Opinion: Apple -- Here to Stay

MacCentral ^ | March 08, 2005 | Don Tennant

[r5boston]

Nearly a decade ago, just a few months after Microsoft shipped Windows 95, I asked Bill Gates if it was a conscious decision in the development of that product to give Windows more of a Mac look and feel. Of course I knew he'd say it wasn't, but I couldn't resist asking. "There was no goal even to compete with Macintosh," Gates proclaimed. "We don't even think of Macintosh as a competitor."

That was a crock, so I pressed the issue a little. I asked him how he accounted for the widespread perception that Windows 95 looked a lot like Mac 88, and whether the similarity was just a coincidence. I didn't expect a sobbing confession of mimicry, but I thought it would be cool to see how he'd respond. Surprisingly enough, Gates shifted gears and became more forthcoming.

[Petronski]

Question: Who is George Bush? Answer: The President

True.

I don't know what your strawman is meant to prove, but George Bush is currently the President and is one of 43 men who have served as president.

but Bush = President is FALSE!

Why don't you show me where I said that?

[Petronski]

You better call the orderly.

[pageonetoo]

So educate her. Life is filled with all kinds of threats. And the best way to deal with those threats is through education. We, as a society, offer education to drive a car, learn about sexuality, handle firearms, protect yourself, etc. But God help you if you suggest that it might be a good idea to take a basic class in using a computer before you expose all of your private/confidential data to the world and/or incur the wrath of hacker vandals.

God doesn't need to help us MacAddicts. We are intelligent enough to know better than to buy things requiring a lot of upkeep. We buy our computers to use, like the rest of our appliances. We were among the first to use it for producing movies, like Star Wars, instead of a $150,000 Sparc station. We found ways to produce music with it, and transform video and audio, without being qualified with a degree...

In 1984, I bought a Mac, had a third party internal 5 meg hard drive installed, added a monitor, and a 9-pin printer. I took it to my home office, where I set it on a desk. I plugged the wires to match the icons (which later were color coded like so many PC's do these days), and turned it on. It worked, and within 30 minutes, I had loaded the provided MacWrite, MacPaint, MacDraw, and my purchased copy of MacDraft. I printed out a basic floorplan a few minutes later. I had visited an IBM store, and found that the price was about the same, by the time I bought AutoCad and the PC equipment. But, I would have spent 30 days in a classroom to learn how to use the AutoCad. I still don't know how to address that C > thing.

Soon after, I bought a program called Sticky Bears, and turned my 4 yr old daughter loose with the Mac. No problem...

I currently use a wireless Apple Network to link my G5 desktop machine, as well as a G4 PB, a G3PB, and assorted other Macs. I will soon add a G5 dual Server, to set up a new business site. All i need to know is how to plug it in, and click an icon!

I have used a home network, with included Apple sofware, almost from the beginning. I have had my computers converse with me, responding to verbal commands. Sure, PC's can do that...now. I did it before it got out of their mainframes...

I hooked up my new printer and it searched and found the drivers. Sure, the Windows program can do that ...now. We did it first.

I have a digital camcorder, a digital camera, and a flatbed scanner, and can hook them up and use them, without even telling the Mac. I then can integrate their outputs into a free Apple provided program. Sure, you can do that on your PC, now... but we did it first.

I burn DVD's and CD's with eased, and Wintel guys still are scratching their heads, and forcing third party software to work, with constant tweaking and crashing.

I am sure you love your PC. If you don't want to discuss Mac with relevance, rather than citing all the hypercritical PC tech crap, and expecting others to be overwhelmed with your prowess, you should find a Wintel thread to recite your mantras.

Oh yeah, did I mention we have the most stable Operating System? It saves us the money on virus/spyware software...

Here, on these Mac threads, folk post to others with like interests, to make us aware of new and good things.

Nobody wants to read your shi'ite! If you don't like Macs, that's your problem. You won't change any minds here. We know better!

Oh yeah, did I mention we have the most stable Operating System? It saves us all that time rebooting!

[Last Visible Dog]

We have had a fun journey into Petronski Logic but lets get back to the lecture at hand (To quote Snoop Dogg).

We descended into Petronski Logic because you wanted to disprove this statement:

Firmware = Software.

You failed to disprove this statement - but I will give you another chance. Explain exactly when Firmware is not software. If you can do that, you can prove this statement is false. Now if Firmware is always software, then the statement is true.

HINT: you tried to disprove this statement by applying faulty Petronski Logic - this time address the actual statement.

If you want some practice exercises, try disproving the following statements:

Photoshop = Software

Windows = Software

Doom 3 = Software

[Petronski]

Not all software is firmware. Thus Software=Firmware AND Firmware=Software (being the same statement) are both false.

[Last Visible Dog]

Why don't you show me where I said that?

Did I say you said that? Let's illustrate:

LVD said <> Petronski said ((Bush = President) = FALSE).

I was just extrapolating Petronski Logic. If Firmware = Software is FALSE then Bush = President must also be false.

[Petronski]

So you can't show me where I said that. Fine.

[Bush2000]

I'm scratching my head wondering what perfect pitch has to do with the quality of digital encoding.

It's a mystery...

As for lossy compression, I'm convinced that Photoshop does a better job on jpegs than cheapo programs. Could be my imagination, but I have a number of images with large areas with little detail. The program used to edit them seems to make a difference in the number of visible artifacts.

Perhaps, but quite a few programs use the open source jpeglib code (including PS), so you might want to check and see whether changing the quality setting and/or progressive are impacting the quality. Many cheapo programs just use default settings and don't let you tweak the JPEG settings, so your results will definitely vary from those that expose all possible settings.

I wonder if encoding and decoding programs make an audible difference on the quality of MP3s, for the same bitrate and file size.

Sure. Quite a few apps use the open source LAME MP3 encoder (a reasonably good encoder), which gives you a lot of control over bitrate, etc. I wonder if encoding and decoding programs make an audible difference on the quality of MP3s, for the same bitrate and file size.

[Last Visible Dog]

Not all software is firmware. Thus Software=Firmware AND Firmware=Software (being the same statement) are both false.

More Petronski Logic (sometimes referred to as nonsense).

If 100% of all Firmware is software and 0% of Firmware is not software then Firmware = software.

Software=Firmware is faulty Petronski Logic, please stop repeating it. I will give you another chance: tell us when firmware is not software. If you can't do that then Firmware = software is true.

...don't take my word for it, read the 8 definitions from technical resources that I posted for the term firmware.

Petronski Logic:

firmware = software is FALSE but

Bush = president is TRUE

Therefore, using Petronski Logic:

president = Bush

Another example:

My Car = Yellow (using Petronski Logic - that is false)

Here is how you prove it in Petronski Logic:

If My Car = Yellow then Yellow = My Car

Everything Yellow is not My Car so My Car = Yellow is FALSE!

[Last Visible Dog]

So you can't show me where I said that. Fine.

I never claimed you did. I just illustrated the faulty nature of your logic.

[Bush2000]

We are intelligent enough to know better than to buy things requiring a lot of upkeep.

So are we. I don't spend any time maintaining my computer. I invested a couple hours when I first got it to choose a few freely available tools -- and my machine runs and runs and runs and runs and runs ... virus-free, spyware-free, etc. I simply don't need to worry about those problems. According to you Mac guys, such PC users don't exist.

Nobody wants to read your shi'ite! If you don't like Macs, that's your problem. You won't change any minds here. We know better!

Of course you know better. You're like the dim-witted Moonies handing out pencils and flowers at the airport. All hail the Cult of Steve! Tell that to your buddy, Hal. The #1 Apple Cheerleader is constantly stuffing PC-related threads with his useless "Switch! I did!" evangelism.

[antiRepublicrat]

Thank you. I think it is futile to try and reason with Swordmaker. It is nearly impossible to reason with fanatics.

It's harder dealing with people who don't know the principles of economics. Price is only a reflection of the supply and demand of a product, the going exchange rate between buyers and sellers in a market. You could argue that the iPod is not a good value based on some economic theories of value (like Karl Marx's), but the Market Theory of economics states that price and value are the same.

In other words, we can't say the iPod is overpriced. Only the market will tell us that by buying fewer iPods.

[Last Visible Dog]

Not all software is firmware.

But all firmware is software.

Petronski Logic has left you in quite a quandary

Let's listen to Petronski's mind right now: "Daisy, daisy give...me...yo..ur....answ..ser....do"

[Petronski]

Look, I just realized I've been trying to explain this to you for six days, and you've shown no sign of progress. There is only so much I can do for you.

Software=firmware and firmware=software are the same statement. One of them (the first one) is obviously not true. There is some software that is not firmware. Thus, the other cannot be true. There is software that is not firmware, firmware=software is false. Firmware is a subset of software, but firmware does not equal software because those two sets have different members.

I'd love to play remedial sophomore debate club with you, but time is not boundless. If only you'd shown some progress on this. You showed progress in other areas...clearly you now understand that the iPod battery is not hardwired, that it does not cost $200 to replace, etc., so you obviously CAN learn. But on this topic, I obviously not equipped to make you understand.

[antiRepublicrat]

The fact that you can't admit that Apple made a poor design choice here is very telling.

And just like with my trusty old Palm V, I think it's an excellent design choice. But whether that is appealing to an individual consumer is of course up to each. The design choices of the competition in their user interfaces and clunky batteries will keep my from buying them.

I'd rather get smooth operation with a smaller form factor and excellent user interface and have to change the battery every few years than live with an inferior product all that time just so battery changing every few years will be easier.

But then you may decide differently for yourself. The wonders of a free market.

[antiRepublicrat]

On the other hand, I have drawers full of PC-DOS programs from the early 1980s that run fine under XP.

I an old program that won't even install on anything besides FAT16. I'd have to crank up Windows 95 on FAT16 under VirtualPC to get it to work. I also have some DOS games that won't work under XP, and some Windows 9x games that are very buggy under XP. But that's why I have VirtualPC.

[pageonetoo]

You're like the dim-witted Moonies handing out pencils and flowers at the airport.

Excerpt-

"...Most home Windows users tempted to switch to a Mac could do so without losing anything, and might well gain … Macintosh computers are the best-designed computers on the market, and handle every common computing task as well as, or better than, a Windows PC. Switching to the Mac might make sense if you’re tired of Windows or Microsoft; if you spend much of your time working with digital photos, videos or music; or if you just love the look and feel of the Mac hardware and software. It might appeal if you prefer a carefully designed machine over a commodity box, or tight integration between software and hardware instead of a generic operating system crammed into a generic PC."

-Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal

[Last Visible Dog]

Price is only a reflection of the supply and demand of a product, the going exchange rate between buyers and sellers in a market.

BINGO (except you forgot to mention hype). Thanks for proving my point. Just because people will buy it does not mean it is priced appropriately - some people will pay fecal-loads of money for just about anything if you hype it right. You can not equate value of a product by what the market will bear. That was my point. Just because people buy Ipods does not prove it is not over priced.

In other words, we can't say the iPod is overpriced. Only the market will tell us that by buying fewer iPods.

That is only true is you are a market - human beings are allowed to draw their own conclusions. It does not prove it is a good price just because lots of people buy it. It may be a good price for Apple and a bad price for customers.

[antiRepublicrat]

Certainly "Tom Brady equals Patriots" cannot be true, as Tom Brady is singular, but Patriots is plural. Tom Brady is A Patriot. He is a member of the set "Patriots."

Come to discuss computer stuff and end up with a discussion on set theory. I love this place. No joke. It's nice to see where discussions can go (except for defining "hardware" earlier).

[pageonetoo]

You're like the dim-witted Moonies handing out pencils and flowers at the airport.

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