yep, but this is first time in ages (almost ever) that Mac is a great platfrom with true advantages and no major disadvantages for the money.Blazkowicz_ said:
Apple ships Intel PCs
- Thread starter Joe DeFuria
- Start date
The problem (and advantage) of Apple still remains: A single vendor for both the hardware and OS. They dictate the pace of change.Druga Runda said:
Perfect example: Nothing stopping a Core Duo Mac Mini with some decent PVR software being released now. Perhaps ~$200 more expensive sure, but a hell of a lot better machine (I have a 1.42ghz G4 Mini - my XP2500 rig runs rings around it for everyday tasks).
The problem of course is that the higher-tier iMac now has the core Duo, so Apple will either wait considerably to update the Mini, or only offer a single core variant so as to not eat into the iMac's revenues. Apple just doesn't care about expandability, and why should they? You have no other source to go for the hardware, as recent xmas G5 iMac owners found out this week.
I'm playing very few games these days, so I'm looking at perhaps switching over myself as well - little downside from a business perspective when I can just boot Vista on these Macs to be compatible with my corporate apps (note: They use EFI as opposed to a traditional BIOS, so getting XP onto them may not be possible). It will hurt amongst my family and friends though, as I always did the component hand-me-downs. Always nice to pay $80 for a feature-laden motherboard as opposed to a $500 replacement from Apple.
Plus if I move to console gaming, then it's another proprietary solution. The PS3 will have some nice exclusives no doubt, but purchasing more than one console and the price really starts to skyrocket. Maybe I'll be completely bored by most games by then and couldn't care less, but who knows.
The best thing would be for MS to blow us away with Vista, but I've been thoroughly unimpressed with the CTP builds so far, especially the GUI - an entire vector-based 3D engine, and what do we get? A glass refraction effect, which looks like garbage when you have a few windows underneath. Wow. Way to shock and awe MS. I think Apple getting ~10% marketshare could do wonders for the industry, lord knows it would really kick MS into gear. I'll reserve judgment until I see the release candidate, but everything so far looks as if MS completely restarted the project 2 years ago, which be all accounts is indeed the case.
It works the same as every other desktop searching app, it simply incorporates context-sensitive keywords for system help as well, as Vista does.Kalin said:
With the exception of the system preferences, you just described virtually every desktop searching app on Windows as well. Spotlight is most certainly centered on finding your data, searching through system preferences is a nice bonus but the design of the app is to find your data as quickly as possible.
Windows Desktop Search is an excellent free add-on for XP that I've been using for months. Not quite as complete as Spotlight, but it does pretty much the same thing, and actually is a little more flexible in some aspects (the deskbar results support right-click functionality for example allowing you to take action on results without opening another window).
Dave Glue said:
I'm simply pointing out it's usability is about making things accessible, far beyond finding lost things, which seemed to be implied in the thread (i.e. keeping your data organized would make Spotlight irrelevant).
I haven't tried Vista, and I don't intend to do so in the near future. It's worth pointing out though that Tiger is out for people to use, while Vista is still (and will be, for several months) in the shape of a yet-to-be-released software product. So no comparison can exist between those two, not yet.
DemoCoder said:
And if microsoft had a good moviemaker builtin, you know what would happen? They would be sued and they would lose the case. Everyone likes to bitch at microsoft, but they actually make decent software they simply cannot include it or else they get sued. The same with photoeditors and anything else. Anytime Microsoft includes something that is decent and competes well they get sued and have to spend millions of dollars. That is the price of success.
As to the looks of OSX my wife hates it which I never have understood, I assumed women would like that crap ah well.
Dave Glue said:
No, I didn't describe a desktop searching app on Windows simply because my explanation of the intended use of Spotlight doesn't even come close to describing it as a whole. E.g. one of it's strengths comes from it's tight integration in the system - I've not even mentioned that.
In order to draw comparisons you have to get the full spec of it, or at least enumerate all it's up- and downsides, which is not my intention to do (I'm using OSX since a month, not long enough IMO).
And the problem for Apple is of course a lack of decent commercial software, Adobe ditched Mac support for Premiere and other products (and Premiere was less than half way decent). So they are more or less forced to bundle software with the OS.
When you can get Pinnacle's excellent Avid Liquid (Edition) 7 for just $499.00 there's really no need for MS to supply a more advanced editing tool, IMO.
Cheers
When you can get Pinnacle's excellent Avid Liquid (Edition) 7 for just $499.00 there's really no need for MS to supply a more advanced editing tool, IMO.
Cheers
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Blazkowicz
Legend
I never used OSX so I can't tell much about iCooking, iToaster and such but what's wrong with 3rd party apps? isn't an OS made to run apps?
say, I use GAIM for chatting on MSN, I have an easily reachable shortcut to launch it, and it has an icon in the systray. I can also copy-paste or drag'n'drop text to every other application. That's enough desktop integration for me, thanks.
Also, Picassa is free and there are such other free tools (Irfanview, Xnview)
say, I use GAIM for chatting on MSN, I have an easily reachable shortcut to launch it, and it has an icon in the systray. I can also copy-paste or drag'n'drop text to every other application. That's enough desktop integration for me, thanks.
Also, Picassa is free and there are such other free tools (Irfanview, Xnview)
Gubbi said:
Umm.
To hear my wife (who's a designer, and keeps her finger on the media creation pulse) tell that story, the reason Adobe ditched Premiere for the mac was that Final Cut outclassed it so thoroughly sales just died. Contrary to what you might expect, content creator types tend to be pretty conservative - as other professionals, they use their computers and software as tools, so just because someone comes up with a glitzier screwdriver doesn't mean that you will drop the one you're using if it does the job and feels comfortable in your hand. Witness the resilience of Quark Xpress users despite its glaring problems for a brilliant example. Nevertheless, Premiere just died.
(I wonder, now that Adobe has gone draconian with their copy protection, what will happen with the rest of their product portfolio. It used to be that they had the professional users as paying customers, and wannabees, students and hobbyists largely pirating their software creating a vertical monopoly. Now there's quite a bit of pricing space below their offerings, and the grubby low lifers (some of whom are future paying customers, of course) will need to shop around for alternatives.... )
Apple has always been about enabling users. In the 70s it meant making personal computers available to the public at a decent price. In the 80s and to some extent early 90s it was making computers not only available, but easily accessible without having to know too much computer arcana. And today, Apples consumer strategy revolves around making their computers not only accessible, but easy to manage and to actually produce decent results with.
"Lack of commercial software"?
I don't know about that. A quick look at VersionTracker reveals quite a bit of commercial software. Sure there are tiny niches that aren't well covered, in my own field of expertise for instance, but if you aren't in one of those niches, why should you care?
I agree with you about the 70s and 80s, but once they got into the PowerMacs (the 90s) things started to slide. Inferior performance at a much higher price tag. You'd have to be braindead (or a celebrity) to own a PowerMac as a personal computer back in the 90s. The shift to x86 is an attempt to become more competitive (both higher performance and lower cost) so that the Apple tax is justified. People are a lot harder to fool today than 10 years ago.Entropy said:
The reason so many software vendors ditched Mac support was because Apple market share dwindled to almost nothing. Today Apple is only staying alive because of the iPod.
And one whole class of applications is almost completely missing in action on Macs: Games.
Cheers
I acknowledge that, I just thought you were going into hyperbole territory in how you were describing it.Kalin said:
An example of how it works - input "Wireless" into Spotlight, and the resulting network preference will pop up. It's nice, but "far beyond"? It doesn't provide any extra instruction beyond what just selecting the system preference pane will do - it's just a shortcut if you can't figure out you would configure the wireless under "network". Spotlight's primary purpose is to find your data which it does an excellent job at, providing quick context-sensitive shortcuts to a few control panel items is a nice addition, but that feature hardly significantly changes how you interact with the system.
Keeping your data organized would hardly make Spotlight "irrelevant". Like any desktop search, it's main focus is to provide one area to search through all of you data - no matter how organized you are, you'll never be as fast as someone using a desktop search engine when you have to search for data across multiple apps. How would you quickly search inside those documents as well? The desktop search engines are data indexers - you're not just searching file names.
Obviously, to Apple's credit. Some may balk at yet another $129 in just over a year to get some of the functionality however. I'll take 10.4 over XP in a heartbeat even will all the free add-ons, but it is worth noting much of Spotlight's functionality has been available on XP/2K without shelling out any cash (WDS was in public beta before 10.4 was released).
This isn't platform advocacy for pete's sake, so please relax. I own a mini, iBook, and my primary job is to support the 150 Mac clients within my organization. Some people post things for informational purposes for all concerned who may be reading the thread, not to start a childish flame war.
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Is it just me or are the new Intel notebooks from Apple appearing a bit underpowered. I would expect the minimum clock speed to be at 2 ghz at least! And what is up with that crappy LCD resolution? I have a 15.4 inch widescreen and it has 1920 x 1200! If Apple launches a 17 in with a higher clockspeed and a mobility x1800 at least or a geforce gtx 512 mb mobility I am gonna go and grab one. Finally good competition for Dell's XPS line of notebooks.
As for OSX in general, I think its a great piece of software. I have used it a few times before...takes me a bit of getting used to. However I like the Start menu implementation in Vista better instead of the Dock. And as for the UI...someone already has mentioned it...with all that 3d capability for the desktop, Vista only releases a glass interface...which is fine...because I kind of like the look. But come on...I am sure there are things that can be done better. One could of course argue that MS is saving the best for last but I thought this last release was Vista with all its features completed, only a lot of debugging and tweaking is left over!
As for OSX in general, I think its a great piece of software. I have used it a few times before...takes me a bit of getting used to. However I like the Start menu implementation in Vista better instead of the Dock. And as for the UI...someone already has mentioned it...with all that 3d capability for the desktop, Vista only releases a glass interface...which is fine...because I kind of like the look. But come on...I am sure there are things that can be done better. One could of course argue that MS is saving the best for last but I thought this last release was Vista with all its features completed, only a lot of debugging and tweaking is left over!
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Nothing's "wrong" with them per-se, it's just that when you have one company producing them, they all share a similar design ethic and are made to be data-interchangable (for instance, you can drag-and drop pictures/music/tracks from iDvd/itunes/iMovie/Garageband etc between each other, and they all share similar interfaces and shortcuts).Blazkowicz_ said:
There's plenty of consumer-level DVD editing programs out there for XP and there's Picassa from google which is an excellent iPhoto competitor, but stick MyDVD alongside it and it's going to be confusing for a newbie - let alone most Windows app designers simply don't focus on interface consistency (or artistic quality) nearly as much as your average Mac developer. Vista is supposed to help that by transferring the interface design over to the artists instead of the programmers, but I'm not holding be breath.
Finding an overall package with the functionality and consistency of iLife - especially under $100 - is basically impossible in the Windows world right now.
Yeah, Apple's always had something against high-res displays in their notebooks, they've always been lower res that their PC counterparts.suryad said:
It's especially odd when OSX's interface widgets and fonts are generally much larger than XP's. 1920*1200 on a 15" screen makes XP incredibly tiny, while it would still be very readable (and look fantastic) on OSX. My 12" iBook display at 1024*768 is very frustrating to use on OSX.
The "real" Beta2 with most of the features enabled hasn't been released to testers yet.
A recent article by Ars tells us of the possibility of running Windows on the intel macs. However it's up to MS to support the new scheme.
Still, interesting...
Here's an interesting quote linked in the article:
It seems that Apple is willing to tolerate a dual booting environment with windows. I would love to see the day.... Even better, fast user switching between windows and Mac OSX.
I'm still dreaming the day when you see OS X on a run of the mill PC. <sigh>
Still, interesting...
Here's an interesting quote linked in the article:
It seems that Apple is willing to tolerate a dual booting environment with windows. I would love to see the day.... Even better, fast user switching between windows and Mac OSX.
I'm still dreaming the day when you see OS X on a run of the mill PC. <sigh>
Ya that .. but like if for example I want to to the directory for quake 4.. I can goto properties for the shortcut and hit find target, so seaching for data isn't really a big help to me.Kalin said:
Searching for contacts emails containing certain words... thats much better and perhaps I might use it.
But a lot of these cool things OSX can do.. I don't mind not having them since I don't really find a need for them.
Its a cool feature and all but I wouldn't miss it.
Atleast windows vista is finally get some things.. too bad they had to skimp or take out features because of time contrainsts.
It's really about time windows had a major overhaul seeing as windows 2000 was the last major change.
To me a good OS is stable, has a nice GUI (osx+++++++) has decent memory management and can run games.
Speaking of memory management, I hope vista helps with memory management during file tranfers.
When I only had 512MB of ram during file tranfers and buring cds, windows would allocate way too much cache and end up taking all my free ram so during that time my computer was quite unresponsive.
Since I have 1GB now I don't notice it, but you shouldn't need a gig of ram just to burn stuff without running out of memory.
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