Lately I'm frustrated by the fact that Apple has gone solely to an OS X operating system.
However attractive -- and a programmers dream -- I can barely use the 20 some odd programs in classic mode as efficiently as in a native OS 9.
This very issue has stopped me from buying a new computer this year -- and I may very well try to buy a used, top o' the line, G4 with OS 9 in the system so as to save myself for a few years.
Apple has always been stupid in the market game for computers (though their new methods of selling music seem to be more important than building a strong system - their excelling in the 'iLife' as they say), but what do any of you mac (and PCers) think?
Please, no Mac vs. PC arguements... that'll take forever, and it's just a matter of taste:)
I just wonder how some of the mac users here feel about the changes going on.
Whatever's right or wrong, Apple will take some odd route nobody understands. There's talk of them using AMD cpu's in future, I dunno what their game plan is but they don't want to become too PC-like, even if it does reduce component cost. I suspect they want to attract game publishers, this would be inline with the AMD cpu theory as Mac's are currently rubbish for games...as well as everything else, lol.
OS X might very well be a reason for many users to get themselves a reasonably priced piece of PC action, saying that, Apple aren't the only ones; Macromedia software is now OS X only is it not?
These changes are wanting me to buy an iBook, if that means anything. :)
(I've been on a PC for 9 years now.)
All the OS X only programs will still work native in OS 9 -- Macromedia's MX version all work fine under OS 9 without even having OS X on the system.
Mostly, the program problems are not with the web stuff -- it's the print for us designers here. OS X does some wacky stuff to print drivers and fonts (even Suitcase 10 hasn't fixed many of my font loading errors from crashing). Older programs like Fontographer and procreate Painter can't go to OS X well -- and Quark's lazy @#$%'s still haven't made a native version of OS X (though it takes them 5 years to make an update).
AMD cpu's? Oh great -- well, when I open my Mac up -- aside from seeing many motorola logos, I see a few IBM ones now and then as well, so who knows.
Yeah, I've thought of getting a PC, but I really have had horrible problems with working on ones for graphics programs and large file sizes (even on supped up computers). In the end, though overpriced, the Mac has always been more stable for me in the graphics realm.
Hey, the ibooks are cool:) - the older more annoyingly colored ones were great because you could beat them up and nothing would happen to them. The new ones are too elegent and sensitive for that.
I've just been reading the apple website actually and it's a joke in many ways. They seem to want to hide the spec whilst coming out with ludicrous statements like:
This turbocharged Power Mac rips through digital video and 3D projects faster than Pentiums can say “uncle.”Hmmm, that's why Discreet and friends don't support the Mac whilst optimising for Intel platforms? I'd love to see any Mac against dual hyperthreaded Xeons in a fair 3D rendering benchmark.:rolleyes:
You can fill it with 2 GB of high-speed DDR SDRAM, get it with a 4x SuperDrive that’s twice as fast at burning DVDs, High speed? how fast is "high"? very slow one suspects compared to the dual channel DDR advancements being made on the pc platform. And the SuperDrive is twice as fast at burning DVD's than what?
Short data pipeline
All processors complete their tasks in a series of steps or stages, referred to as the processor pipeline. These steps include fetching, decoding and storing data and executing instructions. And here’s where the PowerPC G4 processor demonstrates its overriding advantage over Pentium 4 systems: The PowerPC G4 was designed with a short 7-stage pipeline, while the Pentium 4 processor has to cycle instructions through 20 stages. Because of its shorter pipeline, the superefficient PowerPC G4 accomplishes a task in 13 fewer steps than the Pentium 4.13 few steps huh? well Pentiums are quad pumped so effectively they have a 5 stage pipeline not to mention 2 cycle cache latency (transpiring to 19gb/s bandwidth) an 800MHz, 6.4gb/s bus... P4 and AMD threads are 32bits long, Mac 128bit. so unless you're talking floating point then Mac loses...
You're right about Apple marketing, it sucks. They assume ignorance in their customers. AMD have grounds to attack Intel in their marketing, their claims can be backed up by any user and a copy of SiSandra/3Dmark/pcmark/etc. Apple should bear in mind that Intel are massive, they invented the microprocessor and are at the forefront of the technology, few believe the marketing hype around Mac's and their architecture, by bringing Intel into almost every paragraph on their spec sheet they're planting a seed they maybe shouldn't be planting.
I don't think you've much to worry about on OS X, my brother uses a Powerbook with OS X and seems to like it. If you feel you have problems go PC, build the PC you want, open yourself to masses of software, upgradeable hardware and unquestionable compatibility.
Sorry if I'm Mac-bashing but it's hard to escape Apple's misinformation and somewhat arrogant marketing.
No bashing is fine -- and it's just as well to us Mac users. We have 40 macs here, maybe 10 PC's -- I remember when our old macs would last through a rain storm... now, since I've had this G4, replaced two harddrives and had numerous full system installs.
It is speedy for my programs (though it doesn't hold it's waters to what you have listed below)... but I am losing faith.
Too bad Apple doesn't spend more time building quality work as compared to making online music easy to buy.
I really like OS X. I hated OS 8 and 9, but OS X is excellent. It's like the Linux you can't get - the one that has the sense to keep all that /dev/etc/ business out of the finder ... but of course it's all still there in the terminal.
It's just a damn shame that it only runs on overpriced proprietary hardware. OS X for x86 ... now that would be something special ;)
But I have a Mac and a PC; the PC is my home while the Mac is like a quirky little house at the bottom of the garden; and that's good - it's a cute little house and I like going there, but I wouldn't wanna live there all the time.
I like that:D
My world of the print designer is bottle-necked with macs... we choose to live in that quirky little home.
Apple has been on the wrong track for a long, long time. They missed the boat back when Jobs refused Gates when Bill begged him to port the MacOS to the Intel platform because BG wanted to get out of the OS business. SJ always thought of Apple as a hardware company but their best work has always been in their software, their hardware has always been overpriced and usually (but not always) slower. Other than the processor chip these days the Mac resembles the PC more than it ever did before and yet it's still overpriced, just making their systems less expensive would result in an improvement in their market share.
SJ had a great opportunity dropped into his lap years ago and still refuses to acknowledge that he made a mistake and therefore still refuses to do anything that might indicate a change of mind.
Just think how much different the world of computing would be today if Jobs had ported the MacOs and Microsoft had achieved their goal of exiting the OS business so they could concentrate on their Applications business.
Mouse,
Thats what you get when you have sales people write the technical speel...
Roy,
So true, so true...
I remember when IBM and Apple got together to introduce a Computer that would run as a MAC but also be able to run the Windows OS itself... Turned out to be nothing more than a pumped up MAC with and Intel daughterboard added for the x86 portion... Since it was a daughterboard and since the bus wasn't completely utilised by it, you can imagine the performance hit that the intel processor took... The MAC portion ran fine while the Intel portion was, lets just say, I've seen snails swim faster...
-sage-
I remember that little keynote -- everyone was up in arms about the merger... then Mac clones came out, and then Steve Jobs bought those companies back out, and put the mac back into a single company market.
In all honesty, though it seems as lately they've been putting more aggression into their software than their hardware -- I would love to be able to buy a cheaper machine that runs my Mac software. I'm tired of buying a G4 for 1700, then three months later, a higher end model comes out at 1700, then another... and another...
i can just say that macs arent popular in france. in shops and stuff, you just don't see them around. i can't believe that they're still around!
Really? Not even with the Graphic Designers in France? Does Apple even do marketing in France?
Honestly, with American Capitalism, Euro Disney, McDonald's, and our imperial aggression to police the world with our own morals, I wonder why:)
P.S -- just a little additive... in the past two weeks I've gone through 3 harddrives - because of an HSF Wrapper issue. Seems as though this little toy was put in to communicate with elder Mac OS's (8 and under), from what Apple says. It starts to drag my computer, then pops me a warning that I need to back up and reformat my harddrive. DiskWarrior will fix it over and over again, and then it just dies. I'm pissed:mad:
i'm talking about the home owner. i think that graphic desingner probably use acs but on the home owner end you only get winodws schmindows
That's true -- but then, I have a Mac at home... but it's not commonplace I imagine.
Well if TV were to be believed, everyone's got one. Maybe this is a UK phenomenon - but on TV when you see people using computers at home or in offices or at school, it's always a Mac. But yet in real life I hardly ever see them.
It's mad .. almost like Apple have a deal with loads of agencies to use macs in their TV ads ...
I guess it like good customer service from a bank - it's in all the adverts, but it never happens in real life ...
Common in movies and just about everywhere -- it's here in the US as well. From what I know of some of the Marketing guys in Hollywood, L.A., and San Francisco by me, they say they use it because the box design is more 'sleek' and modern.
Because of that popularity, you'll notice the new powerbooks have the Apple logo on them so it looks right side up when you view someone head on using it. Everyone made jokes about it looking backwards:)
There is also speculation that since the Steve Jobs owns Apple, and Pixar, he has that Hollywood pull that gets him noticed:cool:
Ads are image because most Americans are limited in opinion and intelligience. Depressing...
Originally posted by mouse
Whatever's right or wrong, Apple will take some odd route nobody understands. There's talk of them using AMD cpu's in future, I dunno what their game plan is but they don't want to become too PC-like, even if it does reduce component cost. I suspect they want to attract game publishers, this would be inline with the AMD cpu theory as Mac's are currently rubbish for games...as well as everything else, lol.
I've heard some rumors of them using the Intel Itanium which seems more believable, since Apple's biggest fear is that people will be able to run their OS on non Apple hardware, and how many people have/could use an Itanium based machine?
Originally posted by Thejavaman1
I've heard some rumors of them using the Intel Itanium which seems more believable, since Apple's biggest fear is that people will be able to run their OS on non Apple hardware, and how many people have/could use an Itanium based machine?
Eh... then no could afford the Macs... those Itaniums aren't cheap. However if that did happen, then the cost would go down becuase Intel would be selling more so they could lower the price some.
Just think what would happen if you could run their OS on non-mac hardware... They couldn't just charge whatever they wanted for Mac hardware. Realistically, there is no real purpose for Macs to exist, most, if not all, of the software is on the PC and PCs are so much cheaper, faster, and scalable. At least thats how I see things.
As an old-time PC user who's just gotten himself an iBook to play with, I can say that this operative system seems to rock. It's got automation for most things where other unix/linux systems has none, even in places where Windows needs the user to insert what settings they want instead of just plug-and-go. And, the thing that differs from Windows, is that so far everything works at first try. Except some problems with some Mac/PC networking, but that was because of network security and nothing else, and I frankly don't like the thought that anyone would be able to mount my harddrive over LAN, so that's just fine by me.
On the other hand, you have most of the linux/unix tools at hand in the terminal if you wish. In fact, I had more use of my linux books for this system than I had for Red Hat, because in Red Hat you didn't get as fast to the 'use' stage - you remained quite a while at the 'set up' stage.
As for gaming, only the OS9 games/game versions run slower than the PC versions, and then my PC has 433 MHz up on this one, and eight times the video memory. (And a better video card in general.) We benchmarked WC3, SC and JK2, and all those games ran faster on this machine, so I'd not call it a bad gaming machine - except for it's lack in sortiment.
Finally, I can say about OS9 that I don't fancy it. It crashes easily (where OSX only quits the program running) and it is far from beautiful.
The problems with the Apple change from old System 7-9 to Darwin seem to be the same kind as the MS change from DOS based Win9x to NT based Win2k,XP,2k3. It'll pass with time.
Do you really think Apple would give up "The Right Way" for the change to AMD? Especially with the upcoming IBM 970 series, 64bit G4 processors? Especially when these are rumored to be half again as fast as the Motorola processors? Maybe they'd give up their hardware monopoly (for the computer systems, at least) to make the work easier for the game makers? I'd not think so. Apple has never had the same idea behind it's comnputer as the PC market has. Apple has, as Amiga has, tried to be better. They have tried to be distinguished from the hoarde. They have tried to be in the front of the areas that matter to their prospective customers.
Apple hasn't lost to the PC. They have simply niched in to their area of the market while leaving the PC to cover the general computer market. And with the new OS, they make it easier to borrow tools from the other 'alternative' OS, linux, so as to make themselves even more free of the PC. They aren't going the PC way. I don't think they would want to let the Macintosh computer system open up to the pick-the-parts-and-put-them-together-to-form-a-system way of the PC. They'll keep being a niche company, but maybe they will broaden the niche. Music industry are already invited. Maybe gaming industry will too. After all, now you can far more easily than ever before make a program that compiles and actually works on Win32, Linux, Solaris, BSDs, and MacPPC. This is bound to become even easier.
Apple don't want to be mainstream. They don't want to be "just" a choice among many. They want to be special, and worth getting in spite of their differences to what everyone is used to. They will go with their RISC processors, and they will keep true to their motto, "Think Different".
(Besides, my iPod has both a more than double as fast processor as my Pentium-60, and a 60 times as large harddrive... and is eigth years the newer...)
Many of your post I agree with liorean -- the only major issue I can see with OS X is the fact that:
1) It's eaten harddrives like crazy. This is happening through our whole company right now.
2) Print Drive/fonts. We've had to keep our Prepress and Design Department that works fully for print to stay under OS 9 because of the way it reads and interacts with printers (which apple agrees it hasn't perfected). Seems it won't connect properly at times, lose it's settings, destroy the postrscripts and distort color, adjust the layout (especially in quark where it'll throw off the reflow of all the text for a book/magazine)... and not properly read our input output color curves.
That last one is a huge thing for printers, and a major reason why most companies like us can't switch -- our color cannot change, our layout cannot change. We lose a lot of money in that end.
So, most prepress is still under OS 9 -- and in that realm we've completely reformatted the drives and removed OS X under those computers. We've also been in a flux to buy older systems (since newer ones cannot even load OS 9). Hell.
I would also agree that Apple isn't going for an open market. They tried that a few years back (the ol' Mac Clones), and then bought them all out and did the same things. Right now, though, it just feels like they are alienating their most profitable market -- the print designer. If they don't catch up fast, they'll end up like Quark -- where most of us are switching to InDesign because it took Quark 8 years to go from version 4 to 5, and 9 months to go to native 6. The preview seems like crap none the less for the program.
Bro' have you noticed that CTU (24) and MI5 (Spooks) and also the hacker kid on Spooks, all use Mac's too. I'm no |337 h4><0r but I find it odd on 24 where the guy asked someone to "open a port" on a network using Mac's...
Thejavaman1, Itanium is massively expensive. Intel would only sell it at affordable prices if AMD's 64 bit baloney, comes close in floating point. Seems like Apple will continue using dual cpu's to make up for the lack of raw power, not sure how this tactic will work on notebooks though...
Not seen either of those programs; but I remember Independence Day where they use a powerbook to upload the virus to the mothership - I remember my brother commentating - it was nice of the aliens to make their network infrastructure MacOS compatible :D
brothercake, that's hilarious:D -- Thank god Goldblum and Smith saved the day.
lol. that film was so funny. they even took the trouble to make a skull and crossbones appear on the aliens screen before they blew their ship. i'm sure thealien's graphic cards were nice shinyy radeons. *sigh* thats what you get when you make things backwards compatible, inferior races come and h4x0r0z j00
lmao.
You've never seen that networking protocol for mac? It's right under IPX, "Alien Computer Systems." Duh. :D
i always thought bill gates was from another planet (who else could be a geek and be one of the richest men alive). oh well the truth is out there...
yeah man ... you never see Gates and the Borg Queen in the same room ...
Originally posted by brothercake
yeah man ... you never see Gates and the Borg Queen in the same room ...
Lol... Well you couldn't anymore, the Queen is dead along with all her drones. So maybe Bill is next? :)
What about the new G5? its supposed to be a really fact processor made by IBM (IBM 970 processor)...how ironic I think... I guess mac exes are singing "I wanna be, I wanna be, I wanna be like the PC".....hehehehe
Jason
But the G5's are nice. They will be released at 1.8, 1.9, and 2.0ghz apparently. Quite a jump from the current 1.42ghz G4's.
good for them with their not as great computers ;) but one thing wouldn't make sense, Intel released the 3.0ghz with some faults and had it recalled but it will be here shortly, but in the article I read it said that they were closing that 1.0ghz gap....so if theirs isn't out and intels isn't either....when is that gap going to be closed...I think they are just full of mumbo jumbo....
Jason
Yeah, the G5's are nice -- but the design looks like someone took the shelfs off our little server rack here. I'm iffy on that whole look -- and I'm still questioning the hardware. Until I see some massive drive improvements, I'll keep my G4... and, lord knows, the price needs to drop significantly still. I still cannot get a productive model that can be upgraded for the price of a PC -- but hey, I love my Macintosh. Maybe OS X Panther will fix all of it's OS errors, improve the system wide usage, and get everything back on track.
Originally posted by oracleguy
Lol... Well you couldn't anymore, the Queen is dead along with all her drones.
You humans ... you think in such 3-dimensional terms ...
You humans ... you think in such 3-dimensional terms ...
"Marty, your not thinking forth dimensionally" said By Dr. Emit Brown, one smart human always thinking above those three dimensions...
Jason
Here is more fuel to add to the fire.
http://famulus.msnbc.com/famulusgen/cnet07-07-093501a.asp?t=CNTEK
I think by Apple trying to make all their own software will be their eventual down fall.
I have to agree on a small scale, its not smart to try and control the entire market of your own product with software created by and only for the product...apple is just completely going about all this the wrong way...they need to go and open up for other companies...
Jason
I know, I saw this the other day on MacWorld.com -- this has quite a few Designers in the media hear kinda freaked -- including myself. Apple has always tried to take over the market (notably back in the day when it ok'd Mac clones, and then bought them right back out), but the software arena, I agree, could be their eventual downfall indeed.
You don't bite the hand that feeds you, and Adobe is one of the main reasons I've stayed with a Mac -- it was sad to see Apple pull this out, and I know many Mac fans happy with Premier are very PO'd right now.
I find this interesting, however, that it has come out recently since MS decided to halt IE for mac... for good. I wonder if these corporations are sending a well deserved message?
MS office saved the Mac, Adobe keeps it rolling (especially since it has taken a large market from Quark)... I wonder what's next.
http://webflash.com/indexframe.php?id=561&id=561
pretty funny video. im convinced :D
Premiere moved out the mac market because Premiere 6.x was a peice of junk and Apple developed a better product. It was bad on Mac and worse on PC. I work at an architecture firm as the IT person and we had to switch to FCP because we were loosing too much time and money with Preimere's constant crashing. We had used Premiere since 1998 before we switched about 2 years ago to Final Cut Pro to edit video walk throughs.
I've only been using OSX for a year now, but I've been extremely pleased. I rarely reboot my machine, a 800Mhz G4 Powerbook. I just close it and open it back up and its great. Seems like its only when I DL system updates that I restart. I hated OS 9 and below with a passion, and WIn 98/NT 4 drove me to Linux. Its a shame that the Mac's 10.3 OS is not 64-bit to match the G5's. That is a mistake. We have quite a few Alpha rendering boxes around here that is nearing their end of life and will be phased out over the next year. We are looking at IBM and Sun boxes, but if we could buy Mac boxes and use them as workstations and then render servers when we have a large job, it would be great.
As far as Microsoft pulling support, Safari was a good execuse. They hadn't done much to MSIE for mac in several years. As far as Office goes, I like Powerpoint better on the Mac than on PC, it has more features. Sarfari is damn good browser. It still needs some work, but the fact that I don't any popups any more is great. However, I could get along with Apple works if I had a program to replace Powerpoint. Keynotes isn't there quite yet.
I am waiting for the benchmarks between the dual G5's 2Ghz versus a dual 2.4Ghz Xeons. Our past expirance with Alpha Servers and Maya has been interesting. Our Quad ALpha 600Mhz with 4GB Ram still kicks our dual 2.4 Ghz with HT & 2GB Ram Dell box by a pretty good margin. Alpha is running Redhat 6.2 for Alpha and the Dell has RH 7.2 and both are running Maya 4.5. The Alpha's used to beat the older P4's by about 20%, now its down to about 7.5%. Its an improvement, but these Alpha Boxes have been here for at least three years, when I started working here.
Anyway, Apple's price is worth my money because it works. I am not rebooting twice a day and sometimes programs crash, but rarely does the OS, about 4 times in the last year has a program taken the entire OS and two of those was running Classic.
Originally posted by unimatrix
Anyway, Apple's price is worth my money because it works. I am not rebooting twice a day and sometimes programs crash, but rarely does the OS, about 4 times in the last year has a program taken the entire OS and two of those was running Classic.
I leave computer at work on all the time and I never have to reboot it, I can keep it on for months on end. It never locks up and works great. (Dual P3 550, Win2k Pro, 256MB) I have had Outlook 2003 freeze once or twice but it is a beta version so you have to give it some slack.
Originally posted by oracleguy
Dual P3 550, Win2k Pro, 256MBWindows 2000 pro is amazing. Since switching from 98 to 2000 pro, I have gone from an average of 4 BSOD's a day to 0. I just hope my switch to XP Pro will be as pleasant...
Oh and what's this about Adobe and Mac? I can't seem to read the link oracleguy provided... :(
The skinny is:
Adobe has decided to pull it's Video editing program Premier out of usage for Macintosh's, because mac has it's program Final Cut Pro that is too competitive (and, incidentally, much better)... however, there is talk from my friends at Adobe that After Effects may be soon to follow. They may be trying to force Apple into backing away from the software arena -- which, would be smart, since if Adobe leaves, I gaurantee a lot of us mac users will be switching back to PC with much complaint.
Adobe no longer makes ATM(Adobe type manager) or Pagemaker for OS X. I think they are already pulling away some things and coming out with "replacements" Like InDesign is for Pagemaker sort of......
MNS
ATM was getting it's butt kicked by Suitcase, so I understand why they killed out of that market.
Pagemaker, although an ok program, is not of high quality for Print Designers, and I honestly don't know anyone (unless you) that uses it -- they stopped making it because Adobe's whole market is pretty much Print, since GoLive is a weak HTML Editor, and much of it's web based programs are worked into their print programs.
I do use Pagemaker and my "mentor" and her colleagues at work have not switched to OS X because they use Pagemaker very much, although I do not believe it is only for print that they use it. I personally do not like it and only use it when there is something I can do in it "easily". I really like InDesign... I have never used suitcase, only ATM because it does what I need it to I guess so I have not loked at alternatives.
MNS
ATM and Suitcase aren't much different, so I wouldn't worry about it so -- they essentially do the exact same thing, Suitcase has some things I think ATM can't do, like open up specific fonts for specific programs and/or files -- you can program it to interact with programs.
InDesign is a good program, and many of us old Quark Xpress users have made the switch to InDesign because Adobe keeps it updated and interacts with it's customers extremely well -- where as Quark came out with it's great program, fired 99% of it's program designers and just sold the program without updating it for almost five years. InDesign was made to incorporate PageMaker users, and Quark users, into a more advanced program with larger spectrum of capabilities. Although some people probably still use PageMaker, I don't know anyone personally that would accept it as a file type... except Kinkos maybe. But, there are still some programs that I use no one uses -- don't knock it if it works!:)
InDesign also integrates fluidly with Illustrator and Photoshop, so I would recommend it now. Large companies such as 'Old Navy' announced at the beginning of the year that they would be switching from PageMaker and Quark to 100% InDesign -- the first design firm to do that. That said, it's getting a lot of big attention, so to speak. And since the new Quark Xpress 6 really sucks, it's no wonder why people are switching sides.
ATM and Suitcase aren't much different, so I wouldn't worry about it so -- they essentially do the exact same thing, Suitcase has some things I think ATM can't do, like open up specific fonts for specific programs and/or files -- you can program it to interact with programs.
You have to use it's partner, Adobe Type Reunion" and it works in all other applications and software on your box.....if suitcase does it all in one...it may be "better"
I do my catalog in InDesign. It is so much "easier" than Pagemaker to me...