The "Macs are too expensive" argument is one of the most tiresome and long-lived flamewars in internet history. Obviously, Apple makes a premium product and charges premium prices, and you can always find a computer from another vendor that seems to match or exceed specs that costs less. But if you look at Apple's Mac Pro line, and compare it not so much to other vendors, but to the past lineup of Mac Pros, you discover some very unpleasant truths that help explain why Apple is enjoying record earnings for their Mac line, but doing so to the detriment of some its most loyal and valuable customers.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-06-29
I'm with you on this one. At my budget, I had two choices for an OS X machine: A used Mac mini with limited expansion and non-upgradeable video, or a Leopard license for the infinitely upgradeable Hackintosh-friendly system I already owned. A Mac Pro would solve both my problems, but I'm not going to pay more for a computer than my car is worth.
So, I now use OS X on a system I built, and I'm on the fence about it. I would love to be on a true Mac, but Apple doesn't offer one for someone with my needs (inexpensive, fully expandable, reasonably powerful).
On the flipside, this computer actually performs better in Linux and Windows than OS X, especially video-wise, and I'd keep it with those OSes on it if I did have a "real" Mac.
Apple really is the Mercedes of the computer world: Sleek, powerful, beautiful and trendy, but way too expensive for the average consumer.
Member since:2005-07-23
I have a real mac, a Macbook Pro C2D 2.2 GHz, 4 GB 667 MHz DDR2, 8600m GT 128 MB.
But I also have this hack, with OS X 10.4.6, Athlon 64 2 GHz, 1.5 GB 333 MHz DDR, 6800 LE 128 MB.
I've came back to and used the hack since may 2009.
Enough said ...
Don't get a real mac, just a huge waste of money. If I had bought a PC back then for around 9000 SEK instead of a 20.000 SEK MBP then eventually I could had upgraded it and played SC II. Or afford a new machine.
Now I will most likely get a new machine for that game alone anyway but it will cost around 9000 SEK now to. And the MBP isn't that old, or well, wasn't in may atleast ...
The quality, system configurations and prices sucks arse though. So does Apple management (too little care of consumers and too much care about making big bucks), software development (as in the OS and their applications), DRM, vendor-lockin and usability of their products.
And if I could I would shoot each and everyone who will reply on this with "DON'T BUY A MAC IF YOU WANT TO PLAY STARCRAFT!", I didn't and I whouldn't. Though I paid extra money for it to get commercial applications and the possibility of games over Linux, BSD and Solaris. It's an issue with the machine, their configurations and prices, not with the fact it's a mac as such.
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance."According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.
Member since:
2007-09-06
My primary motiviation would be the legal access to osX on native hardware resulting in a minimum tripple-boot system (win/lin/osx) or maybe a fourth slice for BSD. Outside of running osX without the hassle of questionably legal hackintosh setups, the hardware remains more limited than what other vendors sell. Still though, the option to boot osX for those things not native on win64 or Lin64... not entirely un-tempting.
Ah.. who am I kidding. It remains a "great hardware, shame about the company it comes from" issue.. I've always had more issue with the corp policy than the resulting products.