If you say so....
As for your “run anything” I hope you are seriously joking here.
Lets take my kids music. Burn a CD to our apple? Fuggedabout, especially our older CD’s. They have to be connected to the internet, to sync up with the apple store for licensing and all that jazz. Share music without usage rights? Fuggetaboudit.
Games? Guess what, I have kids. Kids love games. They can’t get those games on apple. On the apple, they can get games that other kids make fun of, not the games they want. Oh, eventually they can, after several years, their Warcraft game became available on the Mac, but... it ran like crap. They refused to play it on there, so they play it on their souped up, home made (by a 12 year old) smoke your socks off PC. Which was built for around 800 bucks, plus the monitor. That same system on an Apple? maybe 5 grand.
Now, as for me, I do city bids, they MUST be in excel format. I could run them from the apple, and convert them, and lose data and/or formatting each time I do that (which I have done), but I find that to suck. I don’t like things that suck.
My load calc programs are all PC based. I have yet to find one for the mac. I guess I could buy another Mac to take on the road to run the PC programs I need for my job, but why? Why pay 3x more for something that I don’t need? Our Think Pads work great.
Also, my diagnostic programs, you know... the ones you plug into large electrical equipment to diagnose it.... PC based. Now, I guess I could rework the 20 million dollar systems that are already in place, at my cost, maybe that would cost me a few million, and make my clients really really upset, especially when they need that equipment going YESTERDAY. I know, I’ll tell them...... umm, that Heidelburg afterburner runs on PC software, but I have it on good knowledge that apple stuff is much better, so I’m going to have to shut it all down, and scrap it and start over, because I have a shiny fancy apple....” I’d be booted out the door so fast, my neck would break.
Even smaller building environmental control programs are all PC based. I couldn’t effectively tap into an office building or campus and run the software I need to run, in a timely fashion.
So, bought into fear uncertainty and doubt? I think not. I think you’ve bought something, and are very protective about your buying decision. Like I said, if it works for you, great. For the rest of us, its a PC based world, unless your world is listening to music, and working with screen savers, and even then, most kids would rather have a PC where they can grab their music off of a torrent, instead of having to be shoved into the itunes store.
But, again, to each his own. I like apple, because it turns me a profit, and their stock has done well for us. I dislike apple, because PC works better for me and my kids. My wife likes apple, because they look nice, they are easy to use, and they are dummy proof (she’s no dummy, but she’s naive when it comes to computers), and she likes to get her music with 1 click, all safe, secure, tidy.
We had an old Mac we used as a word processor back up for years. We junked it. Wife now has an iMac on the kitchen counter. For her, she loves it, but it has trouble on our home network (win 7 based), but to be fair, our XP has trouble on that network as well. Also, she loves her iphone. She loves it to DEATH. I would be a fool to tell her that she should get something else. Why would I? She likes it. End of story. I have a cheap motorola phone, that has been dropped 2 stories and works great. I can push to talk my crew, and it is unbreakable. I don’t need music. I don’t need dancing bears. I don’t need ringtones. I need a solid, rubber encased phone, with good walky talky reception, that goes through walls, and works several basements below ground. Our needs are very different.
There is a reason Baskin Robins has 31 flavors... And I’m always amazed that some folks think everyone MUST love the Apple flavor. I like pralines and cream thank you, keep your Apple.
Now, all that being said, the article was about how Apples propriety control was its biggest asset. That is fundamentally wrong, and I still stay with it. This is what put Apple on the butchers block to begin with.
The reason so many large corporations use PC is that they are not committed to one company, and it is easy to upgrade, change things around. Few companies are going to buy hundreds or thousands of computers in one year, that will be reliant on a single vendor for both hardware and software. It wouldn’t make financial sense, and it would lead to being held hostage by your vendor. Instead, it is easy to buy PC’s, and if something needs upgrading, IT can go to newegg or whatever, buy a graphics card for 30 bucks, and stick it in.
Also, apples licensing and usage rights to their OS made it impractical for others use the the OS as the foundation for all sorts of things such as robotics, building controls, electrical controls, etc. PC could be used, in any language, early ones like FORTRAN 1 and 2 are still being used for this, and they work with PC, any PC. No one gets a cut of the licensing. Apple doesn’t control it, nor does Microsoft. Its just a PC platform.
For these reasons, Apple will never get big in the computer market. Big in terms of % of users. They may dominate the PDA market, and someday they may dominate the market of the casual user, but as long as they control their OS with an iron fist, and as long as their OS does not take well to add-ons from other vendors, they will never end up in the mainstream of engineering and controls.
Even when it comes to PDA’s, I keep hearing how already the DROID has capitalized on apples weakness of proprietary content, and many speculate that apple will be losing shares of the market at a very rapid pace (thus the deal with Verizon was done), in the next 2 years. Only time will tell. If apple loses its PDA share of the market, and they only have what? maybe 3% of the PC market, and already most analysts say their stock is a bubble (of which we personally own a good amount), the propriety attitude could not by any stretch of the imagination be considered a good thing. Well, not in my opinion, but then again, I’ve been wrong before, just ask my wife.
Good luck with your Apple FRiend, I hope it serves you well. I may someday be using Apples for our business, but not until the Apple OS becomes an industry standard for my line of work. My kids may move on to Apples when they get to college, but for now, they play games with their friends on PC. My wife has already been converted. So that’s where I stand on the issue, I had no intent on offending you, or any other apple user, and I’m not sure why so many apple users are offended that not everyone thinks Apple is the greatest thing in the world since sliced bread.
Sorry for the reply, was waiting for a phone call and just kept typing away :)
There is not a single point in that paragraph that is correct.
iTunes uses the Gracenote database to identify the disc so it can fill in the album and track information; you can rip discs without an Internet connection, but you'll have to type in that information yourself. The "apple store" (by which I assume you mean the iTunes store) has nothing to do with ripping from disc.
iTunes can rip to AAC or MP3. The resulting files can be copied, burned, swapped, shared on Limewire, anything you can do with tracks on a PC. Songs purchased from the iTunes store have been free of DRM for a year and a half. You can download music from Amazon, Walmart, or Limewire, import them into iTunes and load them onto an iPod.
Games? Guess what, I have kids. Kids love games. They can’t get those games on apple. On the apple, they can get games that other kids make fun of, not the games they want. Oh, eventually they can, after several years, their Warcraft game became available on the Mac, but... it ran like crap.
I conceded that Windows has the edge in game titles. Steam for Mac has been a big step forward, but if your primary purpose is playing games, you'd be happier with a PC. Of course, you'd probably be happier still with an XBox.
They refused to play it on there, so they play it on their souped up, home made (by a 12 year old) smoke your socks off PC. Which was built for around 800 bucks, plus the monitor. That same system on an Apple? maybe 5 grand.
The $5000 Mac Pro comes with two six-core Westmere processors and an ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1GB of video memory. Your kid did not build an equivalent computer for $800 unless he stole the parts.
Now, as for me, I do city bids, they MUST be in excel format. I could run them from the apple, and convert them, and lose data and/or formatting each time I do that (which I have done), but I find that to suck. I don’t like things that suck.
Or you could use Excel on the Mac. You did know Microsoft released Excel for the Mac before it did for Windows, right? Same file format. No conversion required. Microsoft dropped Visual Basic scripting from one version of Office for Mac for reasons that are unclear to me, but it's back in the current version.
You list several niche needs that you have. I don't know enough about embedded systems to know if there are Mac clients for that, and don't have enough information to look, even if I were inclined to spend the time. So I'll assume you have to use Windows for work. I don't envy that.
So, bought into fear uncertainty and doubt? I think not. I think you’ve bought something, and are very protective about your buying decision. Like I said, if it works for you, great. For the rest of us, its a PC based world, unless your world is listening to music, and working with screen savers, and even then, most kids would rather have a PC where they can grab their music off of a torrent, instead of having to be shoved into the itunes store.
You've bought into FUD, and you're repeating it here again. BitTorrent is not a Windows-only technology. MP3 is not a Windows-only technology. I have about 40GB of music on my Mac, and fewer than a dozen of those albums were purchased from the iTunes store.
My Mac is useful far beyond "listening to music and working with screen savers." As are the millions being used by bankers, brain surgeons, rocket scientists, engineers, and other folk doing real work. Your dismissive attitude is typical of Windows users who mistake things they don't know for things the Mac can't do.
There is a reason Baskin Robins has 31 flavors... And I’m always amazed that some folks think everyone MUST love the Apple flavor. I like pralines and cream thank you, keep your Apple.
I do not believe that everyone must love the Mac. I like it a lot better, and believe it's a better solution for what the vast majority of people use computers for. You finally, in this post, hit on some niche uses that the Mac might not meet -- after spinning off a litany of misinformed "limitations" that simply don't exist.
Also, apples licensing and usage rights to their OS made it impractical for others use the the OS as the foundation for all sorts of things such as robotics, building controls, electrical controls, etc.
Apple is not an embedded systems vendor. Windows isn't a great solution for that, either. That said, the core of Mac OS and iOS, called Darwin, is an open-source BSD implementation.
For these reasons, Apple will never get big in the computer market. Big in terms of % of users. They may dominate the PDA market, and someday they may dominate the market of the casual user, but as long as they control their OS with an iron fist, and as long as their OS does not take well to add-ons from other vendors, they will never end up in the mainstream of engineering and controls.
"The mainstream of engineering and controls" is an oxymoron. Apple builds desktop and portable workstations; they won't be big in embedded controls for the same reasons Ford isn't a big player in aviation.
The notion that MacOS "does not take well to add-ons from other vendors" is more FUD. Any code developed for other flavors of Unix is a quick port to Darwin, and Linux code isn't much more difficult.
I had no intent on offending you, or any other apple user, and I’m not sure why so many apple users are offended that not everyone thinks Apple is the greatest thing in the world since sliced bread.
I have no problem with people who don't, for whatever reason, like Macs. Well, no bigger problem than the one I have with people who don't like Miles Davis. De gustibus non est disputandum. The only reason I waded into this is that your stated reasons for disliking Macs were misinformed. A lot of passionate Windows advocates have a similar view of the Mac, and it's the faulty premises that lead to erroneous conclusions; I wouldn't want a Mac that's like the one you've been describing.