f13.net

But we make the iPod!  We're hip, really!  JUST LOOK AT OUR COMMERCIALS! (http://hardware.silicon.com/desktops/0,39024645,39164472,00.htm)

"I've fallen, and can't reboot!"

Damn, now I feel old!

They got it wrong. The Apples aren't marketed for young'un's, they are marketed to old fart artsy types who still want to THINK they are hip and young.

And yet I don't have one.

You don't need to reboot Macs.  The TV told me so.

Galactus likes unix, so it makes sense.

This is mostly due to the fact that MACs cost more than PCs.  Before x86 another downside was that you couldn't play games on MAC since hardly any was ported. Cost more = luxury item = older demographic.

Maybe this is true.  I saw on the news a couple of months ago that the average age of a new Corvette owner is 45. 

A lot of old, bearded, UNIX users adopted the Mac in recent years. I don't think it's all yuppies.

[edit] Those guys are rich though....Even though they may not look it.  :-P

There's a reason for all those mid-life crises jokes. I find it amusing. Corvettes are cars for "young people". So aging guys buy them so they can feel young and wild, like a kid. But what fucking kid can buy a new corvette?

I'm young. Well, 31. I'm buying a Prius.

I didn't know what a Prius was so I googled it.  (insert Realota joke) They don't look fun!

I recently had the opportunity to start driving a Cadillac Deville.  I like it a lot.  I don't drive it, however, due to one dealbreaker: no cupholder.  What kind of car has no cupholder?  It has two sunvisors but zero cupholders.  Autodimming rearview mirror?  Check.  Tape and CD player?  Check.  Smooth ride?  Check.  Air of pimpitude?  Check.  Cupholder?  BZZZZZZZT!

I am afraid that a Mac would not have a cupholder, so I am sticking with a PC.

Yeah - I think they pretty much exclusively use slot-loading optical drives now.  ;)

They use to exclusively use them (err...kind of...more like cd "cartridge" loading).

Anyhow, slot loading is way cool.

Slot-loaders are fucking sexy. I especially like the Wii's.

Just wait till it breaks with <insert special/important disc> and you have a nightmare getting it out since they use an electrical mechanism which can be quite a pain to get a disc out of if there isn't any power  :-(

How can something that's been in car stereos for over a decade still be considered cutting edge in this day and age?

Yeah...I dunno why, but it feels different in a console or PC.

Back on the OP, another significant factor is people buying computers for their elderly parents.  Many people who would never buy a Mac for their own use are still more than happy setting Grandma up with one.  Macs are perfect for people who are slightly intimidated by this whole "computer" fad but want to be able to email their grandkids.

My car's slot loader scratches CDs like there's no tomorrow. I'm glad I have trays for my PC DVD/CD drives.

How so?  Those people need three things:  cheesy little minesweeper/solitaire games, a browser, and word processing capability.  Any OS, even Linux, is more than capable of doing this as long as you idiot-proof things by slapping the icons for those apps on the desktop.  God help any newbie trying to figure out a nesting file system, you have to put the shiny up front for 'em to use.  Once you've done that the OS is pretty much indistinguishable for these types of users because what they use their computers for are extremely limited.

I've done this with my father, who is incredibly computer illiterate.  A couple of years ago I set up his computer with Suse Linux, slapped Firefox, OpenOffice, and various game icons on his desktop and he was as happy as a pig in shit.  For the last computer I built for him I put XP on there, did the same thing and he really didn't notice much of a difference.

For computer illiterates, the Mac is no more intuitive than Windows. It's simply because of that whole keyboard, mouse and monitor thing. No amount of icons and crap get around the fact that either OS is fundamentally a different experience than anything else a computer illiterate has likely seen.

That's what I love about Mac adverts. You can use the machine out of the box, just as you can a Dell. You just already need to know how to use graphical UI OS's already.

The Mac has at least two advantages for technophobes over PCs:

1) They're prettier.  To people like you and me, this doesn't matter even a little bit.  To some people, Dells look scary, what with their hard corners and grim color schemes.  Macs look like toys.  Or kitchen appliances.  They're very non-threatening.

2) Greatly reduced vulnerability to malware.  Every goddamn time I go visit my mother and use her computer, I find a crapload of adware on it, usually because somebody (I'm never sure whether it's her or one of my siblings, because they ALL should know better at this point) installed a Bonzi Buddy or something.  Macs may not be inherently more secure than PCs, but they're not popular targets either.  Security through obscurity works.  Again, this is a nonissue to people like you and me, who know better than to say "yes" to anything a web page asks you.

The one on the PS3 is even smoother than the Wii's. About 3 times as smooth. When it works (just adding that because of all the shit on the web about broken PS3s, mine is frawress).

Oh, Macs. Yea. Definately for old people, suckers, and art fags.

I talked my mother in to buying a iMac, they are not that expensive, and for her needs MUCH better than a PC. They dont have hardly any problem with viruses and spyware (Think of how many older computer novices you know whos computer is just FULL of spyware and viruses), they run well most of the time, and they look nice. The operating system is much easer for some one who is not very quick with computers to learn and navigate also.

Honestly I think all people who just want email, web surfing and MS Office should have a iMac. But then it would put a LOT of computer repair small businesses out of work.

I would have responded sooner, but I misplaced my bifocals after getting in to an argument with my poolboy Sergio about the meaning of the Chapman Brother's "Unholy Libel" mixed media exhibit.

We hand out little tickets (like raffle tickets) for computer time. People like to shove them in the cd slot. I dislike people. Anyway, it's trivial to pop open the cd drive and remove stuff. Once I found a playing card, our tickets (x5 or so) and a stick of gum in a cd drive. I dislike people.

meh, I'm 37 - is that old? And I'm not rich. My MacBook Pro runs Vista very well (2.3 core 2 duo, 2 gig ram, 256 MB ati) for gaming while allowing me to also run my favourite OS X an NIX apps. Choice is good mmmkay? Oh and I've been driving a sports car of some kind for over a decade. Maybe you're all just dull :)

I work with Macs all day every day and little by little I'm really starting to despise them and their 'userbase'. Most people who buy Macs are in it for the 'lifestyle' and nothing else. Case in point: I went on a call the other week to diagnose some network problems in an all Mac setup. First let me state that if you are at all experienced with computers and networking in general, Apple's whole concept  and method of going about things is completely obtuse, or at least it is to me. Configuring the Airport was confusing as hell at first because Apple in their infinate wisdom did everything completely different from everyone else when it comes to setting up DHCP and such. It wouldn't be bad if it was innovative and better, but in reality it's neither, just different enough to confuse the average PC user who's not a complete noob. Maybe if you've never touched a computer or router before it makes sence. Basically they had an Airport Extreme and 2 Airport Expresses and whoever had set them up did a miserable job so there was confustion amongst the various devices as to what Airport to join. One Express was hooked up to the family stereo and the other looked like it should have been set up to be a repeater for the main Airport but never worked correctly because it was set up on it's own network. The one on the stereo was too far away to pick up the wireless signal from the Extreme (old farm house with stone walls). Anyway, my suggestion was to get rid of one of the Expresses and move the Extreme and cable modem to a more centralized area of the house and have everything on the same network. No, that was too much trouble (even though it wasn't). The punchline came when I suggested this to the wife and she said 'Oh, I don't care if we can't get on the internet. I just want to listen to the music on the stereo!'.

Ugh.

Oh yeah. The kid kept saying that the wireless had, and I quote, 108 mega pixels. (108 Mbps)  He's in the Computer Information class to boot.

Ugh.

I always hear this no virus and spyware thing like it is due to Macs being superior. It's due to Macs having a much smaller install base so most virus makers don't bother.

Just to mention, while Macs still don't have the security problems PC's have, those problems have increased in recent years (due to popularity). Back in the day, there was no such thing as a "security update" for the OS. Nowadays, they come out regularly.

Macs are definately vulnerable. It's just that no one bothers to exploit them before Apple patches them. There have been a few flaw lately that would have allowed a hacker root access had Apple not bothered to release a fix.

There is no 'secure' OS. If there's a lock, there's also a key. And the key is usually the user. I believe people should get a licence to 'drive' a computer down the Information Superhighway just as they drive a car down the turnpike. I have ZERO problems with my windows boxes because I now know what not to do. Common sence is a big part of not messing your box up but there are simple things anyone can learn that will keep their machine humming along with no problems.  I've often thought of doing a night class on safe PC driving. People would pay a reasonalble amount to learn and it would hopefully eventually put that fracking mouth breathing, turd burgling Geek Squad out of business.

I never said they didnt have viruses and spyware because they where a superior OS. I just said they had "hardly any" which is true no matter what the reason. And this is a very very good thing for computer illiterate users.

Based on this thread I can conclude that macs are teh stoopid, all mac users are idiots, choice is bad and the collective wisdom of f13 has resolved the oldest, and most pointless, argument on teh intarweb. w00t and such.

Not to disparage the occasional sensible remark re: security and the fact that it's lack of motivation not opportunity that makes the platform more secure.

But ya - special Olympics rule invoked.  :roll:

I think we understood that. I think Riggs just meant that most of the Mac users out there use that logic in their sermons on OS X and why it doesn't have any signifigant malware at this time.. In part it's true. OS X is much more secure than XP by default. But the Big One will hit one day and they will shit their pretty little iPants. And we will point and laugh and then invite them out to the bar and buy them a few rounds and welcome them to the club.

The only valid complaint about Macs is that they're too expensive. Even with the Intel transition, they've still fallen short.

They definitely need an affordable + upgradeable desktop solution in their catalog (i.e. a mid range desktop without shitty onboard, non upgradeable video).

Never gonna happen.  Oh sure, they can do affordable, as evidenced by the Mac Mini, but they'll never even attempt to make Macs upgradeable beyond simple shit like RAM, HD's, and optical drives.  Anything more than that discourages people from buying new Macs, which is Apple's game.  They don't want you to incrementally upgrade your box, they want you to buy a whole new overpriced hunk of plastic.

Buy the Apple case. Put a PC inside. Install Fly-A-Kite OS. Give it to Mom.

Are you saying you can't upgrade any macs graphics card? Not the 'affordable' ones no, you can't, which sucks. But if you're suggesting there is no mac you can upgrade the gfx card on you're wrong. (http://www.apple.com/macpro/graphics.html) Hell I had a G5 tower on lease that I bought a stock 9800 for a couple years ago and slapped it in (PCI-X was new at the time). The Mac Pro will take any card you can get drivers for, which is anything from ATI or Nvidia. So sorry, what was your point? That the $1000 machines aren't upgradeable? True. That none are? False.

I believe that would fall under my definition of "simple shit".  When I can walk into my local computer shop, buy a mobo and processor and run OSX, then you could have an argument that they're upgradeable.  They're just not.

There was one period where they were doing just that actually. The Age of the Clones and/or the mid-life term of the PowerPC. A little before Jobs settled in. The mid range desktops were still a little pricey (some could be had for around $1300...I think), but there were upgrade options that could keep a machine in good shape for up to 3 years (through PCI slots, as well as processor slots).

Jobs introduced the iMac and whatever else.....And while those are cool, I see his ideas on "affordability" as two steps forward, and one step back.

[EDIT]


Haha. Hold your horses, buddy. I never said that at all. I know current Mac desktops can be upgraded.....That's why I said Apple needs a mid range system. Something in between the iMac and the current desktops.

Basically, something as cheap, or maybe just slightly more expensive than an iMac....but more upgradeable.

So um, don't buy one? WTF - at what point did anyone here think Apple was trying to get their business? BMW does just fine with 2% market share on overpriced but elegant machines. I bet dollars to donuts noone here drives a bimmer. So fucking what? Your market is well serviced, and it's not the one Apple is trying to appeal to.

Jesus, platform arguments are soooo 1999.

EDIT: Stray - nested quote. Reply was to Big Gulp. Kthx.

Gotcha. Thought you were taking your zeal out on me.  8-)

You know why I still get up in arms about Macs vs. PC? Cuz I can fix a fucking PC. When shit breaks on a mac it's like pulling teeth. She's had to send her laptop back 4 times in the past 3 years. Yea, sure, it's because she doesn't know what she's doing. But the idea that Macs are good for any segment outside of professionals trained in using them is just beyond me.

It's not a platform argument anymore. It's just knowing old people and hearing young people say otherwise.

Bullshit. I can fix an iMac or a desktop mac as easily as i fix my dual core AMD gaming box. I've done it. And laptops? They're designed NOT TO BE USER SERVICABLE. Dell, Lenovo, Thoshiba, Sony or Apple. All Laptops suck for user servicing. So, no, that's not a valid point. (I currently own a dell, tohisba and apple laptop. Well, the Dell is my g/f's).


EDIT: My house has 6  computers. 1 is an Apple. Im not a fanatic. But arguments like "i can't fix an apple laptop" or "they cost too much" are really weak guys.

Actually I do.

I don't give a shit about full customization. I just want swappable vid cards on their iMacs. Or something in that range. The rest of the hardware isn't too bad, but giving those machines such a short lifespan, merely because of a video card, is a damn shame.

Then I would think you'd understand.

Actually IBM/Lenovos and Dells to a lesser extent are designed to be user servicable. Heck Lenovos will even sell you laptop screws if you need them.

So will Apple. And the little alan key to break the laptop right down. I've swapped drives, replaced ram and installed network cards on many apple laptops (none of which require said alan key). I assumed the complaint was that if the logic board or cpu dies you can't swap it out yourself. Not sure what else the issue could be.

Squirrel. Over the phone, blind, it's impossible. I don't have a mac in my house. But I have to service my mothers.

Straw... grasping.....

I wish. Ever met a last generation jewish person? Ever seen one actively in front of a computer? No. Ok.

I have, course she's a professor at a university. Heck her favorite word processor was WordStar back in the day...

And this, combined with your lack of applicable knowledge (no offense), is the manufacturers fault?

Okdok, gotcha.

I was under the experience that Schild had Mac experience, having gone through an Arts program and all...

I never blamed Apple. Ever. I just said their shit was overpriced. I could care less about vulnerability or how they design their operating system. My comments were purely based on wanting Apple for any reason over a regular windows box.

And yea, the last Mac I had was in college.

??????

Sorry Schild - this is you not blaming Apple how? Cause to be honest your old lady phone support story is just as bad with a Sony laptop. (Worse actually - i've owned a Vaio.)

So...what?

EDIT: Keep in mind - we're discussing laptops in this sub-thread discussions - and no fucking way can you tell me a Toshiba or Sony laptop is any easier to remotely troubleshoot than a mac. I have a Toshiba Satellite and a Mac Book Pro. And I sold a Vaio PCG R505TS that I had for a few years recently. I'm speaking from a fair bit of experience in this sub-discussion.

One thing I'll disagree with squirrel about.

Macs are not beamers. They are still a home computing company, even if they have their foot placed well within the workstation market. They were never about luxury, but just about giving a more pleasant/hassle free computing experience.

Apples are more...eh, lets say exotic. It's like comparing an old Chevy to a Honda or something. One of those is a lot easier to fix than the other.

My friend - pleasant/hassle free computing IS LUXURY IN THIS MARKET. You're crazy if you think otherwise. And the comparison to BMW isn't mine, it's Harvard Business Review's - agree or disagree but it's a valid comparison. Similar market share, similar marketing tactics, premium pricing over competitors (Acura, Lexus and even Mazda offer better reliability, performance and price than BMW). You can disagree, that doesn't make it wrong.

I still want a Mac Mini just so I can run TextMate to do Rails development but being unemployed at the moment makes that a bit difficult.

I switched to a Mac last year.  I have one of the last Macs that aren't Intel based.

It was the best fucking computing decision I made since getting a Commodore 64 18 years ago. 

Macs are easy to use.  They are fun to work with.  Its PLEASANT using a Mac.  I have had almost zero problems doing anything with a Mac.

For some of you complaining about the Mac's bad pricing is hypocracy since it seems to be the same people who grabbed the most expensive HDTVs they could get their hands on.

You say it was worth it.  I say my iMac was worth the extra cost.  Its turn on and use.  No hassle, no problems.  I doubt I will ever go back to a pure Windows based machine.

Shit, once OSX 10.5.1-2 comes out with the next iMac 24" system upgrade I will probably buy it ASAP.  I will then be able to use all my old Windows games at close to maximum possible detail settings on a stupidly big 24" screen with great sound power then go back to the happy nice to use land of OSX for any actual computing instead of the giant buggy, kludgy clusterfuck that IS the Windows experience.

I am 32.  My first 2 computers were Commodore machines.  My next 5 or so were all Windows.  I never really enjoyed using a Windows machine.  I enjoyed certain Windows GAMES, but never the OS itself, which has never been anything outside of a useless hunk of shit.

1. I am tired of reading the age old canard about how Macs don't have viruses because they only have 5% of the market. They don't have viruses and proliferation of malware and spyware because underneath, the BSD/*nix system is generally immune to such intrusions. As smug as Mac zealots are, you'd think there'd be something in existence greater than scare mongering FUD from anti-virus software companies, even with all the gauntlents thrown down by the Mac faithful (http://wilshipley.com/blog/2005/10/mac-os-x-viruses-results-sort-of.html).

2. Web developers have flocked to Macs in overwhelming numbers. Attend any conference for LAMP, Photoshop, Ruby, PHP or any non-.NET web developer conference and Macs are by far the most popular notebook machines, easily outnumbering PCs. At a few of the web startups I've worked at, the development staff unaminously chose Macs. At my last job, only one dev opted for a dual boot Win/Linux box, and even he had a Mac at his disposal. With Parallels or Boot Camp, it makes it easy to do cross platform testing.

3. As far as ease of use for computer illiterates, I don't know, especially if they've been poisoned with a Windows tract of doing things. I've noticed that people switching often get frustrated using a new Mac, especially when they try to use it like their past Windows familiarity. Eschewing more elegant solutions in favor of a longer, more familiar approach. And Apple in the post OS X realm, has really went UI backwards in some regards. For instance, it's not evident that Cmd-~ will cycle through windows in an app (Cmd-Tab is equivalent of Win alt-tab).

Hush now, it's that kind of non-numbers based unscientific bias that is killing us. ;)

ps. of my 6 computers (well 4 - the Dell laptop and Toshiba are on permanent loan to the g/f) my MacBook - and the TiBook i had prior to it - are my main machines. My AMD killer rig is for gaming, my shuttle intel dual core is for media, i have a pentium pro relic running SUSE for serving but my Apple laptops are my day-to-day machines.

Oh and to add a positive Apple experience to the mix - I had a 15" TiBook (G4) based machine. It got stolen. So house insurance replaced it. With a new 15" G4 AluBook (aluminum book). A few months later it got stolen from my workplace. So they replaced it with a 15" Core Duo. 3-4 weeks later my girlfriend dropped a full glass of water on that laptop. Now it was still under 90 day warranty but no Apple Care. Apple replaced it no questions with a new 2.3 ghz Core 2 Duo that I received a few weeks ago.

Dell will do that. Oh wait...not.

EDIT: To be fair I was not completely transparent on how the Core Duo ceased to work. It 'just stopped working'.

For whatever it's worth, I rarely, if ever, have a problem with Windows. I just try to not fuck it up.

In recent years, I've had more problems with hardware.

Wrong. There's nothing inherent in the design of an Unix OS that makes it more secure than Windows. Check out this list (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304829) and count how many stack/heap/buffer overflow problems there are which are exactly the same sorts of problems Windows users have to contend with. In college, which was admittedly a long time ago, I was constantly having to "disinfect" everybody's Macs in the dorms I stayed in because of all the viruses that were running around, and these viruses were being spread by "sneaker net", not like the incredibly rapid network propagation you have now. This happened because the campus at the time was heavily Mac-biased with virtually all the undergraduates that had computers using Macs rather than PCs.

I'm not disagreeing in principle but have to point out to key factors:

1.) Windows, prior to Vista, installs in trust mode. OS X and most *NIX's install in distrust mode. This alone reduces a lot of vulnerabilities. In general, not discounting your accurate assessment that no OS is inherently secure.

2.) If your college experience was pre-OS X it is completely irrelevant given the massive changes to the OS between OS 7,8,9 - and OS X.

Didn't claim Macs were invulnerable but what you are detailing is not a virus. Mac OS X like any Unix box is prone to stack/heap/buffer overflows as well as root kits. But in terms of viruses and malware, I'm referring more to Unix mode of multiuser structure and how only root (admin account) has authorization to applications and other sensitive/critical disk areas. I realize MS/Win is "catching up" in this regard, and many corporate installations are nailed down, adhering to similar structure where users cannot even admin their boxes (at the last 2 large corporate entities I worked at, even programmers are not authorized to admin their own Win box which is quite amusing, as they wait for weeks, or even endure perpuitity to get stuff installed…). But home Win users generally arn't adhering to such a protective framework and I wager many run normally under an account with full admin power, thus exposing them & network to foul play.

"A long time ago", Macs were not Unix based — it's only been post 2001, that Macs became blessed with a "real OS".

I have nothing but Macs in my house now (3 total, though I have one reformatted Linux box too…), have Macs at work and have never seen a virus in nearly 4 years of Macs. And a four year old Mac runs like a charm still, snappy as the first day I took it home (though I had to replace a HD this summer). Win machines always ran great for the first six months, then degraded to a point where serious tinkering was needed or a complete wipe and reinstall was necessary (at least in my XP).

I have a Win box at work too so yes I realize a lot of the silliness of Mac zealots that make claims that are no longer true (i.e., Win needing to reboot all the time, etc..). By the same token, many Win users still have foolhardy notions about Macs, based on stuff that just is ridiculous  — like one button mouse (I use Mac with 8 button mouse but the trackpad on MBP by far exceeds useabilty on any Win machine), not able to upgrade (I put in memory and HD into my PB and you can upgrade the desktops but generally speaking, that sort of thing isn't needed), etc..

Honestly, using a MBP makes Win laptop usage all clunky, akin to Model T.

What he said. And I'm running Vista RC2 on my AMD gaming box and my Mac and it's much improved in this regard but still not at the level OS X or SUSE is.

It's really not that hard to exploit a hole in a Unix executable that runs as root, at which point you have root access. The typical route for hacking into a Unix box is to exploit a hole, typically a buffer overflow of some sort, of a network service (which usually don't run as root) and then once inside exploit another hole of a program that does run as root. It is an extra step compared to your typical Windows box where everybody just runs with Administrator privileges because it's much easier that way but it's not a big step.

No it's not. But combined with the 'esoteric' market of OS X and the wide availability of Windows machines you simply don't see this kind of exploit in the wild on OS X. It just doesn't happen. Now you can point to the fact that that's a result of OS X's lower market share and that's fine. But OS X aside I think I could find a million Linux (Redhat, SUSE) advocates that would argue and do so intelligently that those OS's are more secure than Windows. And they are. Statistically.

You aren't seriously arguing otherwise are you?

naum said "generally immune to such intrusions" -- that's what I'm taking exception to.

Fair enough. That's a disputable claim. And arguing about OS or hardware advantages on a gaming focussed board is again like the special olympics. Windows is the gaming platform. Period. Consoles aside obviously. Therefore it is of primary interest here. And I run Vista on my Mac for that reason - I'm a gamer. But I think WUA's original premise that Apple is strictly a kitchy iPod company is stupidly false. And based on the fact we're now discussing kernel level vulnerabilities I believe that has been validated.

EDIT: Funny thing is - im now shutting down 2 machines, my mac which im posting on and my gaming rig which I am patching EVE on (resubbed you fuckers) to go play my 360 - GoW. This argument may soon be moot at least from this perspective.

I'd like to point out that the old Mac OS wasn't easy penetrable either. Especially for web serving. It's not like they had a good reputation just when they switched to BSD.

Anyone remember several years back when a server company (Webstar) offered any hacker $10k if they could break into their OS 8 server? No one could do it. A couple of other companies followed with similar contests around the same time. There was the VanHacking challenge that ran for 6 whole weeks (they offered $7500). No one won that either.

Soon afterwards, the US army made big news by dropping their NT servers for Macs.

The pre-Mach/BSD Mac OS didn't really have a way to easily remotely execute a program without a UI. Yes there was AppleScript but that wasn't like the command shells that Windows and the Unix OSes have. That meant that even if you could cause a remote buffer overflow (and it wasn't hard to crash a Mac program back then) you couldn't spawn a command shell to take advantage of the overflow.

Internet went down for a while, sorry to bring this back up. I've never dealt with anything other than Dell and Apple laptops. I'm not surprised a Vaio is an annoying piece of shit.

Ok, here's one for the Mac boys:

Why, tell me why, do I constantly have to reset the PMUs and zap the PRAM in order to get these stupid things to work properly? I don't have to reset anything on my Windows or Linux boxes to get them to work properly on a day to day basis. Nor do I have to constantly repair permissions and check for file/directory errors.

Hmmmm?

Apple replaced my MB once because of the faulty PMU. It was a hardware defect.

Omigod you still have to zap the PRAM? I'm getting flashbacks to the 1980s when I was constantly yanking the batteries out of the back of Macs to do that.

Fixed for me.  I really haven't had any major problems with my Mac regarding various compatability issues, and aside from issues with it not liking writing to my USB HDD (my fault for formatting it NTFS ) there's nothing really I've needed to boot into Windows for anyways.  Not that I can until I activate it again though.  :|

To be honest though I didn't buy this laptop for the OS.  I bought it because it had solid specs and Apple has a decent record with service and hardware.  I figured I'd try OS X to give it a run and if I didn't like it I already had Bootcamp at the ready.  I just kinda...kept putting off using bootcamp.

Probably a weak battery.

Sometimes I fucking hate you people.  :nda:

What? Dell coming out with their own Macs?  :-D

What could possibly warrant a  :nda:?

Brand new MacBooks. Unless all the batteries are weak.

The fact that I work for them.

I'm still bitter that the best personal computer system got mismanaged into oblivion.

It's CLI was better than MS-DOS, it's GUI was better than the Mac's, it was at least as good at graphical processing as the Mac, better at video work, damned good at music, and it multitasked properly. It also had an awesome games library.



And Commodore totally screwed it up.

http://www.apple.com/support/diy/ But mostly I buy through our local shop, which is great about ignoring Apple's tightness with parts. I was actually considering buying a Core 2 Duo + mobo from them to build my new pc, so I could boot into OSX on it (for everything but playing games, which is really the only reason one needs a winders machine).

I don't believe you walk into your local computer shop to buy your pc's cpu and mobo, unless your local pc shops are way better than the losers we have around here. Newegg and whatnot.

I haven't had to zap pram on any of our 50+ macs since we moved away from imacs and OS9. OS9 SUCKED. I was questioning this job and macs in general back then. OSX, and newer mac hardware, has turned me into a Mac Guy™. I've mentioned in many places here how much easier they are to admin and deal with vs pcs.

This site can use more zeal. Now get up, trooper, and flame that asshole back! Make your momma proud!

I actually have a shady pc shop run by asian mafia that sells *everything* at at much cheaper price than anywhere online. Not sure how they do it, they must steal it somehow.

Probably don't spend a ton on advertising.

Probably counterfeit goods.

Hell yes.  I have two (actually three, but the third shop is run by assholes) local mom & pop computer repair/component sales joints around me that'll sell me whatever I need, they even have a decent stock of fairly outdated stuff if you're trying to replace 2-3 year old components.  Sure, neither of them beat Newegg on price, but when you've got an emergency you don't have to wait on shipping.

Oh, Sky?  From the very same page you linked to:


Fuck that noise.  Yay!  I can buy overpriced cabling from Apple!  I certainly wouldn't drive 10 minutes away to fucking RadioShack for highly technical components like batteries and cables.  I also love how they won't sell mobos and processors for the good of the customer.  That's awfully considerate, Apple.

Considering I don't even know what you are talking about means that I probably don't have to do it and you either managed to fuck something up (which takes EFFORT on a Mac), or had bad luck and got a bad machine.

I've never had to execute said procedures either on any of my Macs…

Considering that that question is the most popular support article for the MacBook Pro and the G5 PowerMac and the third most popular article for the iMacs (both Intel and G5) I would say that raydeen isn't the only person who has run into that problem.

The only time I've ever had to flash PRAM was when I converted a LinuxPPC based machine to run MacOS instead (i.e. flashing PRAM erased a small bit of firmware code that told the machine to boot directly into Linux).

Flashing PRAM should be that rare of an occurrence.

Batteries can go dead, and like I said, that's more than likely the problem. If Raydeen is saying it's occurring across an entire lineup of computers though, then my best guess is some kind of network fuckup.

Based on the ranking of support articles I would say PRAM zapping is rare, however needing to reset the PMU/SMC/SMU/whatever else Apple is calling their power management chips seems to be a common occurance (that's where the #1 and #3 rankings are coming from).

Edit: reworded

This runs across a line of notebooks and desktops that are between 4 years old and brand spanking new. Maybe it is the way they're configured. I'm the low man on the tech totem pole so I don't get any insight into how the images are created or configured. But at least once a day, I'll have someone (student or teacher) come to me saying the laptop won't turn off (without pulling the battery), the laptop won't start up (freezes on the loading bar), the wireless card won't work, etc. I generally reset the PMU, zap the PRAM, run Applajack (if it seems to be an OS problem), and if that doesn't fix things, repair disk permissions, run the hardware diags...you get the picture. Some of you may never have to do that because you have a perfect unit (or you know how to treat your box properly). I work with about 100 Macs on a daily basis that are admittedly probably being abused on some level. By contrast, the Windows segment of the building has almost no problem at all (with the exception of crappy boxes from a local unknown vendor - they suck). We get the occasional virus that creeps through, or someone's registry gets fubared, but generally, the Windows boxes and laptops just keep plugging along. We've got some 7 year old Gateways that are still chugging (had one finally die with capacitors going bad). From where I stand, the Macs have an alarmingly higher failure rate. We've had to send one guy's iMac in twice because his logic board went. The main hardware failure I see is the system board. At least that's what the repair guy reports back to me.

I sys-admin an officer which runs around 100 macs, ranging from 6+ year old machines to brand new machines. I have had to Do that procedure all of twice in the last 2 years. And hey, look at it this way, thats a much better fix than "Format your drive and reinstall everything".

Sometimes it comes to that but I gotta say I love Macs in this respect. If I can firewire the users machine and pull their files across to mine, I can re-image and have everything back in under an hour. From what you're saying though, it could be that the images we're using have problems from the start. I'm not in that particular loop unfortunately. I'm just the worker bee.

You know. Once upon a time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and there was another president named Bush, I had to work with Macs' fairly often. You see, The University of Arizona had just finishe their spiffy and new Chemistry and Biological Sciences building. Inside of which was a lovely Mac lab, networked to all of the internal research materials and the University Medical Center Library. It was beautiful. HTML was new, and it was easy to do research.

So here I was, plunking away, when suddenly, I get a message. "There has been a critical error in your Macintosh. This machine will now restart". And the vast volume of diagnostic information, or the ability to save my work, or do anything useful but curse The Fates for this twist was gleefully hidden behind the helpful and descriptive button, labeled "Oh!".

Die in a thesis fire Mac. Die and rot in hell.

(all that being said, I do like OS X, and with its introduction Apple is no longer on my comp.apple.discussion.die.die.die list).

It was easy to lose your work on a DOS or Windows machine back then as well. Memory protection was a luxury.

Except now, if windows crashes, you still lose all your work. If your Mac crashes, you will most likely still have all your work when you reboot.

DON'T CONFUSE MY COLORFUL ANECDOTES WITH FACTS YOU DAMN RAT BASTARDS!

Oh, and get off my lawn too.

Goddamned punks.

But much less common. 

In high school I did almost all of my essays on a DOS machine at home and very occasionally did work on the Macs in the school labs.  I think the DOS machine crashed and lost my work once in all the years I used it.  Having a Mac crash on me was roughly a monthly occurrence.

OS X seems much more stable, but it had nowhere to go but up.

This isn't neccessarily true. Don't ask me how it works, but I was working on a paper before, had windows lock up on me, did a hard (from case) reboot, and found that Word recovered the vast majority of my paper when I went back in.

By default Word on Windows will create a recovery file every 10 minutes or so to recover from such a crash. AFAIK there isn't anything inherent in Mac OS X that preserves "state" between crashes. I.e. it's up to each application that you run to autosave or whatnot and some do and some don't.

You are the anti-Ellen Feiss, and I claim my (UK) £5.

(Yet another point in my screed of "Why the Amiga was the Home Computer of Champions" - the BSoD/Bombs for the Amiga were called 'Guru Meditations' and is therefore superior).

Macs are for old people? Apple says: No Wai! (http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20061206/tc_cmp/196601642) (The title of the article is just greatness btw).

Well, you speak great truths there, as befits someone with a Haruhi avatar.  But few people outside of Europe gave a shit about the Amiga.
I never wanted to go PC in the first damned place, but pre OSX Macs sucked to the point I have PSTD from using Mac SEs for 3 years of Vocational High School Electronics.
(I think there is a reason I am not in the Electronics field.  The early Macs are that reason.)
Of course Commodore couldn't sell water in the desert, so its not totally bad taste in computer public..

They were big in the US for a short while (along with everything else Commodore). Some of my fondest memories of games were on the Amiga (read: Defender of the Crown). I never had one though. I just spent nights at a friends house to play with his.

I spent far too much time playing Dungeon Master and someone's shareware BattleTech game.

My favorite amiga game would have to be Armour-Geddon (http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/armour-geddon/mobyrank).  Carrier Command and Armor Command were pretty good too.  Unfortunately, my Amiga 1000 eventually gave up the ghost, but only after they were somewhat out of style.  Strange that it happened though, it took years for the PC to catch up in terms of multimedia capacity.

You bet your ass they were.  It was the only computer I considered when I (finally) replaced my Commodore 64.  Shit, Bard's Tale actually had real music, not just cheesy MIDI!  That was fucking huge back in the late 80's.  It absolutely blew away anything in the PC or Apple world.  Actually, the runner up was probably the Atari 1040 XT, which a buddy of mine had and was great also.  Again, better than anything in the PC or Apple worlds.

I just don't understand how Amigas can still be in use today.

They're so old.



Just remember, this is coming from someone Born in the 80s. I didn't have a PC of my own until my Freshman or Sophomore year of high school (late-90s). I don't think I've ever even seen an Amiga.

The Amiga's in use today are PowerPC based, with a sort of modern, but sort of shitty OS/2 like interface.

Only fiercely nostalgic Euro Trash use them apparently.

[edit] I liked that era of computing though. Everyone was making tightly integrated systems back then. Only Apple and a couple of UNIX companies do that now (as far as desktops go).

I never had an Amiga but lusted after them for one reason and one reason only:

Shadow of the Beast

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_beast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_of_the_beast)

It didn't hurt that Roger Dean did the artwork for the game either.

They had that out for the Genesis.  Trust me, that was NOT the reason to own an Amiga.  It was SHIT.  Now Gods?  That's some quality Motorola CPU sidescrolling awesome.

Pretty much anything by the Bitmap Brothers or by Sensible Software was worth buying.

Speedball 2 is still the best futuresport game ever made, and Sensisoccer is still the best football game.

I agree but it is also one of the hardest games I've ever played.

Xenon Megablast was also way cool. It had a Bomb the Bass soundtrack for god's sake!

Speedball 2 wasn't that hard.  Its not even hard compared to many modern games.
And Sensible Soccer was kickass.  A shame the remake was apparently complete ass.
Maybe the original game will get that rumored Xbox 360 Live Arcade release.

It's not really a rumor when Peter Moore has already said "yes, it's coming".

I got to thinking today...  Isn't the only proprietary part of Macs nowadays the mobo?  I mean, a standard Intel C2D should work just fine in a Mac motherboard, correct?

So I started searching around, but apparently Apple doesn't exactly sell it's motherboards to Joe Consumer.  This to me is incredibly stupid.  Hell, keep your markup on the motherboard.  Charge well beyond Asus standards into the $350-400 region and your margins are still incredibly fucking high for basically just soldering an instruction chip onto an off the shelf standard Intel mobo so OSX can boot.  I know I'd bite the bullet and pay a markup on one component to be able to dual boot, but what I won't do is pay the inflated prices for the entire Mac desktop experience.

Since Apple is embracing Windows compatibility with Boot Camp already what would they really have to lose by going this route?  They'd be raking in money on mobo and OS sales, and they could still keep the vast majority of MacTards who view their computer case as a "work of art", and they wouldn't be releasing the OS into the wild for just any X86 user to run it.

Anyhow, Sky, could you find out what that shady Apple shop in your neck of the woods is charging for motherboards?

Apple's ROM's (OpenFirmware), while not totally owned and developed by Apple (some Mac specific parts are), still sets them apart from PC's as well.