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i've had my powerbook for 9 months or so now and i love it. around the same time i moved completely over to gentoo on my desktop, and a bunch of stuff on my other computer (linux, windows2000, BeOS, finally settling in with FreeBSD). around that time the first of the big worms from last summer hit and i was sitting high on my roost of not having to worry about windows worms, virii, et al, which from a non-windows user standpoint seems to be a crapload.

a post on osnews (i'm janeiro over there btw), the one about being 1984 all over again and mac not touching the windows user base got me thinking: WHY ISN'T MAC TOUCHING THE WINDOWS USER BASE!?!

i think if i was to start a business tomorrow, linux and mac would either be strong competitors for the systems in my shop or would work together. the lack of weekly (or sometimes daily) exploits would be what sold me mostly (i didn't say vulnerabilities); the idea that i can run things without a gui, without media players and web browsers built into core areas of my OS would be a close contender for second; being able to run on robust, efficient hardware would be up there; complying with open standards would be pretty high (if my document standards are open, i avoid vendor lockin).

besides comfort, what are the advantages of running windows? i really don't understand! i can sort of see companies running windows on the desktop, as a lot of places have custom apps built for windows and there's still plenty of people scared of computers who are comfortable using what they have at home, but for the server do you really want something that will autoplay the lastest britany spears album and automatically download tracknames and album art?!?! something who's security would let joe administrator completely destroy system files? or that requires a graphical login to install patches and updates (that is if you don't trust it to be automagically updated).

i guess i'm really concerned. it seems that business is going with comfort over quality, perceived cost over actual results, monopoly lockin over free market. why hasn't anyone large (banks, department stores, someone the public knows) stepped up to the plate and said we're sick of this microsoft crap, we're going to redefine how we do computing?

sorry, this isn't really a mac post, but that's where i felt it would fit most appropriately.

Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 7:45 am Post subject:

Apple is the kind of company that wants higher margins per sale, and will settle for lower volume. A company like Dell, will settle with lower margins per sale but make up for it in volume.

And guess what? Volume wins. Customers see a lower price tag and that wins the sale. Doesn't matter if the more expensive computer is infinitely better, easier, whatever. There are more people out there who are on a low budget, just want a computer as soon as possible, don't care about the platform wars going on. Geeks, power users, people who do care about the platform wars, we're small in numbers but we do buy more systems than an average user.

Just observing Apple's behavior towards their hardware/software partners reveals that Apple wants complete control and do everything themselves. Steve Jobs' attitude seems to be "my way or the highway."

Case #1: Adobe
Apple releases products that compete directly with Adobe's line. Some of which are bundled in iLife. While both sides are publicly saying "we're still friends" do you really think the Adobe execs are happy for Apple?

Case #2: Motorola
Everyone still thinks that it's Moto's fault we don't have faster procs for Macs. Everyone says Moto "dropped the ball" so IBM picked it up and now Apple is doing better in CPU power. That is completely untrue. Moto does not CARE about Apple. Moto is busy making chips for cell phones and tv remotes. It's Apple's fault for not making the jump sooner and it's not big surprise that they did, just look at their history of CPU providers:
68K (Moto), G3 (IBM), G4 (Moto), G5 (IBM).

Case #3: System resellers
Every now and then I read something on the Mac news sites about disgruntled resellers. Right now, if you walk into a friggin' WALMART of all places you can go home with a PC or laptop. Only in the last year or 2 did other stores besides Apple stores (I'm speaking of CompUSA) started selling Mac systems. Yes I realize that more and more Apple stores are cropping up, but thus far I've only seen one Apple store in my state whereas there are too many places to go to buy PCs. Online vendors are a little pissed at Apple too, I'm sure you've read the stories.

I read a really interesting post on OSNews. Someone was saying that the clones were not killing Apple. Everyone thinks the clones were, but they were actually helping Apple. Each company had to pay royalties back to Apple, that's a source of revenue. Each company help with development R & D, manufacture the hardware, then sell the units. That increased Apple's marketshare and exposure. They all ran the same software, and if they continued in that path up to the release of OSX, MacOSX would have been the #1 operating system and finally knock MS down. Killing the clones has got to be one of their biggest mistakes.

We're entering an age where the novelty of owning a computer has waning. The computer is becoming a commodity. PC vendors realize that and adjust to that market. Apple still has that old school mentality, I'm referring to their business mentality. Their technology is very modern and so is their style.

Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 7:48 am Post subject:

Oh, and the reason why I haven't gone BACK to the Mac platform like I said I would:

1. Too expensive - just to get in the door, plus getting new software so I can be productive again.

2. Too many horror stories regarding the hardware and Panther weirdness.

3. No time to retrain my brain.

I'm almost afraid to say that I'm losing faith in the survival of this platform.

Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 10:26 am Post subject:

Lycander wrote:
1. Too expensive - just to get in the door, plus getting new software so I can be productive again.

my mom asked me about a sony laptop, so i compared it to my 9 month old powerbook, it did not compare feature or formfactor-wise and cost about $600 more then i payed 9 months ago. if you want the break down, i can post it.

for desktop systems though, the perceived price is troubling. sure there's a $2000 gap between the highest of the mighty G5 power macs and the lowest of the low eMac, but it seems that the gap in what your getting is much huger. but on the otherhand, the average life of a mac is about twice that of its pc counterpart, so either you're getting what you paid for or their customers don't care about the latest and greatest.

Lycander wrote:
2. Too many horror stories regarding the hardware and Panther weirdness.

i think apple needs to rethink its clone strategy, especially now that their powermac and imac sales are down. they weren't losing money directly on clones the first time around, but they were losing money. in many cases the clones were faster and cheaper, which cut into apple's hardware sales. and the majority of the people buying clones were already mac users, so they were basically giving their customers over to other companies.

as far as panther weirdness, i've only used it on one platform, so i don't know too much about how it interacts with hardware.

Lycander wrote:
3. No time to retrain my brain.

i'm sure its' just like getting on a bike Wink

Lycander wrote:
I'm almost afraid to say that I'm losing faith in the survival of this platform.

a company fulfills the geek dream (fantastic hardware, unix, reasonable price, unix) and you're losing faith? look at the past and you see Be who should have owned the personal computer market, and the old apple, who should have owned the personal computer market, but were dastardly undercut. now the old apple and Be (well developers from Be) are together and your going to watch idly by waiting to see what happens while they are destroyed because people are just watching and waiting and not acting? faith without works is dead!

it won't survive if: people sit on their haunches and keep justifying dealing with poor security and illegal and unproductive business practices, people don't step up and tell apple why their systems aren't moving on the desktop market, if apple doesn't move to get a broader user base. imho the first two have to happen first, and those are things you as a fellow geek can do.

don't get me wrong, i love linux to death as a perfectly viable alternative to windows, but there are so many things that linux can't offer developers, users, and adminsitrators that OS X can, namely: platform consistency (if i'm a software company i don't want to have to distribute 5 different binaries to ensure it works with everyone's system), interface consistency, library consistency (though statically linked programs shouldn't care), and ease of setting things up without having to know anything about unix.

i guess in my idea of a perfect world, MS would be broken up into a operating system and software company, current versions of their software (media player, MSN, office, visual studio, games, etc.) would be ported to linux and os x, and a real OS war could ensue, hopefully with all finding their own reasonably sized sections of the market. people looked at iraq and saw 99.999% of the votes were for Saddaam and everyone in the country complaining and we didn't say "wow, democracy in action!" so why do people here see 95% market share and most windows users complaining and think free market?

hohlecow wrote:
it seems that business is going with comfort over quality, perceived cost over actual results, monopoly lockin over free market. why hasn't anyone large (banks, department stores, someone the public knows) stepped up to the plate and said we're sick of this microsoft crap, we're going to redefine how we do computing?

This is how i see it.

It's still currently a PC world. PC's are cheaper and eaiser to attain, as are parts (apple was/is notorious for inventory issues, their fault or not (motorola?)). A huge majority of business apps have been and are STILL being written for the PC. Unless, ages ago you had an apple in the house as your first computer, your first computer experience was with a PC at school, library, training class, or employer. To retrain is not an efficient option.

I think it really boils down to price. Why would any company spend the money on an Apple when they can get a comparable PC for less money. Take the money saved and multiply that by 10, 100, 1000. Even if you only need 10 computers your savings can be $8,000... pretty hefty change. Build a new computer lab with 50 PC's and you save at least $40,000. Unless you have a special need for a Mac, it makes no sense to own one, except for the novelty of it.

Quote:
besides comfort, what are the advantages of running windows?

--- and PC

Familiarity, wide application base, wide hardware base, "instant" availability of parts or total systems, plethora of support for both hardware and software. In fact, i wouldn't even consider "comfort" one of my reasons for running PC's with Windows. PC's just make sense.

Olive wrote:
Familiarity, wide application base, wide hardware base, "instant" availability of parts or total systems, plethora of support for both hardware and software. In fact, i wouldn't even consider "comfort" one of my reasons for running PC's with Windows. PC's just make sense.

pci nic, pci raid card, sata hard drives, ide or scsi anything, usb 1.1/2.0 whatever, ddr ram, molex connectors, agp video card, pcmcia cards, 802.11b/g access points, IEEE-1394 devices, vga/dvi monitors, bluetooth, heck their boards already have pci express. you can get these as third party whitebox parts just like on your x86 computer. mobos and processors are the only thing that aren't available willy nilly like pc hardware. and most of those interfaces were available with mac drivers first.

Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 12:12 pm Post subject:

Comfort and security of knowing tha I'm safe from worms/viri/hacking etc. well I can get that now on a Window + PC. I favor Windows/PC but that doesn't mean I favor Microsoft. If you ask my coworkers, not a day goes by in the office without me screaming at Microsoft.

The Windows operating system is the only MS product I conciously choose to use. I do not use their web browser therefore I can avoid a lot of nasty crap out there that propogate via a web browser. In the server room, I would not use a Windows operating system and we have migrated all our public servers to Linux.

So your list of things about what Linux can not offer that MacOSX does, I can say the same about what Windows offers to *me* that OSX does not. Am I brainwashed by years of exposure to Windows? Guilty! But... the very first computer I laid hands on was a Tandy monochrome, played Atari games in vector graphics. I went to my local public library and used an Apple II. I didn't even see a Windows PC until middle school.

Apple's entire product line from hardware to software revolve around asthetics. Pretty white or silver boxes and a pretty UI. I would not confuse that with a "better user experience" in regards to the UI. It's simply a different experience which for me is uncomfortable.

I appluad them for "bringing Unix to the masses" but if you ask an average home user about Unix, they would probably shrugg their shoulders and say "cool!" So in the end it's just a novelty. Power users and Unix verterans will appreciate it, and there's evidence of such people migrating to OSX. However, we see more and more start-ups going with Windows and the question is why?

Just from browsing Mac forums, when I come across topics about Mac gaming, there's usually one person coming in to say that "it's not a toy, you shouldn't be playing games on a Mac." Whether they meant it just as that, or if there's a subliminal message saying that the Mac is not an ideal gaming platform, the fact remains that many people choose PCs for the gaming possibilities. Great strides have been made by many companies to bring gaming experiences to the Mac platform, hell I'd like to try myself. Did you know that there's NO hardware accelerated audio processing on the Mac? All that work has to be done by the CPU, and in the recent UT2K4 demo, there was a bug that made audio processing use upwards to 50% of CPU time, thus affecting the game's performance greatly, setting the impression that Mac hardware is not good enough for gaming. There's still not enough interest in the Mac platform for more developments in this area. Creative Labs did release a SoundBlaster Live card for the Mac but it lived a painful life of disinterest by CL and poor drivers were written and never updated.

Why isn't the Mac moving on the desktop? It's a catch 22. Users like me won't budge until they see more support for more hardware/software companies. Said companies won't be interested in the Mac until sales and market share rise. Market share is becoming a dirty word amongst the Mac community and I hear Mac users screaming obscenities when someone mentions market share. They are quick to dismiss its importance, and the importance is for the sake of the developers and companies, not so much for Joe User to feel proud that he's part of a large % of users out there. There's also many people who do feel proud that they are in the minority, because it gives them that loopy feeling of being different from the rest and all that fluffy "blue-sky, head in the clouds" mentality.

hohlecow wrote:
pci nic, pci raid card, sata hard drives, ide or scsi anything, usb 1.1/2.0 whatever, ddr ram, molex connectors, agp video card, pcmcia cards, 802.11b/g access points, IEEE-1394 devices, vga/dvi monitors, bluetooth, heck their boards already have pci express. you can get these as third party whitebox parts just like on your x86 computer. mobos and processors are the only thing that aren't available willy nilly like pc hardware. and most of those interfaces were available with mac drivers first.

Processors can be upgraded, but for a price. Motherboards --> www.ebay.com Wink

All those technologies you listed are great, fine and dandy. Now... show me a consumer SOUND CARD. I don't know how far you got in my last post, I did mention Creative Labs, so before you mention that I already did for you. For all the greatness of technological achievement and might thrown into a Mac system, they still don't have a decent consumer sound card that will offload the work of 3D sound/audio processing so the CPU can worry about other things. This affects gamers first and foremost.

hohlecow wrote:
Olive wrote:
Familiarity, wide application base, wide hardware base, "instant" availability of parts or total systems, plethora of support for both hardware and software. In fact, i wouldn't even consider "comfort" one of my reasons for running PC's with Windows. PC's just make sense.

pci nic, pci raid card, sata hard drives, ide or scsi anything, usb 1.1/2.0 whatever, ddr ram, molex connectors, agp video card, pcmcia cards, 802.11b/g access points, IEEE-1394 devices, vga/dvi monitors, bluetooth, heck their boards already have pci express. you can get these as third party whitebox parts just like on your x86 computer. mobos and processors are the only thing that aren't available willy nilly like pc hardware. and most of those interfaces were available with mac drivers first.

a) I do not believe that Apple always permited 3rd party parts. Not like this this a bad thing. God knows that part of the headache within the PC/x86/Windows world is compatibilty issues with any of the 1,0000000000000000000 possible hardware combinations.

b) you cannot tell me that apple has the volume of compatible parts that PC/x86 does. While this may be a good thing for apple in one aspect, if in need to get a part fixed NOW on my windows box, i know i can go to one of 10 local stores and get that part or a similiar within an hour. If a local place does not have it i know i can get it next day'ed to me from just about anywhere. Can one say that about Apple?

Just to see if i know what i am talking about, i hit pricewatch.com to see what kind of variety is available. While i know these results are less than a 100% accurate representaion, the difference between searches is somewhat alarming.

A search on video cards, out of 223 pages for all video cards, 2 pages displayed results that were Mac compatible. 5 of 89 pages were Mac compatible for "controller cards," and 3 of 267 for memory. Seriously, am i running a wrong query, is there a better place to look to get a general idea of what Mac compatible parts are out there... or do they really lack in quantity, and possibly availability.

Olive wrote:
Build a new computer lab with 50 PC's and you save at least $40,000.

i think you're playing fast and loose with your numbers, but i'll play ball. now you need to hire at least 1 if not 2 more admins to take care of those 50 extra computers. now you're about even if not a little over. you'll also mostly likely repurchase all of those computers in two years. you'll also probably have to deal with a small amount of downtime daily as new patches are pushed to all the systems but much like the cost of the macs, that downtime adds up too. i have to sit at my work computer for at least two minutes every morning and maybe 10 minutes once a week while new patches are deployed. that's about 2 days a year added up that i can't work, which is about $400 bucks, times 50 computers is $20,000 bucks for emloyees that can't work, but i'm just playing fast and loose with numbers myself.

Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 12:41 pm Post subject:

Lycander wrote:
Why isn't the Mac moving on the desktop? It's a catch 22. Users like me won't budge until they see more support for more hardware/software companies. Said companies won't be interested in the Mac until sales and market share rise.

I couldn't agree more with this. It's quite a horrible position for everyone to be in. About 3 years ago I thought about getting a Mac and making a serious attempt at switching. I decided against it because some of the video and audio software i use was not offered for Mac. Sad

One thing is certain... aesthetically... Apple rules the computer market.

Olive wrote:
A search on video cards, out of 223 pages for all video cards, 2 pages displayed results that were Mac compatible. 5 of 89 pages were Mac compatible for "controller cards," and 3 of 267 for memory. Seriously, am i running a wrong query, is there a better place to look to get a general idea of what Mac compatible parts are out there... or do they really lack in quantity, and possibly availability.

you're coming from the wrong view point. do you look for x86, via chipset compatible ram? no, you look for DDR400. guess what, that's exactly what macs use. i bought a pcmcia cf card adapter, did i need confirmation on the box that its mac compatible? no, i know that the mac can handle pcmcia mass storage devices. for things that don't have open standards, yeah, you might run into trouble, but in general i try to stay away from that stuff anyway.

Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 12:47 pm Post subject:

Olive wrote:
I decided against it because some of the video and audio software i use was not offered for Mac.

but could be used in virtual pc Wink

Posted: Fri May 07, 2004 1:08 pm Post subject:

hohlecow wrote:
Olive wrote:
I decided against it because some of the video and audio software i use was not offered for Mac.

but could be used in virtual pc

If a person buys a Mac only to go out and buy Virtual PC, pay a Windows license... the Switcher's tax just doubled. If I already have a Windows PC and software, what's the incentive to go buy a Mac and spend even more money so that I can use all the software I already bought? Running these programs in VPC will be slower, and not all hardware is fully reproduced. In other words unacceptable.

Kudos to companies like Blizzard for shipping WC3 for both Windows and MacOS on 1 CD. And to Newtek for Lightwave also both platforms on one CD, and one USB dongle.

hohlecow wrote:
now you need to hire at least 1 if not 2 more admins to take care of those 50 extra computers.

If it were 50 Macs put in that lab, you'd still need an admin, further more you'd need someone skilled in BOTH Macs and PC to connect this lab to the rest of the building.