MAC users suck....

[naisho]

Apple supplied our local public schools with iPads for the students.

Yeah, I think that's part of what TWAlex was gabbling about.. Apple being 'selective' in who they want to donate their products or money to...

One college here uses Mac for the graphic design and related majors and courses, and uses Windows PCs for everything else.
When I was in the Navy, we used Mac in the public affairs office for desktop publishing but all the other departments used non-Macs.

Same here, I noticed that during graphics design and yearbook in high school, some of the graphics design classes used Macs, and all the yearbook/journalism used Macs.

I think some consumers and businesses are wising up and picking out what best suits their own needs rather than being hooked on brand names.

I agree, they are wising up these days, even if not, an IT consultant is always a phone call or email away.
However for the past, I feel it may have been a potential business venture/investment grab at straws for 'future' potential market with the newly PC-christened children of schools.

They never made it with me if that was their plan, seeing how I am fine with working with anything.

But for some of the new generation.. I do see the Apple hype kicking in full-time for some folks. It's sad to say some of my colleagues have fallen prey for it too.

 

[naisho]

Heh, heh, I used MS-DOS. For me, that was advanced computing, back in the day. I go further back than that (late 70's).

I'm glad I never had to go through with FORTRAN punch cards.
QBASIC was the first language I ever played with, at a ripe age of 2nd grade!

 

[Jiro]

But if it weren't for some computers being available at entry level prices, some people would never be able to afford any computer for home use.

that's why it's a conundrum. PC's so cheap that you end up paying even more than Apple computer in 4-years timeframe

beside - schools are selling MacBookPro/iPad at educational discount (some schools give it away for free for freshman) - usually 50% off. That's a huge deal.

Honestly, my MacBook Pro is my fourth Apple computer I've owned during my lifetime but it's my first new one. My other three Macs were used computers. Otherwise, I could never have afforded them.

My first PC was also second hand, which I was able to obtain because someone else was upgrading. My subsequent PCs and first laptop were bought new, and were affordable because they were not Macs.

Each one of my computers (Macs and Windows) have gone on to new homes of people who couldn't afford to buy any computers.

Not everyone needs the latest and greatest whiz bang product but they can seriously benefit from internet access and basic computer processes. My older computers opened up doors for less financially able families and students.

Sure, more expensive products usually last longer but there is still a niche for entry-level basic products.

that's fine. it's a privilege to own a computer and if they cannot afford it - they can go to public library or school lab.

and there are many stores that sell older generation of Apple computers. Its resell value is pretty good and it's the best bang for your buck. So if you are technologically-challenged and have limited budget, PC is a poor choice.

Are you kidding? Some people replace their Apple products every time a new one hits the market. They're replacing their iPads with iPad2, or waiting in long overnight lines for the newest iPhone long before the previous model has worn out.

It's all about marketing. Young people especially don't want to be caught with "old" products.

Keyword - "some". Many young people cannot afford to get the latest products every year. Even my parents and I can't afford to buy a new one that just came out.

Majority of iPhone4S buyers are the collectors, professionals, and somebody with lot of cash in his pocket. I have many friends who still are using MacBook from few years ago. When I got the latest MacBook Pro, I told them - holy crapo! you've gotta get this! it's awesome! They said they knew but they cannot afford it... and their MacBook are still running just fine. They have no good reason to get the latest one unless it broke. I cannot think of anybody with PC laptop that can run "just fine" for over 4 years.

Marketing and snob appeal carries a lot of weight.

lol but it's very simple - iPod/iPhone/MacBook is simple. It makes sense. Any caveman can figure it out. and Apple has a completely different business strategy. It's extremely risky and daring but Steve Jobs did it. It's amazing. This is extraordinary rare for company to be successful with this kind of tactic -

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.” -Steve Jobs

this is a very good read by techie guy who made a journal with his experience with Android cellphone for 3-4 months. Click on ARCHIVE to read from Day 1 to now. There's this particular post that interests me -

My Dinner With Android - Dual wielding

The girl sitting across from me on the train had a Samsung Galaxy S (something something, I don’t know/care about the specific model) laying in her lap, while her hands were wrapped around an iPod touch and Apple’s iconic white ear buds dangled from her ears.

I leaned across, smiled and pointed at her iPod. She took out the ear buds and I asked, in the least werido way possible, why she had an iPod and an Android smartphone.

She was blunt. “My boyfriend said this was better than an iPhone, so he bought it. Two weeks later I went and bought an iPod touch.”

.....

She showed me her iPod: it was a fourth-generation with six pages of apps and 15 GBs of music. A lot of the apps were garbage free stuff, but she had a solid collection of premium games. Apparently I had interrupted a Plants vs. Zombies shesh.

In contrast, her Android phone was barren. Nothing downloaded but the Facebook app. I asked her why and she shrugged. “Couldn’t really figure it out. Nothing happened when I plugged it into my computer.”

So this is what things had come to for her: carrying around two incredibly powerful, modern devices; each with their own distinct ecosystems and user experiences. And she had decided to focus on the one marketed to children.

I explained to her that she could do basically everything on her phone that she was doing on her iPod touch and only carry around one device. It was just … different.

Her response was unapologetic. “No, I can’t. I have to get my boyfriend to do things on my phone.” She waved her iPod in the air. ”I can do things on this myself.”

it's very simple math. Make a product that makes sense and you win.

Heh, heh, I used MS-DOS. For me, that was advanced computing, back in the day. I go further back than that (late 70's).

I know. I'm glad to be born into computer with a mouse! Actually it was Commodore at first but you know what I mean.

True, I'm not so tech savvy now. But I also studied and worked in marketing related fields, so I know how product promotion works.

good. then you should know that Apple actually delivers what they advertised and PC didn't.

Failure in what sense? Is Microsoft going broke?

failure as in losing its market share to Apple. They have failed in many fields - tablet PC, smartphone, OS, and many more. I'm sure you remember that since 90's, majority of headlines were dominated by Microsoft.... until around 2000 or so where Apple started to steal its spotlight.

What's keeping Microsoft alive is Windows and Office. They did make a great comeback with Bing.com but its fate is uncertain because like you said above - marketing and "snob appeal" carry a lot of weight. I personally find Bing quite nicer and better than Google but Google has already became a noun and verb. It's too late for Microsoft to budge into in this market. and it's too late for Blackberry to survive for next decade since they just recently released its new OS.

Microsoft and Blackberry frequently failed to deliver what they advertised. and Apple consistently delivers.

 

[naisho]

Majority of iPhone4S buyers are the collectors, professionals, and somebody with lot of cash in his pocket. I have many friends who still are using MacBook from few years ago. When I got the latest MacBook Pro, I told them - holy crapo! you've gotta get this! it's awesome! They said they knew but they cannot afford it... and their MacBook are still running just fine. They have no good reason to get the latest one unless it broke. I cannot think of anybody with PC laptop that can run "just fine" for over 4 years.

My Gateway C141XL will be on its fourth year soon in 2012. My last was an Acer Travelmate 4400WLmi that I got in 2005, and used extensively until 2008/2009 when I got the 141XL and went with that instead. By 2009 the Acer was showing signs of its age, it's just a single core processor, not much you can expect out of old hardware, Macs aren't any more different.
I never had ANY problems with either of them whatsoever, I did swap out ram for more, and other than that all I did was reload the OSes every year or two to start on a clean slate.

this is a very good read by techie guy who made a journal with his experience with Android cellphone for 3-4 months. Click on ARCHIVE to read from Day 1 to now. There's this particular post that interests me -
My Dinner With Android - Dual wielding

See this one: another blog from techie who went from iPhone to android
Life With Android, 1 Year Later | Jeff Nolan - Venture Chronicles

There are plenty of people who went android after being apple fanatics also. I owned both apple and android products for awhile now, so I feel I can have a say in this. I have owned and played with 6 android products, 3 apple.
Lots of people I know who are on apple aren't into hardware coding, engineering, software interaction or software development, while on android and WP7 I see a lot of developers, xda is living proof of it. You don't see much development like exotic bluetooth support on iOS, it's there, but not as advanced as it is on android, flash embedding on sites, emulation: psx4iphone is long stale, but it's still going strong on android, so on. The development seems to circle around the niche where the users are interested in, for apple it isn't all about being able to port a program that's on PC into a mobile version which they seem so happy about in android and WP7, with apple it seems to be more "hey, everyone's getting this, I gotta try it too". "Did you try angry birds??"!

The list can go on and on, but in the end if you realize it, it's just opinion to whoever uses the product. They will like what they like, and it's up to them to decide.

 

[TWA]

I've owned only three PCs in the last 12 years, all Dells. My first was a Pentium III, which I used for 7 years (800$ original price). My second was a Core2 duo (600$ original price), which I had for three years. I am now on a 500$ Inspiron laptop running Win7 and am approaching the third year with it. The only reason I am using this computer (which is not as powerful as the Core2) and not my Core2 is because I blew the motherboard on my Core2 by making a bonehead hardware install mistake. My Core2 would have been fine for a long time. My current laptop will run all multimedia programs, word processing, all Internet, Adobe suite, etc. Everything but the most hardcore of games.

So, I've spent about 2000$ on my PC products for the last 12 years, and I will be good with my current setup for at least another 2-3, possibly longer. How much does a new Macbook pro run these days? $LOL

As long as you're not a hardcore gamer, a decent PC is fine and will be every bit as durable and stay relevant for just as long as a Mac. If you are a hardcore gamer, Macs won't work anyway.

Lol at all the fanboy apologists on this thread.

 

[naisho]

Oh yeah, if we talk price, I think my stuff went like this:
Acer 4400: $1,200 MSRP in 2005, invoice is on newegg somewhere
Gateway 141XL: $1100 MSRP in 2008.

That's not even including my PCs, which I swap the internals like hot potatoes.

 

[The Highlander]

That's okay you can't afford Apple products.

I own same Macbook for almost 5 years and it's works fine. So many of my friend/family's laptops worn out under 2 years as logic board failed, GPU failed, etc.That's why PC laptop are so cheap. I grew up with PC since I was 6 years old and I knew how to installed M$ DOS, Win 3.11, 95, 98, W2k (skipped ME) XP, and Windows 7 (skipped Vista) since I grew up. I built a first PC computer when I was 14 years old. I knew PC hardware pretty well. In fact, Apple is better hardware ever I had for all in my life.



Former Compaq CEO now loves his Mac

Former Compaq CEO now loves his Mac | TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

 

[The Highlander]

My Gateway C141XL will be on its fourth year soon in 2012. My last was an Acer Travelmate 4400WLmi that I got in 2005, and used extensively until 2008/2009 when I got the 141XL and went with that instead. By 2009 the Acer was showing signs of its age, it's just a single core processor, not much you can expect out of old hardware, Macs aren't any more different.
I never had ANY problems with either of them whatsoever, I did swap out ram for more, and other than that all I did was reload the OSes every year or two to start on a clean slate.



See this one: another blog from techie who went from iPhone to android
Life With Android, 1 Year Later | Jeff Nolan - Venture Chronicles

There are plenty of people who went android after being apple fanatics also. I owned both apple and android products for awhile now, so I feel I can have a say in this. I have owned and played with 6 android products, 3 apple.
Lots of people I know who are on apple aren't into hardware coding, engineering, software interaction or software development, while on android and WP7 I see a lot of developers, xda is living proof of it. You don't see much development like exotic bluetooth support on iOS, it's there, but not as advanced as it is on android, flash embedding on sites, emulation: psx4iphone is long stale, but it's still going strong on android, so on. The development seems to circle around the niche where the users are interested in, for apple it isn't all about being able to port a program that's on PC into a mobile version which they seem so happy about in android and WP7, with apple it seems to be more "hey, everyone's getting this, I gotta try it too". "Did you try angry birds??"!

The list can go on and on, but in the end if you realize it, it's just opinion to whoever uses the product. They will like what they like, and it's up to them to decide.

OSX don't need clean each year. It's pretty works fine and smooth for over three years. Reload OS each year is so silly for business.

 

[naisho]

OSX don't need clean each year. It's pretty works fine and smooth for over three years. Reload OS each year is so silly for business.

That's good for ya..
I like my registry clean. You never know what sites are trying to install on your PC back in x86-32, but now with the 64 kernel you have more control over it.

 

[The Highlander]

Oh yeah, if we talk price, I think my stuff went like this:
Acer 4400: $1,200 MSRP in 2005, invoice is on newegg somewhere
Gateway 141XL: $1100 MSRP in 2008.

That's not even including my PCs, which I swap the internals like hot potatoes.

Did you know that PC laptop's hardware almost exactly same as Macbook like CPU, RAM, and GPU for almost same price? But most PC's battery life up to 2.5 years then junk. Apple's battery life up to 5 years. I still have 5 years old battery and it's work fine and 3 hours left now (normal 5:30hours for brand new battery) I bet your battery won't last for 5 years when you are heavy travel.

 

[Jiro]

My Gateway C141XL will be on its fourth year soon in 2012.

that's because you and I know computers. Many people don't. It's sad IMO

I owned both apple and android products for awhile now, so I feel I can have a say in this. I have owned and played with 6 android products, 3 apple.

so which do you like better?

 

[naisho]

Did you know that PC laptop's hardware almost exactly same as Macbook like CPU, RAM, and GPU for almost same price? But most PC's battery life up to 2.5 years then junk. Apple's battery life up to 5 years. I still have 5 years old battery and it's work fine and 3 hours left now (normal 5:30hours for brand new battery) I bet your battery won't last for 5 years when you are heavy travel.

Yep, I know. I was able to run Snow Leopard and Lion on my 141XL. Have you tried triple booting your MacBook yet?

Nah, my battery life isn't that great, but it's still around the same as it was 3 years ago. I get ~3 hours on a 5200MAh battery.

 

[The Highlander]

Yep, I know. I was able to run Snow Leopard and Lion on my 141XL. Have you tried triple booting your MacBook yet?

Nah, my battery life isn't that great, but it's still around the same as it was 3 years ago. I get ~3 hours on a 5200MAh battery.

You can do triple booting on Macbook and it's stupid idea and I am not big fan of reboot again and again. Who like to rebooting 3 times a day or more for 3 diff OS? That's what I use Vmware Fusion for. I can open Wind XP Pro 32bits, Win 7 64bit and Ubuntu 9.10 64bit in same time.

[ame]http://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Adapter-Prolific-PL2303HX-Chipset/dp/B00425S1H8/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1319482098&sr=1-3[/ame]

That's one I have one and it's great and it's good for upgrade firmware for old hardware thru Window XP thru Vmware.

Mine 3 hours on a 4239 mAH battery right now. Used 5:30 hours at 5020 mAh. So 3 hours on a 5200 mAh battery is very bad!

 

[TWA]

Let's not get off track here: Apple is hoarding cash. They're doing it well.

How is Linux doing that?

I just wanted to get back to this and point out that APPLE DOES NOT PAY DIVIDENDS ON IT'S STOCK SHARES.

How is it that one of the most profitable companies on the SX does will not pay its shareholders a percentage of the profits they helped to produce? Classy, Apple. Classy.

 

[naisho]

so which do you like better?

Hmm, they're both equally good for their own reasons. I tend to use the apple stuff more for surfing or leisure, like lounging around or playing some games, music, facebook, so on, but you will rarely find me texting or writing emails on it, but I do use the asian handwriting recognition (this feature is really good on iOS).

For android it's if I need to do something more computer related. typing emails, text, wifi/hsdpa tethering, coding, transferring files between sdcard/phone storage(root explorer), copy/pasting quickly in documents. There are just some things I can doodle with on android that I can't do as well the apple.

I was watching the other day some WP7 devs got Win 95/98 running on their WP7 phones, thought it was cool but not something productive to do. In the end I think WP7 has the most 'bridging' between the PC and phone, but in terms of actual usability and popularity it's still low on the chart.

 

[naisho]

You can do triple booting on Macbook and it's stupid idea and I am not big fan of reboot again and again. Who like to rebooting 3 times a day or more for 3 diff OS? That's what I use Vmware Fusion for. I can open Wind XP Pro 32bits, Win 7 64bit and Ubuntu 9.10 64bit in same time.

Amazon.com: Plugable USB to RS-232 DB9 Serial Adapter (Prolific PL2303HX Chipset): Electronics

Good to see that, lots of people I know on Macs are adding Win along on their macbooks, since it's pretty much the same hardware anyway.

Mine 3 hours on a 4239 mAH battery right now. Used 5:30 hours at 5020 mAh. So 3 hours on a 5200 mAh battery is very bad!

It doesn't concern me too much. You have to take into account I'm not the average joe user, I do take my battery out when I'm fully charged and plugged in AC or leave it discharged when not using the battery for awhile. The battery is 3 years, almost 4 years now so it gotta depreciate.

 

[TWA]

Hmm, they're both equally good for their own reasons. I tend to use the apple stuff more for surfing or leisure, like lounging around or playing some games, music, facebook, so on, but you will rarely find me texting or writing emails on it, but I do use the asian handwriting recognition (this feature is really good on iOS).

For android it's if I need to do something more computer related. typing emails, text, wifi/hsdpa tethering, coding, transferring files between sdcard/phone storage(root explorer), copy/pasting quickly in documents. There are just some things I can doodle with on android that I can't do as well the apple.

I was watching the other day some WP7 devs got Win 95/98 running on their WP7 phones, thought it was cool but not something productive to do. In the end I think WP7 has the most 'bridging' between the PC and phone, but in terms of actual usability and popularity it's still low on the chart.

Think Nokia's impending switch to WP7 will change this? I am a Nokia devotee and love Symbian (it's kind of like the Linux of mobile OS), but I'm worried about what will happen with Nokia after they make the transition. (I guess their Maemo OS was a bust . . .)

 

[Jiro]

Hmm, they're both equally good for their own reasons. I tend to use the apple stuff more for surfing or leisure, like lounging around or playing some games, music, facebook, so on, but you will rarely find me texting or writing emails on it, but I do use the asian handwriting recognition (this feature is really good on iOS).

For android it's if I need to do something more computer related. typing emails, text, wifi/hsdpa tethering, coding, transferring files between sdcard/phone storage(root explorer), copy/pasting quickly in documents. There are just some things I can doodle with on android that I can't do as well the apple.

I was watching the other day some WP7 devs got Win 95/98 running on their WP7 phones, thought it was cool but not something productive to do. In the end I think WP7 has the most 'bridging' between the PC and phone, but in terms of actual usability and popularity it's still low on the chart.

wot?

 

[Banjo]

I just wanted to get back to this and point out that APPLE DOES NOT PAY DIVIDENDS ON IT'S STOCK SHARES.

How is it that one of the most profitable companies on the SX does will not pay its shareholders a percentage of the profits they helped to produce? Classy, Apple. Classy.

The problem with some corporations paying out dividends is that they pay out when they shouldn't. For instance, Cisco refused to pay out dividends for years and when they caved in, they got in trouble. Let's not forget all of the banks that offered dividends prior to the economical meltdown. So it's hardly a surprise that Apple is holding out on it at the moment.

Apple hasn't paid dividends for years. It may happen again sometimes in the future, but I wouldn't get my hopes up over it right away. Apple has a lot of big plans and Steve Jobs wanted massive reserves, I think it's something like $65 billion.

There are upsides and downsides to it. However, Apple's growth is a good thing because it means they are creating more jobs.

 

[Banjo]

For android it's if I need to do something more computer related. typing emails, text, wifi/hsdpa tethering, coding, transferring files between sdcard/phone storage(root explorer), copy/pasting quickly in documents. There are just some things I can doodle with on android that I can't do as well the apple.

Isn't the fragmentation a big concern with Android products? Google is somewhat known for fragmentation issues in the past.