control, VRU, web server, etc. all work just fine on the older machines.

Pete C.

Reply to
Pete C.

It's always been touted that MACs are better for graphics and A/V, however I have not seen that to be true. I think what could be true is that the MAC OS is better for the typical graphics/A/V user with a more abstract though process.

I've had experience several MAC and several Windows based video editing systems 3 or 4 years back and while neither was bug free, the Windows ones crashed less frequently than the MAC ones.

I know of at least one mid sized magazine publisher that eliminated all MACs (well, except for one for archive use) from their operation about 5 years ago.

That is very much a false sense of security and a dangerous thing. If you are going to have high speed Internet connection these days you absolutely should have a separate firewall router on your network.

There is absolutely nothing inherent to the MAC OS that protects it from viruses/mal ware/etc. The only thing protecting it currently is it's small installed base. If/when that base expands or if some virus programmer just gets bored there will be viruses targeting MACs and then you will have to do security patching and virus updates just like the Windows world.

Additionally not all patches in the Windows world are security related. The same goes for the various flavors of Unix, VMS, etc. All OSs have bugs and all OSs require patches to correct those bugs between major releases.

Both are pretty poor in reliability and scaleability.

Pete C.

Reply to
Pete C.

Apple's "think different" slogan is pretty accurate. MAC OS is for people with an abstract thought process, and Windows/Unix is for people with a logical thought process.

Pete C.

Reply to
Pete C.

What I would want to know is why did they drop the Macs? Was it because of cost to purchase new, software, or what? My opinion would be that it is because there isn't the software selection available, but I don't know for sure.

Right, but which is worse? I think that Microsquash made improvements going over to the NT kernel for all of their home OS, but from what I have seen Mac's aren't any better. At least the windows machine will give you some sort of error information, you may have to be a Borg to understand it, but it is better than the Mac reporting that it "has fallen and can't get up."

Reply to
YouGoFirst

Cliff,

Yep, that was the turning point. The Power PC was based on IBM's Power RISC chip. These were use in the RS6000 AIX workstations.

Mark

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Reply to
MM

They dropped them because of the higher purchase cost, additional maintenance / management expense, the necessity for having PCs anyway for most non graphic purposes and the fact that all the graphics software they were using was also available on PC.

Quite true, and "real" enterprise class OSs provide far more than either Windows or MAC for error and diagnostic information. Nice tools such as dump analyzers and whatnot.

Pete C.

Reply to
Pete C.

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