I hate Apple

[Waluigi]

PowerPC? Now that's a word I haven't heard in a long time.

This was the last Mac I owned. My understanding is that they've come a long way since.

[erimir]

Originally Posted by Doctor X

When I "discovered" the HD, I quickly used Al Gore's Greatest Invention to Mankind Not Called Global Warming

Hey, when was the last time someone laughed at this joke?

Was it some time around when zipdrives were a thing?

[Adam]

The SO was watching some horrible police procedural the other night where a key plot point was the protagonist needing to download something or other to her "zip drive", which was actually just a USB stick dolled up with some blinking LEDs. Stupid babby TV writers who don't know what zip drives actually were.

[BrotherMan]

[Pyrrho]

Apple's competition: Pear

[Doctor X]

Originally Posted by Waluigi

PowerPC? Now that's a word I haven't heard in a long time.

I had a PRE-power PC--POWERBook 520--

and who needs to spend more money for color displays? Color is a passing fancy! What is the "World wide web?" You know, where reporters would tell you addresses by saying "h-t-t-p-colon-backslash-backslash. . . ."? Hey! Get OFF my lawn!

You could upgrade it to a PowerPC chip! It had System 6 BUT YOU COULD UPGRADE TO SYSTEM 7 IMMEDIATESLEES!

I note that because a few years ago in the tedious "Mac Suck No PC Suck" debates a PC fan claimed Mac OS X had "millions of viruses!" and when asked to provide one he cited one for . . . System 6! Created a few years after that system was abandoned. I informed him that I nightly worry about the security of my TimexSinclair. . . .

I digress . . .

Then came the PowerBook G3 with 400 FUCKING Mhz:



that I upgraded to a G4 500!!11! BWA!HA!HA!HA!HA! Just look at it! It is BLACK!!!1!!

It also had Firewire! FUCKING FIREwire!!11!

Mere PC "notebooks" cowered in the face of The Black Powerbook [Of Doom.--Ed.] Even Me Mum's desktop PC cried tears until she needed to replace the mother-board. I warned her. Oh I warned her!

I only upgraded to that because the old one just required too much duct tape to keep the screen up! I found another one and thought about rehabilitating the 520 only to come to my diseased senses.

That one lasted for a long time. Meanwhile, Mac fucked about with newer Macbooks that flaked, had keyboard buttons fall out, even voted Libertarian. Many, like myself, stuck with the Powerbook Firewire [Of Doom.--Ed.]. It was easy to fix--you could literally take it down to all components and replace them if you needed. But, finally, as I surfed these pages and noooooottttttttiiiiiiicccccceeeeeeddddhoooooowwwww wslow, and a fried AC soundcard led me to move on to the loved . . .

Macbook 2.4 GHz and 6.0 GB of RAM! AND IT IS BLACK:



a serious upgrade to previous and my "work horse" for years. Eventually, it became slow and just . . . stopped. It now works again--probably has a failing logic board--see? The Mac Names for components are SO more Kool than PC!--but it works and I use it to travel to GodForsaken Regions. Moved on to current laptop.

Anyways, it is fun to compare the Geekbench "bars" for all of the models. The earliest, they do not even bother. The 520 had a BLAZING fast 25 MHz processor



The old PowerBook Firewire gives a bar of 21 with the G3 400 Mhz native. Upgraded to G4 500 we ZOOM to about 320.

The MacBook 2.4 is 3135--nearly 10X as fast. My current tests into 7000. Had I bought the cumbersome 15" you get 10,000 and if you are really wasting the concept of "laptop" with the 17" you 10,700.

What will the future bring?

--J.D.

[Waluigi]

The Apple products I used were: an Apple IIc, a Macintosh SE-30, and the above Power Macintosh 5400. All leaps and bounds better than their predecessors, but the IIc holds a special place in my heart. It was an awesome computer.

[Qingdai]

I had an SE II, I had to take it out and shoot it in 2002. I bought it in 1987 or so. Damn thing never did die.

[Waluigi]

Those lunchbox Macs were solid.

[It's Me!]

I like my Sansa mp3 player. Still use it for working out. The display is pathetic, but I'm rarely looking at the display while working out anyways. I love the ability to increase the memory via the microSD card.

I do have an iPod nano (5th generation), and it's stuffed to the gills. Can't expand the memory which is a major downer. I don't find iTunes to be that cumbersome, then again I also own an Apple TV2, so getting used to iTunes is pretty much a necessity.

[Doctor X]

Avoiding work . . . surfing . . . found a list of "worse computers"--nearly ALL PCs!!11! [Timex Sinclair was not a PC.--Ed.]--save the "worse:"

Apple III

I believe this was the computer that spawn many of the "it can explode" stories.

The Apple III was kind of like a baby conceived during a group orgy, and everybody had this bad headache and there's this bastard child, and everyone says, "It's not mine."--Randy Wigginston

--J.D.

[erimir]

Originally Posted by Doctor X

Avoiding work . . . surfing . . . found a list of "worse computers"--nearly ALL PCs!!11! [Timex Sinclair was not a PC.--Ed.]--save the "worse:"

Considering that nearly all computers ever designed were not Apple computers, it's not exactly the most impressive claim...

[Janet]

Hey, Doctor X! I'm weeding the computer books at the library. You want I should save this for you?

[Doctor X]

Actually, in all seriousness, there are collectors of those things.

--J.D.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by Megatron

My girlfriend has had endless headaches with apple's dogshit warranty service and tech support. She's a die hard fan and she's even ready to swear them off.

This does not match my experience at all. I have had lovely experience with applecare. Send machine in, get machine back.

Me, on the other hand, I still can't wrap my head around why someone would want to spend about 50-100% more money than the PC equivalent for a computer you're virtually incapable of upgrading.

Mac users get more defensive than a freshly kicked beehive when I mention that.

Probably because it's not really generally true, and even when it's true, the answers are obvious and we've given them many times.

First off, "equivalent" isn't. My 13" Air has a 1440x900 IPS display; my 13" PC has a 1366x768 TFT display. That's a very noticeable difference, and I think the Mac wins handily there. Yes, it cost more. It's also in some ways a better machine. (And in other ways worse; the PC has discrete video, although that's an unusual choice in PCs these days.)

Secondly... I am not, for the most part, buying parts with intent to construct my own computer from base principles. I am looking to exchange money for Getting Things Done. Let's say I have a Mac, and a PC, and I have them both do their factory restore thing. How many hours of work will it be before my machine is fully patched and has my stuff on it again?

Apple: About an hour for a 100% fully patched OS. The base OS does not need me to install special anti-virus software or anything before it's safe to connect it to the Internet to download patches. All the hardware was working from the first boot.

Windows: The base OS is not safe on an open network without anti-virus software, so if I want to be safe, I have to get a full download of some anti-virus software to media on another machine, install it, and then start patching. The patching process takes several hours, with half a dozen or more reboots, and even then I might still have some "critical" patches left to get. I probably had to download additional drivers before I could run my display at native resolution, and my laptop that was cheaper than the Air has 8 custom drivers that need to be installed, each with a separate reboot, before it is usable.

Oh, but wait, what about backups?
Apple: Plug in the time machine drive. The system offers to reload my stuff.
Windows: Fuck if I know.

Okay, now that it's up, what tools do I have? (I do program, after all.)
Apple: Multiple complete full-featured programming languages correctly configured and installed.
Windows: COMMAND.COM.

Hmm. How about browsers?
Apple: Safari
Windows: Internet Explorer

Multiple desktop support?
Apple: Spaces/Mission Control
Windows: We used to have one but we stopped, but there are third-party packages that may or may not work.

What it comes down to is: In the immortal words of Bill Gates, "Linux is free if your time isn't worth anything." And similarly, Windows is cheap if your time isn't worth anything. For fuck's sake. The time it takes to fully reload and patch and update a Windows machine, and get some kind of basic tools on it, is worth more than the computer is.

Data lost per year of use? On the Macs, I don't think we've ever lost anything. On the PCs, every so often Something Happens and then the machine's unusable. You can extract data, probably, if you have another drive and do a full reload on the new drive and then mount the old drive externally. Good luck finding it all.

In short: I am getting what I pay for. The time I save not fucking around with Windows far exceeds the cost of all my computers put together.

[ImGod]

I'm not fond of the Apple store near my house. I go in there and the place is packed with people. It seems like half of them are Apple employees. Do they really need 50 employees in the store?

I had four people stop me and ask what I needed before I could get to the back of the store. I finally told the last one, I needed to get to the back of the store.

iTunes account setup for multiple users blows. Etc. and stuff.

I'd be more likely to get an Apple computer (versus pad, pod, or nano-bot) if it could run engineering software. Given how many programming languages that come with it, you'd think it would be able to run more software. The solution, vmware running windows, seems redundant.

It's the same reason I don't use Linux.

[Waluigi]

Posting from my brand new MacBook Pro that work bought me. 15" high-res antiglare display, 2.4 GHz quad-core i7, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD. Lots to get used to.

[Doctor X]

Supposedly the SSD makes all your dreams come true.

--J.D.

[Corona688]

Originally Posted by ImGod

I'd be more likely to get an Apple computer (versus pad, pod, or nano-bot) if it could run engineering software. Given how many programming languages that come with it, you'd think it would be able to run more software. The solution, vmware running windows, seems redundant.

Given that Macintosh computers are dolled-up PC's now, they can run WINE, which can run some Windows programs natively. Unfortunately compatibility is always a moving target, as Microsoft creates new API's and discards old ones every season or so.

I don't know about the less expensive apple warranties, but the deluxe one is apparently something else, as long as there's an apple store somewhere nearby. If it dies, they replace it without question. If they can't replace it anymore, you'll end up with something better. But, having to ship it back to the factory for repairs could end up being a similar experience to most PC warranties I figure.

[seebs]

Originally Posted by Corona688

But, having to ship it back to the factory for repairs could end up being a similar experience to most PC warranties I figure.

It's very much like what the IBM ThinkPad warranties were like back before the sale to Lenovo -- a much nicer experience than the usual one, IMHO.

[freemonkey]

Originally Posted by Corona688

I don't know about the less expensive apple warranties, but the deluxe one is apparently something else, as long as there's an apple store somewhere nearby. If it dies, they replace it without question. If they can't replace it anymore, you'll end up with something better. But, having to ship it back to the factory for repairs could end up being a similar experience to most PC warranties I figure.

I have a the extended two year Apple Care warranty on this computer, which I have not yet taken to be repaired, because I'm busy. I have asked them if I can send the computer to them for repairs and they say no, I must take it to an Apple store, where I will get a 15 minute diagnostic session, after which they will tell me what needs to be done and I can decide from there what to do. A trip that will take an hour or more each way, plus toll or ferry fees. And if they need to keep it longer than a few hours, I'll need to make a second trip.

Now, the CD/DVD drive is acting up, too. Mostly it just physically scratches up disks before it spits them out. I've also run the Apple disk diagnostic tool, which tells me there is no problem with the hdd (SMARTReporter still disagrees). AFAIK, the Apple tech whose 15 minutes I will get will likely run the very same test and tell me the drive is OK.

So, yeah, extended warranty is not too useful if this is the way it's implemented.

[seebs]

That's weird, I've never had them give me any crap if I asked about sending a machine in. If I ask to send a machine in, next day there's a box at my door with a shipping label so I can drop it off at any fedex location and have it come back a few days later fixed.

[Doctor X]

Yeah, I have been told the exact opposite for Apple Care in that you have to send in the machine rather than drop it off. Now, the Super-Duper Apple Store [of Doom!--Ed.] may allow the repairs under Apple Care, but most vendors--like the ones I use--cannot.

However, you should explain to them that you are two hours away from a store. If you still have a problem, let us know, there are people to whom I can refer you.

--J.D.

[viscousmemories]

Sheldon's thoughts on a Mac "Genius" -...

[freemonkey]

Originally Posted by Doctor X

Yeah, I have been told the exact opposite for Apple Care in that you have to send in the machine rather than drop it off. Now, the Super-Duper Apple Store [of Doom!--Ed.] may allow the repairs under Apple Care, but most vendors--like the ones I use--cannot.

However, you should explain to them that you are two hours away from a store. If you still have a problem, let us know, there are people to whom I can refer you.

--J.D.

Yeah, I called again yesterday and they said I had to go to Tacoma or Seattle. I've made an appt. for Tuesday, we'll have some pizza while we're there and try to make a day of it.