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green68

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 6, 2002
4
0
This MacWorld dissapointed me. If Apple doesn't give people compelling reasons to upgrade their hardware, they are gonna lose more than just the consumers who got on board with the iMac, iBook, and the "Jobs" revolution of a few years ago. What I've always wondered is, if they sold all these iMac's etc. to novices, students, etc. why did market share not go up significantly and only now is inching upward.

It hit me today, because of people like me. I own and run a small advertising and marketing firm. We use all Macs save for my programmer who uses a PC. I have iMacs and G4's no faster than a 450 Mhz. I bought all of these over 2 years ago. I buy new hardware if I think it will make me money. 2 years later, finally I think a dual processor powermac might, but $3000 worth, I don't know at the current speeds. Another example, I needed a new Powerbook. I looked at my options and bought a used Pismo, 512meg Ram, removable Zip drive, CDRW, etc. for under $1100 in mint shape. Since I don't do video, I could see no financial reason to pay more for a G4 or even an iBook. Now before I get flamed, I know the new hardware is way better and faster than my old stuff, but how much so? Does it let me do anything I can't do with the old stuff? Will it give me more billable hours? Etc. Etc. Unfortunately, when people try to answer these questions for me they end up sounding like a PC person extolling the virtues of a 2.4 GHz processor while ignorantly snickering at my lowly G4.

Apple has counted on it's prestige and justifiable, almost mythic, reputation with graphics people to take us for granted when it comes to the speed of hardware upgrades. Well, they took me for granted, made insignificant, expensive hardware upgrades, and the result, I'm still with Apple but have spent no money on new hardware in 2 years.

I love apple, I want to buy new hardware, but c'mon, quit insulting me and people like me, and give me a reason to trade in my trusty Mac's for new, significantly faster and more powerful ones that will make and save me money.

The most frustrating part, I'll never go Windows of my own free will, but then I might upgrade only once every 3-5 years if Apple continues their current rate of hardware advancement; and, if there are enough people like me, Apple will go away. Or else they might just sell really expensive computers, to really arrogant people, who are really too hung up on being different.

Give me a dual processor 2 ghz G5 with superdrive, etc. for under $3000 and Apple will have my money in a second. I can think of a million reasons why that machine would make me money. Give me another speed bump on the G4 and Apple can keep waiting for my money. I'm pretty sure I am not alone, and that is Apple's biggest problem- It is not converting PC users. Although that would be nice:)
 
Re: Apple's problem

Originally posted by green68

It hit me today, because of people like me. I own and run a small advertising and marketing firm. We use all Macs save for my programmer who uses a PC. I have iMacs and G4's no faster than a 450 Mhz. I bought all of these over 2 years ago. I buy new hardware if I think it will make me money. 2 years later, finally I think a dual processor powermac might, but $3000 worth, I don't know at the current speeds. Another example, I needed a new Powerbook. I looked at my options and bought a used Pismo, 512meg Ram, removable Zip drive, CDRW, etc. for under $1100 in mint shape. Since I don't do video, I could see no financial reason to pay more for a G4 or even an iBook. Now before I get flamed, I know the new hardware is way better and faster than my old stuff, but how much so? Does it let me do anything I can't do with the old stuff? Will it give me more billable hours? Etc. Etc. Unfortunately, when people try to answer these questions for me they end up sounding like a PC person extolling the virtues of a 2.4 GHz processor while ignorantly snickering at my lowly G4.

There's nothing wrong with that. I still use G3s primarily since they serve my purpose. Sure, I would like a new one but I probably won't buy a new one for several years. The fact that you can still get by with 2-3 year old hardware is one of Apple's strong points.
 
I'm not too worrie dabout the lack of Power hardware at this macword because I think that the 17" iMac is a steal.

It's just bs like making a big deal over iCal that pisses me off. It's a great idea... but shouldn't be its own program...maybe built into Appleworks or something.

-Pete
 
Software is behind Hardware

Hardware is easy to catch up with. Did you know that a majority of Nvidia Engineers are Software? This proves one thing. Getting Software coded for a platform is a more difficult task on the avg than HW.

So when you see Apple producing Software be happy because the Hardware is the easier part to accomplish.

Also. Intels propaganda is working on Mac users. Think in terms of IPC Instructions Per Clock Megahertz is misleading and Intel knows you'll want to boil everything down to this metric.

For instance take two 300HP cars. One generates full power at 5000RPM and the other at 8000RPM. The first car will be faster because it doesn't have to work as hard to reach full power.

Microprocessor are the same. The G4 has 7 Pipleines vs the Pentium 4's 22. Therefore the pentium has to work much harder to move the same data. This is why G4's are at 1ghz and pentiums are at 2.4ghz.


So in summation. forget the HW...they'll woo you with high numbers that mean nothing it's the software that matters.
 
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