Posted on 02/06/2002 7:02:35 AM PST by toupsie
I still don't understand why so many conservatives think that Rush Limbaugh is a cross dressing faggot because he prefers Macintosh systems. Must be that whole "latent" thing...
As stated before, I am suprised how many conservatives think Rush Limbaugh is a flaming fairy because he prefers Macintosh computers. Guess its a lack of income thing...like so many liberals that are against tax cuts...hate the rich mentality.
By standard VGA monitor, do you mean a "Video Graphics Array" monitor? Wasn't this standard created by, gasp!, the enemy, IBM, the creator of the PC?
I'm just yankin' your chain.
Personally, I think this whole Mac vs. PC thing is no different than a Ford vs. Chevy argument. And is about as mature.
FRegards,
dan
There's an exception to every rule.
Actually, he's said on numerous occasions that he knows that Steve Jobs is an enthusistic supporter of the DemocRATs and that he doesn't care. He still likes his Macintosh.
dan
I dont use a computer because of politics, I use it for politics. :)
Never. Bang for buck, notebooks are too expensive.
I still find plenty of uses for the Mac (it is a Pro Tools machine primarily, but I also use it to scan from a 5370c). It has OSX, 9.2, and 9.1.1 (for the Pro Tools) as well as an Atto SCSI card and external Seagate Barracudas (18G, RAID_0) in a Glyph Rack with a Plextor CD-R ...
All that said, I spend way more time on the Windows boxes (sounds like you are I are in the same line of work) and its hard to get passionate about one over the other ... I like them all, and the distinctions are part of the fun ... I take my fun where I find it these days ... :)
I've never figured out how Microsoft forced companies to buy their products. Did they use a gun? Or did they say "If you want this level of discount, you have to purchase this package of licenses"?
Practically. What Microsoft did was to tell x86 manufacturers that they must buy a Windows license for every x86 machine they built even those that were not meant to have an OS when shipped. Also these contracts prevented the manufacturers from making "Dual Boot" machines. So if Compaq wanted to make a BeOS machine, they still would have to buy a Windows license from Microsoft. If they didn't, Microsoft would yank the all the licenses from Compaq. This what anti-Windows folks called the "Microsoft Tax".
Let's say the retail price of Windows is $200 and the normal wholesale is $100. So if I offer it to you at $20 a pop, provided you by a licence for every machine you build, is this a loaded gun?
Lots of small OEMs get buy without the deep discount.
Toupsie already answered your questions about price and expansion, but I wanted to make a different point: You, and a lot of other people who have such trouble with iMacs are forgetting that most people aren't power users, and are not the same "real people in the real world" that you are. The average PC purchaser - of any platform - will never "expand" their computer beyond adding some better speakers and maybe a scanner. They'll probably never even open the box, except to add some RAM. (And at least half of those people will take their machines to a dealer just for that.)
I've seen incredibly detailed attacks on the new iMac in a number of places on the web, always going into great detail about the technical aspects of the machine: about how far behind the G4 processor has fallen compared with Intel and AMD; the not exactly state-of-the-art display chip, the slower RAM, etc. And they're all absolutely correct about those facts. However, they're all missing the point: If the machine does what it puports to do, in a way that pleases the purchaser, then they will be happy. My parents have what is, at this point, a truly ancient original Bondi iMac. Well, okay, it's a Revision B, but the only difference between it and the true Model T iMac is 2MB of extra VRAM. It only has 96MB of RAM, and a 4GB hard drive. And they are as happy with it today as they were they day they bought it. It does what they want - web surfing, word processing, printing, a little Photoshop stuff (my mother's an amateur photographer) - and it does it well. They have never opened the case. They have never expanded. And they never will. In fact, the only reason they're even considering an upgrade (and they're thinking 6 months to a year down the line) is because my mother wants to change the wallpaper in the room and thinks the greenish-blue iMac will clash with it! (Well, okay, I admit, she's getting a little hungry for a Firewire port too.)
Also see James Lileks's two weblog posts (1) (2) on his extremely positive experiences with his iMac. He is the quintessential "real person in the real world" when it comes to the who the average computer consumer is today. He is who Apple is aiming their iMacs at. And he is completely satisfied.
And in the end, that is ALL that really matters. That is why Apple already has a record number of orders for their new iMacs, even more than they did for the originals. You can crow until the end of time about the technical superiority of Intel-based PCs (and I use "technical" in both senses of the word here), and you will often be correct (less so when we talk about standard Power Mac G4s instead of the consumer-oriented iMacs). And it just won't matter one bit.
(For the record, I have and use both Macs and Windows machines, and have plenty of positive and negative feelings about both.)
They simply threatened to stop selling Windows to those OEMs at all. You're not going to sell many PCs if you can't sell them with Windows preloaded. This was especially true pre-XP when Windows needed to be severely tweaked for each individual configuration of parts that made up a given PC model. Very few consumers have the skills to perform these tweaks properly even if they wanted to.
These threats all went on deep behind the scenes, of course.
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