Just saw the news on the internet around 8pm EST 2011 October 5.
Hasn't even been officially put up on the IMDB yet.

Sad day for Steve Jobs's family and friends.

I never thought about this before until now:
For the past 17 years of my involvement in WAM, which I consider officially starting in May 1994 when I first heard from Rob Blaine of Messyfun that, indeed, yes there IS a fetish, Virginia, for lovers of messy fun,
I assumed that everyone worked from a Microsoft-OS personal computer just like I do. I've never even touched an Apple product in my life.

My question: what fraction of you wammers are on an Apple computer,
or do your internet or dvd-wam viewing, through an Apple device of some kind,
rather than a PC?

My primary computer is a PC but professionally, I have worked with Macs. My working relationship with the Mac goes back about 20 years.

Last year, I managed to get my hands out to catch a Mac G5 before one company I worked for was gonna dumpster it. It's the last G5 they made before Pentium was put in so they couldn't upgrade any of its software. They had thoughts of selling it for a lot of money anyway but since eventually they just threw the whole thing in the back seat of my car...I imagine that they finally saw the light and realized that if they gave it to me, they wouldn't have to pay anybody else to haul it away nor would they have to worry about the software on it being somehow pirated and sold to competitors.

I can play some mud videos on that G5 and the monitor is absolutely AWESOME!!! but it is an older computer, and it won't see a thing on YouTube.

I personally like Macs somewhat better as they are more intuitive to use, don't catch viruses and seem to be overall more stable. But the world is on PC and so are most of the software creators.

That makes owning a Mac expensive. Grudgingly, my budget says that I need to stay on a PC.

My personal Mac that I rescued from the dumpster has some very cool software on it and at one time that cost somebody a lot of money. I will use that software and I will watch some mud videos on it too.

Other than that, it will be frozen in time, and mostly offline, until it just dies.

Nessie

I have always had an issue with the whole "I can't afford a Mac" thing. It's not always the case by a long shot.

By the time the average consumer pays for virus/malware/spyware software and then the fact that consumer PC's are made of cheap plastic and built at the cheapest price possible it's not going to last long.

My Macbook of four years has just been moved out to pasture - in that time my wife has had to cheap laptops die on her. Total cost of ownership of a laptop for both of us... a difference of $100 (She uses free virus protection).

She also didn't have a good free suite of Media applications with it - not even a video editor came installed, let alone an iPhoto or an email client of any worth.

She used her laptop for basic stuff, maybe an hour or two a day. I ran my Macbook ragged for work, and it went all over the world - including in luggage on planes.

In four years it had two new keyboards, both replaced by Apple for free.

If you really need Windows... dual boot it. It's no big deal. If you need Windows for work, you know what that means.


I would still put my Macbook up against a Windows PC for speed in everyday stuff, the only reason it has been replaced is because Dual Core wasn't enough anymore.



I haven't owned a PC in about eight years. I got tired of them only lasting a year of what I needed. One new laptop a year or one new Mac every four... the Mac works out cheaper and I much prefer it.



As for the original question... my wife now uses an iPad for all her surfing and email needs, and she is no geek. So do I.

The percentages will be the same as everywhere else on the web, but Android and iOS will take over as the years go on.

Thank you, Noise and Loch Ness, for replying so quickly to my ill-posed open-ended question about that media-generated "war": "Mac vs PC". And in such detail.

I have heard the term Android for about 2 years now. No idea what it is.
Even after reading the wikipedia page. (I have a very short memory for things I obviously don't care about.) What IS it? An operating system?

I settled into my "comfort zone" long ago - probably in 1997 - with what I can use computers for. I intuitively know when some knew piece of hardware or software will not be the worth the trouble, and I am always right about it.

For me, the most memory and computationally intensive activity I have ever done on my Sony VAIO computer or ANY computer for that matter
is digitize analog video using Sony Click2DVD.
Digitizing old home movies. But, even THAT stopped working. I bought and used Dazzle a little bit this year, but THAT stopped working. So, I cannot even update my YouTube page anymore, which I began in August 2009.

At least I can still digitize audio, although I have no audio left that I feel the "need" to digitize. (i.e. no more home / personal-generated stuff)

I collect and buy NO dvds of ANYthing commercial whatsoever.
I have ZERO interest in collecting and saving other people's creations.

Even the WAM downloads that I have bought maybe one per year
I delete after awhile.

Same goes for music CDs. I would prefer if everything I'd want to listen to
could either be on YouTube to listen to for free or to be rented from a library.
But, that's not possible. So, I DID violate my own rule last year and purchased
a 5-CD collection of Boccherini string ensembles.

I'm saying all this to describe how I have greatly simplified my computer activities since 1997.

So, my computer activities are limited to surfing the web, online banking, watching YouTube and Dailymotion videos, checking email, and every so often using Microsoft Word and MathType to type math reports.

I realize it's fun to fantasize about doing more with a computer,
i.e. doing some sort of amazing creations - computationally and maybe create animated science and technical videos - but I have had to face the reality that it's not worth the effort.

So, I don't know if it's "more worth the effort" trying to do more complicated things on a Mac - i.e. more complicated than just playing dvds or watching YouTube or checking one's email - or with Android or iOS than on a non-Mac.

I have only this desktop computer. I have no laptop or other portable device.
I already mentioned I've never even touched a Mac product, but I mean I don't even have any portable Microsoft product - if they exist.

You would suit an iPad down to the ground unless monitor size is an issue, and reclaim your computer desk space.

Or the Macbook Air - fast as hell and super light and strong.

Neither are cut out to be workhorses, but of course if you don't need a work horse...



I love watching people as they first start using a Mac.

Starts with a little frustrating, then becomes "oooh" and "aaaah" as they see how easy it should be.

That may be Steve Jobs greatest gift to us - teaching that engineers they should learn make computers and software for people to use, not make computers and software for people to learn.



You won't necessarily make "more complicated" things on a Mac, but it's easier to get to making more complicated things.


Android is an OS for mobile devices - phones and Tablets, but will be adapted for everything from your TV set top box to your fridge and your car.

I use an Android phone, it's great and all that - particuly if you are a geek - but it lacks the Apple elegance, style and user simplicity. Also because it's so hard for developers to make money making apps for it (Lot's of reasons) the iPhone has all the best developers in the app store.

Even PC folks benefit greatly from the work of Steve Jobs. Windows 7 is not quite as cool as the latest Mac OS, but it is a huge improvement in ease of use relative to other Windows releases. Even the original Windows was simply Bill Gates borrowing the ideas he and Steve Jobs worked on together for an early mouse-driven Xerox information system. By putting something that much better on the market, Apple forced Microsoft et al. to compete and improve. All users of modern computers owe at least as much to Steve Jobs's aesthetic sensibilities and design genius as they do to anyone associated with the development of Windows PC technology.

Regards,
messydom

Hell, the browser you are using probably is based on Webkit.

As a PC gamer thats been building his own computers for 10 years I don't really have a use for a Mac. The average user just wants to dick around on the internet for a couple hours a day, and download music. Thats not what I build em for.

I don't buy into that PC's are made of cheap parts, and only last for a year argument. Sure, if you buy an E-Machine, or Gateway thats true, but this box I built 3 years ago is playing the BF3 beta at the highest graphic options. Aside from bumpin the RAM up to 8 gigs its gonna be chuggin along fine for the next couple years before I build a new one. It only cost $1000 to build.

The key point is the PC you made. You chose what you made it from.

Fact is, PC's as a general rule are made from cheap parts - mostly the same parts as each others brands.

That's the result of a race to the bottom on price. That's why their business model is based on volume - the margins are so low.

The only way that model works is if the parts and build is cheap. That's why IBM left the PC manufacturing business and HP is doing the same. It's how a race to the bottom always ends - shitty product and companies going "Screw this, we will make our money elsewhere.".

Apple don't care about market share, they care about the equation of Great Product = Customer Satisfaction = Returning Customers = Great Profit.

UMD is built on a Mac.

So are Microsoft TV adverts.

Here is an interesting take: http://daringfireball.net/2011/09/new_apple_advantage

I have an IBM Thinkpad from 1997 that I am still using as a print server back in the office. It also runs current postage, DVD printing, and accounting applications. My "new" Lenovo Thinkpad is about 4 years old and flies around the country with me a couple times a month. Computer electronics are sensitive to static charges and have relatively fragile precision moving parts. If you have no respect for them and treat them like a frisbee, they're going to break.

90% of the world's professional graphics are done in Photoshop. It's cross-platform, so the underlying operating system is irrelevant. 90% of hand-rolled websites are created in some type of text editor, and again the underlying OS is completely irrelevant. World-class audio and video editing applications are available on both Windows & Mac. Most of the world's public-facing websites run on Unix or Linux. A smaller percentage run on Windows Server, and approximately zero run on the mostly abandoned Mac server platform.

I bought my Mom a Mac. I have a house and office full of Windows XP laptops and workstations. I have several data center racks full of Centos Linux servers. For the last couple of years I've used an Android phone. I have 5 Tivos and 7 web-accessible security cameras in various locations that all run Linux. I have probably 50 other microchip-based electronic devices around that may or may not have what you could call an "operating system". (is the toaster running Linux?)

I use the appropriate tool for the job and the format I am most comfortable and familiar with. The one deal-breaker in all of this is that I will NEVER own a product that does not let me swap batteries and storage chips myself when virtually ALL other competing products have that feature. One of the many reasons I don't personally use any Apple products.

I dunno, I have an eight year old iPod here, a four year old and a two year old... as well as an Android phone. Never had to swap out battery or memory. I don't even know how to get at either on the Evo.

My wife had an iPod with a battery go bad at a year and a half old... they just gave her a new one. Try doing that with any other brand of MP3 player.

Although granted, on stock android I can see why people would carry a spare battery. My EVO lasted all of 5 hours until I changed to Cyanogen. Now it rolls over ten with reasonable use and will standby for two days with none.

My wife won't be putting modded OS's on a phone though, that's why she rocks the iPhone and I'm about to. Much as I like Android, it's just not up to scratch barring the Navigation app.

BTW - anyone with a HTC phone go careful - the fundamental flaw in the whole Android thing has just shown its first casualty. Any application can get at all your data... be careful what apps you choose. It's to do with HTC's Sense overlay... they are working on a fix.


As for the big programs running multi platform... yeah. But I personally prefer to run it on an OS that gets out of the way and doesn't take up my time and patience with maintenance - I also love the quality of indy developers on Apple stuff iOS and OSX.

Windows has it's place - running the back end of businesses and servers and people that need to get into the nuts and bolts. Maybe that will change with Windows 8, but they have already had many swings of the bat.

Actually, on the subject of Android... there is another thing that pisses me off about it. Here's my soapbox on it.

For the average user, Google made a HUGE mistake handing over control of updates to the call phone companies.

Chances are, if you own an Android phone you will be stuck with the version of Android for the duration of your contract - 2 years.

Why? Because for the next version Android needs to baked it for every handset this where Apples one size fits all shows to be a good move - handsets are being released weekly. All with different screens, processors, RAM etc. So that's the first obstacle.

Second obstacle is it has to go to the manufacturer for them to put their own flavor on it. Verizon it's Droid, Sprint it's the god fucking awful Sense UI,

So, you have phone companies making UI for all these phones to layer over Android.

Next the phone companies have to deploy the update. Well, eventually because they certainly don't rush to get it to phones if they do.

Point is, the cell phone companies don't give a shit. Their attitude is well, you are in a two year contract - they have your money. Why do they need to improve the product they already sold you and is in your pocket?

It's the same reason they don't need to improve your internet speeds. You are paying them for what you have, so why hurt the profit margin, particularly when their is no real competition... the other three or four guys are doing the same thing after all!


So, if you get one update of Android... good luck getting the next flavor. Personally, i don't care. I am into the update cycle of the Android modders... I am running the latest version and will be for a long while if I were to keep the phone - hell, my G1 still gets updated by them. From my cell phone company, they never moved me onto the second version of Android.

Apple will actually increase the value of the item you bought because they get it. They get that if your experience with their product is positive, then you will be back for more. From the start they decided they were not going to put the OS of the phone in the communications companies hands... and fucking right. I don't need their crappy badges and horrible UI and bundled apps you can't remove - it's all a bit Windows, frankly


If i get another Android phone it will be one of the Nexus phones, but the hardware is frankly too crappy. But that's another rant - plastic phones...




*I enjoyed using "flavor" and "baked" in reference to Android versions. You will just have to swallow it.

The Apple hardware is nice, but the advantage is in Mac OS X. As a developer who has written well over a million lines of production software for Windows, OS/2, DOS, Linux, MVS, VM/CMS, OS400, and OS X ... and that's just the production stuff ... not the tinkering and early learning stuff on 6502 and Z80 processors ... my professional opinion of OS X is that it is the most advanced and developer friendly OS, ever. It is based on a Free BSD kernel and the Next Step environment. If you do some research on Next Step, you'll find that it has been used for decades by developers who needed fast solutions to complex problems (scientists, intelligence agencies, etc.). If you spend some time getting to know Core Data, and Cocoa, you can write some pretty complicated apps with just a few lines of code. Security is also much better and simpler on OS X (think Un*x), with all of the users' data, preferences, etc. in their home folder, rather than a central registry. It's easy to back up (and restore), it's orderly, it's reliable, and it's a true multiuser design.

As a professional developer, I would take OS X over MS Windows any day. Knowing the APIs and internals of both of them, I simply won't have MS Windows on one of my workstations. The time required to maintain a poorly designed OS, and the security risks, are simply a drain on my life.

If you want to argue with me, all I ask is that you have at least 10 years of experience as a full time software developer AND you have proficiency on both OS X and Windows. Otherwise, you cannot make a fair and thorough comparison. I've got 25 years experience as a professional developer, and my experience ranges from IBM mainframes to 8 bit micro-processors, and many of the operating systems employed across that range. I have written code for IBM, Intel, Netware, Siemens, Coca-Cola, and many small companies. I don't call them, they call me. I only wish I hadn't wasted so much time before I discovered OS X.

Indeed, nowadays the main difference is the reliability and ease of use that Apple offers vs. admittedly cheaper PC alternatives. However, when I took to Web design in 1994, there was really no choice. Back then, getting a PC set up for 32-bit color required some very expensive and exotic hardware. Back then, I'm not even sure Photoshop was cross-platform. I believe a lot of the earliest designers took to the Mac as a platform because it offered 32-bit color (essential to see what you're doing while editing photo-realistic imagery) as a well-integrated feature. Today the selling points are dependability and simplicity. Once upon a time though, serious graphic designers had to choose between an exotic solution (like an SGI system or a custom-made UNIX platform), a PC with at least one extremely uncommon component, or a Mac. I think this early difference is a big part of why Apple products continue to be so popular with creatives today, because nowadays you have to go -extremely- cheap to find a PC lacking 32-bit color capability.

Regards,
messydom

Although the Mac OS has superior support for audio and video, in my opinion, many of the hardware manufacturers favor Windows when writing the OpenGL/driver support, simply because the Windows platform enjoys deeper market penetration. Depending on the hardware, sometimes Windows will perform better, and sometimes OS X will perform better. The gamers especially like Windows because they can choose from a huge selection of the latest graphics hardware. But alas, it is that broad support that makes some Windows PCs suffer from difficult to diagnose driver issues.

To be fair, this is no longer an argument about hardware. The hardware is essentially the same. Macs use Intel processors on high quality motherboards with off-the-shelf video cards and other components. Apple is careful to select quality components, and they offer a great warranty service. They can offer better support because the hardware, the hardware drivers, and the operating system are all within their control. Some people applaud the homogeneity, while others curse it as a lack of options. I've been in both camps. I really appreciate the reliability and support, but I also hate, sometimes, that I have specific configurations from which I must choose.

At this point in my life, I'm done tinkering. I want to buy a PC (and yes, an Apple PC is still a PC) that does what I expect it to do, every day, without fail. Back in the day, I used to build my own machines and load everything myself. Now, if a company is willing to build me a machine and provide all of the drivers and the OS, and will repair or replace said machine inside of 2 days when it fails, that's the option for me. I guess I'm just not as adventurous, anymore.

Speaking of adventurous, once you're hooked on TimeMachine, I'm not sure you can live without it.

Amen. Saved my arse a few times now.

How about Auto Save and Versions in Lion?

I jumped into Lion maybe a little to early, then with no choice with a new computer - I am now rocking a 27" iMac with Quad core i7's.

It took me a week before the screen stopped being too big and i hooked up a second monitor - now i know why MM bitches so hard about how OSX handles multiple monitors... a desktop for each monitor I am told it's on it's way in an update.

I work in printing and it's always been Mac-dominated.

I started using Macs at work around 1990. I worked with Quark Xpress, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop. They had none of this on PC.

'Twas all Mac. There was no such thing a color laser. Our machines output negative film to be burnt to printing plates and for cheap duplication on instant platemakers, there was this slick glossy stuff called RC paper.

I don't know when plain paper came in but my first Mac shop ran this neg-and-RC stuff BEFORE they bought a laser printer (talk about some expensive mistakes!).

When they finally got one, it wasn't much of a laser printer compared to what we have now. 300 dpi was the best it could do. Kinda crummy really.

Around 1996, at my next job, some of the Mac programs appeared on PC, but it still totally sucked. We had to jump through hoops to get anything from a blankety-blank &&%^%%%%!!! PC file to print on any device at all. All the expensive hardware was set up for Mac, so if they sent it to you in Word...!!!

Nessie