Aren't Macs Expensive??????

[Beej]

On a low-end portable

Rather than designing a new low-end portable, Apple could do what they've done with the CRT iMacs. They could simply hold on to the current low-end iBook, and over the next few years let the price drop.

That would mean no costs in engineering a new machine, but you would still be getting a high quality machine that would run OS X nicely.

I guess the only down side is the wait (for the price to drop) but even if Apple were to start working on it today, it would be a year or more before it hit the market.

 

[LucasLand]

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

JUST REMEMBER "YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR". SO IF LOW PRICE IS IMPORTANT TO TO YOU, GO OUT AN BUY AN E-MACHINE AND SEE HOW LONG IT LASTS, BEE-OTCH!!!!!

 

[Backtothemac]

Originally posted by alex_ant

Yes, I don't find it hard to believe that a 1GHz Celeron is slower than a 500MHz P3. So was my 550MHz K6-2, which should put it about on par with the Celeron. So in that case, please refer to my previous post about the K6-2 blowing the lid off the 550MHz G4 in non-Altivec apps.

I also agree that a 600MHz G3 is, theoretically, faster than a 1GHz Celeron. However, what I said was that, with the G3 running OS X and the Celeron running Win98, the Celeron will feel much, much faster. Win98 won't be more stable, or better looking, or more pleasurable to use, or anything else - and I didn't say it would be - but it will feel much faster. This is not taking into account OS 9, which completely changes the picture - I hope you were referring to the G3 being faster than the Celeron in OS 9 rather than OS X, although due to the extreme implausibility of it being faster in OS X, this is the only explanation I can come up with.

Alex

1) Find a copy of non-Altivec Photoshop for X or 9, oops there isn't one. Wait, how about a copy of Illustrator, zip again. Office. Yep, it will feel faster on the Celeron, but wait there's a .dll error. Point is, the hardware, and software is superior on the Mac.

2) My G3s are faster than ANY Celeron is, and that is the case under 9 and X. My iMac has 1GB of ram, seperate swap partition, and I prebind once a week (now that I know how). My iBook is actually faster than the iMac is and it only has 384 MB of ram, but it has the new pangea controller in it.

3) Oh, one last thing, PCs do feel faster on many things than Macs especially ones running X. PCs hang faster, crash apps faster, blue screen faster, and run MICROSOFT programs faster than they do on a Mac. The reason they do so is that Mac software meshes with the OS and therefore takes longer to load than it does on a PC. The fact is that Windows will load programs faster than a Mac because the majority of the program resides in the oh so unstable .dll file.

I am not trying to start a war of words with you, in fact, I am enjoying this

 

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by PC > MACs
bump

Please stop doing that. If a thread is dying off, it means that most of the people here aren't interested.
Bumping is selfish, that's why we don't do it here. Besides you haven't even posted a comment to this thread. Just because you think the title implies a PC bias, doesn't mean that that's what it's about.

 

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by Backtothemac
1) Find a copy of non-Altivec Photoshop for X or 9, oops there isn't one. Wait, how about a copy of Illustrator, zip again. Office. Yep, it will feel faster on the Celeron, but wait there's a .dll error. Point is, the hardware, and software is superior on the Mac.

You can magically get a copy of non-Altivec Photoshop or non-Altivec anything else by running it on a G3, which has no Altivec unit, and which is the CPU I was originally referring to.

2) My G3s are faster than ANY Celeron is, and that is the case under 9 and X. My iMac has 1GB of ram, seperate swap partition, and I prebind once a week (now that I know how). My iBook is actually faster than the iMac is and it only has 384 MB of ram, but it has the new pangea controller in it.

Your G3s are remarkable. I would trade my 550MHz G4 for one of your G3s any day because my G4, while it benchmarks much higher than a Celeron, does not feel faster in OS X than a Celeron running Win98 does. Only now that I've downloaded iCab can it scroll web pages seemingly as fast as IE on an Intel chip half as fast. (I am a Web Page Scroll Nazi.)

3) Oh, one last thing, PCs do feel faster on many things than Macs especially ones running X. PCs hang faster, crash apps faster, blue screen faster, and run MICROSOFT programs faster than they do on a Mac. The reason they do so is that Mac software meshes with the OS and therefore takes longer to load than it does on a PC. The fact is that Windows will load programs faster than a Mac because the majority of the program resides in the oh so unstable .dll file.

DLL files can only cause software to be unstable if poorly written. Most, especially by more reputable software companies, aren't. DLLs are a poor implementation of the concept of shared libraries, yes, but that doesn't affect software stability.

I don't know what you mean by Mac software "meshing" with the OS - please explain.

I've already agreed on this thread many times that Windows is a piece of arse, but I think you're exaggerating its crash-happiness a bit. You're right that it does crash, a lot, but I think the average Win98 user has at least a few good hours to get work done in between crashes.

I am not trying to start a war of words with you, in fact, I am enjoying this

Well, that makes two of us, at least. I was originally trying to point out the unfairness of the originator of this thead, whoever he/she was. Then when attacking that poster's pro-Mac comparison, I was flagged as a PC using idiot. So then I bring my TiBook and the fact that I own no PCs into the picture, and people don't know what the hell to think. That's a Mac discussion forum for ya, I guess.

Alex

 

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by alex_ant
DLL files can only cause software to be unstable if poorly written. Most, especially by more reputable software companies, aren't. DLLs are a poor implementation of the concept of shared libraries, yes, but that doesn't affect software stability.

I have seen Office 2000 on a peecee with a single 'damaged' dll file totally f*ck the computer.. just one file made the system so unstable it wasn't funny. I had to wipe the entire drive and install EVERYTHING fresh in order to get it to be halfway usable. It took most of a day to get everything back on, including the files I had to back up.

Mac's take about 2x-8x less time to fix, depending on the chip and age of the system. The new ones fly through the utilities, where the older ones tend to take longer (slower chips, cd drives, bus speeds and such then the newer ones).

If you get a Mac, not only go you get a superior OS, but the hardware rocks too. Most Mac issues (90%+) can be fixed in under 2-3 hours, unless it requires major replacement of hardware, or trying to retrieve critical data that the user has deleted Peecee's on the other hand can take a full day or more to 'fix'. That also can require the dozen or so 'critical' updates and such that m$ has put out that you have to do a damned restart between each one.

I am VERY glad that we have many more Mac's at work then peecee's. If the numbers were reversed I would be in the looney bin by now.

 

[Backtothemac]

What can I use to capture a quicktime movie of me opening IE on my iMac and scrolling through a window? Let me know and I will post it for you Alex. I promise this thing scrolls faster than any of the PCs at my office, and one is a 1.4 GHZ P4.

 

[Xapplimatic]

Come on.. I have a 466 Celeron with 66 Mhz bus running Windows 98 here (which I rarely turn on except to make fun of it) and a 466 G3 iBook here with a 66 MHz bus running OS X.. The G3 on OS X is faster than the Celeron with Win98 in many operations at equal clockspeeds. It's faster on some disk operations, it's faster redrawing the screen (windows move as a whole piece on the Mac.. the "Win"tel flickers noticably), it's faster to shut down, it's faster running PhotoShop, heck -- it's faster emptying the trash! The only thing I'll give the Celeron is that Internet Explorer loads 1/2 sec faster. Other than that, the Celeron also wins in the "how many applications can I crash per hour" category! And is in it's own total category when it comes to something lovely called the "Blue Screen of Death".. which also seems to happen a lot when Windows can't resolve an application lockup (including Windows locking itself up!)..

 

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by AlphaTech
I have seen Office 2000 on a peecee with a single 'damaged' dll file totally f*ck the computer.. just one file made the system so unstable it wasn't funny. I had to wipe the entire drive and install EVERYTHING fresh in order to get it to be halfway usable. It took most of a day to get everything back on, including the files I had to back up.

That's great, so how does that refute what I said about DLLs being a bad implementation of shared libraries but only being unstable when poorly written? Citing a single case does not prove, and does not even imply, a trend. Am I saying Office 2000, the concept of DLLs, or Windows 98 do not suck? No.

Mac's take about 2x-8x less time to fix, depending on the chip and age of the system. The new ones fly through the utilities, where the older ones tend to take longer (slower chips, cd drives, bus speeds and such then the newer ones).

If you get a Mac, not only go you get a superior OS, but the hardware rocks too. Most Mac issues (90%+) can be fixed in under 2-3 hours, unless it requires major replacement of hardware, or trying to retrieve critical data that the user has deleted Peecee's on the other hand can take a full day or more to 'fix'. That also can require the dozen or so 'critical' updates and such that m$ has put out that you have to do a damned restart between each one.

I am VERY glad that we have many more Mac's at work then peecee's. If the numbers were reversed I would be in the looney bin by now.

All of this has absolutely nothing to do with anything I said. Hopefully you didn't mean to imply that it did.

 

[alex_ant]

Originally posted by Backtothemac
What can I use to capture a quicktime movie of me opening IE on my iMac and scrolling through a window? Let me know and I will post it for you Alex. I promise this thing scrolls faster than any of the PCs at my office, and one is a 1.4 GHZ P4.

I don't think there's anything you could use to do that without affecting the speed of the scroll, but your point is taken. I must have a defective TiBook. The Apple System Profiler is telling me I have a 550MHz G4 and a Mobility Radeon graphics chip, but it is obviously lying, so I'll shut up now.

Alex

 

[Backtothemac]

Alex, how much memory do you have? Do you have a seperate swap partition? Do you prebind your system, or defrag your drive? I want to help you man. That system should scream. Let me know.
Chuck