My Parents Hate Apple

[D4F]

But in the end of the day, cheap hardware without software remains what it is: a piece of metal.

Interesting. You know that OS X has only fraction of software that Win systems do right? And you know that most professional applications are more stable on Win systems than OS X right?

Just carefully read professional 3D/Music forums once Snow comes out.
I will have uninterrupted workflow on my Vista 64bit while many OS X users will be forced to go back to Leopard or will be stuck with not working software.

I can easy tell that you have no idea what you talk about and apparently you didn't read what was going on when Leopard went live.
To you that might be of no importance but many use their computers for serious work and interruption of few hours sometimes it's catastrophic.
Guess what happens when your system dies and you have to replace a part fast to get the work going?? eeeeeerrrrrrrrrr. Wrong answer. Please ship us your Mac and we will fix it for you even if it's a damn fuse. 4-14 days without your work tool. Apple will never reach pro levels with their attitude as they think that every user is a idiot and can not do anything himself. Unfortunately it's Jobs that's an idiot for making wrong assumptions.
And before anybody tells me how awesome Apple is doing in terms of Mac sales... please check the numbers for other PC manufacturers combine them together and see how small is Apple. Why combine?? Because it's a beauty of a open competition market and not get stuck with a company that does not let anybody use their OS.

 

[grym]

Just carefully read professional 3D/Music forums once Snow comes out.
I will have uninterrupted workflow on my Vista 64bit while many OS X users will be forced to go back to Leopard or will be stuck with not working software.

I can easy tell that you have no idea what you talk about and apparently you didn't read what was going on when Leopard went live.

This is so fun to read! You forgot that people were forced to *downgrade* back to XP because Vista refused to work? Have you heard of anyone downgrading to Tiger from Leopard? You forgot that people petitioned Microsoft to keep selling XP because Vista was useless (which Bill Gates conveniently refused to do)?

Leopard did have a few minor problems when it first came out. Apple is not a perfect company. Most smart people waited a couple of months before upgrading to Leopard by which time all the blemishes were fixed. This cannot be compared to Vista. Vista was a total disaster, people had to throw out their hardware and buy new computers because Vista was not compatible. Which could've been part of the plan, by the way. A global conspiracy of Microsoft and PC manufacturers!

To you that might be of no importance but many use their computers for serious work and interruption of few hours sometimes it's catastrophic.

Exactly! That's why I switched to Macs from PCs. For me, an interruption of just a few minutes can be a disaster. I need a stable system. What if you are in the middle of typing an important document and the computer freezes? What if you're giving a powerpoint presentation and your computer starts doing funny stuff on the screen (such as opens windows asking you to upgrade your antivirus, or informs you that it's time to do a backup - all real stories I've observed, fortunately, as a part of the audience, not as the speaker). That's already a good reason to switch to Keynote, to say nothing that Keynote is simply better software (as someone who used powerpoint, both Windows and Mac version, for many years before switching to Keynote last year, I can attest to that). (By the way, let's be honest: Word is better than Pages, at least for now. This confirms that there are no rules without exceptions).

Guess what happens when your system dies and you have to replace a part fast to get the work going?? eeeeeerrrrrrrrrr. Wrong answer. Please ship us your Mac and we will fix it for you even if it's a damn fuse. 4-14 days without your work tool.

I am not going to tell you what Lenovo told me when the trackpad on my laptop (which was still under warranty) broke down. Needless to say, I had to quickly find a replacement computer.

please check the numbers for other PC manufacturers combine them together and see how small is Apple. Why combine?? Because it's a beauty of a open competition market and not get stuck with a company that does not let anybody use their OS.

That's because idiotic hardware procurement people at large corporations buy PCs in bulk and fund Bill's lifestyle. They do it because it's easy, it's something they've been doing for years, they know how to do it and they do not need to think about it. That their employees will suffer, and their IT people will make a lot of money off the company working overtime to maintain their PCs - who cares about it. As long as CEOs do not know.


But seriously, man, if you're such a PC fanatics, I need your help! My old Thinkpad T30 is still around. I want to be able to use it sometimes. If only because I already have it. But during the last year or so, every time I turn it on, it opens a window entitled "Access Connection", and that window informs me that the computer is trying to connect to a wireless network with a name of a network I used a year ago at a hotel (which of course does not exist any more). If I do nothing, the window simply stays and the computer refuses to connect to the internet. To connect to the internet, I need to 1. Close that window 2. Go to wireless connections 3. Put a checkmark on "Use windows to manage my wireless connections" (every time the computer is restarted this thing unchecks itself) 4. Look for wireless network 5. Find the right network and connect. Amazing, isn't it?

It originally took me an hour to figure out this sequence. It takes me up to 10 minutes every time I restart the bastard to go through this sequence (because it goes very slowly). Finally, it took me several more hours to try to fix this problem, to no avail. I tried to locate this "Access Connections", and it's nowhere to be found. Not in the start menu, not in the msconfig list of start items, not in program files. There is a thing called "IBM Access Connections", but this is clearly something different. Whatever it is, it took over, it's hiding somewhere and it's abusing my time. Very typical of PCs, by the way! When they don't outright break down, they just slow you down to diminish your productivity.

So if you're such a PC aficionado and believe in total PC superiority, fix this problem for me!

Incidentally, never saw anything of this kind on a mac. There everything is transparent. Everything which loads on startup is easy to locate and manage. You don't have to know much to do that.

 

[mosx]

On laptops, possibly. I'll openly admit that the Macbook (and powerbook before that) are the only laptops i've really attempted to watch DVDs on... But the quality is good enough for me when the situation calls for it.

Of course, usually i'm watching them on my HDTV via Blu-ray or HD-DVD player (yea... I was impatient waiting for the war to end)

DVD playback on all Macs is just terrible. I can't believe theres people out there with Mac Pros and 30" Cinema Displays watching DVDs and thinking it looks good.

If you want good DVD playback you need a Windows system or you need a good Oppo upscaling DVD player. Oppo DVD players put that entire first year of blu-ray discs to shame (you know that the first year or so of blu-ray discs used low bitrate MPEG-2, right?) and keeps up with all of those VC-1 encoded HD DVDs. But now that blu-ray has finally moved on to high bitrate H.264 and VC-1 for some of those HD DVD "ports", blu-ray finally looks better than an upscaled DVD.

Me? Actually a whole lot... but I like to screw with stuff.

Then why bother with OS X? Windows and PCs will let you tinker with just about everything except recompiling the kernel. Its a lot more fun when you can adjust clock frequencies, timings, etc. than recompiling the kernel endlessly

Naw, XP does what I need it to do... play the few games that I do play. I currently have no need to pay the money to upgrade to vista for a possible FPS or two more.

Or you don't want to see that Vista is better than Leopard

You're lucky. Or maybe that's because you yourself build them. Open your own business and sell them; you'll soon beat Dell. After all, their computers *do* freeze up all the time.

You realize that Apple, Dell, HP, Gateway, etc. all contract the same manufacturers and use the same parts, minus optical drives, right? The only real hardware difference between a Dell and Mac is the casing, logo, cooling system, and cost.

If you actually browse PC related forums, you'll see that probably 9 out of 10 problems with Windows PCs are caused by the user and not anything else. If you go to an Apple forum, 9 out of 10 problems are hardware related.

Just look at the case issues with MacBooks and MacBook Pros! And iPhones! You won't see that happen with a Dell or an HP.

This happens on my Thinkpad T43p. It's not particularly new, almost 3 years old, but it did come with XP preinstalled. I could not format it as FAT32 even if I wanted, because I do not know and do not want to know the difference. I do know that its hard drive is 100GB, so must not be FAT32 if what you're saying is right. Yet, freezes and gives that very stupid message, all the time.

If your Thinkpad (very overrated series, especially now that Lenovo builds them) displays that screen after a crash, then your HDD IS formatted as FAT32. You bought your Thinkpad after Lenovo bought IBM's PC division, so get mad at the cheap Chinese-based company and manufacturer for not properly configuring your system.

And before you say "It has an IBM sticker on it!", keep in mind that Lenovo made a deal with IBM to continue using their branding after the purchase.

So yes your Thinkpad was built and configured by a second rate Chinese based company and manufacturer, lower quality than the manufacturers that HP, Dell, Apple, Gateway, Acer, etc. contract.

By the way, I never had to format its hard disk. With one exception: when a year ago it got infected by some kind of malicious adware which no commercial antivirus I tried was able to remove.

Thats the users fault Since XP SP2, it's been next to impossible for malware to install without the users consent.

The first time I tried to use those CDs, the computer froze by the 3rd! Not that I did something wrong: I just kept popping CDs in and out precisely as instructed. I had to do it again, and this time I was lucky. After several hours sitting by the computer and removing and reinserting these CDs I did get back this thinkpad the way it used to be when I bought it. Of course, all my software and all my work had to be reinstalled from scratch. But this is the price of working with Windows.

No, thats the price of buying from what is essentially the Walmart quality of PCs. The Thinkpad's durability dropped through the floor after Lenovo bought that division in late 2004/beginning of '05. What you bought is a computer that was made by the Chinese equivalent of the Walmart of computers.

This is why you shouldn't buy based on brand name Look at Apple. They're regarded as a high quality brand. However you have issues with the power adapters being fire hazards, cases cracking, discoloring, warping, bending, etc.

Soon after I bought it, about a month later, I noticed that when I turned it on, it would display this Windows XP logo with a moving bar underneath for about 10 minutes and only then the computer would start working. This was very irritating. Each time I restarted it I would have to wait 10 minutes.

User error combined with the Walmart quality Not Windows fault.

I've known hundreds of people using XP over the years and not a single one has ever had issues as long as they bought quality hardware.

The only people who have issues with Windows are those that buy poorly built products.

As I was disabling, the warning message appeared "are you sure you want to disable this valuable backup designed by Bill Gates during one of his great revelations on how to design fabulous software?"

Okay, that didn't happen. And if it did, its clear that YOU installed some sort of malware again.

Once again, SP2 made it next to impossible to install malware without the users consent. USers had to actively download, install, and run malware. And if a message like that really appeared to you, then you're either lying or you installed malware and ran it yourself. Entirely your fault.

I expected that I was buying a machine which would work, but this sucker just limped along. I asked the experts, professional software developers, and they told me, yes, yes, of course Windows 98 is known to be unstable system (then why did millions of suckers buy this crap of a software and put money in Bill Gates' pockets??).

Well, again, everyone I knew with Windows 98 had no issues. What software were you running? Hardware drivers? What was the manufacturer?

I never upgraded to Windows 2000, but I did try upgrading it to XP in the summer of 2003. The upgrade didn't go smoothly, to say the least.

Thats your problem right there. You NEVER upgrade an OS. Never. Not OS X, not Windows, not Linux. You never upgrade. You do a clean install.

As you can see, I used Windows, and I used it a lot.

And you made it clear that you installed and ran malware yourself and you bought low quality hardware.

OS X can do whatever windows can. Only it does it simpler, in a more straightforward fashion, so that if you forget you recall in a minute, not an hour or a day. Also it does not freeze.

Thats funny, because I've had OS X lock up more than 10 times on me. I've never been able to repeat it and it happens at very different and random points.

All while Windows runs completely rock solid in its own partition.

Also, OS X cannot do everything WIndows can. Why can't I play games without having to install Windows either on my Mac or in OS X or by using software such as Crossover to enable Windows compatibility?

Why can't I watch high definition movies on blu-ray discs connected to my HDTV? Or in general?

Why can't OS X properly handle external displays? I mean, if I hook my MacBook up to an external display, the connected monitor can ONLY be shut off if I connect an external keyboard and mouse and close the lid, putting the system to sleep, then waking it up with one of those external devices. What a pain. In Windows, when I connect an external display, it ASKS me what I want to do.

Oh and OS X can't properly detect the resolution of my HDTV (thanks to all of the adapters that are required) while Windows notebooks have HDMI as standard and it can connect, see my HDTV, and select the resolution properly.

Steve Jobs is not going to give you this fantastic software without you paying for it.

What fantastic software? iTunes is available for free for Windows. Even though iTunes is a great "jukebox" it uses ridiculous amounts of resources and the CPU use is higher than any other media player. iPhoto? Again, theres a perfectly good alternative built-in to Vista and others available free, like Picassa. Everything else is available in the form of freeware alternatives for Windows.

But you also get other things, such as MUCH better hardware, more connectivity options, etc.

And you know that most professional applications are more stable on Win systems than OS X right?

Not only that, but you get far more options on Windows! Look at the legions of hardware available for Windows for music recording and editing.

Please ship us your Mac and we will fix it for you even if it's a damn fuse. 4-14 days without your work tool.

Exactly! My first MacBook had a bum optical drive. Thanks to having to send it in and Flextronics, the company Apple contracts the work to, I was without my system for over 3 weeks because they kept botching the repair and making the system worse and worse. Apple had to replace it because of their shoddy repair work.

The optical drive went bad on my first HP (admittedly, I used it A LOT). You know how that went? I called HP, the next day I had a replacement drive on my door step. Not even 5 minutes later I had the new drive installed and had called FedEx to come pick up the old drive to send back to HP.

You forgot that people were forced to *downgrade* back to XP because Vista refused to work?

Believing what Apple tells you, eh? Do you actually read PC forums? Every single person who went back to XP did so out of choice. Not because they had to, but because they chose sto.

Have you heard of anyone downgrading to Tiger from Leopard?

You don't read much of these forums, do you? I suggest you go back a few months and read some posts from around the time Leopard launched.

You forgot that people petitioned Microsoft to keep selling XP because Vista was useless (which Bill Gates conveniently refused to do)?

Oh really? Must be people like these: http://mojaveexperiment.com/ Be warned, it uses Flash so if you're running your MacBook or MBP on your lap you'll be infertile due to heat for a few days.

Vista was a total disaster, people had to throw out their hardware and buy new computers because Vista was not compatible. Which could've been part of the plan, by the way. A global conspiracy of Microsoft and PC manufacturers!

Oh please, that is such a load of crap. Vista works on any 800MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, and GPU with drivers. Home Premium requires DirectX 9 (so any 5 year old GPU will do, Microsoft includes drivers), 1GB of RAM, and a 1GHz CPU.

Please stop feeding us the lies that Apple has been feeding us through the "Get A Mac" ads for the last 2.5 years. Though I do admit, they are funny.

What if you are in the middle of typing an important document and the computer freezes?

Hey that happened to me on my Mac a couple of weeks ago! I was type type typing away in Notepad and BOOM the system locked up.

What if you're giving a powerpoint presentation and your computer starts doing funny stuff on the screen (such as opens windows asking you to upgrade your antivirus, or informs you that it's time to do a backup - all real stories I've observed, fortunately, as a part of the audience, not as the speaker)

Two things. First, take care of your system and this won't happen. Second, this is what "Presentation Mode" is for. It keeps all that kind of crap on the primary display while running the presentation on the secondary display.

That's because idiotic hardware procurement people at large corporations buy PCs in bulk and fund Bill's lifestyle.

Fund Bill's lifestyle? Its a little funny you say that, considering that Apple accounts for more money than any other computer company in the world, despite having such small sales.

If you want to complain about "funding a lifestyle" then complain about Apple. They have an average of 30% margin? The iPhone generally costs $200 to get to market, yet AT&T is subsidizing $200 on the cost, so that means Apple is making $200 or so from each iPhone sold.

Not to mention the fact that they take 30% from all software SOLD on the App Store.

 

[D4F]

This is so fun to read!

ROFL it is!!!

But seriously, man, if you're such a PC fanatics, I need your help! My old Thinkpad T30 is still around. I want to be able to use it sometimes. If only because I already have it. But during the last year or so, every time I turn it on, it opens a window entitled "Access Connection", and that window informs me that the computer is trying to connect to a wireless network with a name of a network I used a year ago at a hotel (which of course does not exist any more). If I do nothing, the window simply stays and the computer refuses to connect to the internet. To connect to the internet, I need to 1. Close that window 2. Go to wireless connections 3. Put a checkmark on "Use windows to manage my wireless connections" (every time the computer is restarted this thing unchecks itself) 4. Look for wireless network 5. Find the right network and connect. Amazing, isn't it?

It originally took me an hour to figure out this sequence.

And people wonder why Apple is making big $$

I'll make it easier for you... 'preferred networks'.
And don't tell me you tried it Einstein.

ROFL now I'm done with this thread.

lol, lol, lol, lol, lol, lol, lol, lol... and LOL

 

[theyellowdart]

Then why bother with OS X? Windows and PCs will let you tinker with just about everything except recompiling the kernel. Its a lot more fun when you can adjust clock frequencies, timings, etc. than recompiling the kernel endlessly

I've found that I can tinker a lot more with OS X than windows due to it being UNIX. Sure you don't get the same hardware level tinkering (hence why I have a PC sitting two feet from me).

That PC is also dual booting Debian and Windows... so I get the best of both worlds with Debian .

Or you don't want to see that Vista is better than Leopard

The odds of me personally finding vista to be better than leopard are pretty slim.

And people wonder why Apple is making big $$

No... I don't think many people do wonder why.

 

[airjuggernaut]

This thread has just turned into another Mac Vs. PC thread.

God damnit.
I wonder when people will just realize that the two are just f**** computers with flipping operating systems that are both fantastic and crap in one way or another.

I hate the overblown statements about How great OSX is that you can throw ANYTHING at it and it will never FREEZe or CRASH, because it's APPLE and APPLE ROCKS or how Vista crashes every three seconds, when it clearly is now into Post-SP1 and is as stable as ever. and the overblown statements about "You paid 2000 for someting while I paid 1000 and got the same thing, APPLE SUCKS"

or

" I HAD A MACBOOK AND I HATED IT BECAUSE I USED IT FOR ABOUT 3 days AND DIDNT TRY TO LEARN ANYTHING, SO IM JUST GOING TO NITPICK ABOUT ALL THE PROBLEMS I HAD AND BITCH ABOUT IT ON MAC FORUMS SO MY DICK LOOKS BIGGER. " (Not trying to single anyone out.. even though I did slightly exaggerate, I guess its my apple pretenciousness kicking in.) (Sorry for the caps too )

Sure Apple is overpriced, but so is Starbucks, Abercrombie, Nike, etc. But will people stop buying them? NO.

People buy brands to make themselves feel good about something or feel like they belong to a select group of people. It's a wonderful feeling and I'm pretty sure you PC users do the same, I sure used to.. "Oh Look I have an NVidia card, My rig now runs Crysis at 49488 fps. ATI SUCKS"

I like Apple and Microsoft because I've come to realize that both operating systems are great. I do all my video and day to day things on Mac OSX and my gaming, programming and other windows sheninigans on Windows (yes Vista and I love it). They're both great and stable as long as you maintain and update regularly.

Grow the F*** up.
Because as much as you hate to say it, Apple and Microsoft will be around for a very long time, and if one didn't have the other, there would be no competition or innovation whatsoever in the market. If both of them were to magically dissapear one night, people would start bitching about Linux (Another amazing OS ).

Life is a screwed up cycle of complaints and arguements (Just go read any history textbook )

Thank you. (I'm slightly drunk )

 

[Auzburner]

This thread has just turned into another Mac Vs. PC thread.

God damnit.
I wonder when people will just realize that the two are just f**** computers with flipping operating systems that are both fantastic and crap in one way or another.

I hate the overblown statements about How great OSX is that you can throw ANYTHING at it and it will never FREEZe or CRASH, because it's APPLE and APPLE ROCKS or how Vista crashes every three seconds, when it clearly is now into Post-SP1 and is as stable as ever. and the overblown statements about "You paid 2000 for someting while I paid 1000 and got the same thing, APPLE SUCKS"

or

" I HAD A MACBOOK AND I HATED IT BECAUSE I USED IT FOR ABOUT 3 days AND DIDNT TRY TO LEARN ANYTHING, SO IM JUST GOING TO NITPICK ABOUT ALL THE PROBLEMS I HAD AND BITCH ABOUT IT ON MAC FORUMS SO MY DICK LOOKS BIGGER. " (Not trying to single anyone out.. even though I did slightly exaggerate, I guess its my apple pretenciousness kicking in.) (Sorry for the caps too )

Sure Apple is overpriced, but so is Starbucks, Abercrombie, Nike, etc. But will people stop buying them? NO.

People buy brands to make themselves feel good about something or feel like they belong to a select group of people. It's a wonderful feeling and I'm pretty sure you PC users do the same, I sure used to.. "Oh Look I have an NVidia card, My rig now runs Crysis at 49488 fps. ATI SUCKS"

I like Apple and Microsoft because I've come to realize that both operating systems are great. I do all my video and day to day things on Mac OSX and my gaming, programming and other windows sheninigans on Windows (yes Vista and I love it). They're both great and stable as long as you maintain and update regularly.

Grow the F*** up.
Because as much as you hate to say it, Apple and Microsoft will be around for a very long time, and if one didn't have the other, there would be no competition or innovation whatsoever in the market. If both of them were to magically dissapear one night, people would start bitching about Linux (Another amazing OS ).

Life is a screwed up cycle of complaints and arguements (Just go read any history textbook )

Thank you. (I'm slightly drunk )

Hey it makes more sense than several of the previous posts and you are "slightly drunk". I see lots of truth in your post and each OS has its specialties. Thanks for that.

 

[grym]

ROFL it is!!!



And people wonder why Apple is making big $$

I'll make it easier for you... 'preferred networks'.
And don't tell me you tried it Einstein.

ROFL now I'm done with this thread.

lol, lol, lol, lol, lol, lol, lol, lol... and LOL

Hey genius, you're probably independently wealthy bastard, have nothing to do, and spend all your time reading windows manuals and learning code words such as "preferred networks". While Bill Gates is laughing in his mansion. As I said, the computer to me is a tool, not an idol to be worshipped.

By the way, dude, you need to brush up on your windows knowledge. *OF COURSE* I have my network selected as "preferred network". But as I told you, each time I restart the computer the line, put there by Bill Gates in a stroke of genius, "Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings" gets unchecked. After which all these "preferred networks" are as good as dead, until I check it again.

So, I don't think you're a computer genius. Most likely, you're some computer-illiterate idiot here to annoy serious people.

 

[JVene]

Wow, the poor kid that started this thread was asking how to convince his parents to buy a Apple notebook. I still haven't found a post where he told us yet how that's worked out.

It all starts to sound like the day, 30 years ago, when my girlfriend let it slip somehow to her mother that she was no longer a virgin.

Let me give you a view from inside the machine. I'm an engineer, developer - been all over the map, technically speaking. I wrote software on the pre-cursor to the PowerPC CPU Mac fans came to know and love for years, before Mac ever thought of using one (no, not the 68000 family, the RT). I met the guy that invented that technology for IBM (John Cooke), and I had the opportunity to work with (as a consultant) one of the engineers that created the Alto, the system that started the "GUI" revolution.

One person in this thread posted that these are just computers. Another pointed out that at this point, they're all very nearly the same parts. NVidia, Intel, Seagate, Western Digital, maybe some Mushkin, Corsair....

If you've ever lost a drive (or at least it's contents including the OS), you'll realize quite suddenly that the entire 'personality' you come to depend on is your configuration of software and the data.

Architects, dependent on AutoCAD for the most part, can spend weeks setting up that application for their particular use, following a fresh install. They are an extremely particular class of users (if they're of the slightest technical inclination), even though, to them, the computer is all about AutoCAD, with 'other stuff' like email, browsers and a word processor. They wouldn't care of the machine still ran MSDOS.

Think about this for a second - an application that has captured probably 90%+ of the U.S. market for architectural drawing, and it's command driven. Read that again - while you CAN use icons and menus and the mouse, most of the work they do to create an architectural workpiece is done by typing in commands. It's enough to make you cringe just watching, but they're fast at it - and it works for them.

One thing most of them don't do is to anthropomorphize the machine. One architect I met called her computer "Franky" - but not as an endearment, but because her computer was assembled out of the remains of several others in the office - Franky was short for Frankenstein.

If you're fond of your computer; if you think it's really wonderful; if it seems to have a personality to it, the way a great car might feel; and if you believe that others who don't respect it's quality and style are somehow missing the point, then I have a message for you.

You haven't seen what's coming. Some day, you'll look back at this machine and it will seem as antiquated, a small, flat, black & white, slow and limited as the original MacIntosh would seem if you used it right now. You wouldn't want to have to use one of those to fulfill your current expectations of a computer, would you?

I know there must be at least one person who would jump into say, "But that was a great computer." Please, the memory of it being a great computer is quite different than the reality that would hit you if you compared it to a current machine, Windows, Mac or Linux.

There was a computer, once, that went farther than the machine we have in front of us right now, in some respects. It foretold the future of how a computer would be used, and inspired everyone with an open mind that saw it. Some, even those who paid for it, didn't think it was of any value. They saw a few small images and a mouse, but had no vision to recognize what an imaginative and revolutionary design was before them. There ought to be a movie made about that computer, and the story of it's creation - but only geeks would watch it.

It was the Alto, developed at PARC, by a team of engineers and scientists (most of them PhD's), for Xerox. One PDP-11 was used just as the graphics engine. Obviously there were limitations in performance we can easily exceed today, but like I said before, if you've ever lost your hard drive, you'd realize the personality of your computer is not in the hardware. It's in the software, it's configuration and it's data. To that end, we have yet to exceed what was created by the early 80's. It was allowed to die off because Xerox didn't see any value in it.

Imagine, for example, the ability to program an Icon. No, not point one to a batch file, a script or some URL, but to see the Icon as an object of the desktop which itself has 'knowledge', as it were. It's relationship to the rest of the machine is determined by how it's been programed to interact with other icons. They're commands, after all, but they're also representative of devices, files, executables.... Remember Unix - how it was constructed so that the output of one application could be fed into the next on a single command line instruction?

For those not familiar, a brief illustration is in order:

cat filename | sort > resultfile

This uses 'cat' - a command - to send the contents of a file to the sort program, which sends its output to a file. These could be chained endlessly to make small specialized commands (or programs) perform surprisingly complex tasks.

Imagine if you could 'hook' icons together to make tasks - feed the output of one application into another, as easily as typing a few words on a command line.

We never retained that in our modern GUI. I know, dragging things to the trashcan, dropping some files dragged from one location to another - that's not 'it' here. Imagine if the design of the system were such that the STANDARD of applications is that they 'announce' what they can do, and what they can respond to, and the 'system' overall is able to let you group these into tasks - each represented graphically in what we currently think of as an icon. Think 'intelligent' icons that can connect, interact - with a grammar and language in the mix.

I know - the elements of shared libraries, DLL's, ActiveX controls, agents - lots of paradigms sound like they're related to this. Wrap all of them into a graphically represented interface, where some Icons represent operators, like +, - or =. Imaging being able to perform a boolean comparison on two or more directories to create a third (as in show me the outdated or missing files when comparing my current directory to my last backup).

Imagine being able to create a pipeline that connects the output of your image editor and your vector editor to the input of your HTML designer, and then ITS output to your web server. If you 'touch up' your photo, or 'nudge' some text in the vector editor, the adjustment passes through the HTML designer and appears on your website - live. Don't want it live, well link the output to a hidden directory or a private server, obviously - the point is that we currently 'link' these applications to each other with comparatively clunky and primitive methods compared to the way the Alto was capable of doing.

A team of engineers worked for a few years, back in the late 70's and early 80's, on concepts LIKE these - they were headed in this direction, taking risks, pushing the envelope on pure theory and putting that into application. It was inspiring, as you probably know from history - it was the spark of inspiration that put Jobs on the road to the first MacIntosh.

What Jobs and Gates walked away with from their 'visit' at Xerox they absorbed in a few days or weeks. The stuff they saw had been in development for years, and it would have taken months to understand it all, and they certainly didn't have the hardware to implement half of it. We're finally 'there' and we're not really focused on the Alto's original inspiration anymore.

Frankly, THAT was a system worth some awe and respect - perhaps even a little anthropomorphic naming. We're getting closer, finally, to those ideas. It's true we have surpassed a number of their capabilities, in specialized technical areas (like 3D in real time, audio in real time) - but that thing that makes the system what you've come to know and love - that thing you'll loose if your hard drive crashes - they had even more of THAT stuff long ago.

It's coming back.

I can't say Mac is all THAT far ahead of Windows (compared to the example from history), but as an engineer, I have no choice but to admit it is a little bit ahead of Windows. From where I sit, and what I've seen, and where things are going (that most will not see for several years) - you haven't seen the best of it yet.

And, of course, the others will copy - they're all copies, remember - playing catch up.


Ok, sorry - third beer, should've warned you before I started - old men, old stories - I'll be asleep before the server gets the last packet when I hit submit.

 

[grym]

If your Thinkpad (very overrated series, especially now that Lenovo builds them) displays that screen after a crash, then your HDD IS formatted as FAT32. You bought your Thinkpad after Lenovo bought IBM's PC division, so get mad at the cheap Chinese-based company and manufacturer for not properly configuring your system.

And before you say "It has an IBM sticker on it!", keep in mind that Lenovo made a deal with IBM to continue using their branding after the purchase.

So yes your Thinkpad was built and configured by a second rate Chinese based company and manufacturer, lower quality than the manufacturers that HP, Dell, Apple, Gateway, Acer, etc. contract.

That Thinkpad was $3000. Top of the line at the time. If you're right, thoso guys are marketing geniuses. I doubt Lenovos are far worse than other PCs. I suspect they're about the same.

Thats funny, because I've had OS X lock up more than 10 times on me. I've never been able to repeat it and it happens at very different and random points.

I think it's because of your bad karma.

Why can't OS X properly handle external displays? I mean, if I hook my MacBook up to an external display, the connected monitor can ONLY be shut off if I connect an external keyboard and mouse and close the lid, putting the system to sleep, then waking it up with one of those external devices. What a pain. In Windows, when I connect an external display, it ASKS me what I want to do.

Nonsense. What you're describing - having to close the lid and wake the computer up with a keyboard - is needed to run the external display with the laptop lid closed. In fact, PC laptops do not have this ability AT ALL. If you want to do that on a PC, get a docking station. With a mac, the procedure you described is the right one.

But if your aim's just to drive the external monitor, without closing the lid, you are in luck if you have a MAC. Because with macs, all you need to do is to plug it in ... and it works. OK, sometimes you have to click "detect displays", but if needed it can be accessed with one click.

With a PC, I don't envy you. After plugging in the monitor, often you need to tell windows that it's plugged. You do it by right-clicking on the screen, choosing properties, then settings, then advanced, then displays, and then click on the icon for the display you want to use. I wonder what nightmares Bill Gates was having when he devised this diabolical combination of menus. After this click, windows responds with a mocking message "Do you want me to apply new settings without restarting (not recommended), or would you rather restart your computer?" I love Windows. It wants you restart your PC every other minute and then waste time staring at windows start-up logo.

Once you switched on your monitor, you may need to set up the proper resolution. In many cases your PC does not recognize the resolution right away (if it's nonstandard), so that it doesn't even appear in the list of possible resolutions in the "settings" submenu, and you have to restart it.

Just today spent an hour on the phone with a guy who couldn't configure his monitor. Eventually we got it to work, but so much time wasted...

Now it's true sometimes you can have a shortcut Fn-F7, which lets you choose which monitor to use. But you have to manually preconfigure it. Does not work if you just plugged your PC into a totally new monitor or a nonstandard projector.

Believing what Apple tells you, eh? Do you actually read PC forums? Every single person who went back to XP did so out of choice. Not because they had to, but because they chose sto.

Are you crazy? Read this:
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6142_102-0.html?forumID=133&threadID=234979&messageID=2412969

Read this:
http://blogs.consumerreports.org/electronics/2008/02/vista-to-xp-the.html

Read this:
http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1138117

And then sleep well and get over your hangover.

 

[grym]

Two things. First, take care of your system and this won't happen. Second, this is what "Presentation Mode" is for. It keeps all that kind of crap on the primary display while running the presentation on the secondary display.

In fact, the presentation mode was not available on early versions of PC powerpoint (but it was on a powerpoint for MAC, believe it or not!). Maybe now it is available; they stole the idea from Keynote.

Most serious people do not have time to micromanage every little behavior on their laptops before giving the big presentation. They just expect it to work. If they have a mac, they're in luck. If it's a PC, let the force be with them. But even that won't help.

Fund Bill's lifestyle? Its a little funny you say that, considering that Apple accounts for more money than any other computer company in the world, despite having such small sales.

Apple earns its profits. Bill Gates steals his fortune from his customers. This is the big difference. I have nothing against masters charging for their materpieces. But I abhor thieves who sell a poor quality substitute at top prices.

 

[D4F]

Apple earns its profits. Bill Gates steals his fortune from his customers. This is the big difference. I have nothing against masters charging for their materpieces. But I abhor thieves who sell a poor quality substitute at top prices.

And yet you praise Apple which sells a laptop for $1100 that doesn't even have a DVD writer in 2008... rofl.

 

[D4F]

Hey genius, you're probably independently wealthy bastard, have nothing to do, and spend all your time reading windows manuals and learning code words such as "preferred networks". While Bill Gates is laughing in his mansion. As I said, the computer to me is a tool, not an idol to be worshipped.

By the way, dude, you need to brush up on your windows knowledge. *OF COURSE* I have my network selected as "preferred network". But as I told you, each time I restart the computer the line, put there by Bill Gates in a stroke of genius, "Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings" gets unchecked. After which all these "preferred networks" are as good as dead, until I check it again.

So, I don't think you're a computer genius. Most likely, you're some computer-illiterate idiot here to annoy serious people.

Haha. You my young padawan need some free time away from the internet.
Go out, play some marbles, find a girl/guy maybe. Get A LIFE.

Yes I am wealthy. Unfortunately at this point I still have a lot to do. I'm a head of creative department for a broadcasting company. I'm 30, have a great family AND I'm A HAPPY man.
Since your system is a tool for you then why don't you learn it?? rofl I mean it. How dumb can you be to assume that you know it all and if you can't find it then it's bad??. Try looking at manuals for 3D studio, C4D, ZBrush, Vue and Houdini and you'll understand that manuals are a key for me or anybody in my team to function properly.

You spend one hour looking for a solution that can be found within less than 5 minutes. That is why you're frustrated little hypocrite and I'm a happy guy enjoying this thread.

*CLEAR PREFERRED NETWORKS*... rofl this is so amusing.

 

[mixmacface]

. . .

Thank you. (I'm slightly drunk )

i love you. hahahahahahaha!

 

[sabregreen]

See, the thing is, when you actually own or use something on a regular basis, its easy to prove it. For example, if someone told me I never used a Mac, it'd be a simple matter of either taking a screenshot of me logged in here at macrumors while on my Mac or taking a picture and attaching it to my post.

Its not just his supposed "experience", but its also many statements he made both regarding Vista and computer hardware that were flat out wrong.

It's funny you mention this. I have my experience. I don't need to defend it. My customers and workplace can vouch for this. Stupid argument. As you can see, I run Vista and have been running it, like I stated before, since one of the first betas. Small portion of what I deal with:
http://s37.photobucket.com/albums/e77/tharpj/apple/

My Vista experience is different than yours. I have seen posts and benchmarks about Vista SP1 RTM being better, but not by this large margin you claim. Certain areas are better than others, like file copying. Others, are not. And the whole learning thing I don't disagree with but I don't see really a difference with my machine.

You and this big ordeal about playing video on your computer is getting out of hand. I mean, I don't know how many times you need to repeat yourself. The thing is, you aren't proving anything. All you had to do was say it once. None of us have disagreed with the fact that you can't play HD video on a Mac or the lack of vide acceleration. This doesn't change anything I have been talking about.

The whole talk about finding a PC for half the price with twice the performance is, well, yet to be found. Maybe your definition of twice the performance is different from mine and apparently theyellowdarts. For twice the performance, a program should load much faster. Maybe not twice, I'll let that slide. In general, the machine should do basic tasts much faster. Booting up, opening programs, etc. Never argued that fact that you can get much better video intensive performance for a lot cheaper. Let me say this one more time. This was never argued.

No, he specifically said that you needed double the RAM to run 64 applications. Nothing more, nothing less. His entire argument was that ALL 64-bit applications take up double the "RAM" and failed to understand how software works at all.

OS X proves his entire argument wrong anyway. Leopard takes no more RAM at startup than Tiger does (both eat up ~400MB of RAM at startup on my system) and the system functions all eat up just as much memory in either OS.

About the arguments about 64-bit. My first statement about how 64-bit works was a little absolute so to speak. However, I posted response to someone that questioned what I said and explained this in a more correct fasion quoted below.

The reason is that the instruction set uses 64-bit wide registers and data. So now instead of instructions being 32-bit wide they are 64-bit wide. When you assign a virtual memory space, this is double that of 32-bit. Now, its not one-to-one the sense its going to take literally twice the amount of memory so to speak, but it will take more memory.

The issue is that the 64-bit implemenation of their 32-bit counterparts are just not at the same level as the 32-bit versions. Programs are also the problem as there are few that are written for 64-bit architectures. Vista and Leopard improved upon their predecessors however by a long shot. Vista is by far much better than 64-bit XP. Solaris is another good 64-bit OS.

I'm sure wikipedia can explain this a lot better, as I am no teacher.

As you can see above, I said it is not a one-to-one implementation. In all likely hood and practice, its not going take twice the memory. It takes more memory to do the same instruction in 64-bit as it does in 32-bit period. How its implemented can be different however, thus changing everything. This is what happens. 64-bit usage at the client level or desktop level is still premature. Software has to be rewritten to take full advantage of the benefits that 64-bit brings. Software is being changed to run on 64-bit, but not optimized. Bottom line: Data takes up more space in memory as 64-bit than 32-bit. Taking the same size cache used in 32-bit arch gives you less cache to play with since data takes up more memory, thus reducing performance.

From my superficial understanding of the computer system, there is a difference between "memory" as ya'll know and "instruction sets". Memory, ie: textures or data files a program uses, go into your RAM module. "Instruction sets" on the other hand, go to "Cache", which is inside your CPU (processor). When you compare a 32 bit and 64 bit OS, you're talking the latter doubling the instruction sets of the first...so what is all this talk about 64 bit using more RAM?

The idea of cache is to move data from a slower medium to a faster medium, which in turn is closer to the CPU. There is a hierarchy of the order of slowest medium to fastest, with tape pretty much being the slowest, and data registers being the fastest. This is why the cache in a computer is called the cache. I was talking about doubling the instruction length in a given instruction set. This is what happens because memory addressing is done in 64-bit instead of 32-bit, twice the length.

You throw around the term "fanboy" too much. I am not a fanboy. I am neither defending nor attacking PC's or Mac's. The statements both you, mosx and D4F have made are, in fact, absolute statements with no exception. That is where you are wrong and the reason why I even responded to your statements. Again, I NEVER disagreed the generalized statement of, "You can get a PC with better specs that yields better performance at a cheaper price." I have said this before.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

to MOSX, and his reply (#278)

you are obviously a no-life and poorass nerd who probably lives in their mothers basement. your post is so long and so untrue. UNIX is solid, XP is called trash. Macs are obviously the better platform since it was voted the fastest Vista pc in 2007. this wasnt one guy but an independent company who tested pcs. and why do you talk so much about XP if windows is better? IF you really were confident, talk about Vista and Leopard since they are the latest OS of each company. and lenovo is NOT a second rate chinese company. I'm chinese and everything or close to you own is made in china. your zune (you are a mac hater, dont think you have an ipod) you laptop, dekstop, some of your clothing, car parts, camera, etc. alot of the things you use are made in china. so if you dont like it, dont buy it and tell us you hate it. Macs always have beaten PCs. Always, since Mac is UNIX and PC is not.

Second, ppl who really do alot of pro stuff dont use either platform. they use specialized platforms and hardware/software. but... for the semi-pro and under Apple dominates. It's just simply better, and if MOSX actully disects my post and criticizes it, then he just proves what my point. He's probably a no-life and a loser who sleeps is his mothers basement and doesnt have any friends. get a life and dont reply to this post.

but to the OP of this thread:
i used to believe that XP was better, since I never used macs and wasnt a computer person at that point (like 6 years of age) but now I only use macs, but still retain my skill in XP/Vista. The best way is simply to make a simple list, listing the basic hardware/software of the PC system and then do this for Mac. It's easier if you add sidenotes, saying oh this processor is better or something. thats easier for your parents to understand. and list the software, like iLife on Mac, and whats equivalent in XP/Vista along with the prices you pay.

 

[theyellowdart]

to MOSX, and his reply (#278)

you are obviously a no-life and poorass nerd who probably lives in their mothers basement. your post is so long and so untrue. UNIX is solid, XP is called trash. Macs are obviously the better platform since it was voted the fastest Vista pc in 2007. this wasnt one guy but an independent company who tested pcs. and why do you talk so much about XP if windows is better? IF you really were confident, talk about Vista and Leopard since they are the latest OS of each company.

You might want to re-read most of this topic if you want... mosx has been talking almost exclusivly about Vista.

Macs always have beaten PCs. Always, since Mac is UNIX and PC is not.

Kind of hard to say "always" and then use the fact that OS X is UNIX as your defense. Seeing as before 2001 there was nothing UNIX about macs... not to mention a PC can run various forms of UNIX and *nix.

 

[drs68]

Still Reading

seriously? what did ever happen to the OP? . . I wonder if he's still reading all this mumbo-jumbo crap. and seriously, the replies to replies to replies with wall of texts. . needs to stop. it's so silly.

and i don't think the OP's parents hate apple. . they just don't understand why a computer (in their minds are all the same) has to cost so much. that's how my parents are, but i told them, it's my money, i'm going to do what i need to do. and thus my macbook was ordered.

I know you all haven't heard from me in so long; I'm sorry about that. I have been reading this thread still, just not as often, and I've been skipping through some of the osx vs vista s*** which has really gotten out of control no matter how much everyone says it's to help me because it isn't helping me at all. As for my progress, everything has been pretty much on hold. I have continued to try to convince my parents that a MacBook is best for me. I honestly believe that my mom would highly disapprove but would not stop me from buying a MacBook. Next weekend we are going school shopping and I'm going to introduce mac osx to my mom ( I say osx because when I buy my MacBook the hardware will likely be different due to a refresh in a month or two). Whatever happens I will let you know. Whether it is in two weeks or late September and whether I have to add a reply here or start a new thread I swear I will let you know!!!

 

[stone315]

Alright man! You're still alive! Sorry to hear it's not working out yet, but good luck and keep trying. Keep us posted; I apologize for the 11 pages of crap you had to wade through. Hopefully an OS X demo will convince them! You have good reasons for wanting a MacBook, now is your chance to demonstrate them and have other people back you up on them. Good luck!

 

[patrickmacrumor]

I know you all haven't heard from me in so long; I'm sorry about that. I have been reading this thread still, just not as often, and I've been skipping through some of the osx vs vista s*** which has really gotten out of control no matter how much everyone says it's to help me because it isn't helping me at all. As for my progress, everything has been pretty much on hold. I have continued to try to convince my parents that a MacBook is best for me. I honestly believe that my mom would highly disapprove but would not stop me from buying a MacBook. Next weekend we are going school shopping and I'm going to introduce mac osx to my mom ( I say osx because when I buy my MacBook the hardware will likely be different due to a refresh in a month or two). Whatever happens I will let you know. Whether it is in two weeks or late September and whether I have to add a reply here or start a new thread I swear I will let you know!!!

Hey Kid,

Welcome back I stopped reading this thread until I found that you actually posted another comment. In my previous comments, I did say that, if I were you, I would take whatever my parents were giving me, and save for a MacBook. I also said that I understood your parents point of view. It takes time to understand that LOL. But I'm now 32 and about to become a dad myself. I guess this changed my way of seeing things.

However, I'm not you. You seem to be very focused on a MacBook, and anything else will not make you happy. In this case, there is no sense getting something you'll hate for the rest of your life and thinking you could get something "better." By better, I mean that will make you happy.

You said you would be introducing your mom to the Mac. Good Luck! (I mean it). It never hurt to fight for what you think is good for you. If you fail, you'll have the peace of mind knowing that at least you've tried, at least you've give it your best shot.

My motto: always give it a try first. Imagine a boy wanting to go out with a girl badly, but was very shy to ask her out. Let's imagine that the girl would have said yes, but he did not try. As a result, he might have crossed the opporunity to live something great. The wors thing that could happened: the girl saying no.

--
Patrick

 

[MacHappytjg]

i say if theres no budging your parents get the dell and put osx on it urself
......

 

[queshy]

Please stay on topic. Windows or mac bashing back and forth isn't helping the op at all.

 

[toolbox]

My parents were the same, OH you don't need that you have enough stuff.

I have now got this mind set that if i want something i am going to get it, if i want to go somewhere i am going there. Just remember you only live once! If you want a mac get a mac. It's your money you do what you want with it.

MY first discussion with my parents in getting a laptop was a disaster. They didn't approve at all. But i still wanted it. I worked all summer to save up which which was almost 7 days a week at work saving up for this.

Finally i had enough money, i went and bought it and i felt proud of what i have achieved despite my parents. I had that for 2 years, bought my macbook which again was a disaster, how ever mum had a change of attitude the following morning. She says to me think about it for a week, if you still want it go and by it.

You have do what you think is right

 

[sabregreen]

I agree the thread has gotten out of control. The idea is to have an unbiased opinion or unbiased facts about the different systems that you are, in essence, having to decide between. Whichever one you get, just know that if it does come down to your choice, make it one YOU like because it has what YOU need/want. When the dust settles, thats what matters.

 

[drs68]

Good News

Alright man! You're still alive! Sorry to hear it's not working out yet, but good luck and keep trying. Keep us posted; I apologize for the 11 pages of crap you had to wade through. Hopefully an OS X demo will convince them! You have good reasons for wanting a MacBook, now is your chance to demonstrate them and have other people back you up on them. Good luck!

I have some great news!!! I've actually made some progress! My mom asked me last night if I thought it was a good idea to visit a larger mall for school shopping this upcoming weekend possibly in Pittsburgh or on the VA side of DC. Naturally I thought it was a good idea because those areas have Apple stores. Well, I helped her look around and boasted about two malls that looked nice (and have Apple stores of course) and she decided that she would like to go to South Hills Village in Pittsburgh, which has an Apple store. I told her that it was my clear intention to show her OSX when we get there. She rolled her eyes and expressed skepticism but I think the Apple Store will change her mind and that's definitely better than any Best Buy I would have gone to where she might get exposed to many other computers and not pay attention to Apple. Can't wait to show her (and myself as well) how wonderful Mac products are! I will be sure to update you after we visit the Apple Store in Pittsburgh and I get her impression of Apple!!! Hopefully she becomes more open minded after that, especially since football starts on Aug. 16, because I will have other priorities and won't be able to pester her as much. Thanks for all your comments! Like I said, I plan on printing out several of these to help convince her once this thread slows down (who knows when that will be? but that certainly doesn't mean slow down! I am grateful that this thread has become the second most popular thread on the first page of macbook forums and I would like to see it go into September even!). I'll keep you posted!