MacBook Pro

Some people just refuse to admit the PC's faults.

Sure, there are advantages to having a PC. But I'm not a gamer and I love my Mac.

It's intuitive and reacts quickly to the way I think. After an adjustment time of maybe about two weeks I grew into the thing and now it's like an extension of my body.

Whenever I use a PC at a friend's I can't believe I used to own one of those. They're brutal. Slow, clunky. Not to mention that they're huge and full of cables.

And of course the awful patches and anti-virus programs. I hated installing those and after a while they slow your computer down to a crawl.

As for Macs and viruses - haven't gotten one ever. And I'm the kind of guy who downloads tons of stuff. Hell, even from Russian websites. I averaged a virus a week when I had PCs. Not a thing on my macbook beauty in 3 years.

It's just better. It is. In every way.

As for the price, consider the true costs of owning PCs. The repairs, the reinstallations, the stress. That has a cost too. If my mac breaks after the warranty runs out and the cost of repairs is too large then screw it, I'll just buy another one. I'm already saving, as far as I'm concerned.

CyBorg said:

Some people just refuse to admit the PC's faults.

Sure, there are advantages to having a PC. But I'm not a gamer and I love my Mac.

It's intuitive and reacts quickly to the way I think. After an adjustment time of maybe about two weeks I grew into the thing and now it's like an extension of my body.

Whenever I use a PC at a friend's I can't believe I used to own one of those. They're brutal. Slow, clunky. Not to mention that they're huge and full of cables.

And of course the awful patches and anti-virus programs. I hated installing those and after a while they slow your computer down to a crawl.

As for Macs and viruses - haven't gotten one ever. And I'm the kind of guy who downloads tons of stuff. Hell, even from Russian websites. I averaged a virus a week when I had PCs. Not a thing on my macbook beauty in 3 years.

It's just better. It is. In every way.

As for the price, consider the true costs of owning PCs. The repairs, the reinstallations, the stress. That has a cost too. If my mac breaks after the warranty runs out and the cost of repairs is too large then screw it, I'll just buy another one. I'm already saving, as far as I'm concerned.

Click to expand...

The two bolded statements kinda contradict dont they

Macs have their fair share of faults, PCs their own.

I for one could never own a mac since I'm a heavy gamer. PC's are far far ahead in that category and I dont see that changing soon.

> Whenever I use a PC at a friend's I can't believe I used to own one of those.
> They're brutal. Slow, clunky. Not to mention that they're huge and full of
> cables.

It depends. I have two Nehalem Core i7s and a Sandy Bridge Core i5 (which I built and then rebuilt due to the Intel chipset bug). The Core i7 systems have triple-channel memory and they're fast. One is running Oracle Enterprise Linux and the other is running Windows 7. My home desktop is the Sandy Bridge system running Windows 7. Very smooth and very fast.

Yes, I do have cables all over the place.

> And of course the awful patches and anti-virus programs. I hated installing
> those and after a while they slow your computer down to a crawl.

Yes, the anti-virus stuff slows them down. Yes, Windows Update is a pain. But I can more or less live with that. It was unbearable on my previous Windows desktop as the system was too slow with the AV stuff. My system was unusable for about seven or eight minutes with startup. Hardware technology has made up for the Windows Penalty - mostly. The network is still a bottleneck for updates and AV daily updates - I only have a 3 mb down connection.

I have a Windows ME disk somewhere in the basement. I also have a 286 laptop running DOS that still works.

> The last and only time I touched VMS was in university. Did
> they changed much?

Nope. It was ported to Alpha (I worked on that for Digital Equipment Corporation in the late 1980s and early 1990s) and later to Itanium (I know some of the guys that did that work for Hewlett-Packard). It's still a great enterprise operating system. You don't have to worry about viruses and it's rock-solid. If running on Alpha or Itanium, you also get RAS.

I'm currently a PC user, and currently considering a new laptop which may be Windows-based or a MacBook. I know what I get from Windows and I'm looking at what a Mac would offer me, so it's quite interesting to read threads like this where extreme fans from either side voice their opinion.

The one thing I find baffling though are comments like this:

CyBorg said:

As for the price, consider the true costs of owning PCs. The repairs, the reinstallations, the stress. That has a cost too. If my mac breaks after the warranty runs out and the cost of repairs is too large then screw it, I'll just buy another one. I'm already saving, as far as I'm concerned.

Click to expand...

I bought an PC in 2002. That machine is still going strong at my parents' house, and the only thing I have had to replace is the battery on the motherboard.

I bought a laptop in 2003. In 2007 I gave it to a friend. Again, nothing has failed, though if you're being nit-picky after 4 years the battery life had decreased and probably needed replacing.

In 2007, I bought my current laptop. Again, 4 years later and I haven't had to replace anything. A couple of months ago we had a power failure, and I watched a DVD on my laptop - the battery lasted an hour and a half (I should have chosen a shorter film...), which to me is pretty damned good after 4 years. When I bought it, it was quite a beastly laptop, and I only got 2-2.5 hour out of the battery then.

Perhaps I've just been insanely lucky. But I've never suffered component failure, and with XP and 7 I've never experienced a blue screen (I skipped Vista, in case that implies I had problems with that). No, Windows machines aren't perfect else I wouldn't even be considering a Mac, but to portray them as cheap machines that constantly fail couldn't be further from my experience.

Anyway, whilst I have an Apple audience - does iTunes make sense on a Mac? It is by far the worst piece of software I use on my PC, which has always seemed strange to me given Apple's reputation for usability. Does it suddenly become slick on a Mac?

> Perhaps I've just been insanely lucky. But I've never suffered component
> failure, and with XP and 7 I've never experienced a blue screen (I skipped
> Vista, in case that implies I had problems with that). No, Windows machines
> aren't perfect else I wouldn't even be considering a Mac, but to portray
> them as cheap machines that constantly fail couldn't be further from my
> experience.

A lot of PCs are cheap machines. HP is currently leading the charge in this space and their customer complaints have taken the expected trajectory. Dell has had on and off quality problems over the last decade. Lenovo has an excellent reputation for quality and durability.

Microsoft carries the burden of required legacy support along with a lot of code that is old. In the software business, you generally get people to pay for upgrades for new features which means that there's less of an incentive to fix old problems. If you work in software engineering, the monetary rewards (promotion, bonus, stock options, salary) go to those that create features that sell well. The game in software engineering is to try to dump maintenance of old code on other people while you do new projects. It can be quite a political game in large software companies.

> Anyway, whilst I have an Apple audience - does iTunes make sense on
> a Mac? It is by far the worst piece of software I use on my PC, which
> has always seemed strange to me given Apple's reputation for usability.
> Does it suddenly become slick on a Mac?

iTunes is more or less the same on Mac OS X as it is on Windows.

movdqa said:

A lot of PCs are cheap machines. HP is currently leading the charge in this space and their customer complaints have taken the expected trajectory. Dell has had on and off quality problems over the last decade. Lenovo has an excellent reputation for quality and durability.

Click to expand...

Just for the record, the PC was from Evesham, and I was very sad to see them liquidate. Built like a tank. Both laptops were from Dell, and both came from the Outlet store.

movdqa said:

iTunes is more or less the same on Mac OS X as it is on Windows.

Click to expand...

This news disappoints me no end. I only use iTunes because of my iPhone, but I'm not planning on giving that up any time soon.

My office PC from Dell had to have the motherboard, hard disk and some other major component replaced. It appears that Dell knew about the defective components but shipped them anyway preferring to deal with the resulting problems as warranty issues. A lot of office coworkers had the same problems with the machines. They probably guessed that many customers would just replace their machines or get them fixed on their own dime.

I use my own equipment in the office as I want equipment that's powerful and reliable. Dell's business stuff tends to be better than their consumer stuff and their customer support levels are far higher if you buy from their business division - you get support from people in the US which I consider an improvement over support from India.

The iTunes interface is good at interfacing with a variety of devices and it provides the DRM that makes content owners happy. I don't know that there are any really nice interfaces when you have to provide DRM on your content. It's nice to be able to just put everything in a folder and access it with any device or program that you want to but getting the people that produce movies, games and other software is an uphill climb.

Anybody (besides gamers) ever switch from a Mac to a PC and been happy about it?

I'll try to list the things that I really grew to love about the Mac, since switching my home computer. Concurrently, I use a Thinkpad at work, so I am faced with the differences everyday.
1) The huge touchpad, and gestures. I feel irritated when I can't use them now. New PC's are imitating that functionality (e.g. Samsung Series 9), so I hope PC's will catch up. There's still a significant gap.
2) The nearly seamless integration with PDF, without the need to install expensive bloatware from Adobe. The fact that you don't have to click + and - to zoom to predefined levels. The fact that "Save as *.pdf" does not need a second thought.
3) All the unix functionality in general, without an X-client, without cygwin.
4) One-click access to colored unix terminals. I didn't realize I'd like this simple functionality, but do use it quite often to differentiate between multiple activities.
5) The ease of ichat right out of the box.
6) The fact that LaTeX works wonderfully just after installing Tetex or equivalent package, unlike a PC where you need an installation of MikTeX which sometimes breaks mid-install from mirror servers, installation of ghostscript and ghostview, then TexNikCenter or equivalent, and then pray that the versions are compatible.
7) The intangible fact that this is the first laptop that I feel like taking out with me wherever I go, so that I can flip it open and work on things. I recently wrote a draft of a paper in a cemetery, that was strange.

Here are the things that I thought I wouldn't miss but do:
1) Matlab works better and faster on a PC than on OSX, especially if you have the Java Manager on. This is disappointing.
2) Resizing windows from all sides. I hope OSX Lion will include this already.
3) Some occasional weirdness with CISCO wireless routers; the connection seems to drop on me.

Here are things that I thought I would miss, but don't:
1) Right click. Control + mouseClick seems to work really well. Also, right click works just fine with an external USB mouse.
2) Free software to do some day-to-day stuff. Gimp is available, Skype is available, Octave is available. MacVim is available.
3) Ability to connect and exchange files with my Droid. This works quite well, but guess it is not as seamless as with an iphone.

Two and a half years ago, I got my parents a Lenovo laptop running Windows. Since then, my mom has taken a fancy to Ubuntu. I now wish that I had bought them a Macbook instead.

they need to get the bluetooth file sharing and transfer worked out and synch non-iPhones with contacts, calendar, etc, although with cloud model it is not as necessary.

DragonBlaze said:

The two bolded statements kinda contradict dont they

Click to expand...

No, not at all.

As for gaming, just buy a playstation.

movdqa:

Copi, Introduction to Logic.

Click to expand...

More like Copi, Introduction to Logical Fallacies. You're comparing two different subjects and trying to make them sound similar. Plus, I've already refuted his statement anyways, but we can continue this part up if you want.

I didn't say that. I said that the higher up you go with education,
the more you learn how little you know.

Click to expand...

And, you sound like a little kid trying to act like an adult. That
you're a college student isn't surprising. Lots of college students
think that they know quite a bit. The thing about a good education
is understanding how much there is out there that you don't know.
The more degrees you collect, the more you realize this.

Click to expand...

Doesn't seem like that's what you said...

Okay, an infant.

Click to expand...

Copi, Introduction to Logic.

I'm a bit surprised that you doubt the credibility of those that
clearly know a lot more than you do on multiple subjects.

Click to expand...

As previously stated above, I've used CygWin successfully for quite some time. Maybe he hasn't, even if he does have more experience than me.

Mozilla used to use cygwin on Windows. I did some early porting work
of Firefox and Thunderbird over to x64 and cygwin was an incredible
pain in the neck as their x64 model was broken for a few years. Mozilla
went to MSYS which is a more convenient development environment but it
isn't intended as development environment and target. The tools are
good enough for building. It uses a traditional Windows installer so
removing it is relatively straightforward. You don't have to deal with
the large number of configuration options that you have to do with
cygwin.

In general, if you don't have to use cygwin, you don't. Because it is
a pain in the neck to do so.

Click to expand...

Explained above.

In my estimation, viruses aren't a threat to Mac OS X at this time but
it may be in the future. But it would take quite a bit of time for
the number of viruses to get to the point where it impacts performance
in the way that you see with Windows.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

Yes, they copied a successful feature from Apple.

One area which Apple owns is the trackpad. They have the huge trackpad
where the trackpad itself is the button. Nobody else has a trackpad
that big nor the gesture functionality that Apple does, at least as
installed.

Click to expand...

There were features of Mac's that have been copied from Window's features.

My MacBook Pro is made from plastic.

The reference to Apple as an environmentally company spans production
and recycling. Apple has worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
from the manufacturing, transportation, use and recycling of their
computers (and iPods and other devices). The move to Aluminum Unibody
was a response from Steve Jobs to the green movement - I do recall the
video where Steve Jobs made his comments on it a few years ago. The
environmental focus is generally taken for granted today.

As an example, Apple was the early adopter of LED backlights for their
laptops, iMacs and displays. LED backlights are common on premium
laptops today. LED backlights use less power and also don't contain
the mercury that Cold Compact Flourescent displays do.

Click to expand...

The plastic is actually called polycarbonate, and is recyclable. Used to work with this stuff for Chemistry. It breaks down much more easily than "regular" plastic. Regular meaning the other plastics out there.

This is beyond the skill
of the average user though and you can render your system unusable if
you make a mistake.

Click to expand...

The start-up programs and those essential to Windows' System 32 file can easily be found either via start up, or on the web to help even an average user start up their PC faster.

Really? Where would you get the hardware device drivers?

> Or if I had Windows 95 on it, I could update to Windows 7.

Upgrades to Windows 7 from the following operating systems are not
supported:

Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows XP,
Windows Vista® RTM, Windows Vista Starter, Windows 7 M3, Windows 7
Beta, Windows 7 RC, or Windows 7 IDS, Windows NT® Server 4.0, Windows
2000 Server, Windows Server® 2003, Windows Server 2008, or Windows
Server 2008 R2

Click to expand...

My reference was that Hardware can use older and newer versions. To be honest, I don't know who could write the hardware device driver, but if I can use CygWin for Chemistry, it's worth taking a shot, and according to Polaris I have the patience to do long and arduous projects. Also, as you know, I'm at a University and a couple of professors and people would probably know their way around.

If you think that Apple has a waterfall approach to product releases,
then the burden of proof falls upon you to show that this is true.

Click to expand...

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

They have a timeline of Apple's product releases, and when to buy. Notice the divide has enlarged from 6 months per product (by product I mean the product type, such as iPods for iPods whether they're iPod Nano's or iPod Classics) to yearly.

CyBorg:

And of course the awful patches and anti-virus programs. I hated installing those and after a while they slow your computer down to a crawl.

Click to expand...

I don't recall them slowing my computer down AFTER the installation as you stated.

As for Macs and viruses - haven't gotten one ever. And I'm the kind of guy who downloads tons of stuff. Hell, even from Russian websites. I averaged a virus a week when I had PCs. Not a thing on my macbook beauty in 3 years.

Click to expand...

As we stated, there are fewer viruses for Mac's, but what's with attacking Russian websites? Isn't that... a little racist?

It's just better. It is. In every way.

Click to expand...

Sure, there are advantages to having a PC. But I'm not a gamer and I love my Mac.

Click to expand...

These 2 statements contradict each other.

As for the price, consider the true costs of owning PCs. The repairs, the reinstallations, the stress.

Click to expand...

Well as long as you don't go on any... ... ... inappropriate websites...you won't have to reinstall the OS. Even then, you can still usually use anti-malware programs to clean them up. As for repairs, the worst case of a PC repair was by a gaming f(r)iend of mine, who was using a liquid cooler instead of a fan, and when it leaked he had to dunk his hardware in that chemical which I forget. Scary s**t.

As for gaming, just buy a playstation.

Click to expand...

X-Box Live is 14/cents per day if you go with the 50$/year thing. Or you can get it for free in other situations. Plus, if you compare and contrast Playstation Games to PC, you can't play Starcraft 2 on Playstation. Playstation's quality is also terrible compared to the X-Box Live, or even 360 for that matter.

Polaris:

1) Right click. Control + mouseClick seems to work really well. Also, right click works just fine with an external USB mouse.

Click to expand...

By Control you mean the little 4-leaf clover thing right?

I recently wrote a draft of a paper in a cemetery, that was strange.

Click to expand...

I find the spell check of Mac's to be weirder than writing a paper in a cemetery.

> More like Copi, Introduction to Logical Fallacies. You're comparing
> two different subjects and trying to make them sound similar. Plus,
> I've already refuted his statement anyways, but we can continue this
> part up if you want.

Do you own a copy? Have you read it?

> Doesn't seem like that's what you said...

Those sound consistent to me.

> Copi, Introduction to Logic.

Do you own it? Have you read it? Did you read the opening story
about the high-school debate? What did you learn from it?

> As previously stated above, I've used CygWin successfully for quite
> some time. Maybe he hasn't, even if he does have more experience than
> me.

I've been using it for seven or eight years. You have more experience
than that?

> There were features of Mac's that have been copied from Window's
> features.

Of course. But which of the following companies do you associate with
innovation: Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Hewlett-Packard? Dell and HP have
fingerprint readers and facial recognition software. It's pretty cool
stuff. When it works. When you run your finger over the fingerprint
reader ten times and then try your other fingers and finally give up
and type in your password, then you sometimes wonder how great a
feature it is. BTW, I like the idea of fingerprint readers but they
can be finicky.

> The plastic is actually called polycarbonate, and is recyclable. Used
> to work with this stuff for Chemistry. It breaks down much more easily
> than "regular" plastic. Regular meaning the other plastics out there.

Thanks.

> The start-up programs and those essential to Windows' System 32 file
> can easily be found either via start up, or on the web to help even
> an average user start up their PC faster.

My 90-year-old mother has a laptop that last had home internet service
via AOL back in the 1990s. She walks a half-mile to a nearby hospital
for internet access. Do you think that she'd be able to upgrade
Windows without help? Why do you think Best Buy makes a lot of money
with Windows OS services that would seem trivial to those here? The
average person doesn't want to mess with OS files.

> My reference was that Hardware can use older and newer versions. To
> be honest, I don't know who could write the hardware device driver,
> but if I can use CygWin for Chemistry, it's worth taking a shot, and
> according to Polaris I have the patience to do long and arduous
> projects. Also, as you know, I'm at a University and a couple of
> professors and people would probably know their way around.

Normally the hardware vendor writes device drivers. This is why it can
be maddening to a Linux user when a hardware manufacturer doesn't
provide Linux drivers. It is possible to disassemble a driver (that
is break it down into machine code), figure out what it does and
how it works, and then try to write a driver for another operating
system. You may be breaking a law or two doing something like that
though.

> They have a timeline of Apple's product releases, and when to
> buy. Notice the divide has enlarged from 6 months per product (by
> product I mean the product type, such as iPods for iPods whether
> they're iPod Nano's or iPod Classics) to yearly.

Well, an annual cycle doesn't imply a marketing waterfall. Intel's
processor schedule is based on tick-tock. One is a manufacturing
process node and the other is major architectural changes. tick-tock
is on a two-year cycle so they do a major release every year.

At the moment, there are rumors that Apple won't release the iPhone 5
until the end of the year. They were expected to release it this
spring but component shortages are a problem. Component shortages are
also hitting their iPad 2 product line and I've already seen a few
articles on those shortages affecting earnings in future quarters.

It is also hard to do so many product launches. I'd say that there
are multiple factors at play that affect their product release
schedules.

> I don't recall them slowing my computer down AFTER the installation as
> you stated.

It depends on your hardware. My home desktop was from 2004 with an AMD
X2 5800+. It was fast for its time. AV downloads slowed it down over
time to the point where it was unusable for about seven or eight
minutes after the power was turned on. I did add Microsoft's
anti-spyware program too so the signature downloads for both were a
performance killer for the machine. An upgrade to a quad-core Sandy
Bridge system fixed the AV/AS performance issues outside of my system
being a network hog for a short bit of time.

> As we stated, there are fewer viruses for Mac's, but what's with
> attacking Russian websites? Isn't that... a little racist?

Which race are Russians?

> By Control you mean the little 4-leaf clover thing right?

Right-click works fine with a mouse on Mac OS X. If you're talking
about trackpads, just tap with two fingers.

> I find the spell check of Mac's to be weirder than writing a paper in
> a cemetery.

I didn't know that the OS did spell-checking. I use Oracle Open Office
for writing papers and specs and it has its own spell-checking.

As we stated, there are fewer viruses for Mac's, but what's with attacking Russian websites? Isn't that... a little racist?

Click to expand...

You should look up the definition of racist.

No, I'm referring to Russian websites that store files. Such as movies and music. They carry the most viruses.

And, for the record, I'm Russian. Which is why I use them so much.

I don't recall them slowing my computer down AFTER the installation as you stated.

Click to expand...

I'm really glad for you, but my experiences are generalizable across a wide population of PC users.

GetBetterer said:

You're comparing two different subjects and trying to make them sound similar.

Click to expand...

movdqa was correct in recommending the book to you. The two subjects are different but the situation was logically equivalent.

Getbetterer said:

Plus, I've already refuted his statement anyways, but we can continue this part up if you want.

Click to expand...

You haven't refuted anything. I have given up that discussion because it is useless, and because you seem to need the upper hand on an internet messageboard much more than I do. Again, if you think I copied someone's points, feel free. I care not.

Getbetterer said:

By Control you mean the little 4-leaf clover thing right?

Click to expand...

No, I meant the "Control" key. Macs have a "Control" key in case you didn't know. The 4-leaf clover is called the "Command" key. Those are two different things. For someone who rails against Macs, you don't seem to know much about them.

People who think PCs suck because they get viruses and are generally mediocre yet cannot give any examples = PEBCAK

Every Mactard I've met in life has never given Windows a proper chance. "I hated my old $1000 Sony VAIO, but I bought a $2500 MacBook Pro and it's so much better!" summarises exactly everything that is wrong with your average Mactard.

As for games, anyone who thinks consoles are better solutions for entertainment needs to see the trailers for Battlefield 3 or play some Crysis. The console versions are being scaled down for Battlefield 3 so they can even run on Xbox 360/PS3.

The only thing I'll give to Apple is the integration between software and hardware. The hardware alone on any Mac is nothing new and certainly nowhere near as powerful as anything available for the PC.

To summarise: "Never in the field of consumer electronics have so many paid so much for so little."

> The hardware alone on any Mac is nothing new and certainly
> nowhere near as powerful as anything available for the PC.

Okay.

Which other laptop besides the MacBook Pro comes with Thunderbolt?

movdqa said:

> The hardware alone on any Mac is nothing new and certainly
> nowhere near as powerful as anything available for the PC.

Okay.

Which other laptop besides the MacBook Pro comes with Thunderbolt?

Click to expand...

...and how many devices besides the MacBook Pro uses Thunderbolt?

Gotta love how you seem to have ignored the rest of my post.

> ...and how many devices besides the MacBook Pro uses
> Thunderbolt?

Not the point. You claimed that there is nothing new and certainly nowhere near as powerful as anything available for the PC. That claim is false.

The idea of externally daisychaining displays is interesting as is the idea of an external PCI bus on a laptop. You could theoretically hook it up to a graphics card that's far more powerful than what you could normally put into a laptop.

phnx90 said:

People who think PCs suck because they get viruses and are generally mediocre yet cannot give any examples = PEBCAK

Every Mactard I've met in life has never given Windows a proper chance. "I hated my old $1000 Sony VAIO, but I bought a $2500 MacBook Pro and it's so much better!" summarises exactly everything that is wrong with your average Mactard.

As for games, anyone who thinks consoles are better solutions for entertainment needs to see the trailers for Battlefield 3 or play some Crysis. The console versions are being scaled down for Battlefield 3 so they can even run on Xbox 360/PS3.

The only thing I'll give to Apple is the integration between software and hardware. The hardware alone on any Mac is nothing new and certainly nowhere near as powerful as anything available for the PC.

To summarise: "Never in the field of consumer electronics have so many paid so much for so little."

Click to expand...

Ahh playing Crysis at maximum settings in the Christmas holidays on my new GTX460 was awesome!

Too bad Crysis 2 didn't push the envelope further. :neutral:

For the most part phnx90 is correct.

The number of pioneering hardware implementations (not talking about design/formfactor) on Apple desktops and laptops are next to nil. Good for them to break their standard order of business and spearhead Thunderbolt.

movdqa said:

> ...and how many devices besides the MacBook Pro uses
> Thunderbolt?

Not the point. You claimed that there is nothing new and certainly nowhere near as powerful as anything available for the PC. That claim is false.

The idea of externally daisychaining displays is interesting as is the idea of an external PCI bus on a laptop. You could theoretically hook it up to a graphics card that's far more powerful than what you could normally put into a laptop.

Click to expand...

Kind of is. Thunderbolt has no available devices, so it is useless. That could change in the future and Thunderbolt may be popular enough to be worth mentioning, but that's speculative.

Use of multiple displays has been around for quite a while on PC.

Hooking up more powerful GPUs would require a separate power source, and if you need a more powerful GPU, clearly you were mistaken in buying a MacBook Pro in the first place.

Also, discrete GPUs for Mac are both outdated and overpriced. Their best card? AMD/ATI HD 5870, value $449. HD 5870 for PC? $280, overclocked versions available I'm sure. What's the current generation equivalent from AMD? HD 6870, value $200. NVIDIA solution available? Sure, a GT 120. That thing is a rehashed 9600 GT. Fee free to bite the bullet and drop $1799.95 for a FX 4800 if you need something better.

> Use of multiple displays has been around for quite a while on PC.

My desktops have at least three monitors but you're more limited on laptops. Some laptops have multiple display ports and you can always go with a USB2DVI device but those are quite limited. Daisychaining on a high-speed port sounds more interesting.

> Hooking up more powerful GPUs would require a separate power
> source, and if you need a more powerful GPU, clearly you were
> mistaken in buying a MacBook Pro in the first place.

I'm personally fine with integrated graphics. It wouldn't be a bad idea to
use a laptop for mobility and then have a station with a high-end graphics
card when you need it. At least you have the flexibility to do so.

> Also, discrete GPUs for Mac are both outdated and overpriced. Their
> best card? AMD/ATI HD 5870, value $449. HD 5870 for PC? $280,
> overclocked versions available I'm sure. What's the current generation
> equivalent from AMD? HD 6870, value $200. NVIDIA solution available?
> Sure, a GT 120. That thing is a rehashed 9600 GT. Fee free to bite the
> bullet and drop $1799.95 for a FX 4800 if you need something better.

Irrelevant.

You were incorrect in the point that you made. You are merely trying to deflect now.

DragonBlaze said:

Ahh playing Crysis at maximum settings in the Christmas holidays on my new GTX460 was awesome!

Too bad Crysis 2 didn't push the envelope further. :neutral:

Click to expand...

Yeah, game plays too much like COD for my liking; too linear and cliched overall story...at least DX11 support is coming out soon!

PCXL-Fan said:

For the most part he's correct phnx90 is correct.

The number of pioneering hardware implementations and (not talking about design/formfactor) on Apple desktops and laptops are next to nill. Good for them to break their standard order of businness and spearhead Thunderbolt.

Click to expand...

Good to know we're in agreement

Big risk with Thunderbolt IMO (they should've implemented USB 3.0 first). However, I'm pretty sure quite a few notable devices will come out for it...eventually. They could've started the process by making iPad 2 a Thunderbolt device.

At best, Apple 'hardware' pioneering are in minute details like trackpad response/use (minor detail but significant) and multitouch mice (absolutely pointless). But these don't actually qualify as hardware - technically these are peripherals. Since conventional hardware like graphics cards and CPUs are almost always behind (i7 took almost 12 months or more before they were implemented for MacBooks), their hardware implementation is at best sluggish.

It is Apple's competency at keeping the software light enough for the hardware that keeps the Apple experience alive - that and the wealth of miscellaneous software that are available out of the box. The latter however, is bound to change as Apple becomes more and more popular (see: Microsoft antitrust cases).

movdqa said:

> Use of multiple displays has been around for quite a while on PC.

My desktops have at least three monitors but you're more limited on laptops. Some laptops have multiple display ports and you can always go with a USB2DVI device but those are quite limited. Daisychaining on a high-speed port sounds more interesting.

Click to expand...

Then that's an improvement, not innovation.

movdqa said:

> Hooking up more powerful GPUs would require a separate power
> source, and if you need a more powerful GPU, clearly you were
> mistaken in buying a MacBook Pro in the first place.

I'm personally fine with integrated graphics. It wouldn't be a bad idea to
use a laptop for mobility and then have a station with a high-end graphics
card when you need it. At least you have the flexibility to do so.

Click to expand...

That would still weigh more than having a laptop with a beefier GPU. Also, GPUs are not things that are meant to be carried around - too physically fragile and static electricity frying your chip is a real possibility. Also, Steve Jobs would balk at the idea of having more than one plug or mouse button.

NVIDIA Optimus tech allows the computer to automatically switch between integrated graphics and your dedicated GPU, giving you the power when you need it, and saving battery life when you don't.

That said, I do like the idea of being able to plug in desktop GPUs if necessary. But this would benefit Windows based laptops more (if they choose to adopt Thunderbolt).

movdqa said:

> Also, discrete GPUs for Mac are both outdated and overpriced. Their
> best card? AMD/ATI HD 5870, value $449. HD 5870 for PC? $280,
> overclocked versions available I'm sure. What's the current generation
> equivalent from AMD? HD 6870, value $200. NVIDIA solution available?
> Sure, a GT 120. That thing is a rehashed 9600 GT. Fee free to bite the
> bullet and drop $1799.95 for a FX 4800 if you need something better.

Irrelevant.

Click to expand...

Because in your world, Thunderbolt is hardware and graphics cards aren't, I get it now.

Weren't you the one who mentioned something about connecting discrete GPUs to a MBP?

movdqa said:

You were incorrect in the point that you made. You are merely trying to deflect now.

Click to expand...

"Kind of is. Thunderbolt has no available devices, so it is useless. That could change in the future and Thunderbolt may be popular enough to be worth mentioning, but that's speculative."

Is Thunderbolt "new"? Sure. Is Thunderbolt "powerful"? Sure. Is Thunderbolt "usable"? No.

I'll give a +1 for MBP for Thunderbolt. Then, I'll give a -1 for no USB 3.0.

At any rate, when we think of a "powerful laptop" we think CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD, etc. and you'd be delusional to think Macs have the most powerful ones in the market. I think you're the one trying to deflect by arguing with me over semantics.

> They could've started the process by making iPad 2 a Thunderbolt device.

Yeah, it would go so well with the PCI bus on the iPad 2.

> At best, Apple 'hardware' pioneering are in minute details like
> trackpad response/use (minor detail but significant) and multitouch
> mice (absolutely pointless). But these don't actually qualify as
> hardware - technically these are peripherals. Since conventional
> hardware like graphics cards and CPUs are almost always behind (i7
> took almost 12 months or more before they were implemented for
> MacBooks), their hardware implementation is at best sluggish.

Intel used to give out their new stuff to Apple before everyone else.
Apple would get new Xeons for their Mac Pros, they got the new Intel
low-profile ULV Meroms for their MacBook Airs, etc.

I think that Apple's priorities are in the mobile area now and they
update their computers as time permits. Their Mac sales have been
growing at double digit rates for many years so it's hard to argue
with their approach (speaking as a shareholder). Apple wasn't really
behind with Sandy Bridge. In fact, most of the other laptop makers
were pretty timid with their Sandy Bridge adoptions. I was surprised
that Dell only had two offerings into February, one in the business
line and one in their consumer line.

> It is Apple's competency at keeping the software light enough for
> the hardware that keeps the Apple experience alive - that and the
> wealth of miscellaneous software that are available out of the
> box. The latter however, is bound to change as Apple becomes more
> and more popular (see: Microsoft antitrust cases).

There are a lot of technical people that just prefer a Unix-based
system. These are, of course, probably not the majority of users.
There's also the arts crowd which seems to like Apple products.

Apple is, in many ways, coasting with their Macs. Their competitors
aren't really pushing them very hard to do better.

> Then that's an improvement, not innovation.

The concept is an improvement but the implementation is innovation.
Apple asked Intel to develop Thunderbolt (I think that the previous
codename was LightSpeed) and Intel did so. Time will tell on device
adoption.

> That would still weigh more than having a laptop with a beefier
> GPU. Also, GPUs are not things that are meant to be carried around -
> too physically fragile and static electricity frying your chip is a
> real possibility.

The same is true for external monitors. The model of taking a light
laptop with you for mobility and then plugging into something more
powerful is not a bad one. I've gone back and forth between different
models as have many of the people that I work with. I'm mainly going
with powerful desktops and my MacBook Pro. One guy I work with is
centralizing on laptops - 17 inch MacBook Pro in the center and
$3,500 Sony Vaio Z for mobility. Some folks have multiple laptops
depending on their mood for the day.

> NVIDIA Optimus tech allows the computer to automatically switch
> between integrated graphics and your dedicated GPU, giving you the
> power when you need it, and saving battery life when you don't.

Apple came out with switchable graphics with the first Unibody Macs,
so there were a few of these floating around. I'm not completely sure
as to why Apple didn't go with Optimus instead of rolling their own
but my guess is that it had something to do with nVidias high failure
rates on 8600 and 8400 discrete mobile graphics solutions. Apple is
now all or almost all ATI graphics now for discrete solutions so
having their own switching tech meant that they could go with either
ATI or nVidia. Optimus would mean vendor lock-in.

The delay on Apple adopting Nehalem on their MacBook Pros could have
been due to the chipset licensing battle between Intel and nVida -
Apple was caught in the middle and were shipping Penryns for quite
some time after Nehalem came out. The battle was ultimately settled
with nVidia getting a lot of cash (at least $1 billion) and Intel
getting usage rights to nVidia's patent portfolio for some period of
time. A chip architect friend of mine said that the settlement amount
would be useful for R&D expenses for their new foray into ARM chips.

> Because in your world, Thunderbolt is hardware and graphics cards
> aren't, I get it now.

Strawman.

> "Kind of is. Thunderbolt has no available devices, so it is
> useless. That could change in the future and Thunderbolt may be
> popular enough to be worth mentioning, but that's speculative." Is
> Thunderbolt "new"? Sure. Is Thunderbolt "powerful"? Sure. Is
> Thunderbolt "usable"? No. I'll give a +1 for MBP for
> Thunderbolt. Then, I'll give a -1 for no USB 3.0. At any rate, when
> we think of a "powerful laptop" we think CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD,
> etc. and you'd be delusional to think Macs have the most powerful
> ones in the market. I think you're the one trying to deflect by
> arguing with me over semantics.

Irrelevant.

movdqa said:

> They could've started the process by making iPad 2 a Thunderbolt device.

Yeah, it would go so well with the PCI bus on the iPad 2.

Click to expand...

Yeah, because clearly when I said "making" as in 'developing", I meant that they should make it as a device with no PCI and magically expect Thunderbolt to work with it. I'm true a believer of the Church of Steve Jobs.

movdqa said:

Intel used to give out their new stuff to Apple before everyone else.
Apple would get new Xeons for their Mac Pros, they got the new Intel
low-profile ULV Meroms for their MacBook Airs, etc.

Click to expand...

I'm not so sure about Intel and Apple's arrangement when it comes to chips. However, while the Xeon chips on the Mac Pros are undeniably good, I'm sure that Apple was the first OEM, meaning that I think the chips would have been available to the market before they were adopted by Apple. At least, it's been that way for the last few generations of CPUs.

IIRC, the CPU on the original MacBook Air (2008 I believe) is not all new. It was in fact simply repackaged to fit, i.e. it's not a ULV. But I see that's not your point; other OEMs did not consider getting into a deal with Intel to provide unique chips, rather they built around what they were given. +1 to Apple's bargaining power.

movdqa said:

I think that Apple's priorities are in the mobile area now and they
update their computers as time permits. Their Mac sales have been
growing at double digit rates for many years so it's hard to argue
with their approach (speaking as a shareholder). Apple wasn't really
behind with Sandy Bridge. In fact, most of the other laptop makers
were pretty timid with their Sandy Bridge adoptions. I was surprised
that Dell only had two offerings into February, one in the business
line and one in their consumer line.

Click to expand...

Actually Apple had a fairly decent reason to hold back on Sandy Bridge - they were flawed and Intel had to recall. Thankfully for Apple, they adopted SB so late that they were able to get access to the corrected version (or so I've been told).

movdqa said:

> It is Apple's competency at keeping the software light enough for
> the hardware that keeps the Apple experience alive - that and the
> wealth of miscellaneous software that are available out of the
> box. The latter however, is bound to change as Apple becomes more
> and more popular (see: Microsoft antitrust cases).

There are a lot of technical people that just prefer a Unix-based
system. These are, of course, probably not the majority of users.
There's also the arts crowd which seems to like Apple products.

Apple is, in many ways, coasting with their Macs. Their competitors
aren't really pushing them very hard to do better.

Click to expand...

I have a few friends working or studying in the programming industry - despite OS X's Unix core, none of them seem to like it. They'd much rather get the run off the mill laptop and run Linux instead.

The arts crowd don't use Macs out of choice. As someone who seriously considered doing design, I know for a fact that almost all design/art schools require you to get a MacBook Pro...then get Photoshop on it. Once upon a time Macs were superior to PCs in graphics work (this holds true still for movies), but this just isn't the case now.

IMO Apple doesn't need to worry about competitors too much. Not because they don't push Apple hard enough - it's more that Apple users seem to adopt the Apple elitism and stay there. So long as Apple makes pretty computers with midrange hardware (therefore won't lag to a halt like budget PCs) and tweak OS X to work flawlessly, Apple users will see no need to move away.

PC v Mac is potential v convenience.

phnx90 said:

People who think PCs suck because they get viruses and are generally mediocre yet cannot give any examples = PEBCAK

Click to expand...

Examples of what? PCs? Viruses?

10 years of using PCs is enough experience with PCs, one would think.

And as far as the general sentiment about PCs, viruses, virus scans and patches one is welcome to go on google and enter the appropriate keywords for more information.

movdqa said:

> Then that's an improvement, not innovation.

The concept is an improvement but the implementation is innovation. Apple asked Intel to develop Thunderbolt (I think that the previous codename was LightSpeed) and Intel did so. Time will tell on device adoption).

Click to expand...

I agree

movdqa said:

> That would still weigh more than having a laptop with a beefier GPU. Also, GPUs are not things that are meant to be carried around - too physically fragile and static electricity frying your chip is a real possibility.

The same is true for external monitors. The model of taking a light laptop with you for mobility and then plugging into something more powerful is not a bad one. I've gone back and forth between different models as have many of the people that I work with. I'm mainly going with powerful desktops and my MacBook Pro. One guy I work with is centralizing on laptops - 17 inch MacBook Pro in the center and $3,500 Sony Vaio Z for mobility. Some folks have multiple laptops depending on their mood for the day.

Click to expand...

I see what you're trying to say here. In that case, card manufacturers will need to start producing cases or completely new designs to accommodate this. However, the higher end cards will probably be extremely expensive if it's the latter, and given the amount of money you'd have spent on that setup (~$2500 for 15" MBP, ~$600 for a card), you might as well get a MacBook for $1000 and get a desktop for $2100. A $2100 desktop will be quite ridiculous in performance.

movdqa said:

> NVIDIA Optimus tech allows the computer to automatically switch between integrated graphics and your dedicated GPU, giving you the power when you need it, and saving battery life when you don't.

Apple came out with switchable graphics with the first Unibody Macs, so there were a few of these floating around. I'm not completely sure as to why Apple didn't go with Optimus instead of rolling their own but my guess is that it had something to do with nVidias high failure rates on 8600 and 8400 discrete mobile graphics solutions. Apple is now all or almost all ATI graphics now for discrete solutions so having their own switching tech meant that they could go with either ATI or nVidia. Optimus would mean vendor lock-in.

Click to expand...

Actually I do know about this (I read up on Apple all the time) and came to the same conclusion. Personally though, I wish they stuck with NVIDIA. Eyefinity will be unpleasant on a mobile GPU, even if as powerful as the ones on the higher end MBPs as of now.

movdqa said:

The delay on Apple adopting Nehalem on their MacBook Pros could have been due to the chipset licensing battle between Intel and nVida - Apple was caught in the middle and were shipping Penryns for quite some time after Nehalem came out. The battle was ultimately settled with nVidia getting a lot of cash (at least $1 billion) and Intel getting usage rights to nVidia's patent portfolio for some period of time. A chip architect friend of mine said that the settlement amount would be useful for R&D expenses for their new foray into ARM chips.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info (seriously)

movdqa said:

> Because in your world, Thunderbolt is hardware and graphics cards aren't, I get it now.

Strawman.

Click to expand...

It isn't straw man. Straw man technique requires me to ignore your actual point (which you didn't make) and attack a new point that is similar to yours but not the same.

Since you ignored my point and stated that I was using the straw man technique and therefore wrong, you're actually closer to making a real straw man technique than I am.

Also, argument from fallacy. You'll have to explain your position as I have explained mine.

movdqa said:

> "Kind of is. Thunderbolt has no available devices, so it is useless. That could change in the future and Thunderbolt may be popular enough to be worth mentioning, but that's speculative." Is Thunderbolt "new"? Sure. Is Thunderbolt "powerful"? Sure. Is Thunderbolt "usable"? No. I'll give a +1 for MBP for Thunderbolt. Then, I'll give a -1 for no USB 3.0. At any rate, when we think of a "powerful laptop" we think CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD, etc. and you'd be delusional to think Macs have the most powerful ones in the market. I think you're the one trying to deflect by arguing with me over semantics.

Irrelevant.

Click to expand...

Irrelevant. See what I did there?

> Yeah, because clearly when I said "making" as in 'developing", I
> meant that they should make it as a device with no PCI and magically
> expect Thunderbolt to work with it. I'm true a believer of the
> Church of Steve Jobs.

It's pretty hard to criticize the iPad - it has been a stunning
commercial success.

> I'm not so sure about Intel and Apple's arrangement when it comes to
> chips. However, while the Xeon chips on the Mac Pros are undeniably
> good, I'm sure that Apple was the first OEM, meaning that I think
> the chips would have been available to the market before they were
> adopted by Apple. At least, it's been that way for the last few
> generations of CPUs.

Apple used to use PowerPC chips (IBM, Freescale, Motorola, Apple)
and PowerPC chips had advantages over Intel chips (better floating
point performance, a more traditional RISC architecture, Altivec),
but IBM dragged their feet on improving their chips. The advantages
with PowerPC were more seen with certain applications such as HPC
and certain aspects of video creation.

Intel wooed Apple to switch processors and gave them a ton of
technical advice on support and the speed and quality of the port
were amazing to me (I've done my fair share of ports to different
architectures). Apple did the switchover in about two years. Consider
that Microsoft came out with Windows XP x64 edition in 2003 (Beta)
and it took them until around 2008 to get to the point where support
for the platform was pretty good. They tried to do a push on it in
2005 but they didn't have the device drivers ready (always a problem
on ports). I think that the device manufacturers didn't see the numbers
to make it worth their while to port device drivers.

Apple does have their own chip group (actually two) and they seem to
be pretty competent in the job that they did for the iPad and iPad 2.
I think that the chip relationship between the two companies has been
a little strained as Apple didn't go with Intel's Atom chip. Intel's
stock has taken a beating as ARM chip stock became the darlings on
Wall St and in the tech media. It will be interesting to see where
the relationship goes in the future - competitor and/or partner.

> Actually Apple had a fairly decent reason to hold back on Sandy
> Bridge - they were flawed and Intel had to recall. Thankfully for
> Apple, they adopted SB so late that they were able to get access to
> the corrected version (or so I've been told).

The first SB laptops were out in January. Apple announced on February
24, 2011. They would have needed the supply chain in place and that
would take some time. Intel was building inventory in Q4 (maybe Q3 as
well - I don't recall which Intel conference call they talked about
that). So they were probably providing product to large customers in
Q4.

I don't think that Apple had a heads-up on the chipset bug but it
looks like they got the fixed chipsets pretty fast. I saw some
reporting their chipset revisions and it looks like Apple scarfed up a
lot of Gigabyte boards for their laptops. I do recall overclockers
running into failures with their SB chips in January - I wonder if
they actually were the ones that discovered that there was a problem
in the chipset. Not a bad strategy releasing early chips and chipsets
to enthusiasts as the bang the chips pretty hard.

> I have a few friends working or studying in the programming industry
> - despite OS X's Unix core, none of them seem to like it. They'd
> much rather get the run off the mill laptop and run Linux instead.

I have a lot of friends in software engineering but they are older. I
do have a coworker and he loves Ubuntu (he got me to run it on VMs on
all of my systems) but he's much younger. I think that younger folks
will put up with the additional maintenance issues of Linux where many
older folks want someone else to take care of that for them. I think
that's why Mozilla went whole hog on Macs.

> The arts crowd don't use Macs out of choice. As someone who
> seriously considered doing design, I know for a fact that almost all
> design/art schools require you to get a MacBook Pro...then get
> Photoshop on it. Once upon a time Macs were superior to PCs in
> graphics work (this holds true still for movies), but this just
> isn't the case now.

Good job on seeding then.

In the really old days, IBM did this.

We did this at DEC too.

I suppose that Microsoft did this and still does.

I recall when the Apple II ruled the educational (K12) computing
landscape.

> IMO Apple doesn't need to worry about competitors too much. Not
> because they don't push Apple hard enough - it's more that Apple
> users seem to adopt the Apple elitism and stay there. So long as
> Apple makes pretty computers with midrange hardware (therefore won't
> lag to a halt like budget PCs) and tweak OS X to work flawlessly,
> Apple users will see no need to move away.

We've gotten to the point where hardware performance improvements have
far exceeded software requirements and so hardware performance isn't
anywhere near as important as it used to be. Witness the success of
netbooks and now tablets which have a fraction of the power that
laptops have. In that arena, there are other factors that sell
products including style, service and usability.

> I see what you're trying to say here. In that case, card
> manufacturers will need to start producing cases or completely new
> designs to accommodate this.

There are already products out there like this. They typically
expand output resolution greatly.

> However, the higher end cards will probably be extremely expensive

The stuff out there now already is and it isn't high-performance;
it's higher resolution. People apparently will pay for resolution.
I know that I will.

> if it's the latter, and given the amount of money you'd have spent
> on that setup (~$2500 for 15" MBP, ~$600 for a card), you might as
> well get a MacBook for $1000 and get a desktop for $2100. A $2100
> desktop will be quite ridiculous in performance.

That's an option - would would be neat is a MacBook Air with
Thunderbolt. I really wanted to see the MacBook Air treatment for 15
inch and 17 inch notebooks.

> Actually I do know about this (I read up on Apple all the time) and
> came to the same conclusion. Personally though, I wish they stuck
> with NVIDIA. Eyefinity will be unpleasant on a mobile GPU, even if
> as powerful as the ones on the higher end MBPs as of now.

I don't know if you recall the event but Steve Jobs essentially said
that Huang lied to him. nVidia damaged Apple's reputation and greatly
stressed their service organization. It wasn't just Apple - you should
see the number of Dell XPS users that had their motherboards replaced
three, four and five times. There was a tremendous amount of industry
resentment towards nVidia and their CEO, known for shooting off his
mouth in the press, didn't help this problem.

nVidia did some amount of stonewalling in this matter which resulted
in a class action lawsuit which nVidia settled. I imagine that Intel
certainly learned a lesson on being up-front and taking the financial
charge right away so that you don't get your customers and end-users
really, really mad at you. Just mildly mad at you.

> It isn't straw man. Straw man technique requires me to ignore your
> actual point (which you didn't make) and attack a new point that is
> similar to yours but not the same. Since you ignored my point and
> stated that I was using the straw man technique and therefore wrong,
> you're actually closer to making a real straw man technique than I
> am. Also, argument from fallacy. You'll have to explain your
> position as I have explained mine.

A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy
based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a
straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition
by substituting it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent
proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having
actually refuted the original position.[1][2]

> Irrelevant. See what I did there?

Irrelevant.

CyBorg said:

Examples of what? PCs? Viruses?

10 years of using PCs is enough experience with PCs, one would think.

And as far as the general sentiment about PCs, viruses, virus scans and patches one is welcome to go on google and enter the appropriate keywords for more information.

Click to expand...

CyBorg said:

Some people just refuse to admit the PC's faults.

Sure, there are advantages to having a PC. But I'm not a gamer and I love my Mac.

It's intuitive and reacts quickly to the way I think. After an adjustment time of maybe about two weeks I grew into the thing and now it's like an extension of my body.

Whenever I use a PC at a friend's I can't believe I used to own one of those. They're brutal. Slow, clunky. Not to mention that they're huge and full of cables.

And of course the awful patches and anti-virus programs. I hated installing those and after a while they slow your computer down to a crawl.

As for Macs and viruses - haven't gotten one ever. And I'm the kind of guy who downloads tons of stuff. Hell, even from Russian websites. I averaged a virus a week when I had PCs. Not a thing on my macbook beauty in 3 years.

It's just better. It is. In every way.

As for the price, consider the true costs of owning PCs. The repairs, the reinstallations, the stress. That has a cost too. If my mac breaks after the warranty runs out and the cost of repairs is too large then screw it, I'll just buy another one. I'm already saving, as far as I'm concerned.

Click to expand...

Your words, not mine.

BTW:

1. If a dinky antivirus slows down your computer significantly, clearly your PC was crap.
2. A computer doesn't catch viruses by itself. Your downloading habits got you your viruses. My friend who switched to Mac because they "don't get viruses" got one last week. Is it the Mac's fault? No, it's his fault. Similarly, your viruses are your fault.
3. Next time you decide to download files like keygens, run a scan first (you should have an antivirus for your Mac, since Apple themselves recommend it), then open the file in a VM. That's the proper way to do things.

I'm going to bed, toodles

movdqa said:

> There are already products out there like this. They typically expand output resolution greatly.

...

The stuff out there now already is and it isn't high-performance; it's higher resolution. People apparently will pay for resolution. I know that I will.

Click to expand...

Bigger screen + scaled GPU = cancellation. Leads me to think that you are fine with the performance of a MacBook Pro (not very high by desktop standards), but want the screen of a desktop. In that case get a MacBook Air and a desktop. If you like OS X then get an iMac - either way, no need for another screen.

movdqa said:

That's an option - would would be neat is a MacBook Air with Thunderbolt. I really wanted to see the MacBook Air treatment for 15 inch and 17 inch notebooks.

Click to expand...

Thunderbolt for MacBook Air is inevitable IMO, unless they want to lessen the impact of Thunderbolt on the industry by themselves.

movdqa said:

I don't know if you recall the event but Steve Jobs essentially said that Huang lied to him...-snip-...Just mildly mad at you.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I actually remember this. My preference for NVIDIA however is due to PhysX more than anything else. This however, wouldn't interest most Mac users, but now with Steam on Mac and increasing emphasis on gaming by Apple, this may be noteworthy. Eyefinity on the other hand, especially with Apple cinema displays will be one hell of an expensive setup in comparison.

movdqa said:

A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.[1][2]

Click to expand...

This argument started because of this quote: "The hardware alone on any Mac is nothing new and certainly nowhere near as powerful as anything available for the PC."

You cited Thunderbolt as an example of "new".

I cited that GPUs are outdated as an example of "nothing new".

The only way the GPU paragraph can be irrelevant is if GPUs aren't hardware. Either way, in pointing out your obfuscated classifications I actually addressed the core of your argument that it was irrelevant.

movdqa said:

> Irrelevant. See what I did there?

Irrelevant.

Click to expand...

Pointless.

BTW: are you shortening the length of the lines on purpose?

> Bigger screen + scaled GPU = cancellation. Leads me to think that you
> are fine with the performance of a MacBook Pro, but want the screen of
> a desktop. In that case get a MacBook Air and an iMac, or one badass
> PC.

I was an early SB adopter - bought all of the parts from Newegg. Was
disappointed when I found out that I'd have to replace the MB. I have
a pretty nice system that should last for the next five years.

I have a couple of Core i7s at the office, one running Windows 7 and
the other running Oracle Enterprise Linux. They're both very nice.

I carry my MacBook Pro around with me (3+ years old) for working in
cafe's or my other residences. I do have a 27 inch iMac there but
my daughter claimed it. I also have a large external monitor there
too but my wife claimed that. I'd have to buy some more furniture
there if I wanted to get some big displays. I don't spend a lot of
time there so I usually just live with my MacBook Pro.

> Yeah, I actually remember this. My preference for NVIDIA however is
> due to PhysX more than anything else. This however, wouldn't
> interest most Mac users, but now with Steam on Mac and increasing
> emphasis on gaming by Apple, this may be noteworthy. Eyefinity on
> the other hand, especially with Apple cinema displays will be one
> hell of an expensive setup in comparison.

nVidia's now a component supplier for Apple's competitors with their
Tegra line of processors. Maybe Apple goes back to nVidia in a few
years - Apple likes to play ATI and nVidia off each other over the
long haul. Maybe Intel will someday get their act together on Larrabee
too.

> This argument started because of this quote: "The hardware alone on
> any Mac is nothing new and certainly nowhere near as powerful as
> anything available for the PC." You cited Thunderbolt as an example
> of "new". I cited that GPUs are outdated as an example of "nothing
> new".

You took something that was not my point or argument and claimed that
I said it. That's a strawman.

> Point proven. BTW: are you shortening the length of the lines on
> purpose?

Irrelevant.

Polaris:

You haven't refuted anything. I have given up that discussion because it is useless, and because you seem to need the upper hand on an internet messageboard much more than I do. Again, if you think I copied someone's points, feel free. I care not.

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Apparently Post #87 wasn't anything worth reading. Only #113 was.

No, I meant the "Control" key. Macs have a "Control" key in case you didn't know. The 4-leaf clover is called the "Command" key. Those are two different things. For someone who rails against Macs, you don't seem to know much about them.

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I've heard the four-leaf clover key also called as a Control key. And yes I know both PC and Mac keyboards have a Ctrl key.

movdqa:

Do you own a copy? Have you read it?

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I wouldn't want to read a book that wrong. If I was driving with that book, a cop would pull me over for how Wrong I was going. Plus, you're trying to defend a specious point by Polaris.

Those sound consistent to me.

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I'm talking about:

And, you sound like a little kid trying to act like an adult. That
you're a college student isn't surprising. Lots of college students
think that they know quite a bit. The thing about a good education
is understanding how much there is out there that you don't know.
The more degrees you collect, the more you realize this.

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and

> Although, if I recall correctly you said more degrees expands the
> knowledge and allows people to think more rationally and critically.

I didn't say that. I said that the higher up you go with education,
the more you learn how little you know.

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There's no consistency in that? Wow.

I didn't know that the OS did spell-checking. I use Oracle Open Office
for writing papers and specs and it has its own spell-checking.

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I'm talking about iWork.

Which race are Russians?

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Even though CyBorg has now stated he's a Russian, I meant the Russian people, not white people.

Well, an annual cycle doesn't imply a marketing waterfall.

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In some situations it can, and I think with an in-depth look of the website I linked, it does imply it for Apple.

Normally the hardware vendor writes device drivers. This is why it can
be maddening to a Linux user when a hardware manufacturer doesn't
provide Linux drivers.

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I use Debian, but none of my hardware is old enough, so even as a Linux user I don't know of this frustration.

My 90-year-old mother has a laptop that last had home internet service
via AOL back in the 1990s. She walks a half-mile to a nearby hospital
for internet access. Do you think that she'd be able to upgrade
Windows without help? Why do you think Best Buy makes a lot of money
with Windows OS services that would seem trivial to those here? The
average person doesn't want to mess with OS files.

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I'm not sure if 90 year olds pertain to the "average user" category, not that I'm trying to discriminate or anything. Personal question: Why don't you help her? Back to regular stuff, if someone did have internet connection, you could just as easily Google it. Will respond to you late tomorrow, I have some important classes tomorrow to deal with.

> I wouldn't want to read a book that wrong. If I was driving with
> that book, a cop would pull me over for how Wrong I was going. Plus,
> you're trying to defend a specious point by Polaris.

"The 14th Edition of Introduction to Logic, written by Copi, Cohen &
McMahon, is dedicated to the many thousands of students and their
teachers - at hundreds of universities in the United States and around
the world - who have used its fundamental methods and techniques of
correct reasoning in their everyday lives."

(Amazon.com)

You don't know that the book is wrong because you haven't read it.

> There's no consistency in that? Wow.

That is correct. What you said and what I said are quite different.

> I'm talking about iWork.

I've never seen the product. Oracle Open Office is a comprehensive
office suite that's portable, free and open source.

> Even though CyBorg has now stated he's a Russian, I meant the Russian
> people, not white people.

So what race are the Russian people?

> In some situations it can, and I think with an in-depth look of the
> website I linked, it does imply it for Apple.

Some of my later exchanges here may provide reasons for Apple's Mac
release schedule.

> I use Debian, but none of my hardware is old enough, so even as a
> Linux user I don't know of this frustration.

Try running it on a Sony Vaio Z and getting all of the gadgets to work.

> I'm not sure if 90 year olds pertain to the "average user" category,
> not that I'm trying to discriminate or anything. Personal question:
> Why don't you help her?

She hasn't asked. Sometimes, with older people, you don't do it for
them as they get upset over that.

> Back to regular stuff, if someone did have internet connection, you
> could just as easily Google it. Will respond to you late tomorrow, I
> have some important classes tomorrow to deal with.

You could but you might not be able to follow directions. Or you might
not want to. I could do my taxes by hand but I prefer to use software
if it is available.

You may enjoy playing around with this stuff but most people would just
like their applications to run and not have to do any maintenance. It's
similar with cars. The maintenance intervals on cars is much longer than
it was 20 years ago.

GetBetterer said:

Polaris:
I've heard the four-leaf clover key also called as a Control key. And yes I know both PC and Mac keyboards have a Ctrl key.

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ROFL!

GetBetterer said:

Even though CyBorg has now stated he's a Russian, I meant the Russian people, not white people.

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<Facepalm>.

I've heard the four-leaf clover referred to as the Apple-Key.

Besides these, there's also the function key.

movdqa said:

You took something that was not my point or argument and claimed that I said it. That's a strawman.

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Okay, so what exactly is your logic behind the fact that it's irrelevant?

movdqa said:

BTW: are you shortening the length of the lines on purpose?

Irrelevant.

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This wasn't an argument, as I was asking if you were pressing Enter/Return midsentence making the posts appear much longer.

> Okay, so what exactly is your logic behind the fact that it's irrelevant?

It is. To my point.

> This wasn't an argument, as I was asking if you were pressing Enter/Return
> midsentence making the posts appear much longer.

This is the old email/usenet posting style going back several decades.

I copy text into emacs, reformat it with angle quotes and then reply.
This has been the standard way to reply in text forums and email lists
for many decades.

movdqa said:

> Okay, so what exactly is your logic behind the fact that it's irrelevant?

It is. To my point.

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Sounds like an assertion, since you can't explain it besides "it just is"

movdqa said:

> This wasn't an argument, as I was asking if you were pressing Enter/Return midsentence making the posts appear much longer.

This is the old email/usenet posting style going back several decades.

I copy text into emacs, reformat it with angle quotes and then reply.
This has been the standard way to reply in text forums and email lists
for many decades.

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Yeah, I was wondering if you were reformatting your posts, looks like you are.

> Sounds like an assertion, since you can't explain it besides
> "it just is"

I don't care to explain it but I'm surprised that you're asking as it is so obvious.

> Yeah, I was wondering if you were reformatting your posts,
> looks like you are.

I'm old school, tennis or computing. Really, really old school.

movdqa said:

> Sounds like an assertion, since you can't explain it besides
> "it just is"

I don't care to explain it but I'm surprised that you're asking as it is so obvious.

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Well I already explained its relevance and you just ignored it. So far, you've dismissed the original argument as irrelevant without justification, or argued instead about usage of the straw man technique. I'm starting to think that you're just asserting that it's irrelevant to avoid having to admit that it is a valid example.

More OT, it's also a good argument against Mac hardware in general.

The arts crowd don't use Macs out of choice. As someone who seriously considered doing design, I know for a fact that almost all design/art schools require you to get a MacBook Pro...then get Photoshop on it. Once upon a time Macs were superior to PCs in graphics work (this holds true still for movies), but this just isn't the case now.

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As a member of the 'arts crowd' I have to laugh at this one.

. . . yeah that's kind of funny.

I've had the pleasure of using BOTH PCs and Macs ever since they were popularly introduced in the 1980s. Consistently I find the Macs easier to use. They simply WORK. All too often, the PCs fail.

I'm not a computer technician, etc., I'm just a mere user. The whole Mac vs. PC debate got stale around 1990 in my book; now you just have PC techies trying to score points.

. . . and you know, the only reason PCs are still around is because Microsoft/IBM was smart enough to seed these in the business world when they first came out. That's the chief factor for their current market share.

> Well I already explained its relevance and you just ignored it.
> So far, you've dismissed the original argument as irrelevant
> without justification, or argued instead about usage of the
> straw man technique. I'm starting to think that you're just
> asserting that it's irrelevant to avoid having to admit that it is
> a valid example.

> More OT, it's also a good argument against Mac hardware in
> general.

Think what you will, your other stuff IS irrelevant.

max said:

. . . yeah that's kind of funny.

I've had the pleasure of using BOTH PCs and Macs ever since they were popularly introduced in the 1980s. Consistently I find the Macs easier to use. They simply WORK. All too often, the PCs fail.

I'm not a computer technician, etc., I'm just a mere user. The whole Mac vs. PC debate got stale around 1990 in my book; now you just have PC techies trying to score points.

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How often?