Grr!! More reasons to hate apple...

[Relique du Madde]

LOL, This thread should be archived for all eternity, to be dusted off and brought out at any time anyone wants to see a thread starting out as a rant and ending up as rational (and humorous) postings. I gotta re-read this just to determine at exactly what point the knuckle children entered...

I don't know if I should be flattered or a little bit disturbed...

Now that I think of it, after seing that picture, I think I should be disturbed especially after using an iMac which had a sticky keyboard today.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Oh, there's no question about Steve Jobs being one arrogant and full of himself SOB. Nobody who knows anything about him thinks he's a nice person or fun to be around.

However, he is someone who does have a vision and a style that are unique. Lots of companies have tried to copy what Apple's been doing since he came back to the company and they've all failed miserably. While obviously you don't like Apple's stuff, equally obviously lots of people do and a lot of Apples products have been definitive trendsetters and a fair amount of that is due to Jobs being a finicky SOB. As a result Apple's products usually (though not always) have an attention to detail and thought put into the design of things that is lacking in most other similar products and it's one of the reasons Apple is able to charge a premium for it's products.

An interesting link on Jobs leadership of Apple:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-04/bz_apple?currentPage=all

Unfortunately, it doesn't tell us why what he does works. Maybe he really is one of those "benovelent" dictators people dream off when they are faced with the limitations of democracy and humankind. He might be the 1 in a Million that can pull his style off and have it work.

 

[Rackhir]

... combined with proprietary hardware is what puts me out over them.

What proprietary hardware? They use standard hard drives, ram, intel processors. Most USB stuff will work out of the box. The motherboards are only as proprietary as those in an HP or Dell and it's just as possible as with PC to drop in a replacement processor if you're so inclined. PCIe Cards are somewhat, but mostly that comes down to the roms on the cards (which it is possible to flash, though IIRC Macs need ones with 128k roms vs 64k roms on most PC cards) since macs use EFI (an Intel Standard) and most PCs still use BIOS for booting.

Obviously the iMacs are somewhat more custom, but what do you expect in a machine that's squeezed into a monitor? Besides most consumers are lucky if they can upgrade the ram without needing a techncian to do so.

In fact if you are so inclined and pick your motherboard carefully, you can in fact build a completely generic machine that will run OSX. Apple doesn't exactly encourage this sort of thing, but it is very possible and I have a friend who's built one off of a motherboard/processor combo he got from an Intel Training session.

Yeah the Apple stuff is a lot more expensive than generic white box stuff, but it isn't much more expensive than comparable branded machines. Remember a lot of their hardware is selling to the upper end of the market.

 

[drothgery]

Yeah the Apple stuff is a lot more expensive than generic white box stuff, but it isn't much more expensive than comparable branded machines. Remember a lot of their hardware is selling to the upper end of the market.

Their stuff isn't all that overpriced in the markets they compete in. But there are large segments they don't really bother to compete in, like...

$1500-$2500 upper-midrange desktops (the iMac has too few expansion options and a low-end graphics card that can't be upgraded, the Mac Pro is too expensive and built on workstation hardware)
inexpensive gaming PCs (nothing better than a Radeon 2600 is available for anything other than a Mac Pro, and iMacs are essentially unupgradeable)
sub-$600 PCs (that's the cheapest Mac Mini)
sub-$1100 notebooks (cheapest MacBook)

 

[Rackhir]

$1500-$2500 upper-midrange desktops (the iMac has too few expansion options and a low-end graphics card that can't be upgraded, the Mac Pro is too expensive and built on workstation hardware) inexpensive gaming PCs (nothing better than a Radeon 2600 is available for anything other than a Mac Pro, and iMacs are essentially unupgradeable)

Yeah, something in this sort of niche has been a long time request of a lot of mac people. I'm dubious though as to the probability of seeing this sort of machine any time soon. Gamers are a large chunk of the market for that sort of machine and Jobs does have something against games for some reason. Plus they're raking in the money as is and any machine like that is inevitably going to hit the sales of people who wind up buying Mac Pros for the power. But who don't necessarily need the expandability.

It is actually possible in theory to upgrade the graphics on the current model iMacs as they use something called IICR, MXM modules, which were developed to enable laptops to have upgrade-able graphics. However in practice nobody produces such modules and it's largely served only to make it easier for manufacturers to make changes in the graphics cards used.

sub-$600 PCs (that's the cheapest Mac Mini)
sub-$1100 notebooks (cheapest MacBook)

Apple does also sell refurb machine, though the link to that portion of the online store is usually not prominently placed. Typically it's towards the bottom of the web page. They're not usually an irresistible deal, but the MacBookPros go as low as $1600, MacBooks can get down to $850-900 and the Mini's down to $500 or so. Paradoxically, the oldest models tend to be the worst deals over all.