Re: I hate Linux -- Apple is leading the standards charge on the

[Mike Connor <mikec@silug.org>]

This is my only rebuttal (I shouldn't even do this much, but I get
undisciplined ):
** Apple is well known for incredible margins on hardware (I doubt
they've had a change of heart).  I've been around Mac's since '90-- my
guess is M$ probably wouldn't be what it is today if Apple, among other
things, didn't charge $3k (in '90 money) for something that cost them
$30 to build (that's documented).  Apple didn't sell >15% (or whatever)
of the market but yet be one of the most (I think *the*) cash rich
computer company out there; that was true for a long time (might still
be).

** From my casual observation, Apple doesn't adopt PC buses and
components until it's clear that the bus will be a standard and that the
public will no longer buy a $100 mouse and such.

** FireWire seems to be their only bus that was adopted by the PC
world-- definitely the other way around on PCI and I think USB and
CardBus/PCMCIA (I think I saw a Mac laptop with it once).

** If you buy a laptop based on what you're seeing in the linux laptop
compatibility lists, you'll be fine.  True, it'll probably take a driver
patch here and there.

** If Linux is your main OS, you don't have to pay anything at all :)

** I imagine if you're on this list, you'd be using the unix features of
OS X all the time anyway, so there's not much point in buying OS X and a
$2500 (for something with a screen) one button laptop to run it on.  The
new Apple laptops don't seem as rugged as the old ones either.

**  The cheapest laptop PC is ~2.5GHz+ and the top-dog Mac laptop is
1.3GHz.  I have yet to see a case where a processor could make up for a
100% difference in clock speed, regardless of it being
CISC/RISC/32bit/64bit. Actually, I've never seen a >30% difference made
up for; perhaps if you do broadcast grade video / extreme number
crunching would a 2GHz G5 catch a 32bit 3GHz+ AMD/Intel.


On Sat, 2004-01-31 at 08:26, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-01-30 at 23:50, Mike Connor wrote:
> > I'll second MacOS X thought-- if you don't know anything, or you stay on 
> > the desktop user side and don't have time for viruses and worms, its 
> > probably the best thing out there.  If you want the unix commands and 
> > features you're used to, they're all there or can be added.  Uses CUPS 
> > for printing if you can believe that-- a shared OS X printer will show up 
> > in OpenOffice, etc.  'Course, you'll be paying up for the hardware...
> 
> Apple is _leading_ the charge in standards adoption, from a
> _well_designed_ expansion bus in IEEE1394 "FireWire" to their IETF
> Zeroconf implementation in "Rendevous."  They are adding more
> standards-based features to each X version.
> 
> Now some have mentioned that the hardware cost is an issue.  First off,
> it's simply "economies of scale."  So Apple really isn't charging for
> much of a premium over actual production cost.  At least not in
> comparison to popular PC OEMs.  Heck, they charge less for upgrades than
> some major PC OEMs -- so you have to go to aftermarket with those PC
> OEMs anyway.
> 
> But Apple really is more on a "level playing field" when it comes to
> notebooks.  PC Notebooks are _very_proprietary_ and the major PC OEMs
> _love_ to "nickle'n dime" you on peripherials.  Especially on these new
> "cheap" notebooks -- almost like printers where they charge an arm'n a
> leg for a ink cartridge, only now it's a battery, port replicator,
> etc...
> 
> My next notebook will be an Apple, although I'll say x86 on the
> desktop/server for a long time.
> 

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