On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 20:29 -0600, Les Mikesell wrote: > On Sat, 2006-11-11 at 20:04, Craig White wrote: > > > Basically a Macintosh is really cool hardware > > Intel core 2 duos w/nvidia video seems kind of mainstream... > or did you mean the cases? ---- no the hardware in general. The newest Power Mac's are incredible hardware (of course they start at $2000). They are rock solid - so were the G5's. The iMac's are extremely well designed and cool (not a reference to internal temps) too. ---- > with a stagnant, > > Is that another word for stable? ---- It wasn't the direction I was heading. I wouldn't give it any bonus points for stability - some of my clients have some stability issues. The interface is stale - singular in view - stupidly conceptualized for idiots with a single button mouse as Apple finally figured out that there is a benefit to having a mouse with more than one button. Not only the OS but most applications do little to implement alternate button options because of Apple's lack of vision. Then of course, they adopt the position that the user is super user and suggests that they have this issue under control by requiring the user to enter credentials to do things which of course works except when someone doesn't play by the rules. ---- > > > proprietary OS with too little generalized software that is applicable > > for niche usage, > > Niche as in professional work? ---- niche as in graphic arts - music. Of course their market share hasn't appreciably grown in those or other areas. ---- > > > with a majority of users with a big chip on their > > shoulders. > > As compared to GPL fanatics? ---- depends upon your point of view which is evident by your labeling them as fanatics ---- > > > Macintosh users typically have a rather interesting > > perspective that theirs is the anti-Microsoft choice without considering > > that there are too few contributors to porting OpenOffice.org because > > they are happy launching an underpowered Microsoft Office 2004. > > Perhaps they noticed the OpenOffice users complaining about how > the conversions didn't always work. ---- I guess I hadn't noticed much of a problem since OOo 2.0 Of course, I have a client in a world of hurt until we convert their entire operations manual designed tightly on Macintosh OS 9 with Word/Office 98 that fall apart upon conversion to Office 2002/2003 on Windows, Office 2004 on Mac OS X and certainly no worse in OOo ---- > > In any case, healthy competition is a good thing, and if nothing > else should help keep people honest if they try to claim that > open source always produces the best results. ---- Competition is fine - no argument here. I didn't mean to rag on Macintosh / Apple. As far as open source always produce the best results - that can only be answered by each person and their perspective and we both know, this is subjective. Admittedly, I have a somewhat anti-Macintosh bias. I used to run the local Apple Users group back in the mid 80's but that was then and this is now. Allow me to pose this conundrum to you... I have a non-profit client without a lot of excess funds. Having just recently figured out how to implement roaming profiles on Macintosh via LDAP/NFS/Netatalk it allows me to consider them as peers on a network that has Windows and Linux desktop machines which already had roaming profiles so I am relatively at peace with the Macintosh at the moment. They have several iMacs and G3 systems that are still running OS 9 and are due to be updated. Do we upgrade them to Tiger considering... - $ 129 per system - most of them don't have a DVD drive and we would need the CD's and if you go to this page on Apple's web site http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html you will see a link in the middle of the page to get CD media for just an additional $ 9.95 - the link has been dead for over a month or do I just say - screw Apple and install Fedora Core 6 on them? In this instance, it's evident that if I don't have to run any specific Macintosh software on these systems, Fedora it is - even if I can't locate PPC based versions of things like flash/etc. By logical extension, the only difference between this client and any other user is the willingness to spend money to feed the corporate beast, whether it is Microsoft of Apple and to be honest, and to paraphrase one of my favorite lines of all time...one is a monopoly, the other is a monopoly wannabe. Craig
