>I hope you escape with your head intact on this one. :)
>
>I've had just enough experience with Macs to have an opinion...
>
>I'm a died in the wool PC person who has never had a serious problem with
>my computers or software. Win95 was truly a major step forward and is
>extremely well supported due to the advent of the internet. There are
>software drivers and one-click wizards for installing just about any
>capabilities you want. The machine/software combo does everything it's
>advertised to do.
>
>On my other (biased) hand, my kid's extremely well-equipped school has a
>bunch of power Macs that are extremely buggy. Software won't install or
>won't run right once it's installed because of the limited video
>capabilities of the system. Things like Grolier's Encyclopedia may refuse
>to display maps, etc.
I guess my experiences are just the other way around. I grew up playing
with PC and there predicessors, s-100 bus 8080 machines. Before I started
with my current employer I thought Macs were a waste of time. Eventually I
had to start to support them, mainly because nobody really was doing it
inhouse at the time. Now I wouldn't got back to PC's if I have my choice.
I'll admit the PC's have gotten better over the years. It used to take
major effort to install a hard disk into a PC, with a Mac it was just plug
and play. I won't go into the nightmares I've had with ethernet card on
PC's. I've had basically no experience with Win95 or NT so I can't comment
there, but windoze 3.x in my book sucks. I can't tell you how many hours
I've had to spend trying to fix some obscure problem with .INI files that
would cause windows not to even start.
Some of the creations from Apple have not been upto par in my book, some of
the lower end machines have had some problems but apple has had repair
programs for the machines in question. The stability of the system software
keeps improving as of late. I personally have been impressed with there
transition from the 68000 family to the powerpc. Some of the worst behaving
and slowest pieces of software to run on the Mac come from MicroSoft.
I'm one who like there new model of doing system updates. I've got mixed
feelings about the NeXt merger, but over all it looks good. You have to go
to NT or O/S 2 to get protected memory and pre-emptive multi-tasking.
NeXt's OS is based on UNIX so you get all of this, from what I understand
you are insulated from UNIX with NeXtStep. Apple already has a piece of
software to run Mac applications on unix boxes, so this seems like it would
fit nicely. The things that are going to break are O/S additions, like the
eye candy things
>As I see it, there are several Truths which should be revealed concerning
>the Eternal Apple Plan.
>
>1.) The machine itself is a wonderful creation, but it is marketed very
>cynically.
Yeah the adverts have kind of sucked. The agency they use, used to do some
real cool adds, maybe it's time for them to start looking for somebody
else. Say Widen & Kennedy, look what they've done for Nike!
>From recent experience (I seriously considered several Apple
>systems recently because I'm going into elementary education), Macs are
>still sold as systems you can just plug into the wall and never ever have
>to configure. In fact, in this respect the Mac it is no different from the
>PC (the Grolier's problem is too few colors in the video configuration),
>and I'd call it an intentionally deceptive marketing practice. I'd bet
>all my British cars that there are many more incorrectly configured
>(crippled) Macs out there than there are screwed-up PCs.
You keep brining up Gorlier's, did you ever think that maybe it's the
problem not the Mac? A lot of software will check the bit depth and if it's
not set right will correct it or atleast tell you what the problem is.
Usually it seems to be game type apps wanting less bit depth for speed. All
of the machines apple has released for the desktop in the last 3 or 4 years
have had slots for additional video memory. I think you would be on the
losing side of that bet, I spend more time supporting the PC in our company
then the Macs. I would say there are 20 PC's and 120 Macs.
>2.) The entire product line is severely overpriced and add-on peripherals
>are criminally overpriced.
Some of the systems are overpriced, but there are clone vendors now that
have lower prices machines. The clone machines all use varients of the
apple motherboards, even the new Motorola systems were a cooperative
design. Currnetly the license from apple does not allow the cloners to make
laptops, an error as far as I can see. If you want a truely screaming
machine you should check out some of the multi processor machines the clone
makers have. As for the peripherals I'm not sure what you're talking about.
You can hook up just about any monitor to a mac, at most you need a $10
adapter. Hard drive prices shouldn't be any diffrent, most of the consumer
macs have ide and scsi controllers in them. Same with scanners. MicroSoft
reams us on software, try comparing the street price of Office.
>3.) The notion that the Mac is more "intuitive" than the PC is really
>living in the past. This was true when comparing DOS 3.3 systems to the
>little gray Mac boxes ten or twelve years ago, but not anymore. Win95 is
>pretty intuitive right from the start, but you need to used the machine,
>explore and click on things to get comfortable with all the capabilities.
I'll give you that they are less diffrences then there used to be. But from
everything I've seen the user interface is more uniform on the Mac then
under 95. There are things that both do better.
>4.) Finally, high end Macs in the hands of people who know how to use them
>are EXTREMELY powerful machines which can do many complex things in a very
>straightforward and "intuitive" manner. This is why the Mac dominates
>several entire industries such as the publishing industry. But let's not
>confuse these machines with the entry-level Macs sold to ordinary consumers
>which cost more than Pentium PCs and can do less.
They are the same machines.... Maybe not as many expansion slots, but when
so much is built into the machines are they really necessary? Do you know
of many home users that need more than 128Mb of RAM? You have SCSI port
built into them so you can add upto 6 external SCSI devices like disk
drives and scanners. You can add to the video memory and run 19" monitors
upto 24bits deep. Now that I think about it the 7500 and higher machines
come with video in/out that consumer machines don't have.
If you're intrested in bottom line PURCHASE price, yeah you can get a
wintel box cheaper. It's been proven over and over again that long term
cost is less for a Mac.
But again we all have LBC's so sanity for all of us is questionable.
Lane
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