“$100 per year is too much for many Mac users to hold on to their mac.com email addresses, and Apple sysadmins have been furiously busy deleting the complaints that flooded Apple’s own technical forums. Users are also unhappy that the upgrade to 10.2 costs a full $129, with no discount for existing Mac OS X users.” Read the report at TheRegister. Update: And now Apple masked the thread linked from above and TheRegister’s article, and it is no longer available for viewing. This is one of the many such threads Apple censored since yesterday in their discussion board. So much for “feedback from the userbase.”
Mac Users Outraged at iTools, Upgrade Taxes
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
>>I have seen the “benchmarks”. I also have personal experience. And I have, as an example, compared render times with people using the same scene as I under various programs that have both Mac and PC versions. And the X86 CPU’s are almost always faster. Even most Mac fanatics will admit that. They use the OS and pretty hardware as their reason for sticking with Macs. They are all complaining about how Macs are falling far behind PC’s in processing power. Where have “you” been hiding that you are one of the last to actually still believe that Mac processing power compares favorably?<<
I also compare render times with PCs vs. Macs (helk pretty much on a daily basis) I work around both on a daily basis, the fact is that PPC is faster per clock cycle than x86! The complaint from Mac users lately is that Motorola got stuck at the 500 MHz ceiling 2 years ago and that knocked the PowerPC behind the Pentium in the clock speed race, but that doesn’t equate to processing power, other factors have to be taken into account. I have owned both platforms as well and can see the technical merits of both. Intel is about to get a rude awakening once they transition the consumer desktop over to 64 bit CPUs and the x86 gets dropped for good, of course this is where AMD will take advantage while Intel tries to figure out what went wrong!
Time will only tell 🙂
“the fact is that PPC is faster per clock cycle than x86!”
That may be the case in some benchmarks. But not by much. And there is no way a G4 933 can keep up with an AMD 2100+ or a P4 at over 2Ghz. No chance. Apple knows this. And most Mac users know this. I don’t suggest that means that Mac’s are garbage. It just means that PC’s lead in raw horsepower.
AMD vs. Intel is another story. I really don’t care who wins. As long as I have a fast, stable processor/motherboard combo to run my OS of choice so I can run the apps I want to run.
Satori.
>>That may be the case in some benchmarks. But not by much. And there is no way a G4 933 can keep up with an AMD 2100+ or a P4 at over 2Ghz. No chance.<<
Nice try, I just had a friend build a PC box with an AMD 2100+ running Red Hat Linux (KDE 3) and it was not impressive in speed to say the least, though I was impressed with KDE 3 and the ‘High Performance Liquid’ Theme he had selected!
I do have currently an Linux workstation to my immediate right running a Dual AMD Athlon 1.6 GHz that I like, but that is a lot of muscle I am talking here. But now lets take the Compaq DeskPros sitting behind me running Pentium IIs/IIIs (400 MHz) with Win2000 installed and they pale in comparison to my G3 iMac (400 MHz) at home running Mac OS X! PPC has been faster than x86 since day one, though the x86 has been the performance juggernaut for the last 9 months (and I’ll admit that, but…)! Memory and Bus speed has been Intel’s advantage point and the Xserve just proved this theory:
http://www.xinet.com/benchmarks/benchmarks.2002/index.html
enjoy 🙂
The claim that Apple puts forth about their “supercomputer” performance makes them a laughing stock in the computer industry. It is an outright lie, a complete fabrication based on some theoretical maximum Altivec performance that has never been seen in any real shipping application.
Certainly ignorant graphics artists, musicians, and others not working in computers may be impressed, but Apple has no legitimate data showing leading performance for G4.
Just so the mindless mac-drones don’t post some lame response, let me acknowlegde up front that there there are a few couple where apps optimized for G4 are speedy because of of heavy Altivec optimization:
Photoshop filters (Adobe a dedicated engineer who does all the Altivec stuff)
RC5 key cracking
Wow. Out of all the 2,500 OS X applications, you have one useful application that can match a much cheaper PC in performance. That’s pretty weak for a “supercomputer”.
Apple doesn’t even participate in the industry standard SPEC benchmarks because the G4 is so slow and it would show Apple’s performance claims to be completely false.
http://www.spec.org/
As every other company is on SPEC, why not Apple? Why isn’t their “supercomputer” there?
It has been shown that Apple is slow even loading and scrolling web pages. It is slow in everything you do compared to a modern PC of comparable price.
Because Apple’s whole architecture, from CPU to memory bus has poor performance compared to every other computer architecture out there, this is why Jobs is open to upgrading the CPU. Motorola simply is not in any way shape or form a high performance CPU vendor. That’s not their business.
If Apple were to deliver on pure, raw processing performance and had all their cool software, it would be winning proposition. Jobs knows this and I’m sure tries to get the most out of PPC, but in the end, knows unless the G5 really is a supercomputer, that the PPC line is a dead end.
#m
Certainly ignorant graphics artists, musicians, and others not working in computers may be impressed, but Apple has no legitimate data showing leading performance for G4.
Of course not, the fact that a certain genetics firm uses Macs because they are twice as fast as PC’s with their app is full of lies. And DVD encoding on a Mac isn’t much faster (and easier) no matter what the National Software Testing Labs says.
Adobe [has] a dedicated engineer who does all the Altivec stuff
And they also have a dedicated engineer for SSE. So why mention the one and not the other?
Wow. Out of all the 2,500 OS X applications, you have one useful application that can match a much cheaper PC in performance. That’s pretty weak for a “supercomputer”.
What about Final Cut Pro, iMovie, DVD Studio Pro, iDVD, DVD Player, After Effects, Emagic Logic Pro Tools, Cubase, Reason, Soundjam, iTunes, EditDV, Swift 3D, Strata Studio, Combustion, Media Cleaner Pro, Virtual PC, Canvas, Director, Kai’s Power Tools, Bryce, Qdesign, Sonic’s DVD apps, Quake 3, BLAST and OS X itself*? Hardly just one. Of course, why do I even bother responding to a troll?
*I could go on, but I don’t want to get RSI, so I won’t.
Apple doesn’t even participate in the industry standard SPEC benchmarks because the G4 is so slow and it would show Apple’s performance claims to be completely false.
That could be the reason. Although it might also be the fact that SPEC is aimed for scientific applications, not for rendering, games and business applications (of course, you’d often use Altivec for scientific applications anyway, so SPEC sucks for that as well). The excellent arstechnica has this to say:
“In light of the above observations, you can see that while the SPEC benchmarks are thorough and informative, aside from the occasional usenet platform flame-fest, they’re of limited use to the PC hardware enthusiast community.”
http://www.arstechnica.com/cpu/2q99/benchmarking-4.html
Motorola simply is not in any way shape or form a high performance CPU vendor. That’s not their business.
That’s true. Motorola is in the business of going out of business. I bet on IBM. IMO there is a lot of life left in the PPC. It’s an excellent architecture. We just need a manufacturer to get the most out of it.
If Apple were to deliver on pure, raw processing performance and had all their cool software, it would be winning proposition.
A decent part of the population cares more about usability and percieved performance than pure, raw processing performance. Your simplification favors the stories of doom and gloom that are simply untrue. Apple can survive quite a while with a processor that isn’t the fastest on the market.
From http://www.tech-report.com this evening —
One “side benefit” of the Radeon 9700’s floating-point pixel shaders is that Photoshop-style image processing filters can be applied to any image in real time—3D graphics, a desktop GUI, or a motion video stream. ATI showed off an edge detection filter and a guassian blur applied to live video during their press conference this week, and I believe custom Photoshop plug-ins may be in the works. (I guess that’s the end of Apple’s “six Photoshop filters” cross-platform benchmarking methodology.)
This new capability might do something billions of dollars of Intel advertising couldn’t do: turn home video editing into a compelling “killer app” that sells new PCs. Thing is, Intel doesn’t make the semiconductor that makes these things possible. Doh!
Anyhow, we’re looking at minor revolutions in image processing and video editing, as well as in 3D graphics. I wouldn’t be surprised to see new, non-3D uses for these pixel processing capabilities emerge in the next few years, too. Discuss.
With the powerful floating-point GPU’s from ATI (and soon NVidia’s NV30), the PC has just vaulted to an even higher performance level. Very soon, Photoshop and other graphics processing apps will run lightning fast on the PC, much faster Altivec as the latest GPUs are incredibly faster than Altivec.
And since Apple uses the same graphics cards as the PC but ships them 6 to 18 months later than the PC, Apple will be permanently behind in multimedia.
So now the switch to AMD64, Intel32, or Intel64 makes even more sense.
Provided personal computers aren’t saddled with neo-totalitarian populace control mechanisms, we may be at the leading edge of some incredible developments for personal computers.
#m
“Certainly ignorant graphics artists, musicians, and others not working in computers may be impressed, ”
Gotta love this quote, says everything about M (with a #)’s bias.
“Just so the mindless mac-drones don’t post some lame response”
fsck.
I’ll ask you this straight up.
What is your obsessive fetish with putting down creatives -not in that one quote but throughout this forum??
“Nice try, I just had a friend build a PC box with an AMD 2100+ running Red Hat Linux (KDE 3) and it was not impressive in speed to say the least, though I was impressed with KDE 3 and the ‘High Performance Liquid’ Theme he had selected!”
So, now you are blaming the AMD cpu instead of the bloated OS (yes Redhat is bloated) and a bloated Window Manager (KDE is ver bloated) for the lacklustre performance? Did you bother to “tune” the OS at all?
“I do have currently an Linux workstation to my immediate right running a Dual AMD Athlon 1.6 GHz that I like, but that is a lot of muscle I am talking here. But now lets take the Compaq DeskPros sitting behind me running Pentium IIs/IIIs (400 MHz) with Win2000 installed and they pale in comparison to my G3 iMac (400 MHz) at home running Mac OS X! PPC has been faster than x86 since day one, though the x86 has been the performance juggernaut for the last 9 months (and I’ll admit that, but…)! Memory and Bus speed has been Intel’s advantage point and the Xserve just proved this theory”
Well, I guess it all depends on what you do with your systems. But, with the exception a very few benchmarks like those that use Photoshop filters optimized for the Mac, the Mac loses in pure performance. You keep on telling me it’s not true. But the whole Mac community has pretty well come to terms with it and will admit it quite easily (even Jobs knows it’s true). I guess you are one of the last holdouts. Or, maybe it’s simply a matter of the type of work you do or the programs you run on each platform. And saying a P2 or P3 400 is slower then a G3 400 really has nothing to do with how a G4 933 compares to an AMD 2100+ or P4 2Ghz+ does it? So, your experience means about “this” much. Nadda.
Anyhow. I won’t argue the point anymore. You believe what you want and I will believe what I want.
I don’t hate Macs. I hate the price. If I was loaded would I buy one? Sure. I like OS X. And I would be willing to pay a premium to use it if I could afford throw around money. I might buy an SGI too if I was in that position. I’m not.
Satori.
“Certainly ignorant graphics artists, musicians, and others not working in computers may be impressed.”
If someone is ignorant about what a supercomputer is or isn’t then I’d really hope they don’t get offended. There is plenty of material on the web, just learn a bit and don’t be so sensitive in the future.
And please get real. I’ve worked with quite a few artists, musicians, writers, etc. It’s a rare one that knows much about computers, much less supercomputers.
“Just so the mindless mac-drones don’t post some lame response”
The ignorant Mac owners who go on and on about Altivec and the “megahertz myth” clearly do not have any depth of knowledge about computer performance. I’d rather acknowledge up front there are some places were hand-tuned Altivec code is really fast.
http://www.top500.org
While IBM’s vast arrays of Power RISC chips are on the list, no PowerPC machine, no Apple machine is on the list. Considering there are still companies from 1997 on the current 2002, list, it is obvious that the Mac “supercomputer” is not even competitive with real supercomputers from five years ago.
If Apple were to back off the “reality distortion field” a bit, their integrity would go up and they’d sell more computers. What’s my expectation for scrolling a web page on my “supercomputer”? Certainly it should be faster than a PC thats costs half of what I just spent on my “supercomputer”.
What is your obsessive fetish with putting down creatives -not in that one quote but throughout this forum??
I don’t put down creatives at all; some of my favorite people in my life are musicians, writers, painters, sculptors, etc.
For whatever reasons, those “creative” people who treat their Macs like pets or friends, well, some of them get emotional whenever something less-than-glowingly-positive is said about their Mac. Maybe they realize if they didn’t own a Mac their status in their community would drop? Who would they be without their Mac?
I’m not going to worry about the feelings of some people who are emotionally attached to their computer. They need therapy or other help if they are getting hurt over what someone says on a news forum.
In anything is obsessive, it is Apple’s false advertising. Apple’s constant overstatment and hyperbole is certainly the result of poor self-esteem.
#m
You 2 really take the cake…
The only fools here would be the ones who buy into Intel propaganda marketing and have not really worked inside the computer industry to know what they (or you) talking about!
If anybody is the laughing stock of the industry, it would be most of the PC side of the industry, which is not taken very seriously beyond office productivity. I have never in all my years of working in this industry to see PCs do more than just the usual list;
1-email
2-web browsing
3-word processing
4-spreadsheets
5-other mindless simple tasks
PCs have not proven themselves in the more important missions critical areas, an area that I work in and have only seen the likes of Sun (including DEC from the past) fulfill the void! Commodity hardware (which is what PCs are) is not reliable compared to more integrated solutions like Sun, IBM, SGI and Apple have to offer… Microsoft still hasn’t figured this out and its offerings falls short of the expectations the UNIX world takes for granted!
You PC drones obviously are blinded by hearsay and cannot talk from much experience as your posts betray your bias immature lack of knowledge!!!
Michael posts…
>>It has been shown that Apple is slow even loading and scrolling web pages. It is slow in everything you do compared to a modern PC of comparable price.<<
Actually that is hearsay, and has been summed up as more myth than reality! I work with both systems and don’t any difference!
>>And since Apple uses the same graphics cards as the PC but ships them 6 to 18 months later than the PC, Apple will be permanently behind in multimedia.<<
Check your history again! And as long as Microsoft can’t deliver true multimedia solutions within its product, Apple will continue to be #1 in that arena!
>>While IBM’s vast arrays of Power RISC chips are on the list, no PowerPC machine, no Apple machine is on the list. Considering there are still companies from 1997 on the current 2002, list, it is obvious that the Mac “supercomputer” is not even competitive with real supercomputers from five years ago.<<
I guess you forgot another very respected benchmark that Apple’s G4 has been eating up… ‘RC5’ and Intel doesn’t even come close, the Alpha was right behind the G4 on the RC5 benchmarks the last I checked, and once the memory and bus speed get revamped it’s going to be more horror for Intel!
Satori…
>>So, now you are blaming the AMD cpu instead of the bloated OS (yes Redhat is bloated) and a bloated Window Manager (KDE is ver bloated) for the lacklustre performance? Did you bother to “tune” the OS at all?<<
So it’s Linux’s fault for poor performance, though that could be the case, for a CPU that is fast as AMD’s Athlon 2100+ (and I like AMD myself), I expect super duper performance that you PC drones preach to the rest of the world as so great, but that isn’t what I saw. Furthermore tuning an OS to run faster is a poor excuse, Windows folks preach the same thing, helk I can install Solaris, BeOS (helk even Mac OS) without tweaking it to performance to my expectations… you need to come up with a better story than that one!!
>>Well, I guess it all depends on what you do with your systems. But, with the exception a very few benchmarks like those that use Photoshop filters optimized for the Mac, the Mac loses in pure performance. You keep on telling me it’s not true. But the whole Mac community has pretty well come to terms with it and will admit it quite easily (even Jobs knows it’s true).<<
Yeah another conspiracy theory that the PC zealots conjure up (probably while dreaming or praising Bill Gates in some ritual). I mean how many tall tales are you going to spread to satisfy your blurred fantasies? And you obviously have not listened to the Mac community very well, the last thing they want in their Macs is anything x86, why?… because it’s old tech that’s subpar to the PowerPC design which still scaling as IBM has proven with the POWER4 CPU, which has beaten Intel in past benchmarks! Get a real glimpse of what the Mac community wants before spreading bad FUD!
>>And saying a P2 or P3 400 is slower then a G3 400 really has nothing to do with how a G4 933 compares to an AMD 2100+ or P4 2Ghz+ does it? So, your experience means about “this” much. Nadda.<<
Hey you compared your 2 machines that you (I guess) have tested against each other, and I compared my 2 machines that I tested against each other. Your claim is that PCs are faster than Macs PERIOD, so I challenged that theory and said it was not the case, especially when PPC is faster than x86 per clock cycle, which has been proven time and time again!
PC zealots will never learn, the only listen to marketing propaganda by the likes of Intel rather than actually do a little research, work with the hardware professionally and/or learn by experience from the industry! I have went down that road as well and was also naive to the same mindless boondoggle that you spread here, then after working in the industry for the last decade and seeing what is real and what is bull$h!t I can just take your useless FUD and have a good laugh and keep with the reality side of things!
have a good day 🙂
“They need therapy or other help if they are getting hurt over what someone says on a news forum.
”
Man, no one is getting hurt, it’s YOUR constant, repetative use of all the known put downs of mac users that gets real old and I call you on it (and I also wonder why you have this grudge).
And you constantly infer mac users have no clue.
I could constantly reference about PC users I know who don’t have a clue.It seems in your world only mac users are ignorant.
You have demonstrated that not only do you dislike the platform, the company, but also the people who use it.
“have a good day :-)”
Already am. I’m having a great time watching you twist and turn to make things look the way you want. You claim to be unbiased and experienced in Mac, PC, Sun and so on. But anyone reading your post and comments like:
“I have never in all my years of working in this industry to see PCs do more than just the usual list;
1-email
2-web browsing
3-word processing
4-spreadsheets
5-other mindless simple tasks”
can see what a poser you are. If you have never seen more than the above you haven’t been looking too hard. I use my PC for serious work far beyond what you mention above on a daily basis. So I, for one, know you are full of shit.
Satori.
“I use my PC for serious work far beyond what you mention above on a daily basis. So I, for one, know you are full of shit.”
And people characterize mac users as sensitive wimps.
>>Already am. I’m having a great time watching you twist and turn to make things look the way you want. You claim to be unbiased and experienced in Mac, PC, Sun and so on. But anyone reading your post and comments like:
“I have never in all my years of working in this industry to see PCs do more than just the usual list;
1-email
2-web browsing
3-word processing
4-spreadsheets
5-other mindless simple tasks”<<
Truth hurts doesn’t it?!
>>can see what a poser you are. If you have never seen more than the above you haven’t been looking too hard. I use my PC for serious work far beyond what you mention above on a daily basis. So I, for one, know you are full of shit.<<
Oh, so I am a poser?… sounds like something a pimple faced teenager would say, ha ha 🙂 I never said that you don’t use your PC for serious work, but unfortunately in the industry I work in, PCs are not taken seriously other than what’s mentioned above… it has nothing to do with what a PC can do! You people just think the PC is the cure all solution and can perform miracles, well guess what, you’re far from the truth!
I get serious work done on my Macs (helk even a PC a times). I am typing this post on my workhorse TiBook G4 that I use here at work, which has improved my productivity greatly and no more fighting with Windows verses Solaris!
You have a bias view which blurs your own thought process of truth verses myth! I was once that naive PC user (like you) that learned that there were better solutions out there and I am reaping all the benefits of the knowledge I continue to develop on a daily basis!
“Poser!”
Is that the best you can do?!
It is true. I just learned it was true. Wow.
All the world’s stupidest computer users end up on Mac.
Face it, Apple is the world headquarters for remedial computing.
From the Apple website, this is what people who want Macs are interested in:
“Can I run Microsoft Office?”
“How will I get and send email?”
“How do I chat with friends?”
“Can I run my applications?”
“Can I run a Mac on a PC network?”
“How do I get online with my ISP?”
“Can I use a two-button mouse?”
“Can I use my printer?”
“Can I use my digital camera?”
It makes me happy to see that even a dumb PC user is not so stupid as to want to use a mono-button mouse.
This is the target market for Macintosh. Those people who couldn’t figure out how to use a PC. Now, let’s look at things from there. Heck, even the dumb PC users think a
Mac is an incapable and impotent platform. They don’t even think that it prints, or emails, or can connect to the Internet. Maybe given the hospital-like white coloring of most Macs, PC users think they are highly specialized computers for doctors and nurses.
Apple’s “Switch” ads don’t even play on a Windows machine without downloading Apple’s lame media player. Based on the above questions, they probably lose 99% of their user base of idiots because the idiot doesn’t know how to install Quicktime. At least Apple didn’t make it so you need the pay version of Quicktime like they do many of the movie trailers.
It’s almost like Apple is doing Windows some sort of public service, collecting all the dumb users and bringing them together on the Macintosh Remedial Computing Platform.
Then Apple gives them remedial education:
1 Ghz better than 2.53 Ghz -> “Cooks food more evenly”
PC133 faster than PC2100 -> “Don’t want jumpy apps.”
$3000 cheaper than $1500 -> “Nice white paint is big bucks.”
Why is it “PowerPC” -> “Because IBM didn’t like FlowerPC”
There’s no slots -> “They put out deadly radiation”.
It’s slow -> “Run RC5 or secret life-science software”
It ate my CD -> “Throw your CD in the trash. If it loves you…”
Okay, yeah, it’s me that’s out to prove to the world all these things about Mac users. Nah. I think Apple handled that well enough.
I think it’s time for Apple to give up on the tired old Mac users that don’t want the Mac to be cheaper, faster, more expandable, have better games, and more applications.
#m
“Truth hurts doesn’t it?!”
I don’t know. You tell me.
“Oh, so I am a poser?… sounds like something a pimple faced teenager would say, ha ha 🙂 I never said that you don’t use your PC for serious work, but unfortunately in the industry I work in, PCs are not taken seriously other than what’s mentioned above… it has nothing to do with what a PC can do! You people just think the PC is the cure all solution and can perform miracles, well guess what, you’re far from the truth!”
Well, this pimple faced 33 year old thinks you’re a poser. So, what “mightier than the rest of us” industry are you in? I don’t think the PC is the cure all. You were trashing PC’s saying they weren’t taken seriously and are only used for such and such “mindless simple tasks”. Maybe in “your” industry that may be the case. In “my” industry it is not. There are millions, many more millions than on any other platform, of people doing serious work with their Windows machines every day. Putting down Windows and PC based on “your” industry is ridiculous.
“I get serious work done on my Macs (helk even a PC a times). I am typing this post on my workhorse TiBook G4 that I use here at work, which has improved my productivity greatly and no more fighting with Windows verses Solaris!”
I thought PC’s were for “mindless simple tasks” though? How on earth do you ever manage to get any real work done on one?
“You have a bias view which blurs your own thought process of truth verses myth! I was once that naive PC user (like you) that learned that there were better solutions out there and I am reaping all the benefits of the knowledge I continue to develop on a daily basis!”
I didn’t say PC’s were “the” solution. I am only taking issue with your claim that they are basically only good for “mindless simple tasks”. You are the one who is overblowing things and underrating the PC not the other way around.
“”Poser!”
Is that the best you can do?!”
It’s the best that I “have” to do. You are the contradicting yourself left and right.
Satori.
Anyhow. I’ll leave you to be now. This is getting real boring and I have some “mindless simple taks” to complete. You know, typical home user type stuff like rendering some print resolution images and then compositing multiple 100M+ layers and so on. You know, pedestrian stuff.
Satori.
>>Well, this pimple faced 33 year old thinks you’re a poser. So, what “mightier than the rest of us” industry are you in? I don’t think the PC is the cure all. You were trashing PC’s saying they weren’t taken seriously and are only used for such and such “mindless simple tasks”. Maybe in “your” industry that may be the case. In “my” industry it is not. There are millions, many more millions than on any other platform, of people doing serious work with their Windows machines every day. Putting down Windows and PC based on “your” industry is ridiculous.<<
Well if I’m a poser, then what am I posing? Well since you asked what industry I am in, that would be the ‘space industry’, and you obviously think that PCs are the greatest thing since sliced bread the way you praise them! And as I was supposedly trashing PCs, I can say that you were definitely trashing Macs and I challenged the notion!
Well anyways, good luck on your “mindless simple tasks” and I’ll get back to my usual riff raff!
Later 🙂
LOL!
you’re getting worse, dude.
Just tell me which one you liked the best —
1 Ghz better than 2.53 Ghz -> “Cooks food more evenly”
PC133 faster than PC2100 -> “Don’t want jumpy apps.”
$3000 cheaper than $1500 -> “Nice white paint is big bucks.”
Why is it “PowerPC” -> “Because IBM didn’t like FlowerPC”
There’s no slots -> “They put out deadly radiation”.
It’s slow -> “Run RC5 or secret life-science software”
It ate my CD -> “Throw your CD in the trash. If it loves you…”
Ya know, if they weren’t so expensive, I’d buy one. Maybe if they were expensive and really really fast, I’d buy one. But slow and expensive? Wrong quadrant.
#m
who cares what you’ll buy?
And I don’t believe for a sec you would have anything to do with a mac.
Talk about passive-aggresive : )
>>Apple’s “Switch” ads don’t even play on a Windows machine without downloading Apple’s lame media player.<<
That would be Windows Media Player… which is the worst in the industry as anybody would tell you!
Dude, you are 100% in line with most other tech people who think that broken, defective and poorly tested software is just fine as a commercial product. Your comments about me being a cheepskate… get real. Before I bought OS X 10.0, how in the hell was I to know how pathetically backwards and broken the OS would be, even compared to OS 9? Yes, compared to OS 9. OS X fails at displaying file system changes on the desktop in a huge way (where the hell is the file I downloaded? Oh, there it is now… 20 seconds later, that’s funny – OS 9 showed changes almost instantly and file name changes didn’t have broken redraws). In OS X, USB floppy performance is zero with FAT disks (this works just fine in OS9 and earlier) and crash-prone with HFS, HFS+ or FAT. Wanna crash that most advanced, sexy candy coated barely multi-tasking OS? Copy a 54MB file to an LS-120, wait half way through the copy and start holding down the mouse on a Finder control. You do it long enough and the whole system pukes. How’s that multitasking if I can stop data processing with a freakin mouse click?? Oh, I was supposed to expect this when I bought it, though.. right? Where on the package did it say “Fails at most tasks when holding down the mouse button on controls like scroll bars!” ??
Tell me, Mr. Toughguy, how was I to know that Apple’s “world’s most advanced operating system” was a broken piece of beta software/marketing BS in a retail package? I should have assumed, really, because I’ve been with the computer industry for about two decades. Long enough to know that 98% of software is only ever beta quality and often less. I should have assumed it would be crap. I should have paid hours of attention to the slightest news about Apple’s progress so that I could see that OS X was pushed out the door unfinished.
But no, I’m a cheepskate because I want the OS they claimed I was buying. Grow up.
I’m a cheepskate… how lame. You just keep pretending that this software business is just fine… keep wasting your money on crap that doesn’t work… keep your eyes closed and your expectations below the horizon… You are so much better than me.
>>Apple’s “Switch” ads don’t even play on a Windows machine without downloading Apple’s lame media player.<<
>That would be Windows Media Player… which is the worst >in the industry as anybody would tell you!
http://www.apple.com/switch/ads/
Uh, CattBeMack… d00d… you won’t believe this… Apple used some strange codec or plug-in or something like that…. let me see… I think it’s called QuickTime. It sounds like what you get when the judge lets you off easy.
Wow… it looks like metal or something. That’s cool. Wait… now that it is trying to run… I can see that it really bites on Windows. The graphics are jumpy on my fast PC. It must be used to a much slower processor. Hmmmm. There’s some fine print…. “this software handrolled for Mac”.
#m
>>Uh, CattBeMack… d00d… you won’t believe this… Apple used some strange codec or plug-in or something like that…. let me see… I think it’s called QuickTime. It sounds like what you get when the judge lets you off easy.
Wow… it looks like metal or something. That’s cool. Wait… now that it is trying to run… I can see that it really bites on Windows. The graphics are jumpy on my fast PC. It must be used to a much slower processor. Hmmmm. There’s some fine print…. “this software handrolled for Mac”.<<
When you said a lame Media Player, ‘Windows Media PLayer’ was the first thing that came to mind! Quicktime happens to have the best Media technology out there right now, though Microsoft did steal some of the Quicktime technology, which Apple had them pay for in the end (can you say Alliance 1997). Now of course I am not going to say that you’re full of bull if you claim Quicktime is not so good on Windows, I haven’t used Quicktime on Windows in awhile, but I can say that Windows Media PLayer sucks a$$ on Mac OS while being pretty decent on Windows, but I still prefer Real Player over WMP when it comes to Windows!
Dude, you are 100% in line with most other tech people who think that broken, defective and poorly tested software is just fine as a commercial product.
No, I believe that people shouldn’t buy crappy software. They do however and then blame the manufacturer. What about punishing that company by just not buying their products? No wait, instead they just complain and whine and make other people’s life miserable. You know what, just pirate the damn software and shut the f*** up. Thank you.
Before I bought OS X 10.0, how in the hell was I to know how pathetically backwards and broken the OS would be, even compared to OS 9?
– Read reviews.
– Ask people who bought it.
– Try it out by dl’ing it (pay if you like it, delete if you don’t).
Don’t you do research before you buy expensive products? If you don’t, it’s your own fault if you buy a lemon. It’s fair to expect Apple to fix bugs, but an upgrade with major new features is not what you paid for. You paid for the features promised for OS X 10.0. Demanding to get 10.2 for free or a very low price, where a good part of the bugs in 10.0 have been fixed in 10.1.5, is simply unfair.
I should have assumed it would be crap.
No, you should have been skeptical. Especially considering the fact that the Beta was crappy as well. Something that was widely reported (you could even test it for a low price).
I should have paid hours of attention to the slightest news about Apple’s progress so that I could see that OS X was pushed out the door unfinished.
You can get a fairly clear view on the state of the OS by reading John Siracusa’s articles on Arstechnica. Other than that, there was plenty of reporting that called 10.0 beta software. You should have been warned. Of course, you just didn’t bother and we are supposed to feel sorry for you.
But no, I’m a cheepskate because I want the OS they claimed I was buying.
Have you ever seen the screens that you get while installing Win98? It promises you everything but a girlfriend and a yacht. Suffice it to say that I didn’t believe it, but was laughing all the way (until I had to use it). Don’t you know better than seriously believing that these kind of claims are true? Am I talking to a 10 year old kid who still believes advertising or an adult?
BTW, did Apple ever promise that OS X would have every feature that OS 9 has? I’m quite sure that they never actually promised all these things that you claimed they did. Or do you believe that a subjective claim like “better than OS 9” means anything more than “someone on this planet likes OS X better than OS 9”?
You just keep pretending that this software business is just fine… keep wasting your money on crap that doesn’t work…
The software business is a mess because of people like you. You waste money on crap that doesn’t work. Then you complain to people who can’t help it and do the same thing next time. How do you expect software to improve if you don’t punish companies that create shitty products?
No, I’m not a 10-year-old kid that believes advertising. I mentioned about two decades as a tech. How clever of me to be working with computers 10 years prior to being conceived.
Oh yeah… People like me are the reason, right. Whatever. We’re on the same side, here, in regards to the software industry, yet you still had to pick a fight. You don’t like me complaining. Why is that? I have a right to vent and complain just as much as everyone else here and elsewhere has done, in great quantities.
But, according to you, I’m not allowed to complain about being ripped-off because I should have known I’d BE ripped off. Is that how it works in your world?
Does it work that way with everything a person might buy or just computer software?
My car works great, bought new. As does my minidisc recorder, VCR, all my pro audio equipment (thousands of $ of it) and so on. Almost every other product in existence or on the shelves for sale has a warranty or some form of accountability. The auto industry even has the “lemon law” to protect consumers. Why should there be zero accountability for the software industry?
No, that’s right… I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut and take it like a man, right? I’m at fault because I played by the rules, didn’t break the law, paid the price for the product. Right. Whatever.
So your solution to this problem is to stop buying software completely, right? Pirate everything, yes? I’ve been there. It’s something I decided a few years ago and have made only few exceptions since then (Mac OS X, because all the reviews I read and peer-commentary claimed how great it was – as if I did no research…Yes the beta sucked, it was a beta!). The only stuff I paid for during that time, aside from OS X, was BeOS stuff (which I never regretted).
And no… in regards to your comment about the BS MS spews in their installer and advertising. I haven’t believed a thing from MS since around 1995. The BS they spew is so far beyond reality that it’s like reading a surreal joke book that is taken as truth by the media. Win95 was my last purchase from them. Shortly after that was when I woke up to the awareness of exactly how bad the software industry is (I got burned on several software purchases back then). Oh, but I guess it’s my fault that this stuff sucks because I was a dumb-ass consumer and paid for products that had great reviews. Right. Whatever.
Seems the only safe choice anymore is to steal software. Do you honestly think that it will have any effect on the quality of it? We individual consumers are the only ones that can get away with theft like that. Business sales, which is where most of the money is made, can get audited and are quite attractive to lawsuits. Individual users are mostly ignored unless they’re distributing and selling pirate software (there’s no value to nailing them). It’s the businesses that buy 30-pack licenses of $600 software packages because the media claimed the product was great.
Pirating software is no solution. It’s just a self defence. The solution is to bitch like mad. In every forum possible. Companies react to bad PR because it affects their stock prices and large-scale sales.
There are so many people that are exactly what you claim I am (a clueless consumer who believes the BS). How do you expect them to learn the truth? By castrating them when they go to share their experiences and opinions with others?
How did YOU find out how much this stuff sucks? Oh, did someone yell at you for complaining once so now you have to bash other complainers? What crawled up your butt that you needed to start a fight with someone who’s venting about something you already agree with?
You know what, just pirate the damn software and shut the f*** up. Thank you.
You started it, pal.
Oh never mind… like you said, it’s all my fault and the fault of people like me who pay for things that all this stuff sucks. We’re so damn stupid! Stupid users! BAD! You must steal! STEAL it ALL! Spread the word, everyone! Anarchy!
…and all that BS.
No, I’m not a 10-year-old kid that believes advertising. I mentioned about two decades as a tech. How clever of me to be working with computers 10 years prior to being conceived.
It’s a rethorical question. You acted like a 10 year old.
Oh yeah… People like me are the reason, right. Whatever.
A capitalist society is supposed to award those who create the good stuff and punish those who fuck up. But people don’t do this! They buy the crap and whine. It amazes them somehow that nobody creates better products. Some PC-users even dare to whine about the quality of Windows and the price of a Mac. They feel that Apple ows them a MacOS X on x86, even though they really don’t want to pay anything extra. Somehow they cannot fathom that Apple will not make a move that will lower their income to a great extent. Their drivel is the thing I hate most.
We’re on the same side, here, in regards to the software industry, yet you still had to pick a fight.
We are not on the same side because people like you are part of the problem. It may sound harsh, but it’s the truth.
You don’t like me complaining. Why is that?
Because it doesn’t solve anything. It just gives me a headache. Complain about the content of an update = ok. Complain about the price/quality = ok. Complaining that you should get an upgrade for free because you bought a lemon is whining.
But, according to you, I’m not allowed to complain about being ripped-off because I should have known I’d BE ripped off.
You are not ripped off since you got (for the most part) what you paid for. Apple never promised that OS X would be perfect for you. Companies have no obligation to create a perfect product or even just one that is better than the predecessor. You can be expected to evaluate the offering to see if it’s worth the money. That means doing a bit of research yourself to see if the stuff that Apple didn’t promise is there. Doing this has never been easier in history. You should perfect your skill if you’re bad at it.
Does it work that way with everything a person might buy or just computer software?
With everything. That’s why you can’t sue McDonalds for their crappy food (as long as it is safe). You are supposed to go to a competitor if you don’t like their products. Of course, few do research before buying a McNugget. That’s because the low price makes it easy to just try it out. But you have no right to whine about getting a refund when it turns out your McNugget tastes like a piece of tire.
Since software has a reproduction cost of $0, there is no problem with trying out a piece of software before you buy it. This does not amount to theft. I know that a part of the socalled ‘pirates’ are people that try out the software before they buy. I don’t have a problem with this. This kind of ‘illegal copying’ only harms the companies that produce shoddy products. ‘Try out before you buy’ is a good thing (keeping the product without paying is not acceptable of course).
My car works great, bought new.
Did you take the car for a drive before you bought it?
The auto industry even has the “lemon law” to protect consumers. Why should there be zero accountability for the software industry?
Lemon laws are supposed to make sure that the product you buy works as you can expect it should. Unfortunately, software cannot be defect-free. You can only minimize the number of bugs by spending insane amounts of money and time on the software (like NASA does). I’m sure that people don’t want to pay for a defect free version of OS X that comes out in 2010 and costs $10,000 (and only has the current set of features). Given the above, the software contract cannot be read as a quarantee to a defect-free product. You cannot and should not expect this. Futhermore, there isn’t a clear and reasonable featureset that an OS can be expected to have, unlike a car. This makes it impossible to demand certain features. Basically the courts cannot do much more than make sure that the software company delivers on the things it promises. Above and beyond this, you are on your own. You must evaluate the offering yourself beforehand.
So your solution to this problem is to stop buying software completely, right?
No. But I’d rather have people like you pirate the software, than that they whine on the sites I visit and make intelligent discussions impossible. At least these pirates don’t bother me, which can’t be said for you.
It’s something I decided a few years ago and have made only few exceptions since then (Mac OS X, because all the reviews I read and peer-commentary claimed how great it was – as if I did no research…
I must have read different sites than you did, because I got a whole different impression. The impression I got was that the OS was mostly liked by OS 9-converts that had big stability problems and Unix/Windows-users that liked the new interface, which is far less Mac-like (and more NeXTish). Of course, I ignored every review that contained the FUD: “everybody that doesn’t like OS X simply doesn’t like changes at all”. Clearly these writers are incapable of critical thinking.
Yes the beta sucked, it was a beta!.
I’ve seen beta’s that were very good. A sucky beta is a clear warning, it’s not something that you should gloss over.
Oh, but I guess it’s my fault that this stuff sucks because I was a dumb-ass consumer and paid for products that had great reviews.
No. Sometimes there just isn’t any better. But as a consumer you have to make the call whether you still think the product is worth it. If you decide it is, you aren’t entitled to the new features in the next paid upgrade. If you feel the software wasn’t worth the money, then stop buying their products. If you feel abused by reviewers that are wrong, repay that by ending subscriptions and/or stopping to visit their sites.
Seems the only safe choice anymore is to steal software.
No, it’s not safe because you don’t support great software. The developers will go bankrupt and you don’t have any good software to steal. The truly safe choice is to try before you buy.
The solution is to bitch like mad. In every forum possible.
Yes and trolling. APPLE/BSD/LINUX/WINDOWS IS DYING. Great stuff, ain’t it? Especially when everybody bitches and still buys their software. Isn’t that brilliant? We’ve all seen how the stock of the most bitched on company (MS) fell and fell and fell. Oh, wait.
There are so many people that are exactly what you claim I am (a clueless consumer who believes the BS). How do you expect them to learn the truth? By castrating them when they go to share their experiences and opinions with others?
It’s ok if they tell a honest story about their bad experiences. I don’t attack people who do (I may criticize their arguments, of course). It’s another thing altogether when they start bitching about getting the next version for free. That’s like: ‘Those McNuggets suck, I deserve another one for free’. This is just hypocritical.
How did YOU find out how much this stuff sucks?
I read reviews and I try it out. Sometimes there is a try-out version, sometimes I have to warez it.
Oh, did someone yell at you for complaining once so now you have to bash other complainers?
No, this is not a ‘repressed homosexuality’-like thing. It’s a ‘I get fed up with this whining’-thing.