It sounds to me more like you were considering it until you realized you couldn't afford it, so now you resorted to bashing it.
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More Evidence of Apple's Massive Marketshare Growth in Higher Education
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It sounds to me more like you were considering it until you realized you couldn't afford it, so now you resorted to bashing it.
It sounds to me more like you were considering it until you realized you couldn't afford it, so now you resorted to bashing it.
Is it a secret Macs are overpriced?
One thing has nothing to do with the other
I use vista and os x everyday. OS X is in no way better than vista. vista is staple and fast but you need 2gb of ram. I agree that vista requires more memory to run well but it runs well. There are some things you cant do on os x but you can do everything in windows. Dont lie to yourself. Dont use bootcamp or vmware if you all hate windows so much. I never had a virus with a vista machine. I did have viruses with win xp though.
Actually, in my exeperience, the x64 version most certainly is.
What nonsense. There are plenty of standalone programs that require no internet access and therefore no security software. I suspect you're talking about on-line activiation and therefore referring to general securityware, but since all these activations go to secure servers it's a moot point.
As has been demonstrated no OS is safe (I believe OS X is safer but it's fairly marginal these days).
Actually OS X is limited in comparison to Vista. Limited in a good way though in terms of what it supports is built for very narrow configurations of hardware and therefore runs smoothly nearly all of the time.
I sometimes wonder if some of the posters here have more of a hatred of MS than a love of Apple.
I'm long standing PC user. Well, I can't without proper Windows PC. (yet, the Linux is catching up steadily).
Frankly, several days of constant reboots trying to make some piece of [*BEEP*] software/junk PC component working in my PC Windows workstation, justify all the price difference between a decent Mac and a decent PC.
Many buy a PC for its excellent upgradeability. But taking into the account an amount of time the upgradeability costs, one soon realizes that PCs are not that cheap. In fact, quite often are much much more expensive.
Any day of week I'd take an overpriced, but well integrated platform with all advertised features working as advertised over a lego-brick-like platform, eating constantly my time for the obscure maintenance handwavings one has to perform to keep it running.
Indeed, but I meant "extremely driven" in a different way to Bill Gates (& certainly Steve Jobs
). BG would've probably ignored the Apple ads, whereas SB probably sees Apple's ad-campaign attack on his MS (at least the products) as something he needs to counter in a head-on way, ie. "if you want a fight, you'll get a fight!" He'll probably finance a very long ad campaign until he feels enough damage has been done to Apple's credibility & sales start to dip. I'm not saying that'll happen, but it may do for 2 basic reasons: downhill economy & for many people Windows 7 needs be only good enough, not better than OS X. The problem for Apple might be that if you tell most people something often enough, in the end they tend to believe it & go on to spread that message. I'm sure many here will agree with your other points (as will Linux users & some Windows people), I just don't believe your view is representative of how Steve Ballmer & MS are seen in the wider world. Obviously he's far from the deranged schmuck some people like to represent & I think his, & MS's, "lack of taste" is meaningless outside of fairly niche Apple circles.
I expect many consumers & pros will continue to buy MS products bar an unexpected disaster, for eg., Win 7 proves to be as disappointing as Vista pre-SP 1 was, which is highly unlikely. FWIW, I think the greatest long-term danger to MS might be Google, particularly if cloud computing takes off with an online OS along the lines of Chrome bringing thousands of office-based applications. That would hurt MS more than Apple by eating into sales of MS cash-cows "Windows" & "Office". It'll be interesting how all this pans out.
I agree that when looking at "total cost of ownership", Macs still represent very good value for some of us (hence, I have 2), but until Apple expands their hardware range - by which I don't mean catering for every niche - I'm sure PCs will continue taking some 90% of the computer market, which in turn encourages greater software development for the Windows platform. Mac-native gaming is already a casualty here, with only Feral & Blizzard of any note bothering to develop proper Mac-native ports.
As people realize that the "Laptop Hunter" ads from Microsoft point out the poor value of Apples, this will slide too.
One data point, and the fanbois have a collective orgasm!
By the way, note from the same source:
Easy to infer that desktops are dead and gone, no?
It could also explain the rise in Mac Sales. Back in 1990s and early 2000s there were (and still are) a ton of Desktop brands and people can easily build their own desktop unit, for less. I know I had a home built desktop while I was in college. Now with the trend of desktops going away for education (The reason is most colleges almost demand that each student has a laptop, for their school work) Heck I am back working on my grad and the students who do not have a laptop are really at a disadvantage as there are point during class you just need to pull one out and work on a class assignment.
So with the rise of Laptops you create a situation where there are a lot of brands and most people can't build a laptop as easily as a PC, that are not in Laptop Markets. So for the Popular Brands you have Acer, Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Toshiba. As for Good Quality laptops we have Apple and Lenovo and Dell. So they will expect to take a bulk of the market share, so there is just reduced competition that helps inflate the numbers. Granted they are still good but there are a lot of factors going on.
Secondly as Microsoft may want to explain. College Students when they start off normally have a good deal of upfront cash (saved up from their summer jobs, money from relatives...) So these kids with their first experience with a lot of money will go out and get themselves something really nice, so they are not going to penny pinch on a laptop, and will get the nicest one they can afford, and normally there is a free iPod deal with a Mac at that time. And in a slowing economy there is a fact that the poorer students will not go to college this year and that could alter the results as only the upper-middle to rich will have a greater majority in the college.
Numbers don't lie but they can be quite vague.
Agreed, hence the reason I'm getting a PC as well. Then again, Blizzard being the only original developer.
It sounds to me more like you were considering it until you realized you couldn't afford it, so now you resorted to bashing it.
Me, for one, had no problem affording to buy a MacBook Pro but sure as hell didn't buy it for it's amazing hardware. It bought it because it was the only way to run OS X legally on an 15" laptop... Sorry, Apple - notebook.
How did you become so openminded for a lawyer?
Can I hire you to do some of my stockmarket trading? I figure since you know Windows 7 will suck you're able to foretell future, right? You should've stopped with Vista. Given the downwards jump between 10.4 and 10.5 I'm not so sure SL won't suck too.Where did you find the emulation software in OS X for running Windows? I had to install VMware as Paralells wouldn't stay stable. And FYI, it's quite possible to run OS X on Windows as well if you going to start comparing all the extra software available for an OS.
I agree, as long they're still able to use a pen and paper effectively. One guy in our class couldn't, forgot his laptop one day and he couldn't get anything down. Kids today...
Indeed, but I meant "extremely driven" in a different way to Bill Gates (& certainly Steve Jobs
Well, I'll certainly concede that this is really the first time we've seen MS ads of this kind, and they've been done under Ballmer's leadership. He doesn't intend to simply sit and do nothing, that's for sure!
Because only a fool would buy something they want when they could get what they don't want for less.
I wouldn't exactly say 'marginal' in describing the security differences between Vista and OSX. If it was 'marginal' OSX would either be full of Viruses or Vista wouldn't have such a bad reputation.
I'm not trying to nit-pick, I agree that OSX isn't 100% safe; I'm just pointing out the difference is slightly more than marginal.
Agree, OS X security is certainly significantly greater than "marginal", especially for those employing reasonable care in what they download or when using security details. Without bragging, fact is OS X still has no proper self-propagating viruses, only trojans & other minor malware wholly reliant on user activation.
I would guess that about 80% of my customers who are switching from Windows to Macs are high school and college students.
And on OS X, question is do they really need to be?
Most people I know who's using a Mac bought it because they don't want to know how a computer works. They need to use one for various needs or purposes and have no interest in doing any maintenance. With a Mac they wouldn't need to, the seller most likely argued, it would just work.
In short, they double-click everything!
And between Apple's Vista-esque way of throwing prompts on whether or not to run the thing they just downloaded & double-clicked, what do you think they choose? Allow or Deny? OK or Cancel? What's the difference to any unknowing, average user?
None.
And please refrain from any crap about 'people have to read the dialog boxes' because the avarage user don't even understand what it's all about or don't care after a while because they continuously keep on coming up when it's mostly safe. Imho, any prompts of this kind is just training the average user to say yes to everything when they just don't know what's happening. Vista screwed up with this but Apple is slowly adding the same feature - at least appearance-wise to the end-user. In the end there isn't any real shortcuts to safe computing except learning how it works and why. Most Mac-users choose Apple so they wouldn't have to, thus being a perfect target.
Haven't read the whole thread yet, but I've got to point out how ironic and funny it is that you're pointing out his grammatical error while making one yourself.
It's "you're", not "your".
I love OS X, but it is not more secure than Vista/7 by design, but rather by market share/obscurity. Malware is made to make money (extortion from botnet use, swiping personal information, etc) and malware writers are going to go after the big fish, not the little one. OS X lacks what I feel are crucial security pieces such as the NX bit and ASLR that Vista and 7 both have. Hopefully Apple realizes this and fixes this with Snow Leopard.
Of course that doesn't negate the fact that malware is still very much an issue on Windows despite the measures MS has taken.
Funny.. I thought Vista came to market after OSX. OSX hit the market prior to Vista - The operation system is therefore neither copying Vista nor 'Vista-esque' as you erroneously state.
Your entire post doesn't really make much sense... It doesn't matter how you argue the case, OSX is more secure - whether the situation you say exists or not, there are not wide-spread viruses on OSX, even with all the stupid users you say there are. And, with Vista 'copying Apple' as you insinuate, that version of Windows is still poor on security. So, in our hypothetical situation, we have one dumb user using each OS, making the same mistakes. It is therefore a matter of OSX only as to whether problems arise. That's why Vista has more trouble - it has security flaws.
And please refrain from any crap about 'Apple's Vista-esque way of throwing prompts.' Go use OSX for a while and then make an educated, sensible post.
Malware dominates Windows because Windows is poorly written non-sandboxed code with automated systems that run purely for Microsoft's pleasure. An OS that constantly writes to itself even when all you do is change your home page.
Are you new here?
OS X has had a permissions system since 2001. Except it's less obtrusive than Vista's. We've never had cause to complain about it. OS X is fully Unix, and Unix has had a permissions-prompt system for over 20 years now. Far before MS had any concept of actually including it in an OS. Where do you think MS got the idea from? But MS can't even copy an idea and implement it without fouling it up. It boggles the mind that they couldn't get a simple UAC in place properly.
Were you actually under the impression that user-prompts were a recent addition to OS X???
Are you new here?
OS X has had a permissions system since 2001. Except it's less obtrusive than Vista's. We've never had cause to complain about it. OS X is fully Unix, and Unix has had a permissions-prompt system for over 20 years now. Far before MS had any concept of actually including it in an OS. Where do you think MS got the idea from? But MS can't even copy an idea and implement it without fouling it up. It boggles the mind that they couldn't get a simple UAC in place properly.
Were you actually under the impression that user-prompts were a recent addition to OS X???
That said, careless PC users are generally more vulnerable than careless Mac or Linux users. Ever wonder why?
Also, anyone thinking that the basic advice to heed OS warning dialogue boxes is "crap", probably deserves to have their computers infected with malware.
Of course Mac users have to be reasonably careful, but the fact remains that OS X is inherently more secure than Windows as proven by the fact that many relatively naive Mac users remain malware free.Disagree. Mind that Macs also used to have proper viruses in the pre-OS X years, so this idea that no-one targets Macs because of small market share simply isn't that convincing. OS X is just a more solid & secure system than Windows. That said, there are many careful PC users who manage to stay malware free simply by following basic procedures, it's just that using security measures tends to be a less time-consuming process for Mac users.
That said, careless PC users are generally more vulnerable than careless Mac or Linux users. Ever wonder why?
Also, anyone thinking that the basic advice to heed OS warning dialogue boxes is "crap", probably deserves to have their computers infected with malware.
Disagree. Mind that Macs also used to have proper viruses in the pre-OS X years, so this idea that no-one targets Macs because of small market share simply isn't that convincing. OS X is just a more solid & secure system than Windows. That said, there are many careful PC users who manage to stay malware free simply by following basic procedures, it's just that using security measures tends to be a less time-consuming process for Mac users.
True, there were Mac viruses in the System 7 days, and not just a few.
If the market-share argument is pushed further, OS X should have at least 1,000 viruses by now, and that's being conservative. Right now we still have zero. But we keep hearing the "no one cares to write one" argument. No one, apparently, in almost 9 YEARS. It sounds completely absurd, but hey, it works for me, I suppose.
I don't care who's copying who, it's there today and it's a bad thing either way and that's my point. It doesn't matter whether it's called "com.apple.quarantine" or UAE/USN/UPN/UPS whatever - it's the same crap, the OS posting unnecessary prompts that are 99.5% of the times, safe! On one it's 'Allow or Deny', on the other it's 'OK or Cancel'/'Allow or Deny' (OS X firewall) - same sh*t, different name. It's Vista-esque to me, does that bother you too?
If OS X is the secure fortress they claim why bother cluttering up the lean gui with that daft idea?
Security flaws? You're kidding, sure it has, no-one arguing that and while OS X might have less, they sure as heck don't get fixed in the 6+ months because why would they bother, right? Would you like a cup of Java perhaps?
Another point of my post was that Vista is crap but Apple are heading in the same direction if they keep adding these needless prompts bugging us about things that are almost, always safe. It doesn't matter if the OS is safe, secure or not when the one using their computer's going to open the door either way. You could have all the locks you want, it wouldn't matter.
Though I think most major OS's today would be fully capable of making a post in any forum, on what OS do you think I am writing this? It ain't the ms one nor is it free. So thread carefully fanboi, I've been a Mac user for soon to be 25 years, I'm just not religious about it.