Comment Apple Eliteism? (Score 4, Interesting) 125
I have been using personal computers of one sort or another since I was sixteen; I'm forty two now. Thats right, I started with the TRS80 Model I from RadioShack :)
Since the death of CP/M, I've been a diehard PC user, and not always a happy one. The absence of an assembler and linker in the OS was a harbinger of dark times for those of us who were assembler programmers when windows finally rolled out in a (questionably) useable form.
Late in '94 I found the Internet, or maybe it found me. Within a month I had wiped windows from my box and replaced it with linux (slackware on a 0.98 kernel if you're interested).
As of one year and eight days ago I became the owner of a refurb dual proc 1.25GHz G4.
I can tell you that I am in love with this machine, and I can tell you that while the design of the hardware certainly plays into it, cosmetics are not my first requirement; it's all because of OS/X. This OS is what linux wants to grow up to be. And the spit and polish represented by Aqua/Cocoa/Carbon are at the core of the benefits of OS/X.
As a result of my experiences with OS/X I have made the switch from linux to FreeBSD on my server; and I have to say, as I work FreeBSD on an old wintel box and OS/X on the Mac, the differences are quite apparent; FreeBSD ala Apple and FreeBSD ala carte are very different beasts, the Mac being far simpler and easier both to use and to administer.
The reason I've gone through all this preamble is to qualify my next statement: until about the time of the advent of Panther, which I consider to be first release of OS/X refined enough for general use, Apple simply had it mostly wrong. The insistence on a price point that alone made them a nich market product, the insistence on hardware and operating system software that were not only proprietary but closed, is so backward that were it not for all the substance of it, it would be not unlike the emporor's new clothes.
Sometime recently though Big Steve drank the right cup of electric coolaid. The iPod is a device of sheer genius. Not in its design, its implementation or its pricepoint; these features had all been clearly defined by the market place well in advance of Apple's offering. No, the real power of the iPod for Apple is as a marketing device, where it has introduced literally millions of PC users who would never have considered buying an Apple product to the company, just in time to push the Mac Mini under their noses. This has the potential to be a one-two punch for the WinTel world that should have them all shaking in their boots.
If I haven't made myself clear, I'm really impressed with Apple these days, their products are solid, their support is solid, and they seem to have finally gotten the company on track to become the major force in the market that it should have been all along.
Maybe it has something to do with Big Steve returning home to roost.
Anyway, given the success to date since the advent of OS/X, and the consistently right moves made since with the iPod, iTunes, and potentially the Mac Mini, its a no-brainer that the litigious in the world will spare no opportunity to haul them into court for whatever they can get for it.
All I can say is, go Apple, go Steve, keep up the good work, and don't leave us in the lurch this time.
Peace
ReallyTweakin
Since the death of CP/M, I've been a diehard PC user, and not always a happy one. The absence of an assembler and linker in the OS was a harbinger of dark times for those of us who were assembler programmers when windows finally rolled out in a (questionably) useable form.
Late in '94 I found the Internet, or maybe it found me. Within a month I had wiped windows from my box and replaced it with linux (slackware on a 0.98 kernel if you're interested).
As of one year and eight days ago I became the owner of a refurb dual proc 1.25GHz G4.
I can tell you that I am in love with this machine, and I can tell you that while the design of the hardware certainly plays into it, cosmetics are not my first requirement; it's all because of OS/X. This OS is what linux wants to grow up to be. And the spit and polish represented by Aqua/Cocoa/Carbon are at the core of the benefits of OS/X.
As a result of my experiences with OS/X I have made the switch from linux to FreeBSD on my server; and I have to say, as I work FreeBSD on an old wintel box and OS/X on the Mac, the differences are quite apparent; FreeBSD ala Apple and FreeBSD ala carte are very different beasts, the Mac being far simpler and easier both to use and to administer.
The reason I've gone through all this preamble is to qualify my next statement: until about the time of the advent of Panther, which I consider to be first release of OS/X refined enough for general use, Apple simply had it mostly wrong. The insistence on a price point that alone made them a nich market product, the insistence on hardware and operating system software that were not only proprietary but closed, is so backward that were it not for all the substance of it, it would be not unlike the emporor's new clothes.
Sometime recently though Big Steve drank the right cup of electric coolaid. The iPod is a device of sheer genius. Not in its design, its implementation or its pricepoint; these features had all been clearly defined by the market place well in advance of Apple's offering. No, the real power of the iPod for Apple is as a marketing device, where it has introduced literally millions of PC users who would never have considered buying an Apple product to the company, just in time to push the Mac Mini under their noses. This has the potential to be a one-two punch for the WinTel world that should have them all shaking in their boots.
If I haven't made myself clear, I'm really impressed with Apple these days, their products are solid, their support is solid, and they seem to have finally gotten the company on track to become the major force in the market that it should have been all along.
Maybe it has something to do with Big Steve returning home to roost.
Anyway, given the success to date since the advent of OS/X, and the consistently right moves made since with the iPod, iTunes, and potentially the Mac Mini, its a no-brainer that the litigious in the world will spare no opportunity to haul them into court for whatever they can get for it.
All I can say is, go Apple, go Steve, keep up the good work, and don't leave us in the lurch this time.
Peace
ReallyTweakin
