While very cool, and I want one..... I can't justify buying the rMBP's... A cheap dual-core atom Thinkpad Tablet 2 running Win8 and a docking station meet most business desktop/mobile needs dirt cheap. While *I* would notice and make use of it, I can't justify it for my users.

As integrated video chipsets get faster and the displays get cheaper, it'll be mainstream. Like I said, I love the displays personally but I can't justify the additional cost. If the screen can do at least 720p then it's good enough in most use cases.

Ummm..... the Mac II was released in '87 and discontinued in 1990. Chances are it's closer to 3 decades old. And I haven't seen a 68k MacOS browser that can render modern pages in an acceptable fashion. As cool as I think the 68020 is, trying to use a 16Mhz Mac II as a primary machine in the 21st century is a little weird. A/UX or NetBSD/mac68k would be fun on a tricked out Mac II as a toy though.

Hell, 10 years ago you could have bought a Blue&White G3 or early-model G4 for $50 and still had software compatiblity with the 68k.

And most people they sell them to use them to run Office and hop on Facebook and bought it because of looks and to feel "elite" compared to others in their organization. Apple is great at convincing people they need an i7 and a hi-rez display for basic computing tasks.

The people that can actually make use of them generally can't get them. I had to kick and scream to get my 2011 iMac and 2012 MacBook Air..... in 2013. And I'm the IT Director. I just wanted a UNIX box with native well-known productivity apps and a copy of VMWare Fusion for staging VM's for ESXi servers.

Apple is pretty much the only game in town for UNIX boxes with widespread commercial software vendor support for desktop apps. Linux can be workable if you don't mind jumping through hoops all the time as well as running commercial desktop apps in a VM. WINE is still a joke in most cases and unless ALL your Windows apps run in WINE you might as well use VirtualBox.

There are REALLY GOOD reasons for buying a Mac. Unfortunately none of them apply to the vast majority of Mac users and they are just underutilized, shiny status symbols.

It supports MacOS X and a couple BSD variants. I'm sure with a little effort it could have been ported fairly easily rather than reinventing several wheels.

That means it supports more platforms than systemd..... which supports one. And properly dealing with it in software means broken fragmented apps and desktop environments.

If you wanted to write code for a clumsy dead platform, why not the Apple Newton? Far cooler and more interesting. At least the Newton is the same CPU architecture.... just with a much better OS, 2 PCMCIA slots and a bigger screen.

Hell, even the Atari 8-bit is more interesting than a piece of crap from Palm.

Seriously, PalmOS sucks. I've written a couple things for it in the past and I wish I hadn't.

You aren't far off, a couple high-end 17" MacBook Pros would easily get there pretty quick.

Exactly.... if that were the case the Windows CE and PalmOS smartphones would have sold a lot better than they did in the early 2000's. They were actually much better suited for real work than Android or the Glitzy iOS interface. The CPU's were weak and they had no 3D acceleration but they were actually USEFUL.

The majority of smartphone users basically treat them as phones they can play games on and check facebook. There's maybe 3 people in my office that know how to use their phone effectively for anything else. And most of us were issued an iPhone 5S. I really wanted to keep my Milestone 3 because it was more useful for..... you guessed it..... real work. Now I'm stuck with a much faster, but overall less useful device.

Yeah, if they'd implement the Ink->Text functionality in the Metro version, it would suck a lot less. That's my only real gripe with it.

Apple Newton-style drawing touch-up would be nice too.... like turning crappy circles into nice ones, etc. I miss my Newton :-( It spanked OneNote in terms of functionality.

Correct. We have several Lenovo ThinkPad 2 tablets running Win8.1 and the input panel is right on the taskbar. These came with Wacom touch/pen digitizer screens. My only complaint is that the digitizer needs recalibration every so often.

The newer dual-core atoms are no power house but I wouldn't say they are useless. Stuff like OneNote works great. Basic stuff in GIMP it does ok with. Haven't tried Photoshop. It runs Office quite nicely. For a cheap business tablet with good battery life they do the job well. They are nice and responsive but they are certainly not "workstation-class". If you want performance, get an i5/i7 based tablet and enjoy the heat and poor battery life.

We handed them out to district supervisors for our retail stores and gave them docking stations here at the office. It's worked out well. They spend most of their time in Desktop mode vs. running Metro apps. The only metro app they use is the fairly crippled metro version of onenote for taking quick notes.

The atom tablets are a good compromise if you need x86 software but want power efficiency and cheap solid state storage more like ARM tablets. If you have folks that aren't doing real CPU-intensive work, they are fine. Most administrative staff usually are not. The Lenovo TPT2 is cheaper than an iPad these days and far more useful in a business environment.

Ummm..... Windows 3.0 was a 16-bit DOS shell that was horribly buggy and lacked a lot of functionality most take for granted with a GUI OS. MacOS System 7 was out by then. A real 32-bit GUI OS that was easy to manage, lightweight and simple. It did its fair share of crashing but was a MUCH better OS than DOS/Win3.x. I was more of an Atari ST user in 1991 still... we converted to Macs a little later after we realized the TT030 was pretty much vaporware and underperforming when a few units finally did ship.

It wasn't until Win95 that the classic MacOS had a serious competitor from MS. It wasn't until WinNT4 that MS had something better. The Mac's real competition in 1991 was the Amiga and Atari ST. All of which were kick-ass machines that were less costly than a nice Mac.

NeXT machines were around as well then and they were SWEET but far too expensive for most folks. Lucky for us, NeXT/OpenStep became MacOS X.

That's a WINE issue, not really an XQuartz issue. Really only an issue with full-screen stuff. To be fair, I've had this happen a lot on Linux/BSD machines as well.

I never use the old "Cmd-Opt-Esc" Force Quit method. Easier to hold opt and rightclick dock icon and hit force quit there. If that's not an option I usually have a terminal window open and I can just kill it from the CLI. TotalTerminal is awesome and should be part of the base OS. I haven't had a situation where it didn't pop up over whatever was running. X apps included.

Mac hardware isn't really overpriced. Just stick to the base config and add your own RAM and bigger drive. The thing is that Apple doesn't have crappy budget machines aside from the Mac Mini and even the Mini is no slouch. Look at similar PC's with the same config, in the same form factor with nice sturdy all-metal chassis. You'll find the Mac is often cheaper.

Where Apple is unappealing to a lot of "enthusiasts" is the lack of low-end or mid-range expandable machines with slots. People shouldn't have to spend $3,000 for expandability. But most of that crowd knows how to build a hackintosh if they want one anyway. I run it on cheap non-Apple hardware very successfully for home use with full hardware support. I let my employer buy the newer Apple-branded hardware except maybe my little used 2009 MacBook at home which runs 10.9 quite well also.

Even if the mythical "Apple Tax" were true, I'd pay it to get a nice stable UNIX workstation with support from major commercial desktop software vendors and no Linux dependency hell. It's worth it to me to NOT be stuck running Windows. Linux and BSD on the desktop are fun if you like being an isolated leper.

Yeah.... if I want to deal with TSA Gestapo bullshit, I'll just fly. The cost is comparable to flying if you buy a soda or two on the train. And you get there slower.

If taking the rails were less hassle, the trains were better maintained and slightly faster, I'd choose them every time for domestic travel over flying.

The TSA is KILLING commercial mass transit IMHO.

Maybe I'm tired.... thought you trying to bash XQuartz for some reason.

I don't think anyone has compiled real statistics but I wouldn't be surprised if the number exceeds the number of FreeBSD desktop users by a large margin. It's certainly not an insignificant number but probably a fairly small percentage of OSX users. Most Mac users I know have Fink or Macports installed along with XQuartz but my numbers are likely skewed because I'm an IT monkey. Most of the "average" mac users I know only ended up using it to play with older versions of GIMP or OpenOffice.

It's enough that it sees active development and a lot of use where old RISC-based UNIX boxes were once king.

In terms of installed base, there's FAR more headless Linux servers than desktops, so X11 users in general are "next to no one" right?

Generally it gets used when some "gotta-have-it" FOSS app lacks a proper mac port. X11 apps are less desirable because generally they suck compared to proper mac applications. And it's not XQuartz that's the problem, it's X in general. X11 on the mac is a last resort even if it works well because Apple's windowing system is THAT MUCH BETTER.