Is that what they're calling it?

There's always third party. Lots and lots of third party.

I guess we'll all go back to passwords now.

My impression has been that mac users tend not to keep their machines for a decade unless forced by their company. mac-intel users replace their machines with m1 when they came out, and now with m3. which tells me it's something other than usability. we used to call it the brushed Chrome effect, but pcs are available in brushed Chrome now. maybe it's the logo. in any case, it appears to be a want rather than a need. which is fine, it's your money.

Not off the top of my head. The Macbook Pro is my work machine and rarely leaves my desk. I take the Acer into the field quite a bit, but I have an adapter (12v - 19v I think) that allows me to plug it into a cigarette lighter, so battery life hasn't been an issue. I'll grant that Apple's ability to charge from USB-C is probably an advantage, provided they're not doing some DRM stupidity that prevents me from plugging into the car's USB-C slot. (I haven't tried, to be honest.)

Performance while unplugged is adequate in both cases.

Again, I'll grant you that the Macbook is probably faster. I'm a heavy user of Adobe Lightroom and a less heavy user of Photoshop, and there isn't a lot of difference between the two, which is for me the main point. While Adobe CC will make use of GPU, it doesn't take as much advantage of GPU as does games for instance. I don't game. I picked the Aspire because it had an AMD Radeon GPU that CC would use, rather than the usual Intel basic graphics, that CC would not use. I don't know what the Mac has, frankly, but it seems to be adequate.

Again, it comes down to use case. There is a pretty sharp premium for the Mac, and maybe there are uses for which that is justified. So, when buying a Mac, I think it's important to ask one's self, is it a need, or a want?

Yes, exactly. Undergunning the ram is historical, not practical.

And, according to a developer I talked to recently, Edge forked from Chrome.

Not sure I agree. It so happens I have an Acer Aspire 5 to my left and a Macbook Pro to my right, (the Acer belongs to me and the Macbook belongs to work) so I can make a pretty close comparison.

They're both about the same thickness. I'd need tools to measure the difference.

The Macbook is a little heavier.

Both make roaring noises when pushed. I couldn't honestly say which is louder at max.

I haven't benchmarked them, but I will grant you the Mac is probably faster. I use Adobe CC on both and either is adequate for what I do, which is the important thing. Let me repeat that because it is key: Either machine is adequate for the work I am doing. It is not important to have the fastest available, it is only important to have enough resources to do the job plus some buffer. (I say this because I have a friend who hungers to replace his older Intel macbook for an M3, but when pressed has no use case. It's not for doing, it's for having. I guess.)

Screens are about the same size, both are calibrated and accurate. Ok that's not quite true, the Mac's screen is a little larger. Maybe a half inch on the diagonal with a slightly slimmer bezel.

At $580 new, I could buy three of the Aspires for the cost of the least expensive Macbook Pro I could find online. ($1599).

The Aspire came with 4GB, which I pulled and replaced with two 16GB DIMMs for about $80. So I guess you could say I paid $660 new, and couldn't quite buy three for the cost of the cheapest Macbook Pro. But pretty close. And that $1599 Macbook Pro has 8GB of memory soldered in.

I work with Macs, have supported them in IT jobs (Jamf is your friend) and they're ok. I've noticed that they sometimes get confused and will refuse to charge from the official Apple wall wart but I guess that just adds character. But when people say they're considering a Mac, my response is, that's going to be a big investment. What is your use case? What do you do that a Mac does well enough to justify the price?

The thing is, memory is cheap. Even retail. Much cheaper wholesale. I strongly suspect the quantity wholesale cost of 32 GB is less than the cost of the fancy box the unit comes in.

I think this is at least partly due to "old thinking" by the execs making decisions. They remember memory as being a major cost, and part of their reptilian brain still believes that is true. It hasn't been for a while.

Yeah, 8 GB is fine for browsing and email. But do people really buy macs for browsing and email? Or would they buy a Chromebook or a $120 BestBuy special for that purpose? Or a tablet? I have a wife and two friends who got tablets because they were "cute", and then realized they could do everything they needed to do from the tablet, and their computers gathered dust. When all you do is consumption, you don't even need a macbook.

To your point, I think the major learning here is, the system they're referring to "as low as"? Never, ever buy that one.

Very happy to say that I saw Dark Star in theater, almost by accident. At a time of dystopian scifi (finally put to rest by Star Wars, released two months later) Dark Star was a welcome parody of the downer that was most scifi at the time. With props from a toy store and very early space effects, the film still stands up today.

A friend had it on tape and we'd periodically have "Dark Star" parties, especially if someone in our group was a "Dark Star virgin".

I have the novel (which adds depth to the characters and more insight into details like why the control room is so crowded but the rest of the ship is so spacious) and used to have the DVD. I think I loaned it out and never got it back. Being reminded of this film, I just put the thermostellar edition on order.

The film had so many good points to make. The stupidity of government management, the depression and insanity due to long periods of isolation, and the misuse of AI.

I sometimes pass out at my desk. Is that sleep?

Ok, so, part of this might be overenthusiastic reporting. Once media attention is drawn to something, things that would have been page twenty-six tend to show up above the fold because of its association with a previous incident. This tends to make things seem worse than they actually are.

That said, ye gods.

I'm not really up on the conspiracy angle, but although John Barnett had blown the whistle, my understanding (feel freel to correct if wrong) is that he had not testified yet. Which, of course, he can't do now. So if there was anything else he might have revealed, it's lost.

I'd be interested in the differences between first world and third world countries.

that was my immediate conclusion.