Waa's Profile

Heh, I'm 26 and I also had to put up with the pre-GUI OS's. It's kind of crazy when you look at how little time has passed and compare to how much the technology has changed. At this point I think we take it for granted, especially younger people than myself. My 400MHz DVse iMac is sitting in a closet wrapped in plastic awaiting some sort of use. It needs a hard drive, which I have plenty of, but it may also need a new optical drive - I don't have enough care to run it through tests when I could be spending time on my working Macs. As for running OS X, that 400MHz G3 iMac of mine was happily chugging away with 10.4 installed.

I've had that twice. Oddly, I've only ever had it happen after trying to restart because of a system patch (eg., 10.4.0 to 10.4.1). It hasn't happened recently, but in the early days of Tiger it did. Maybe twice? Seriously, though - aside from apps unexpectedly quitting sometimes, my Mac doesn't crash. I don't think once-in-a-blue-moon hard crashes are equatable to Apple lying. I don't want to sound like a raving fanboy, but that's my strong opinion. No computer is perfect. None. Not even close. Nana is right, though. As rediculous as my up-times are, rebooting every couple of weeks isn't a bad idea. Neither is manually running cron tasks like daily, weekly, and monthly. Keep your gear clean (hardware and software) and it'll treat you right. That reminds me, my fans are dusty!

Part of me says, "Yes! Make OS X available to everyone!" but another part of me says, "But, then why would Apple continue making Macs. And if they did, why would anyone buy them other than for looks and the supposed 'it just works' factor?" BootCamp is interesting. I also want to believe I understand its true uses... But I am a pessimist, tried and true, and I really feel BootCamp is going to cause more problems than it will solve. Personally, I won't be using it at all as I have NO need to. My biggest fear is that it will discourage software porting; but, I'd rather go pay for Mac software than pay for Windows and Windows software.

As a long time user of Adium, and a tiny-insignificant-portion-of-it contributor, I have to put in my voice and say Adium is the best multi-protocol chat client EVER. And it's only going to get better.

Apple... Never... Lies... Always... Best... But in all seriousness! I could care less about ANY companie's maket share. I'm more concerned with what that companuy is doing and how much money they're able to toy with. No one, except maybe some sort of proven, tried and true beneficial research group, should be allowed to weild as much money as, say, Time Warner, or Bill Gates. It's absurd. There's no need for it. I'm going to go off topic, and if you feel the need to respond, please don't do so here! I believe our economy, here in the U.S. alone if not in the entire world, is totally screwed because things don't actually change as they should. At one time, a computer programmer was an elite specialist. A minority. That known, he or she could argue that they deserved very good pay because of their knowledge and capabilities. Now, computer programmers (quality aside) are a dime a dozen, yet, to my knowledge, still expect to get payed a lot of money. How does this make sense? Supply and demand should factor into pay rates and employment in general. If there's an ovewhelming supply, it can't possibly be valued as high. Back on topic: If Apple gaining a larger market share meant producing computers in larger quanitites (almost assuring more hadrware problems), then they could potentially reduce prices. Would they? If Ferrari produced one hundred times the amount of cars they do, would they lower their prices? There's a sort of mystique to high priced goods, as if spending more money means your getting something better. Oh, sure, it's true a disturbing amount of the time, but not 100% of the time. I know a lot of Mac users. Most buy their Macs off of other Mac users. So, that said, most use old Macs. My newest Mac will be 4 years old this spring. But, I don't see tons of Mac users. Granted, my job doesn't permit such viewings, nor does my method of transportation. But, for San Francisco, a supposedly liberal, democratic, free thinking city, I sure see a lot of PC hardware. Hmm. I've never been to a computer conference. I'm not sure I could handle the people. Computer users tend to irk me, as do computers, iPods, the internet, etc... It's all garbage. It really is. What were computers supposed to be? Tools. What have we tried to turn them into? Home entertainment system. That doesn't help them solve scientific problems or track objects in space. No, that helps push DVD sales and make companies think it's OK to strip us of our rights as consumers through things like DRM and ideas like trusted hardware. And the internet? Woo... What a dump. What a steaming, stinking dump it is. How much of the internet is of any use to the average person. I'll put money on less than 1%. Let's clean it up. It has such a huge impact on our lives. Maybe if an effort was made to reform the internet, we'd start reforming society. There's a fun idea. When I think of a drone, I think of insects. Mindless workers intent on one (or more) given task(s). So, using that word to describe hopeless Mac Zealots who think Steve Jobs is god is A-OK with me. (My opinion on Steve Jobs? He makes mistakes and tries to make us think it's OK.) I agree that a larger market share for Apple's computers could be bad. I don't neccessarily want more of the computer using world sharing my interests in computer hadrware. I can't stand most people as is, I don't want them coming up to me and saying, "Hey, I got a Mac. Let's talk!" (That would obviously never happen, but play along with my rant here...) At the same time, couldn't a larger market share be absolutely amazing? (You're on your own to devise a reason why.) I'm a hardcore Mac guy, but I also only make $21,000 (USD) per year, so I can't exactly keep up with the Jobses. Still, I love my Macs. I love OS X. I use Windows at work and, thankuflly, I don't use it for much. Whenever I have to do more than type something up or surf the internet, I start to wish I was on a Mac. (To my delight, we use OpenOffice.org for our spreadsheet and word processor needs. I'd also like to take this moment to say Notepad is the worst application ever in its genre. Even the old SimpleText is vastly superior. At least SimpleText let you use MORE THAN ONE font size! AAAAH!) OK... I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but do you guys all realize the marketing genius of Apple removing the headphone remote from the 5G iPods? In order to change songs, you're required to hold your iPod, most likely in a manner that allows people to see it. White earbuds can be taken for granted now, but seeing people cycling through their music and enjoying their iPods will make others go, "Hey, I want one!"

From what I can tell, they're just phasing out FW800, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Intel PowerMacs still have 1 FW800 port. It makes more sense on pro/workstation machines like the PowerMac and Xserve (does the Xserve even have a FW800 port?). Really, what we all need is Fibre Channel on every Mac. ; P

I find it hilarious that banks, government offices, and other "need to be secure" work environments would every willingly use Windows. But, then, I suppose when the one thing you depend on essentially dies and will never be improved or added to, you have little choice. Oh, wait, that's not true. Remember what the AT&T UNIX was originally used for? Carbon is not neccessarily like Win32 on Vista. Carbon is a rather interesting and useful library (can we call it a toolkit?) that works with OS 9 and OS X. Carbon can also do a surprising number of things Cocoa can not do, so, booga, point #4 makes sense. (At least for now.) MacGlee, you're probably, disturbingly, correct that most all Mac users have had to use some version of Windows for some reason, while most Windows users have never touched a Mac. Why is that? I think every Mac user I know has HAD to use Windows for something (work, school, etc). REALITY, get a life. Yeah, I'm stooping to your "you suck" level. You want to act like a child by taking the easy way out of an argument then go to another site, like the forums on MacRumors. Didn't the Sega DreamCast run Windows CE? Microsoft is not going anywhere anytime soon. We all know this. It's hard to deny. For one, people are stubborn if not simply lazy and complacent (like most Americans, myself included all too often). For that reason they will not abandon the OS they have spent so much time with. All those IT and enterprise situations that are running Windows where the people doing it are MS certified... They won't abandon Windows. Plus, people will all too often just suck it up and stick with something. "Aw, they got rid of the dock from the iPod's included accessories, but it plays video, I just have to have one!" Should I include other examples of people giving in? MS can do what they want. The only thing they do that pisses me off is trying to force their own file formats on the world. I'm sorry, but there are a lot of things in life where standardizationa and uniformity are actually GOOD. People should be individuals. Electronic devices should be compatible with each other. We are not machines, but I shouldn't have to worry about a device not supporting a version of MPEG just because MS has so much money they can force a Wndows Media down device makers' throats... .. Reminds me of the meat and dairy industries... "Oh, great, we've bred and slaughtered all of these cows and now we have all these leftover parts. Hey, I know, let's make all the other food-related companies put them in their food and then tell the public it's good for them. Animals = nutrition." (Is that why meat and dairy heavy diets so often lead to health problems? I'll stick to my all plants diet, thank you. - Yes, I know. Computers aren't vegan... I assume.) And, you know what... I'm gonna say it. I'm a Mac Evangelist and I'm gonna say it: Apple is not a very good company. Steve Jobs is not smart. And!!! OS X is not perfect! HA! There! Eat it! You know it's true! Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go do everything I do on my Mac.

Hey, if MS can finally leave behind Windows (someday) and move on with their lives, good for them. In fact, I encourage it and welcome any and all change from them. They can actually trim Windows down a lot by shedding backwards compatibility. I don't see why they don't and then sell it as an "all modern" Windows variant (Vista Trim) with a warning, "Apps designed for WinXP and earlier may not work; DOS? No. 16-bit? No. 32-bit? Well, OK, but we'd like to be able to make it solely 64."