What is your opinion of Apple?

[hoppipolla]

I ask because... I just seem to have this weird, inherent hatred of them lol

I don't even fully know why... I just... hate macs and Apple lol

I think it's kind of all the small negativities bundled together - the environmental irresponsibility that they had at least at one point, the poor ethics in general such as sweatshops, Steve Jobs generally being kinda, pretentious and full of himself, the "head up their a**es" advertising (sorry lol :) ), the posh, snobby... ANYWAY! lol you get the idea!

Also, I may be under a false belief that Apple is in some way exploiting the Linux and Open Source community by, instead of being cool like Ubuntu and giving loads back and using their OS for the better, they seem to just take way more than they give and have no real interest or desire to just "be nice".

What are your thoughts on this? Am I right to hate them or am I just misinterpreting information or too stuck in my ways? lol

Thanks guys, poll coming!

Hoppi :)

[Dharmachakra]

I like Apple more than their stereotypical user.

[bodyharvester]

I ask because... I just seem to have this weird, inherent hatred of them lol

I don't even fully know why... I just... hate macs and Apple lol

I think it's kind of all the small negativities bundled together - the environmental irresponsibility that they had at least at one point, the poor ethics in general such as sweatshops, Steve Jobs generally being kinda, pretentious and full of himself, the "head up their a**es" advertising (sorry lol :) ), the posh snobby... ANYWAY! lol you get the idea!

Also, I may be under a false belief that Apple is in some way exploiting the Linux and Open Source community by, instead of being cool like Ubuntu and giving loads back and using their OS for the better, they seem to just take way more than they give and have no real interest or desire to just "be nice".

What are your thoughts on this? Am I right to hate them or am I just misinterpreting information or too stuck in my ways? lol

Thanks guys, poll coming!

Hoppi :)

too...much...lol...

i dislike the price, they werent made especially for games which is good, unlike windows. Unfortunately they are used by some who treat it as a fashion accessory and i think thats what i disagree with the most, i do like the way they look, all shiny like that

EDIT: im speaking of macs, primarily, but everything by apple seems to be overpriced

[gn2]

Not too keen on the company, absolutely abhor iPods, but really like some of their computer hardware, especially Mac Minis.

[Tibuda]

They are ok. Their only product I use is CUPS, but I would never buy an iPod.

[HappinessNow]

I really like them!I actually like Gala Apples the best but I do like an occasional Granny Smith.

...but seriously there are things I like about Apple and things I dislike, not unlike any other OS.

[purgatori]

I can relate. I can't stand them, and I know that my hatred is way out of proportion, but something about their business practices and smarmy advertising just rubs me the wrong way. When I think about it, there has been a long history of enmity between Apple and I, starting with the lousy Apple computers we had to use at high school, the nightmarishly buggy and bloated Quicktime player, the money I wasted on music videos that I bought on the iTunes store and then couldn't play in Linux (along with the generally shoddy and unintuitive nature of iTunes itself), and the smug "I'm a Mac" ads with that infuriating milquetoast hipster. Add to that, the way that Apple seems to have successfully created a kind of fashion label for which their products are the accessories.

Despite being a computing enthusiast, I am not much of one for gizmos and generally prefer to be 'unencumbered' when away from my PC (note: "PC" is NOT synonymous with "Windows", k macboys? thx), so most of their iBaubles just seem gimmicky and excessive to me. Microsoft, at least, have given me something that I get some value out of, namely the Xbox and Xbox 360, whereas Apple have yet to release anything that I would be even vaguely interested in. Mostly, I avoid their products like the plague.

EDIT: I forgot about CUPS. I suppose that's something I can be grateful to them for, even though I don't know the full story behind its development.

[jrusso2]

I don't dislike Apple. I like what they did by making Unix easy to use for anyone and I think Linux could take some lessons from them.

Also they have a certain artistic beauty to many of their products.

I don't care much for their politics and restrictive policies.

[hoppipolla]

I can relate. I can't stand them, and I know that my hatred is way out of proportion, but something about their business practices and smarmy advertising just rubs me the wrong way. When I think about it, there has been a long history of enmity between Apple and I, starting with the lousy Apple computers we had to use at high school, the nightmarishly buggy and bloated Quicktime player, the money I wasted on music videos that I bought on the iTunes store and then couldn't play in Linux (along with the generally shoddy and unintuitive nature of iTunes itself), and the smug "I'm a Mac" ads with that infuriating milquetoast hipster. Add to that, the way that Apple seems to have successfully created a kind of fashion label for which their products are the accessories.

Despite being a computing enthusiast, I am not much of one for gizmos and generally prefer to be 'unencumbered' when away from my PC (note: "PC" is NOT synonymous with "Windows", k macboys? thx), so most of their iBaubles just seem gimmicky and excessive to me. Microsoft, at least, have given me something that I get some value out of, namely the Xbox and Xbox 360, whereas Apple have yet to release anything that I would be even vaguely interested in. Mostly, I avoid their products like the plague.

EDIT: I forgot about CUPS. I suppose that's something I can be grateful to them for, even though I don't know the full story behind its development.

You actually put all that very well, far better than I could :)

And I also agree with you about Microsoft, I think they are doing good things with the 360 as well! And even though on paper I'm sure I should have just as many reasons to dislike them, perhaps even more so, than Apple, at least they are more direct about what they are doing, and Bill Gates actually seems like quite a reasonable guy! :)

I don't dislike Apple. I like what they did by making Unix easy to use for anyone and I think Linux could take some lessons from them.

Also they have a certain artistic beauty to many of their products.

I don't care much for their politics and restrictive policies.

Also well said - I suppose there are things we could take away from their approach :)

[NormanFLinux]

Polished UNIX system with an easy to use GUI. The Apple kernel is based on BSD so its stable. With an X11 install, Linux software can be installed to run on a Mac.

[earthpigg]

i think they treat their customers like absolute garbage.

[schauerlich]

I'm going to preemptively invite people in this thread to check out the link in my sig.

[tubezninja]

Also, I may be under a false belief that Apple is in some way exploiting the Linux and Open Source community by, instead of being cool like Ubuntu and giving loads back and using their OS for the better, they seem to just take way more than they give and have no real interest or desire to just "be nice".

If you truly believe this, then try this little exercise out:

1. Don't Print in linux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS). Ever. This includes printing to postscript or PDF.

2. On linux-powered mobile devices like the Palm Pre or any Android handheld: don't use the web browser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webkit). Don't use Konqueror on your desktop, either. Nor Chrome.

3. Wanna stream mpeg-4 video using an open source platform? Good luck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Streaming_Server).

4. And in the future. you'll have to make sure that any piece of software you use builds in its own multiprocessing, instead of using this ready-made library (http://libdispatch.macosforge.org/).

And there's about 196 other projects (http://www.apple.com/opensource/) that are in some way touched by Apple open source development.

OR...

You could take advantage of the one great thing about FOSS: you don't have to like the people doing the development, you don't have to buy their products, and you can even spread half truths and false assumptions about the people whose tools you're using - sometimes without even knowing - and it'll be no big deal. :)

[HappyFeet]

i think they treat their customers like absolute garbage.

Thank you.

I hope the apple headquarters burns to the ground along with all the factories that make the hardware.

[purgatori]

2. On linux-powered mobile devices like the Palm Pre or any Android handheld: don't use the web browser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webkit). Don't use Konqueror on your desktop, either. Nor Chrome.

Webkit is built on KHTML, not the other way around.

[RiceMonster]

I don't like iPods/iPhones/iTunes, but I like mac computers and I think OSX is a very good OS. I prefer Linux, but I think there's stuff that can be learned from it. I also like how they opened up CUPS, GCD, WebKit and some other stuff. More or less I agree with what jrusso2 said.

[blittergames]

**** apple, **** IBM, HP, and the rest. They make billions of dollars and give back pennies and people defend these ********, especially linux people....YAY IBM contributing pennies back!! yay support IBM!!! the perfect example I use to sum up these ****** companies is openssh not recieving a DIME from SUN, HP, IBM, APPLE, and the rest of these crappy companies.

I like companies who focus on good WORK not MONEY. Theo operates on 30k......

[Matthewthegreat]

I like Apple more than their stereotypical user.

+1

I know two apple fanboys, and they drive me nuts.



nuff said...

[tubezninja]

Webkit is built on KHTML, not the other way around.

Surprise! A lot of WebKit developments are pushed back to KHTML beginning with version 3.5, including code that permitted that version of Konqueror to pass the Acid2 test. But thanks for playing. :D

[JDShu]

Apple TV ads are really annoying.

[whoop]

There are a couple of things I don't like:
* I have a feeling they are using allot of open source technology but not giving enough back (I can't back this up, so it's not a fact).
* I don't like the price.
* I don't like that (free) software alternatives to their software don't run as well, not because it's not as efficient but because they make it run more slowly on purpose by disallowing usage of some API's
* The GUI feels like it's made for idiots, I feel like I can't tell the machine what to do and how to do it, I have to do it via there specific method. It's not a computer, feels more like some kind of appliance (like a vcr, or a microwave).
* Most of the mac users/owners I know don't know how to use it.
* What I dislike the most is the whole "mac culture", like it's for "different" people; creative or hipster or whatever. And people are falling for it (but I can imagine people thinking along the same lines about linux too). I have the feeling that hordes of people are buying a mac because it looks "nice" from the outside. Pick your "friend with benifits" like that, not your computer :lolflag:

[KiwiNZ]

i think they treat their customers like absolute garbage.

interesting

I am an Apple customer

Never had a faulty product , they arrive promptly when ordered. They are very well packaged and very well presented.

Correspondence with Apple has always been very friendly and very professional . So have I been treated like garbage ? .... NO

[tubezninja]

Correspondence with Apple has always been very friendly and very professional . So have I been treated like garbage ? .... NO


I'd dare say that Apple has certainly treated me better as a customer than I've seen some treat people on here.

[RabbitWho]

I almost always say this about companies I don't like.. but this time it's almost true.. they killed my family!

Well not really, but my cousins apple caught fire. Literally, not just that there was a bit of smoke, there were flames coming out of it.
They apologised, admitted responsibility, and replaced the power pack which was at fault, but that wouldn't have been much good if it had happened in the middle of the night and burned the whole house down.

I don't believe that companies are inherently evil, but apple cut corners there and put lives in danger.

Add that to the problems everyone I know who has one has had (i've never heard of a macbook lasting longer than 3 years, and a 1 year old one is usually cracked and slow as hell.) the problems people i know have had with Ipod, (I know about 10 people who got them,only one of whom doesn't regret it.. (and when he has a problem he can just throw the money his wife earns at it) there's a broken Ipod on my mantel piece right now actually)

Then you look at the prices.. compare mac specs to dell specs and mac prices to dell prices.. what's the difference? the OS? some hardware compatibility issues that are a downside not an upside?

So why do people buy the products?

1.Marketing. 99%
2. Monopoly on certain professional products that people need. 1% (I don't have a problem with this, if you fund a project you have a right to keep it a secret if you want, you created it, without you it wouldn't exist anyway)

So if you have a Mac for reason 2, horray!
If you have it for any other reason, it's probably a direct result of marketing.

And I used to believe in it, and I used to really want one, and encouraged my parents to get one for themselves (fortunately, they couldn't afford it! ).


But they're not evil bastards. Galmac (galway) loaned a 2000 euro computer to our 3ed year Degree Show... and it didn't catch fire once!
And lots of people have already mentioned their open source stuff.
It's great when you make a good product that people want to buy, charge as much as you like. It's not fair when you lie to them about what the product is/make a bad product that people want to buy because you're such a good liar.

Maybe there's a number 3... It seems like a lot of mac and ubuntu users are just people angry with Windows. A lot of times they don't need to know much about the new OS, just that it's not Windows.
That's probably why I came to Ubuntu.. plus since I started using computers it was so obvious everything is better than the microsoft alternative.. Firefox > IE MSN > yahoo Yahoo > hotmail and eventually Gmail > hotmail.. wherever there was an alternative.. the alternative was always better.

interesting

I am an Apple customer

Never had a faulty product , they arrive promptly when ordered. They are very well packaged and very well presented.

Correspondence with Apple has always been very friendly and very professional . So have I been treated like garbage ? .... NO

So how come you choose Apple? What is it about them that makes the extra money worthwhile/necessary for you?

[-grubby]

I don't believe that companies are inherently evil, but apple cut corners there and put lives in danger.


[citation needed]

It was probably a manufacturing defect.

[RabbitWho]

[citation needed]

It was probably a manufacturing defect.

Maybe. But when the battery swelled up (it's a good half a centimetre wider than it should be) and stopped working, and the whole cheap plastic case cracked and broke.. At some point you think maybe you were over charged for a cheap piece of shite, and that that was directly related to the fact that it caught fire?

And I've seen the way he treats it, he treats it really well, he has a fan cooler for it so it won't overheat (it still does) and he is much nicer to it than I would be at this point, considering it's only 3 years old and slower than my 10 year old IBM Aptiva upstairs... that's not giving the aptiva credit.. comparing it with this thing.. the aptiva is reasonable with XP you wouldn't say it's painfully slow... this macbook is so slow you want to pull your hair out.

[MikeTheC]

I think many of the posts in this thread are indicative of the general age demographic and lack of life experience typical of UF and many other message boards.

I don't expect a thread such as this one to garner many positive comments, so I'm not really looking for them or to comment beyond what I just have.

[RabbitWho]

I think many of the posts in this thread are indicative of the general age demographic and lack of life experience typical of UF and many other message boards.

I don't expect a thread such as this one to garner many positive comments, so I'm not really looking for them or to comment beyond what I just have.

Explain what you mean?

It's a little silly to basically say

"You're all immature! I'm not talking to you because I know more than you! :P "

I want to know what is good about Macs and I want to hear it from people who actually know more about computers than I do. Because on Yahoo answers all you get is "I've had my mac a year and a half and I've never had a problem, I can open 10 programs at a time and I couldn't do that with my old windows computer, and I have never had a virus"

[hoppipolla]

If you truly believe this, then try this little exercise out:

1. Don't Print in linux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS). Ever. This includes printing to postscript or PDF.

2. On linux-powered mobile devices like the Palm Pre or any Android handheld: don't use the web browser (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webkit). Don't use Konqueror on your desktop, either. Nor Chrome.

3. Wanna stream mpeg-4 video using an open source platform? Good luck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_Streaming_Server).

4. And in the future. you'll have to make sure that any piece of software you use builds in its own multiprocessing, instead of using this ready-made library (http://libdispatch.macosforge.org/).

And there's about 196 other projects (http://www.apple.com/opensource/) that are in some way touched by Apple open source development.

OR...

You could take advantage of the one great thing about FOSS: you don't have to like the people doing the development, you don't have to buy their products, and you can even spread half truths and false assumptions about the people whose tools you're using - sometimes without even knowing - and it'll be no big deal. :)

Surprise! A lot of WebKit developments are pushed back to KHTML beginning with version 3.5, including code that permitted that version of Konqueror to pass the Acid2 test. But thanks for playing. :D


Why can I currently hear Dharmachakra's words ringing through the air? lol

[purgatori]

Surprise! A lot of WebKit developments are pushed back to KHTML beginning with version 3.5, including code that permitted that version of Konqueror to pass the Acid2 test. But thanks for playing. :D

Wow, you're not at all patronizing, unlike most Apple fanboys! Thanks for shattering stereotypes!

But I'm looking for the part where I said that none of the code in Webkit was ported back to KHTML... I don't remember mentioning that, and I'm pretty sure it was simply my intent to point out the chronology of these two development efforts to someone who was making it sound like Konqueror was only running due to the good graces of Apple software developers.

[tubezninja]

Wow, you're not at all patronizing, unlike most Apple fanboys! Thanks for shattering stereotypes!

That's okay. You're reinforcing quite a few of your own, so I guess we're both being good little soldiers in this so-called OS war, right?

Konqueror was only running due to the good graces of Apple software developers.

Don't misquote me, and I won't misquote you. I never said Konqueror was solely here due to Apple's involvement. However, quite a bit of the code is there because KHTML developers saw the advantage of collaboration, even if it is with a company that quite a few people here will summarily accuse of being evil, and summarily accuse anyone who remotely disagrees as a stereotypical fanboy.

The point I was making - and you ignored solely to pick a nit - was that the OP claims Apple contributes little to FOSS, when in fact in would be quite an inconvenient exercise to avoid the many key components in common linux distributions, that have quite a lot of their contributions in there, and benefit as a result.

[Sgt-Slyde]

Showing my age but I remember when the old Apple PC's (II, II+, IIgs, etc.) were the only computers most schools could afford. The "POS Apples" a lot of high schools had were there because starting in the early '80's Apple gave lots of discounts to schools. Maybe it was a marketing scam, hoping that after graduation the students would buy the machines they were used to using but regardless, when I graduated my high school only had one computer and it was an Apple.

I agree, though that Steve Jobs is a character - and I think it's telling that Steve Wozniak left the company some time ago. Also I believe the company's continued existence is due more to the iPod than their computers. They've held onto a niche market for decades and are still trying to break out and get a greater market share. They might yet succeed due to the malware issue - their record of virus attacks is not simply "security through obscurity." They're not immune, no, but they're a tougher target than Windows, not just a smaller one.

The main thing I give them, though, is they hung on for decades giving non-geeks an alternative to Microsoft. Us geeks always had an alternative and while the many faces of Mac weren't always pretty, they were at least an alternative.

[hanzomon4]

It's a lie to say that Apple doesn't give back to the foss community. XNU, GCD, CUPS, Webkit, Objective-C. I mean, come on.. really?!

[running_rabbit07]

I like Apples. They are better than grapes, but not as good as bananas.

Seriously. They look cool. They are what my 5 year old uses at school. I haven't touched one since the early 90s when they were useless for anything other than cheesy math programs and even cheesier games, but my wife says that Apple will be her next PC of choice.

[earthpigg]

my wife says that Apple will be her next PC of choice.

at least you will be able to ssh from one computer to another, i suppose...

[dhughes]

Well thinking back to many years ago Apple was seen as the computer for artists, it was expensive compared to a PC which at thousands of dollars ($5000?? for a 386, equivalent to $10,000 today in 2009 double that for an Apple) was not cheap either. IBM compatible was the buzzword of the day and Apple was seen as only for art; pictures, music, writing etc., not for serious real computer stuff.

Apple evolved into what I would call high-end specialized computers, they were different with their Motorola CPU and that weird OS that wasn't DOS or Windows although it did look nice especially the Macintosh.

Apple hardware got more polished and in the late 1990's early 2000's and it really took off especially the iPod.

Soon they became fashionable, people didn't care if it didn't have an Intel CPU, the Internet/Web was so common that all people cared about was the web and music, if the Mac could be used to surf the Web that was all people wanted.

Then it became a status symbol, who cares what it was or did it was fashionable to have one!

Then the switch to a BSD-based OS, the Intel CPU etc. seemed to be a whole new step towards stability, safety compared to Windows based systems.

Apple makes the OS and the computer, they control every bit of their empire. It makes MicroSoft look pale in comparison and MS was called a monopoly?

Now it seems Apple is getting very arrogant and restrictive, very pro corporation and less freedom for the user. EFI BIOS, HDCP monitors, DMCA crippled hardware that seems to be more about making you prove you're not a thief than being a customer who uses an Apple computer.

[schauerlich]

Apple makes the OS and the computer, they control every bit of their empire. It makes MicroSoft look pale in comparison and MS was called a monopoly?

8% is a monopoly now?

[KiwiNZ]

Well thinking back to many years ago Apple was seen as the computer for artists, it was expensive compared to a PC which at thousands of dollars ($5000?? for a 386, equivalent to $10,000 today in 2009 double that for an Apple) was not cheap either. IBM compatible was the buzzword of the day and Apple was seen as only for art; pictures, music, writing etc., not for serious real computer stuff.

Apple evolved into what I would call high-end specialized computers, they were different with their Motorola CPU and that weird OS that wasn't DOS or Windows although it did look nice especially the Macintosh.

Apple hardware got more polished and in the late 1990's early 2000's and it really took off especially the iPod.

Soon they became fashionable, people didn't care if it didn't have an Intel CPU, the Internet/Web was so common that all people cared about was the web and music, if the Mac could be used to surf the Web that was all people wanted.

Then it became a status symbol, who cares what it was or did it was fashionable to have one!

Then the switch to a BSD-based OS, the Intel CPU etc. seemed to be a whole new step towards stability, safety compared to Windows based systems.

Apple makes the OS and the computer, they control every bit of their empire. It makes MicroSoft look pale in comparison and MS was called a monopoly?

Now it seems Apple is getting very arrogant and restrictive, very pro corporation and less freedom for the user. EFI BIOS, HDCP monitors, DMCA crippled hardware that seems to be more about making you prove you're not a thief than being a customer who uses an Apple computer.

Hmmm Odd

I have a Imac and a Mac book and don't experience any of that bad stuff you mention.

[Sashin]

Apple products are too expensive in my opinion. Especially ipods and macs, a non apple PC of similar specs is cheaper. So I don't understand why people would want a mac or an ipod.

[running_rabbit07]

Apple products are too expensive in my opinion. Especially ipods and macs, a non apple PC of similar specs is cheaper. So I don't understand why people would want a mac or an ipod.

Same reason people buy Acura over Honda or Lincoln over Ford. Product refined.

[mdsmedia]

I've never owned an Apple product. I only ever operated an Apple (Mac, I guess) in 2000/1 for a very short while, as I saved an accounting file to transfer to my Windows computer at work. This is simply to say that I have NO experience with Apple products.

I have absolutely no problem with Apple, the company, except that their software is ported to Windows and not Linux, and their iProducts apparently don't play well with Linux. For those reasons, I probably won't buy an Apple appliance.

Comparing Apple to Microsoft as "a monopoly" is like saying that Sony are a monopoly in the Sony product market. I'm trying to think of a better analogy, although the Mac eula (apparently) is more restrictive than Windows. Microsoft is a monopoly in the PC market, and that includes Macs. Microsoft is a monopoly in the office suite market, it has monopolistic tendencies in the internet browser market. MS has a monopoly in each of those areas because Windows was able to be installed on any "IBM clone". Apple is, if anything, the direct opposite in that respect

MS is a monopoly. Apple is not. Apples is restrictive, yes, but not a monopoly.

[Sashin]

Still, in my opinion a non-apple product can meet the customer's needs and provide a user experience on par with it at a much cheaper price.

[-grubby]

Apple products are too expensive in my opinion. Especially ipods and macs, a non apple PC of similar specs is cheaper. So I don't understand why people would want a mac or an ipod.


Mac OS X (pronounced /mæk oʊ ɛs tɛn/)[3] is a line of computer operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc., and since 2002 has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems. It is the successor to Mac OS 9, the final release of the "classic" Mac OS, which had been Apple's primary operating system since 1984.


From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X)

[KiwiNZ]

Still, in my opinion a non-apple product can meet the customer's needs and provide a user experience on par with it at a much cheaper price.

A Lada can get you from A to B but not as well as my Audi A6
An Acer PC can compute but not as well as my Imac

[chessnerd]

I, too, have an inherent hatred of anything Apple. I could have gotten an iPod Touch for graduation, but turned it down for cash. Not because I wanted the cash, but because I didn't want to get an iPod and be forced to use iTunes and convert all my music to mp3. I installed the restricted extras in Ubuntu solely for the reason that I wanted to be able to use my wma files without converting them all to ogg or mp3. (However, if someone can point me to an ogg converter that was easy to use I wouldn't mind spending some time doing that. I don't want to use mp3 though.)

Also, the Apple ads show Mac users as young, cool, stuck up people who think their computer is better than everyone else's. This is now what I think of whenever I see any Mac user, even though I know several Mac users personally and this is only sometimes the case (it's about 50/50 from my personal experience.)

In addition to that, they still have the Gaul to sell mice without a right-click and mouse wheel in 2009. My first computer from '96 had a mouse wheel for crying out loud! And...[insert really long rant talking about hatred of the dock, lack of gaming support, lack of desktop upgradeablity, how badly overpriced their products are (with examples and graphs), why Windows Media Player is better than iTunes and Quicktime, etc.]...that is why I don't like Apple.

I know some Linux users prefer Macs because OS X is partly open source and is resistant to malware but I personally feel that it is even more proprietary than Windows because its EULA forces you to only put it on their hardware. The only way I would ever run OS X is:
1. Apple offered fair prices (not likely to happen)
2. Apple released OS X for standard PCs (again, not likely)
3. I hack it and put it on a PC anyway (that might happen :twisted:)

[mdsmedia]

Still, in my opinion a non-apple product can meet the customer's needs and provide a user experience on par with it at a much cheaper price.

Yet Apple continues to sell Macs. Why is that? I'd suggest it's largely to do with a "better user experience", for what it is capable of doing.

And I don't see a reason for disliking Apple, even if you believe their products are over-priced. If they are over-priced, don't buy them. Unlike Windows, Apple does not have a product that is necessary for a large proportion of the population, for different reasons. People tend to buy Macs or iPods or iPhone, not because there is not an alternative which can complete the task at a cheaper price, so there must be a reason for buying Apple products. If so, in my opinion, they are not over-priced because their customers buy them.

Why dislike Apple for prices you don't have to pay. Do you dislike Rolls-Royce or Mercedes or Ferrari because you believe that they're over-priced?

[Chronon]

MS is a monopoly. Apple is not. Apples is restrictive, yes, but not a monopoly.An argument can certainly made for their tight vertical integration. I agree that they probably can't safely be considered a vertical monopoly but bear in mind that a company can (in theory) have a vertical monopoly rather than a horizontal monopoly.

. I installed the restricted extras in Ubuntu solely for the reason that I wanted to be able to use my wma files without converting them all to ogg or mp3. (However, if someone can point me to an ogg converter that was easy to use I wouldn't mind spending some time doing that. I don't want to use mp3 though.)

Only do this if the source files are lossless. Transcoding from a lossy format to another lossy format can cause significant degradation in sound quality.

[chessnerd]

Only do this if the source files are lossless. Transcoding from a lossy format to another lossy format can cause significant degradation in sound quality.

Hmm... I'm not sure if they are lossless or not, but I would guess that they are not lossless. I should just keep them as wma then, they work fine under Rhythmbox with restricted extras, no reason to mess them up.

[misfitpierce]

They are just as bad and less to do on their OS. Money hungry company that takes idea's from *nix communities as well to turn into another buck. ha!

[earthpigg]

Hmmm Odd

I have a Imac and a Mac book and don't experience any of that bad stuff you mention.

and an iPod? (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1266823)

[schauerlich]

They are just as bad and less to do on their OS. Money hungry company that takes idea's from *nix communities as well to turn into another buck. ha!

Maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't the point of Free Software to share ideas with each other in the form of source code?

[KiwiNZ]

and an iPod? (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1266823)

point?

[schauerlich]

point?

Counterpoint.

[KiwiNZ]

Counterpoint.

Counterpoint? its that corner of the counter that gets you right in the thigh and leaves a sodding bruise :P

[HappinessNow]

Counterpoint? its that corner of the counter that gets you right in the thigh and leaves a sodding bruise :P

Ouch! :shock:

[handy]

Hmm, what an interesting question?

I've never thought about this subject before...

Now, let me see, as I cast my mind back through 24 years of computing, what have I noticed that might give me a clue as to what my opinion might be on this company...

They were always more expensive, but generally offered better software & particularly better hardware, though the Apple user has to accept the limitations with regard to choice of hardware that are inherent in the brand.

The Apple computers consistently used better quality cables, connectors & overall design (you don't want me to go into all the details do you? Well I'm not anyway going to anyway, do your own research?), Apple (Steve Jobs) grabbed the computer genius Alan Kay (http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html), from Xerox Park, back in the early 80's & had him lead the team that basically bought the GUI OS to the desktop computers of the world.

The Apple's & Mac's ended up leading the computer world in the fields of desktop publishing, video editing, sound editing, apart from being the system that MS were always chasing/copying (in their own bizarre way) & trying to present to the market as their own invention.

That is how it has been for roughly 20 years. As hardware became more sophisticated (faster & more capable) it allowed MS to catch up in the productivity stakes; the increased hardware performance has made up for the poor quality of the MS software, allowing that poor quality to become less & less critical when evaluating a windows machine against an Apple machine.

Though I doubt they will ever catch up in the software stakes as MS are most often followers & Apple are usually the leaders, in whatever field they are involved in.

Apple produce such a consistent GUI (though I can certainly fault it) for their OS & the applications that run on it that research (no link) has shown that Apple users find it much easier to learn a new application than users of any other system do. (yeh, I know, without links it is all talk. You find them?)

Apple market incredibly well. They don't need huge numbers of buyers for their computers (though they certainly have them with the iPod & such) as being primarily a hardware manufacturer they make their money on the hardware, the software is just the icing on the cake, which of course is part of their marketing strategy, in combination with their artsy good looks.

I could go on in more detail about different aspects of Apple, but I'm starting to bore myself, so perhaps no one is reading what I'm writing now anyway? lol

The last thing I have to say, is that I am so amused by people that have the attitude that Apple is a most evil corporation.

The Apple corporation, by world standards, is a tiny, (though well known due to their marketing) little corporation.

Why do people get so upset about Apple, when there are SO MANY other monstrously large corporations out there (just the ones that make computer chips is a good place to start) that are quietly (don't put themselves in your face as Apple has to, to survive) out there making their billions a quarter, polluting the planet far more than Apple, controlling governments (every chance that they can manifest) & carrying on quietly (invisibly) as far as Joe/Josephine average are concerned.

Chauvinistic arguments, which this particular thread was set up to stimulate do nothing positive for humanity. As anything that divides us is bullsheet.

[handy]

A Lada can get you from A to B but not as well as my Audi A6
An Acer PC can compute but not as well as my Imac

Do you know why a Lada Niva has a rear window demister?

It's so your hands don't stick to the glass when you are pushing it. :)

Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

I hope you are going well KiwiNZ. :)

[KiwiNZ]

I used to love that the Lada's had wipers on the head lamps. They caused torque steer for the car:P

[handy]

I used to love that the Lada's had wipers on the head lamps. They caused torque steer for the car:P

The thing could fish tail... :lolflag:

[Edit:] Probably the only way it could (unless it was on ice) as it couldn't do it under power...

[hoppipolla]

Some great opinions here, I have learnt a fair amount!

It seems to be true that they have given a fair amount back, but it also seems to be true that they are quite greedy, quite arrogant, inspire a certain kind of userbase (which we have covered lol) and are very, very controlling, at least compared to alternatives.

I think I would still feel quite uncomfortable using an Apple machine, but I do often wonder if I would be tempted to buy their products if I had enough money for it not to be an issue.

[RabbitWho]

A Lada can get you from A to B but not as well as my Audi A6
An Acer PC can compute but not as well as my Imac


HAng on a second there... serious question..

Is an Acer Aspire 8935g Laptop with for £1349 With
Core 2 quad
4GB memory
500 GB hard drive
Graphics - ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670 - 1 GB



really not as good as a Mac Book Pro for £1499 (that's £150 more)
Core 2 Duo
4GB memory
320 GB hard drive
Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT with 256MB


(incidentally those specs cost 599 with dell but with the same graphics card ad HD as the acer, i'd avoid nVida like the plague with laptops anyway because of their tendency to melt when they overheat)

I couldn't actually find a laptop that expensive with Dell but Alienware ( i didn't actually realise they were affiliated)

for £1460 (still less than the mac)
You get

Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9000 (2.00GHz,1066MHz FSB,6MB L2 Cache)
4096 MB
160GB Free Fall Sensor Hard Drive (whatever the hell that means)
1GB GDDR3 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M

That ones obviously still specifically for gaming.




So why is the mac the best of all of them?

Sorry I know you were talking about your computer and I started talking about laptops, but I'm more familiar with laptop specs.

And of course you'd put Linux on whatever you had. The only problem in the whole world with Linux is compatibility with software. I can't just go into a shop and buy Photoshop or whatever program I need, or just impulse buy something that looks cool. (and if I'm a professional graphics designer Gimp isn't going to cut it) But all that will change as more and more people use Ubuntu, because they will want Linux users to buy their products so they will work with Canonical to make it compatible, and as soon as it fits with one linux distro all the clever people can make any minor tweaks necessary to get it working with all of them.
For my purposes all the software I need is available. And all the hardware I've used so far was more easily compatible with linux than windows or mac.
Our printer just would not work with mac, and took about half an hour of setting up every single time you wanted to print using vista because it would never recognise the printer as being the same printer you had used the last time (and it's a HP printer and it was a HP computer at that time!)
With ubuntu you just plug it in and press print and it does.
So to me it seems like the hardware is better with Dell and Acer for the same price.
And the OS and software is better free. Nowadays unless you have a professional need to use certain Apple-restricted programs I don't see why you use apple. And none of the apple people here have given a single reason yet.
I don't mean to put it down i genuinely want to know why you use Apple! Why is it better for you?

[RiceMonster]

It's a lie to say that Apple doesn't give back to the foss community. XNU, GCD, CUPS, Webkit, Objective-C. I mean, come on.. really?!

People who talk about how Apple apparently takes or steals from the FOSS/*nix community, read this and let it sink into your head.

[hoppipolla]

People who talk about how Apple apparently takes or steals from the FOSS/*nix community, read this and let it sink into your head.

Owh but then why do I still hate them ._.

lol

I think if someone could explain to me why they're NOT excessively controlling, why they're NOT harmful to the environment and lacking in fair trade ethics, and why Steve Jobs is in fact NOT a **** (that word isn't quite as bad as the stars imply xD), I will attempt to force myself to change this weird stubborn mindset I have rofl xD


EDIT -- Oh! And why they're not excessively pretentious!

DOUBLE EDIT.. One more sorry, lol :) The way their adverts suggest that all PCs have to run Windows, as that pushes down Linux as an option as well ._. They fail to mention that a lot of the advantages of a "Mac" that they mention are in fact just advantages of running a Linux or *BSD system... it's just kind of annoying when you're sitting there on Ubuntu watching them pretend they're so special ._.

[khelben1979]

Personally I really liked the design of Powerbooks and I still do. The design is excellent and this is one of the good things which have been created by Apple. So I really like these.

When it comes to their company I'm very uninterested about their products and what they do. They surely have created products with good design but their prices on everything they sell is just insanely high. I as a customer always choose to go for PC hardware because of this and... the exceptions is when I find something old where I can buy somewhere, then I can accept it.

The fact that you can use Linux on a macintosh makes them usable, in my opinion and I experience it as pretty cool as well.

[handy]

This chauvinistic us vs them stuff really is something.

As if there aren't actually any genuinely important things that require analysis & appropriate action.

[gnomeuser]

I think Apple makes well designed products of an acceptable quality. They know how to make a highly usable OS which I and other value.

My main problem is with their exclusion of 3rd parties from using their devices. E.g. they put a crypto hash around the iTunes database and then use the DMCA to prevent 3rd parties from implementing support for the iPod/iTouch/iPhone. This is anti competitive and anti social. It greatly hurts competitors in the following scenerio:

Windows/Mac user who is unaware of this issue buys an iPhone, sometime later the user decides to try Linux or simply an non-iTunes media player such as Banshee or Songbird. Upon an otherwise pleasing experience the user now discovers that his device doesn't work with this new software.

User goes on to blame the software for the position Apple has put it's competitors in. The software loses a potential user and customer and revenue takes a hit.

In this sense Apple are more deeply anti competitive than any other company in IT right now. They actively harm even hobbyists who do this reverse engineering work for their pleasure or for personal use without monetary gain. This in my mind is indefensible as a business tactic and given their large marketshare in the portable media player market it is tantamount to monopoly abuse.

On the other hand lately Apple have been opening up more, Grand Central Dispatch is under an Open Source license. They are working with a number of standards and issuing them freely to the world (OpenCL is an example here). It is though obvious that they are open when it suits them to get their standards adopted but utterly closed when it goes counter to them in any way, such as can be seen with the HTML video tag or the iPod.

I have to say I greatly dislike them currently, but I will give them a pat on the back when they do it right and a fist in the face when they abuse their monopoly.. time will tell if the face or the back will be the most sore.

[hoppipolla]

I think Apple makes well designed products of an acceptable quality. They know how to make a highly usable OS which I and other value.

My main problem is with their exclusion of 3rd parties from using their devices. E.g. they put a crypto hash around the iTunes database and then use the DMCA to prevent 3rd parties from implementing support for the iPod/iTouch/iPhone. This is anti competitive and anti social. It greatly hurts competitors in the following scenerio:

Windows/Mac user who is unaware of this issue buys an iPhone, sometime later the user decides to try Linux or simply an non-iTunes media player such as Banshee or Songbird. Upon an otherwise pleasing experience the user now discovers that his device doesn't work with this new software.

User goes on to blame the software for the position Apple has put it's competitors in. The software loses a potential user and customer and revenue takes a hit.

In this sense Apple are more deeply anti competitive than any other company in IT right now. They actively harm even hobbyists who do this reverse engineering work for their pleasure or for personal use without monetary gain. This in my mind is indefensible as a business tactic and given their large marketshare in the portable media player market it is tantamount to monopoly abuse.

On the other hand lately Apple have been opening up more, Grand Central Dispatch is under an Open Source license. They are working with a number of standards and issuing them freely to the world (OpenCL is an example here). It is though obvious that they are open when it suits them to get their standards adopted but utterly closed when it goes counter to them in any way, such as can be seen with the HTML video tag or the iPod.

I have to say I greatly dislike them currently, but I will give them a pat on the back when they do it right and a fist in the face when they abuse their monopoly.. time will tell if the face or the back will be the most sore.

Haha well said :)

[Mateo]

Not a fan of the Orwellian control they place over their users.

[BFG]

Apple make fantastic tools for allowing the technically inept to become mediocre. They do this extremely well. However, if you know what you're doing, the OS is irritating.

I bought an intel Mac Mini. Highest spec at the time was 1Gb Ram.
Out of the box it didn't have enough guts to run the OS plus more than a couple of apps. Literally 2. Open more than 4 firefox windows and the spinning pinwheel would show for 30 seconds just flipping between windows.

Then the HDD failed. It was diagnosed as the speed problem, and this sounded plausible, but after a new HDD under warranty (a painless process undertaken at an Apple shop) it was still slow. I bought another gig of Ram and now it's fine.

The fanboi attitude of the stereotypical Apple user is repellent. They really do have a superiority complex and are blind to the many shortcomings the OS and apple apps have.

It's like the Eastern block before the wall came down. Most people have Ladas (windows), and a few of the privileged have Skodas (Apples). The Skoda owners are busy strutting to the rest of the road about how much better their Skoda is that the Ladas everyone has. Meanwhile, over the wall, the Linux community has BMW and Lexus.

The Skoda owners say that BMW and Lexus is **** because no-one knows how to use them and you can't get them repaired anywhere in their country, therefore Skoda is superior. etc etc.

[BrokenKingpin]

I very much hate Apple.

[schauerlich]

Apple make fantastic tools for allowing the technically inept to become mediocre. They do this extremely well. However, if you know what you're doing, the OS is irritating.I guess I don't know what I'm doing, then.

The Skoda owners say that BMW and Lexus is **** because no-one knows how to use them and you can't get them repaired anywhere in their country, therefore Skoda is superior. etc etc.

You know, I seems to see a lot more people talking about how bad the Skoda is while driving something else than Skoda owners ragging on BMWs.

[starcannon]

Apple is too restrictive for my tastes; that said, too each their own. If it works for you, enjoy. I personally do everything in Linux; including MS Office, wine does such a fantastic job these days that installing MS Office 2007 was a snap. No matter how you get your work done, its all about being able to do it at the beginning of the day, and results at the end of the day.

GL and HF

[KiwiNZ]

Apple make fantastic tools for allowing the technically inept to become mediocre. They do this extremely well. However, if you know what you're doing, the OS is irritating.
.

Oh I see now. So my Masters Degree in Computer Science , MCSE , A+ and ITIL would of course make me technically inept because I own two Apple computers. :rolleyes:

One should exercise caution when making sweeping statements.

[KiwiNZ]

I guess I don't know what I'm doing, then.



You know, I seems to see a lot more people talking about how bad the Skoda is while driving something else than Skoda owners ragging on BMWs.

I test drove the Skoda Octavia , not a bad car , but decided on the Audi A6

[hoppipolla]

You know, I seems to see a lot more people talking about how bad the Skoda is while driving something else than Skoda owners ragging on BMWs.

Congratulations on missing his point entirely! lol :)

[KiwiNZ]

Congratulations on missing his point entirely! lol :)

Freedom is being allowed to miss points.

But I am not sue that he did if one was to think out side the square

[issih]

Irrationally hating them makes you no better than the people who irrationally love them...

They make fine products from a design and ergonomics pov.

The price argument is utterly invalid, if you want you can ALWAYS pay more for perceived style, and either way no-one ever puts value on OS-X or iLife, they just do bare hardware comparisons. You can easily find computers that cost more and do less if you go looking for them. They cost what they cost, whether that is value or not is up to the customer.

They do give back to open source, quite a lot (as has been covered)

They make just about the most usable (day to day) computer for the non technically minded, whilst still being perfectly powerful, adaptable and capable for a power user (anyone who claims it is not customisable has never really used it - its immensely customisable, more than linux in some ways)

They offer excellent hardware and software support.

Environmentally they are now getting on for the best - they took what was very valid criticism and improved.

They make good products.....BUT

They are overly restrictive in their use of DRM and hardware control

They charge ridiculous amounts for "upgrades" - the only price argument I fully admit is valid, ram is ram after all.

They are very keen to milk more money out of customers wherever possible (but then all businesses are)

They have pompous advertising and marketing

They use cheap (probably exploitative) sweatshops to manufacture goods (but then so does everyone else - sadly)

Their hardware quality (in my experience at least) is poor.

All in all, I think they are quite good, I own a macbook, I like it, are they perfect? god no.

[KiwiNZ]

They use cheap (probably exploitative) sweatshops to manufacture goods (but then so does everyone else - sadly)

Their hardware quality (in my experience at least) is poor.

All in all, I think they are quite good, I own a macbook, I like it, are they perfect? god no.

proof please or is this just trolling

[issih]

Proof of what?

Use of cheap manufacturing facilities is the central point of all outsourcing - its central to the macroeconomic policy. That those manufacturing facilities are not always as well run (in terms of worker health, pay, etc) as would be demanded in the country of origin is fairly well known, e.g:

http://goodelectronics.org/news-en/chinese-workers-demand-compensation-from-battery-producer-for-cadmium-related-diseases

I stated only "probably", and I have no proof that Apple's are any worse than any other (but I also stated that).

The only example I can quote right now in reference to Apple is this:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/27/foxconn_badmouths_dead_engineer/

That kind of behaviour and treatment of the workforce is utterly unacceptable.

As for hardware quality, in my time with macbooks (about 3 years total), I have had three power adapter failures, one complete failure of the battery, three cracked topcases and one cracked screen bezel... and I do not take it extreme ironing..

I do like it (can't prove that one) and they are not perfect (see above...

That do?

[SIGTERMer]

Polished UNIX system with an easy to use GUI. The Apple kernel is based on BSD so its stable. With an X11 install, Linux software can be installed to run on a Mac.

actually, the kernel's a hybrid; BSD + Mach. but for the most part, it should be compatible with posix software.
why pay for something when you can get a better variant (that surpasses it in every possible way) for free?

[hoppipolla]

proof please or is this just trolling

That's a bit of a blunt comment! lol

But yeah Apple's use of sweatshops and then masquerade as this super-cool and responsible company really annoyed me ._.

[issih]

They are no worse or better than any other company in that regard, they have pretty much all put profit ahead of any accountability in that regard...as I stated.

[timbledum]

I have a macbook and I love it.

The main bonus of mac for me is that its an easy stress free pre-packaged way of getting away from windows. Of course linux is just as good in that regard (without the functionality of garageband that I also needed) and I am capable of setting that up, but the idea of buying a laptop paying for xp then wiping it off just didn't appeal for me (I live in NZ where its near impossible to my knowledge to get linux preinstalled save the occasional netbook, and even there most xp has overtaken). My macbook and my girlfriends notebook are pretty much exactly the same specced, 2Ghz Intel core 2, 2 G of ram, and yet mine flies while hers crawls (Im still trying to figure out why hers is so unbelievably slow).

Other bonuses of mac os x compared to xp included a much better program installing method. The drag and drop method of mac os x astounded and amazed me when I first met it. That is how things are supposed to be. Cf. windows where everything installed slows down your computer and linux where it is quite easy... as long as you tread the beaten path.

Apple as a whole can be very frustrating, but I still believe they have a premium on product design and I also believe the os is the best out there, although linux does have some major advantages and is catching up fast! I think maybe in two or three years it will be a lot tougher decision.

Sure they're a bit more expensive, but what you're paying for is software and style and a well designed hardware package. To be honest this macbook has handled everything that I've thrown at it, without complaints, including games.

[Frak]

They rock my Sox off! OS X is better than what Ubuntu will EVER DREAM to be, cause it's just that much better.

[hoppipolla]

They rock my Sox off! OS X is better than what Ubuntu will EVER DREAM to be, cause it's just that much better.

o.O

[Frak]

o.O
I know, right?

[handy]

I find it interesting to look at the demographic of such places as the Linux forums.

These are places where I expect there to be a much higher than average membership of people who are somewhat technically inclined (to say the least).

These people (particularly the younger ones) so often find it hard to appreciate that there are a variety of different types of people. All of which are equally valid.

There are a LOT of people that really don't care about & have no interest at all in how a computer works; be that hardware, OS (many don't know what an OS is) software, the internet, whatever. All these people want to do, is their job. Which requires them to know how to operate 1 or more pieces of software. They don't like computers, they have a life that focuses on very different things than technical.

Why must there be all of these biased value judgements on people who are different?

The easiest way to get something done on a computer, for the non-technically minded, is to use a Mac. The Mac's have been built for them.

The non-technical love something that hides the technical aspects from them & just lets them do what they need/want to do.

[hoppipolla]

I find it interesting to look at the demographic of such places as the Linux forums.

These are places where I expect there to be a much higher than average membership of people who are somewhat technically inclined (to say the least).

These people (particularly the younger ones) so often find it hard to appreciate that there are a variety of different types of people. All of which are equally valid.

There are a LOT of people that really don't care about & have no interest at all in how a computer works; be that hardware, OS (many don't know what an OS is) software, the internet, whatever. All these people want to do, is their job. Which requires them to know how to operate 1 or more pieces of software. They don't like computers, they have a life that focuses on very different things than technical.

Why must there be all of these biased value judgements on people who are different?

The easiest way to get something done on a computer, for the non-technically minded, is to use a Mac. The Mac's have been built for them.

The non-technical love something that hides the technical aspects from them & just lets them do what they need/want to do.

Oh no no I FULLY appreciate that, and I actually have become more that way myself - I used to use OSs like Slackware and have now moved onto Ubuntu as I find it manages itself more and requires less user input :)

My arguments against Apple and Macs are never really related to how friendly or unfriendly their OS or computers are!

[handy]

Oh no no I FULLY appreciate that, and I actually have become more that way myself - I used to use OSs like Slackware and have now moved onto Ubuntu as I find it manages itself more and requires less user input :)

My arguments against Apple and Macs are never really related to how friendly or unfriendly their OS or computers are!

So its Apple's corporate politics that you are against?

[sertse]

But if it is, we must then question whether FLOSS is the be all, end all, one true way of software development.

Apple's philosophy of total control of their product from start to finish *has* produced good computer ware. Many Apple fans believe in the benefits of that model with the same genuine zeal and conviction as you do on the FLOSS model.

[sailthesea]

It was only after seeing this thread I realised that I have NEVER used or even knowingly seen an Apple product in the flesh There are probably iPhones and iPods in the house somewhere but I've never placed a finger on a Mac and would have no idea what to with one
I can see that they are a good Hardware/OS combo
I think that the roads we took 30 years ago when it came down to Win
IBM Mac are hard to go back down
Strange I never even considered it before:confused:

[JDShu]

I used to be ambivalent, but continuously seeing this ad on TV is starting to make me hate the company.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e-WM6tuTeA

[sailthesea]

I used to be ambivalent, but continuously seeing this ad on TV is starting to make me hate the company.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e-WM6tuTeA

Even though I generally shun all forms of advertising I find it strange I should never even have seen a Mac advertising campaign in the UK that made me take notice
To me Macs were used in corp America by slickd*&*ks in suits who went "Yah" and made deals
That only helped reinforce the image:)

[JDShu]

Even though I generally shun all forms of advertising I find it strange I should never even have seen a Mac advertising campaign in the UK that made me take notice
To me Macs were used in corp America by slickd*&*ks in suits who went "Yah" and made deals
That only helped reinforce the image:)

LOL nice... yeah Apple seems to do a lot of product placement in Hollywood. Everytime I watch a "mac vs pc" ad, I hate Apple more. Its not even anything to do with their business practices, FOSS, price, or whatnot... the implication that a PC is a window's computer and that using a PC implies that you're a bumbling incompetent downright angers me.

[hoppipolla]

Even though I generally shun all forms of advertising I find it strange I should never even have seen a Mac advertising campaign in the UK that made me take notice
To me Macs were used in corp America by slickd*&*ks in suits who went "Yah" and made deals
That only helped reinforce the image:)

Haha yeah but in that it was the PC who was like that!

When I was watching that I was thinking "how on earth are they going to make the mac look better than the best pc?" lol

[hoppipolla]

LOL nice... yeah Apple seems to do a lot of product placement in Hollywood. Everytime I watch a "mac vs pc" ad, I hate Apple more. Its not even anything to do with their business practices, FOSS, price, or whatnot... the implication that a PC is a window's computer and that using a PC implies that you're a bumbling incompetent downright angers me.

Yes! Absolutely! That annoys me too lol

I know it's just an advertising technique and it probably made sense around a board table somewhere.. but WOW it's annoying!

[JDShu]

Glad I'm not the only one who thinks so :D

[wersdaluv]

Apple is a bunch of greedy geniues led by an iGod. They wanna lock you up in their religion.

They're great, but if you're not one of them, they're going to bring you down. The little benefits outsiders get out of their work are products of rare win-win situations.

[wersdaluv]

A Lada can get you from A to B but not as well as my Audi A6
An Acer PC can compute but not as well as my Imac
Sounds so elitist :(

[geekygirl]

I find it interesting to look at the demographic of such places as the Linux forums.

These are places where I expect there to be a much higher than average membership of people who are somewhat technically inclined (to say the least).

These people (particularly the younger ones) so often find it hard to appreciate that there are a variety of different types of people. All of which are equally valid.

There are a LOT of people that really don't care about & have no interest at all in how a computer works; be that hardware, OS (many don't know what an OS is) software, the internet, whatever. All these people want to do, is their job. Which requires them to know how to operate 1 or more pieces of software. They don't like computers, they have a life that focuses on very different things than technical.

Why must there be all of these biased value judgements on people who are different?

The easiest way to get something done on a computer, for the non-technically minded, is to use a Mac. The Mac's have been built for them.

The non-technical love something that hides the technical aspects from them & just lets them do what they need/want to do.

+1 to this

the phrase 'banging ones head against a brick wall' comes to mind when reading through some of the responses from the more junior members of UF. Ah to be young and idealogical again, now I am old and just want to be able to get things done as I dont have the time to stuff around getting my operating system to work with all my hardware just to be able to surf the internet...

But you get my point ;)

I own a Macbook Pro - only bought it in June this year, I am very impressed with the build quality after having owned a so-called 'flagship' Sony Vaio TT notebook - Sony make laptops with very little regard to build quality these days. I have also owned Dell's, Asus's, HP's (in fact I have a HP for work - Elitebook 6930p, nice but no Macbook Pro) and and IBM Thinkpad.

I too must be 'technically inept' now that I have chosen an Apple product (never mind studying CS at Uni now...and have been using Ubuntu since Warty came out...) nice to see an inability to argue rationally ;)

Now about comparing Apples with Acers - Acer might have some slightly better internals, pity their build quality is no where near that of Asus or Apple, and a friend of mine who works selling laptops has always told me to avoid Acer like the plague due to their rather shoddy build quality (ever wondered why Acer's are cheap?!), and poor after sales support.

Jealousy is a curse, I cant help having a higher disposable income than the average high school student who wants to tell me the evils of owning an Apple computer and iPhone

:lolflag:

[juancarlospaco]

Its a nice fruit, but i like orange and watermelon too...

[handy]

But if it is, we must then question whether FLOSS is the be all, end all, one true way of software development.

Apple's philosophy of total control of their product from start to finish *has* produced good computer ware. Many Apple fans believe in the benefits of that model with the same genuine zeal and conviction as you do on the FLOSS model.

Why must there be only ONE way?

What there must be is freedom.

If someone doesn't like the way MS, or Apple or Adobe or whoever does something, there needs to be the freedom to make other choices.

The Free Software Foundation is an organisation that is often seen as extreme, this is because it has to counter the opposite extreme. All in an effort to protect our freedom of choice.

[geekygirl]

Sounds so elitist :(

Why is it considered elitist?

If someone can afford something better than a Lada how does that make them an elitist? And why not be able to brag either? Funny how bragging about something that the 'average' person cannot afford makes one an elitist.

I would love to brag about driving around in an Audi instead of my el cheapo 08 model Kia lol

Or, is this the argument you are trying to put forward that people who own Apple products, which we all know are more expensive than a similarly specced laptop/desktop are just being elitist when they wish to discuss the ownership of such things?

There is a more elitist attitude within the UF forums prevalent especially within this thread (and others regarding Apple) with the suggestion that all Apple users are 'trend setters and are not really computer literate'.

'You do not use brand ABC computer (ie NOT Apple) with Linux therefore you must not know anything about computing and the corporate lies espoused by such evil corporations and are completly ignorant to the fact you are just a trend setting iClone"

Care to explain people of UF how such opinions are not elitist then?

[hoppipolla]

+1 to thisJealousy is a curse, I cant help having a higher disposable income than the average high school student who wants to tell me the evils of owning an Apple computer and iPhone

If you REALLY think that's all this is about then you are missing a lot of people's very valid points ._.

[JDShu]

+1 to this

the phrase 'banging ones head against a brick wall' comes to mind when reading through some of the responses from the more junior members of UF. Ah to be young and idealogical again, now I am old and just want to be able to get things done as I dont have the time to stuff around getting my operating system to work with all my hardware just to be able to surf the internet...



I'm young and I hope to be ideological for the rest of my life. :guitar:

Luckily, with the growing availability of preinstalled linux (including ubuntu) it looks there shouldn't be too much problem getting a fully working linux system in the future.

[handy]

I agree, the Apple related threads always bring out the same old useless arguments, that are rarely based on anything else than immaturity & ignorance.

Chauvinism may very well cause humanity to become extinct. We really need to get over it.

[wersdaluv]

Why is it considered elitist?

If someone can afford something better than a Lada how does that make them an elitist? And why not be able to brag either? Funny how bragging about something that the 'average' person cannot afford makes one an elitist.

I would love to brag about driving around in an Audi instead of my el cheapo 08 model Kia lol

Or, is this the argument you are trying to put forward that people who own Apple products, which we all know are more expensive than a similarly specced laptop/desktop are just being elitist when they wish to discuss the ownership of such things?

There is a more elitist attitude within the UF forums prevalent especially within this thread (and others regarding Apple) with the suggestion that all Apple users are 'trend setters and are not really computer literate'.

'You do not use brand ABC computer (ie NOT Apple) with Linux therefore you must not know anything about computing and the corporate lies espoused by such evil corporations and are completly ignorant to the fact you are just a trend setting iClone"

Care to explain people of UF how such opinions are not elitist then?

I drive nice cars too but that's not the point.

I just don't think you should raise your profile at the expense of others. Oh well. Don't mind me. We really need to compare if we're talking about the quality of computing. hehe

[hoppipolla]

Woo 50 posts! ^_^

[hoppipolla]

I agree, the Apple related threads always bring out the same old useless arguments, that are rarely based on anything else than immaturity & ignorance.

Chauvinism may very well cause humanity to become extinct. We really need to get over it.

I thought there were a lot of excellent arguments and posts made here though, there was just a lot of variety :)

My opinion of Apple has improved slightly over the course of this thread, but I'll be honest and say my opinion of Apple users has actually dipped slightly (that's not aimed at geekygirl or whatever it's just a general feeling!)

[handy]

I'm young and I hope to be ideological for the rest of my life. :guitar:

What usually happens to us, is that as we grow older, we become more pragmatic & gradually grow more of an understanding of how life works in reality, as opposed to how it works when seen through an ideology. :)

[hoppipolla]

What usually happens to us, is that as we grow older, we become more pragmatic & gradually grow more of an understanding of how life works in reality, as opposed to how it works when seen through an ideology. :)

Oo let's not get into this lol, ideologies are good - they help us have vision :)

But let's not tread this road lol

[Ric_NYC]

Overpriced.
"Elite" OS.

[KiwiNZ]

The point I was making was....

A Lada is a car and so is an Audi A6 . But they are not equal.

[handy]

My opinion of Apple has improved slightly over the course of this thread, but I'll be honest and say my opinion of Apple users has actually dipped slightly (that's not aimed at geekygirl or whatever it's just a general feeling!)

Who cares? :)

[handy]

Oo let's not get into this lol, ideologies are good - they help us have vision :)

But let's not tread this road lol

Who's vision?

[hoppipolla]

Overpriced.
"Elite" OS.

*cough* flame bait! lol

I think I'm going to head to bed all before that kicks off xD, night night everyone!

And handy... I'm not even going to start lol

[JDShu]

What usually happens to us, is that as we grow older, we become more pragmatic & gradually grow more of an understanding of how life works in reality, as opposed to how it works when seen through an ideology. :)

While many people may give in to the pragmatism and realities of day-to-day living, I think it is a choice to throw away idealism... I'm the first to admit I have a privileged upbringing, but I have met enough idealistic older people to know that its possible to live and be idealistic at the same time. :D

On the other hand, I don't know why people are raging against Apply as a company... its just doing what companies are supposed to do :confused: I only hate Apple as a marketer and their ads.

[wersdaluv]

The point I was making was....

A Lada is a car and so is an Audi A6 . But they are not equal.
Got it :)

[geekygirl]

If you REALLY think that's all this is about then you are missing a lot of people's very valid points ._.


hmm you do understand the term facetious now dont you?

I was being rather facetious with my statement and attempt at humour..... ;)

[mdsmedia]

Oh I see now. So my Masters Degree in Computer Science , MCSE , A+ and ITIL would of course make me technically inept because I own two Apple computers. :rolleyes:

I don't see how you could draw any other conclusion ;). I mean, if you need a Masters Degree in Computer Science to use a computer, you must really be inept!! :lolflag:

[KiwiNZ]

I don't see how you could draw any other conclusion ;). I mean, if you need a Masters Degree in Computer Science to use a computer, you must really be inept!! :lolflag:

True

[handy]

While many people may give in to the pragmatism and realities of day-to-day living, I think it is a choice to throw away idealism... I'm the first to admit I have a privileged upbringing, but I have met enough idealistic older people to know that its possible to live and be idealistic at the same time. :D

On the other hand, I don't know why people are raging against Apply as a company... its just doing what companies are supposed to do :confused: I only hate Apple as a marketer and their ads.

Write down your thoughts & feelings on life the universe & everything & put them in an envelope somewhere safe.

Keep the envelope & don't open it until your 50th birthday. When you open & read it, it should be responsible for the best laugh that you've had in many years. :)

P.S.

When you read it, spare me a thought, as I'll most likely be dead but my spirit will be living in my ideology. :lolflag:

[mdsmedia]

I used to be ambivalent, but continuously seeing this ad on TV is starting to make me hate the company.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e-WM6tuTeA
I LOVE that ad!! Thanks for the link. It's the first time I've seen it :).

How is that any worse than the MS FUD about Linux?

[hoppipolla]

Write down your thoughts & feelings on life the universe & everything & put them in an envelope somewhere safe.

Keep the envelope & don't open it until your 50th birthday. When you open & read it, it should be responsible for the best laugh that you've had in many years. :)

P.S.

When you read it, spare me a thought, as I'll most likely be dead but my spirit will be living in my ideology. :lolflag:

That's quite a cool experiment I like that, but you're still being quite patronizing ._.

[JDShu]

Write down your thoughts & feelings on life the universe & everything & put them in an envelope somewhere safe.

Keep the envelope & don't open it until your 50th birthday. When you open & read it, it should be responsible for the best laugh that you've had in many years. :)

P.S.

When you read it, spare me a thought, as I'll most likely be dead but my spirit will be living in my ideology. :lolflag:

Cause it'll say "42" :D

Nah I'm not patient enough to do that. Anyway, back to Apple.

[hoppipolla]

Cause it'll say "42" :D

Nah I'm not patient enough to do that. Anyway, back to Apple.

Hehe I dunno man I think this thread is now exhausted! lol

[xArv3nx]

i only like os x. everything else sucks imo. the community, the support, every other product made by Apple, etc.

[afroman10496]

At least they don't need a product key...

[handy]

That's quite a cool experiment I like that, but you're still being quite patronizing ._.

Sorry, sometimes talking to youngsters brings that out in me.

I'll probably be over it by the time you're 50. :)

[xArv3nx]

At least they don't need a product key...
Trudat. probably one of the nicest things about os x. :)

[coldReactive]

They're all right but... those ads are annoying.

[handy]

All ad's are annoying.

We dumped TV & radio over 20 years ago.

[KiwiNZ]

Don't get the Apple ads down here . I have only watched them on the Apple site. Quite funny actually.

They have people talking about them so they have done their job.

[Giant Speck]

My opinion of Apple: oooh shiny. That's not necessarily a good thing, but at the same time, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Regardless, I do love my iPhone. :D

[mrkazoodle]

I don't like them either.

They always compare themselves with windows, they always say they're more reliable,...

But they forget that they have to be grateful to Microsoft. (Yes it's true)
Because Microsoft developed windows to work on (almost) every piece of hardware, that hardware became much better then apple's hardware (mac is made to work on the hardware they have chosen, nothing else) and since they now use x86 hardware, like Microsoft, they are back in business.

[schauerlich]

They always compare themselves with windows, they always say they're more reliable,...I'm sure Linux advocates never do the same.

But they forget that they have to be grateful to Microsoft. (Yes it's true)
Because Microsoft developed windows to work on (almost) every piece of hardware,
As long as that hardware is x86.


that hardware became much better then apple's hardware (mac is made to work on the hardware they have chosen, nothing else) and since they now use x86 hardware, like Microsoft, they are back in business.
I think a lot of people will disagree with you that x86 > PowerPC. The reason switching to Intel helped Apple's sales isn't that PPC chips were bad, but that Windows didn't run on PPC, so switchers couldn't bring their "safety blanket".

[tweakedenigma]

I think a lot of people will disagree with you that x86 > PowerPC. The reason switching to Intel helped Apple's sales isn't that PPC chips were bad, but that Windows didn't run on PPC, so switchers couldn't bring their "safety blanket".

If I recall the reason for the major factor in the x86 switch was that the G5's ran way too hot to be used in the iBooks.

[schauerlich]

If I recall the reason for the major factor in the x86 switch was that the G5's ran way too hot to be used in the iBooks.

What I've heard was that Dear Leader wasn't happy with the pace at which IBM was improving their chips. So, yeah, basically that.

[Anzan]

I used Apple from 1987 until 1995.

Back then, I thought Apple was "for the rest of us" and happily pointed and clicked.

I realized a few years ago I would have been better off with DOS until GNU/Linux came along. Learning how to use a computer instead of knowing where to click on a menu would have been so much easier.

I know that many developers use OS X because they can easily set up a development environment and yet have a family-friendly web/email/music appliance for the family.

But Apple is now even more abusively restrictive than Microsoft is and I can't even use the iPod I was given even though Rockbox was put on it and so gave it away.

I like Fake Steve Jobs (Real Dan Lyons) though.

[Tibuda]

It is a company created by the Beatles.

[schauerlich]

I like Fake Steve Jobs (Real Dan Lyons) though.

Too bad the New York Times had to go and mess that up. :|

I knew there was a reason I didn't like New York. (Besides the Yankees, of course... :))

[1clue]

Apple switched to Intel chips because they required more PPC chips than they could buy. Production quantities were just not high enough. The vendors (mostly Motorola) of PPC chips could not keep up with demands, and the last run of PPC Macs was held up by the lack of reliable chips.

I've owned 2 macs. Loved them both for what they were, hated them for what they weren't. I've never owned any Microsoft operating system, nor paid for one. Every Intel box I've ever bought was bought as parts and assembled by yours truly, in order to avoid the license fee for an OS I despise. That said, I DID buy Microsoft application software for one of my Macs.

Steve Jobs has always been at least as restrictive as Bill Gates, just in a different way. They're both monsters. It may be a requirement for making a big enough splash to be noticed.


Apple opinion: I think Apple has always been at the forefront of user interface innovation. If this sort of thing is truly important to you, then get a Mac, or an iPhone. This is the company for customers who think of computers as appliances or tools, and who focus on the task at hand rather than the features you want.

The attention to little details the rest of us think of as minor (font quality, ease of use for beginners, ease of use for professionals in a field, etc) are what makes Apple what it is.

Buying a Mac has nothing to do with having more money than everyone else. You can easily go find a PC which costs more than any Mac. You either like them or not, and you can either afford them or not. I know somebody who drives a Porsche around, but uses crap computers because they are what he likes. He also has one of the most basic phones I've seen lately. He wants a phone, not a pocket computer.

You guys think I use Linux because I don't have to pay for it?!!? What a stupid assumption. I use Linux at work and at home, and if you counted the extra crap I go through to make it work in a Windows office I could pay for 2 macs or the latest greatest Microsoft server OS for the time it takes away from my job. Linux definitely has a cost, and it's not cheap.

I use Linux because it fits my world view better, and I don't like to put up with somebody else's idea of what software I have to use. Ubuntu helps out a lot for ease of use, but it still definitely has a cost.


Apple is the Bang & Olufson of computers: Technology should serve people, people should not serve technology. Who cares what's inside, as long as it serves you without distractions? If it takes more effort than it saves, you are better off without it. It's not the hardware or the price, it's the world view of the creators, and a totally different approach toward solving problems.

If Mac OS would work flawlessly on a VMware session I would instantly have a VMware with Mac OS on it, and would gladly pay the price of the OS and the software. But my PC has Linux on it, and I don't think that will change any time soon.

[MasterNetra]

There isn't a verbal translation of what I think of Apple. :p

[The Funkbomb]

Apples are cool. Every 15 year old who thinks they're a master at audio/video/graphic arts... they are not.

[Frak]

What I've heard was that Dear Leader wasn't happy with the pace at which IBM was improving their chips. So, yeah, basically that.
Apple happily prescribes to the Megahertz Myth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth). Well, they do it because it looks better in an Ad, and they found that users wanted to buy more IBM PC's because the Intel x86 clock rate was higher, even though the PowerPC was more efficient.

There's a reason why all the major platforms use PowerPC as their processor of choice. It's not because they're faster via clock rate, because they aren't, it's because they're more efficient. They can complete more operations per cycle than an Intel chip of nearly double the speed.

[mamamia88]

as i get less and less free time a unix like environment that is basically maintenance free is becoming more and more tempitng

[Frak]

as i get less and less free time a unix like environment that is basically maintenance free is becoming more and more tempitng
THIS



i

[NFblaze]

The only thing Apple ever had good was Word Munchers.

[Thirtysixway]

As far as computers go, they're supposed to be great with multimedia things. I think they really own video editing with all the default applications etc.

I also really like the iPod touch, pretty snazzy little thing :p

However, You'll probably never see me buy a mac. There are good and bad things really, I say They're okay, a bit hit and miss.

[schauerlich]

as i get less and less free time a unix like environment that is basically maintenance free is becoming more and more tempitng

+1

[Frak]

as i get less and less free time a unix like environment that is basically maintenance free is becoming more and more tempitng

Just to reinforce my point

THIS

[xArv3nx]

Just to reinforce my point

THIS
yeah if you have the money and you're not a gamer. *goes back to reading the entire thread*

[schauerlich]

yeah if you have the money and you're not a gamer. *goes back to reading the entire thread*
What if you don't have the money and you're a gamer? Guess you can't use Linux either.

[Frak]

yeah if you have the money and you're not a gamer. *goes back to reading the entire thread*
Surprise, surprise. Windows runs on Macs.

[xArv3nx]

What if you don't have the money and you're a gamer? Guess you can't use Linux either.
?

[xArv3nx]

Surprise, surprise. Windows runs on Macs.
so? you can't upgrade the parts and the graphics card isn't exceptional (even in the imac, a $1200 computer).

[schauerlich]

?

No money = no mac was your assertion. My assertion is gamer = no linux.

[Frak]

so? you can't upgrade the parts and the graphics card isn't exceptional (even in the imac, a $1200 computer).
You could say the same about a laptop, but there are reasons for certain purchases. If your goal is to play games, you aren't buying a Mac, now are you?

[cascade9]

+1to the general 'not bad products, but overpriced and Apple is far to fond of locking systems down and giving us DRM we dont want'


But they forget that they have to be grateful to Microsoft. (Yes it's true)
Because Microsoft developed windows to work on (almost) every piece of hardware

As long as that hardware is x86.


Actually, no, theres Microsoft IA-64 (Itanium) as well. Only XP-64 and Server 2003 though (poor old Itanuim got clobbered by intels pricing and AMD-64)

Apple happily prescribes to the Megahertz Myth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_myth). Well, they do it because it looks better in an Ad, and they found that users wanted to buy more IBM PC's because the Intel x86 clock rate was higher, even though the PowerPC was more efficient.

There's a reason why all the major platforms use PowerPC as their processor of choice. It's not because they're faster via clock rate, because they aren't, it's because they're more efficient. They can complete more operations per cycle than an Intel chip of nearly double the speed.

'Major' platforms? You mean big iron? People like Cray have been moving away from PowerPC chips for a while now, even things like IBM Raodrunner is using both PowerPC (well, PowerXCell) and Opteron chips.

[The Funkbomb]

The thing I really don't get are the prices.

Say you took a linux pc and a mac pc. Both with the same specs and quality parts... The linux pc is going to cost you a lot less. And people complain about paying 200 bucks for Windows? The cost of Mac's OS is like 800 bucks when you think about it.

[1clue]

so? you can't upgrade the parts and the graphics card isn't exceptional (even in the imac, a $1200 computer).


An iMac is an entry-level computer for people who don't want to mess with hardware. It's a computing appliance, the same way that a toaster is a cooking appliance. My Linux box cost more than twice that, and it STILL doesn't have a fantastic graphics card.

And yes, I've seen the new iMac with the huge monitor. That really makes zero difference. An iMac has mediocre hardware, no matter how you slice it.

[1clue]

So, take a look at a Bentley. It's a USD $200,000 car, at least. Double that for a pimped out one. You're not buying a bunch of parts, you're buying a Bentley. It's the whole experience. You either want one or you don't. Nobody who has ever bought a Bentley has done it because it was a good deal. Nobody who has ever bought a Bentley has even THOUGHT about whether it was a good deal. If you want one, you buy it. If you don't, you don't.

A Bentley isn't exceptional at anything at all. It's a hand-made Luxury car, and the slow ones can go 160 mph and the fast ones can go 200+, but if you look at the price there are other, cheaper cars that can go faster, handle better and are more luxurious. However, none of these other cars is a Bentley.

If you have the money and you think it fits your needs more, then you get one.

And FWIW, most macs you CAN upgrade the parts on, contrary to what a recent poster said.

[The Funkbomb]

So, take a look at a Bentley. It's a USD $200,000 car, at least. Double that for a pimped out one. You're not buying a bunch of parts, you're buying a Bentley. It's the whole experience. You either want one or you don't. Nobody who has ever bought a Bentley has done it because it was a good deal. Nobody who has ever bought a Bentley has even THOUGHT about whether it was a good deal. If you want one, you buy it. If you don't, you don't.

A Bentley isn't exceptional at anything at all. It's a hand-made Luxury car, and the slow ones can go 160 mph and the fast ones can go 200+, but if you look at the price there are other, cheaper cars that can go faster, handle better and are more luxurious. However, none of these other cars is a Bentley.

If you have the money and you think it fits your needs more, then you get one.

And FWIW, most macs you CAN upgrade the parts on, contrary to what a recent poster said.

I guess I can see that point. I just like my car to get me to point A to point B.

[1clue]

Exactly.

The thing is, while lots of people just want a car to get from A to B, they might have other requirements too: The need to seat 2 adults and 3 kids, for example. So my little 2-seater might get me around just fine, but it won't get your family around. One size fits none, right?

Everybody has different requirements. Some, the price doesn't matter so much but other things do. People buy all sorts of things with no functional value. Art, music, whatever. Does that mean they have no value at all? No. Do I think your art is worth what you paid for it? Maybe, maybe not. Am I interested in art? Yes, but not a lot of it in my house, so maybe I don't value it as much as others do.

It's really easy to disrespect a product because it doesn't fit your personal requirements. It's easy to say it's not worth it, but people never seem to remember that while it's not worth it to YOU, doesn't mean that same judgment applies to everyone. Back to the cars, my two-seater is maybe cheaper to run than your full sized car, but it has less value to you because it can't do what you need it to do.

A mac is just a different type of computer. It's not better or worse than anything else. Your "better" computer is cheap and gets the job done, assuming that your computer is like the car that just gets you from A to B. It costs more to write the software maybe, so you pay for that if you want one. I'm a professional software developer, so I know what it takes to write software, both in terms of time and money, and in effort too. Really good software is difficult to design.

I could have easily had a Mac laptop for what I spent on my current Linux box. Instead, I chose to get an i7 920 and stick RAID on it. It was a tough decision, but I figured I would get more value out of a Linux box. Next time, I very well might get a Mac. Last time, I got a Mac. Neither is better than the other all around, but each has its strengths and weaknesses. They actually complement each other really well, if you've ever used both at the same time maybe you would know what I mean.

So to reiterate, I like Macs, but I also like Linux. I've used Linux for longer than I've used Macs overall, and if I had to choose only one it would probably be Linux. At least right now it would, but that hasn't always been my attitude.

There is no such thing as a single best operating system, the same way that there is no such thing as the single best hardware. One size cannot fit all, at least not in our current understanding of how things work.

[maflynn]

I'd say I'm pretty close to being a fanboy. I love their hardware even though it's more expensive and their software is great as well

they can be very secretive and arrogant but you cannot deny the fact they pay extreme attention to details - adjusting stuffby one pixel detailed

if you use their OS and apps you gain an incredible amount of integration but lose out on flexibilty

overall they make great products provided you just want them to work without changing or customizing anything

[chrome101]

I love Apple Macs... i still have my old mac classic and it still works. yes they are expensive but they have a part to play in my setup, which consists of linux, windows and... apple! Each is good for its own purpose and the end goal is to get the job done. Nothing more nothing less!!!

As for the politics of computing (for which i studies as part of my degree)... i really don't care. I leave that to those who have a vested interest or simply don't understand.

*Now, where did I put my iPod???*

:lolflag:

[Ric_NYC]

They would sell a fancy new toilet paper... If they could make a lot of money with it.

[zman58]

Apple is great at marketing. They can always find fools to dump money their way on fancy stuff that really does not do anything special. Cool advertisements, sexy, cool looks, cool buzz, ridiculously expensive merchandise.
"A fool and his money soon part"

[vagrantrooper]

Dad has one, a 24" iMac same theme every month never changes because it's not that easy to do so.

Some things I like some I do not.

Someday I will put Kde on it :D

[xtremesupremacy3]

I used to love Apple.

It had a class of elegance about it. Stream-lined, sexy, worked well etc etc.

But then I disliked them because of their business practises which are starting to closely resemble those of our friends at Richmond.
I like many others bought the Apple Iphone (why? dont ask...what a waste), and was disappointed by the fact you NEEDED itunes and you couldnt have 3rd party apps without jailbreaking.

Which I did to discover that the packages they use are .deb

Now thats funny, use .deb, but dont let the linux community be able to sync the phone...talk about a kick in the teeth.

You know what, forget them, forget microsoft...we have linux...give it a couple of years and we'll be number one without corrupt business strategies

[Frak]

'Major' platforms? You mean big iron? People like Cray have been moving away from PowerPC chips for a while now, even things like IBM Raodrunner is using both PowerPC (well, PowerXCell) and Opteron chips.
Meant to say major "gaming" platforms. PowerPC's are cheap to make, and very efficient at rendering since they take less cycles to complete a job. Combine that with the fact that they can be stacked pretty high, PowerPC becomes a very tempting platform.

[Windows Nerd]

Their ads, though slightly humourus, are biased towards making Macs "The best" at everything. Though they have excellent multimedia software (Final Cut Pro, par example), they lack when it comes to gaming and programming environments. I also hate how thier laptops, especially, are treated as a fashionable accessory. The only thing I like about them is thier unibody casings and are easier to fit in a backpack with your school books without breaking something on the laptop. My screen on my laptop is falling off because of it's casing beaing caught on something soo many times. Yet another dislike is thier restrictive policies.

On the plus side though, is that though they have a pretty GUI, it still has a fully functioning Command Line that is almost as powerful as Linux's. Did I mention they use BASH for that? Thier kernel is quite stable. Another plus is thier security.

The thing I just cannot tolerate is thier fanboys. One thing to you guys: Steve Jobs is not a god!


Scott

[mamamia88]

I was playing with one of the imacs on campus today and i just had no idea what the hell i was doing. is it just something you get used too after awhile? everyone i know says macs are easier to use but everything just seemed counter intuitive too me.

[mwalimu54]

wormy

[1clue]

Their ads, though slightly humourus, are biased towards making Macs "The best" at everything. Though they have excellent multimedia software (Final Cut Pro, par example), they lack when it comes to gaming and programming environments. I also hate how thier laptops, especially, are treated as a fashionable accessory. The only thing I like about them is thier unibody casings and are easier to fit in a backpack with your school books without breaking something on the laptop. My screen on my laptop is falling off because of it's casing beaing caught on something soo many times. Yet another dislike is thier restrictive policies.

On the plus side though, is that though they have a pretty GUI, it still has a fully functioning Command Line that is almost as powerful as Linux's. Did I mention they use BASH for that? Thier kernel is quite stable. Another plus is thier security.

The thing I just cannot tolerate is thier fanboys. One thing to you guys: Steve Jobs is not a god!


Scott


I strongly disagree here. Text Mate is the world's best programming editor on any platform. My boss is buying the entire development staff Mac laptops just to get this editor, and the search whatzit that lets you start typing a word and everything you've touched lately that matches the search shows up in a list.

As long as you can get a compiler for whatever language you need, Text Mate makes up for a whole world of other issues.

[Anzan]

I strongly disagree here. Text Mate is the world's best programming editor on any platform. My boss is buying the entire development staff Mac laptops just to get this editor, and the search whatzit that lets you start typing a word and everything you've touched lately that matches the search shows up in a list.

As long as you can get a compiler for whatever language you need, Text Mate makes up for a whole world of other issues.

I've read many good things about TextMate.

(I like gedit and its healthy array of plugins. actually, I like it a lot.)

But I think that the important thing for me is to have the tools to do a task rather than a program that I depend upon.

I don't want to depend on an OS let alone a program.

If Ubuntu becomes something I don't agree with or like, I can use Debian or even go to the other side of the packaging street and use Fedora. If Microsoft somehow kills Linux with patent litigation (unlikely, just saying) I can go to BSD.

At this point, after more than two decades of using computers, I'd rather just have a GNU userland and a tty than have my work and data locked in to any product/appliance/OS/program.

I'm still cleaning out crud from old files that used a proprietary program (I think it cost about $500 then) to produce kanji and hiragana on the Mac in the late 80s and Microsoft Office hinkiness in others. I have hundreds of files I have rescued as .txt, .odf, .pdf and paper copies but many hundreds to go. And this is all old work I'm trying to get into useable condition in addition to current projects.

So, my point is that I value being able to use my own work freely and no program or shiny interface or convenient features can displace that.

I walked by an Apple store the other day and had an involuntary shudder as I passed.

[1clue]

Anzan,

I totally agree with you, I've gone through proprietary format hell too.

Our case is different. There are currently 3 developers in our company. We represented Mac OS, Windows XP and Ubuntu. Actually, we've all moved around quite a bit in terms of variants, I've been everywhere from Gentoo to Ubuntu and many places in between. Our Windows user has been mostly XP, but the Mac user has gone through a couple OS variations too.

We're working on Java and Grails. We use Tomcat app server, grails and whatever editing platform we want. The mac user uses TextMate, the rest of us are currently using Eclipse. I've tried IntelliJ, too, and I like it but it's slow. And most of the features are useless with Groovy/Grails. I also use Vim, have been using it as my primary text editor for over a decade until I switched mostly to Eclipse.

The files are text files. There is no marriage to a single OS or single file format. We've each developed our own styles in terms of getting the job done, and we all agree that TextMate is incredibly better at getting the job done than any editor any of us had found or seen. TextMate is so much better that my boss decided it easily paid for Macs all around because of improved productivity. That and the extra productivity tools that come standard on a modern Mac.

Don't get me wrong: I'm still a Linux guy. I just bought my i7/920 and I don't plan on installing Windows on it. It's just that some days, like today, I get stuck in a spot where something I need to do my job is broken. Today it was VMware. Doesn't work on 9.10. So I'm messing around trying to figure that out instead of doing my job. This sort of thing happens all too often, even on Ubuntu. Actually, it seems to me that Ubuntu breaks things almost as often as Gentoo, but with Gentoo you have to budget a lot more time into just maintaining the system overall.

I love the Open Source model, we use it heavily in my company. It's just not always ideal, you know what I'm saying?

Edit:As well, if you go to any sort of software development seminar where Open Source software is discussed, (No Fluff Just Stuff for example) you see a really interesting trend. Back in the beginning, you saw a couple Macs, and then a whole lot of PC laptops, about 20% of which seemed to be Linux.

Now, the Mac content is huge. It seems like a quarter of the machines are Macs, but that may be an exaggeration. You definitely see more Macs in the hands of presenters, where they do live coding for the class.

You don't get a lot of defections from Linux guys unless there's a good reason to do so. In this case, you get to keep almost all of your Linux software, and you gain Mac software. It's a no-lose situation.

[alphaniner]

We have two Macs at work, a G5 and what might be a G3. I think the case design is magnificent; particularly in the G5 but the G3 is nice too. Otherwise, after some practice I've grown to appreciate OS X but I have no particular attachment.

The commercials amuse me too, even if they are a bit too kind to Windows.

[Veteropinguis]

I'm going to jump in here as a more average computer user. I've been futzing with Ubuntu on and off since Hardy, currently dual-booting with Karmic.

I don't like Apple fanboys. I don't like Apple computers. However, I do like iPods (yeah, shoot me) and I have owned a few iRivers.

The 'Mac Mentality' is very different from the 'Linux Mentality'. If I were to speak in broad generalizations, here's how I would generally classify the majority computer users by OS:

Windows: Apathetic about the OS. They use whatever came on the computer that runs what they need for work/to have fun. If you gave them Ubuntu and they had a small learning curve and all their toys would work, they wouldn't care.

Linux: Interested in computers, likes to tinker and take things apart, wants to know how a computer works and doesn't appreciate being held back from doing that. Doesn't mind breaking something because fixing the problem would be fun/it's easy to go on to the Ubuntu Forums and get some geeks to do it for you. :p

Mac: Doesn't care about/doesn't understand computers, needs something simple and hard to break- or a hipster. Either way, the response they want to a hardware problem is to throw money at it and make it go away.

From a pretty average user's perspective, I can't stand Mac OS. Everything is buried in a tab within a submenu within a submenu within a sidebar. Now, what this does is keep you from doing anything too damaging to your Mac, but assuming you're an intermediate-level computer user who isn't a regular Mac user, trying to, say, print something is a nightmare. The computers look pretty sexy, but that only goes so far. The other sort of frustrating thing is that because of the "Mac Mentality" you end up with people who buy a $1500 laptop to run Firefox, iTunes, and Text Edit- but hey, they've found the computer that best suits their needs.

Regarding iPods. My first mp3 player ever was an iRiver ifp-700, 512 glorious megabytes of flash memory. That actually still works, even though I've left it out in the snow a couple times. The buttons aren't as responsive as they used to be, sometimes, but this thing has been through 5 years of abuse. I then graduated to a 20 GB iRiver H10. Dropped it from about 3 feet while it was running, and the hard drive died the next day. My next iRiver met with a similar fate, and I am actually pretty careful with my equipment. Then I got an 80 GB Zune, because I liked the idea of being able to watch movies on the subway on a decent screen, but unloaded it after a few months when the battery life got annoying. Also, I listen to classical music and wasn't going to retag all my music, then retag it again when the Zune software let you have a composer field. Next up, a 120 GB iPod, which I was very happy with and unhappily had to sell to help fund a trip abroad. I dropped that thing many times while it was playing, and it's soldiered on. The things my boyfriend does to his iPod make me cringe, but it's been playing strong for years. The only thing that ever killed one of his iPods was when he left it in his jeans pocket and it went through a washer cycle...and the drier. Currently I'm trying to find a 5.5-gen 60 GB iPod so I can put Rockbox on it.

iPods are, in my experience, extremely hardy critters. I have used iPhones (my mom switched from Verizon to AT&T to get one) and actually, I like them. They're shiny and fun to play with. Since I'm not particularly in to the FOSS philosophy (I try to support open-source whenever I can, but I use Ubuntu because it's fast and yeah, it was free) I don't really care about how much of their code they've released. I don't think everything has to be open-source.

I also think that some people on here (probably a lot of my age range: I'm 17) need to get a better sense of what the typical computer user is. My boyfriend's cousin deleted his C:\ drive a while ago...while trying to make a desktop shortcut to a game. This sort of thing happens all the time. Linux distros give you more power but for some people, that would be like giving a baby a flamethrower.

Just my two cents.

[handy]

This is all so personal.

Let whoever use whatever they choose.

People that have really negative feelings for Apple, usually are forgetting about the corporations that make the chips that Apple, & MS, & whoever else use.

These chip manufacturers so often have really nasty corporate histories, to the point that they make Apple look like they are good.

Don't believe me?

Have a search on Intel, nVidia, AMD, the old ATi, IBM (oh my god! they even legitimately bring in Godwin's law!) VIA, pick another manufacturer & have a look at their history.

Really nVidia, AMD, ATi & VIA are just new kids on the block.