There are many things you must keep in mind of why PC laptops are so cheap and apple will NEVER be able to produce them.
Sorry but you are wrong. Apple very much could produce cheaper laptops. they are perfectly able to do so.
but they choose not to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by camroidv27
I want a desktop hard drive, a desktop processor that I can change out and over clock, I want standard drives and be able to install a blue-ray drive if i wish. I want to be able to upgrade to USB3 when it comes out, or install a new networking card. I want to be able to use a standard graphics card that isn't specially built for Mac, and more so I want SLI or CrossFire. I want this in a smallish desktop form factor. Apple doesn't sell this. I want all this AND OSX, but that's not a possiblitiy through Apple... so then what do I do?
you are one of what I call the SuperGeeks. the highly techno users of all things (computers, smartphones, televisions etc) that make up about 5 (maybe 10)% of Apple's user base. one of those that says that anything less than 1080 is NOT HD and it's a sin to call it that, who will always find something to complain about that Apple isn't doing that you think they should, because (in your wise opinion) they are stupid not to. and so on
sorry to say it but they don't focus on you. they focus on the other 90-95% who only think of their tv when they buy blu-rays, who can't tell the difference between 720 and 1080, who only care that they can build a little family website, not that the coding is bloated, who want to edit that home movie of the kids, not make a blockbuster, etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by camroidv27
I understand that Apple cannot make computers for all people. I don't think they should make computers for everyone. No computer maker really does. I think a good idea would be to have two divisions. Apple computers just how they are now. Then the "build it yourself" model.
how is this different than the whole cloning fiasco. aside from the fact that Apple had to support those authorized clones.
for the record, Apple doesn't go around and knock on every house and check that you didn't build a hackintosh for your own use. just like they don't randomly walk up and demand folks let them inspect that they didn't unlock/jailbreak their iphones. they don't make you sign 20 pages of legelese that you aren't buying that retail copy to "build it yourself". if you want to build one yourself and you think you can do it and make OS X work on it, great. just keep it to yourself. don't go putting the instructions online, making that DCMA violating bootloader available for folks to download etc. yes by letter you are still breaking the law, but you aren't going to get caught if you don't brag about it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gmac
Yeah right. And when these people that are building their own macs run into problems and apple refuses to support them because "hey we told you this Mac OS really only runs on our HW" they'll be perfectly happy with that response? Apple would get sued left right and center.
actually they wouldn't. because the folks building those machines know they tampered with the software etc and won't get support.
now who is the problem is these illegal iphone resellers. I'll put down good money that they have unlocked the phones and aren't telling the buyers that there's no warranty or that any updates to the software will kill the phone. And without that info, they will blame Apple when the phone fails.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss
No no, you miss the point. Apple must be made to compete against itself, or there's no justice in the world.
No, you are the one that has missed the point. there is no such thing as a Macintosh Computer Market. which is what Psystar tried to claim when they tossed AntiTrust at Apple.
but the market is Personal Computing Systems, if which Apple is a merely 8% (give or take a percent). as such, the courts have validated that due to a lack of market power, Apple can do whatever they want in regards to tying hardware and software.
now when they get to more like 40-50%, the issue becomes dicey and the courts might say otherwise, which is part of why I don't think Apple is in all that much of a rush to push their share growth too hard. thus why no cheap ass computers etc
No, you are the one that has missed the point. there is no such thing as a Macintosh Computer Market. which is what Psystar tried to claim when they tossed AntiTrust at Apple.
I'm sorry, this was only my first post on this subject, so that must be why you completely missed my meaning.
Aside from the IP and legal issues, these are the reasons why Apple persists--and should persist--in their approach:
If you make a new technology an option or an alternative, it tends to languish. If you want it adopted, make it standard across hardware to the extent possible. Then it becomes part of the platform infrastructure. For example, Apple and others can integrate camera support into their apps secure in the knowledge that there are millions of people with a built-in camera. Apple can advertise video chat because there are millions of people to chat with (interesting how the PC side has languished in picking up AIM voice chat despite the proliferation of Windows-compatible webcams, isn't it?). This applies at the chipset level, too: By shipping Core Image and its siblings, Apple have now encouraged a record number of apps using chips other than the CPU for work, a far cry from the orphaned DSP unit in the old Quadra 840AV. All of this makes the software environment richer and more consistent.
How do you effectively define, maintain and extend a platform's infrastructure? You control the hardware.
It's easier to ensure quality. That's not to say that Apple never drops the ball on QC, but any problem they have is limited and the fix is usually as straightforward as it will ever be. The overwhelming majority of crashes, slowdowns, and other nuisances on Windows have come from the vast proliferation of drivers, many of which are sketchy software supporting sketchy hardware. Drivers are a particularly nasty issue, because in an open platform anyone can write them and they have to run in system memory with system privileges--they can't be isolated from the critical parts of the system the way an application can. Drivers have a near-limitless capacity to cause damage and mischief, which is why it's crucial for any platform to have the least possible number of them, and to have them as well written and tested as possible. A company with absolute control over the hardware in the box can assure this. An open platform cannot. (USB has also helped a lot by putting a generic driver between the system and any hardware, which makes for fewer potential crashes than in the days when hardware was physically plugged in to the board and required a custom driver in every case.)
It's easier to write software and design hardware. "Good programming is intelligent laziness," and any feature which requires effort to implement has to guarantee a payoff or it will languish no matter how beautiful it looks on paper. This is true of engineering as well. No-one is building hardware chips to accelerate Ogg Theora because there are no obvious customers. No-one built USB printers while every PC shipped with a printer port; it took a popular computer with only a USB port to force the issue, and that only worked because there was an installed base of millions of PCs that had heretofore unused USB ports. While AltiVec had to be hand-coded, and while it was only on some of Apple's machines, it languished. And so on. The more consistent and universal the interface--hardware and software--the easier it is to design for and the more worthwhile it is to take advantage of all of its features. This applies to game programming as well: John Carmack loved the old CRT iMac as a development target (hardware-wise; he had no love for the old Mac OS and I don't blame him) because it was so consistent that it was like targeting a console.
As consumer options increase linearly, the work necessary to support them increases geometrically. A few options are fine; too many are unsustainable. Most game developers, as much as they love hardware that pushes the envelop, would just as soon develop for an ocean of 9600GT Mobility chips. They would only have to test their game on one GPU! Huzzah!
A company with absolute control over the hardware in the box can assure this. An open platform cannot. (USB has also helped a lot by putting a generic driver between the system and any hardware, which makes for fewer potential crashes than in the days when hardware was physically plugged in to the board and required a custom driver in every case.)
Wholeheartedly agree. Utilization of encapsulation and abstraction are simply proper engineering practices.
Having had a source code contract several years ago to test the feasibility of slenderizing and embedding Windows 3.1 on a customer's target hardware, we had a close-up example of the dearth of software engineering concepts and the inevitable scalability and portability growth issues, portending significant future maintenance issues for MS.
Why is it so hard to put someone who is clearly making knock off Macs out of business? And why do Psystar even bother to fight, surely they know they must lose. Do they seriously think they can pull the wool over the eyes of a judge.
On the other hand, some idiot judge banned sales of Word a few days ago, so there's some weird ones out there.
If you had bother to actually READ the articles on the case you would have seen that Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas had ruled Microsoft had willfully infringed on i4i's patent and that was the reason for the ban.
"Psystar's counsel stated that Psystar's e-mail and customer support software (SupportSuite) randomly 'deletes or loses' e-mails."
Brilliant!
Brilliantly stupid is more like it. I am sure that if any such bug exists in SupportSuite, Kayako would know about it and had it fixed ASAP. Never mind that putting the blame elsewhere adds the risk that the company you are talking about keeps much better records and can come after you for possible defamation using said records.
Comments
Have you seen how many other computer manufacturers there are in existence?
Have you seen how many other operating systems and version of operating systems there are out there?
Apple has plenty of competition.
No no, you miss the point. Apple must be made to compete against itself, or there's no justice in the world.
There are many things you must keep in mind of why PC laptops are so cheap and apple will NEVER be able to produce them.
Sorry but you are wrong. Apple very much could produce cheaper laptops. they are perfectly able to do so.
but they choose not to.
I want a desktop hard drive, a desktop processor that I can change out and over clock, I want standard drives and be able to install a blue-ray drive if i wish. I want to be able to upgrade to USB3 when it comes out, or install a new networking card. I want to be able to use a standard graphics card that isn't specially built for Mac, and more so I want SLI or CrossFire. I want this in a smallish desktop form factor. Apple doesn't sell this. I want all this AND OSX, but that's not a possiblitiy through Apple... so then what do I do?
you are one of what I call the SuperGeeks. the highly techno users of all things (computers, smartphones, televisions etc) that make up about 5 (maybe 10)% of Apple's user base. one of those that says that anything less than 1080 is NOT HD and it's a sin to call it that, who will always find something to complain about that Apple isn't doing that you think they should, because (in your wise opinion) they are stupid not to. and so on
sorry to say it but they don't focus on you. they focus on the other 90-95% who only think of their tv when they buy blu-rays, who can't tell the difference between 720 and 1080, who only care that they can build a little family website, not that the coding is bloated, who want to edit that home movie of the kids, not make a blockbuster, etc.
I understand that Apple cannot make computers for all people. I don't think they should make computers for everyone. No computer maker really does. I think a good idea would be to have two divisions. Apple computers just how they are now. Then the "build it yourself" model.
how is this different than the whole cloning fiasco. aside from the fact that Apple had to support those authorized clones.
for the record, Apple doesn't go around and knock on every house and check that you didn't build a hackintosh for your own use. just like they don't randomly walk up and demand folks let them inspect that they didn't unlock/jailbreak their iphones. they don't make you sign 20 pages of legelese that you aren't buying that retail copy to "build it yourself". if you want to build one yourself and you think you can do it and make OS X work on it, great. just keep it to yourself. don't go putting the instructions online, making that DCMA violating bootloader available for folks to download etc. yes by letter you are still breaking the law, but you aren't going to get caught if you don't brag about it.
Yeah right. And when these people that are building their own macs run into problems and apple refuses to support them because "hey we told you this Mac OS really only runs on our HW" they'll be perfectly happy with that response? Apple would get sued left right and center.
actually they wouldn't. because the folks building those machines know they tampered with the software etc and won't get support.
now who is the problem is these illegal iphone resellers. I'll put down good money that they have unlocked the phones and aren't telling the buyers that there's no warranty or that any updates to the software will kill the phone. And without that info, they will blame Apple when the phone fails.
No no, you miss the point. Apple must be made to compete against itself, or there's no justice in the world.
No, you are the one that has missed the point. there is no such thing as a Macintosh Computer Market. which is what Psystar tried to claim when they tossed AntiTrust at Apple.
but the market is Personal Computing Systems, if which Apple is a merely 8% (give or take a percent). as such, the courts have validated that due to a lack of market power, Apple can do whatever they want in regards to tying hardware and software.
now when they get to more like 40-50%, the issue becomes dicey and the courts might say otherwise, which is part of why I don't think Apple is in all that much of a rush to push their share growth too hard. thus why no cheap ass computers etc
No, you are the one that has missed the point. there is no such thing as a Macintosh Computer Market. which is what Psystar tried to claim when they tossed AntiTrust at Apple.
I'm sorry, this was only my first post on this subject, so that must be why you completely missed my meaning.
If you make a new technology an option or an alternative, it tends to languish. If you want it adopted, make it standard across hardware to the extent possible. Then it becomes part of the platform infrastructure. For example, Apple and others can integrate camera support into their apps secure in the knowledge that there are millions of people with a built-in camera. Apple can advertise video chat because there are millions of people to chat with (interesting how the PC side has languished in picking up AIM voice chat despite the proliferation of Windows-compatible webcams, isn't it?). This applies at the chipset level, too: By shipping Core Image and its siblings, Apple have now encouraged a record number of apps using chips other than the CPU for work, a far cry from the orphaned DSP unit in the old Quadra 840AV. All of this makes the software environment richer and more consistent.
How do you effectively define, maintain and extend a platform's infrastructure? You control the hardware.
It's easier to ensure quality. That's not to say that Apple never drops the ball on QC, but any problem they have is limited and the fix is usually as straightforward as it will ever be. The overwhelming majority of crashes, slowdowns, and other nuisances on Windows have come from the vast proliferation of drivers, many of which are sketchy software supporting sketchy hardware. Drivers are a particularly nasty issue, because in an open platform anyone can write them and they have to run in system memory with system privileges--they can't be isolated from the critical parts of the system the way an application can. Drivers have a near-limitless capacity to cause damage and mischief, which is why it's crucial for any platform to have the least possible number of them, and to have them as well written and tested as possible. A company with absolute control over the hardware in the box can assure this. An open platform cannot. (USB has also helped a lot by putting a generic driver between the system and any hardware, which makes for fewer potential crashes than in the days when hardware was physically plugged in to the board and required a custom driver in every case.)
It's easier to write software and design hardware. "Good programming is intelligent laziness," and any feature which requires effort to implement has to guarantee a payoff or it will languish no matter how beautiful it looks on paper. This is true of engineering as well. No-one is building hardware chips to accelerate Ogg Theora because there are no obvious customers. No-one built USB printers while every PC shipped with a printer port; it took a popular computer with only a USB port to force the issue, and that only worked because there was an installed base of millions of PCs that had heretofore unused USB ports. While AltiVec had to be hand-coded, and while it was only on some of Apple's machines, it languished. And so on. The more consistent and universal the interface--hardware and software--the easier it is to design for and the more worthwhile it is to take advantage of all of its features. This applies to game programming as well: John Carmack loved the old CRT iMac as a development target (hardware-wise; he had no love for the old Mac OS and I don't blame him) because it was so consistent that it was like targeting a console.
As consumer options increase linearly, the work necessary to support them increases geometrically. A few options are fine; too many are unsustainable. Most game developers, as much as they love hardware that pushes the envelop, would just as soon develop for an ocean of 9600GT Mobility chips. They would only have to test their game on one GPU! Huzzah!
A company with absolute control over the hardware in the box can assure this. An open platform cannot. (USB has also helped a lot by putting a generic driver between the system and any hardware, which makes for fewer potential crashes than in the days when hardware was physically plugged in to the board and required a custom driver in every case.)
Wholeheartedly agree. Utilization of encapsulation and abstraction are simply proper engineering practices.
Having had a source code contract several years ago to test the feasibility of slenderizing and embedding Windows 3.1 on a customer's target hardware, we had a close-up example of the dearth of software engineering concepts and the inevitable scalability and portability growth issues, portending significant future maintenance issues for MS.
Why is it so hard to put someone who is clearly making knock off Macs out of business? And why do Psystar even bother to fight, surely they know they must lose. Do they seriously think they can pull the wool over the eyes of a judge.
On the other hand, some idiot judge banned sales of Word a few days ago, so there's some weird ones out there.
If you had bother to actually READ the articles on the case you would have seen that Judge Leonard Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas had ruled Microsoft had willfully infringed on i4i's patent and that was the reason for the ban.
"Psystar's counsel stated that Psystar's e-mail and customer support software (SupportSuite) randomly 'deletes or loses' e-mails."
Brilliant!
Brilliantly stupid is more like it. I am sure that if any such bug exists in SupportSuite, Kayako would know about it and had it fixed ASAP. Never mind that putting the blame elsewhere adds the risk that the company you are talking about keeps much better records and can come after you for possible defamation using said records.