the 'new' mac

[Mike Minto]

anyone gone to apple's site and seen the ad for the new 'ultimate' mac? guess that means all the ones people bought before were so much a lesser machine, eh? just how much longer do they think they can keep saying things like that (oh, i know - forever!). advertising cracks me up.

[David Weaver]

So....you're going to buy one, right? :confused:

:D

[Bryan Morgan]

Hope its better than the last one.... we had to roll all of our 10.6 machines back to 10.5 because 10.6 is a piece of crap and doesn't work with half of our graphics equipment.

[Brian Ashton]

anyone gone to apple's site and seen the ad for the new 'ultimate' mac? guess that means all the ones people bought before were so much a lesser machine, eh? just how much longer do they think they can keep saying things like that (oh, i know - forever!). advertising cracks me up.

Pretty much forever. Read up on Freud's take on the ego and you'll start to understand why this sort of "logic" (for lack of a better word) can't be satisfied. It seems to be more prevalent with technology also.

Looks like a ripper of a machine though, but I'm a laptop guy.

[Greg Peterson]

Hope its better than the last one.... we had to roll all of our 10.6 machines back to 10.5 because 10.6 is a piece of crap and doesn't work with half of our graphics equipment.

Just your imagination. Mac's are fool proof and never have problems. So I've heard.

As for advertising, it's the grease in the gears of commerce.

[John Coloccia]

Hope its better than the last one.... we had to roll all of our 10.6 machines back to 10.5 because 10.6 is a piece of crap and doesn't work with half of our graphics equipment.

So what would be the "good" version of Windows to roll back to? LOL.

Seriously, I use both and have for many years. I've recently switched my whole home over to Mac. This lets me quickly and easily do Mac, Windows, iPhone and Linux development on a fast, reliable platform without any real administration or headaches to speak of. The right tool for the right job.

[Jim Koepke]

Having been a Mac user for almost all of my computers, I tend to not be an early adopter of the new machines or operating systems unless it is time to replace when one comes on the market.

I would also advise people to stay with what they have if it is working for them. If you can make a change without it being an emergency, that will be the least stressful.

The machine I have now was obsoleted by a new model in less than a week after buying it. Fortunately, Apple did give me the option of upgrading at no cost to me. I decided not to do that because of the hassle of moving all the old files across was done on the new machine and I would have likely had to take another day or two to go through the process to do it all again.

I have had to use PCs at work. It always seems like a lot of work to do what comes so easy on a Mac. One example, is how many can do this on a PC:

157282

That was just a few keystrokes and mouse clicks to capture the image and its tag. It can be captured without the tag if desired. It can be captured to the clipboard and pasted into another document if needed.

For me that is an important feature that is used daily.

The rest of the usage issues are also easier for me than on the PC. I did like the operating system under OS 9 better than OS X, but times have changed and my OS 9 machine bit the dust.

A friend of mine is a PC wizard. His biggest problem is not being able to understand that everyone is not a PC wizard.

I am not a Mac wizard. Thankfully, to get them to do almost everything I want them to do, I do not have to be a Mac wizard.

jim

[Bryan Morgan]

So what would be the "good" version of Windows to roll back to? LOL.

Seriously, I use both and have for many years. I've recently switched my whole home over to Mac. This lets me quickly and easily do Mac, Windows, iPhone and Linux development on a fast, reliable platform without any real administration or headaches to speak of. The right tool for the right job.


I manage thousands of computers. PC's, Macs, piles of Linux servers (*nix is my primary skill set)... You are right, the right tool for right job. The marketing machine for Apple and their zealot following is mind boggling.

I work for a very large graphics company... the old myth about Macs being "better for graphics" is simply not true anymore. Whats worse is that the Macs always have issues with high end imaging equipment. Sure maybe it will work fine with your $25 Walmart scanner but it really sucks with big expensive Vidars or Colortracs.... not to mention all the issues 10.6 has with fonts... and can't print on high end imaging equipment. If thats what people like and it works for them (and they can afford the inflated prices), awesome. I prefer to live in reality.

In all honesty, every time I sit down at a Mac workstation I feel like I am stepping back in time and using an old IRIX box with a clunky X11 window manager.

[Tim Morton]

I manage thousands of computers. PC's, Macs, piles of Linux servers (*nix is my primary skill set)... You are right, the right tool for right job. The marketing machine for Apple and their zealot following is mind boggling.

I work for a very large graphics company... the old myth about Macs being "better for graphics" is simply not true anymore. Whats worse is that the Macs always have issues with high end imaging equipment. Sure maybe it will work fine with your $25 Walmart scanner but it really sucks with big expensive Vidars or Colortracs.... not to mention all the issues 10.6 has with fonts... and can't print on high end imaging equipment. If thats what people like and it works for them (and they can afford the inflated prices), awesome. I prefer to live in reality.

In all honesty, every time I sit down at a Mac workstation I feel like I am stepping back in time and using an old IRIX box with a clunky X11 window manager.

I am too chilled out on a sunday afternoon on my mac and also watching a great red sox game to refute all this crap:cool::cool::cool:

[Scott Shepherd]

Must be lots of stupid people out there then because Apple passed Microsoft earlier this year in having the largest market capitalization.

All the haters out there should realize you don't beat Microsoft or any other company in the USA by producing crappy products that don't work.

It's a 3 week wait to get an iphone right now. Ipad's sold 4 times as many as they anticipated, yet there are still those that say it's just a company based on image, not real working products. I guess you can't let the truth get in the way of a good story, because their products fly off the shelves, cute or not.

Only 1 company in the USA is worth more and that's Exxon/Mobil. I didn't realize you could become the second largest company in the USA by producing absolute crappy products that no one wants or likes, or that's don't work well.

[Glenn Clabo]

Sox win!...Sox win!

[Phil Thien]

I didn't realize you could become the second largest company in the USA by producing absolute crappy products that no one wants or likes, or that's don't work well.

I don't think the products are crappy. I own a computer shop and we get our share of Apple machines in for service. I own a number of Macs and Windows machines.

Overall, I've found the reliability of Apple machines above average (with some caveats like their liquid cooled units that almost universally developed leaks).

I've found the serviceability of their machines to be below average. Apple goes to great lengths to get the "look" they want, without much thought to fixing them when they do fail.

The proprietary nature of their product does contribute to problems like an inability to run Flash without a notebook's fan sounding like a jet engine.

The price is certainly high (1.5x to 2x) compared to Windows machines, too.

Apple really needs to work on serviceability, though. I had to replace the panel on a MBP the other day. They screw the panels in, but also use glue. The glue was a major PITA. And they use too much tape to hold things together, too. I'd like to take all their tape dispensers and glue bottles away.

[Tim Morton]

Sox win!...Sox win!
yes they did...but they made it interesting a the end. i was yelling at the TV when he brought clay back for the 9th...paps is lights out when he starts an inning...no reason not to bring him in to start the 9th. But i am not the coach:p

[Greg Peterson]

I don't think one has to be a windows wizard to make windows a useful tool. I'm not a fan of click and drag, yet that seems to be Apples bread and butter. In windows, if I want to delete a file, I highlight it and hit the delete key. Pretty simple. Apple makes you drag it to the garbage can.

If Apple floats your boat, more power to you. If Windows gets the job done, why change? The idea that Apple is vastly easier to use is overstated.

Given the fact that Apple controls the entire software/hardware platform their products run on, they better be more reliable and stable.

A point in Apple's favor is they are an innovator. MS, in my opinion, has never been an innovator. Gates was always much more interested in capturing the market and annihilating the competition or perceived competition. If someone had a good idea, MS would either acquire the technology or undermine it. How many innovations can you pack into a mature product like Office?

I have a IPod nano 3G that is almost three years old and still works fine. I love it. Not crazy that I have to use ITunes to manage it, but that's the way Apple does things. Their way or no way.

I finally got to play with an IPad today. Very cool. It may take the competition several generations to catch up with the IPad. It's a great idea.

But first to market with a great idea doesn't mean much these days.

[Tim Morton]

In windows, if I want to delete a file, I highlight it and hit the delete key. Pretty simple. Apple makes you drag it to the garbage can.

or right click-move to trash...or highlight it and hit apple-delete...

you really don't want to get into a "windows is simpler than OSX" do you? because of all the silly arguments windows users have...that one would be the weakest.:D

[Greg Peterson]

or right click-move to trash...or highlight it and hit apple-delete...

you really don't want to get into a "windows is simpler than OSX" do you? because of all the silly arguments windows users have...that one would be the weakest.:D

I can right click, select delete. I can also delete with one key stroke - delete - rather than some combination of keys.

Yeah, I really don't think there is a hill of beans difference between the two in terms of ease of use.

[John Coloccia]

Re: which is easier

ever since I switched my father to a mac, he has not had any problems that he can't figure out for himself. Previously he had a local guy that would help him when I couldn't figure it out over the phone. I'll also say that I've had to do exactly zero maintenance or anything else in the year since I switched.

I can't say that about any other platform i've used, including older macs and any form of windows, Linux or unix box. I don't think that makes The interface any easier. In fact, I think Windows generally has the edge there, at least in terms of form (maybe not function!). I just think they generally tend to require less intervention from moi, and that's what I want right now.

A hand saw requires less maintenance and fiddling than a bandsaw. That doesn't make the handsaw easier to use or more appropriate for a task. When the folks I know talk to me about "easy", what they really mean is "works with no brain power required". There's something to be said for that when you're like me and you really dislike using computers but you have to because of your line of work. I'm a software engineer...figure that one out.

Just my opinion. I really don't get any pleasure from either anymore and it's just a tool that allows me to implement the creative process in my mind, which I DO enjoy a great deal. :D

[David Weaver]

157282

That was just a few keystrokes and mouse clicks to capture the image and its tag. It can be captured without the tag if desired. It can be captured to the clipboard and pasted into another document if needed.


Actually, that can just be saved directly on the right click menu on a PC by copy and paste (instead of "Save image as"). I copied it and pasted it as a file on my desktop without issue. Could paste it in any document or folder without any keystrokes.

However, mac does come with a lot of nice video editing stuff that PCs don't (and presumably image editing stuff, too?).

[paul cottingham]

In all honesty, every time I sit down at a Mac workstation I feel like I am stepping back in time and using an old IRIX box with a clunky X11 window manager.

not that there's anything wrong with that....

+1. I have been searching my brain for what bugs me about macs and you just nailed it. I even prefer -shudder- gnome to it.

[Bryan Morgan]

Re: which is easier

ever since I switched my father to a mac, he has not had any problems that he can't figure out for himself. Previously he had a local guy that would help him when I couldn't figure it out over the phone. I'll also say that I've had to do exactly zero maintenance or anything else in the year since I switched.

My grandmother in her 80's takes care of all her own problems with her old XP box too. Even bought herself a printer and scanner and installed and uses them fine by herself... ;) Somebody even let her on to the internet :p

[Bryan Morgan]

not that there's anything wrong with that....

+1. I have been searching my brain for what bugs me about macs and you just nailed it. I even prefer -shudder- gnome to it.


Yeah it was bugging me too. I couldn't figure it out until I had to do something with an ancient SGI O2 and though "hey, this is kinda like a new Mac..." :) Gnome...AKA the fisher price interface hehe :p I just prefer a console. KDE if I MUST use a GUI. I actually set it up with some Windows and some OSX features. These guys sitting here talking about which is the faster or easier GUI... pffft, nothing compared to a console and carefully crafted scripts. :D

Its like Mac is trying to be KDE... but they are still a few years behind at best. :p

[Scott Shepherd]

Yeah it was bugging me too. I couldn't figure it out until I had to do something with an ancient SGI O2 and though "hey, this is kinda like a new Mac..." :) Gnome...AKA the fisher price interface hehe :p I just prefer a console. KDE if I MUST use a GUI. I actually set it up with some Windows and some OSX features. These guys sitting here talking about which is the faster or easier GUI... pffft, nothing compared to a console and carefully crafted scripts. :D

Its like Mac is trying to be KDE... but they are still a few years behind at best. :p

No, if you were on a Mac, you wouldn't need to know or understand anything you just said :p

[Bryan Morgan]

Just my opinion. I really don't get any pleasure from either anymore and it's just a tool that allows me to implement the creative process in my mind, which I DO enjoy a great deal. :D

Thats true. We let our people use whatever they want. If they like Mac, they get a Mac, PC get a PC. The programs and files generally work fine across either platform (10.6 font issues aside...) I do know our help desk guys struggle more with Macs than PCs. They aren't any easier from a support standpoint. Yes, they do have problems, contrary to the hype and marketing machine.

[Jim Koepke]

157352 <<< Click to the Left...

I think that can be used to capture individual elements or JPEGs, but I have not been able to get it to work in the past.

Of course, I have not used a PC since I retired over 2 years ago and their new operating system may have included ways to capture images and parts of images without having to use third party software.

Then there is the what you are used to factor. I am used to using a Mac and I am willing to pay more for a machine that will last a few years longer and do the work I want to do instead of making me work to get what I want done.

jim

[David Weaver]

I think there's a lot of weight in the "what you're used to" department.

I'm cheap. I like the cheapest computer I can get.

My last laptop was $600 - I've had it for two years. Unless something on it breaks, I expect it to last me a while (i'm not a power user).

I've had my desktop PC since 2001. It's fine. It's not fast any longer, but it's running older software, and it's an email checker and proxy machine. It works well for that, though I know I'm not going to be able to keep it forever. I'm so less-than-enthralled with getting another PC and paying any real money for it that I'm inclined to patch together near free stuff that's 3 years old from now on.

I used to really be into computers, but I get less excited by them each year and I'd have macs probably if they were cheaper than PCs.

[paul cottingham]

OS holy wars, baby.

Maybe we should move to something less controversial, like do you need to use a pushstick with a tablesaw. :D

[David Weaver]

I college, OS holy wars and hardware discussions could only be settled with a healthy dose of beer and Megadeth playing in the background.

My roommate overclocked his PC back in the celeron 300 days, but there was something goofy about his system - as soon as it got above 82 degrees in the case, it hung. So, all winter, the window was open in north-central PA, so that his computer wouldn't hang (you'd think that he would've just clocked it back when he wasn't playing video games). Not open the whole way, just enough to make it really cold in the room and keep the computer cool.

I did the same thing with my PC, but for whatever reason, my PC didn't have any stability issues, so I didn't need the window open.

PCs and operating systems are so much more stable now than they were then, but our dream of getting a PC that boots from ram in two seconds (cold) never did come about. Maybe it has, but I haven't seen it.

[Bryan Morgan]

PCs and operating systems are so much more stable now than they were then, but our dream of getting a PC that boots from ram in two seconds (cold) never did come about. Maybe it has, but I haven't seen it.

Windows 7 booting from one of these new solid state drives is pretty quick.

You're right about the holy wars! :D I just post in these threads because you can quickly find out who the zealots are and just to say "hey, I use all these things and they all suck in their own way" :p Trying to inject a little reality because I have daily experience with all of these things as its my day job. Doesn't mean I know everything about everything of course (far from it) but I use them WAY more than your average user and in different scenarios with different hardware/software combinations, plus more when I help people out in home environments. Macs aren't "the best". Neither is Windows. Nor is Linux. People like to claim one or the other is "easier" and with these modern OS's I really don't find that to be true. They are all "different" but the differences are less than people think. There are so many key/click combos in each its silly to argue which is easier.

I'll tell you... when I look at crap like Facebook and whatnot, I wish computers were still difficult for the average person to use. :D On the other hand, theres all this great info on woodworking with sites like these and it makes me glad computers have become easier to use. :)

[David Weaver]

Yeah, you're way farther ahead than me. The solid state drive and Win 7 rings a bell, I think someone was telling me about that not too long ago when I was moaning about not having an instant on machine.

I'll keep my eyes open.

My roommate was obsessed with having the fastest PC on the floor. Back then, you could download executables without worry as much, and you could always find a few benchmark programs to get frame rates or mflops. He used to harrass me to run my PC all the time just so he could get a higher number and tell me all about it. :rolleyes: I remember a lot of days going from a bare drive back to restoring everything because I installed some beta software, or I screwed up my own setup and couldn't get sound or something. One time got a hold of an alpha build of nt 4.0 and learned a lot real quick about what alpha meant in terms of promises of compatability. Looking back, college wasn't that time intensive and if I blew a day screwing around with the machine "learning lessons", it wasn't that big of a deal.

Anand Tech and Tom's Hardware (don't know if either of those still exist) had regular postings about new hardware and stuff that could be overclocked, and then the next generation after I got my celeron, they started installing bus locks on chips - or at least they said they did, I never bothered to find out.

[paul cottingham]

I college, OS holy wars and hardware discussions could only be settled with a healthy dose of beer and Megadeth playing in the background.


PCs and operating systems are so much more stable now than they were then, but our dream of getting a PC that boots from ram in two seconds (cold) never did come about. Maybe it has, but I haven't seen it.

I configured my Amiga 3000 to boot from a virtual Ram disk. It was smokin fast, baby.

For a 33 mhz machine, that is.

[paul cottingham]

Macs aren't "the best". Neither is Windows. Nor is Linux. :)
"neither is Linux."

I was with you till you started speakin' nonsense. Next thing I know you'll be saying that the sawstop isn't the best saw out there.....

[Bryan Morgan]

I configured my Amiga 3000 to boot from a virtual Ram disk. It was smokin fast, baby.

For a 33 mhz machine, that is.


Amigas! My cousin works in animation and he tells me those old Video Toaster machines are still sought after! Don't know why, not really my interest, but he seems to love them.

[Bryan Morgan]

"neither is Linux."

I was with you till you started speakin' nonsense. Next thing I know you'll be saying that the sawstop isn't the best saw out there.....


:D Hey, I LOVE Linux. All *nix really. Is it the best? Nope. Linux's problem is the lack of consistency. You find some nice code you want to compile and it has piles of other pieces of code you have to track down and compile first. Sometimes you run into a chicken or egg situation. Its not a huge deal for some of us because we just change the code to do what we want anyway (another plus for Linux) but for someone who can't/won't do that..... Also, there is a huge pool of awesome programmer talent in the open source community and tons of great projects... Instead of working on a few programs to make them awesome they find something and then go off and start a new one. How many CMS or Groupware software packages do we need?! No excuse, all the code is available to anyone. I'm not a programmer by any means but I can kludge through what I need to.

Of course the BSD snobs will chime in and say "just use BSD, it already has everything you need and never ever ever ever crashes" :p I love BSD too.

Now, that said, I have numerous examples of people who have walked up to an Ubuntu machine and just started using it. They had no idea about Windows or OSX or anything else. They just sat down and did what they needed to do. No confusion or anything.

Its also interesting how many things OSX and Windows 7 have ripped off from old Linux GUIs. ;)

And I really want a sawstop. Especially because I am kind of clumsy and prone to accidents. Just WAY out of my price range.

[paul cottingham]

Hell they did babylon 5 on them for a fraction of the cost of a sgi machine. local tv station replaced $100,000 worth of buggy, hard to use hardware and software with a couple of amigas with video toasters in them. as far as I know, they are still using them. best computer ever made. period.

[Neal Clayton]

:D Hey, I LOVE Linux. All *nix really. Is it the best? Nope. Linux's problem is the lack of consistency. You find some nice code you want to compile and it has piles of other pieces of code you have to track down and compile first. Sometimes you run into a chicken or egg situation. Its not a huge deal for some of us because we just change the code to do what we want anyway (another plus for Linux) but for someone who can't/won't do that..... Also, there is a huge pool of awesome programmer talent in the open source community and tons of great projects... Instead of working on a few programs to make them awesome they find something and then go off and start a new one. How many CMS or Groupware software packages do we need?! No excuse, all the code is available to anyone. I'm not a programmer by any means but I can kludge through what I need to.

Of course the BSD snobs will chime in and say "just use BSD, it already has everything you need and never ever ever ever crashes" :p I love BSD too.

Now, that said, I have numerous examples of people who have walked up to an Ubuntu machine and just started using it. They had no idea about Windows or OSX or anything else. They just sat down and did what they needed to do. No confusion or anything.

Its also interesting how many things OSX and Windows 7 have ripped off from old Linux GUIs. ;)

And I really want a sawstop. Especially because I am kind of clumsy and prone to accidents. Just WAY out of my price range.

did someone say BSD snobs?

i'm gradually migrating everything i'm responsible for away from linux. two small servers left, one small office backup/database machine and one webserver. FreeBSD has never hung me out to dry, linux has on many occasions. but its chances for doing so again are getting pretty limited.

the best part is i can make my people a profit doing it. i'm sold, ZFS is the future, and hardware raid cards look great on ebay. too bad sun doesn't get more credit for real work in eliminating one of the biggest contradictions in terms in the entire IT industry Redundant Array of I (http://www.futurepowerpc.com/scripts/product.asp?PRDCODE=1411-9550SXU-12B-10&REFID=FR)nexpensive Disks.

hmm, which one doesn't compute?

the sad thing to me is how hardware chugs along while software often devolves. microsoft catches up to the times typically a year or two late. apple gives their faithful all of the marketing they so desire but not much else, linux gives us a broken project that forks into 3 more broken projects of which 80% is still broken code from abandoned IBM/SGI/ATT projects from the late 80s. is it any wonder that all of the money is being made in phones and small net appliances? at least the phones work as advertised (most of the time...unless it's an apple phone and you're left handed...).


Must be lots of stupid people out there then because Apple passed Microsoft earlier this year in having the largest market capitalization.

All the haters out there should realize you don't beat Microsoft or any other company in the USA by producing crappy products that don't work.

It's a 3 week wait to get an iphone right now. Ipad's sold 4 times as many as they anticipated, yet there are still those that say it's just a company based on image, not real working products. I guess you can't let the truth get in the way of a good story, because their products fly off the shelves, cute or not.

Only 1 company in the USA is worth more and that's Exxon/Mobil. I didn't realize you could become the second largest company in the USA by producing absolute crappy products that no one wants or likes, or that's don't work well.

it's not hard to make money selling a 400 dollar computer for 1500, all you have to do is convince people to buy it. they represent about 10% of the OS market, and it won't likely ever be much more than that. they didn't beat microsoft, they're not going to. as for inflating a stock price, that's mostly marketing too. ten years ago pets.com was a winner. what changed between that and the time it was delisted? nothing, except perception.

you can absolutely make money selling products that don't work well. look at black and decker. you can also lose money making widely used products that work flawlessly. look at motorola.

[Steve knight]

or right click-move to trash...or highlight it and hit apple-delete...

you really don't want to get into a "windows is simpler than OSX" do you? because of all the silly arguments windows users have...that one would be the weakest.:D

these don't work in snow leopard. my blind wife can't drag files to the trash and has no clue how to delete things.
I find handling files is easier in windows. lots of wacky quirks in osx that slow things down.

[paul cottingham]

did someone say BSD snobs?

FreeBSD has never hung me out to dry, linux has on many occasions. but its chances for doing so again are getting pretty limited.



Don't have to tell me twice we had an unpatched (I know, I know) FreeBSD web server running on the internet feeding out tons of web sites, mail and dns, it was attacked tons, but never breached in 6 years.

I just hate running X on it.

[Tim Morton]

these don't work in snow leopard. my blind wife can't drag files to the trash and has no clue how to delete things.
I find handling files is easier in windows. lots of wacky quirks in osx that slow things down.

yes they do. If the wife needs some mac lessons have her email me.

[Scott Shepherd]

it's not hard to make money selling a 400 dollar computer for 1500, all you have to do is convince people to buy it. they represent about 10% of the OS market, and it won't likely ever be much more than that. they didn't beat microsoft, they're not going to. as for inflating a stock price, that's mostly marketing too. ten years ago pets.com was a winner. what changed between that and the time it was delisted? nothing, except perception.

you can absolutely make money selling products that don't work well. look at black and decker. you can also lose money making widely used products that work flawlessly. look at motorola.

Neil, my point was that just as dug in as the "fanboys" are for apple, so are the apple bashers. It wouldn't matter to some if Apple produced the finest product ever made and sold it for $200. It just wouldn't matter to some, they would continue to say how horrible it is, no matter what.

I believe in giving credit where credit is due. I don't own a Mac. I do own an iphone. When the iphone came out, those apple haters said it was junk, crap, piece of garbage, and another horrible fad that would quickly drop off. Yet, they were completely wrong and you don't see any of them rushing to forums to admit they were wrong.

Then came the ipad. There were these same people saying it was a stupid idea and it had no use, no purpose and it was a fad that people wouldn't buy. Wrong again. With sales more than 4x what the estimated, and plants running at full capacity to produce them, someone was wrong again. Yet, I see no threads on people admitting they misjudged the company again.

So when you look at their side of things, they have been wrong just about 100% of them time, yet they speak with authority on the subject of how rotten apple is, despite the facts that contradict almost everything they say.

itunes was the same way. "Oh, it's horrible, it'll never last, it's a fad". Well, that fad has changed the music industry and made apple billions.

I don't recall Black and Decker being bigger than Microsoft and falling that far. I don't recall Black and Decker taking on Exxon/Mobil for the largest company in America.

If their products were so horrible people would not buy them. Period. There's an apple store here and every time I walk by it, there's no less than 50 people in the store looking at products, playing with products, and buying products. I walk by other stores and they are empty.

[Brian Ashton]

Just your imagination. Mac's are fool proof and never have problems. So I've heard.

As for advertising, it's the grease in the gears of commerce.

That's funny (and I mean that in the nicest way)... As I sit here typing this on my wifes windows machine because my mac's OS is being reinstalled because it shat itself. Nothing could be deleted in the trash and a few other problems were becoming a serious problem.

To be honest I find Windows to be more resistant to unexpected and uncontrollable problems such as a sudden shut down that cause data corruption. Don't believe me try it. The windows machine will often, without user initiation, self correct such problems. Whereas the mac wont and the problems will compound over time unless the user boots from the DVD and uses the disk utility to correct such minor problems (that will over time become a major problem).

I think the days of the macs perceived "invincibility" are coming to an end as it gains market share. Apple is now starting to experience what microsoft has been battling with for decades. The more popular the mac gets the more people will realize they're not all that much better than windows.

[Eric DeSilva]

Yeah, you're way farther ahead than me. The solid state drive and Win 7 rings a bell, I think someone was telling me about that not too long ago when I was moaning about not having an instant on machine.

I upgraded to Win 7 a month or so ago and slapped in a small SSD for the OS and some core programs--64 GB was big enough for Win 7, MS Office Suite, Adobe CS5 Master Collection. It boots fast, but it isn't instant on. Faster than my wife's macbook or my old XP system for sure, however.

If you really want instant on, you need to look at a couple SSDs configured in RAID 0. No fault tolerance, but fast...

[Neal Clayton]

Don't have to tell me twice we had an unpatched (I know, I know) FreeBSD web server running on the internet feeding out tons of web sites, mail and dns, it was attacked tons, but never breached in 6 years.

I just hate running X on it.

the thing that has driven me away, ironically, is a small home NAS that i've been using for about 5-6 years. it takes about that long (with all of the random power outages in that span of time) for an ext3 journal of that size to become completely corrupted and unrepairable. of course reiserfs and xfs are no better. the former doesn't even need power failure to corrupt itself, and the latter caches writes longer than ext3 does.

to which linux people will respond "always have a UPS and if your data is that important use hardware raid + hot spares". to which i would respond: you're cursing the cost of other server operating systems while telling me i need a couple extra thousand dollars worth of hardware to cover up flaws in your software. at which point they absolve themselves of all responsibility by declaring that free software has no warranty, and i should write something better if i need better. at which point i declare there's no need to write something better, other free OS projects have better already, i just need to stop using linux. at which point the faithful depart to go write another blog entry about how btrfs will almost be as good as ZFS...in a few years....except for all of the things it can't do. then they can switch over to their desktop and download all of the latest and greatest mpeg codecs/players from russian FTPs while whistling their favorite "everything is free" song.

maybe that was the design, ~39 hour fsck downtimes that fail at 97% are a great time for political OS arguments on slashdot.

[Bryan Morgan]

That's funny (and I mean that in the nicest way)... As I sit here typing this on my wifes windows machine because my mac's OS is being reinstalled because it shat itself. Nothing could be deleted in the trash and a few other problems were becoming a serious problem.

I'm sitting here next to a 2009 Mac Pro with snow leapord that refuses to recognize certain fonts pulled from a 10.5.8 2006 Mac Pro and also completely locked some PPDs that can't be moved or deleted. To the terminal console I go.... glad I chucked the crappy chiclet keyboard it came with...:D

[Bryan Morgan]

I think the days of the macs perceived "invincibility" are coming to an end as it gains market share. Apple is now starting to experience what microsoft has been battling with for decades. The more popular the mac gets the more people will realize they're not all that much better than windows.

I read an article recently that showed Apple having the highest number of vulnerabilities above all other systems. Admittedly it seemed a bit biased...

[Bryan Morgan]

the thing that has driven me away, ironically, is a small home NAS that i've been using for about 5-6 years. it takes about that long (with all of the random power outages in that span of time) for an ext3 journal of that size to become completely corrupted and unrepairable. of course reiserfs and xfs are no better. the former doesn't even need power failure to corrupt itself, and the latter caches writes longer than ext3 does.

to which linux people will respond "always have a UPS and if your data is that important use hardware raid + hot spares". to which i would respond: you're cursing the cost of other server operating systems while telling me i need a couple extra thousand dollars worth of hardware to cover up flaws in your software. at which point they absolve themselves of all responsibility by declaring that free software has no warranty, and i should write something better if i need better. at which point i declare there's no need to write something better, other free OS projects have better already, i just need to stop using linux. at which point the faithful depart to go write another blog entry about how btrfs will almost be as good as ZFS...in a few years....except for all of the things it can't do. then they can switch over to their desktop and download all of the latest and greatest mpeg codecs/players from russian FTPs while whistling their favorite "everything is free" song.

maybe that was the design, ~39 hour fsck downtimes that fail at 97% are a great time for political OS arguments on slashdot.

I had high hopes for BTRFS but honestly I don't think its going to pan out. They are using Apple type hype for it :D I am a big fan of XFS. Its done everything I've ever asked of it and it is very fast and mature, which is why we went with it in the first place. Of course, this is all on very expensive RAID systems with all kinds of hot spares and redundant iSCSI back ends :D I prefer hardware over software any day. Can't say I've ever had a problem or data loss with it in what, 10 years or so (knock on wood, then cut it up and build something nice). Plenty of drive failures though (which is another holy war unto itself ;)) 99.97% uptime according to Nagios, only downtime being scheduled moves, infrastructure changes, virtualization.

I haven't really given ZFS a shot yet. Maybe I will have to look more into it. All these filesystems make great claims but when we put them through testing they don't work as advertised and then you read all kinds of stuff from the apologists about "oh, you wanted THAT feature, yeah its still in development". Does ZFS live up to its claims?

[David Weaver]

15 years ago (you guys are going to have to put up with my discussion of old tech, because I lost interest in the latest and greatest 10 years ago), the lab at school had either crappy macs or 486 dx/33s running NT 3.51. Since they were communal computers, they booted every time.

The macs froze early and often, i couldn't tolerate them, and it took 3 or 4 minutes for the 486s to boot up with NT 3.51.

I had a computer, but they gave us a page allotment at penn state and I wanted to get my free paper out of the printer. I only made that mistake a couple of times, and only went to the lab when I had a group project that made it vital.

The situation with the PCs made the line at the lab grow fast. People either had the computers hang all the time, or they were sitting there looking at a blank screen waiting for machine to start up so they could print something quickly. If you found a lab in the back of a satellite library (pollock is one that comes to mind), that didn't usually have a line, you kept quiet about it.

The word toward the end of my college career was that mac hardware was surpassing PC hardware (i'll take my mac-head's friends' advice), but the OS at the time sucked pretty bad - maybe it was 7 or something?

By that time, I had to go to the sun lab anyway so I could run the goofy math department programs, so my days of waiting in lines were over. Unix and X-windows (I think) kept away the emailers and people who just wanted to print out papers.

I'm glad I no longer have to keep up.

[Dan Hintz]

David,

In one of the engineering computer labs (50+ machines) at Purdue there was a smaller, glass-enclosed room that housed about 10 high-end machines along with a couple of color laser printers (late-90's, so still quite expensive). those of us lucky enough to have access to that room loathed the half-wits who would print 300-page black and white manuals on the color machines when the standard B&W laser printers lined the walls outside of the room... because the ones inside the fishbowl were faster! It ticked us off because we needed the color lasers to print our work out (hyperspectral imaging work done in color) and they were forever running out of black toner and paper. You needed a key to get into the fishbowl, so they would just wait for someone to enter/leave and then they would rush in... we learned to start throwing their work in the round file (as out of order as possible or crumpled up) to discourage that practice.

[Neal Clayton]

I had high hopes for BTRFS but honestly I don't think its going to pan out. They are using Apple type hype for it :D I am a big fan of XFS. Its done everything I've ever asked of it and it is very fast and mature, which is why we went with it in the first place. Of course, this is all on very expensive RAID systems with all kinds of hot spares and redundant iSCSI back ends :D I prefer hardware over software any day. Can't say I've ever had a problem or data loss with it in what, 10 years or so (knock on wood, then cut it up and build something nice). Plenty of drive failures though (which is another holy war unto itself ;)) 99.97% uptime according to Nagios, only downtime being scheduled moves, infrastructure changes, virtualization.

I haven't really given ZFS a shot yet. Maybe I will have to look more into it. All these filesystems make great claims but when we put them through testing they don't work as advertised and then you read all kinds of stuff from the apologists about "oh, you wanted THAT feature, yeah its still in development". Does ZFS live up to its claims?

it's marked stable in freebsd 8 (8.1 is now release status) so yes. it's just now bootable in 8.1, i haven't used it on a bootable volume yet, but i intend to try that out in the next week or two.

generally, yes it absolutely works as advertised. i don't have long term experience to back that up, just been playing with it in the freebsd 8 branch, but there are no glaring issues to report.

it relies on the journal, and the journal is persistently checksum'd and verified (even on reads) so logically, it can't fail due to the common RAID array pitfalls (the 'write hole' and power failures). and since the journal is accurate and checked on reads it tends to report drive issues well before SMART does.

the downside is there is some extra overhead with those journal checking operations, it likes ram. but i don't mind that much since ram is a helluva lot less expensive than multi thousand dollar raid controllers.

huge obvious benefits:

1) since there's only the journal array creation is instantaneous. it only cares that it can keep track of all of the writes, it doesn't build parity across entire disks on creation, it does it as writes come in.

2) journal/array verification and creation can be done on the live system. in theory, journal verification doesn't need to be done, but there is a utility for it. either way no more huge fsck downtimes.

obvious gotchas:

1) you cannot expand an existing array. you can link arrays together into the same volume, so creating a new array and linking it to the first is the designated way to do that. not great if you have a habit of expanding arrays one disk at a time on hardware controllers, but as long as you add storage in multi-drive chunks, i don't consider it a dealbreaker, just different.

2) since linux is fighting (http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/uptake-of-native-linux-zfs-port-hampered-by-license-conflict.ars) with sun over licensing nuances it will likely never be native to linux, only the BSDs and opensolaris.

[Brian Ashton]

David,

In one of the engineering computer labs (50+ machines) at Purdue there was a smaller, glass-enclosed room that housed about 10 high-end machines along with a couple of color laser printers (late-90's, so still quite expensive). those of us lucky enough to have access to that room loathed the half-wits who would print 300-page black and white manuals on the color machines when the standard B&W laser printers lined the walls outside of the room... because the ones inside the fishbowl were faster! It ticked us off because we needed the color lasers to print our work out (hyperspectral imaging work done in color) and they were forever running out of black toner and paper. You needed a key to get into the fishbowl, so they would just wait for someone to enter/leave and then they would rush in... we learned to start throwing their work in the round file (as out of order as possible or crumpled up) to discourage that practice.

Oh yes the good old college computer lab days. I always liked the one where a machine would bog down a bit when the print queue got blotted. So the user would get frustrated because nothing was happening fast enough for them and start hitting the print key a bunch of times in an attempt to make it go faster (ya know the logic... same as people that keep hitting the cross walk button because they think it will make the light change faster :D). Then they would get all red faced when the printer start spitting out 25 copies of their assignment. I'd just stand there with the look of, yes you are an idiot and don't do it again LOL.

[Ruhi Arslan]

Must be lots of stupid people out there then because...
half of them vote jackass the other half elephant dung... :D

I use PeeCees at work and Macs at home. I had one IBM XT at home once upon a time with an external 128 baud rate modem which enabled me to check the status of of my running jobs at a CRAY "supercomputer". I got my first personal Mac in 1991 for home use (PowerBook 180) and since then I had a 7100, 8600, G4 and a G4 PB. I never had any software/hardware issues but still that makes me one of those "lots of stupid people" I guess... :rolleyes:

[Brian Elfert]

What I want to know is why Apple needs to use liquid cooling in their PCs? My employer has a bunch of old G5 Macs because one app only works on PowerPC Macs.

I remember hearing about a help desk call about a Mac dripping liquid. I thought that was a strange call. At ths time I didn't know they used liquid cooling. No stock PC should need liquid cooling.

I do like a lot of what Apple is doing. I have no problem with the iPhone or iPad.

[Bryan Morgan]

I got my first personal Mac in 1991 for home use (PowerBook 180) and since then I had a 7100, 8600, G4 and a G4 PB. I never had any software/hardware issues but still that makes me one of those "lots of stupid people" I guess... :rolleyes:

I honestly find that very hard to believe. "Never" had any issues? As in, never ever? Everything you have ever done with those computers has worked perfectly, every time?

[Bryan Morgan]

it's marked stable in freebsd 8 (8.1 is now release status) so yes. it's just now bootable in 8.1, i haven't used it on a bootable volume yet, but i intend to try that out in the next week or two.

generally, yes it absolutely works as advertised. i don't have long term experience to back that up, just been playing with it in the freebsd 8 branch, but there are no glaring issues to report.

it relies on the journal, and the journal is persistently checksum'd and verified (even on reads) so logically, it can't fail due to the common RAID array pitfalls (the 'write hole' and power failures). and since the journal is accurate and checked on reads it tends to report drive issues well before SMART does.

the downside is there is some extra overhead with those journal checking operations, it likes ram. but i don't mind that much since ram is a helluva lot less expensive than multi thousand dollar raid controllers.

huge obvious benefits:

1) since there's only the journal array creation is instantaneous. it only cares that it can keep track of all of the writes, it doesn't build parity across entire disks on creation, it does it as writes come in.

2) journal/array verification and creation can be done on the live system. in theory, journal verification doesn't need to be done, but there is a utility for it. either way no more huge fsck downtimes.

obvious gotchas:

1) you cannot expand an existing array. you can link arrays together into the same volume, so creating a new array and linking it to the first is the designated way to do that. not great if you have a habit of expanding arrays one disk at a time on hardware controllers, but as long as you add storage in multi-drive chunks, i don't consider it a dealbreaker, just different.

2) since linux is fighting (http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/06/uptake-of-native-linux-zfs-port-hampered-by-license-conflict.ars) with sun over licensing nuances it will likely never be native to linux, only the BSDs and opensolaris.

How fast is ZFS compared to XFS? One of the main reasons we use XFS and high speed redundant RAIDs is for speed. We have literally millions of smaller files that need instantaneous access by multiple clients. Some days you walk in there and see the RAID lights pegged. Expandability is also an issue. XFS is very easy to grow a file system. Its not too hard to use LVM these days though so really you can expand whatever files ystem you want. What intrigues me about ZFS (and BTRFS) is de-duplication. I really want this feature.

[Neal Clayton]

i don't require speed nearly as much. i'm dealing with webservers, small backup/database boxes, that's about it, and all of that over gigabit network speeds at best so disk performance isn't that big a deal for me, the bottleneck being the network.

this is the most recent thing i can find, comparing 8.x freebsd ZFS with ext4, UFS, and btrfs.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=zfs_ext4_btrfs&num=2

i suppose it should be noted as well that the current stable version on solaris is v23 i think? and the freebsd implementation is v14 and has just been marked stable a couple of months ago. there might very well be a noticeable performance gap between bsd ZFS and solaris ZFS.

here is another writeup to consider...

http://www.markround.com/archives/35-ZFS-and-caching-for-performance.html

again, i don't think performance is inherently better, but it is certainly different. it caches writes (not just some, A LOT) and returns I/O control back to the application extremely fast. to the user this seems magically fast. but it's not really the case, it's just doing its own thing server side with its own I/O handler.

whether this is useful or not i suppose depends on the application.

[Brian Elfert]

Anybody who hasn't had a Mac problem needs to visit my employer's Mac graveyard. We have a whole room full of Macs in storage that have various problems. We have 100 to 150 Macs in use total.

Our Dell PCs are not perfect either, but most of the problems are laptops, not desktops.

[Greg Peterson]

I had a recording session canceled after an hour and a half because the Mac had a corrupt driver. It had been working earlier in that day.

I don't think the distinction between the two main OS offerings are that significant. And I think both are on relative equal footing in terms of stability and reliability. They are tools, not a lifestyle.

[Phil Thien]

I honestly find that very hard to believe. "Never" had any issues? As in, never ever? Everything you have ever done with those computers has worked perfectly, every time?

Like I said earlier, I service them (PCs and Macs)

I've been stunned to hear friends tell other friends that they never have problems with their Mac when I just fixed their machine (for example, swapped a bad hard drive, or ran-down a goofy software issue) the previous week or so!

I had one customer that had a G4 notebook. He took it to the Apple store because it wouldn't boot. They told him to buy a new machine because fixing the old one would be cost prohibitive [they ALWAYS quote $700 to fix almost ANYTHING. Try it, go to an Apple store and tell them your Macbook screen is funny and they'll tell you a new 13" screen that you can buy on eBay for $100 is going to cost $700 installed].

So he buys the new machine, but then they say they can't migrate his stuff because the old machine isn't booting. Right, that was the problem to begin with.

So he talks to a friend that suggests he bring everything to me. He does. I pull the drive from the G4 and migrate it via the USB port. While he waited. I had to do it twice because something went goofy the first time around.

So anyway, while he is waiting, I look at the G4 machine and figure out the reason it isn't working is because 1 GB module he had added just a few weeks earlier at (of course) the Apple store is defective.

So I look at him and ask "what do you want to do?" I thought he'd at least want the option of returning the new Mac.

He decides he is going to keep the new machine and we will finish the migration. Fine.

So when I'm all done, he pays me, scoops up his stuff, and says "I love Apple, never any problems." He wasn't kidding, he was serious. As if the last two+ hours didn't happen.

I guess if you're a Mac user the only thing that rises to a "problem" is spontaneous combustion of your computer.

[John Coloccia]

Mac has a software advantage for most uses, IMHO. For example, you can turn on Mac's Time Machine backup utility, select your drive and do nothing else, and you will an intelligent backup schedule without doing anything else. That's just one example. Windows software, in general, does not have this level of simplicity. It's not that it COULDN'T have it, but for whatever reason Windows programmers are in a much different space then their target audience.

I come from an "industrial" background in the sense that my software and systems are designed to run autonomously as much as possible and are only to bother a user when there's really something that the user needs to handle. That's an excellent design paradigm that Apple has honed over the years. This is what allows my father to "fix" a lot of his own problems. The options are typically limited to what the average user might like to do, and the power user may have to dig a bit to get at what they want.

Their other advantage is that their market share is so small that no one is really bothering to put great effort into defeating their security measures. I suspect that OSX has huge, gaping security flaws that have yet to be exploited due to lack of interest. That on it's own makes the Mac platform easier to manage than the Windows platform. This will change someday, possibly sooner rather than later given how popular the iPhone and iPod platforms are and how they are fueling Apple's new found popularity. When that happens, I believe Windows will have a distinct advantage of a good, solid decade of the security cat and mouse game they've been playing.

Finally, Apple has fantastic customer support. Before my father calls me, he calls Apple tech support. 9 times out of 10, they walk him through whatever issues he's having. Try calling Microsoft for help on how to resize your Windows or how to get shortcuts on your desktop. For some people, the premium they pay is worth the attention to detail with the interface and a higher standard of support.

But this will change. Apple's just now starting to feel the pain of having gone mainstream and I suspect that they are totally ill prepared for the nightmares of malicious coders coupled with a generally non-savvy user base they've cultivated.

Just my opinion.

[Greg Peterson]

I guess if you're a Mac user the only thing that rises to a "problem" is spontaneous combustion of your computer.

Mac's do not have 'problems'. They just have undocumented 'features'.

[paul cottingham]

Mac will not have the same problems windows does. the security model for the os is completely different, making it much harder to exploit. osx is based on freebsd, which is much more robust than anything in the microsoft universe.

Will it get hacked? of course. as much as windows? of course not.

[John Coloccia]

Nobody hacks the OS anymore. They hack the apps. A few minutes ago I read about a huge PDF file reader hole on the iPhones. I wonder what's lurking in Safari, Garage Band, iPhoto, iTunes, Mail etc that no one has bothered looking at yet.

[Scott Shepherd]

What some of you keep missing is that all that are complaining about Mac's are power users of the PC. You're talking about internal details of how computers work. 99% of what was typed by some of you, the average user has no idea what you are talking about. If you want to compare things on that level, then great. You can make your own conclusions.

However, 99% of the public doesn't care about those details. Here's the things that some of you are missing when people say Mac's are easy to use....

Plug a digital camera into a Mac, it automatically opens up iphoto and says "Do you want to import your photos now?".

Plus a digital camera into a PC and you get the graphic attached below. Many people have no idea what that means. Most people don't understand files and folders as simple as that may be, but how many times have you PC gurus been called when someone can't find their file because they don't know where they saved it? So plugging a digital camera in, and seeing this dialog box is not what SHOULD happen. Now, you'll say "Well, if you go into the file associations and set blah blah blah up, then when you plug the camera in, it will open blah blah blah".

That's exactly the point. With the Mac, you don't have to know, with the PC, you HAVE to know just to use it. It's really that type of stuff that people are talking about when they say it's more friendly to use. It might be hard for some of you to step back to the point when you knew nothing about computers and see that some of the things MS makes you know or understand just to use it daily, the Mac doesn't make you know or understand it. You just use it, you don't have to "learn" it.

Some of you work with Mac's and say they are horrible, well, I'm sure we can go to an Apple forum and find people that use it in enterprise applications that have great success with it. Your own personal experience doesn't statistically blanket across millions of computers automatically. 3 people in this thread said they have had and see problems with them. Okay, how people have and see problems with PC's? Don't everyone raise their hands at once.

It's nothing to do with hardware, what people are trying to convey is that they just seem intuitive to use. Plug a camera in, it opens the photo application. Plug a video camera in, it opens the movie making program, plug a mp3 player in, it opens the music program. You have to admit that makes it intuitive, instead of asking me "Do you want to open this with Roxio, file manager, burn to a DVD, burn a CD, etc.".

That's all anyone's saying. It's intuitive, which is a refreshing change to many.

[Phil Thien]

That's all anyone's saying. It's intuitive, which is a refreshing change to many.

Intuitive?

How about uninstalling an applicaton?

You can just drag an icon to the can. But that doesn't get all of it. Your really should right-click the icon, click on "Show Package Contents" yada yada yada. That is intuitive?

Here is an article on the many ways of uninstalling apps on Mac:

http://guides.macrumors.com/Uninstalling_Applications_in_Mac_OS_X

Again, I have four Macs. I use them frequently. I bought a Mac for my daughter leaving for college. Not a basher.

Just keeping it real.

[Scott Shepherd]

Most people don't uninstall applications either. Most people aren't downloading and installing applications all the time.

[Bryan Morgan]

I suspect that OSX has huge, gaping security flaws that have yet to be exploited due to lack of interest.

They are currently (supposedly) #1 right now for the most security flaws.


Finally, Apple has fantastic customer support.

This is true. Their support has been great the few times I've needed to call them. No better than hp, Dell, or IBM, which are also good. Light years beyond Acer and some other brands though.

[Bryan Morgan]

Mac will not have the same problems windows does. the security model for the os is completely different, making it much harder to exploit. osx is based on freebsd, which is much more robust than anything in the microsoft universe.

Will it get hacked? of course. as much as windows? of course not.

Windows finer grained security blows any *nix out of the water (at least without addons/patches). I hate admitting this, honestly. :)

[Bryan Morgan]

Nobody hacks the OS anymore. They hack the apps. A few minutes ago I read about a huge PDF file reader hole on the iPhones. I wonder what's lurking in Safari, Garage Band, iPhoto, iTunes, Mail etc that no one has bothered looking at yet.


PDFs are a major security problem these days, regardless of platform. Its only going to get worse since Adobe keeps getting further and further away from the original idea of a PDF and now they are becoming multimedia documents that actually run code.

[Eric DeSilva]

Apple has fantastic customer support. Before my father calls me, he calls Apple tech support. 9 times out of 10, they walk him through whatever issues he's having. Try calling Microsoft for help on how to resize your Windows or how to get shortcuts on your desktop. For some people, the premium they pay is worth the attention to detail with the interface and a higher standard of support.

In all my years of dealing with both Apple and Windows computers, I've only recently had to call tech support--due to an issue with an upgrade from XP to Win 7. Even though it was arguable that I'd actually ended up purchasing the wrong upgrade product, a 20 min. call to MS tech support was all that it took to get me up, running, and validated. I also got a trouble ticket number that he assured me would work in the event I ever needed to do a reinstall.

I was expecting a much worse experience. I was very pleasantly surprised.

[Phil Thien]

Most people aren't downloading and installing applications all the time.

LOL, I have more examples if you want them.

Ever see this?


According to Computerworld (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139250/Snow_Leopard_bug_deletes_all_user_data?source=CTWN LE_nlt_pm_2009-10-12) and several other sources, a bug in Mac OS X Snow Leopard has the potential to delete all personal data from a Macintosh. CNET says that Apple has acknowledged the problem (http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10373064-260.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=News-Apple) and is working on a fix. CNET also reports that “Snow Leopard has been plagued with bugs since its release, including problems with the Finder hanging or crashing, incompatibility with certain apps, and the AirPort connection dropping.”
I have. Twice.

The only reason I'm being somewhat militant about this is that some people that use Windows machines really believe the grass is greener on the Mac side.

Googling "mac problem" shows 85 million hits.

Googling "windows problem" shows 146 million.

Now, Mac has 5% market share. There are 10-15 times as many Windows machines out there.

That Google math isn't adding-up in Mac's favor.

[Neal Clayton]

but they're 'magical' because the ads say so?

[Scott Shepherd]

Phil, I certainly hope you don't use google hits for any statistical data.

You could say "mac problems" and it would bring up hits for anything that said "no problems with my mac" or "terrible problems with my mac".

Google hits are a horrific way to measure anything.

If you want to debate windows problems vs. Mac problems, that's a different thread. I never said Mac's don't have problems, I said they are intuitive for lay people to use. I'm not sure how you can argue against that.

[paul cottingham]

Windows finer grained security blows any *nix out of the water (at least without addons/patches). I hate admitting this, honestly. :)

I'm not talking about fine grainedness (is that even a word?) I'm talking abouy user level apps running as a priveleged user- something that unix avoids. OS level exploits usually exploit the security model, not how finely you've tuned permissions. And windows security model sucks. not to put too fine a point on it.

[Phil Thien]

Phil, I certainly hope you don't use google hits for any statistical data.

I do all the time. :eek:

It is great for making very raw comparisons.


You could say "mac problems" and it would bring up hits for anything that said "no problems with my mac" or "terrible problems with my mac".

But the same is true for Windows.

Here, let's refine by searching for a phrase...

"I hate my mac" returns 813,000 hits.
"I hate windows" returns 320,000 hits.
"I hate my dell" returns 123,000 hits.


Google hits are a horrific way to measure anything.

If you want to debate windows problems vs. Mac problems, that's a different thread. I never said Mac's don't have problems, I said they are intuitive for lay people to use. I'm not sure how you can argue against that.

I thought by you saying the Mac was intuitive that you were implying that Windows isn't.

It was just my point that there are more similarities than differences between the two.

[Bryan Morgan]

Plug a digital camera into a Mac, it automatically opens up iphoto and says "Do you want to import your photos now?".

Hmm, just plugged an Epson 10000XL scanner into a Mac pro and guess what happened? Nothing. Installed the appropriate software and drivers and guess what happened? Nothing. The scanner works fine on a PC, we have a few of them actually. Supposed to work fine on a Mac and works fine on this same machine with 10.4, but not 10.5.8. Yeah, Macs just work.....:rolleyes:

I'll beat it into submission one way or another :D

[Bryan Morgan]

LOL, I have more examples if you want them.

Ever see this?

According to Computerworld (http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139250/Snow_Leopard_bug_deletes_all_user_data?source=CTWN LE_nlt_pm_2009-10-12) and several other sources, a bug in Mac OS X Snow Leopard has the potential to delete all personal data from a Macintosh. CNET says that Apple has acknowledged the problem (http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10373064-260.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=News-Apple) and is working on a fix. CNET also reports that “Snow Leopard has been plagued with bugs since its release, including problems with the Finder hanging or crashing, incompatibility with certain apps, and the AirPort connection dropping.”


We had a brand new factory fresh Mac Pro with 10.6 that wouldn't reboot or shut down. It would just show you a light blue screen and then dump you back at the desktop. Luckily our reinstall fixed it. We've had Macs lose data but many more Windows boxes just outright destroy user profiles.

[Bryan Morgan]

but they're 'magical' because the ads say so?

Not only magical, but "the best" and "the fastest" :p

[Bryan Morgan]

I'm not talking about fine grainedness (is that even a word?) I'm talking abouy user level apps running as a priveleged user- something that unix avoids. OS level exploits usually exploit the security model, not how finely you've tuned permissions. And windows security model sucks. not to put too fine a point on it.

Ah, right, at the OS or kernel level. I agree.

[Scott Shepherd]

Hmm, just plugged an Epson 10000XL scanner into a Mac pro and guess what happened? Nothing. Installed the appropriate software and drivers and guess what happened? Nothing. The scanner works fine on a PC, we have a few of them actually. Supposed to work fine on a Mac and works fine on this same machine with 10.4, but not 10.5.8. Yeah, Macs just work.....:rolleyes:

I'll beat it into submission one way or another :D

Did I say "Plug a scanner in and it opens up something"?

I said, Plug a CAMERA in and it opens iphoto and wants to import the photos.

If you really want to pick the machines apart, we can go down that path.

You can't take everything so literally. I don't think you'll ever see a post I said that says Mac's work perfectly. In fact, I've said several times in this thread, they have problems too, but I guess that gets overlooked when you're trying to find fault in anything anyone else says....

Do you really want to get into how well windows works? Can we talk about how "plug and play" got the stereotype of "plug and pray"? It might work, it might not.

Honestly, just because you find one fault with a machine, printer, scanner, or computer, doesn't make the entire line garbage.

Like I said about 3 pages ago. If they are SOOOOOOOOOOOOO horrible, why do people keep lining up to buy them for premium pricing? I guess every since person that buys a mac is stoooooopid and just wasted their money or bought it because they want to get the decal that comes in the box so they can put it on the VW beetle.

Yeah, Vista was a dream to work with, wasn't it? We'll all just forget about Windows ME, Vista, etc., etc, and then will rip apart Mac's because plugging a scanner in didn't bring up a magic dialogue box? Wow, that's a real stretch to find fault.

[Bryan Morgan]

Did I say "Plug a scanner in and it opens up something"?

This scanner, while expensive, is not abnormal in any way. You can buy it at consumer electronic stores. Says it works with a Mac right on the box. I would have assumed the magical ease of a Mac would have it up and running shortly after I plugged it in.... :D It actually worked fine with an older Mac a year or so ago.


I said, Plug a CAMERA in and it opens iphoto and wants to import the photos.

With every camera, or just newer models that actually support a Mac?


Do you really want to get into how well windows works? Can we talk about how "plug and play" got the stereotype of "plug and pray"? It might work, it might not.

I have no disagreement here. ;)


Honestly, just because you find one fault with a machine, printer, scanner, or computer, doesn't make the entire line garbage.

Conversely, just because somebody got lucky with a particular combination of hardware and software does not make it the holy grail of computing. :)


Like I said about 3 pages ago. If they are SOOOOOOOOOOOOO horrible, why do people keep lining up to buy them for premium pricing? I guess every since person that buys a mac is stoooooopid and just wasted their money or bought it because they want to get the decal that comes in the box so they can put it on the VW beetle.

As was mentioned in the beginning of this thread: Marketing. REALLY good marketing. Funny point about the Apple decal though, didn't think of that. ;)


Yeah, Vista was a dream to work with, wasn't it? We'll all just forget about Windows ME, Vista, etc., etc, and then will rip apart Mac's because plugging a scanner in didn't bring up a magic dialogue box? Wow, that's a real stretch to find fault.

No argument about Windows, I agree with you. Just saying that all these people running around saying Macs are soooooo easy and rarely/never have issues are blinded by marketing hype or some strange zealotry. Maybe they could just be extra lucky, but I'm not buying it.

Not only does this scanner not pop up a dialog box, its just flat out not working. I can only assume I am doing something wrong or missed something along the way... but then, while I will be able to fix it, I don't know how grandma would be able to handle it. :D

[Scott Shepherd]

Bryan, I think you are missing my point.

I've told this story about 6 times on here, so let's go for 7. My parents are in their 70's. Have had PC's since they came out. Bought my Mom a digital camera one year, she took lots of pictures, couldn't figure out how to get them on the computer by herself.

Got calls on a weekly basis on "it's asking me if I want to do something, what do I tell it?". Spent hours and hours driving over there and back saying "yeah, that's safe to say okay to". Just a royal pain in MY butt and I didn't even own the computer.

Uploaded some photos on there, told her to email me some of them. Couldn't figure out how to do it.

Got them a Mac Mini. My Mom plugs her camera in, it opens up, brings all the photos in, she's easily able to email photos to her friends and family and she's having a blast.

So what's the difference there? If she couldn't do many things before because it was so confusing and now she's doing it all, apparently something changed. She didn't go to class. She didn't enroll in college. So what made the computer easier for her to do the simple tasks that most people do? Did she need to install something magical? Did she have to buy extra software? Did she have to pay someone to come set something up? Did she suddenly get computer savvy and know all the answers to those questions the computer keeps asking her permission to do? Nope.

On the flip side, I got called to hook up a printer to a Macbook pro. Printer was sold to them by the apple store at the time of purchase of the computer. Darned if I could get the wireless printer to work. I spent hours trying to make that printer work. Never did get it to work. Told her to buy a longer cable. Plug it in and it works, but not wireless like it's supposed to.

That type of stuff is exactly NOT what I'm talking about. I'm talking about situations exactly like my parents.

I use a PC every single day, 7 days a week, normally about 10-12 hours per day. Does it hang up, crash, have problems. Yup, all the time. I've been on computers since computers came out, VIC20, Commodore 64 times, and at this point in my life, I'm sick of all of them. My home router died about 2 years ago and I never replaced it. Haven't turned that computer on in 2 years and haven't missed it a bit.

I used to love technology, but I've about had all the technology I want for this lifetime. I'd be quite happy going back to no cell phones and pay phones all along the roads :)

[Brian Ashton]

There is obviously more going on behing the eyes of people that engage in these debates. You don't hear the same rage, passion... when you talk about your favourite wrench, tv...

It's quite interesting in a way as there is a clear and easily seen difference in the people that are passionate about macs and those obsessed with pcs. It very similar to the the right/left wing polical divide.

[Tim Morton]

This scanner, while expensive, is not abnormal in any way. You can buy it at consumer electronic stores. Says it works with a Mac right on the box. I would have assumed the magical ease of a Mac would have it up and running shortly after I plugged it in.... :D It actually worked fine with an older Mac a year or so ago.:D

The scanner is supported under snow leapard... did you import the twain driver properly? It is different in CS5 than it was in CS4 or 3...

[Greg Peterson]

Plug a video camera in, it opens the movie making program, plug a mp3 player in, it opens the music program. You have to admit that makes it intuitive, instead of asking me "Do you want to open this with Roxio, file manager, burn to a DVD, burn a CD, etc.".


Following your progression, eventually we get to plugging in a scanner. Pretty common peripheral these days.

Perhaps a Mac is intuitive to someone that doesn't have any experience with computers. I find the Mac GUI counterintuitive. What's so intuitive about having two delete keys?

As for people that opinion that people don't download and install a lot of stuff, every computer I come across is chock full of applets and free crap programs. People seem to be drawn to the enticing offer of a free program that does something they consider neat or curious.

I'll give you that Mac's are intuitive to beginners if you'll agree that Mac's are not the rock of Gibraltar they are made out to be.

[Greg Peterson]

The scanner is supported under snow leapard... did you import the twain driver properly? It is different in CS5 than it was in CS4 or 3...

That just sounds so much like PC talk. I thought the whole idea of Mac was to insulate the user from this kind of jargon and processes? Importing twain drivers? You think a newbie is going to understand that?

[Neal Clayton]

There is obviously more going on behing the eyes of people that engage in these debates. You don't hear the same rage, passion... when you talk about your favourite wrench, tv...

It's quite interesting in a way as there is a clear and easily seen difference in the people that are passionate about macs and those obsessed with pcs. It very similar to the the right/left wing political divide.

you missed all the festool/sawstop threads?

that used to be plasma versus LCD tv threads?

it has little to do with facts, reality, or the products in question. it's purely psychological.

[Bryan Morgan]

Bryan, I think you are missing my point.

Nope not at all. I just have different experiences and feel the need to counter the Mac hype. If nothing else to get people to research all their options before plopping tons of cash that may or may not work for them despite what the marketing and zealots tell them. :)



I use a PC every single day, 7 days a week, normally about 10-12 hours per day. Does it hang up, crash, have problems. Yup, all the time. I've been on computers since computers came out, VIC20, Commodore 64 times, and at this point in my life, I'm sick of all of them. My home router died about 2 years ago and I never replaced it. Haven't turned that computer on in 2 years and haven't missed it a bit.

I used to love technology, but I've about had all the technology I want for this lifetime. I'd be quite happy going back to no cell phones and pay phones all along the roads :)


I agree with all of this, which is precisely why I got into woodworking and love using hand tools over power tools. :D At work I constantly tell my co-workers "F this, I'm going to go be a garbage man!" :D

[Jim Koepke]

This scanner, while expensive, is not abnormal in any way. You can buy it at consumer electronic stores. Says it works with a Mac right on the box. I would have assumed the magical ease of a Mac would have it up and running shortly after I plugged it in.... It actually worked fine with an older Mac a year or so ago.

Does it say which Mac OS it is going to work with?

I am sure something that worked in Window 3.1 is going to need different drivers if it is going to work in Vista.

Same with a Mac, when you move from 10.4.x to 10.5.x, chances are the driver needs to be updated.

If you are not going to be happy with something that doesn't just work no matter what you plug in anywhere, then computers are not for you.

For people who like things to be easier to accomplish, Macs have been the choice for years.

I like to do what I want on my computer without having to fight with it at every turn. That is why my machine has been a Mac for many years.

Gee, one of my scanners worked on my old Mac but won't work on my new Mac. That is because I am not going to move the SCSI card from the old machine into the new machine.

jim

[paul cottingham]

Nope not at all. I just have different experiences and feel the need to counter the Mac hype. If nothing else to get people to research all their options before plopping tons of cash that may or may not work for them despite what the marketing and zealots tell them. :)





I agree with all of this, which is precisely why I got into woodworking and love using hand tools over power tools. :D At work I constantly tell my co-workers "F this, I'm going to go be a garbage man!" :D

testify!

I am retired from teaching and consulting, and miss tinkering, but that's it. Replaced it with woodworking. Thats frustrating enough. :-)

[Bryan Morgan]

The scanner is supported under snow leapard... did you import the twain driver properly? It is different in CS5 than it was in CS4 or 3...

Yeah, it turned out to be a permission problem. Whether the drivers and software were installed as the user using the admin account or straight into the local admin account it would not work. We use directory services for the user accounts (active directory). Nothing would work as the user, which is odd because things usually work. I logged in as an admin and ran the scan software (Silverfast, and CS5) and it worked ok. Logged in as the user and it worked ok. Something was hanging up in the user account even when using admin credentials to install things. Running the software as admin allowed whatever files it needed to be written. Weird.

No grandma could have figured that out. :) Of course no grandma would be using active directory accounts for their users either I suppose...:p

Macs work perfectly fine on Windows domains. 10.5 worked a little better than 10.6 though.

[Bryan Morgan]

It's quite interesting in a way as there is a clear and easily seen difference in the people that are passionate about macs and those obsessed with pcs. It very similar to the the right/left wing polical divide.

I hate them all, as well as the political divide :p

[Bryan Morgan]

Does it say which Mac OS it is going to work with?

I am sure something that worked in Window 3.1 is going to need different drivers if it is going to work in Vista.

Same with a Mac, when you move from 10.4.x to 10.5.x, chances are the driver needs to be updated.

If you are not going to be happy with something that doesn't just work no matter what you plug in anywhere, then computers are not for you.

For people who like things to be easier to accomplish, Macs have been the choice for years.

I like to do what I want on my computer without having to fight with it at every turn. That is why my machine has been a Mac for many years.

Gee, one of my scanners worked on my old Mac but won't work on my new Mac. That is because I am not going to move the SCSI card from the old machine into the new machine.

jim


It simply says "OSX". What kind of computer newb is going to know the difference between 10.3, 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, etc or all the feline names? Grandma won't know that her scanner/camera/USB monkey plasma ball only works in 10.4 and has limited functionality in 10.5 and doesn't work at all in 10.6. Even if they all have a USB or firewire port.... Thats some downright Windows pots and kettles lacking hue and brightness stuff right there! :p CS5 only works on Intel Macs even though G5's work fine for most things. Does grandma know if she has a G5 or a Core2 or Xeon? Not that grandmas would be using CS5... just sayin' :)

[Bryan Morgan]

testify!

I am retired from teaching and consulting, and miss tinkering, but that's it. Replaced it with woodworking. Thats frustrating enough. :-)

Yeah but woodworking is tangible! I can wire up a BGP/MPLS solution at locations all around the state and if it works fine nobody says anything except maybe its "too slow". :) Nobody understands the router programming behind it. Nobody knows the aggregated internet connection failed over to another location because some butt head dug up the fiber in the street and their internet magically stays up and running. Nobody cares that their data gets throttled because there is a high volume of VOIP calls going through and CoS is managing the traffic. Nobody cares that one of the iSCSI concentrators dropped a hard drive and the heartbeat failed it over to the backup unit, keeping all of their files online and ready to access. All you hear about is things not working (Why can't I get to this internet site! Well, clearly the security gateway found some malicious code and saved you from getting infected. I don't care! I want my bonzi buddy!). While occasionally you get to go home wearing a superman cape and feeling good, most of the time you go home wondering what the heck you accomplished even though you were super busy that day. And I don't really do helpdesk type stuff!! No, working with wood gets you something tangible that is equal or greater than the work you put into it. I love networks and programming routers and whatnot. But things never really change from small metal or plastic blinking boxes no matter how cool or complex the programming inside is...:)

[Mike Minto]

You know, 'lighthearted' image aside, it sure seems like Mac owners have less of a sense of humor about computers than PC users. When shopping for software some time ago, I even got told once at a big office supply store that I didn't 'look like' a Mac user (I'm not now, but I did have a IIGS back before the girl who said that to me was even born :rolleyes:).

[Scott Shepherd]

I'll give you that Mac's are intuitive to beginners if you'll agree that Mac's are not the rock of Gibraltar they are made out to be.

Gladly, just show me where I said they were. My claim in this all, which is even confirmed by some of you against Mac's, is that Mac's are easy to use for someone without computer experience. I don't recall saying Mac's were anything other than that.

Will computers lock up, crash, or do unexpected things? Yup. Doesn't matter who's name is on the label.

[David Weaver]

You know, 'lighthearted' image aside, it sure seems like Mac owners have less of a sense of humor about computers than PC users.

definitely true :)

There is a minority that is really rabid, to the point of putting apple stickers on their cars and wearing apple clothing, and bringing up computers when you're trying to do things like eat dinner.

[paul cottingham]

You know, 'lighthearted' image aside, it sure seems like Mac owners have less of a sense of humor about computers than PC users. When shopping for software some time ago, I even got told once at a big office supply store that I didn't 'look like' a Mac user (I'm not now, but I did have a IIGS back before the girl who said that to me was even born :rolleyes:).

If you follow Dilbert at all, Scott Adams claims all *nix users have facial hair and wear suspenders. So we are easy to spot apparently.

I'm guilty on one count.

[Bryan Morgan]

If you follow Dilbert at all, Scott Adams claims all *nix users have facial hair and wear suspenders. So we are easy to spot apparently.

I'm guilty on one count.


I'm a stereotypical nerd, minus the glasses. :D I even had a pony tail and a scruffy halfassed beard thing going on at one time too... :p Though I do have a bit more muscle mass than most other nerds I know, save for maybe someone like Joe Lauzon...:)

[Brian Ashton]

definitely true :)

There is a minority that is really rabid, to the point of putting apple stickers on their cars and wearing apple clothing, and bringing up computers when you're trying to do things like eat dinner.

I wasn't going to mention it... But now that you've brought it up... There are those mac owners that appear to treat that box like it's one of the family! LOL It's a bit worrisome actually.

[Brian Ashton]

You know, 'lighthearted' image aside, it sure seems like Mac owners have less of a sense of humor about computers than PC users. When shopping for software some time ago, I even got told once at a big office supply store that I didn't 'look like' a Mac user (I'm not now, but I did have a IIGS back before the girl who said that to me was even born :rolleyes:).

Robin Williams summed up being a mac owner. He said buying software for a mac was like buying porno movies. They're hidden away in a dark, dusty back corner of the store - so you can have some anonymity.

[Greg Peterson]

My boss finally told me keep any complaints about her Mac to myself. She never gave me that directive when she had a PC on her desk and I had to work on it.

I just don't get the Apple thing. Perhaps it's a sense of community or a tribal connection similar to how people feel about their favorite sports team.

Then again, guys will argue all day about how a Gibson Les Paul is superior to a Fender Strat or Tele. They just can't see the truth. :D

[John Coloccia]

Tribal connection. LOL. Has anyone else noticed that people who talk about Macs just can't help but make ridiculous comments about Mac owners? The only tribal anything I see is years of brainwashing that make you think that Mac owners are all sitting around a campfire burning incense and singing Kumbayah.

Re: reliability, ease of use, etc

jim: "I bought a Delta Unisaw because I wanted reliability and ease of use"
bob: "They're nothing special. I read somewhere that someones brother had to replace the motor in his once."

Tom: "my ryobi cuts just fine and has NEVER broken down"

pat: "I had to go over to my friend's house once and show him how to align the fence"

Tim: "I don't get what the attraction to Delta Unisaws are. It must be like some sort of tribal connection or something".

ROFL.

[Greg Peterson]

The only thing I can think of that would explain the unified front presented by Mac users is their sense of community. There is no denying the devotion of the Mac community. I'm mystified by it, as are many others.

Mac's may be the cat's meow, but at least with a PC if you say anything less than complimentary about 'em no one takes offense.

I could and did malign the boss' PC and MS for years without a single word from her. Two or three negative comments about her IMac and it was 'shush it'. Now I have to speak in reverential tones about the IMac. And from what I have read and seen on line, her attitude is not unique.

Go figure.

[Jim Koepke]

The only thing I can think of that would explain the unified front presented by Mac users is their sense of community. There is no denying the devotion of the Mac community. I'm mystified by it, as are many others.

Mac's may be the cat's meow, but at least with a PC if you say anything less than complimentary about 'em no one takes offense.

I could and did malign the boss' PC and MS for years without a single word from her. Two or three negative comments about her IMac and it was 'shush it'. Now I have to speak in reverential tones about the IMac. And from what I have read and seen on line, her attitude is not unique.

Go figure.

I am not sure about other people who use Macs, for me, most of the time it just works like I want it to work. Maybe it is like the Chevy community or the Ford community. I drive a Dodge truck. Are any of those better than the other? Probably not, but they will all beat a Yugo.

PC users are always carping about how the PC is a better machine. Do you think this thread would be over 100 posts if the PC community didn't care?

Do you really have to "speak in reverential tones"? Or is it cut the carping and help me with this problem? Maybe a mistake was made thinking an iMac would do the work and that is why they would rather not hear it.

PCs ran for years with lowered expectations because they crashed all the time. They would hang up all the time. They would get finicky and not perform tasks they would do the day before. People expected less from PCs and it was the stumbling block in the room that no one knew how to replace. The best argument for PCs was that they were cheaper. When we buy quality tools, we know where buying on price takes you. The other argument came down to there were gazillions of programs for the PC that were not available for the Mac. Of course, not many needed all of those programs.

One person's reason was that you had to pay for all the programs you ran on the Mac and you could just pirate them on a PC. That is when I learned a lot of my co-workers would just make copies of software and pass it around like fresh baked cookies.

I feel if someone spends their time making something to make my work or life easier or more enjoyable I should not try to steal it from them. There is a strong feeling in most of the Mac users I know that software and even shareware should be paid for. Maybe that is the invisible bond of the Mac community.

jim

[Neal Clayton]

PC users are always carping about how the PC is a better machine. Do you think this thread would be over 100 posts if the PC community didn't care?



now you're giving us a straw man argument. that's why the thread is over 100 replies.

no windows user is saying that the machine is better. the machine is no different. apple is using the same intel/nvidia/ati parts that dell is.

that's our argument, that the machine is the same, and when the machine is the same yet one costs 800 dollars more than another that's basically identical, people take note of that and talk about it.

the political debate-style defenses offered up by the apple users to defend the glaring difference in price between identical machines draw out those 100+ replies.

[Shawn Pixley]

I think it is that sense of community as well. I use PC's at work and Macs at home. I sit here today having the first problem I have ever encountered on my 10 year old, twice upgraded mac (admittedly it was a top of the line mac when I originally got it). I have fixed problems on other's macs. It turned out that a Ram slot failed. I fixed the problem and will live with it for a while longer. 2 Gigs is enough for my current use. Conversely I am on my third PC laptop this year at work. I have it crash 2-3 times per day.

The mac community is strong because of the bashing they received for so many years. "No games for you computer. You buy software, why not get a PC and go to XYXYXY Site and download a cracked copy for free? Just learn the code and you won't need the fancy interface." When I have a problem with Macs it is usually because I overthink it and try to make it harder than it is. Burn a DVD? - Drag and Drop. Edit a movie cut and paste. The antagonism faced by Mac users over time caused them to band together to help solve each others problems. This has created a strong devoted core of Mac aficionados.

I am not claiming that one is superior to the other, I prefer the mac because it allows me and my individual work practice to be the focus of my attention rather than the computer be the focus of my attention. Your mileage may vary

[Neal Clayton]

well alot of that imo is because of the vast difference in number of users between the operating systems.

windows, being the default, has alot of garbage software available for it, not just a little. a good bit of that garbage software is included with the machine too, so you don't have to actively acquire it, you have to actively get rid of it.

for someone to actively develop software for the mac they have to have a reason for making something for the smaller base of users. so one would expect that in most cases that software will be useful, not just a rehash of some other software designed to skim the total profit of the particular market the software pitches to.

for instance, non windows users point to the abundance of registry cleaners, temp file cleaners, etc. as an example of windows' inferiority. but they fail to mention that all of those cleaner programs are worthless, they're just an attempt to get a few people out of a large base of users to buy something they don't need. if OSX were 90% of the OS market it would have temp file cleaners for sale for 20 bucks too. and they would be just as worthless on OSX as they are on windows.

[John Coloccia]

for someone to actively develop software for the mac they have to have a reason for making something for the smaller base of users. so one would expect that in most cases that software will be useful, not just a rehash of some other software designed to skim the total profit of the particular market the software pitches to.


OK, now we're getting to something I know something about. IMHO, one thing holding Mac software back is their archaic and quirky development environment. I believe that if they had a reasonable set of tools like Microsoft and Unix/Linux/etc, more people would develop and port software over to the Mac platform. Their Xcode development suite is from the dark ages of computing.

Objective C is, IMHO, a blight on Mac programming and should be put out of its misery. So should C++, incidentally, but Microsoft found a way to use C++ in a way that brought a tremendous amount of power to the platform. VB.net and C#, while new fangled and strange at first to folks like me that grew up on C, C++ and various flavors of assembly, are so simple and powerful that I don't really mind them too much either. I can be productive in minutes. To get that on the Mac I either have to switch to a different paradigm or drop into something like Java...and don't even get me started on that. :D

If Apple really wants to do something good for itself and the community at large, they should drop that Objective C and XCode nonsense, and build a modern environment around a modern systems programming language like D, for example. For the life of me, I can't understand how they can put so much time and effort into getting their interfaces simple and intuitive, and then saddle us Xcode. That's just my opinion.

[Greg Peterson]

Do you really have to "speak in reverential tones"? Or is it cut the carping and help me with this problem? Maybe a mistake was made thinking an iMac would do the work and that is why they would rather not hear it.


Absolutely I must use reverential tones. I am not exaggerating. Like I said, she didn't have any objections to my carping about Windows.

If anyone is the perfect candidate for a Mac, she is it. But she struggles with anything other than browsing the WWW and maybe email. File management is a concept that evades her, and frankly I find Apple's interface on this task lacking.

Mac's are fine. In my experience, they are not the end all, be all their users claim. After all, from a hard ware perspective they are no different than a PC. WinTel/MacTel, you decide. YMMV.

[Jim Koepke]

no windows user is saying that the machine is better. the machine is no different. apple is using the same intel/nvidia/ati parts that dell is.

Others do not agree with this:

Mr. Winkler served as the expert witness for Advanced Internet Technologies, which filed the lawsuit in 2007, saying that Dell had refused to take responsibility for 2,000 computers it sold A.I.T., an Internet services company. A.I.T. said that it had lost millions of dollars in business as a result.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/technology/29dell.html?pagewanted=2&ref=technology

Apple had a similar supply problem with capacitors as Dell. They took care of it.

I have had Apple take care of a monitor at no cost after it was 3 years old.

My PC using friends are always having to buy a new machine more often than me.

A very important consideration for PC makers is price. Apple doesn't have to play that game. They can and do build a more solid product.

Secretly though, I hope Macs stay in the minority enough that those virus writers and hackers will leave us alone.

jim

[Phil Thien]

Others do not agree with this:

Mr. Winkler served as the expert witness for Advanced Internet Technologies, which filed the lawsuit in 2007, saying that Dell had refused to take responsibility for 2,000 computers it sold A.I.T., an Internet services company. A.I.T. said that it had lost millions of dollars in business as a result.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/technology/29dell.html?pagewanted=2&ref=technology

Apple had a similar supply problem with capacitors as Dell. They took care of it.

I have had Apple take care of a monitor at no cost after it was 3 years old.

My PC using friends are always having to buy a new machine more often than me.

A very important consideration for PC makers is price. Apple doesn't have to play that game. They can and do build a more solid product.

Secretly though, I hope Macs stay in the minority enough that those virus writers and hackers will leave us alone.

jim


(from August 2007 email)
"I have a lab of 17 Dual 2.7Ghz G5s that are all now leaking their coolant - all at once. A significant number are dead in the water and the rest are just holding on right now. Symptoms are wide-ranged but will include fans spinning wildly, machines shutting down when they heat up, greenish liquid leaking from the case, and if you are able to look, crystalized liquid forming where the CPU meets the heatsink as well as corrosion of all the metal surrounding the CPU module.
Eventually, the machines just stop working altogether necessitating a replacement of CPU, Logic Board, Power Supply, and two smaller parts. (If you spot a coolant leak DO NOT keep using it.-Mike) In one case the power supply started to shoot off black smoke and then died. (some others noted this also when the coolant leaked into the power supply.) As of yet, Apple has been fairly unresponsive in fixing or replacing them and I am now working on making this more public. I am curious to know if any other people are having this problem. I know of 3 other cases outside our own lab here. The machines in our lab were the first of the dual 2.7GHz - they were bought right when they came out.
-Zach M.
Systems & Network Administrator
Instructional Development at UCSB"



The above is not a unique scenario. A lab at the MCW (Medical College of Wisconsin) underwent similar pain. Every day they'd come in and smell cooking coolant. Funny how just a couple years earlier they were telling me they were switching to all Mac because Apples were "so powerful and so reliable." After the LC fiasco, they started the switch back.


And what about the antenna problem on the iPhone? They really stepped up on that. Free skins for everyone. LOL.


The point you (EVERYONE) is missing is the common denominator.


These machines (Macs and Windows) are conceived of, designed, produced, and supported by imperfect, irrational, sometimes unscrupulous PEOPLE.


We (you, me, everyone else) are the common denominator.


You show me a case where Apple is more responsive to an issue, I'll match it with one where they are less responsive.


Because as hard as an organization may try to be better/different, all organizations are simply comprised of people that go home at the end of the day and deal with issues like infidelity and the illness of a child and parents with Alzheimer's and being upside down on a mortgage, etc.


So when confronted by someone that says "product A is superior to product B" my answer is almost universally "that is pretty unlikely given that both are made with the same components and designed to perform the same function."


It is almost all perception, placebo, and rationalization.


And when the masses line up around the block to buy the phone from the outfit that can do no wrong, only to discover that holding the phone a certain way results in dropped calls, people realize that they traded one set of problems (with their old phone) for another.


Case in point is Toyota. It took a while but was really only a matter of time before people realized that Toyota was no different than any other car manufacturer.

Concentrate on the similarities, and the differences vanish.


Philosophical enough for you?

[Neal Clayton]

Others do not agree with this:

Mr. Winkler served as the expert witness for Advanced Internet Technologies, which filed the lawsuit in 2007, saying that Dell had refused to take responsibility for 2,000 computers it sold A.I.T., an Internet services company. A.I.T. said that it had lost millions of dollars in business as a result.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/technology/29dell.html?pagewanted=2&ref=technology

Apple had a similar supply problem with capacitors as Dell. They took care of it.

I have had Apple take care of a monitor at no cost after it was 3 years old.

My PC using friends are always having to buy a new machine more often than me.

A very important consideration for PC makers is price. Apple doesn't have to play that game. They can and do build a more solid product.

Secretly though, I hope Macs stay in the minority enough that those virus writers and hackers will leave us alone.

jim

there...is...no...difference.

there are only a handful of manufacturing facilities for all of the parts, they all come off of the same assembly lines, they all use reference designs from intel.

there is no way that a mac has even 50 more dollars worth of parts in it than an equivalent PC. it's mathematically impossible. the parts cost what they cost, and neither dell or apple make the parts, they both buy them from the same suppliers.

the bottom line is you're paying 600-800 dollars more for OSX. if that's worth it to you, great! but don't try to tell us that a C2D and a GTS250 stuck on an intel motherboard from apple is any better than the ones in a white box from newegg. it simply is not the case, they're the same.



OK, now we're getting to something I know something about. IMHO, one thing holding Mac software back is their archaic and quirky development environment. I believe that if they had a reasonable set of tools like Microsoft and Unix/Linux/etc, more people would develop and port software over to the Mac platform. Their Xcode development suite is from the dark ages of computing.

Objective C is, IMHO, a blight on Mac programming and should be put out of its misery. So should C++, incidentally, but Microsoft found a way to use C++ in a way that brought a tremendous amount of power to the platform. VB.net and C#, while new fangled and strange at first to folks like me that grew up on C, C++ and various flavors of assembly, are so simple and powerful that I don't really mind them too much either. I can be productive in minutes. To get that on the Mac I either have to switch to a different paradigm or drop into something like Java...and don't even get me started on that. :D

If Apple really wants to do something good for itself and the community at large, they should drop that Objective C and XCode nonsense, and build a modern environment around a modern systems programming language like D, for example. For the life of me, I can't understand how they can put so much time and effort into getting their interfaces simple and intuitive, and then saddle us Xcode. That's just my opinion.

well i'm not a programmer other than simple web languages so can't comment on that, but don't give them too much credit on their interface. there was a comment above about it being like using an old X11 SGI machine. from my use of it, that analogy is not too far off, honestly. sure it looks snappy, until it runs into an error, then it handles that error every bit as badly as any X11 desktop ever did.

[Tim Morton]

make it stop....please:cool::cool:

[Scott Shepherd]

[INDENT]
And what about the antenna problem on the iPhone? They really stepped up on that. Free skins for everyone. LOL.

You mean this problem?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJG7pbSRvJ8&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b-aoZNv-q0&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anbD8HCRKGA&feature=channel

What's Motorola and Nokia done to resolve the same issue?

Published last week :)

[Phil Thien]

You mean this problem?

What's Motorola and Nokia done to resolve the same issue?

Published last week :)

You're just reinforcing my point. Tit for tat and I'll never run out of either when comparing Apple to anyone else.

Again, the reason is simple. Just re-read my post.

It is nearly religion, all of it. Watch Steve Jobs on stage at a conference and you'll see what I mean. Thousands of people hanging on his every word, akin to a revival. Conferences where he didn't appear are let-downs for attendees.

And I'm not saying it is just Apple. Bill Gates groupies were the same before he decided to retire from day-to-day.

Whether people know it or like it or not, most have bought in at some level.

They don't buy things, they invest themselves in things.

[Jim Pletcher]

:mad:
My dog is bigger than your dog!!

[Scott Shepherd]

Phil, my point was that no matter what the actual evidence is, those against apple will refuse to apply the evidence.

In the iphone case, it made front page news all over the world. The iphone 4 is a disaster, etc, etc. It's a flawed design and everyone's losing calls.

However, the evidence isn't there to support that claim. The iphone 4 had a lower percentage of complaints to apple than any previous phone. It was something like far less than 1% of people had problems with the signal, where as something like 4% had signal problems with the previous phone and there was no media frenzy to take the phone or company down at that time.

Apple came out, said it was a problem all phones had, and everyone said they were just covering up. So you post videos of other phones doing the same thing the iphone does and it's immediately dismissed by others.

Even you brought the antenna issue up. Why? To show it's a flawed product? If so, then post about the Droid and Nokia being flawed too, because they have the same problem. The problem is, those are discounted as "not true" by those that want to trash apple.

I don't own a mac and I don't own apple stock, so I have no dog in this fight. I just try to see both sides, in the iphone case, the data supports it's the best phone they have every launched, but if you read the headlines, it's the worst. So which is right? The people that use it, or the people that criticize it? I'd listen to those that use it, rather than the headlines news.

[John Coloccia]

Tit for tat and I'll never run out of either when comparing Apple to anyone else.
...
...
It is nearly religion, all of it.
...
...

Problem with tit for tat is none of it is statistically significant. I generally ignore tit for tat arguments.

re: religion
It makes people feel better about their own purchases when they can marginalize other people's purchases of a competing product as some sort of brainwashing or zealotry...or maybe even religion? :confused:

LOL. Everyone have a beautiful Sunday morning! :D The weather here today is uncharacteristically cool and dry for a New England summer. No 98F with 95% humidity. It's about 80F and dry. That's about 26.66C if you prefer it in metric. :p

[Tim Morton]

Time for divine intervention...

http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/54/facepalm_statue.jpg
__________________

[Eric DeSilva]

One person's reason was that you had to pay for all the programs you ran on the Mac and you could just pirate them on a PC. That is when I learned a lot of my co-workers would just make copies of software and pass it around like fresh baked cookies.

There are a lot of good arguments for and against the Mac. But in my experience, that isn't one of them. I participate in a very high tech users forum that is pretty pro-Apple, all things considered. One issue I continually have is arguing about piracy with those people--neither Apple users, nor *nix users, are disproportionate in their advocacy of "stealing because they are technically sophisticated enough to do it." In fact, I'd argue that Apple users are overrerpresented in the piracy community because they tend to skew to a younger demographic that consumes more media and has less money.

[Neal Clayton]

Time for divine intervention...
that's probably the actual face he made when he happened across two guys arguing about which was better out of goat's milk and flatbread 2000+ years ago.





However, the evidence isn't there to support that claim. The iphone 4 had a lower percentage of complaints to apple than any previous phone. It was something like far less than 1% of people had problems with the signal, where as something like 4% had signal problems with the previous phone and there was no media frenzy to take the phone or company down at that time.



my helper bought an iphone4. the first time i held it in my hand i reproduced the antenna problem. i haven't been able to do that with any other phone i've owned.

so no, it's not 1%. more like "all of left handed people".

[Greg Peterson]

In the iphone case, it made front page news all over the world. The iphone 4 is a disaster, etc, etc. It's a flawed design and everyone's losing calls.

Apple and their users set a high standard. So the iPhone 4 situation is not that much different than the guy standing on the side of a hiway in tux with steam pouring out from under the under of his Rolls Royce.

Apple produces product that is easy to use, high performing, reliable and stable. At least that is the perception in the public domain, supported/promoted by Apple customers.

So when Apple releases a highly anticipated product that proves to be a mere mortal in the offerings of the market, yeah, it's news.

I've been running XP on the same Dell machine at work for eight or nine years now, along with about twenty other identical machines. Aside from having to add more ram and two hard drives in all the machines, I've not had any problems with the hardware or software.

Running Windows 7 at home for the past year, no problems.

The gap between ApTel and WinTel disappeared long ago IMO. YMMV.

[Phil Thien]

Phil, my point was that no matter what the actual evidence is, those against apple will refuse to apply the evidence.


Nothing is going to put a bigger smile on the face at least some BMW drivers than seeing a Mercedes broken-down by the side of the road.

You get what I'm saying, right? To recap:

(1) More similarities than differences. Differences mostly insignificant.

(2) People invest themselves in the products they buy. They never stop rationalizing those decisions. Never.

[Phil Thien]

Time for divine intervention...


Well, you could always just stop clicking on the thread. :confused:

[Eric Franklin]

I figured I needed to put my 2 cents in.

Everybody says that Apple computers are over priced but when you usually do a true comparision, they are quite close in price to the PC world.

For example, I tried to spec out a comparable HP that is equivalent to the base model iMac. This is as close of an all-in-one computer that HP sells.

HP:
23" display touchscreen
Core 2 Duo T6570 2.10 GHz
4GB RAM
500GB HD
DVD burner
Integrated GeForce G200
Bluetooth & wireless lan
Wireless Keyboard & mouse
Windows 7 Pro 64bit
1 year warranty
$1325.00

Apple
21.5" Display
3.06GHz i3
4 GB RAM
500GB HD
DVD Burner
ATI HD 4670 w/ 256MB
Bluetooth & wireless lan
Wireless keyboard & mouse
Mac OS X 10.6
1 year warranty
$1199.00

This is not an exact comparison but it's as close as I can find in a 10 minute search. The Apple has a higher quality IPS display but it is 1.5" smaller but the same resolution. The iMac has a dedicated video card and the HP doesn't. HP doesn't offer an i3 processor and I think the i3 is a better processor than the Core 2 Duo in the HP. I have some experience with the HP and they don't have they great of build quality.

[Tim Morton]

Well, you could always just stop clicking on the thread. :confused:

yes and i could also drive by a car wreck and not look too;)

[Bryan Morgan]

Conversely I am on my third PC laptop this year at work. I have it crash 2-3 times per day.

What, in your opinion, qualifies as a crash? I see Macs with the "sorry, an application error has occurred" or the infamous "Unknown error" crash all the time, yet nobody seems to count those as crashes....

[Bryan Morgan]

My PC using friends are always having to buy a new machine more often than me.

Why do they buy new machines? Nobody "has" to upgrade anything. My main notebook is 5 or 6 years old now and does everything I need it to. My gaming PC I upgrade every other year or so. I don't "have" to but its nice to be able to play the latest games on the highest settings. Heck, most of our accounting and billing PCs are from the late 90's / early 2000's. :eek: They don't get upgraded until they completely fail.

So, nobody "needs" to upgrade any computer (Mac or PC) until there is actually a purpose for that upgrade. If people have money to burn or are suckered by TV or sales people thats their problem. ;)

We had to buy new Intel based Macs to replace the old G5's just to run CS5. There was nothing wrong with the G5s and the Intel Macs don't even seem to run any faster.

[Bryan Morgan]

So when confronted by someone that says "product A is superior to product B" my answer is almost universally "that is pretty unlikely given that both are made with the same components and designed to perform the same function."

It is almost all perception, placebo, and rationalization.

Concentrate on the similarities, and the differences vanish.


Philosophical enough for you?



whoa whoa whoa. Wait a minute bub. No using logic and reality here mister! :D

Thats the point I've been trying to make.

[Bryan Morgan]

:mad:
My dog is bigger than your dog!!


Yeah but my dog cost twice as much and is softer for grandma to pet therefore is superior! :D

Still poops on the carpet just like any other though... ;)

[Phil Thien]

I have some experience with the HP and they don't have they great of build quality.

I haven't worked on a lot of other brands of "all-in-ones," but I have worked on quite a few iMacs. They sure aren't a party.

[paul cottingham]

Nothing is going to put a bigger smile on the face at least some BMW drivers than seeing a Mercedes broken-down by the side of the road.

You get what I'm saying, right? To recap:

(1) More similarities than differences. Differences mostly insignificant.

(2) People invest themselves in the products they buy. They never stop rationalizing those decisions. Never.

So are you saying my Veritas planes AREN'T better than the Lie-Nielsens that I can't afford?

I don't know how to take that.

[Jim Koepke]

the bottom line is you're paying 600-800 dollars more for OSX.



HP:
23" display touchscreen
Core 2 Duo T6570 2.10 GHz
4GB RAM
500GB HD
DVD burner
Integrated GeForce G200
Bluetooth & wireless lan
Wireless Keyboard & mouse
Windows 7 Pro 64bit
1 year warranty
$1325.00

Apple
21.5" Display
3.06GHz i3
4 GB RAM
500GB HD
DVD Burner
ATI HD 4670 w/ 256MB
Bluetooth & wireless lan
Wireless keyboard & mouse
Mac OS X 10.6
1 year warranty
$1199.00

Gee, that doesn't look like a $600 - $800 difference to me.

That argument reminds me of one my PC guru friend and I used to go through many years ago.

He would say the PC was less expensive. Then I would point out that my Mac came with sound, SCSI, video card and a lot of other stuff standard. He would say that he could find all that stuff cheap all over the place. In the end, it came down to him paying just as much and filling up all the slots in the machine to get what I had from one place. He had to do a lot of running around to get the best price on each component and then if there was ever a conflict it was everyone pointing fingers at the other vendor's stuff.

Of course, that was eons ago, or so it seems. I did not want to play that game and I did not want to learn a cryptic language called DOS. I am sure many of the features that I use regularly in my operating system are now available in Windows or from a third party source.

If you can give me a good reason why I should have to learn all new procedures to do what I already know how to do, I might listen. Otherwise, I am happy with my Mac and maybe more important, so is my wife. I have worked with PCs and even went through the chore of writing and producing a technical manual on one as part of my last job.

jim

[Mike Minto]

hooda thunk a buncha wood-dust breathers would be so passionate about a hunk 'o' silicone?

[Phil Thien]

hooda thunk a buncha wood-dust breathers would be so passionate about a hunk 'o' silicone?

It is silicon. Think the companies of Silicon Valley.

Silicone Valley is something entirely different. Think the women of San Fernando Valley.

[Neal Clayton]

Gee, that doesn't look like a $600 - $800 difference to me.

jim

because it's an imac with a cherrypicked comparison that he didn't look very hard for an alternative to. unfortunately...

----------------------------
mac pro, 2400 dollars (http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro?mco=MTAyNTQzNDQ)

IBM thinkstation, 1700 dollars, with noticeably better specs (http://www.google.com/products/catalog?client=serp&q=thinkstation+S20&hl=en&safe=off&cid=15918661630462020122&ei=oH9fTLruM4yENqbdhMQK&sa=title&ved=0CAcQ8wIwADgA#p)
----------------------------


----------------------------
13" macbook pro 1200 dollars (http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro?mco=MTM3NDc3ODM)

better processor, twice the storage, larger monitor, better video card, 350 less (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114927)
----------------------------



----------------------------
thinner/lighter macbook sans optical drive, 1800 dollars (http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_air?mco=MTM3NDczMDU)

hp equivalent, 900 dollars (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157142)
----------------------------




and last but not least, the imac comparison...

900 dollars, only problem is the IBM alternative has a better video card, bigger hard drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883152028)

now, admittedly the IBM imac-like alternative is an attempt to match the specs, but that's about as high end as you can get. get rid of the vid card and you can get those for about 550-600 bucks all day long. and if you're looking for a small form factor PC like that i'm assuming you don't need the higher end video card, so consider that as well.

unlike with macs, with standard PCs you can choose how much or how little hardware you need, and the price adjusts accordingly. with apple the price doesn't adjust anywhere but up...

so the question still stands, is OSX worth at least 400 dollars, and at most 900 dollars?

cause that's the difference in price. if you think so, fine. but there's no need to try to pretend that what isn't, is.

[Bryan Morgan]

If you can give me a good reason why I should have to learn all new procedures to do what I already know how to do, I might listen. Otherwise, I am happy with my Mac and maybe more important, so is my wife.

If you are happy with what you have and it does everything you want then you shouldn't switch. There is no logical reason to switch. I don't think anyone here is trying to convert anyone. If I remember correctly the original post was about Apples unwarranted superiority complex in advertising and zealot following. A few of us are trying to point out that it is nonsense and there really isn't anything but superficial differences between these computers. :)

[Bryan Morgan]

now, admittedly the IBM imac-like alternative is an attempt to match the specs, but that's about as high end as you can get.


I watched a video of an astronaut flying through the space station and describing what goes on in there and what the different parts are. Every single notebook up there was an IBM/Lenovo. I didn't see a single Mac... just sayin'..... :D

Having gone through all the major companies notebooks at work (including Macs), IBM is what we always buy our sales staff. Everything else gets destroyed too quickly as these people are not computer friendly. The guts of these machines are all the same but the IBM/Lenovos have a thicker more durable plastic casing.

[David Weaver]

I've had work issue notebooks from dell and lenovo, and regardless of the lenovo origin, I've had a lot better service from the lenovo notebooks.

You'd think they'd be more reasonably priced coming from China, but when I shopped around for a notebook for home, they were expensive (at least in a relative sense), and I ended up getting a cheap HP.

[Tim Morton]

Heres one the the "intangible" things about being a mac user...

My wife flew out to Indianapolis this morning to give a speech at a conference that required a ppt presentation that hse had on her macbook pro. Well she landed in baltimore and i get a video chat invite at work from her...and she tells me she forgot a cable that she needed to connect her laptop to the projector. I asked her where she was staying in indy and i would send her directions to the nearest apple store.

well the apple store was abotu 10 miles from the hotel so i googled "apple resellers in down downtown indy" I came up with a "mac experience" store downtown so i called them and explained the situation and asked them if they had a mini displayport to VG cable in stock and could they hold it for my wife to come pick up in a few hours once she landed. They did, and i was texting the directions from the store to the hotel for my wife.

Well the guy on the other end said , that if i paid for it with my credit card ($31 ) he would be happy to walk it over to the hotel and make sure it was there before my wife checked in....

I'm like really????? That would be awesome...much appreciated.

His comment...no problem...always happy to help a mac user.:D


+1 for the intangibles.....:cool::cool::cool:

I got another video chat invite a few hours later...wife was in the hotel, and the cable was waiting for her when she got there.

I owe that guy a beer!!!

I'm pretty sure my next mac purchase will be with this company.

http://www.themacexperience.com/home/

[David Weaver]

Yikes....$31 for a cable...sounds like the delivery fee is built into the price.

Though, i know that there are lots of places that charge like that for standard cables, and PCs aren't exempt. I remember getting a printer and looking at best buy for a USB printer cable, but when I got there, I didn't look long. The price was in that range. I went over to staples in the same shopping center and found one for about $10.

Best buy should be named "worst buy".

[Tim Morton]

Yikes....$31 for a cable...sounds like the delivery fee is built into the price.

Though, i know that there are lots of places that charge like that for standard cables, and PCs aren't exempt. I remember getting a printer and looking at best buy for a USB printer cable, but when I got there, I didn't look long. The price was in that range. I went over to staples in the same shopping center and found one for about $10.

Best buy should be named "worst buy".

http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB572Z/A
Its a $29 dollar cable...yeah i could find it cheaper on amazon...but i was not thinking about the money in this case.

[Neal Clayton]

31 bucks for a cable is a bargain if you look in the A/V dept at what they sell monster cable garbage for.

[Scott Shepherd]

Article about laptop use in colleges posted this past weekend, I think..... Apparently Apple is the #1 laptop used by college kids with Dell coming in at #2, HP at #3.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/08/07/big-macs-on-campus/

Note the premise of the article, that someone had reported a very large number, and this article did it's own study and these are the numbers from their study.

[Tim Morton]

31 bucks for a cable is a bargain if you look in the A/V dept at what they sell monster cable garbage for.

as a true blooded audiophile for the past 30 years...monster cable is not garbage....it may be over priced...but it is generally very well built cable. I have some monster rcas laying around for easily 30 years...and they stuff still is in great shape. I use some cable that is 5 times what monster sells for, and some that is a 1/5th of what monster sells for...all depends on the application. But it is not garbage....

and $31 bucks to make my wife happy is not bad money spent...she is not easy to impress :-)

[Phil Thien]

Article about laptop use in colleges posted this past weekend, I think..... Apparently Apple is the #1 laptop used by college kids with Dell coming in at #2, HP at #3.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/08/07/big-macs-on-campus/

Note the premise of the article, that someone had reported a very large number, and this article did it's own study and these are the numbers from their study.

I think this has been the case for some time. At least I was hearing it three years ago, maybe even a little longer.

When my older daughter went off to school I sent her w/ a black Macbook.

The virus situation was the primary factor. I can lock a Windows machine down to the point where it is nearly impossible to infect. BUT, that sometimes isn't compatible w/ what kids need to do with machines for assignments. Adding printers, etc., can also be more difficult under this scenario. So the Mac made sense.

We checked w/ the university before we went Mac and were assured that the Mac was fine, no Windows required.

Unfortunately, her 2nd semester she took a class which required Office on a PC, the Mac wouldn't work.

Crap!

Now we had to give her another machine, a Windows machine (yes, a Dell) for that class. It was just temporary, and I had it on-hand. And this certainly wasn't Apple's fault.

I think it is more the school's fault.

Don't get me started on higher education. I wouldn't be so civil in that thread. :D

[David Weaver]

and $31 bucks to make my wife happy is not bad money spent...she is not easy to impress :-)

Yeah, I was just busting your chops a little. Nothing mac comes cheap, but it works and they support it.

I don't know where I got monster cable, but the last time I got it was 14 years ago - 12 gauge, copper (maybe most of it's copper), 100 feet for $50.

I like it. It's pliable and it's stayed that way even though it's been in a lot of different places.

[Darius Ferlas]

Well the guy on the other end said , that if i paid for it with my credit card ($31 ) he would be happy to walk it over to the hotel and make sure it was there before my wife checked in....

I'm like really????? That would be awesome...much appreciated.

His comment...no problem...always happy to help a mac user.:D


+1 for the intangibles.....:cool::cool::cool:

Tim, that's indeed great service, albeit not from Apple which is legendary for its overall arrogance and poor customer service. You lucked out on a great retailer.

Now, if it were a PC laptop then there would be likely a few video cables available within a few feet from the projector.

[Tim Morton]

Tim, that's indeed great service, albeit not from Apple which is legendary for its overall arrogance and poor customer service. You lucked out on a great retailer.

Now, if it were a PC laptop then there would be likely a few video cables available within a few feet from the projector.

apple is CONSISTENTLY rated number 1 in most customer service surveys..at least if you are going to try and trash apple...gets your facts correct.:rolleyes::rolleyes:

[Neal Clayton]

well, back to the topic of pages ago of ZFS, speak of the devil, this is why people who write really cool software get a special reverence from me, i just happened to check on the status of a large transfer a few minutes ago and...



pool: media
state: DEGRADED
status: One or more devices has experienced an unrecoverable error. An
attempt was made to correct the error. Applications are unaffected.
action: Determine if the device needs to be replaced, and clear the errors
using 'zpool clear' or replace the device with 'zpool replace'.
see: http://www.sun.com/msg/ZFS-8000-9P
scrub none requested
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
media DEGRADED 0 0 0
raidz1 DEGRADED 0 0 0
ad4 ONLINE 0 0 0
ad6 REMOVED 0 14 0
ad8 ONLINE 0 0 0
ad10 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errorsSMART says the drive is fine, it doesn't know there's a problem yet (if it's a physical drive problem, and not just a random error)

14 bytes isn't much, after all.

but it isn't just ignoring the drive, and it isn't running the array one short waiting for me to do something, it remounted the drive and fixed the data on the fly even as more writes were coming in. a few seconds later the array returned to 'healthy' as i was watching it. meanwhile my ~450gb write coming over from another windows machine continued without a care in the world (whereas with linux sw raid i'd likely have a failed write from the client machine by now, and a hung server that wants to run a 40 hour fsck after i'm forced to reboot it from its hung state)

sure is nice to have smart software that doesn't come preinstalled on a multi-hundred (or worse yet, thousand) dollar pci card for a change ;)

shame apple dropped plans to add ZFS to OSX, or the mac people and i would have something to sing the praises of together.

[Brian Ashton]

interesting article about security and computers. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/11/zeus_cyberscam_analysis/


It's something I've suspected for a while in that macs on the internet are no more secure than pc's. If anything they're less because mac users are more ignorant and often obtuse to the threats on the internet. I know I was when I jumped back to mac a year or so ago...

I've taken a pc and a mac and went to identical high risk sites and have found both exhibited problems soon after. I don't think it's the OS per say that is being "infected" but the applets and such that are compromised allowing the infection to take hold. And for those that think I'm talking about porn sites as high risk think again. I went to one site I know is infected that is a rope tying site. Specifically the Turks head knot page. The first time I went to the site I had no problems the second time, about a month later, my computer's internet security setting were completely stuffed and unrepairable by the time the virus software chirped in and said there was suspicious activity on my machine. When I went back with the mac it also was compromised. The problems were different and only annoying at first but they progressed into serious problems that could only be solved by a complete reinstall of the HDD.