We're All Mac Users Now

Wired News ^ | January 6, 2004 | Leander Kahney

[DragonflyX]

AH, the SX-64 (executive Commodore 64). I loved the C-64 and have had about 10 of them over the years. I still play games on one.

[Hank Rearden]

Oh man, what drivel.

Sorry, I'm not in the market for a new religion just now.

[Ichneumon]

Oh man, what drivel. Sorry, I'm not in the market for a new religion just now.

My reaction as well.

After reading the "history disguised as chest-beating" article, my reaction was a hearty, "so?"

[tahoeblue]

The NeXT is clearly the hallmark machine. Jobs did learn the object oriented lesson from Xerox after all. The only thing that he missed was the concept of a virtual machine, or Java never would have seen the light of day. It's taken many years, and an underpinning of the FreeBSD OS to get the NeXT programming team to finally start to whip the Mac into shape. The future of the Mac looks promising.

-tb

[riri]

Proud Mac Owner since '97 never called Tech Support Once, and I'm Dumb as Rocks......

Never use anything else. Even if Al Gore is sitting on the board.

Last year, just before a deadline, starting locking up when booting up. Ran disc first aid. Told me what I had wrong, which, apparently, was pretty bad.

Went to google. Did a search on the problem. A couple of different boards told me what to do. Fixed it, all by myself, with a product called Disc Warrior. You just couldn't be blonde and do that on a PC.

[JoeGar]

The MAC was not the first window / mouse oriented Apple Computer. The LISA, which was a far more expensive and capable machine was released first.

True, and the LISA was copied from the Xerox Star, which was our office machine of choice. Xerox Stars were excellent but very pricy.

[Glenn]

Buy whatever you want. Use it however you want. Don't make it your religion. A lot of soldiers died for something that didn't make a tinker's dam.

[avg_freeper]

MacWorld Expo started today. During the keynote Steve Jobs announced a new G5 server, mini iPods, Final Cut Express 2.0, and a new iLife sweet.

New to the iLife sweet will be GarageBand .

What Apple says:

GarageBand turns your Mac into an anytime, anywhere recording studio packed with hundreds of instruments and a recording engineer or two for good measure. It’s the easiest way to create, perform and record your own music whether you’re an accomplished player or just wish you were a rock star. And GarageBand is the newest member of the iLife family, so you can add your original music to your slideshows, your DVD menus, burn it to CDs or score your iMovie projects.

iLife will ship along with every new Mac.

[beaware]

I use an Amiga even today for video editing. My other machine is a 2.8 Ghz machine. Pop a cd into the machine during playback and you'll get a noticeable freeze in the machine. However, my trusty Amiga doesn't miss a heartbeat much less skip on the recording. Change the name to Amiga and leave Steve Jobs out and the story would be right on! We called it the first color macintosh that could even run Mac software at the same time as other PC programs at half the price. The speed?? 25 MEGAHERTZ or .025 GIGAHERTZ.

Why did the Amiga not become a standard? Marketing my friends! As conservative we have an awesome product-- sometimes our markeeting is lacking...

[Paul C. Jesup]

Yes and the way they did it and made their fortunes at it, they made it illegal for us to do with DMCA.

[meyer]

I always love these Mac-vs-MS threads. I read them and enjoy them, though I seldom participate in them. Its the Ford/Chevy argument of the new mellenium. :P

Anyway, I will state that I never met a Mac owner that didn't like his or her computer, though I only know a handful of Mac owners.

I don't really know too many unhappy Windows owners either, though the ones I do know aren't geeks - they use the computer, but don't see it as a toy (like many of us do). My brother has an absolutely horrible-running machine, but he must have 20-25 various TSR's running all the time, and they're probably competing pretty heavily for resources.

IMHO, If Windows has one serious fault, its that the platform has chosen collectivism over individualism - that is, Windows is constantly striving to make ones' computer part of a larger machine with great connectedness, whereas most of us would rather have strong gatekeeper control over our own computers just as we do with our other property. This philosophy is precisely why Windows machines are easy targets for mischief - its easy due to the openness of the connection, and fun since MS is so big.

BTW, another fun fact, Bill Gates bought a fairly large sum of Apple stock several years ago. I don't know if it was due to a court decision or not, but it did serve to rejuvinate Apple. Even though I'm a PC/MS user, I don't see anything wrong with that. Apple keeps 'em a little honest (and vica-versa).

[jaz.357]

TODD IS GOD!

(IM an old UTOPIA head)

[Cosmo]

I've been on Mac since the early 90s when I bought a Quadra 840 AVA. I knew nothing about computers then and still had no problems getting the thing up and running. I now own G4 powerbook and using OSX it's all but idiot proof. I've never had an issue I couldn't resolve via common sense.
Meanwhile my mom listened to her STUPID BOYFRIEND (yes, I have issues) and bought a Dell. She has no clue what's going on 6 months later. She's 65 years old and bought a Windows machinew!! I bought her a digital camera, installed the software, and I too have no clue what's going on.

not much of a story, but I think you get my point.

Is Algore still on the board Apple?

[Col Freeper]

Oh boy. Another Mac vs PC thread. Yawn. Zzzzzzzz.

[Unknown Freeper]

Which tax software for the Mac is better? Last year, I became a Mac user and prior to that used either turbo tax or tax cut for the pc. (anxiously awaiting g5 powerbook)

[meyer]

Meanwhile my mom listened to her STUPID BOYFRIEND (yes, I have issues) and bought a Dell. She has no clue what's going on 6 months later. She's 65 years old and bought a Windows machinew!! I bought her a digital camera, installed the software, and I too have no clue what's going on.

Ya know, I don't doubt the ease of operation of a Mac, but I have two Dell computers with XP and neither required any effort on my part to get them up and running. OK, I confess, I had to plug the desktop into the wall outlet and connect the network cable to both, but they ran right form the factory. As far as my digital camera, while I installed the software on my desktop, I never needed to. XP supports most digital cameras as well, as I found out when I plugged the USB from my Canon into the laptop. It immediately recognized the camera.

not much of a story, but I think you get my point.

I hope I'm not getting the wrong point here!

[21st Century Man]

"Mac took technology from Xerox."

Jobs team was licensed by Xerox to integrate it's GUI, which Xerox had no interest of bringing to the home end-user market.

Don't make it sound like Mac/Apple stole it...

[meyer]

Which tax software for the Mac is better? Last year, I became a Mac user and prior to that used either turbo tax or tax cut for the pc. (anxiously awaiting g5 powerbook)

I can't answer specifically for the Mac, but the PC version of TurboTax last year had some neat little spyware installed. It was a bear to remove from my old machine, leaving traces everywhere and bypassing Windows 98's "remove software" procedures. I no longer trust Intuit for that reason. I have no idea how prone Mac is to errant 3rd party software, but if there's a loophole, I suspect Intuit will find it. I do know that Mac is tighter than Windows in that area.

[Swordmaker]

BTW, the Amiga was a better computer than the Mac will ever be.

It is really funny that the article credits Windows 95 with introducing preemptive multitasking when that was a feature on the first Amiga in 1985.

I am a computer consultant servicing clients using all types of computers for over 20 years. I curently use a Macintosh G5.

I have owned and used all types of PCs and every variation of Windows. I still have my very first computer (a Timex 1000), my first Amiga 1000, 500, 2000, and 3000.

When I finally, regretfully retired my Amiga 3000 NINE years after I acquired it, and EIGHT years after the bankruptcy of Commodore, I migrated to a Macintosh PowerPC 6300.

Why did I select Macintosh instead of Windows 98? I went Mac because I had years of fixing the problems my clients were experiencing with various incarnations of Windows. On the other hand, my clients who were operating Macintoshes very seldom had ANY problems at all. It was no cocntest; Macintoshes were (and are) the superior platform.

However, there were still areas my 8 year old 25MHz Amiga 3000 blew the doors off of my brand spankin' new 250 MHz Macintosh PowerPC.

[Swordmaker]

Thanks Quid...