Next in our series will be our piece on the Apple Corporation in general.
Apple is generally considered very innovative and user friendly. And they are. They innovated the first PC user interface, for the most part. And that interface was very user friendly. But what Apple left out was the usefulness. While Unix computers were involved in UUCP and early popular TCP/IP networking, Apple computers were doing something called hyper cards or something. While powerful unix editors such as VI and EMACS were being perfected, Apple had, er, well, I don't know what they had until Microsoft came out with Word, but I'm sure they must have had something, and I'm sure it was useable. When Microsoft started catching on to the whole Internet thing, providing crude and barely functional TCP/IP networking, Apple provided even cruder and even less functional networking capability.
In fact, by the time Apple caught on firmly to the whole networking thing, they were already an also-ran. This is when they became obsessed with lawsuits and this silly, Albert Einstein, pot-smoking, "different" image that was supposed to somehow elevate them above functional computer systems.
Move ahead a few dull years, and we come to Mac OSX.
Now Apple decides, understandabley, to scrap their, useless, Mac OS in favor of something that works and that is free and that they can integrate with a bunch of pretty icons and sell for lots of money.
This was a good thing for Apple users who were already used to spending lots of money on pretty icons but weren't used to an OS that actually did anything. Now Apple fanatics had an OS with pretty icons and a functional operating system. But in the spirit of previous Apple OSs, Apple locked this thing up and prevented developers from easily developing Apple applications. They also neglected to contribute back to the community from which they took (the open source community) and refused to contribute their own software (itunes, the apple gui, etc.) back to the community).
I hear from folks that OSX is very pretty and has lots of nice wallpapers. I've seen it. Yes, it's very shiny and sparkling. Folks claim it's very stable, and I have to agree; FreeBSD has always been a very solid OS. But is Apple now much different than M$? They take other peoples technology and re-package it. It doesn't work very well, but it's "more stable" than the previous version. It's locked up like a drum, but should somehow magically be comatible with stuff that shows up a year or two from now.
Apple/Mac is no better than Microsoft, they just smoke more pot and spend more on fancy billboards on the 101.
Next installment: Why I hate Redhat
Comments
http://apple.whipnet.net
Chill
I have an iBook with OSX and will never use Windows again. Why? Not stability, useability, etc. They both work fine. Just OSX looks nicer. And to the person who said that the G5 was slower than the Pentium II - do you have you pants on your head? 64 bit processors like from Apple and AMD are just faster. Soon there will be an intel one too. So what? THEY'RE JUST COMPUTERS! Buy one that looks pretty.
So like I do music and shit with Pro Tools and design Albim covers- DVD, whatever. Anyway, I'm not using this forum as an outlet to plug my services...
Apple has like 8 Major scams and like 15 minor. (By the way, I'm using my wintel machine to type this.) The biggest is the iPod: 5 years ago I bought an MP3 player for like 90 bucks when they first came out. Mp3 players were looked down on. Anyways I've written reviews on iPod at epinions.com if you wanna read my "New Media" article. But put that scam aside, I predict Apples next move:
After Christmas everyone and thier mom will have a fucking iPod. And not only computer hardware companys like Dell and Compaq and shit will be making supped up MP3 players but the music electronics companys like Sony, Panasonic, Aiwa, JVC, RCA, Zenith, and even NIKE are pushing this fucking crap. At that time Apple crawl back into the hole it came out from and pretend like they never chargged $400 bucks for an MP3 player....But no, no...I won't forget.
After Christmas while Apple's slanging iPod batterys for the super low price of $90 bucks.(they die in like 4 months)MicroCocks will have MP3 players for the car (where musics most important), and everything will be back to normal.
The heart of the scam is in the MP3's. iTunes, Buymusic. They don't realise THE MP3 IS OURS!!! The internet used to be a paridise until corporate came into OUR world, complained about and fought MP3's in court, and then somewhere along the line said "I got an idea" and now there here slangin Time Warner music on MP3! As if people wanna listen to 40,000 songs on the headphones.
So what did I do? I bought a IBM desktop and a Sony laptop. I only use my G4 for Pro Tools and shit. But I'm waiting for that to burn out. Fuck the iPod Fuck Apple! I got my Vaio and my 80 dollar mp3 player! Fuck, all you need is a computer and a cheap mp3 player.
Ipod= $300-$400
iRock MP3 player + Lacie 80 gig Hd= $230.
I save and I also look good doing it. Because no one looks good with an iPod. Maybe to other Wacinoff users. But fuck them. They like being scammed.
In case you're wondering why I'm mad, Apple scammed me by selling me an iBook 500, that broke one month after my 1 year of Apple care expired and they dissowned me as a customer. That just scratches the surface. When ever I post on the Apple site forums: They delete them.(of course)But anyway, this model was recalled because it's logic boards couldn't handle the heat.Here's a picture of my broken iBook: link
And I know there's someone out there to dissagree with me:
He'll say: "The iPod is more than an MP3 player its got..."
and I'll say: "I know I have one!"
And he'll say: "What?"
And I'll say: "Yea, 2 of em. I stole em' from Comp USA."
I am a person that believes apple users are great people but their computers should die slow painful deaths. Apple computers are proprietary pieces of sh*t and can only use 5% of software currently on the market. In comparison, the x86 pc can run the vast majority of operating systems ever written. The only fesable os choices for mac computers are yellow dog linux, suse, NT 4.0 (which also runs on alpha systems too), and of course that overoptimized unstable POS mac os. And honestly, as much as I hate apple, if they made a freely downloadable x86 version of X 10.2, I wouldn't mind having maybe a 5 gb partition for it (which isint much considering that my computer has a 120 NTFS HDD)
I'm about this - close to throwing my piece of shit apple back into the store that i bought it from. I thought it was user friendly it more more like unless. What the hell is up with apple and their crap hole computers. To think that i fell for their marketing scheme... Damn you Apple!!!!(On my kneens yelling with my hands in the air)
until Microsoft came out with Word, but I'm sure they must have had something, and I'm sure it was useable
Well little prick! Apple had: (drum rumble) WORD AND EXCEL!!!! THATS RIGHT! word and excell was first use by apple. They sell it to microsoft HAHAHA! SURPRISED FUCKER?
TCP/IP networking: was the first buit-in card used by APPLE while pc weenies had to buy one to connect to other user (and talking about connecting to another pc! shit its worst than vietnam!!!)
You see, you just earing things from folks who heard thing from folks .. blablabla! u have to see both extremities to have an opinion, otherwise its bullshit. I saw both! so before writing shit, inform yourself.
By the way, you want to know what apple realized?
_Mouse
trackpad
firewire
The os (copied by microshit)
color screen (first computer
Excell, word
you want more?
The Apple Mac disaster.
I hate Microsoft who in my professional IT career have cost me and my staff thousands of hours with their clasp of unreliable kludge operating systems, and have made my home computing a misery. I'm a Unix SA so was really looking forward to something decent with MAC OS 10. I couldn't have been more disappointed.
The mouse pad.
The ibook's mouse pad highlights text as you unknowingly touch it; when you type the next character you wipe out half your document. If you don't notice this immediately and click Edit > Undo, you are forever retyping the document and you never finish it. Even small documents take ages.
The pad frequently moves the character cursor up the text to the position of the mouse cursor, into the middle of an existing word, and your new half sentence is in the middle of an old sentence, which is now in two halves. It takes ages to continually cut out bits and and put them back.
And finally it keeps flicking you to other windows when you are least expecting it.
For these three reasons alone, the ibook is unusable and an outright liability in any environment.
The bit you want is usually greyed out
You can't do what you want, because what you want is greyed out and can't be executed. For example, you try to print a document and end up in the printer centre. You try to add your printer. It shows it in the list, but with no driver. You need to add a driver, but add, the most useful function in the centre, is greyed out, so you can't. As always absolutely no help is offerd, you've reached yet another Apple brick wall.
Help centre
You can't go backwards in help. You have to start from the beginning each time. And help is so busy trying to be easy and avoid the nitty gritty detail its not just useless, it costs you time.
No help with printing.
There's no way to connect to a standard centronics printer. You can buy a USB-centronics adaptor, but Apple sure as hell won't tell you whether that will work (it doesn't). Apple give you absolutely no useful help whatsoever, not even pointing you in the right direction to find an index of all Mac drivers. You have to throw all your printers away and buy a USB printer. But Apple don't even give you a list of printers that will work.
I've had it 6 months and only use the Aplle when I can't get to my PC laptop. I've really given up with the MAappalling. The indexing is terrible. Can't find your way around. I dislike the way they hide their support telephone number, very dishonest.
The speed of a dog
Booting takes forever as the disk thrashes (with 128Mb of Ram - Unix is happy with 16Mb! It thrashes each time you launch a program, which also takes ages.
Deleting takes twice as long (no forwards delete key) and you can't bypass the mouse with function keys etc.
This Apple MAC wasn't of merchantable quality the day I bought it and after 6 months it remains unusable. I want my money back.
David Noakes.
Let me start first and foremost by saying that around 95% of all comments in the above thread are 100% balderdash.
I'll go through each offending comment by the post order, and put in a response afterwards. This is an organizational boon for you Windoze users out there.
#1 - "...They are betting the farm on their relatively minor software contributions which they do not release to the community from which FreeBSD and OSS are derived."
Re: A GUI addition to a flavor of UNIX is not minor. Apple made a UNIX-based OS usable to the normal person - that is a big accomplishment. Bring in a non-techie and sit him in front of a Linux (or god help you, UNIX) OS computer, and watch confusion grow. I've seen it happen. Mac OS X is also open source, so it is "released".
#2 - "...Offer free for personal/institutional/educational licensing of most/all of their software. This would allow for a level of user adoption that M$ would never be able to compete with."
Re: This would kill apple. Apple needs their hardware and software sales to survive. The idea is great - if only they could afford it. Should Apple do this, it would indeed put a big dent into M$'s sales, as ~$200 vs. Free is hardly a fight between OSes.
#3 - "...Oh, scrap the proprietary hardware model that has been killing your company from the day it was founded (except for the brief period where you smartly scrapped it :)."
Re: This is another good idea that Apple can't afford. Two problems prevent this. Problem #1 (the big one) is that Apple's main source of income is in their hardware. Since their hardware is more expensive than the competition, their hardware sales would plummet like a rock, bankrupting them. The other (smaller) problem is that Apple really likes to integrate their hardware and OS. Since MacOS only runs on Apple hardware, Apple knows what to expect and can greatly simplify configuration. In Windows there are a billion and one control panels for every component, each to be configured individually. With MacOS, the OS knows what components are there, so little to no configuration is necessary. This problem shrinks every day with hardware standards like ATA, SCSI, IDE, PCI, AGP, etc. , which is why this is a small problem.
#4 - "Anyone who says that Windows is like an Apple Mac is either stupid or blind."
Re: Just like how anyone who says that Macintosh apples are similar to Granny-Smith apples deserves to be shot...
#5 - "What is 'Special' about switching a Mac off?"
Re: The "Special" portion of the menu (Mac OS 9 only BTW) is where all infrequent functions like restarting, shut down, sleeping, emptying trash, etc. are lumped, since you might as well get stuff you don't do very often together to prevent the clutter of other menus. Since these functions are rarely used, they are "Special".
#6 - " Why can a Mac only run one application at a time... even though my Mac G4 has masses of memory?"
Re: Not sure if you're talking about OS9 or OSX, but either way, they CAN run multiple app's. Granted, OS 9 doesn't do a very good job of it, what with its rather primitive cooperative multitasking engine, but OS X does multitasking like Windows only dreams about. A pre-emptive engine that can run 10 app's all doing tasks at the same time while only using 20% of proc. power (on a 450 MHZ G4) has got to be good. Also, memory does not necessitate what app's you can run...it could be that you need more RAM on your video card, or a certain proc. feature you don't have, etc.
#7 - "Has anyone tried placing a new folder within a folder- what a nightmare the folder just disappears from the screen to god knows where?"
Re: Wow - do you actually listen to the crap that issues from your mouth? The folder goes inside the folder, asshat.
#8 - "I wonder how many people have lost files because the copying of files from one folder to another is bizzare?"
Re: Maybe Windows auto-moves your files to some obscure directory, but MacOS X or 9 puts it where you drag it. It would also help me belittle you if you'd tell me what the hell you're talking about. I can only assume that you mean when you drag something somewhere it makes a copy. That's a stupid waste of space if you ask me, but to each his own. It's readily apparent when you do move files from directory to directory that it is not auto-copied. Only Windows users who use a mac afterwards have a problem with this.
#9 - "Why can I not see an internet etc., window when I activate it in the finder?"
Re: Three letters - wtf.
#10 - "Why do the windows in Mac get so cluttered and lost- in a windows machine they are are beautifully lined up on the bottom to click and run."
Re: They get cluttered until you clean them up. Unlike windows - which manhandles your windows and rearranges them for you - Mac OS puts the windows in your control. You can minimize them in the dock by clicking the yellow button, if that's what you mean. Also, the clutter doesn't matter if you just press the Expose (pronounced ex-pose-a with the long kind of "a") hotkey, which scales all the windows down to thumbnails and let's you click the one you want. Now THAT's organization for you.
#11 - "Why does my Mac freeze at least once every couple days when I can expect a Windows machine to go for a month without problems?"
Re: OS 9 froze a lot - just like how Windows froze a lot. OS X NEVER crashes - I've only seen one crash requiring a restart on X, and that was a developer preview, mind you. There have also been countless app crashes, but they didn't take down the system, and they were all in Internet Explorer, a Micro$haft product. Your overall reliability is determined partially by luck, and partially by the OS you're using. What probably happened in your case was a stroke of good luck on the Windows side with a stroke of bad luck on the MacOS side. This would be an especially big difference if you were using a more recent version of Windows vs. OS 9.
#12 - "Why are Macs so slow compared to a Windows machine?"
Re: They might be slower, and they might not. Recently, macs have become a lot faster. Previously, they were marginally slower. That's really only in terms of hardware power though. If you look at performance benchmarks between windows, linux, and mac os, you'll see that mac os and linux beat the living s**t out of Windows, no matter what version of windows you're running (there are about 20 point-releases of windoze). Windows is a collection of bad coding practices, and the benchmarks show it. Macs tend to have slower hardware (except of course for the G5, which beats the crap out of any x86 proc.), but much better software running on the hardware. The software runs efficiently, meaning that the two platforms are roughly on par (though the faster one changes every few months) in speed, since pc's have fast hardware with a slow os, while macs have slow hardware with a fast os.
#13 - "Why do I feel I have gone back 10 years when I use a Mac?"
Re: I don't know what goes on in your twisted little mind, so I can't answer your questoin. OS 9 does have that old-school look and feel to it, but so does windows 9x/me (BTW, why in the HELL is a millenium edition of an OS necessary? It has "point release" written all over it).
#14 - "My home machine is an old windows 98 machine that can thrash my Mac G4- fortunately I did not pay for my G4?"
Re: I seriously doubt the accuracy of that statement, on the grounds that you posed a statement as a question. Ergo, your mind is certainly not of the best quality.
#15 - "How have Mac got away with selling these absolutely crap machines. As a user I am sorry MacHeads but I am looking at the emporer and he aint wearing any cloths. I would take a pay drop to use a Windows machine rather than as Mac."
Re: Learn to speak English. Mac is not a company, it is the product that Apple makes. Plus, whatever OS you choose to use is your choice, whether it's right or wrong. Also, the question here is not how apple is still around but how m$ still is. I am amazed that they have been selling virus-prone, inefficiently coded, bloated operating systems with no major changes since the move from DOS to Windows so strong for so long.
#16 - "Microsoft should be told off for making Mac Office less user friendly then Windows Office."
Re: Damn straight. Then again, Win Office had a terrible GUI to start with.
#17 - " I confirm to all the redaers of this that I have never received money etc from Microsoft (I am an Architect if that helps) but I can guarentee that I will continue to buy Microsoft products with my own money."
Re: That's right - feed the hand that whips you.
#18 - "I'm about this - close to throwing my piece of shit apple back into the store that i bought it from. I thought it was user friendly it more more like unless. What the hell is up with apple and their crap hole computers. To think that i fell for their marketing scheme... Damn you Apple!!!!(On my kneens yelling with my hands in the air)"
Re: You could save money by just taking it back. Also, what are these "kneens" you speak of? You obviously have the language skills of a dyslexic 2nd grader. You should probably express your reason for return vocally.
#19 - "FUCK APPLE USERS"
Re: Ey! F**k you, buddy!
#20 - "APPLES SUCK"
Re: Therefore, Oranges blow.
#21 - "A properly designed pIV machine can run 95% of software applications ever written and runs faster per chip than any mac in the world. A g5 with system 10.2 might be fast, but it is impractical because of..."
Re: You're confusing Windows' market share with availible app's. 95% of PC's RUN Windows, but that doesn't mean that 95% of all applications only run on Windows. In fact, the percentage of programs that run on linux is higher than linux's market share. Why? Because the geeky C++ coders run linux (or in my case, Mac OS X), because they know in detail about all the flaws that exist in Windows, and they don't want to have an os designed by retarded chimps. Plus, the kind of people that swallow the crap M$ rams down their throat about it being user-friendly and efficient makes up about 95% of the world's population. Also, as demo-ed by steve jobs at the 2003 WWDC, a G5 BEATS THE S**T out of a Dell with a 3.2 Ghz P4 and a Dell with Dual Xeons (at 3 Ghz/proc.)
#22 - "wtf are you going to need 8gb ram for?"
Re: If you don't know you probably won't understand. 8GB RAM is almost enough to store an entire DVD, meaning less drive access to the DVD drive and hard disks. Those accesses are very slow, so the less, the better. It's also easier on the drives to not use them so much. If you're constantly spinning your hard disks and CD's, those mechanisms will wear out and break, FAST. Also, you aren't forced to get 8GB RAM with a G5 (in fact you can get as little as 512 mb) - the option is just there for those who need it. And if you're running big rendering projects, a lot of RAM is helpful. Remember, a G5 is a top of the line desktop system for computer pro's who need the power.
#23 - "there are not many applications that take advantage of the g5 architecture or the system 10.2 memory protection."
Re: The first part of this statement is true - there aren't many app's optimized for the g5. Then again, it takes about 20 minutes to recompile something as big as a rendering program for it (it's been done, watch the WWDC 2003 keynote speech for proof), and the improvement is not exactly massive. Plus, the G5 can run 32-bit and 64-bit app's natively, so there's no big problem in a 32-bit program. The other part of your statement is quite wrong. I don't know if you've been misinformed, or if you're just making up "facts" to make your side more convincing. Either way, memory protection is a system-level thing, so it applies to all app's, no matter what. And it's been that way since v10.
#24 - "system 10.2 is bsd UNIX (why pay for something that can be legally downloaded for free without the pretty face?)"
Re: Go install and run BSD UNIX on your computer, with no extra help or utlities. It's friggin impossible, and very "icky" at that. Mac OS X and UNIX are not the same; Mac OS X is usable UNIX, with a bunch of mac-like goodies thrown in to make it more familiar.
#25 - "Why pay for a g5 when you can get a pIV system that runs faster for 1/2 the price?"
Re: Again, G5's run faster than P4 systems, as noted in one of my previous Re:'s. Also, pricing out a P4 system costs MORE on average than a decked-out G5 (as shown in the WWDC 2003 Keynote).
#26 - "that f*cking apple logo has got to go"
Re: Why? It makes sense, considering that the company's name matches the logo. And if you're on the appearance side, take a look at the windows logo. Blech.
#27 - "Steve jobbs is an asshole"
Re: I'll have to take your word on that, after all you're the one who's met him and knows enough about him to make a fair judgement. Surely you wouldn't simply call him an asshole for irrational hate reasons? Steve Jobs, on the other hand, is fine. He's CEO of my favorite computer company.
#28 - "those slot loading dvd drives suck ass and can get jammed if you stick a copy protected disc into one"
Re: I agree with you in that slot-loading media readers are sub-par - they're hard to upgrade, and they are less-conveinant to service should they malfunction. However, they do NOT get jammed no matter what you put in (as long as it's a CD/DVD of the right size). The reason that Apple decided to put slot-loading drives into some of their computers (the G5 has a tray-loading drive BTW. I have a G5.) is because it's more intuitive than a tray, and they marketed their slot-loading drive computers to the novice computer user (by putting them in iMacs). Also, a tray takes up a lot of space - only a concern in portables. But if instead of a bulky tray that's really just wasted space, sloat-loading drives just have a tiny robotic arm that grabs the cd, a much smaller design.
#29 - "Try running a webserver on a mac (doesn't work too well)"
Re: Were you using the non-server version of Mac OS? Was it a non-server version of Mac OS 9? I'll bet it was one of those two. Also, try explaining the purpose of running a webserver on a mac.
#30 - "Overheating problems anyone? a dual processor system with 3 hard drives is not something you want to leave running all the time."
Re: The G5 was designed with 9 fans to cool off the massive heat that would come from such a configuration. Also, the front and back have about a million little holes to take cool air in and blow hot air out the back. The fans are independently controlled, and there is a plastic sheet inside to route air to the hottest parts. An explanation of the extraordinary cooling systems that the G5 incorporates can be found at www.apple.com . But it doesn't overheat if you leave it running for a while, I've left mine running overnight on rendering projects and it's fine.
#31 - "macs suck ass at multitasking"
Re: You couldn't be more wrong. Macs have pre-emptive multitasking, MUCH better than the crappy cooperative multitasking found in ALL versions of Windows. On my old 450 Mhz G4 system, I could run 10 app's at the same time with only 20% CPU load. Let's see Windows do that without severe slowdown or crashing.
#32 - "...and lets face it, apple spends all its time on the 'pretty' (read: ugly, useless, appealing to 'trendy' graphic designers) plastic casings, and not enough time on what goes inside."
Re: Apple doesn't spend ALL their time on appearance. And you must not have seen an apple computer in the last several years if you think their cases are ugly. They either have a beautiful and shiny plastic case or a sleek anodized aluminum case. They look nice, and they wouldn't take that long to design. Plus, you would know how they spend their time, since you obviously work at Apple.
#33 - "Apple computers are proprietary pieces of sh*t and can only use 5% of software currently on the market."
Re: Apple computers are proprietary, but so is Windows. Plus, you're confusing market share with programs availibility. More C++ coders use Linux or Mac OS X than Windows, so you get more programs for those OSes. But more sheep that barely know anything about computers use Windows because most of them frankly don't even know of another platform.
#34 - "you r a fucking idiot trying the turn the past of apple agienst them. You shuld think on the present and the G5 whitch is the fastest persional computer in the world so fuck-off Machater!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "
Re: Though not eloquently expressed, you do have the right idea. You're cool.
#35 - "In fact try an apple and you will see why it soo better than a PC i get the ibook its cheep $999 and powerful"
Re: Rock on. I wish I had an iBook. The new iBook G4's are even better.
#36 - "Yes, Mac Os X is very sparkling and delightful."
Yes it is. I don't want to waste space and reprint the rest of your 100% true statement, but thanks for sticking it to these idiots before me.
Correct me if I am wrong,
Correct me if I am wrong, but Microsoft is the only company that produces a commercially viable non-Unix based OS. BSD, Linux, Solaris, OSX etc are all essentially copies of the original Unix. They are viewed as innovative. Windows, which has an almost entirely unique heritage, is not.
Matthew Driscoll, you really are an idiot.
mac OSX has nothing to do with windows XP. windows is copying mac. the X in mac osx is the roman numeral for 10. you got that bit right.
but the XP in windows is named after a systems development ideal called eXtreme Programing.
and its not owned by microsoft, simply used by them.
and lets face it, apple spends all its time on the 'pretty' (read: ugly, useless, appealing to 'trendy' graphic designers) plastic casings, and not enough time on what goes inside.