[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Well, I'm basically staying out of this thread as voodoo and I have...issues, but in a single breath with claiming there was no advantage to using a Mac any more, that was just downright embarrassing.

For many people there isn't, so what?

[mattyb]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

For many people there isn't, so what?

For many people there isn't any water/electricity/sewage/Gucci, so what?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by mattyb 

For many people there isn't any water/electricity/sewage/Gucci, so what?

I don't get your point.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Dismissing the boring nerdy sarcasm, yeah Apple has been moving more Wintels than ever before. Since the hardware is generic, I'm not impressed - but how has Mac OS X been doing? Apple has been selling more Mac OS X than ever before and never put less effort into making it.

What does OS X so desperately need? Leopard was a pretty stable release, and ever since Snow Leopard I haven't ever had to reinstall the OS for any reason at all, even when I've made a mistake.

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

I don't get your point.

If you can afford a Mac, why wouldn't you? It's down to personal preference.

[Spheric Harlot]

Sorry, but being able to deinstall applications by dragging them to the trash constitutes an advantage to any user, advanced, novice, "power", pro, or geek.

I find it rather impossible to imagine a scenario where it wouldn't be.

That's all.

I really don't want to drop into this, so I apologize for the snark.

I've already edited my other post to that effect.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

If you can afford a Mac, why wouldn't you? It's down to personal preference.

You answered your own question. Some people prefer Windows PCs. For some people they are literally the right tool for the job, no matter what personal preference is. Yes a Mac can boot into Windows, but if you know that you are going to be running Windows full-time, a Mac may not be the best choice if there are better options out there in terms of horsepower per buck or form factor.

[Shaddim]

Some people do prefer Windows, and some people also enjoy jabbing themselves in the stomach with a fork.

[osiris]

Some people are stupid too, and simply like doing things the hard way and with as much risk to failure as humanly possible.

yeah, that would make a great ad for Microsoft.

[imitchellg5]

Are you really going to argue about the Mac vs PC thing? At this point it's like arguing about which flavor of chocolate you prefer. It doesn't matter.

[osiris]

Oh, it does, I assure you.

[imitchellg5]

Well. Only if you're buying it for someone

[Atheist]

voodoo... wake up! It's 2011. Small portable computing devices are the future. The vast majority of computer users don't need a desktop computer.

I would argue you're lamenting the loss of your youth... not the Mac.

[P]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Where does that leave *the MACINTOSH*? More sales don't help the Mac. I wrote about the state of the Mac, not the state of Apple in general (which is fine at the moment) and I stand by that distinction. Apple is not == Macintosh.

More sales help the Mac by increasing the installed base, thereby increasing the potential sales of any app for the platform and any hardware with a driver for the platform etc. No, Apple is not the same as the Macintosh anymore, but it was historically.

Originally Posted by voodoo 

So the versions of the i3 and i5 are desktop versions? I'd like a confirmation on that, if you don't mind, since they are available in laptop versions too. Is the motherboard a desktop version as well? Certainly not the GPU.

The iMac is available in Core i3 3.06 and 3.2 GHz versions. The fastest mobile i3 is 2.67 GHz. The i5 dual is 3.6 GHz, also more than the top mobile i5, and there isn't even a mobile i5 quad in that generation.

The chipset is based around the P55, the desktop chipset. It has 4 DIMM slots, something that is very rare on laptops (although not unheard of) and it uses DDR3-1333 RAM, which the Arrandale Core i3 and i5 do not support. The slots are SO-DIMMs, however, but that does not limit either performance or capacity - Intel states that the max RAM for those CPUs is 16 GB, and there are enough 4GB SO-DIMMs. The GPU is a mobile chip, but described as the closest desktop equivalent as is Apple's habit.

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Notably the 'main feature' of every new iMac according to Steve Jobs is that it's 'thinner' than ever before. Like a cm or two matters one iota for a computer that sits on the desktop all day. That man has lost some connection with reality. But I digress. .. Thinner iMacs means laptop energy saving motherboards and chipsets. But you claim "everything" except the GPU is of desktop caliber. I don't mind being wrong on this, but I've seen no confirmation of that. Just that the new iMacs use the i5 and i7 (both of which exist in a low-energy, low performance laptop versions).

The iMac being thin is a distinguishing characteristic - probably the only Apple marketing can come up with. The performance has actually increased a lot with the first quad and will increase again with the first Sandy Bridge chips. The argument could be made for stagnation in the line just before that, but right now, the iMac is doing fine.

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Again you use Apple and the Macintosh interchangeably. I have never been enthusiastic about Apple. Just the Mac. Maybe I've been a minority without knowing it and everyone was just so excited about Apple and by extension the Mac, but I doubt it.

Oh no, I was a Mac user since 1984, I bought my first iPod with the 4G and my first iPhone a week ago - I'm here for the Mac stuff. The point is, Apple dying would have sort of killed the Mac as well. That was quite close to happening back in -97, and much of the enthusiasm in the years after that was defending the underdog. Without that near-death experience, the enthusiasm would have been much less. In retrospect, the G4 was underwhelming, but Apple could thrill the crowds with their Photoshop bakeoffs anyway.

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Tirade? You're no Shakespeare buddy. And you're right, there are not many complaints that OS X is missing crucial features that Windows has, because they're pretty much on par - though I could name a few: such as graphics performance, backwards compatibility and hardware support.

No complaints is patently wrong. The preemptive multitasking and memory protection were introduced *a decade ago*. Please, stop talking about that as features. That's history.

You wrote:

Originally Posted by voodoo

Windows 7 has reached Mac OS X in functionality and passed it in performance, reliability and compatibility. That has never happened before in Apple history that Microsoft has reached Apple in any way shape or form.

Emphasis mine, and my answer to that is yes, yes it has. Win NT 4.0 did reach Apple, and passed it in many ways. Some examples above. I can dig up more, but the point is that those things are hard to add. Very hard - unlike some of the examples that follow.

Originally Posted by voodoo

Good enough, fast enough and reliable enough are words I have until now connected with Windows, not the Macintosh. So we've downgraded from damn fast and responsive to good enough. Yeah, I think that can be improved upon and I think OS X is a downgrade from OS 9 in UI performance (though we've gained some other good things with OS X) -- but it's not a zero sum game. We can easily have both performance and reliability, but it takes effort.

Are you aware of the Million Man-hour problem? Not trying to be snarky, not sure how well known it is. Basically, it says that if you keep adding programmers to a project, their contribution will eventually approach zero and even become negative, as the effort required to organize them becomes a bottleneck. That is what Apple has become incredibly good at avoiding - they have a few very good programmers, and they choose what projects to work on carefully. After the graphics optimizations in 10.4, they simply decided that it was enough, they were better than the competition and those resources could be better applied elsewhere. I'm not sure that stuffing the project with people focused on squeezing a few nanoseconds out of the equation would have made the total product a better deal.

Originally Posted by voodoo

Effort Apple is not at all interested in. Steve Jobs has been obsessed with it on the iToys however, which are quite responsive. If only the Macintosh, with its immensely more CPU/GPU power was as responsive as an puny ARM based iPhone. It's a question of interest.

Ehm, no. It's a question of storage access time - basically, slow HD compared to fast flash. Put an SSD in your machine and watch it fly.

Originally Posted by voodoo

Spotlight? Exposé? Dashboard? Spaces? JFS? Bonjour? ... and indeed Front Row. All in version 1.0 (more or less) though Front Row was better in version 1.0 than the tragedy that it is today.. though it is essentially not Front Row, just a facsimile - a rewrite. The rest are fine things, but have seen little or no performance improvements or development in the last years. CUPS is a system for driving printers.

Spotlight gained the ability to search network drives (which Windows still can't, BTW. How's WinFS coming along, Redmond?) and Bonjour has gained a lot of tricks like IPv6 but in general, there hasn't been much fiddling. So? Apple drops big features into an OS release, fixes bugs and then leaves them alone. I quite prefer that to the nineties approach of dropping say OpenTransport which didn't even work until 1.1 and didn't add anything over the old network system until years later.

Originally Posted by voodoo

Quartz Extreme is how old? As I wrote, some of those things are fine, but have seen no real enhancements, developments or actual upgrades. Just maintenance.

10.2, if you refer to the compositing engine. Quartz itself has seen lots of updates to speed up old Quickdraw and add hardware acceleration to QuartzGL (Quartz is both the new 2D graphics language and the compositing engine). The steps forward after that have come through things like CoreAnimation. Is it the new names that bother you?

Originally Posted by voodoo

OK, let's grant you that all above is valid. Is there a vision for Spotlight in the future, or can shareware developers make something as good or better with little effort? Will it be developed? No. It won't. It hasn't. Exposé? Spaces? Dashboard? Apart from mixing it into one, anything?

Spotlight has been developed, as I mentioned above. It's currently ahead of the competition. I'm sure it will be updated, but only as a sideeffect of a new FS whenever that rolls around. Mixing Expose-Space-Dashboard into one DOES count as developing them - let's see what they do with Lion.

Originally Posted by voodoo

Are we still using HFS+? Like in the 90s?

-98. Yes, that's a weak spot, one of two in the current OS X in my opinion.

Originally Posted by voodoo

What happened to file extensions? They still there? Yes, stronger than in DOS back in the 80s. Filetypes gone because ... users are too stoopid? That's what some apologists say.

I don't like them either, but honestly: file extensions are file types stored in a way that is compatible with existing file transfer protocols. I can live with them - and no, they're not stronger than in DOS: they don't control what files are executed.

I personally dislike the loss of creator codes more, but A) there's a workaround and B) they were designed in the paradigm that most documents on your computer were created by you, and thus had a logical creation connection, while most documents today were created by someone else with God knows what application. Personally I'd prefer if the creator code would be left unset for any new file that came in, but that it would be set for any new document created on the OS, but perhaps that would be too confusing.

Originally Posted by voodoo

So instead of being insanely great, let's be insanely mediocre! That's the state of the Mac today. And there's no real reason for it, apart from the fact that Apple can't (or won't) concentrate on two things at once these days -- perhaps because Steve Jobs can't. Apple of the 90s was a lousy business, but then again, I was never a fan of Apple. Heck I even bought a clone when I could.

But Apple of the 90s could do system engineering and design, at least of what they already had in their hands. Granted Copland wasn't all that successful, but blaming that on Apple not being able to design and engineer good systems was not the reason. It was despite the talent of Apple.

Apple tried it your way. It almost killed them. You can't run a business like that. If you ever become insanely rich, start a non-profit that runs that way - that might work. A for profit company doesn't, and it has been proven over and over.

[P]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

The GPUs are just embedded on the motherboard on most models, right? To be fair, Apple is far from the only vendor that ships machines with embedded video.

On the iMacs, they're on standard MXM cards but with a special BIOS. On the 15" an 17" MBPs, they're soldered onto the motherboard as you say, and on the lower-end models they're of course integrated into the chipset.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by osiris 

Some people are stupid too, and simply like doing things the hard way and with as much risk to failure as humanly possible.

yeah, that would make a great ad for Microsoft.

Some people also work in financial services of various sorts, run Exchange servers, use Sharepoint, play a lot of games (or design them using DirectX), or find that they are more productive in a document-centric sort of environment.

I'm not one of those people, but the urge to label these people as stupid really comes across as zealotry and is a big turn off.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by P 

Ehm, no. It's a question of storage access time - basically, slow HD compared to fast flash. Put an SSD in your machine and watch it fly.

It's awesome how much faster the puny 1.4 GHz 11.6" MacBook Air with its 2GB RAM is than the honkin' i5 MacBook Pro over on the other side of the display table, at some of the most common mundane tasks - launching an application with a media browser, for instance, or, in fact, launching almost any application at all.

[Laminar]

successfultroll.jpg

[driven]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

I for one am glad that I no longer have to answer emails from my relatives that go along the lines of "I DOWNLOADED A MOVIE VIEWER ON MY WINDOWS XP AND THE COMPUTER WON'T BOOT NOW!!!11"

Me too. My dad gave me these calls on a weekly basis. Eventually I put him in the car, took him to the apple store and had him get an iMac. Old G5 model. Still uses it. Not a single "support call" from him since that day.

[Don Pickett]

Windows 7 has reached Mac OS X in functionality and passed it in performance, reliability and compatibility. That has never happened before in Apple history that Microsoft has reached Apple in any way shape or form.

Happened the minute MS released Windows 95. It had pre-emptive multitasking, large drive support, long file names, real multi-cpu support and a robust TCP/IP stack at the time Apple was still struggling along with 7.5.x. Windows 98 made it much worse. Matter of fact, there was no real reason to buy a Mac from 1995 until the release of 10.1 in 2001: Windows machines were much faster, much cheaper and had a much better OS.

If you toss the Megahertz Wars in there, you can make the argument that it was only with the Intel switch that Macs could be relied upon to have equal performance at equal price.

[voodoo]

The Windows 95 comparisons or NT 4.0 are only good for some parts (perhaps pre-empetive multitasking and memory protection), but as far as performance and reliability, the Mac OS had the advantage until Windows 7.

I'm fine with the Mac fading away, I guess. But I feel it isn't necessary, at least not at the moment. Sure many people *think* that iToys and such super-mobile cloud computing are the future, but it isn't the present. So for now Apple is ditching good, solid, powerful and proven platforms and apps for very mediocre things - on the assumption that in the future this will all make sense.

Perhaps it will, I don't know.. but what I do know is that now, today, 'normal' computers are better for doing *actual* work.

When I saw the Apple presentation on video editing on the iPhone, I rolled my eyes so much I almost saw how my brain looks like.

Like P says, throwing more engineers at a problem doesn't necessarily fix it and in fact in the end one will just hit a wall, but really - it doesn't seem like there are more than a handful of engineers working on the Mac OS. Heck, even shareware companies manage to write a decent Finder replacement! (decent for those who want a browser Finder)

If I knew Apple had hundreds of engineers working on the Finder and another hundreds working on other aspects of the Mac OS and this (what we have today) would be the result, well then I'd be inclined to agree - but I'd be surprised if the total number of Mac OS engineers today numbers one hundred, total.

And while it is true that the iToys have some technological advancements over the desktops in general (such as the SSD), that really only helps launch time - little else - on Macs that have 4+ GBs of RAM and 500MBs+ of VRAM. Safari still chokes on animated GIFs in 2011 at times!! (if they are very many)

SSDs don't explain everything and the lightweight iOS doesn't explain everything either... though it does explain how iToys are relatively responsive (considering how low powered they are) it doesn't explain why the Mac is and has always been since OS X, less than it should be with all the performance power under the hood. Apple can do better. I know they can, I've seen it. We all have.

Another comment of P which doesn't resonate with me is that Apple needs to be "good enough" to make money, instead of "insanely great", well being insanely great was what gave the iToys lift. They are damn fine for what they are, and if they had only been "good enough" then I doubt that they would have achieved the success they enjoy today. The Mac sells well, despite the stagnation - not because of it.

I'm sure Apple could sell even more.

[P]

One of the points you return to is how parts of the OS haven't moved anything at all over the years. In parts you are incorrect, as I mentioned in my last post, but in others you are absolutely right. That's how Apple works these days - find a few things to focus on and make them great instead of spreading the work over all these million tasks to make each one a little better. I suspect doing it this way helps reduce the load on the testing department. General interface speed hasn't been one of these since 10.4 or so. Probably they felt the work was better spent on things like CoreAnimation.

Originally Posted by voodoo

The Windows 95 comparisons or NT 4.0 are only good for some parts (perhaps pre-empetive multitasking and memory protection), but as far as performance and reliability, the Mac OS had the advantage until Windows 7.

You have some seriously rose-coloured glasses on if you think System 7.5.x was a more reliable system than NT. I remember that as the worst, most unstable OS I've ever used. As for performance, don't forget that the Mac had a hardware advantage for a time, especially when Intel was promoting "Pentium with MMX" against the 604 because the Pentium Pro yields were low. Even so, there were areas where the Mac was terrible, such as network copy speeds and anything involving 68k emulation (such a basic task as switching the frontmost program was emulated all the way until 9.1).

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by P 

One of the points you return to is how parts of the OS haven't moved anything at all over the years. In parts you are incorrect, as I mentioned in my last post, but in others you are absolutely right. That's how Apple works these days - find a few things to focus on and make them great instead of spreading the work over all these million tasks to make each one a little better. I suspect doing it this way helps reduce the load on the testing department. General interface speed hasn't been one of these since 10.4 or so. Probably they felt the work was better spent on things like CoreAnimation.

I agree more or less completely, but we reach a different conclusion of whether this is bad or good. I honestly think Apple can do better and base that on the development and QA of the iToys - which is pretty darn impressive. I think there exist enough talented people in the world to handle both the Mac and the iToys at the same time - though it would cut into Apple profits (certainly) and it makes no sense if a policy decision has been made by Steve Jobs that Macs and PCs in general aren't "interesting" any more. Which I suspect is the case.

Most of us have a pretty clear idea about how Steve Jobs thinks, he wants to focus *all* his energy and efforts on things he is enamored with and ditch everything else like yesterday's news. But for a huge company like Apple it can and needs to have full focus on all its assets. All the time. This is why I think it's 'bad' that the Mac development is more sporadic and less vision driven than before (IMHO) and that it only reflects Steve Jobs' idiosyncrasies, not the actual capabilities of Apple as a company.

You have some seriously rose-coloured glasses on if you think System 7.5.x was a more reliable system than NT. I remember that as the worst, most unstable OS I've ever used. As for performance, don't forget that the Mac had a hardware advantage for a time, especially when Intel was promoting "Pentium with MMX" against the 604 because the Pentium Pro yields were low. Even so, there were areas where the Mac was terrible, such as network copy speeds and anything involving 68k emulation (such a basic task as switching the frontmost program was emulated all the way until 9.1).

I didn't mean to say that System 7 was more stable than NT (if I did, that was my mistake) but I presented three variables; but more reliable, yes in a broad sense. If you ran a stable program on System 7 it could run reliably - and I'd say you're using the rose colored glasses if you want to claim that multitasking was something normal or common in that time.

So if the program crashed, then you had to restart the computer (which was very fast in the System 7 days) and open it again. In OS X and NT you don't have to restart, but if a program crashes, it crashes. However today, when we are used to run many many things at the same time, then yes it is very important that the system doesn't go with the program. In the 90s, on 68k processors, multitasking was more of a tech demo for most people than actually how you used a computer.

Which is exactly why the lack of preemptive multitasking wasn't a real problem for Mac users until perhaps Windows 95 came out and we all got jealous (well we who can be considered "nerds"), but other people? ... let's put it this way, the iOS didn't support multitasking until recently, yet it was very popular and usable even in the latter part of the first decade of the 21st century. I realize many complained about the lack of multitasking on the iOS (and even the version of multitasking that was eventually implemented) but it wasn't a dealbreaker for very many people (all those who actually bought an iToy before multitasking being implemented).

So, I still maintain that System 7 was quite reliable because on a 90s Mac it was quite stable (though 7.5.x wasn't, 7.1 was) and it performed very very well. However it was not as stable as NT when programs crashed. For obvious reasons. And Windows 95 and NT were not immune to crashes or corruptions either. Registry corruption for instance. Plugging in a USB device. All in all, with the mature programs available for System 7 and that one would mostly run one major app at a time simply because of hardware limitations, yes it was a reliable system. And it performed better than Windows at the time ... I remember seeing a Windows 95 Pentium machine crawling through startup and performing like the UI was in molasses back in 1997.

It wasn't a dark time of constant crashes, I only remember semi-constant crashes when running MacAMP in the background (which was a notoriously unstable program, but it was just so cool to listen to mp3s at the time) and that was in 1999, a short time before OS X.

So technical stability, no. Relative reliability, yes. Performance, oh yes.

I don't yearn back for those days, don't get me wrong, but to claim stability comes at the cost of performance and refining ... as one could phrase the argument ... well, I don't see that. Stability, reliability and performance can be had in one single system.

And as loony as that looks when I write it, it will probably happen in Windows sooner than on the Mac - and just because Apple is focusing on something else. (in the foreseeable future at least)

[Don Pickett]

To inject some reality in the solipsism of 'the Mac is dying': Mac Growth Outpaces Market for 19th Straight Quarter | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

[imitchellg5]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

I agree more or less completely, but we reach a different conclusion of whether this is bad or good. I honestly think Apple can do better and base that on the development and QA of the iToys - which is pretty darn impressive. I think there exist enough talented people in the world to handle both the Mac and the iToys at the same time - though it would cut into Apple profits (certainly) and it makes no sense if a policy decision has been made by Steve Jobs that Macs and PCs in general aren't "interesting" any more. Which I suspect is the case.

The fact that you keep calling them "iToys" reflects a misunderstanding of the reality of the direction of the desktop OS market.

[driven]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

The fact that you keep calling them "iToys" reflects a misunderstanding of the reality of the direction of the desktop OS market.

[anthology123]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

The fact that you keep calling them "iToys" reflects a misunderstanding of the reality of the direction of the desktop OS market.

It's rather ironic he refers to them as iToys, considering that during the 80s and 90s, Macs were dismissed as "toys". The new paradigm of ipod/iPhone/iPad will accomplish alot more in the next decade, but as with all technologies that go for portability, every two steps forward makes one step backward, it's just a way of life.

[sek929]

Originally Posted by Atheist 

voodoo... wake up! It's 2011. Small portable computing devices are the future. The vast majority of computer users don't need a desktop computer.

/Thread

The majority of computer usage is email, music and web browsing. We can do this in our pockets now.

We have Macs with the latest technologies, unhindered by the follies of Motorola and IBM, that are well designed and perform as advertised. IMO the state of the Mac has never been better. Classic crashed to much, not matter what you try to tell me, and in the PPC days we had lagging processor updates. Sure I'd like a tower that isn't north of 2 grand, but what would I need to do that an i3 iMac wouldn't be able to handle?

[Phileas]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

The fact that you keep calling them "iToys" reflects a misunderstanding of the reality of the direction of the desktop OS market.

Exactly. Computers, and their OS, will be a lot more invisible in years to come.

[olePigeon]

Unfortunately I think the world is heading towards dumb terminals and cloud computing. We'll no longer own anything, we'll just have to rent it.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by olePigeon 

Unfortunately I think the world is heading towards dumb terminals and cloud computing. We'll no longer own anything, we'll just have to rent it.

Disagree. In fact, Apple has been fighting that model from the beginning. When you buy something from the iTunes store you own it. The copy is on your machine(s), not stored in the cloud anywhere.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

Not any more: Most iMacs use standard PCI GPUs. Theoretically you could replace the card. However, given the iMacs are designed with extremely tight tolerances for both fit and cooling, putting a card other than the one the machine was expressly designed for may be asking for trouble.

False. They use laptop GPUs on nonstandard MXM-like cards. Nothing at all like a standard desktop PCIe graphics card.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by anthology123 

It's rather ironic he refers to them as iToys, considering that during the 80s and 90s, Macs were dismissed as "toys". The new paradigm of ipod/iPhone/iPad will accomplish alot more in the next decade, but as with all technologies that go for portability, every two steps forward makes one step backward, it's just a way of life.

Oh, the criticism of iOS devices is, for the large part, EXACTLY the same as for the original Mac - the technical details differ but are exchangeable, and the conclusions drawn are exactly the same, and the basic fears and worries are the same.

In five years' time, there will be absolutely no discussion about the default modus operandi of ordinary household computers.

There will, however, be discussion over whether the "original" really is much better than all the "me too" knock-offs that look close enough at first glance but obviously completely missed the concept - just as there was with Macintosh. In this case, though, there's actually two serious contenders for concept: webOS and Windows Phone 7. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like either of them will be serious market forces for long. (No, Android is not a computing concept platform - it's an advertising vehicle.)

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

Which is exactly why the lack of preemptive multitasking wasn't a real problem for Mac users until perhaps Windows 95 came out and we all got jealous (well we who can be considered "nerds"), but other people? ... let's put it this way, the iOS didn't support multitasking until recently, yet it was very popular and usable even in the latter part of the first decade of the 21st century. I realize many complained about the lack of multitasking on the iOS (and even the version of multitasking that was eventually implemented) but it wasn't a dealbreaker for very many people (all those who actually bought an iToy before multitasking being implemented).

iOS had serious and extremely effective preemptive multi-tasking from Day One.

You didn't notice it, because your phone just worked even if you had the iPod running and were checking an e-mail, but just because it's transparent doesn't mean it isn't there.

Conversely, being able to manually manage memory heaps for applications via the Finder's Get Info windows did not mean that System 7 had advanced memory management features; quite the contrary was the case, despite what a handful of luddites liked to claim in the transition to OS X.

[driven]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

(No, Android is not a computing concept platform - it's an advertising vehicle.)

Someone said (paraphrased) "Google is a marketing company disguised as a technology company."

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by mduell 

False. They use laptop GPUs on nonstandard MXM-like cards. Nothing at all like a standard desktop PCIe graphics card.

Actually, looks like you just need a card with an MXM PCIE connector which will fit into an iMac case. A quick google search found some here. As usual with these things, the real answer is 'how much time and effort are you willing to put into it?'

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

Actually, looks like you just need a card with an MXM PCIE connector which will fit into an iMac case. A quick google search found some here. As usual with these things, the real answer is 'how much time and effort are you willing to put into it?'

The part you linked to is only useful for replacing the GPU in one particular iMac model.

You can't just grab any random MXM graphics card from a PC laptop and have it work.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by mduell 

The part you linked to is only useful for replacing the GPU in one particular iMac model.

You can't just grab any random MXM graphics card from a PC laptop and have it work.

1) This is true with any GPU for a Mac: you either need one built for OS X, or you need to flash a PC one;
2) I will bet you it's possible, just because almost any hack is possible. I remember stumbling across a Japanese web page on which a guy showed the steps he'd taken to remove the stand 8MB Rage 128 which came with the Pismo and had replaced it with the 16MB version. As you can imagine, a very, very touchy operation.

That said, yes, you're right, iMacs don't use desktop cards. But they can be replaced and, even, upgraded.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

To inject some reality in the solipsism of 'the Mac is dying': Mac Growth Outpaces Market for 19th Straight Quarter | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

I'm sure this is going to be too nuanced for you, because I've basically written it in several posts already, but here goes: the computer line commonly called a Mac made by Apple isn't dying, never said it was. The concept is. Now it's just a second tier product, made with little enthusiasm or software innovation to the point that Windows is pretty much interchangeable with this 'Macintosh'.

Apple might as well be selling pretty Windows boxes. And in a way they are. So that's cool I guess.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

The fact that you keep calling them "iToys" reflects a misunderstanding of the reality of the direction of the desktop OS market.

What utter nonsense, I write iToys, because it's a convenient shorthand for iPhone/iPod touch/iPad -- I laughed harder at atheist's blabber about my posts really being about me wanting to relive my youth or somesuch.

You're on the internet, replying to some post by some guy you don't know. Can you stay on topic?

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by anthology123 

It's rather ironic he refers to them as iToys, considering that during the 80s and 90s, Macs were dismissed as "toys". The new paradigm of ipod/iPhone/iPad will accomplish alot more in the next decade, but as with all technologies that go for portability, every two steps forward makes one step backward, it's just a way of life.

Yeah ironic if you don't understand irony, since the Macs were indeed used as important workstations in numerous fields - but certainly in graphic design and DTP above all. In other words, a Mac in the hands of a capable artist, could help said artist shovel $$$s into his bank account.

Now the iToys are just for diversion. They don't pretend to be anything else. Apple doesn't market them as anything else. A phone. A music player. A mini-app computer. Little or no connectivity to peripherals (excepting the iPad optional keyboard) and as people say all the time - they use them to browse the web, read and perhaps even reply to mail, check Facebook, play games, listen to music, watch video...

They are toys and they are proud of it! Nothing wrong with that, but it would be hugely stupid and asinine to compare the empty claims about the Mac being a toy in the 80s (when it wasn't and never wanted to be) and the fact that the iToys are in fact for diversion only (which they are and are proud of!).

Those claims about the Mac were only uttered by people who never even tried a Mac seriously and felt just fine with DOS. I've tried the iToys, I own one and use it daily. It's fine for what it is.. but it is no Mac or Macintosh replacement. Or PC replacement in general. It's a toy.

[driven]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

What utter nonsense, I write iToys, because it's a convenient shorthand for iPhone/iPod touch/iPad -- I laughed harder at atheist's blabber about my posts really being about me wanting to relive my youth or somesuch.

You're on the internet, replying to some post by some guy you don't know. Can you stay on topic?

You can't spin that "iToys" implies that you don't take them as serious computing devices.

The last 8 months of my life have been spent entirely on companies asking me to implement offline capable mobile solutions on the iPad. That's amazing business adoption for such a new device. Toys? I think not. They are quickly becoming frontline business tools.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by sek929 

/Thread

The majority of computer usage is email, music and web browsing. We can do this in our pockets now.

Indeed, you can play with your toy that you can carry in your pocket.

We have Macs with the latest technologies, unhindered by the follies of Motorola and IBM, that are well designed and perform as advertised. IMO the state of the Mac has never been better. Classic crashed to much, not matter what you try to tell me, and in the PPC days we had lagging processor updates. Sure I'd like a tower that isn't north of 2 grand, but what would I need to do that an i3 iMac wouldn't be able to handle?

Bah, no Mac has the latest technology, in fact Apple seems *proud* that it's offering C2D MacBook Air. The GPUs in every Mac is old AND for laptops (excepting the one in the MacPro, which is just old)

Classic isn't a platform, but the environment to run OS 9 and older programs within OS X. It actually was very stable, Classic that is.

You ask what you need with a computer that the i3 can't handle? If you use your computer like your iPad or whatever, then you probably don't. And honestly I don't care much for a much much faster Mac, but I care for a more *responsive* Mac. How it is done is immaterial.. if it is done by throwing RAM and GHz and megaflops at the problem, then fine - but considering what Apple has been able to do with the iToys (running a responsive and rather graphics intensive system based on OS X on a low performance handheld device) I feel rather confident that the same could be done to the Mac OS itself.

I care for a more refined Mac, with a consistent UI, no beachballs and no lost threads like Front Row and the Finder. The OS is a constant evolution and refinement, but with every so called "major update" all we get are more "features" -- even with the Snow Leopard "refinement update". In fact SL is what Leopard should have been in the first place, but here the attention span of Apple shows. At the same time as Apple was making 10.5 it was making iPhone OS.

So for Apple it's basically a situation of either/or. Either iOS or Mac OS. Hence the poor state of the Mac today.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett 

Disagree. In fact, Apple has been fighting that model from the beginning. When you buy something from the iTunes store you own it. The copy is on your machine(s), not stored in the cloud anywhere.

Nonsense, then Apple would have been the first to implement Blu-Ray drives. What exactly can I do with my "own" copy of a movie I buy in the iTunes store? Watch it on Apple devices. At low res and low bitrate and full price.

What is the model of the Apple TV? Rent.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Oh, the criticism of iOS devices is, for the large part, EXACTLY the same as for the original Mac - the technical details differ but are exchangeable, and the conclusions drawn are exactly the same, and the basic fears and worries are the same.

In five years' time, there will be absolutely no discussion about the default modus operandi of ordinary household computers.

There will, however, be discussion over whether the "original" really is much better than all the "me too" knock-offs that look close enough at first glance but obviously completely missed the concept - just as there was with Macintosh. In this case, though, there's actually two serious contenders for concept: webOS and Windows Phone 7. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like either of them will be serious market forces for long. (No, Android is not a computing concept platform - it's an advertising vehicle.)

This is by far the most drivel I've read in this thread.

1. No connection between silly criticism of Macs (used for making money) in the 80s by people who never used them and correct description that iPhone/iPad/iPod touch are in fact toys and don't claim to be anything else - just for diversion or minor things, used like a universal peripheral.

2. In five year's time you'll be shilling for Apple product X just like you are today. That's a fairly accurate prediction, though I'm no Nostradamus, but you have NO idea what the "modus operandi" of PCs will be in five years time. It's so crazy how you always present your OPINION as FACT.

3. People don't care about the iPhone as such and will buy whatever is shiny, looks like it's cool and is cheap. Though there will always be a minority that appreciates quality and will be faithful to the iToys, it's not possible to compete with Android and Microsoft in the long run. The writing is already on the wall for the iOS platform as the "Windows" of handheld devices. Heck at one time the Apple II had 50% marketshare.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

iOS had serious and extremely effective preemptive multi-tasking from Day One.

You didn't notice it, because your phone just worked even if you had the iPod running and were checking an e-mail, but just because it's transparent doesn't mean it isn't there.

Conversely, being able to manually manage memory heaps for applications via the Finder's Get Info windows did not mean that System 7 had advanced memory management features; quite the contrary was the case, despite what a handful of luddites liked to claim in the transition to OS X.

1. Not for apps, but yes I could receive calls while playing in an app. It's a goddam phone after all. But for obvious reasons real preemptive multitasking was not and is not a feature of iOS. Keep your patrionizing drivel for yourself, mkay. You just get it back in spades. Though perhaps that pleases you.

2. I've no idea what you are on about with the System 7 memory management. Was anyone complementing it or are you conditioned to talk about random things to disguise the fact that you don't have a point?

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by driven 

You can't spin that "iToys" implies that you don't take them as serious computing devices.

The last 8 months of my life have been spent entirely on companies asking me to implement offline capable mobile solutions on the iPad. That's amazing business adoption for such a new device. Toys? I think not. They are quickly becoming frontline business tools.

I'm not spinning anything, I fully acknowledge that I don't see the iPod touch, the iPhone nor the iPad as serious computing devices - However I don't mean iToys as degrading. They are what they are and nobody (least of all Apple) is claiming that they are "serious computing devices".

How are they serious exactly. - ...?? (doubling as a peripheral device is not serious)

[driven]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

It's so crazy how you always present your OPINION as FACT.

Not for nothing, but isn't this entire thread about your long-winded opinion?
I'm starting to think you are just trolling, or very closed minded. Not sure which yet, and really don't care either way.

[driven]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

I'm not spinning anything, I fully acknowledge that I don't see the iPod touch, the iPhone nor the iPad as serious computing devices - However I don't mean iToys as degrading. They are what they are and nobody (least of all Apple) is claiming that they are "serious computing devices".

How are they serious exactly. - ...?? (doubling as a peripheral device is not serious)

I started typing a serious reply. I doubt you'd read it. Saving my energy.

SARACASM
You are right. They are toys. I'll go do something else for work.
/SARCASM

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by driven 

Not for nothing, but isn't this entire thread about your long-winded opinion?
I'm starting to think you are just trolling, or very closed minded. Not sure which yet, and really don't care either way.

Yes it is my opinion that I write, but BASED on facts. If you don't perceive the difference between that and presenting something as fact that is opinion, well that's harder.

Example:

Macs are toys. (statement treated as fact despite it's just opinion based on nothing, in fact it is almost always not true)

I think iPod touch is a toy. (opinion treated as such, based on the fact that it is almost always true)

Even what you write is opinion, and that's cool. But then you present one example of an iPad used in a business environment == iPad is thus not a toy. Yes it is in 99.9% of cases.