Macs for Intel people
Dave Budde is also an ex-Intel person who uses Macs. I agree with his comments, and add my own.
"Tim, re: "This is not an Apple thread, so I won't go into details about why I like the prospects. In a nutshell, they seem to be firing on all cylinders. I can say more if there's interest.""
"Personally, I'd love to see more about Apple discussed on this thread. I was a Mac user in 1985 until around 1988 when Apple started their long downtrend, but came back in 1998 and have since bought an iMac, a G4 PowerMac, a G4 cube and a G4 Powerbook. I've kept the latter two. I don't use Wintel PCs anymore, ever, for any reason...and not because I don't think Intel makes a great processor, but the OS's that run on PC's quite simply .... for lack of a better term...suck."
Comments on Apple may be useful to the Intel thread folks just so they don't have a completely insular view of the world. And as Dave points out, the issue of _processor_ is different from the issue of _OS_. Intel is tied closely to Windows for obvious historical reasons, but this tie is loosening (Linux, _maybe_ Solaris, again).
The Mac OS is about a lot more than some notion of an "appliance computer." Even the iMac, which I never cared for, is of course much more than just some appliance. Listing features and advantages would be _advocacy_, the bane of so many Usenet newsgroups.
I will say that Windows has come a _long_ way from Windows 1.0, which I had on my IBM PC back around 1985. Windows 3.0/3.1 looked pretty useable...a lot like a Mac OS, in fact. I certainly can't say that someone using Windows 98 or 2000 (or ME or XP) is suffering too much.
Macs are still easier to configure, I believe, than Windows machines. Drivers are trivial to install, and Apple's control of the overall standards (e.g., graphics cards) means few program incompatibilities. (OS X is a big enough jump that there are still some driver issues...should be resolved by mid-summer).
Still, I'm happy with my Macs. Several older machines, kept for no good reasons, and three current-generation machines: a G4 tower with a 15-inch LCD, an iBook SE, and an older G3 PowerBook. The iBook runs OS X, but I haven't installed it on my G4 tower (awaiting final drivers, e.g., for Wacom tablet).
I also run Windows 98 under Virtual PC, mainly so I can run some Go (the Asian board game) programs which only run under Windows. Performance is OK for these kinds of games, and some folks even run shoot-em-ups in this Virtual PC mode...I don't try.
For essentially everything I want to do, there are Mac versions: many Web browsers (I use Internet Explorer and OmniWeb), mailers (I've been using Eudora since '92), newsreaders (I use MT-Newswatcher and Thoth), programming tools (Squeak implementation of Smalltalk), MIDI tools, music programs, Mathematica, and on and on. All of the major programs run on Macs...in many cases the programs made their first appearance on Macs. (The reason for this: the integrated environment when tools like Excel, PageMaker, Quark,FrameMaker, outliners, page layout, etc. tools were being developed in the late 80s.)
I concede that things turned around as Windows gained immensely in popularity: products like the above appeared _first_ for Windows, a change from earlier situations, and only later got ported to the Mac. But these days the development is usually on parallel tracks, e.g., Microsoft releases Mac versions close to the Windows versions. (The Mac division within MS is said to be their most profitable division...)
Dave:
"And just to start things off with a rather controversial subject...I'll take a 500MHz G4 Mac any day over a 1.x GHz Wintel machine. It just gets the job done faster with far less effort. And by the way, Mac OS X is wonderful. I'll go out on a limb and predict that Apple will double their market share in less than 12 months, making them the single largest producer of personal computers (in terms of market share)."
I agree about the market share. Apple's decision to go completely over to LCDs is a bold one. (Customers can buy CRTs from other vendors, as usual.) OS X is a solid foundation for future systems.
Dave:
"Full disclosure...I currently own a significant position in Apple, and Microsoft (hey I'm not a complete idiot), and a token amount of Intel stock. I don't own and would never buy any AMD stock (well, as long as Jerry is in charge anyway). "
My own full disclosure is that 90% of my net worth remains tied-up in Intel stock accumulated in the 70s and 80s. I haven't diversified because the thought of paying out 30% of the gains to the taxman is too scary...and this procrastination/avoidance has certainly worked to my advantage! (Had the cap gains rates been cut, I might have bailed on Intel years ago. "I wonder what _that_ would be like?")
As I've said before, I have the best of both worlds: Macs and Intel stock.
--Tim May |
