rfus,
You said:
"Vista just needs some time. Thats all. I think when this guy in the article Jeff posted looks back five years from now, he will view that article as containing some arrogance and stupidity. Forcing people into Vista was a way for them to rapidly bring all of its faults to the forefront, and in the long run, will proably actually be good for people."
I respectfully disagree with your point. If they want to bring a new operating system out, fine. Please debug it and make it work properly before you foist it on me. Don't make me pay through the nose for new hardware and software, so I can help finish doing the development work for you. I don’t see how it’s good for me to have my productivity reduced because I’m constantly chasing unresolved issues with the OS.
In the automotive business, it is analogous to GM foisting Corvairs, Oldsmobile Diesels, and Cadillac’s V8-6-4's onto the automotive public before they were completely sorted out. Those did nothing to help GM's reputation, and soured many customers. (I don't mean to pick solely on GM, but since I married into a GM family, and went to GMI, it is what I'm most familiar with. Other OEM's have their own foibles.)
You also said:
"lets face it. The professional computing world is Windows, and will continue to be windows for a while. If you cant beat em, then you might as well join em. I'll be on Vista in a year and a half or so."
That statement made me feel old. <lol> I’m old enough to remember when the professional (at least Technical Engineering and CAD world) computing world used to be primarily Unix, and migrated to PC/Windows, once it’s capabilities improved, because of price performance. I was one of the biggest proponents of doing this back in the late 80's and early 90's when we were paying princely sums for Apollos, Suns, HP U/X, SGI's, and what have you. Well, Unix begat NextStep, and NextStep is essentially what OS X was developed from. I have seen the argument made that OS X is really just NextStep 5 or 6, and it’s fairly plausible. When you look under the hood at OS X, it's Unix (primarily BSD), Mach, and NextStep at it's core. I look at my switch to OS X as just heading back to a more stable foundation in which to do my technical computing, and oh by the way, it’s a more capable media environment as well. It’s just icing on the cake if my wife, who doesn’t have the same desire to tinker with her computer hardware, can effortlessly use the MAC without any drama, or training, for that matter.
And finally:
"OS X is cool if you just don't get it-(which is why there is only one button and people paid 3x for sub par hardware and a bubbly OS)... or if you are this guy."
I’m definitely not that guy! <lol> While I find the current crop of Apple commercials funny, I think they actually do more harm than good. They further reinforce the stereotypes that have existed for too long. OS X seems like a darn good technical computing platform to me. It has all of the advantages of *nix (security, multi-threading, almost bulletproof stability, etc . . .,) an attractive interface, and it’s ported to affordable high performance hardware. I don’t think you have actually priced Apple’s hardware lately. It’s definitely not 2x-3x anymore. Your statement used to be true, but I don’t see it so much so now, especially for Notebooks. It’s anywhere from par, to 20% higher.
The only thing that I would love to see is Apple open it up to more non-Apple hardware. However, I’m wise enough to know that if they do that, it’s bad for their bottom line. Hardware is part of their business, and profit is what funds more development. I’m a die hard capitalist and believe in free markets. If Apple can charge a little more, and be successful, then there must be a reason.
I've used everything from an Altair my Dad and I built from an kit, to an OSI, to DEC's, to IBM PC's running DOS, and on to various X86 based systems running various OS's including every flavor of Windows starting with 3.0 (not 3.1, 3.0!), plus various Unix workstations on Motorola and RISC chips. I even wrote my own real-time controls OS for the 80286 chip back in college, for a major project. I was overclocking 5150 PC’s and 5160 XT’s before overclocking was coined as a term. I'm fairly certain that "I get it" when it comes to computing, and yet I still find OS X to be really cool.
-Tony Staples
