Posted on 06/02/2006 9:17:14 PM PDT by Swordmaker
The same thing happened with Windows XP. When Beta 2 arrived, I found myself torn between what was new and good about the operating system, and what was new and bad.
Significant negatives back in 2001 included product activation (which doesn't affect Microsoft volume licensing customers), changes to the network-configuration user interface and the way XP interacted with other versions of Windows on small networks. Was Windows XP truly better than Windows 2000? It was a toss-up in many ways. In the end, I went with the improved app compatibility and user interface improvements of XP. But it wasn't by much.
Well, Microsoft just upped the ante on internal conflict with the release of Vista Beta 2. It boils down to this: The software giant is favoring security and IT controls over end-user productivity. Don't get me wrong, security and IT manageability are very good things. But some of the people actually using the Beta 2 Vista software describe their experience as akin to that of a rat caught in a maze.
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
but for them to charge about every year for a new os... ?
Hell of a lot cheaper than having to buy a new Mac to get the latest and greatest OS and apps. $!29 every 18 months or so works out to about $7 per month.
Do I have to buy a new upgrade copy? Nope. I will because I want the added features the new version offers me... but the old one will work just as well as it did. I know some people who have not chosen to update OS X.3.9 to OS X.4 because they see no compelling reason to do so. Similarly, in the Windows world, there are people who are still running Windows98... and some are doing so on my recommendation. I have clients who run ONE piece of software on their office computers... it runs under a DOS shell, and upgrading would result in no benefit. When their current computers die, they can upgrade to XP.
As for paying for a piece of software every year or so, I will not let a client purchase a vertical solution software package for his business if the publisher does not charge at least $1000 a year for support (which includes updates). AND I require my client to pay it. Every year. If they won't pay it, I won't support them either.
Why do I require this?
Experience. First of all, if the software breaks, I NEED that resource to keep them working. But the most important issue is it is in the business person's own self interest to pay it. In fact, it is cheap compared to the alternative.
If the publishers do not charge at least that much, they will not survive... they will not be around to fix that problem that just popped up much less develop new features and update the software to take advantage of newer hardware... and that is fact.
I have seen too many go under, leaving a business with unsupported software that cost it several thousand dollars. The only solution is to jump ship to another VS vendor again - at the cost of thousands of dollars in software, more thousands in staff training and data conversion.
To maintain a development department and a technical support department requires staffing. Let's say that tech support requires 5 people at $40,000 each and development requires another 5 at $60,000 per programer, that means that at least payroll costs will be $500,000 plus an additional 30% (standard multiplier in figuring labor costs, taxes, benefits, etc.) which is $150,000. Total: $650,000 in labor. Add in equipment, utilities, management, and other brick and mortar costs and you are looking at $1,000,000 just to keep the doors open. That means to cover their "nut" they need 1000 users, each paying $1000 support fees, merely to keep the doors open.
Sales of new VS packages, especially in limited markets, cannot assure the survival of the company. In fact, as a rule, sales generally covers only the costs of sales, advertising, sales staff expenses, and commissions... there is little profit in it in Vertical Solutions... the money is in support.
Even companies like Intuit with its Quickbooks line has found that new and repeat sales of its product cannot keep the bottom line in the black. After all there literally is NOTHING new in bookkeeping for at least the last 100 years to add beyond more bells and whistles... and they really can't convince the accounting department that another B or W is necessary.
So, to keep the doors open, they invented the Tax Table update fee... pay them $170 a year to provide information that the Federal and State government send you for free.
How does this work? Simple. They make it impossible to enter that data into the bookkeeping package on your own (it is literally a five minute job for most businesses). You HAVE to buy it from them in their format.
Then, every two or three years, they change the Tax Table encoding... and then they discontinue offering the Tax Tables in the old format... thus FORCING their customers to buy another $299 copy of their software to replace one that works perfectly well, except for not being able to update the tax tables. Neat scam but it works.
Does it upset me? No. Because if they did not do this, there would BE no Quickbooks for sale. And certainly no upgrades.
The $129 I pay to Apple for an update to OS X pays for all of that. I want Apple to survive and thrive, developing more and more good things that I will want on my computer.
Huh, you can buy windows without a computer.
And you can buy OS X without a computer... but it won't do you much good.
... Until you install it on a computer...
It is in rather poor taste to compare beta to non beta but then again we were promised this OS about five years ago and were getting impatient..
im not getting inpatient, i remember Vista and TONS of games that we rushed to meet some deadline and I don't want a repeat. Whenever Vista does come out they will still need to update it but maybe they could get MOST of the problems fixed now.
It aint me doing anything wrong. I just drive the thing. If there is a problem and it is not with Macs in general, then it is with our IT department.
I still would like to know why it is that a PC can open a file with no trouble when the same file give the Mac serious fits.
Let me ask you a question that may get to what you think the problem may be.
When I open up word, my Mac starts giving me tons of font conflict error messages. I have it hit the ENTER key repeatedly (like 50 times) as it goes through the list of fonts. Also, I get these same font error messages when someone sends an email with a font my machine does not like. Is this normal? I would love to send you one of the files to see if you have the same trouble. Seriously. As a test. I'm about ready to take a hammer to the dang Mac on my desk. And it is not just my station. Everyone has the same trouble - common is to hear people slapping their mouse down on the desk (slap, slap, slap) in frustration over the dang Macs messing up. You can hear everyone doing it.
And I'd love to get everyone a bell they can ring when their Mac (or a program on it) crashes.
I know, you want to know the versions of everything. I will get that for you. I'll do that Monday.
FReepRegards, BJN
And Mac word, no way do I like it better than the PC version. But, that is a really subjective difference of opinion so no much really to disagree on there.
Great to have someone actually say what they like better about it. I don't really hate the things - well, not all the time.
"Is this normal?" you ask.
No, BJ, it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, normal. Do you think the Macintosh became the pre-eminent computer for industrial graphics use by having issues such as you describe? No way.
How many times do I have to tell you that you have a pile of defective, corrupted fonts. Maybe you should be getting a clue by the fact that WORD is telling you that you have at least 50 corrupted fonts IT CANNOT HANDLE because of "font conflicts" when it pops up those error messages. It doesn't do that just for the hell of it, BJ, but you just went ahead and told it to ignore the conflicts! The system is telling you, no, it's yelling at you to resolve these conflicts! Sheesh.
Your company has collected every twisted and tortured by amateur fontographers font that has been modified, corrupted, combined, incomplete that has come its way. It has collected these from years of ad submissions from amateur graphic "artists" and thrown NONE of these junk fonts away. Instead they have allowed amateurishly modified CRAP to over-write legitimate fonts with modified junk from idiots who haven't a clue how to build a proper Font. They have allowed fonts to be installed that are cross connected with files from other font families, were built with open vectors, or that include hints and metrics from fonts that were intended for completely different sizes. These bastardized fonts have been installed on your Macs and WILL and ARE screwing things up. Get rid of them. ALL OF THEM! Any professionally managed IT department would have done this long ago.
I will bet you that your IT department moved the entire list of fonts over from your old OS9 computers (Where you had the same problems). The files you are getting from outside are probably good... it is the BLEEPING amatuer fonts ALREADY on your computers that are being invoked by those files that are causing all of your problems! Your PCs can handle them because they don't have the same collection of corrupted garbage in their file directories.
I went into a newspaper office about six years ago that was experiencing the SAME kind of problems... which went away when I threw away EVERY DAMN FONT from EVERY DAMN COMPUTER and replaced them with fonts from legitimate Font forges. I started looking through their font directory to delete the junk and quit after finding 80 or so corrupted fonts in the first 200 out of over 4000 fonts they had installed. I realized it was useless to try and resurrect their font collection and told the publisher. She said do ANYTHING to get them working again. Under my instructions, they bought the entire Adobe font collection, a good font manager package, and installed them. Bye bye problems.
After I laid down the LAW to them, the only way they could accept an outside font was either in PDF, in an Encapsulated Post Script, or with the text converted to vector graphics. For those rare exceptions, we kept a Mac with a basic font set with a backup of the font director. The file with the outside font was loaded on that machine, the font installed, and then any editing to the copy was done... at which point the font was converted to vector graphics. The entire font directory was then TRASHCANNED and replaced with a clean copy of the backup. The alien font file was then safe to be used on any of the other machines, PC or Mac. They have not had a problem since... running OS9 and then upgrading to OSX Macs with most of the same software you are.
They printed a "Requirements for Submissions" that listed the fonts that were acceptable. They charged additional fees for handling any "Alien" font unless it was in PDF or EPS or Vector Graphics. They turned down business from people who would not or could not comply.
I know, you want to know the versions of everything. I will get that for you. I'll do that Monday.
Print out a list of your fonts as well... I bet you find duplicate names all over the place. Also, fonts are identified internally by a number.... keeps font families together... but I bet yours have fonts with totally unrelated fonts with Font numbers that are the same.
Sometimes I may have to click the maximize button twice to get the window to show the full size version of the Web page I'm on otherwise no problems. But I don't really worry about the last size of the window I had, just seeing everything on the page at once.
I don't agree with the video assessment either. It seems people want MS to hold back just to be compatible with computers sold years ago. Such an attitude of backwards compatibility is one thing that makes Windows suck in the first place.
But what I don't like is offering cheap versions without Aero (love the name BTW, an any more obvious copy of Aqua?). Either it's your GUI, or it isn't. Simply degrade gracefully on older hardware like OS X does.
OS X beta wasn't five years in the making, and it wasn't simply an upgrade to OS 9, it was a re-write.
It's simply indicative of Microsoft always shooting at a moving target. Vista is a clear attempt to copy and catch-up to OS X, and this article is showing how it doesn't succeed.
They only impress me when the underlying architecture lets them be fully accelerated by the video card.
Think of it in Windows terms. Windows 2000 was realy NT 5.0. Windows XP was really NT 5.1, and people paid for that upgrade.
Each OS X dot version also usually contains more improvements and added functionality than the difference between 2K and XP, plus the fact that each new version runs faster on the same hardware.
I share your view. Vista might actually be usable at SP1 rather than having to wait for SP2.
I had a friend who loaded his computer with every cheap font conceivable -- from those cheap CDs and from online. He had way over 1,000 fonts on his system.
What you're seeing on the Macs is nothing. His computer would barely boot up.
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