Reading Macintosh

I've never really gotten the point of mac, at least in recent days.

I've had a great appreciation of Apple in the 80's in 90's. It seemed to have a lot of things going for it back then.
eg.
- Hypercard, which turned out to be a great inspiration for modern day internet as well as rapid development.

- One of the first GUI systems which was well ahead of Microsoft and obviously a decade before Linux was conceived.

- Having GUI elements (icons etc) in the ROM - obvious advantages.

- Bootable floppy containing the actual OS, not just an installer - perhaps inspired knoppix and other Live Linux distros.

- Unique hardware and unique software

- Was extremely reliable up until OSX (IMHO)

But look at Apple now.
They've followed the crowd and switched their hardware to Intel compatible and their software to Unix compatible.

So instead of a GUI system running on GUI friendly-hardware, they now have a TUI system, with a GUI frontend running on TUI-friendly hardware although it is not intended to to be used as a TUI system (unlike Linux/Unix/DOS etc).

I'm sure at least 90% of mac users have no idea what Unix is, or how to use it, they just use the aqua GUI. From what I've seen they're not even taking advantage of shared libraries. Every application I have ever downloaded on OSX has been a single executable file which I drag and drop to the applications directory and it is immediately ready for use. This suggests that either everything this app neads is built into the app, or OSX already has every single library/function that I have ever needed , which ofcourse would make it rather bloated for most people's use.

Perhaps this is why I have seen people spend literally thousands of pounds on a macbook pro and just use them for common day internet activities (downloading/streaming etc), and some light storing of mp3s. I used to listem to Mp3's in the early 90's when Windows 3.1 was reaching its end and Windows 95 was being born. 16Mb and a P150 was all I needed. OK, technology has moved on since then, but not by much. Now with a Dual Core 1.8Ghz processor and only 2Gb ram I can still run 50 virtual machines, watch a 1080p movie and do some light browsing/IM'ing all at the same time. So why do people need 8/16GB Ram, terrabytes of diskpace and quad cpu/core processors to watch youtube videos and update their ipods?

Personally I don't even belive that Macs are indeed better for graphics/media work as is commonly thought. Surely this is because the average mac is generally higher spec (and higher cost) of the average non-mac. (trying not to use the word PC, as they are both PC's now). Would be interested to see if there any official non-biased figures on same spec reliability/speed etc. for mac/windows/linux. But surely if you can run a modern Linux distro very comfortably with 256Mb RAM, it would be better with 8/16GB ram than a mac which requires 1GB as a minimum. I guess Windows is the same, but has always been, whereas Mac used to be the opposite (perhaps not in cost, but in productivity per recources). Most of the conversations I've seen on the web are people who've just bought a brand new mac which they favor to their old Windows machine which they'd had for a few years and was a quarter of the spec - not really a fair comparison.

One thing I do like about the new mac's is that they do look sleek, nice & shiny etc, perhaps a good showing off tool, but apart from that I don't see the apeal.

The interface itself haven't changed in the last 30 or so years. Everything is still in the same place with the same name as it was in the early 80s. Some minor differences: the apple logo is now solid as opposed to all the colors of the rainbow. Also the list of running applications is now in the apple menu on the left, instead of the finder menu on the right, and ofcourse a dockbar on the bottom (which is nothing remarkable I might add) Apart from that, its virtually the same.

Funnily enough, all the people I knew back then who hated mac with a passion while I was raving about it are now mac lovers, raving about how simple and easy the interface is, how quick you can run applications etc. Sure it's easy, but it was also easy 30 years ago, how can that give people the wow factor 20/30 years after the idea was conceived. Someone's just colored it in, and put it in a silver box, you muppets!! But its essentially the same from the user prospective. If I was to recompile DOS with a green screen I doubt anyone will jump with joy, so what's the biggie here?? Nothing's new - seen it all before. We've even seen the concept of having a screen and computer in one, for many decades. Mac Plus/Mac SE & iMac/eMac Is there something obvious I'm missing; perhaps some super new feature that I've somehow overlooked?

I'm a Linux person myself and have been for years, so obviously my opinion is that Linux is the best. This is mainly ease of use, package management, speed, versatility, amongst many others. But despite OSX trying to benifit from the success of Linux by using Unix I don't think it brings any of that, even compared to windows. Its just as bloated (at least at the lower level), it crashes just as much with the spinning beach ball thing, requires a hell of a lot of resources, has no/little package management, and is not as easy to customize.

I'd say that the only real reason why apple is so popular is due to their huge publicity stunt which I only noticed after they Apple-Intel transition. But other than that I don't see their products being unique or special in any way - just another laptop/desktop/mp3 player/mobile phone in a shiny case.

Will be interested to see what others here think. Both mac lovers and mac haters.

First and the biggest deal with apple/mac is the brand power.

Apple tries to look like an elitist system, because it has a small niche on the market (they actually said it in their commercials - office work and games are for normal pc - mac is for fun and creativity).

It's a great system for multimedia production, due to some good software, and stability (which mostly comes from basing on *bsd kernel and limited hardware support).

There is also marketing. Keynotes where the audience is being told what to think (i've seen a few and that's the impression i got).

Concept of minimalism of their products that offer you simple interfaces with no extra bells and whistles, that just do what they're supposed to do - that's what makes lazy crowds comfortable. That's what most of customers are expecting.

There are people that don't like that concept, but i don't think they matter much on desktop market. That's why linux has little desktop penetration.

Btw. Most points at the beginning of your post might as well be applied to amiga from the 80s-90s ;-)

apple often did publicity stunts. Like open letter against drm.

"Life is a queue. You come in, hang around for a bit, get some service, then depart."

This post was edited by yoshi314 on Mar 04, 2010.

Some good points

Talking of stability for example...
What is it more stable than?

Not actually used Windows 7 (or vista for that matter), but there are enough arguments for Windows 7 being more stable than Snow Leopard. I can't judge though, its been a while since I actively used Windows as a desktop.

I agree that BSD itself is known to be stable and reliable but that's BSD as a product. Take out 90% of the system and replace it with something new and you can't really expect the same results. Its like replacing the engine of a Ford Mondeo with the engine of a 3-series BMW. There's different factors affecting that engine so performance is different.

I recently saw a network router (can't remember the name) which ran on some modified version of Debian. I immediately took a liking to it as it was Linux based until we had to do a powerdown failover test. It turned out that it was using an ext2 file system which booted into single user mode and required a manual fsck if it was uncleanly shutdown. In this case, it was either not configured correctly by the manufacturer, or not a good idea to use this release of Linux for this purpose.

Its the same with OSX. I have found that both classic mac and the various BSDs are individually more stable than OSX, it took me years to even see the old unhappy mac crash icon - gave me a giggle though :-) Took me a day of OSX to see the spinning wheel crash and have seen dozens since.

I agree with your point about the marketing - I have to say they did get that spot on. They knew who to target and how. They knew exactly what people wanted to hear and gave it to them. Good on them.

I agree with your point about the marketing - I have to say they did get that spot on. They knew who to target and how. They knew exactly what people wanted to hear and gave it to them. Good on them.

it's all good, but many apple users (be it ipod, mac or iphone) feel so special and superior to people using other operating systems.

i like apple for innovation. but i hate them for being a control freaks and one of the most aggressive promotors of drm-ish solutions. and for separating people through expensive products.

"Life is a queue. You come in, hang around for a bit, get some service, then depart."

This post was edited by yoshi314 on Mar 04, 2010.