Mac's

[Skuzzy]

If Apple hardware is so mundane, how come PC manufacturers started to copy the look and design of Apple products lately? The class of 'ultrabooks' was created in direct response to the superior Apple hardware designs that had no match on PC universe. My 'mundane' macbook has 2880x1800 high quality display, Nvidia 750 graphics card, 4 physical core i7 cpu, 16 gigs of DDR3 ram and a 500Gb SSD. It has thunderbolt connectivity. Full day battery life and all this in a light weight but strong aluminium enclosure that's half the thickness of a Windows laptop. If that's mundane to you I'd like to see your laptop lol.<snip>

By mundane, I am talking about the internals.  I already said Apple products look nice, but the CPU, RAM, video card and so on are all pretty generic and usually one or two generations behind the curve (NVidia 750M is not a state of the art video card).  There really is nothing special about what they are made of.

The 'Pro' series of Apple products are nice products, but they are also very expensive for what they offer, in terms of the products they are made from.  Intel CPU, check, NVidia card, and so on.  Oh, the DDR3 RAM Apple uses is very slow RAM (i.e. cheap).

I have no use for laptops.  None of them impress me in the least, no matter who makes them.  My Wife got stuck with an Apple laptop.  She hated it and was happy for it to be removed from her desk. 

Personally, I find the Apple OS to be a pain in the butt, but then again I am not a fan of Windows either.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

By mundane, I am talking about the internals.  I already said Apple products look nice, but the CPU, RAM, video card and so on are all pretty generic and usually one or two generations behind the curve (NVidia 750M is not a state of the art video card).  There really is nothing special about what they are made of.

The 'Pro' series of Apple products are nice products, but they are also very expensive for what they offer, in terms of the products they are made from.  Intel CPU, check, NVidia card, and so on.  Oh, the DDR3 RAM Apple uses is very slow RAM (i.e. cheap).

I have no use for laptops.  None of them impress me in the least, no matter who makes them.  My Wife got stuck with an Apple laptop.  She hated it and was happy for it to be removed from her desk.  

Personally, I find the Apple OS to be a pain in the butt, but then again I am not a fan of Windows either.

I find it hard to understand why you don't like OSX when you're an unix fan. They have very similar roots and on CLI OSX works much like unix. By the way, very few laptops have 'state of the art' graphics cards they become really expensive in the top end. The 750M is quite capable of running 3D games or high resolution video as far as typical macbook use goes. Macs are not obviously a power gamers choice, neither are any laptops.

You think 1600Mhz DDR3 is slow? Last time I checked it was just standard. Some older 2009 imacs used slower ram.

You should know Skuzzy, that with computers the price of an individual part does not matter. The well designed setup is more than the sum of its parts. I'm not saying Macs don't have a huge price premium - they do. But you get value for your money nevertheless.

As for your wife, all I can say is I share her pain. I hated my mac for the first weeks too untill I started learning off the windows ways of old. The more you use it the more you love it. That's just the way it goes.

[Skuzzy]

I hate the GUI.  I love UNIX, but only if I can have a CLI interface.  More efficient for me.  All GUI's get in my way.

Other than the look of an Apple, there is nothing special about it.  They have great marketing and a good industrial design team.  You pay a premium for the name.  Apple's bank account attests to where the money goes.

There is more to RAM performance than the clock rate and that is where the money is saved.  More wait states helps reduce the costs by providing higher yields of the chips.

My Wife got stuck with her laptop for a year.  When I looked at it, I was reminded of X Windows.  Really did not look, or act, that much different.  Yes, I hate X Windows.

For me, Apple products just miss the mark in a lot of areas.  Too expensive, difficult to use, difficult to integrate in other environments, and the list goes on.  If they fit your needs, then that is good for you.

[PJ_Godzilla]

I hate the GUI.  I love UNIX, but only if I can have a CLI interface.  More efficient for me.  All GUI's get in my way.

Other than the look of an Apple, there is nothing special about it.  They have great marketing and a good industrial design team.  You pay a premium for the name.  Apple's bank account attests to where the money goes.

There is more to RAM performance than the clock rate and that is where the money is saved.  More wait states helps reduce the costs by providing higher yields of the chips.

My Wife got stuck with her laptop for a year.  When I looked at it, I was reminded of X Windows.  Really did not look, or act, that much different.  Yes, I hate X Windows.

For me, Apple products just miss the mark in a lot of areas.  Too expensive, difficult to use, difficult to integrate in other environments, and the list goes on.  If they fit your needs, then that is good for you.

Your problem: you're a damn wirehead. I'm, admittedly, just a user at home. At work i do a lot of fairly sophisticated VBA/Excel stuff, but all in the service of Product Development, IT,and Finance efforts. It's another case of being a user, though more than "just" and, in this case, of Windows. That said, I will transfer files fairly seamlessly between the two environments.

i' am totally with you on Guis. Back when i was a Dynamicist, I used to run a lot of simulation using ADAMS in an SGI unix environment. i hated the Gui and often talked to our MDI developers about it. It was easier to straight up code stuff directly - and a hell of a lot less prone to misunderstanding. gui is a kind of dilettantism for the user. Colonel Kurtz wouldn't approve.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I hate the GUI.  I love UNIX, but only if I can have a CLI interface.  More efficient for me.  All GUI's get in my way.

Other than the look of an Apple, there is nothing special about it.  They have great marketing and a good industrial design team.  You pay a premium for the name.  Apple's bank account attests to where the money goes.

There is more to RAM performance than the clock rate and that is where the money is saved.  More wait states helps reduce the costs by providing higher yields of the chips.

My Wife got stuck with her laptop for a year.  When I looked at it, I was reminded of X Windows.  Really did not look, or act, that much different.  Yes, I hate X Windows.

For me, Apple products just miss the mark in a lot of areas.  Too expensive, difficult to use, difficult to integrate in other environments, and the list goes on.  If they fit your needs, then that is good for you.

You being an American one would think that having a successful business and fat bank accounts would sum up as a good thing.  

Apple uses 100% regular memory modules and users can even replace them at any time as I have done on many occasions. Your attitude against Apple seems more like a personal crusade than based on facts. For example nothing in OSX stops you from utilizing CLI just as you would if you had no desktop at all. I fail to see your logic there. Sorry but that's how it is.

[Bizman]

Double finger tap on touch pad or control+click. OSX basics.

Oh, by "right click" you meant "clicking the right way". Because I would use my left hand for the control button. Right. And on a desktop Mac there isn't a touch pad to "double finger tap" - not sure what it means, but if that means using two fingers simultaneously on the pad, could I use any two fingers and should they exist in the same hand?

[PJ_Godzilla]

You being an American one would think that having a successful business and fat bank accounts would sum up as a good thing.  

Americans are schizo on that issue. To my mind, having a strong and highly profitable energy sector is a strategic asset. To many of them ,however, they'd just as soon tax the entire energy sector out of domestic existence. Not saying Skuz is like that, i'm just saying that taxing energy is a policy fact in the US. This serves to transfer costs +, typically, back to the user via a middleman. The profitability remains since the sector passes on costs and doesn't/won't allow itself to fail financially. Yet the public is none the wiser - many of them still think businesses "pay" taxes, and still hate the idea of a business thriving on profits made from sales in which they the public willingly transacts. They're kind of uncomprehending in that sense; some Americans.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Oh, by "right click" you meant "clicking the right way". Because I would use my left hand for the control button. Right. And on a desktop Mac there isn't a touch pad to "double finger tap" - not sure what it means, but if that means using two fingers simultaneously on the pad, could I use any two fingers and should they exist in the same hand?

Actually if you use a regular mouse on a mac it is 'right click'. With a single button you need to press control. Double finger tap is just a simultaneous tap on the pad usually with your front and middle fingers. Makes no difference if you use both hands as long as two fingers touch the pad simultaneously.

I love how the touchpad works on macbooks. Two, three finger combos and swipes and its so smooth... I haven't seen a windows laptop yet with such a smooth working touchpad. I get furious with windows laptops nowadays because most of them lack dual finger scrolling for example. They feel so clumsy and backwards to use. You can get a touchpad even for desktop by the way. The way the apple pad works it would be not a bad purchase at all.

[Vulcan]

I couldn't find any free third party BT A2DP driver for Win7 at the time. Sucked but what can you do. Never had similar problems with a mac. Not once.

I worked in an office full of mac users for 8 years, I saw 3rd party driver issues all the time (mopiers, scanners, 2G/3G data cards).

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I worked in an office full of mac users for 8 years, I saw 3rd party driver issues all the time (mopiers, scanners, 2G/3G data cards).

Sounds like someone at the IT department wasn't up to his tasks then if he bought hardware that was not OSX compatible.

[zack1234]

You being an American one would think that having a successful business and fat bank accounts would sum up as a good thing.  

We buy $100k kit from an American company and they are play acting half the time,software fixes that take 2 months to complete.

Then we find out that the fixes are coming from Jordan

Tying to get RMA reports is a waste of time.

[Skuzzy]

You being an American one would think that having a successful business and fat bank accounts would sum up as a good thing.  

Apple uses 100% regular memory modules and users can even replace them at any time as I have done on many occasions. Your attitude against Apple seems more like a personal crusade than based on facts. For example nothing in OSX stops you from utilizing CLI just as you would if you had no desktop at all. I fail to see your logic there. Sorry but that's how it is.

I have no more attitude about Apple than you do about Microsoft.  They are equal as far as I am concerned.

Sure, you can put any RAM you want into the Apple.  After all, it is just a regular Intel based motherboard.  Nothing special about it.  It does not mean it will make full use of the timings available.  Everything about the motherboard design is pretty much run of the mill.  That is just a fact.  Take a look at it yourself.

Unlike you, I have no agenda.  I do not care what anyone uses for their personal computer as long as it can play the game.  Personally, there are far too many things I do not care about with Apple and their products to make them a viable choice for me.  If they work well for you, then good for you.

As far as OSX allowing a CLI to be used, I was not aware of that, but it still does not help with the other limitations I have run into.  

DLNA support is a must in my home environment and I am not keen on trying to find third party apps for Apple to accomplish that.  There are other things which do not work out of the box, without me having to rebuild other servers to make them work with Apple.  The cost of the product mitigates any possibility of using them due to the effort required to make them work in my personal environment.  Those are just facts.

I grow tired of this exchange.  You like Apple.  I get that.  I am glad you are happy with them.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I have no more attitude about Apple than you do about Microsoft.  They are equal as far as I am concerned.

Sure, you can put any RAM you want into the Apple.  After all, it is just a regular Intel based motherboard.  Nothing special about it.  It does not mean it will make full use of the timings available.  Everything about the motherboard design is pretty much run of the mill.  That is just a fact.  Take a look at it yourself.

Unlike you, I have no agenda.  I do not care what anyone uses for their personal computer as long as it can play the game.  Personally, there are far too many things I do not care about with Apple and their products to make them a viable choice for me.  If they work well for you, then good for you.

As far as OSX allowing a CLI to be used, I was not aware of that, but it still does not help with the other limitations I have run into.  

DLNA support is a must in my home environment and I am not keen on trying to find third party apps for Apple to accomplish that.  There are other things which do not work out of the box, without me having to rebuild other servers to make them work with Apple.  The cost of the product mitigates any possibility of using them due to the effort required to make them work in my personal environment.  Those are just facts.

I grow tired of this exchange.  You like Apple.  I get that.  I am glad you are happy with them.

I have no agenda either, I'm just correcting some peoples clear misconceptions. DLNA is supported on OSX through third party open source products http://xbmc.org/about/ it was 1 google search away.

Did you know that not only OSX supports CLI but you can enable Macports and homebrew to get all the familiar apps, python, ruby etc. environments to OSX? When homebrew is enabled you can start installing open source software the same way you would use apt-get, yum, pacman or other package manager on CLI.

But I get that you don't like Apple and are not willing to explore it. I can't blame you really, I wouldn't have got interested either if I had to pay the price! They are overpriced that I agree.

[Vulcan]

Apple uses 100% regular memory modules and users can even replace them at any time as I have done on many occasions.

Yeah how about dem proprietery hard drives

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Yeah how about dem proprietery hard drives

LOL are you on crack? I've upgraded the harddrives in my two previous macbooks with regular 2,5" drives. The current one shipped with an SSD from the factory so it doesn't need upgrading. You folks really should lose your prejudice. You're all bashing macs for non-existing reasons.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/58220-upgrade-your-macbook-pros-hard-drive-2

Even the macbook air that doesn't use a *regular* harddrive, uses a regular msata card drive  



The only exception is the post-2011 iMac which uses a proprietary 7-pin connector - but iMacs are not designed for user upgrades in the first place. It's a slim closed package purpose designed for its job and it's very difficult to even open the case. If a mac user wants an upgradeable desktop he will choose the Mac pro that is as easy to upgrade as any desktop pc if the mundane specs do not satisfy you:

3.5GHz

6-Core Intel Xeon E5 with 12MB L3 cache and Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz

Configurable to 3.0GHz 8-core processor with 25MB L3 cache or 2.7GHz 12-core processor with 30MB L3 cache

16Gb DDR3

Dual AMD FirePro D500 graphics processors with 3GB of GDDR5 VRAM each