During a special press event at Apple's campus in Cupertino, the company refreshed its entire notebook line - the MacBook Pro, the Air, and the ordinary MacBook. In addition, the company also launched a new Cinema Display. The rumours on the 'net were more or less spot on, so there will be little news for those that keep up with that kind of stuff. Read on for a breakdown.
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Member since:2006-12-16
Vista has done badly solely because of misinformation and hate from the computer trade media, the vast amount of it completely unfounded. It's become fashionable to Vista bash (let's call it vbash) just for the fun of it.
Sure, DX hasn't been perfect, and in fact, opengl was a far better solution in most cases (and probably still is in all honesty). However, Microsoft provided an API for games developers. Many people got into computers because of games, and since Windows ran games, people bought PCs. And they bought them with Windows on it. Doom? Quake? All ran on PCs. Doom may have had a Apple varient (I honestly can't remember), but I doubt it.
And don't even talk to me about vendor lock-in, Apple has one of the worst histories of vendor lock in EVER. AAC and iTunes? OS X only running on Apple hardware? If Apple was that confident, let them run OS X on a normal PC. You'd see sales of OS X go up and up, but sales of Apple hardware go down dramatically, and we all know that Apple's hardware prices are severely over-inflated. Apple would never ever do that.
Atari, Commodore etc all died. Why? Because they did crappy jobs. Microsoft simply did a better job of it all, and to knock or bash them because of that is sheer idiocy. Again, I mention tall poppy syndrome.
My personal preference is for GNU/Linux, but sadly, it's a bitch to maintain, and it's a bitch to get software running on. I've used Linux probably more than most of the "newbs" on osnews.com who are trying to be l33t, so I feel that I'm well positioned to make valid criticisms of it. I've used Apple machines before (I have a PowerMac G4 1ghz machine at home) and even worked for Apple as tech support, so again, I think I have a reasonable knowledge of being able to comment about them.
Dave
Member since:2007-02-17
Sure, DX hasn't been perfect, and in fact, opengl was a far better solution in most cases (and probably still is in all honesty). However, Microsoft provided an API for games developers. Many people got into computers because of games, and since Windows ran games, people bought PCs. And they bought them with Windows on it. Doom? Quake? All ran on PCs. Doom may have had a Apple varient (I honestly can't remember), but I doubt it.
And don't even talk to me about vendor lock-in, Apple has one of the worst histories of vendor lock in EVER. AAC and iTunes? OS X only running on Apple hardware? If Apple was that confident, let them run OS X on a normal PC. You'd see sales of OS X go up and up, but sales of Apple hardware go down dramatically, and we all know that Apple's hardware prices are severely over-inflated. Apple would never ever do that.
Atari, Commodore etc all died. Why? Because they did crappy jobs. Microsoft simply did a better job of it all, and to knock or bash them because of that is sheer idiocy. Again, I mention tall poppy syndrome.
My personal preference is for GNU/Linux, but sadly, it's a bitch to maintain, and it's a bitch to get software running on. I've used Linux probably more than most of the "newbs" on osnews.com who are trying to be l33t, so I feel that I'm well positioned to make valid criticisms of it. I've used Apple machines before (I have a PowerMac G4 1ghz machine at home) and even worked for Apple as tech support, so again, I think I have a reasonable knowledge of being able to comment about them.
Dave
Again you are misconstruing facts. MS did not do a better job at it. In-fact they have consistently released mediocre products on the general public and eventually get it right after years of not giving a damn. Commodore, Atari and Amiga, all had superior products to MS, even in some cases to Apple, what these companies weren't were business savvy and lacked the business ethics(in other words none) that MS has. They have basically driven out competition with unsavory business practices and lock-in deals with OEM companies. These are not things I made up, they are proven and well documented.
Another thing you fail to understand is that Doom, and Quake were DOS games if I'm not mistaken and didn't need Windows at all and had very little to do with MS other than if the user used MS-DOS. Quake was ported to MacOS, so was Doom. There was a later version of Quake called WinQuake that did use DX to run but the original game was a DOS game. In-fact a lot of interesting rendering techniques that we used to see in gaming were abandoned due to limited functionality of DX, such as Voxel rendering, which was able to do far more advanced things back in the day than you see even now.
Member since:2005-07-07
Member since:
2007-02-17
Microsoft has never had "bash" shells etc, that's always been a UNIX/Linux/BSD thing. They probably never will really integrate/implement it either. It's their operating system, if you don't like the lack of bash, then don't use Microsoft's products. Stick to products that do offer it. Whilst it'd be nice to have the software support of Windows applications on a Linux box etc, it'll never happen for reasons that I've outlined many times before. Apple's OS X is a bit better these days, but only because of virtualisation. Take that away and there is a sharp drop in applications that run on OS X.
Are you trying to deny that the gaming industry took on the Microsoft platform, well and truly before things like the Xbox, Playstation etc. To this very day, many people still buy games designed for the Windows platform. That's the truth of it. Sure, another vendor might have done the same in the absence of Microsoft, but I doubt it. IBM had that ability, and completely cocked it up. Microsoft did a better job of it, and grew as a result and become the industry de fact standard (whether many people like that or not is irrelevant, it's what happened). They did a better job of it than others, and now we have the tall poppy syndrome knocking Microsoft down.
Don't get me wrong, there are many things that I dislike about Microsoft, but in the real world, they are where it's at. They have helped develop the software and hardware industries to where they are today, whether people like you like to admit it or not. Amiga had their chance and blew it. IBM had their chance and blew it. Apple had their chance and blew it. What did they do wrong, that Microsoft did right?
I stand by my comments on Apple fanatics - and many people that I know would agree with me. And many of those same people dislike Apple for it. And rightly so. Apple products are good, in some instances OK, but the rabid "oh why Apple is sooo superior" BS is damn right annoying. It isn't. Apple lovers TM: deal with it.
Vista works just fine for me. I love it, best operating system from Microsoft yet.
Dave
Wow. Are you really serious? You actually believe all the bullshit you just spewed about MS and the gaming industry? As far as I know gaming was doing just fine before MS came along and created vendor lock-in. Sure they make it extremely easy for developers to get into their tools, but that is because MS wants you to use their tools and all they really offer is software. Gaming was great on the Apple platform despite Job's indifference.
Gaming also isn't the end-all-be-all of computing and while popular and fun, PC gaming has been in decline due to several factors, which include bad DRM schemes and the crazy upgrade treadmill required to play certain games.
I also like how you seem to forget that MS didn't do it better until relatively recently, it took 8 versions of DX before it became usable. Also SGI(by extension opengl) was far more a key influence on today's hardware than MS. Games are sure a motivating factor but a lot of the foundation had already been laid years ago.
For you to spit that ignorance as fact on a tech forum where you will most likely be proven wrong is just plain stupidity on your part. Great, you love MS but you have to acknowledge that without Apple, MS would not be where they are today. Even without a crystal ball or special parallel universe seeing powers I can almost guarantee this.
Sure Apple users can be a pain and little overzealous, but they have a lot to be proud of. As a platform their OS and hardware are showing growth while MS has been stagnating, even with Vista. The company while admitedly has shown little growth in years, right now as a company they are basically standing still and that will eventually kill any tech company. Vista's failure has actually helped Apple and ay other OS maker as newer, younger users look for alternatives. Right now the most popular alternative is OSX.