Originally posted by irmongoose
It's fun because we can actually rely on Apple that the card will work. With PCs even though it says the card will work for XP, you have no idea whether your configuration supports it because there are so many configurations, making it unreliable. Apple chooses industry standards so there is no doubt on the consumer's side. If you want other cards that support the Mac, you are free to buy one and stick it into your PowerMac.
If the card specificaly says that it works for Windows XP then it went through Microsoft's Logo testing and certification, and that means it will work in your PC. OEM's also vigorously test each system they design before producing it to decrease tech support costs. Yes, Apple does choose for you. I've also never seen a computer store (and I've been to Mac stores) that actually sell the Apple versions of graphics cards.
Okay, what is this? FireWire, as mkaake has already shown, was developed by Apple. USB, on the other hand, was developed by Intel but Apple was actually one of the first companies to incorporate it into their machines and actively support it. Take a look here. Get your facts straight.
Yes, Apple did create FireWire 400 and it was an inovative move by them. That does't justify their other "standards". The Apple Display Connector is just DVI with USB ports... because everyone needs more USB ports, especially on their monitors (yes, there's a DVI-ADC adapter, but it costs $99 US). Then there's FireWire 800, which has a different plug so you can't plug a FireWire 400 device into it (not to mention you can't reach the maximum speed of FireWire 400 unless you're doing a ram-to-ram transfer, making FireWire 800 rather useless). At least USB 2.0 is 100% backwards compatible.
Oh of course, Microsoft has so many good products... let's see here, uhh Windows, Windows, and Windows. 🙄
You forgot Office. They also make a wide range of server software and lots of popular games. Thanks for admitting that Windows is a good product =)
Have you personally touched and worked with Macs before? The architecture of the iMac, G4 PowerMac, and the G5 are far superior to any PC I have seen or worked with. Nothing beats the awesome accessibility of the G4's insides - one door.
Sure, it might be easy to get inside, but why would you ever do that with a Mac? It's like wanting to open up your stereo system. Macs are, after all, known for being reliable and never ever requiring maintenance. Unless you bought the Power Mac G4 GeForce 4 Ti upgrade for only $399 or a new hard-drive (god forbid it doesn't have the Apple logo on it, otherwise things could go terribly wrong), there's really no reason to open up a Mac. You could make a PC case that is as accessible as a PowerMac but then you'd have to break the ATX form factor standard, and in the PC world we like sticking with standards.
Maybe it's more like Macs don't have lots of the junk software like Windows has. Almost all the first-class software companies support OS X, assuring quality software. Where these companies don't fill in, there are plenty of shareware developers who make almost anything and everything. No software at all? Check out VersionTracker, it will show you the tens of new software released every day.
Sure, there is lots of software for the Mac from big companies, but if you want some special program to do that special thing you need it to do, don't expect to find it for the Mac.
For a while? Let's say 2 months. And currently the only way to really get one is to build one yourself. And even those companies that do sell these Opteron Workstations price them about $1000 more than the G5 if you put in similar specs.
Longer than the G5 anyways. Those workstations aren't as hard to get as you think. They can also be cheaper than a G5 1.6, depending on what's in it, although they're ususally more expensive due to many gigs of ram or Fire GL/Quatro cards as well as fancy SCSI/RAID hard-drive setups. Building one yourself isn't that hard and most computer stores will do it for you if you give them a list of specs.
Mac users are not too design-oriented. It's just that we actually care what our machines look like. I can't stand sitting in front of a huge black box all day.
Wait, so you both care and don't care what your computer looks like? If you don't like black or beige, check out
www.lian-li.com... they've been making aluminium cases long before Apple.
Oh, and in case you haven't heard, OS X's foundation, Darwin, is based on FreeBSD. And you cannot possibly say that the GUI of KDE or Gnome and such is more advanced than Aqua+Quartz.
Bleh.
Graphicaly Aqua does look better but technically it doesn't stand a chance against xfree86's customizability and all of the neat remoting capabilities. It's also been around much longer than Aqua and you don't need a PowerPC to run it (although it runs on that too).
