Has the Apple nearly ripened?

Started by The Geostation, February 15, 2007, 11:42:46 AM

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The Geostation

My my... Apple has been very busy recently.   Their Leopard O/S about to be released (late March I hear), iPhone announcements, multicoloured iPod shuttles, Mac Mini about to upgrade from CoreDuo to Core2Duo, high profile advertising campaign, LED backlit screens on the horizon.

Are we seeing an upsurge in OS X?   Do you reckon Apple will make good headway?

Do you think it will be worth having a bite at the Apple in the next few months?   Possibly having a dabble with TG2 on the platform too?   Is Vista going to be a dead-end?

Will it be appley juiciness running down the chin, or "look there's a worm inside"?

Andrew Randle
The Geostation
Andrew Randle
The Geostation

old_blaggard

Well, I'm a bit of an Apple fan, and I'm pretty excited about everything that's going on.  TG2 on Mac OS X works beautifully - I actually haven't had nearly as many problems as Windows users have.  That might be because of the kinds of scenes I tend to make, or it could be because of OS X's great memory management.  Vista looks like it will have a nicer user interface, but a security bug was just uncovered where a website could play a sound (for example, "Delete all data")through the computer's speakers, have it be picked up by the computer's microphone, and then have the computer act upon the commands it was given.  Finally, I'd be curious to see who on this forum is upgrading to Vista and who has/is switching to OS X.
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Dark Fire

We will only ever see if Mac OS X is better than Windows Vista if everybody starts using Mac OS X. Personally I prefer Windows because just about everything works on it, and it has better security.

MeltingIce

I've essentially been converted to Apple.  While I prefer the Windows GUI over the Mac OSX GUI, you can have both on a Macbook so how can you go wrong?  :P  Yes I know you can install Mac OSX on a non-apple computer, but I've done it and its a serious pain in the ass.

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Dark Fire

Quote from: MeltingIce on February 15, 2007, 04:22:25 PM
I've essentially been converted to Apple.  While I prefer the Windows GUI over the Mac OSX GUI, you can have both on a Macbook so how can you go wrong?  :P  Yes I know you can install Mac OSX on a non-apple computer, but I've done it and its a serious pain in the ass.
That's one of the main problems with Mac OS X. The only reason I would ever get a Mac is if it enabled me to get a substantial amount more out of the iPhone...

Oshyan

I'll be looking seriously at this question when XP finally becomes outdated for me, which I reckon will happen within 1-3 years. Vista as it stands now has little or no interest to me so either I upgrade to whatever comes after Vista (already supposedly coming in 2009!), or I go for OSX, possibly running it on non-Mac hardware. ;) It's sad though because Vista *used* to hold so much promise IMO (back when it was "Longhorn"). I mean it promised to do things even OS X wasn't doing or possibly even thinking about doing yet. Of greatest interest to me was WinFS, the "database filesystem", which seemed tremendously interesting and potentially useful to me. Since that was scrapped and so many other things were as well I lost interest. Meanwhile OS X has continued to advance, not necessarily in ways that interest me as much, but it definitely has some great features that Windows just doesn't have (*natively*). Fortunately the Windows side of things has sooo much software that can do just about anything you can do on a Mac and then some (a lot more in fact). So it's not an easy decision. Hence, as I said, waiting until I *have* to choose and seeing what the playing field looks like at that time.

I'm pleased however to see that since Apple made the switch to Intel CPU's their price point has actually been rather competitive. In fact when the last round of MacPro's came out they were about the cheapest you could get a system with that level of hardware. The problem has always been that it's nearly impossible to cut corners (reasonably) with Mac hardware. The Mac Mini was a sort of compromise and I do hope they continue with that line as they upgrade the hardware line - it was cheap and you could get it kind of "bare bones", which is what I want. The MacPro's are awesome but they have a bottom-line price that is higher than I'm generally willing to spend. For comparison's sake my roommate just bought an almost entirely new Core 2 Duo E6600 system, 2GB of RAM, a Geforce 8800GTS, new case, etc. and only spent just under $1400 *after* California 8.25% tax *and* shipping. The MacPro *starts* at over $2000. Now granted that's with *two* dual core CPU's (4 cores total) and the E6600 only has 2 total, but the point is that if I only want dual core I have to go for a fricking iMac or a Mac Mini. They could have had the MacPro price point way lower if they'd (and thus more attractive and having a wider market) if they'd offered a single CPU model (dual socket motherboards are always much more expensive). So while the hardware is a good value for what you get, the problem remains that they don't offer the options I want at the price I want, while the PC side offers billions of options.

I could go on forever back and forth on this stuff. The bottom line is I'll be waiting and continuing to use XP until I really have to change and I recommend others do the same as Vista just doesn't seem to be much of an upgrade while carrying still much higher system requirements and bloat.

- Oshyan

Will

Quote from: Oshyan on February 15, 2007, 10:23:48 PM
Vista (already supposedly coming in 2009!),

Yea right, but if microsoft could pull that off it would be intesting. I'm keeping XP on this comp right now and fedora on my laptop for the time being.

Regards,

Will
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

Cyber-Angel

Vista has arrived five years behind schedule with an ongoing Antitrust case in Europe and a whole raft of core features doped for developmental time constraint reasons all I can say is...Who Cares?

The Project that is (If you believe Microsoft) meant to arrive in 2009 (I will believe when I see it) was called Vienna but goes under a new name now which cannot at this time be talked about, do Microsoft really expect people to upgrade their O/S again in such a short time frame, hardly I would suspect and then only if it offered substantial new features that surpassed Vista by substantial orders of magnitude?

I have a feeling that Microsoft will face an insurmountable battle convincing its business clients to upgrade yet again when many of those same clients have not even upgraded to XP and still use Windows 2000.

A recent survey of 100 leading companies found that a substantial number (Sorry don't remember the exact figure) would wait at least five years before rolling out Vista on their systems. Given the time and fiscal outlay that it costs to develop and roll out training courses and related materials and related infrastructure the decision be Microsoft to release a new O/S so soon could prove to be a loss making decision.

I do find it interesting that Microsoft are trying from the sound of in to change over to the Apple business model this surely must mean a change in their corporate structure as well, at the vary least at mid to low level management.

There is an opportunity right now for a brand new O/S to come onto the market and take market shear away from Microsoft, this window of opportunity will however not last long, in the end then we shall see what the future holds.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel

Dark Fire

Quote from: Oshyan on February 15, 2007, 10:23:48 PM
Of greatest interest to me was WinFS, the "database filesystem", which seemed tremendously interesting and potentially useful to me.
Everyone was looking forwards to WinFS...If that had made it through we would be seeing a lot more people upgrading...

I can't see Vista failing to become common eventually, which is why I want to upgrade now - the more experience I have with Vista compared to other people, the better my programs and efficiency while working will be compared to other people...

Oshyan

The thing about any new OS coming along to compete with Windows is it *must* be compatible with one of the existing software bases out there or it has no chance of gaining enough market share to be a significant threat. Ideally it would be compatible with Windows itself, but that's very difficult to do. If it were a "flavour" of Linux with really good Windows emulation (a much improved version of WINE or CrossOver Office) and they made the UI much more consistent and everything easier to work with, then *maybe*. But ultimately no matter how bad Windows is it's going to take a huge, huge effort for anything to take its crown away. For better or worse...

Anyway it'll be interesting to see how Vista fairs. I'm most curious to see when the first "Requires Vista" app comes out. I know Crysis will need it for its DX10 features, which I'm very much looking forward to seeing (and playing with). But what else? Any applications that might actually require it? I don't know of any Vista features that would actually make sense for requirement...

- Oshyan

MeltingIce

Yea the only Vista exclusive feature that comes to mind is DX10 and therefore it seems that games will essentially be the only "vista-required" apps.

MeltingIce Network | Wii Number: 3881 9574 8304 0277

Will

only reason I'm consitring buying it later this year.

Regards,

Will
The world is round... so you have to use spherical projection.

Dark Fire

The only feature I can think of, apart from DirectX 10, that Vista has so far and that no other Microsoft operating systems have is the .NET Framework 3.0, which is an optional download in XP. I don't know of any applications yet that require the .NET Framework 3.0, and the fact that it is available for Windows XP (rather than included, like in Vista) means that there isn't a lot Vista can offer that XP can't...

There is another advantage Vista may have: the 64-bit version of Vista is probably much better than the 64-bit version of XP, but again, there are virtually no programs that only work on 64-bit operating systems...

Oshyan

Actually, if the 64 bit version of Vista actually *was* a lot better than XP x64 then I'd be strongly inclined to upgrade. Unfortunately it sounds like it's no better and in fact probably worse, at least for now in terms of support. So no win there either. The only real advantage it can confer is with time in that it is now a more mainstream 64 bit option so it will hopefully push more hardware and software providers to support full 64 bit natively. It's this strange confluence of hardware and software that needs to happen and neither side is pushing hard enough on it in my opinion.

Quite frankly though I think that given the Vista hardware requirements are already high most of that hardware is probably already 64 bit capable, and there's enough 64 bit hardware out there in general that they probably could have just put out a 64 bit *only* Vista and done fine. You could argue that adoption for the average home user would be difficult, but that line has to be crossed at some point, for home as well as professional user, and pro users have had x64 to get used to for a long time now. If they had made 64 bit a requirement all the hardware and software developers would have had no choice and we'd have a lot more capable/compatible hardware and software by now. It's really a chicken and egg thing.

MS probably saw it as too risky, but I think it would have been fully worthwhile and justified. And I at least would finally have a good reason to upgrade to Vista! I'm sure a lot of other people would welcome a good excuse as well and *won't* be buying otherwise, at least for a while. So they might have even come out ahead. :D

- Oshyan

fREeCYCLE

Just my two cents ... but Vista looks so terribly bad in so many respects, that I've commited to removing every windows box from our corp before it's too late to get out.

Only 4 of 68 left in administration;   two as of 3/5;   none as of asap.

Production is next.