Next Version of Windows to Incorporate Advanced Touch Features

[Evangelion]

The point that you refuse to understand is that Mac users almost invariably use both - and therefore have a point of reference to make a decision as to which is better for them.

How exactly do I "refuse to understand" that? I use both, and I think OS X is superior. But does that mean that I should make ******** claims about Windows in order to justify my choice of OS'es? No it does not.

More often than not, Windows users have never used a Mac any significant time, yet still insist on berating the Mac and Mac users.

And those that do that, are morons. Do we, Mac-users want to behave in similar way? There are plenty of Windows-users who spread BS about Macs, and I have argued with them about those comments. And if some Mac-users spreads BS about Windows (or Linux, or some other system) I'm more than willing to argue with THEM as well! If people just stuck to facts, there would not be any issues. If they resort to lies, you can bet your ass that I will take an issue with those comments. Spreading lies is not cool, OK?

Note: I'm all for discussing Windows if we use factual information. I'm NOT for coming up with arguments that are 100% false. THAT is the core of my argument! That we should not resort to lies and BS.

Most of what you're saying about Mac users amounts to strawman arguments. For example, you claimed that Apple switching from PPC to Intel was some kind of loss for Mac users and they were hypocritical for using Intel machines.

Um, I never made any such claim. You are confusing me with someone else it seems.

If you're not bright enough to figure that out, get someone to explain it to you.

If you are not bright enough to understand that it was someone else who said that, not me, the get someone to explain it to you.

I will admit that the G5 wasn't the greatest chip, but it was certainly a better competitor than the Pentium 4s.

G5 had the same fate as just about every PPC-chip had: it was superior (in some ways) at the moment it was launched, but it started to fall behind later. And even though it might have been better than P4 (and even that is debatable: Steve Jobs admitted during the keynote that P4 was faster on integer than G5 was, and integer is what is being used in everyday-computing), how about Athlon64 or Opteron?

There were enough benchmark tests on it to show that it did run faster than the Pentiums in many regards

"Many regards" is a cop out. You could then also say that "P4 was faster than G5 in many regards".

The G5 wasn't a bad performer. Considering that the lowliest of the g5's, the 1.6, still has an 800 Mhz bus and 64-bit performance, two fairly important specs still comparable to today's low end machines, says something.

"64-bit performance" didn't do much with G5. With x86 it's actually useful since it doubles the number of registers (something that x86 was seriously lacking in). And just because some paper-specs in the low-end G5 are OK by today's standards does not automatically mean that the resulting performance is competetive.

 

[macinfojunkie]

Hardly.

Exchange is no better than many messaging systems used by Unix, and therefore Mac OS X. In many respects (such as security), it's far worse.

I don't know about collaboration - in fact, I don't know a single person who uses it. So you may be correct on that one - but who cares?

Games? Sure. I'll give you that one. I've never denied that if your objective is to get every fps that you can get out of a given game that you should get a PC box. But most of those people have multiple boxes, so why not use the PC for games and the Mac for everything else - which it generally does better. Of course, that completely ignores the fact that games are third party apps and MS can hardly take credit for them (of course, you'll try, but that doesn't make it real).

File management? ROTFLMAO. Windows explorer is a confusing POS. We have more files lost due to Windows crappy file management than I could count. Not to mention the time wasted as people try to figure it out.

So you've got one real advantage for the people who choose to use it and which is attributable to third parties rather than to Windows. The Mac has vastly superior security, ease of use, productivity, and ability for applications to work together. Sounds like a pretty substantial advantage.

I think you are looking at it from a different perspective. i.e. that of an end user. I was looking at it from an IT management point of view (well, except for th games bit) - and the list was not meant to be comprehansive, just a snapshot.

I am not anti mac (I just bought all my parents, parents in law, aunts and uncles 20'' imacs for Xmas as I'm sick of supporting their PC problems so am putting this "Macs are easy for IT simpletons to use" theory to the test) but neither am I anti PC (I work with them every day). But long ago I gave up dreaming that the Mac would catch up with PC in terms of usage. I've accepted that my OS of (personal) choice will forever been in the minority. But I'm grateful that things are slowly improving. I was using Macs back in the day when almost everything was proprietary, non-standard and overly expensive. I paid because I thought the premium worth it. Things have moved on thankfully, but MacOS is still a niche player. The sad fact is that if the percentages shifted hugely then Apple would have to relinquish a lot more control to external parties and the platform would then become susceptible to the same issues that have challenged Microsoft with Windows.

OSX is a FABULOUS end user/small business platform, but sadly Apple or a supporting 3rd pary have just not stepped up to the plate to provdie the services and management tools necesasry to scale the system for the enterprise. I wish I were wrong on this, but sadly the argument about mac superiority in the enterprise is just not there yet. Try negotiating for 100,000 licenses for a Mac solution when there is only ONE provider in the market place offering a product worth having. On the PC platform there are more alternatives therefore competitioin is allowed to work. (With the exception of the base os - but this is only a very small fraction of the overall IT footprint cost for many organisation and pretty much negligable to tell the truth).

And, nobody uses Exchange and Sharepoint? Sure! Wonder why one of my customers is wasting tens of millions $ rolling it out world wide to 100,000 plus employees. You should write them a letter and tell them you know better. Outside the US what is the largest Mac estate anyway? I've worked with dozens of large IT deparment (by large I mean 20,000 seats) in Europe or more and only ever come across 1 department which had more than 0.5% Mac. I have seen more SparcStations in the past in Wall Street type IT department than Macs.

The parallels with Orwellian swine politics in some of the Mac fanboy aspirations are comical though.

 

[diamond.g]

Hardly.

Exchange is no better than many messaging systems used by Unix, and therefore Mac OS X. In many respects (such as security), it's far worse.

I don't know about collaboration - in fact, I don't know a single person who uses it. So you may be correct on that one - but who cares?

Games? Sure. I'll give you that one. I've never denied that if your objective is to get every fps that you can get out of a given game that you should get a PC box. But most of those people have multiple boxes, so why not use the PC for games and the Mac for everything else - which it generally does better. Of course, that completely ignores the fact that games are third party apps and MS can hardly take credit for them (of course, you'll try, but that doesn't make it real).

Using Exchange purely for email is short sighted. Exchange is also a Calendar, Todo (Tasks), Address Book (Contacts), and Notes system. All of these things are integrated in Outlook/Exchange. As far as I can tell Apple doesn't provide a single source solution for that.

Sharepoint is a popular collaboration tool (at least in the US government), due to the fact that it integrates with Active Directory permissions.

Games MS can (and does) take credit for. It is called Direct3D (DirectX). MS is willing to work hand in hand with hardware manufacturers and game makers to get the API doing what they want/need it to do. Apple, afaik, doesn't.

 

[macinfojunkie]

Exactly!

MS is willing to work hand in hand with hardware manufacturers and game makers to get the API doing what they want/need it to do. Apple, afaik, doesn't.

To be fair though, I thought Apple was working with some vendors to make games better or easier to convert for Macs. Didn't Electronic Arts do a "dog and poney show" with apple at one of the summer shindigs?

Nice to see that Apple finally copied M$ on the "to-do" front though. I bet SJ felt such a dip$h1t standing on stage and fanfaring that as a breakthough feature for Leopard or whatever it was that introduced that to the Mac. LOL

 

[Steven Ballmer]

Win 7, 3 years and counting down!

We are still on schedule to finnish Win7 in 3 years, a very agressive schedule indeed! The new OS will make Leopold look like a toy!

 

[macinfojunkie]

We are still on schedule to finnish Win7 in 3 years, a very agressive schedule indeed! The new OS will make Leopold look like a toy!

keep your hair on!

 

[diamond.g]

Exactly!



To be fair though, I thought Apple was working with some vendors to make games better or easier to convert for Macs. Didn't Electronic Arts do a "dog and poney show" with apple at one of the summer shindigs?

Nice to see that Apple finally copied M$ on the "to-do" front though. I bet SJ felt such a dip$h1t standing on stage and fanfaring that as a breakthough feature for Leopard or whatever it was that introduced that to the Mac. LOL

None of EA's recent games are native Mac games. They all use TransGaming Cider (I think). So no Apple didn't work with EA to bring games to the Mac, TransGaming did.

 

[::Lisa::]

Haven't read this whole thread but...

the next version of Windows ("Windows 7") will contain touch features with specific claims that the new features will 'blow away' the current touch features on the iPhone

..my eyes just rolled out of my head lol.

I believe we will begin seeing developer seeds in around 2023.

LOL

 

[Evangelion]

To be fair though, I thought Apple was working with some vendors to make games better or easier to convert for Macs. Didn't Electronic Arts do a "dog and poney show" with apple at one of the summer shindigs?

Well, what EA is doing is basically running their games though an emulation-layer. So the games aren't "ported" as such.

 

[zgh1999]

Well, I remembered how Apple preached how Intel was such an inferior CPU in their Ads compared to G# CPU and they had the whole Apple community echoing their statement--forums like Mac Forum was filled with this stuff. And this was happening right until they switched to Intel. Now you guys are eating crow!

It doesn't need to be MS...Sony, NBC, Bungie, anybody who goes against the Apple's movement is enemy number one.

Traitor.

 

[macinfojunkie]

Well, I remembered how Apple preached how Intel was such an inferior CPU in their Ads compared to G# CPU and they had the whole Apple community echoing their statement--forums like Mac Forum was filled with this stuff. And this was happening right until they switched to Intel. Now you guys are eating crow!

It doesn't need to be MS...Sony, NBC, Bungie, anybody who goes against the Apple's movement is enemy number one.

I assume you passed this comment through "Minitruth" before posting? It seems a bit of an Anti-Apple statement to me. Surely it can't be true!

 

[jragosta]

I think you are looking at it from a different perspective. i.e. that of an end user. I was looking at it from an IT management point of view (well, except for th games bit) - and the list was not meant to be comprehansive, just a snapshot.

Yeah, I guess if you make your living on IT management, then you're going to prefer Windows - for job security reasons. Few IT managers have very much familiarity with Macs - because they're just not needed anywhere near as much.

I was referring specifically to the end user perspective. After all, the important criteria should be what the user can accomplish, not how many IT people get to keep their jobs.

Well, I remembered how Apple preached how Intel was such an inferior CPU in their Ads compared to G# CPU and they had the whole Apple community echoing their statement--forums like Mac Forum was filled with this stuff. And this was happening right until they switched to Intel. Now you guys are eating crow!

Hint: There's this amazing thing called 'time'. At the time Apple made that statements, PPC WAS the superior platform. Unfortunately, IBM/Motorola couldn't or wouldn't put the money into process research to maintain that lead - and Intel caught up (and eventually passed them). At that time, Apple switched.

Would you have thought it was more rational for Apple to stick with PPC to be consistent even after it fell behind? Would that make more sense?

It doesn't need to be MS...Sony, NBC, Bungie, anybody who goes against the Apple's movement is enemy number one.

Evidence (other than your hallucinations)?

 

[Evangelion]

Hey jragosta: You can at least be man and admit you were wrong about my comments and apologize.

 

[macinfojunkie]

Yeah, I guess if you make your living on IT management, then you're going to prefer Windows - for job security reasons. Few IT managers have very much familiarity with Macs - because they're just not needed anywhere near as much.

I was referring specifically to the end user perspective. After all, the important criteria should be what the user can accomplish, not how many IT people get to keep their jobs.

I think that your comments about IT managers and their attitude to change is somewhat naive to be honest. If you think that IT managers keep Windows in place simply to keep their jobs, you are living in dreamland. I agree it would take an element of bravery to embark on the migration, but the job satisfaction element would be huge! Not to mention such change management skills re highly prized! The first CIO to successfully guide a large organisation through such a transition is going to have a license to print money for years to come. So the challenge in the industry is not one of technical bigotry - although I don't doubt it exists in the minority of cases. The bottom line is that for very large organisation that the cost of changing is just so incredibly high. If you have no experience in managing projects worth $multi-millions then you simply would to understand such figures, and I don't mean that as a boast or a slight on the reader's experience. But it is not a simple case of adding up a the cost of a few Macs and a copy of Office fort Mac!

New hardware, new OS and software, technical resources and managers to manage the change, re-tooling all the systems management*, not to mention migration of application data and re-writing or re-hosting bespoke applications (it would be far to expensive to re-write in most cases). On top of that you would have all the re-training costs including time out from core business. So at a guess for an organisation with say 25,000 users, you'd be looking at the very least at a bill of $400M or $500M and for more complex organisations you could be looking at many multiples). The problem would therefore be convincing the management board of a business that it would be money well spent and that the risks associated - which would be huge - could be managed without sinking the ship. Not an easy thing to achieve by any stretch of the imagination. I know of a couple of CIOs who would personally love to go Mac as much as possible. But they know it will not happen for a long time if ever. There is far too much entrenchment now. It is similar to the paradigm of our addiction to hydrocarbons for fuelling transportation. The best that can be hoped for from a mac perspective is a gradual tactical shift niche by niche. But on the whole where I have seen this happening. it has mostly been Linux that is supplanting Windows in the workplace, not Macs.

Now if Apple were to spend some of the stockpile of cash it has targeting the Enterprise market and fixing some of these gaps. Then the situation might change. But there is no chance of that. As the margins are so tight in B2B, they are going to get much more ROCI from the next big B2C offering. Hence why Apple's strategy will be to move with the consumer and SME arena and pick up anything else as a bonus.

And as for individuals? It has always puzzled me why anyone would give a flying f3*k what another person is using as their computer of choice. If you want the style of working of a Mac, fine get a mac. If you want games, widely used software and wider compatibility or even just a very cheap machine, go PC. it is great that we have these choices. There is no "perfect" OS yet. to me MacOS is the nearest thing to that, but I understand that not everyone's needs are the same as my own. I blame Apple for fuelling the fire with those amusing (to fanboys) advertisements. It is interesting that their choice to rubbish the competition has coincided with a relative (IMHO) downturn in innovation, delay in productivity (iPhone aside) and at least perceived reduction in quality of delivery. Fanboys on both sides treat the argument as black and white and that kind of mentality is usually destructive!

* - I am not even sure that solutions exist in the Mac space to replace some of the tools needed to manage a large organisation. HP-UX, Solaris, Windows etc. have complex enterprise class tools which largely ignore the Mac space. So you have a chicken and egg situation. Why would a tools vendor invest millions in coding a version for Mac when nobody has enough macs in place to warrant spending $10s of millions on Tivoli, BMC, SMS, SRM, Netcool, Navisphere, TSM, etc. etc. equipped NOC or SMC?

 

[Evangelion]

Yeah, I guess if you make your living on IT management, then you're going to prefer Windows - for job security reasons. Few IT managers have very much familiarity with Macs - because they're just not needed anywhere near as much.

I work in that field, and your comment is not only insulting, it's 100% crap. We have better things to do with our time that fix various issues users might have with their computers. The idea of a computing-platform that is 100% trouble-free would be a dream come true. But unfortunately no such system exists (and that includes OS X). And then there are other questions as well, like hardware-support (can we standardize on certain hardware? Will Apple provide us with hardware that has certain OS in it, even though they have moved to a newer version? Will Apple provide us with 24h on-site support?), , integration with other systems, cost of the migration (do you have ANY idea how difficult that kind of migration is? Migrating from one version of Windows to the next is quite hard, migrating to a whole different OS is order of magnitude harder), selection of hardware (with PC's we can select the best hardware to suit our work, with Macs we don't have that choice, since the selection of hardware is very limited).

Not only have you made claims about me that are 100% false, you are now talking crap about things that you have exactly ZERO knowledge in! This might be a good time to contemplate as to what to say next.

 

[macinfojunkie]

Hey jragosta: You can at least be man and admit you were wrong about my comments and apologize.

I'd be very surprised if that happened. To admit you are wrong, you have to be able to see both sides of the argument and appreciate the opposite view. An element missing in this equation

I work in that field, ......Not only have you made claims about me that are 100% false, you are now talking crap about things that you have exactly ZERO knowledge in! This might be a good time to contemplate as to what to say next.

I can see your frustration and in some regards I think it is entirely justified. But I might be completely mad here, but however frustrated you might be at someone's inability to be logical and coherent, out and out name calling does not help your cause.

Oh and for the record. Whilst a single PPC G4 or G5 chip may have been marginally faster than the competing Intel chip of the day. I do not recall Apple ever releasing anything beyond 4 processors/cores until they moved over to Intel chips. AFAIR there were no 8 and even 16 way PPC systems at least not by Apple. There were on the Wintel platform. I know cause we were using them (albeit with custom HALs) and they were way way faster than anything any machine Apple could ever dream of at the time. Cost a fortune mind!

 

[diamond.g]

Oh and for the record. Whilst a single PPC G4 or G5 chip may have been marginally faster than the competing Intel chip of the day. I do not recall Apple ever releasing anything beyond 4 processors/cores until they moved over to Intel chips. AFAIR there were no 8 and even 16 way PPC systems at least not by Apple. There were on the Wintel platform. I know cause we were using them (albeit with custom HALs) and they were way way faster than anything any machine Apple could ever dream of at the time. Cost a fortune mind!

I never understood how people could compare PPC against the P4 and just completely ignore the A64. It completely trounced the P4 (and chances are did the same to PPC). The only reason why Intel is back on top is cause they pulled their head out of their butt and gave the Pentium M guys the reigns. Well that and AMD seemingly underestimated that change.

 

[Evangelion]

I can see your frustration and in some regards I think it is entirely justified. But I might be completely mad here, but however frustrated you might be at someone's inability to be logical and coherent, out and out name calling does not help your cause.

Well, IIRC, I haven't called him names. I called his comments "crap" and "100% false", but I haven't called him "stupid" or anything like that.

 

[Orng]

The best thing about this whole thread is, now I know who's an @ss.



But nobody should take it to heart, I won't remember who's who by the end of the week anyway. Jeebus, I can barely remember my own password! It was either "secret", or it was my dog's name. Or my god's name. I always get that backwards.

But at least I wouldn't stoop so low as to call someone a fanboy. Sheesh, that's worse than calling them a poo-poo head!

 

[VenomousSVT]

The best thing about this whole thread is, now I know who's an @ss.

hahahaha

 

[Digital Skunk]

G5 had the same fate as just about every PPC-chip had: it was superior (in some ways) at the moment it was launched, but it started to fall behind later. And even though it might have been better than P4 (and even that is debatable: Steve Jobs admitted during the keynote that P4 was faster on integer than G5 was, and integer is what is being used in everyday-computing), how about Athlon64 or Opteron?

"Many regards" is a cop out. You could then also say that "P4 was faster than G5 in many regards".

I would have loved to find some Athlon64 vs. G5 or P4 articles, but when I searched for them all I could find was forums filled with users just asking the questions. I found some papers discussing the G5 vs P4 and they did prove that the P4 was faster at everyday computing and that the G5 blew it away in the pro applications. I guess that's what Apple was aiming for however.

Just like any chip or hardware after time it gets old, so they all fell behind after a while. As a base, not over-clocked work horse chip the G5 was much speedier than the P4. And for what it's work AMD made better chips than both IBM/Apple and Intel, but everyone knew that Intel's new chip construction was going to change that, hence the switch.

Using Exchange purely for email is short sighted. Exchange is also a Calendar, Todo (Tasks), Address Book (Contacts), and Notes system. All of these things are integrated in Outlook/Exchange. As far as I can tell Apple doesn't provide a single source solution for that.

Sharepoint is a popular collaboration tool (at least in the US government), due to the fact that it integrates with Active Directory permissions.

Games MS can (and does) take credit for. It is called Direct3D (DirectX). MS is willing to work hand in hand with hardware manufacturers and game makers to get the API doing what they want/need it to do. Apple, afaik, doesn't.

Apple does one better in my opinion, it works with devos and Pro app developers by using, supporting, and developing Core Image/Audio/Animation. Apple doesn't have an all-in-one solution for iCal, Address Book, and Mail but you can access information from either app while in the other one. Integrating it would be very nice, but integration doesn't make the app and better IMHO. Exchange is great for the business user, but for the consumer who still lives by online email it's a moot point.

Sharpoint is about as obscure to the normal user as Boris FX is. I don't think one can base the superiority of an OS on a niche 3rd party app.

Games are great, and any budget PC can play them. DX10 support from Windows is a nice point to make but a small one once you remove games from the equation. Core Image/Animation/Audio stretches from the simplest of applications to the feel of the OSes UI.

 

[roach]

Evidence (other than your hallucinations)?

Hallucination? I think you got amnesia. You should do a search in this forum of every company I mentioned and see if you can get your memory back.

 

[diamond.g]

Apple does one better in my opinion, it works with devos and Pro app developers by using, supporting, and developing Core Image/Audio/Animation. Apple doesn't have an all-in-one solution for iCal, Address Book, and Mail but you can access information from either app while in the other one. Integrating it would be very nice, but integration doesn't make the app and better IMHO. Exchange is great for the business user, but for the consumer who still lives by online email it's a moot point.

Hmm, interesting point. So as a normal user Apple stuff is fine but as a enterprise user we are all agreeing that MS is better?

Sharpoint is about as obscure to the normal user as Boris FX is. I don't think one can base the superiority of an OS on a niche 3rd party app.

Well, I was really referring to the Government arena. It would be like talking about bulletin board software, no one really cares what software allows the forum to be available as long as it is.

Games are great, and any budget PC can play them. DX10 support from Windows is a nice point to make but a small one once you remove games from the equation. Core Image/Animation/Audio stretches from the simplest of applications to the feel of the OSes UI.

As does DirectX (at least in Vista). It seems like people here think that DX is only for games. That is a false assumption. Any application can use the DX API.

What I was stating is AFAIK Apple doesn't work with hardware manufacturers when making their API's. They utilize OpenGL for 3D related things but don't use the 3D card makers drivers. If they did you should be able to stick any 8X00 or 2X00 in the Mac Pro and have it work. That was all.

 

[Digital Skunk]

Hmm, interesting point. So as a normal user Apple stuff is fine but as a enterprise user we are all agreeing that MS is better?

To a certain extent MS is better for the enterprise user. Exchange is a good app for an all-in-one mail, calendar, tasks, address book solution. And it allows the user to have one app open and access all of that info. The Apple app equivalents are good on their own, and I am sure if they were ever integrated would be even better, but they do basically the same thing. The only difference would be the ability that Exchange has to do those few things that an enterprise user would need it to do, and that many average consumers/power users could care less about.

As a media guy, I need my pro apps to communicate to each other. I can edit photos in Aperture and import a FCP sequence with transitions from Aperture into FCP. I can access my Aperture library from any iLife, iWork, or Final Cut Pro Studio app if done right. Now... not too many users would tout that as a benefit of the OS and wouldn't need to go that far in the capabilities of the machine.

Well, I was really referring to the Government arena. It would be like talking about bulletin board software, no one really cares what software allows the forum to be available as long as it is.

Good point.

As does DirectX (at least in Vista). It seems like people here think that DX is only for games. That is a false assumption. Any application can use the DX API.

What I was stating is AFAIK Apple doesn't work with hardware manufacturers when making their API's. They utilize OpenGL for 3D related things but don't use the 3D card makers drivers. If they did you should be able to stick any 8X00 or 2X00 in the Mac Pro and have it work. That was all.

Another good point. I would love for Apple to support many more GFX card options, and that would open up the market for more games and even that gamer Mac that many users are crying for. At this point i would have to say that the differences in Windows and Mac OS X are clear. Direct X support and hardware cooperation with Windows, and Core Image/Animation/Audio support and software/developer cooperation in with Mac OS X.

 

[zync]

I didn't want to get dragged into this but I just wanted to make something clear.

The official system specs required by both OSes are as follows (Vista on the left and Leopard on the right):

1GHz (any x86 or x64)--------867MHz (G4 and above)
512MB RAM---------------------512MB RAM
15/20GB------------------------Just 9GB

Yeah, Apple doubled the required stats from Tiger. Big deal. Who doesn't have a system with 512MB of RAM? If you didn't, you could install it on nearly any computer made in the last decade. Leopard doesn't even use 512MB sitting there. Of course a fresh install of Vista on my brand new computer at work with all the "eye-candy" off and no programs running somehow took up 768MB of RAM. My 24" iMac took 256MB. You could technically run Leopard on a 10GB drive. Of course 9GB is the total install including international languages. Needless to say, we uninstalled Vista as soon as we could dig up a license.

NB: These requirements are for the bottom of the barrel install of Vista—Vista Basic. A "power-user" wouldn't be caught dead with Vista Basic but there you are for the lowest common denominator. The Leopard stats are, however, for Leopard with the international languages installed. I'm not certain, but I believe Leopard itself is only 4GB.

And yes, I realize that Apple computers last quite a while, but that doesn't mean that they should be supported with OS updates when they are no longer supported in any other way.

So Apple decided to drop off support to models that have been out of support for a few years. Wow. Big deal. 867MHz G4s laptops appeared in 2002. That's almost six years ago. I'm not even using the same software I had two years ago. Yes, that's me. I work in graphics and animation. But it was the same when I had Windows PCs and didn't work in my field. Your mileage may vary, but I highly doubt you need to run a program designed for even Windows 98 unless you work for/run a company that is too lazy to hire a software developer. And if you can't afford one, I'm sure you can pick up an old computer and use that. It might be slow, but I bet it'll run that software as fast as it should.

You want to know why it takes Apple less time to come out with an OS? They make decisions on what NOT to support. They don't need to support an iBook from 2001 anymore. They have a limited amount of machines and they can actually test every machine they've ever made in house if they felt like it—theoretically (obviously they can't test something designed for a Core 2 Duo on a PowerBook Duo). Try testing something on every machine ever made that runs Windows. Hopefully you get my point.

I wouldn't mind it if they cut support for Rosetta in OS X 10.6. It would force developers to actually make code designed for my processor. It's not like we're forced to upgrade, no matter how many times we forget that. That said my five year old PowerBook runs Leopard extremely well.

Also, whoever it was that was talking about how a consumer doesn't make a choice when they buy a PC like "I want an HP" or "I want a Dell" but do when buying a Mac, please realize that the consumer is making that choice, it's simply more vague. They made one of two similar choices: "I want a PC" or "I don't want a Mac." Nearly every one of those PC vendors offers Vista, even to those who wish to run Linux. There aren't any stats that I'm aware of that are simply purchases of boxed versions of Vista, but I wouldn't mind seeing them.