Someone needs to explain to the author how memory/CPU FSB speeds work as it's pretty clear he doesn't understand them.
That 'cheap' 533MHz (effective) RAM on the HP runs at 266 MHz which happens to be the same speed that the CPU FSB runs at (it's 266*4=1066MHz effective quad-pumped).
If you didn't know you generally want the RAM speed to 1:1 to the CPU speed, but and you will won't get any better performance if the RAM is faster than the FSB speed as the CPU won't be able to take advantage of it.
So in other words, putting faster or more expensive RAM (even if it was DDR3), wouldn't make the slightest noticeable difference as you are already getting the best you can with that CPU.
Also, DDR3 has HIGHER latencies than DDR2. Therefore DD2 1066 Ram is FASTER, that's right FASTER, than DDR3 1066. Most DDR2 at 1066 has 5-5-5-x timings whereas DDR3 1066 has 7-7-7-x timings.
The only benefit of having DDR3 is lower voltages and faster speeds through overclocking. However, since it's a Mac and overclocking's a no go, then it's pretty much pointless having DDR3.
"DDR3 also uses more internal banks - 8 instead of the 4 used by DDR2 - to further speed up the system. More internal banks allow advance prefetch to reduce access latency... As discussed earlier, one of the long term potentials of DDR3 is improved memory latency."
I guess you missed that part of the article. Sheesh...
Working in IT, I have been fighting this war for a long time...
Yes, Macs cost more...it comes down to these items:
1. Design....The [new Macbook/Pro] is solid; it's thin, ...To me, that's worth the cost.
2. Software - Put simply, I'm more productive in Mac OS X than in Windows...I don't have to spend hours installing updates, removing trialware/bloatware and manufacturer "utilities" on a Mac. I'm up and running within minutes, not hours.
3. Support...My PowerBook G4 lost it's ability to display video properly about 2 months before the end of AppleCare...2 days later, I had a brand new Macbook Pro delivered to my house, free of charge.
4. Compatibility...The ability to run Windows on my Mac resolves those issues....
I, like most of the people here, think it's great you love all the ins and outs of what politely is called Windows and feel like you saved some money at the same time. But we don't want it. We know what we want and we have it. It all works, as Apple says "seamlessly" and it goes on working, without ever getting tiresome or error ridden.
Would you believe that I have no problem with that..? \
I came to AI because last October I was considering white Macbook for my notebook. One of reasons I didn't get it was that I didn't know much about OSX to feel comfortable with purchase... so I decided to gather some knowledge about it before next notebook purchase.
That is all cool. Only problem for me is - incredible level of uneducated self-indulgence and urban-myths-sort of nonsense some of people here are oozing with on the daily basis. I tried to ignore it at first, but after almost 20 years in IT, it is hard to hear some of it time and time again without reacting.
So here we are.
It is my personal opinion that Apple is using well thought and written OS to sell good looking (but not equally high quality) and expensive hardware. Quest for perceived quality instead of real quality. There are exclusions to the rule and above mentioned white Macbook was one of them - selling, at the time, for less than US$50 more expensive than 13" Toshibas or HPs. While PCs were coming with bigger HDDs and more RAM, white Mac still had value with extra software and (expected) OS advantages.
But new generation of Macs is just too little and too expensive, specially today with speed of progress and price drops IT industry is experiencing in general. Specially iMacs.
Would you believe that I have no problem with that..? \
I came to AI because last October I was considering white Macbook for my notebook. One of reasons I didn't get it was that I didn't know much about OSX to feel comfortable with purchase... so I decided to gather some knowledge about it before next notebook purchase.
That is all cool. Only problem for me is - incredible level of uneducated self-indulgence and urban-myths-sort of nonsense some of people here are oozing with on the daily basis. I tried to ignore it at first, but after almost 20 years in IT, it is hard to hear some of it time and time again without reacting.
So here we are.
It is my personal opinion that Apple is using well thought and written OS to sell good looking (but not equally high quality) and expensive hardware. Quest for perceived quality instead of real quality. There are exclusions to the rule and above mentioned white Macbook was one of them - selling, at the time, for less than US$50 more expensive than 13" Toshibas or HPs. While PCs were coming with bigger HDDs and more RAM, white Mac still had value with extra software and (expected) OS advantages.
But new generation of Macs is just too little and too expensive, specially today with speed of progress and price drops IT industry is experiencing in general. Specially iMacs.
There's a wide range of technical knowledge on this forum and I suspect much of the comments reflect a pretty basic response, like myself, who's had two PC's running Windows XP and not felt happy. I did have lots of problems using windows XP, but in fairness my first PC was nearly 10 yrs old and the second about 3 yrs old. I was itching to get an Apple from my first few visits to the Apple store where I saw that iPhoto was incredibly simple and straight forward to use and that was my main need for a computer outside of e-mail and the internet. If I was someone who genuinely required higher specs I might have been tempted to go with a PC as Apple's gear does get expensive and I was so fed up with my PC waiting another 6 months or more till I could afford to spend more was just not tempting. As it's turned out, even with just the 1GB of ram the mini came with, I have no problems doing anything 'I' have needed to do.
Of course your needs are different. Those new 'sexy' laptops are just exactly that to a lot of people, especially in today's economic climate. Spending that kind of money on a laptop when it's uses will involve only some pretty basic tasks, however well it works or nice it is to use, will mean those looking for a laptop, who are 'financially challenged' will either choose the white MacBook or settle on a PC that's going to save them 30% or so in the short term. They in my opinion though wont have wasted a penny if they could afford the uni-body. It's lighter weight, less bulkiness, beautiful screen, multi-gesture trackpad, long lasting battery, better speaker (than the white MacBook) and strong construction are all worth paying for IMHO.
Apple may address this with a NetBook and I hope it does.
I really can't comment on the quality of the new uni-bodies internal hardware, other than to me, it seems well built and the simple fact that Apple run their own OS with their carefully chosen and redesigned hardware does make a difference to how well it runs and lasts. Until Dell etc write their own OS for their computers their not going to fully catch up with Apple.
If gamers want to buy a windows machine for less, that's up to their requirements and has a larger screen, go for it. But they shouldn't expect the same experience as someone using a Mac Pro in reliability, customer care or most of the PC's uses outside of gaming.
My goal at the moment is to save for a used 17" uni-body which I hope to be able to afford when the usb 3.0 comes out, as many current owners will, with any luck, want to upgrade to it and sell their current models?. I'm confident my mini will carry on working well until then.
Welcome to AI. Obviously you aren't an idiot as you saw the genius of my post.
Seriously though, I think the commercial has a point, albeit lost and clouded, that the much cheaper machine is sufficient or good enough to satisfy the average person computing needs. Is there a simpler way they can portray that simple fact? Car companies push their economical cars all the time and fast food companies push their economical meals all the time without making me think they are trying to portray a sub-compact as a luxury automobile and cheeseburger as a steak.
I find it funny that most that have bsod can be tweakedz and overcoockers. That said, when I used macs more often which is 99% of the time I remember saying to myself it really is the experience. Apple softaware worksnthw way you think it should. Case in point add an image to word doc go to move it or resize and poof the image is off the page. Try this in iWork and it does what you want it to. Works the way the brain works. On the other hand some software like nuendo $2000 for mac or pc works better on a pc. Less problems. Plus it's very FPU Dependent. Need more reverb or fx or virtual orchesatra it requires more CPU fpu power which depends on CPU speed. The thing I like about pcs are you can build a wirkststiin that dies a good job and in a year if you know what you're doing and buy the right motherboard, you can swap the CPU and have a faster computer. Worst case, you have to buy a new CPU and motherboard, much cheaper than a new mac. Personally now that msft has just win 7 in the wings and no need to support several os"s. They could have a hit. Hard to say. Right now it runs well with old hardware and that's very different from vista. Part of me thinks the whole campaign is to get ready for win 7. Still, hard to imagine they will get the experience down. But some will purchase a of due to this ad.
"DDR3 also uses more internal banks - 8 instead of the 4 used by DDR2 - to further speed up the system. More internal banks allow advance prefetch to reduce access latency... As discussed earlier, one of the long term potentials of DDR3 is improved memory latency."
I guess you missed that part of the article. Sheesh...
Nice dig, but if you bothered to compare results, you would have seen that real-life speed compares between DDR2 and DDR3 are from irrelevant to non-existent.
(I'm actually pretty sure you did check results, but decided to pull one paragraph out of content and use it to your advantage. Sad if you ask me)
True article is from 2007... but then again, that is the DDR3 speed Apple is using in their new computers. Have they decided to use DDR3-1600, maybe - maybe - you might have an argument more, but even that is questionable - from all I could find DDR3 in any flavour make some sense only on i7 processors, which Apple is not using for Macbooks and iMacs anyway. Even new Phenom II processors from AMD, though they are borrowing heavily from i7 design wise (but not performance wise), don't benefit from DDR3.
I suppose this marketing is intended for someone like me. My four year old HP is notebook is finally falling apart, and my desktop runs ancient Xenon processors with legacy peripherals that fell from favor long ago. I didn't even want to spend the cash on a new computer, but once my HP started crashing to desktop while running Lightroom 1.4 and the desktop started showing a BSD on most boots-ups, I decided to buy a new computer.
I spent a lot of time researching, actually looking for an excuse not to buy the Macbook Pro. They're expensive, bottom line, so looking at and comparing base models did make me lean towards going with another HP. But once I started comparing specs like FSB speed, L2 cache size, RAM specification and speed, hard drive size, and GPU, the PC notebooks were just a couple hundred less than the MBP. And so I sat on the fence while waiting on my edu check from the VA.
The funny thing is that I saw the "slot machine" ad on the New York Times webpage, and it completely turned me off. How can Microsoft compare a base HP or Dell to a Mac with a faster FSB, larger L2 cache, faster RAM? The marketing is completely dishonest and assumes that computer buyers are idiots. And why not compare models with as near to identical specifications as possible when, in such a comparison, the PC would still come out a couple hundred cheaper than the Mac?
So basically, to bring this back to the point solipsism made, Microsoft's ad campaign sold me on a MacBook Pro. What it all came down to were these four points: 1) Microsoft insulted me by assuming that I am an idiot. 2) I'll be learning a new OS in a few months anyway when Microsoft abandons Vista and turns to Windows 7. 3) I'm not going to fret over $200-$300 price difference between a MBP and an equally spec'ed PC when I'm prepared to drop >$2k on a computer. 4) Microsoft insulted me by assuming that I am an idiot.
I look forward to enjoying my MBP when it gets here Friday. Hopefully this board will be a great resource for me in the years ahead.
I think that MS ads are much less insulting than Apple's "Get a Mac" ads. I think that MS marketing team actually paid extra attention not to insult Mac in any way possible - thus every ad is referring to Macs in politically correct manner. Compare that to Apple's ads that were using questionable humour to deliver really insulting lies to consumers: PCs can't communicate with latest digital cameras. PCs can't print. PCs... Every Apple ad was about PC as much as it was about Mac. On the other side, Apple's exposure in new Windows ads is minimal. They ar ementioned, but not much more than that. And they are not being joked at. And we don't even hear that Mac can't play games natively.
And you still think Microsoft ads are more insulting..?
I think that MS ads are much less insulting than Apple's "Get a Mac" ads. I think that MS marketing team actually paid extra attention not to insult Mac in any way possible - thus every ad is referring to Macs in politically correct manner. Compare that to Apple's ads that were using questionable humour to deliver really insulting lies to consumers: PCs can't communicate with latest digital cameras. PCs can't print. PCs... Every Apple ad was about PC as much as it was about Mac. On the other side, Apple's exposure in new Windows ads is minimal. They ar ementioned, but not much more than that. And they are not being joked at. And we don't even hear that Mac can't play games natively.
And you still think Microsoft ads are more insulting..?
Your way off here.
The Apple ads were fair and pointed out real differences. If you can't see the difference in the Appe ads, you probably should just stick to a PC because you'll probably never notice the difference there either.
The new 9400 chips in the white MacBook, 9400 and 9600 in the Pro's, means they're all good for games. So what if some aren't played natively. PC can't play any of the Mac only games. So given the Mac can play all the PC games and all the Mac games, that puts PC's at a disadvantage!
Nice dig, but if you bothered to compare results, you would have seen that real-life speed compares between DDR2 and DDR3 are from irrelevant to non-existent.
The article noted that at the time it was written (2007), DDR3 was just being introduced and chip set support was somewhat tentative. In fact, the author stated that he expected that DDR3 results would improve over time. He was right--there is now a big difference in performance between what he tested then (using the Bearlake chipset) and current chip sets (Eaglelake, Montevina/Cantiga, etc.) and module timings:
Here's the difference. Most Mac users dont have any interest in becoming Windows IT experts. And here's where the catch is about using Windows. To use Windows effectively, without worrying, you either have to BE a Windows expert, or you have to HIRE a Windows expert, regardless of your general technical skill. To use a Mac, you don't have to be an expert of any sort, and you don't have to ask anyone to help either. It just works, without any intricate knowledge of why or how, or what the registry does, or whether you need antivirus or whether you should avoid certain websites. It just works.
There is no "ignorance" involved here. Mac OS is easy to use for the layman. Windows is not. If you are saying you can run Windows without help from an IT expert, and without being a Windows expert, without supplemental anti-virus software, without the occasional SERIOUS problem, then you are simply a liar.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nikon133
Would you believe that I have no problem with that..? \
I came to AI because last October I was considering white Macbook for my notebook. One of reasons I didn't get it was that I didn't know much about OSX to feel comfortable with purchase... so I decided to gather some knowledge about it before next notebook purchase.
That is all cool. Only problem for me is - incredible level of uneducated self-indulgence and urban-myths-sort of nonsense some of people here are oozing with on the daily basis. I tried to ignore it at first, but after almost 20 years in IT, it is hard to hear some of it time and time again without reacting.
So here we are.
It is my personal opinion that Apple is using well thought and written OS to sell good looking (but not equally high quality) and expensive hardware. Quest for perceived quality instead of real quality. There are exclusions to the rule and above mentioned white Macbook was one of them - selling, at the time, for less than US$50 more expensive than 13" Toshibas or HPs. While PCs were coming with bigger HDDs and more RAM, white Mac still had value with extra software and (expected) OS advantages.
But new generation of Macs is just too little and too expensive, specially today with speed of progress and price drops IT industry is experiencing in general. Specially iMacs.
Hi there Apple Insider. I have a grad degree in computer science. I've worked for almost a decade in both hardware and software, from corporate networks to web design. I have studied computers from binary up, from writing machine code to studying user experience design. I also have an undergrad degree in design, so I can appreciate the valuable effect that aesthetics can have on a user experience. I want to say up front that I'm not going to be dismissive of Apple computers and devices. I think that Apple makes incredible products, both hardware and software.
However, I must admit that I would never buy an Apple computer. All but one out of the hundreds of computer professionals that I have befriended over my nearly 20 years of academic and professional experience would ever purchase an Apple computer (the one guy that owns a Mac designs Apple networks for a living, gets a significant discount, and also owns and regularly uses an XP/Linux machine at home).
When computer professionals (at least the ones I've known) are asked by their friends and relatives for advice on purchasing their own computers, they usually suggest an Apple computer as an option only to those with a low level of computer knowledge and necessity, and a very comfortable budget (i.e. older, upper-middle class people with very little previous computer experience), or to a person for whom design and a cohesive aesthetic are of disproportionately more importance (i.e. non-computer-reliant fine arts students, like fashion design, or higher income design-based marketing professionals).
To most others, for the moment at least, I suggest a Dell as the least horrible option. I strongly dislike Dell, I have absolutely no affiliation with them whatsoever. But they seem to have a nice balance between customizability and price. Not only is Dell offering computers at a discount with Ubuntu pre-installed in place of Vista, but you can buy any Dell with some flavor of Windows OS and get a refund from Dell for refusing to agree to the EULA when you first turn on the laptop (just call them and ask for the refund ? be persistent). They are required by the EULA terms to do this, as are any other 3rd party distributors (HP, Toshiba, Sony, etc.). This knocks around $200 off the price (or whatever the cost to Dell for the license from Microsoft). Dell offers at-home service for the life of the warranty through a 3rd party company, usually Qualicom. While there are of course some complaints about the service, the feedback is significantly more positive than the service experience at a local Apple store, especially the ones in New York City.
If you want my ivory tower prediction, open-source is going to completely devour the software market within the next 10ish years, and Apple is about as far from open source as you can get ? they pride themselves on it. If Moore's law holds roughly true (so far it has been dead-on for 40 years), the time intervals between releases of software will become shorter and shorter to utilize and adapt to the increasing acceleration of hardware advancements (and therefore the need to adapt to those advancements).
This brings me to the point of this post. You can thank my mac-owning girlfriend for the fact that I am even aware of this thread (she too was irritated by the ridiculous Microsoft ads). I've read through the posts here, and while most of the arguments surrounding mac vs. windows vs. linux have been trotted out, there is one criticism of Apple, and to a much lesser extent, Microsoft, that is, in my opinion, EXTREMELY IMPORTANT:
Apple's hardware and software are unnecessarily proprietary. This is known as vendor lock-in. These practices are harmful to the consumer, the company (in the long term), the software industry, and can hinder the spread of technological advancement throughout society. And especially in Apple's case, it's hypocritical.
OSX is UNIX, which was most recently developed by The Open Group in the 90s. Their goal was to create a standardized operating system independent of proprietary hardware. This was extremely valuable, because whenever software was designed for one architecture, it had to be redesigned, often and significant cost and effort, to run on another architecture (this is one reason why DirectX is so valuable to game designers). UNIX allowed developers to create software for one platform, but sell to a much larger market. UNIX was designed to OPEN UP THE SOFTWARE MARKET! It is extremely hypocritical for Apple to take an operating system that was developed for the purpose openness and compatibility and artificially restrict it to "approved" hardware and software. While it is true that OSX is a stable, reliable operating system free from many of the flaws of its competitors, OSX is little more than a flavor of Linux that excluding all but the most rudimentary functionality, repackaged and sold back to the consumer as if these artificially-imposed limitations were its most attractive feature.
What Apple has done is analogous to downloading Firefox, installing a theme and some popular extensions, making their own flavors and variations of the most useful websites on the internet (admittedly with improvements), and selling this specialized version of Firefox to you at a premium under a different name. THERE IS NOTHING NECESSARILY WRONG WITH THIS. This is great, if Apple stopped there. But what Apple does that makes absolutely no sense - they restrict you from downloading themes and extensions made by other people, they don't allow you to go to any of the unapproved websites on the internet, and the worst part - they close off what was once open source so that no one can learn from, improve-upon, modify, experiment, debug it. This drives away many of the brightest minds in software development, their time is better spent developing for a community that nurtures rather than discourages and exploits it. This stifles healthy competition, significantly restricts the universe of possibilities both functional and aesthetic, and results in products that cost more than their value BY DEFINITION.
And this is the worst part - the scariest part for me as a computer professional - Apple markets its product to consumers with the promise that it will be easy - they will take care of everything. You won't have to fix strange problems, compare different types of software and hardware, learn about how to keep your computer secure, etc. You can sit back, relax, and use your computer while they do all the annoying, nerdy stuff for you.
This is true, and it?s a great selling point. It's why I recommend Macs to those who have the smallest desire and/or ability to learn about and adapt to the challenges of using technology. However, and this is the point of this whole wall of text:
it is the ability to learn and adapt to new technology and the challenges it will bring that will be THE ABSOLUTELY MOST CRUCIAL SKILL to possess in our lifetimes.
If the pace of hardware development truly does continue to progress exponentially, and if software continues to keep up, you cannot afford to rely on a company like Apple to do the hard stuff for you. You are doing yourself a disservice if you view a cursory understanding of technology as a virtue, and the modest time and effort required to be prepared to confidently adapt to an uncertain future as an unnecessary inconvenience. Within barely a decade if not sooner, companies like Apple and Microsoft will not be able to keep up with the speed of the development cycle necessary to turn out a product that will be useful for long enough to justify the cycle. Perhaps something new will arise, but currently, only open-source communities will be able to handle this breakneck pace of development, simply because they don?t ?release? software in the traditional sense ? they offer an older, stable version and a work-in-progress. If you discover a new and you cannot wait for the developers to fix it, YOU can learn to fix it yourself, and your solution becomes part of the latest work-in-progress.
But most importantly, if Apple continues to attempt in vain to grab market share, rather than share the market, Apple users will be left in the dust while the majority of the technological world embraces the future of computing as a collaborative, open, living process, a future that will need what Apple does best ? creating an appealing and inspiring user experience, using design to drive hardware development, not the other way around. Unfortunately, the future has no room for what Apple also does well ?clinging to its failures as stubbornly as its successes.
I?d like to see Apple customers should demand that Apple open things up while continuing to innovate. Allow developers and their consumers to take their products into the future. Apple does not have to sacrifice anything - consumers can decide to use only Apple-approved products and maintain the level of quality and the cohesive aesthetic they have come to expect. Or not.
That's got to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen on these boards.
I can hardly wait to tell the vast armies of Mac using programmers here in the Bay Area that they don't exist. You do know that being able to run Windows, command line Unix, and OS X on the same machine is kind of a selling point for coders?
And the idea that the average PC user is developing their 21st century tech chops by dealing with Windows, while poor, coddled Mac users fall ever further behind is priceless.
However, I must admit that I would never buy an Apple computer.
Gee, you're impressive. I bet you built lots of things from Heathkit back at the end of the last ice age too, huh? Still know Morse code? Can field strip that 1903 Springfiled blindfolded, too?
So, why waste your time (and bandwidth) trolling around a Mac news site being smug.
We CHOOSE to use Macs because we can't be bothered dicking around with a shitty OS like Windows and the crappy software that runs on it. OR for that matter dicking around with half-baked "solutions" like Linux. For some, aesthetics and things that work well are important.
It doesn't mean that many of us can't or couldn't fuck with Windows or Ubuntu and make it work. We simply don't want to and can't be bothered.
We've really got better things to do with our time.
[QUOTE=addabox;1404821]That's got to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen on these boards./QUOTE]
They seem to be crawling out of the woodwork lately. I've actually seem other posts... not QUITE like this ... on other blogs.
It's as if the ship is starting to sink and all of the basements of all of the moms are filling up with water and armies of frightened little dweebs suddenly have nowhere to go.
It's kinda weird. Is there some kind of bat signal, that lets PC users know that Mac people are congregating on the web, speaking well of their hardware without being put in their place?
And then they set forth to make sure that can't happen, because just the idea of that is intolerable?
I mean, I honestly can't even begin to imagine seeking out a PC forum and registering just to tell them that they're wrong. It seems literally insane to me.
That's got to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen on these boards.
Where in the world could this guy have a computer science degree from? He is either lying or needs to get his money back.
In ten years Open Source will still be where it i today. Either it getting folded into a commercial product, like Apple's vast use of and funding of open source that makes up the OS X and its software. Or it will have to ad supported to make any money. Either way, it will be a small market that the average person will never support because it will never be as easy to use to show people it is the best option, as well advertised to let the public know its there nor as well supported to offer the public peace of mind if something does go wrong.
His premise that Macs are for people without computer skill is so far from the truth. It's the computer professionals that are tied to fiddling with Windows and tweaking Linux all day at that work that just want to come home to a computer that has the power of Unix and is easy to use that are buying Macs in droves since the switch to OS X.
Signed,
Competent user with computer science degrees and certifications out his ass.
In ten years Open Source will still be where it i today. ... it will be a small market that the average person will never support because it will never be as easy to use to show people it is the best option, as well advertised to let the public know its there nor as well supported to offer the public peace of mind if something does go wrong.
Absolutely. Users first need to to know what's out there... advertising, reviews, etc.
AND they need to know the software is reliable and they can get support when they need it.
It's a bit like the shareware ecosystem. I've stumbled across some great applications and utilities and unless they're reviewed or recommended regularly, most people will never have heard of them. Not everyone will take the time to hunt for useful tools, they'll take their pick from mainstream developers.
It's a double-edged sword. There are amazing pieces of shareware that have been around for years... ie: Default Folder X, Graphic Converter, 1Password... that you KNOW will be around. Then there are things from small developers that are great, but slowly lose support and the developer eventually disappears. Then you're stuck. Recent examples: Concierge, WeatherPop.
Oh I knew you were gonna chewed up and spit out real good a few paras into your "sensible sounding" windbag length post. 'Specially on these boards. Actually, I found parts a good read, but the piece I want to take your somewhat elistist butt to task for is for totally failing to understand Apple's relationship with the open source community.
In point of fact, Apple is a major contributor (both of code and resources) to the OSource communities it works with rather than the predatory repackager you make them out to be. This is of course muchly in their own interest since OS X rests on an open kernel, but over the years, after some or much difficultly, reports are that by and large both Apple and most of the Open folk with whom it works lately mostly find their relationship mutually beneficial.
Further, they are not alone in this. IBM may be the biggest funder of the open source projects which get big corp funding.
Again, this is not purely altruistic on anyone's part - but it also indicates neither Apple nor IBM buy the ridiculous assertion that Linux is about to move into heaven's 7th house and rule the binary planet until Jupiter aligns again with Mars. Open source is wonderful. Open source has its place. Open source gave us Firefox and more. But it couldn't even keep its hold on the windup laptops distributed to the 3rd world which ended up mostly running XP just as "netbooks" have.
So it's a laboratory, a seed bed, a great testing environment, and an alternate development environment for those who can't live under suits, but saying it will become the mainstream source of OS and apps is an oxymoron, along the lines of "the world of the near future will be run by anarchist procrastinators."
Another shot you deserve across your down-looking brow is the idea that real techies can't get jiggy on a Mac running the latest iteration of OS X. Which as everybody except you reading this thread knows has complete command line access and can do anything any Unix computer can do. And constantly improving sophisticated development environments.
Comments
Someone needs to explain to the author how memory/CPU FSB speeds work as it's pretty clear he doesn't understand them.
That 'cheap' 533MHz (effective) RAM on the HP runs at 266 MHz which happens to be the same speed that the CPU FSB runs at (it's 266*4=1066MHz effective quad-pumped).
If you didn't know you generally want the RAM speed to 1:1 to the CPU speed, but and you will won't get any better performance if the RAM is faster than the FSB speed as the CPU won't be able to take advantage of it.
So in other words, putting faster or more expensive RAM (even if it was DDR3), wouldn't make the slightest noticeable difference as you are already getting the best you can with that CPU.
Also, DDR3 has HIGHER latencies than DDR2. Therefore DD2 1066 Ram is FASTER, that's right FASTER, than DDR3 1066. Most DDR2 at 1066 has 5-5-5-x timings whereas DDR3 1066 has 7-7-7-x timings.
The only benefit of having DDR3 is lower voltages and faster speeds through overclocking. However, since it's a Mac and overclocking's a no go, then it's pretty much pointless having DDR3.
Also, DDR3 has HIGHER latencies than DDR2.
Another "expert" opinion! Hilarious!
From a 2007 article cited by nikon133:
DDR3 vs. DDR2
"DDR3 also uses more internal banks - 8 instead of the 4 used by DDR2 - to further speed up the system. More internal banks allow advance prefetch to reduce access latency... As discussed earlier, one of the long term potentials of DDR3 is improved memory latency."
I guess you missed that part of the article. Sheesh...
Working in IT, I have been fighting this war for a long time...
Yes, Macs cost more...it comes down to these items:
1. Design....The [new Macbook/Pro] is solid; it's thin, ...To me, that's worth the cost.
2. Software - Put simply, I'm more productive in Mac OS X than in Windows...I don't have to spend hours installing updates, removing trialware/bloatware and manufacturer "utilities" on a Mac. I'm up and running within minutes, not hours.
3. Support...My PowerBook G4 lost it's ability to display video properly about 2 months before the end of AppleCare...2 days later, I had a brand new Macbook Pro delivered to my house, free of charge.
4. Compatibility...The ability to run Windows on my Mac resolves those issues....
1. yes
2. definitely, agree 100%
3. wow
4. ok
I, like most of the people here, think it's great you love all the ins and outs of what politely is called Windows and feel like you saved some money at the same time. But we don't want it. We know what we want and we have it. It all works, as Apple says "seamlessly" and it goes on working, without ever getting tiresome or error ridden.
Would you believe that I have no problem with that..?
I came to AI because last October I was considering white Macbook for my notebook. One of reasons I didn't get it was that I didn't know much about OSX to feel comfortable with purchase... so I decided to gather some knowledge about it before next notebook purchase.
That is all cool. Only problem for me is - incredible level of uneducated self-indulgence and urban-myths-sort of nonsense some of people here are oozing with on the daily basis. I tried to ignore it at first, but after almost 20 years in IT, it is hard to hear some of it time and time again without reacting.
So here we are.
It is my personal opinion that Apple is using well thought and written OS to sell good looking (but not equally high quality) and expensive hardware. Quest for perceived quality instead of real quality. There are exclusions to the rule and above mentioned white Macbook was one of them - selling, at the time, for less than US$50 more expensive than 13" Toshibas or HPs. While PCs were coming with bigger HDDs and more RAM, white Mac still had value with extra software and (expected) OS advantages.
But new generation of Macs is just too little and too expensive, specially today with speed of progress and price drops IT industry is experiencing in general. Specially iMacs.
Would you believe that I have no problem with that..?
I came to AI because last October I was considering white Macbook for my notebook. One of reasons I didn't get it was that I didn't know much about OSX to feel comfortable with purchase... so I decided to gather some knowledge about it before next notebook purchase.
That is all cool. Only problem for me is - incredible level of uneducated self-indulgence and urban-myths-sort of nonsense some of people here are oozing with on the daily basis. I tried to ignore it at first, but after almost 20 years in IT, it is hard to hear some of it time and time again without reacting.
So here we are.
It is my personal opinion that Apple is using well thought and written OS to sell good looking (but not equally high quality) and expensive hardware. Quest for perceived quality instead of real quality. There are exclusions to the rule and above mentioned white Macbook was one of them - selling, at the time, for less than US$50 more expensive than 13" Toshibas or HPs. While PCs were coming with bigger HDDs and more RAM, white Mac still had value with extra software and (expected) OS advantages.
But new generation of Macs is just too little and too expensive, specially today with speed of progress and price drops IT industry is experiencing in general. Specially iMacs.
There's a wide range of technical knowledge on this forum and I suspect much of the comments reflect a pretty basic response, like myself, who's had two PC's running Windows XP and not felt happy. I did have lots of problems using windows XP, but in fairness my first PC was nearly 10 yrs old and the second about 3 yrs old. I was itching to get an Apple from my first few visits to the Apple store where I saw that iPhoto was incredibly simple and straight forward to use and that was my main need for a computer outside of e-mail and the internet. If I was someone who genuinely required higher specs I might have been tempted to go with a PC as Apple's gear does get expensive and I was so fed up with my PC waiting another 6 months or more till I could afford to spend more was just not tempting. As it's turned out, even with just the 1GB of ram the mini came with, I have no problems doing anything 'I' have needed to do.
Of course your needs are different. Those new 'sexy' laptops are just exactly that to a lot of people, especially in today's economic climate. Spending that kind of money on a laptop when it's uses will involve only some pretty basic tasks, however well it works or nice it is to use, will mean those looking for a laptop, who are 'financially challenged' will either choose the white MacBook or settle on a PC that's going to save them 30% or so in the short term. They in my opinion though wont have wasted a penny if they could afford the uni-body. It's lighter weight, less bulkiness, beautiful screen, multi-gesture trackpad, long lasting battery, better speaker (than the white MacBook) and strong construction are all worth paying for IMHO.
Apple may address this with a NetBook and I hope it does.
I really can't comment on the quality of the new uni-bodies internal hardware, other than to me, it seems well built and the simple fact that Apple run their own OS with their carefully chosen and redesigned hardware does make a difference to how well it runs and lasts. Until Dell etc write their own OS for their computers their not going to fully catch up with Apple.
If gamers want to buy a windows machine for less, that's up to their requirements and has a larger screen, go for it. But they shouldn't expect the same experience as someone using a Mac Pro in reliability, customer care or most of the PC's uses outside of gaming.
My goal at the moment is to save for a used 17" uni-body which I hope to be able to afford when the usb 3.0 comes out, as many current owners will, with any luck, want to upgrade to it and sell their current models?. I'm confident my mini will carry on working well until then.
Welcome to AI. Obviously you aren't an idiot as you saw the genius of my post.
Seriously though, I think the commercial has a point, albeit lost and clouded, that the much cheaper machine is sufficient or good enough to satisfy the average person computing needs. Is there a simpler way they can portray that simple fact? Car companies push their economical cars all the time and fast food companies push their economical meals all the time without making me think they are trying to portray a sub-compact as a luxury automobile and cheeseburger as a steak.
I find it funny that most that have bsod can be tweakedz and overcoockers. That said, when I used macs more often which is 99% of the time I remember saying to myself it really is the experience. Apple softaware worksnthw way you think it should. Case in point add an image to word doc go to move it or resize and poof the image is off the page. Try this in iWork and it does what you want it to. Works the way the brain works. On the other hand some software like nuendo $2000 for mac or pc works better on a pc. Less problems. Plus it's very FPU Dependent. Need more reverb or fx or virtual orchesatra it requires more CPU fpu power which depends on CPU speed. The thing I like about pcs are you can build a wirkststiin that dies a good job and in a year if you know what you're doing and buy the right motherboard, you can swap the CPU and have a faster computer. Worst case, you have to buy a new CPU and motherboard, much cheaper than a new mac. Personally now that msft has just win 7 in the wings and no need to support several os"s. They could have a hit. Hard to say. Right now it runs well with old hardware and that's very different from vista. Part of me thinks the whole campaign is to get ready for win 7. Still, hard to imagine they will get the experience down. But some will purchase a of due to this ad.
Peace
If that isn't the model of classy advertising, I don't know what is.
Another "expert" opinion! Hilarious!
From a 2007 article cited by nikon133:
DDR3 vs. DDR2
"DDR3 also uses more internal banks - 8 instead of the 4 used by DDR2 - to further speed up the system. More internal banks allow advance prefetch to reduce access latency... As discussed earlier, one of the long term potentials of DDR3 is improved memory latency."
I guess you missed that part of the article. Sheesh...
Nice dig, but if you bothered to compare results, you would have seen that real-life speed compares between DDR2 and DDR3 are from irrelevant to non-existent.
(I'm actually pretty sure you did check results, but decided to pull one paragraph out of content and use it to your advantage. Sad if you ask me)
True article is from 2007... but then again, that is the DDR3 speed Apple is using in their new computers. Have they decided to use DDR3-1600, maybe - maybe - you might have an argument more, but even that is questionable - from all I could find DDR3 in any flavour make some sense only on i7 processors, which Apple is not using for Macbooks and iMacs anyway. Even new Phenom II processors from AMD, though they are borrowing heavily from i7 design wise (but not performance wise), don't benefit from DDR3.
I suppose this marketing is intended for someone like me. My four year old HP is notebook is finally falling apart, and my desktop runs ancient Xenon processors with legacy peripherals that fell from favor long ago. I didn't even want to spend the cash on a new computer, but once my HP started crashing to desktop while running Lightroom 1.4
I spent a lot of time researching, actually looking for an excuse not to buy the Macbook Pro. They're expensive, bottom line, so looking at and comparing base models did make me lean towards going with another HP. But once I started comparing specs like FSB speed, L2 cache size, RAM specification and speed, hard drive size, and GPU, the PC notebooks were just a couple hundred less than the MBP. And so I sat on the fence while waiting on my edu check from the VA.
The funny thing is that I saw the "slot machine" ad on the New York Times webpage, and it completely turned me off. How can Microsoft compare a base HP or Dell to a Mac with a faster FSB, larger L2 cache, faster RAM? The marketing is completely dishonest and assumes that computer buyers are idiots. And why not compare models with as near to identical specifications as possible when, in such a comparison, the PC would still come out a couple hundred cheaper than the Mac?
So basically, to bring this back to the point solipsism made, Microsoft's ad campaign sold me on a MacBook Pro. What it all came down to were these four points: 1) Microsoft insulted me by assuming that I am an idiot. 2) I'll be learning a new OS in a few months anyway when Microsoft abandons Vista and turns to Windows 7. 3) I'm not going to fret over $200-$300 price difference between a MBP and an equally spec'ed PC when I'm prepared to drop >$2k on a computer. 4) Microsoft insulted me by assuming that I am an idiot.
I look forward to enjoying my MBP when it gets here Friday. Hopefully this board will be a great resource for me in the years ahead.
I think that MS ads are much less insulting than Apple's "Get a Mac" ads. I think that MS marketing team actually paid extra attention not to insult Mac in any way possible - thus every ad is referring to Macs in politically correct manner. Compare that to Apple's ads that were using questionable humour to deliver really insulting lies to consumers: PCs can't communicate with latest digital cameras. PCs can't print. PCs... Every Apple ad was about PC as much as it was about Mac. On the other side, Apple's exposure in new Windows ads is minimal. They ar ementioned, but not much more than that. And they are not being joked at. And we don't even hear that Mac can't play games natively.
And you still think Microsoft ads are more insulting..?
I think that MS ads are much less insulting than Apple's "Get a Mac" ads. I think that MS marketing team actually paid extra attention not to insult Mac in any way possible - thus every ad is referring to Macs in politically correct manner. Compare that to Apple's ads that were using questionable humour to deliver really insulting lies to consumers: PCs can't communicate with latest digital cameras. PCs can't print. PCs... Every Apple ad was about PC as much as it was about Mac. On the other side, Apple's exposure in new Windows ads is minimal. They ar ementioned, but not much more than that. And they are not being joked at. And we don't even hear that Mac can't play games natively.
And you still think Microsoft ads are more insulting..?
Your way off here.
The Apple ads were fair and pointed out real differences. If you can't see the difference in the Appe ads, you probably should just stick to a PC because you'll probably never notice the difference there either.
The new 9400 chips in the white MacBook, 9400 and 9600 in the Pro's, means they're all good for games. So what if some aren't played natively. PC can't play any of the Mac only games. So given the Mac can play all the PC games and all the Mac games, that puts PC's at a disadvantage!
Nice dig, but if you bothered to compare results, you would have seen that real-life speed compares between DDR2 and DDR3 are from irrelevant to non-existent.
The article noted that at the time it was written (2007), DDR3 was just being introduced and chip set support was somewhat tentative. In fact, the author stated that he expected that DDR3 results would improve over time. He was right--there is now a big difference in performance between what he tested then (using the Bearlake chipset) and current chip sets (Eaglelake, Montevina/Cantiga, etc.) and module timings:
Super Talent & TEAM: DDR3-1600 Is Here!
DDR3 Technology Progress and Future Development
DDR3 SDRAM (Summary section)
There is no "ignorance" involved here. Mac OS is easy to use for the layman. Windows is not. If you are saying you can run Windows without help from an IT expert, and without being a Windows expert, without supplemental anti-virus software, without the occasional SERIOUS problem, then you are simply a liar.
Would you believe that I have no problem with that..?
I came to AI because last October I was considering white Macbook for my notebook. One of reasons I didn't get it was that I didn't know much about OSX to feel comfortable with purchase... so I decided to gather some knowledge about it before next notebook purchase.
That is all cool. Only problem for me is - incredible level of uneducated self-indulgence and urban-myths-sort of nonsense some of people here are oozing with on the daily basis. I tried to ignore it at first, but after almost 20 years in IT, it is hard to hear some of it time and time again without reacting.
So here we are.
It is my personal opinion that Apple is using well thought and written OS to sell good looking (but not equally high quality) and expensive hardware. Quest for perceived quality instead of real quality. There are exclusions to the rule and above mentioned white Macbook was one of them - selling, at the time, for less than US$50 more expensive than 13" Toshibas or HPs. While PCs were coming with bigger HDDs and more RAM, white Mac still had value with extra software and (expected) OS advantages.
But new generation of Macs is just too little and too expensive, specially today with speed of progress and price drops IT industry is experiencing in general. Specially iMacs.
However, I must admit that I would never buy an Apple computer. All but one out of the hundreds of computer professionals that I have befriended over my nearly 20 years of academic and professional experience would ever purchase an Apple computer (the one guy that owns a Mac designs Apple networks for a living, gets a significant discount, and also owns and regularly uses an XP/Linux machine at home).
When computer professionals (at least the ones I've known) are asked by their friends and relatives for advice on purchasing their own computers, they usually suggest an Apple computer as an option only to those with a low level of computer knowledge and necessity, and a very comfortable budget (i.e. older, upper-middle class people with very little previous computer experience), or to a person for whom design and a cohesive aesthetic are of disproportionately more importance (i.e. non-computer-reliant fine arts students, like fashion design, or higher income design-based marketing professionals).
To most others, for the moment at least, I suggest a Dell as the least horrible option. I strongly dislike Dell, I have absolutely no affiliation with them whatsoever. But they seem to have a nice balance between customizability and price. Not only is Dell offering computers at a discount with Ubuntu pre-installed in place of Vista, but you can buy any Dell with some flavor of Windows OS and get a refund from Dell for refusing to agree to the EULA when you first turn on the laptop (just call them and ask for the refund ? be persistent). They are required by the EULA terms to do this, as are any other 3rd party distributors (HP, Toshiba, Sony, etc.). This knocks around $200 off the price (or whatever the cost to Dell for the license from Microsoft). Dell offers at-home service for the life of the warranty through a 3rd party company, usually Qualicom. While there are of course some complaints about the service, the feedback is significantly more positive than the service experience at a local Apple store, especially the ones in New York City.
If you want my ivory tower prediction, open-source is going to completely devour the software market within the next 10ish years, and Apple is about as far from open source as you can get ? they pride themselves on it. If Moore's law holds roughly true (so far it has been dead-on for 40 years), the time intervals between releases of software will become shorter and shorter to utilize and adapt to the increasing acceleration of hardware advancements (and therefore the need to adapt to those advancements).
This brings me to the point of this post. You can thank my mac-owning girlfriend for the fact that I am even aware of this thread (she too was irritated by the ridiculous Microsoft ads). I've read through the posts here, and while most of the arguments surrounding mac vs. windows vs. linux have been trotted out, there is one criticism of Apple, and to a much lesser extent, Microsoft, that is, in my opinion, EXTREMELY IMPORTANT:
Apple's hardware and software are unnecessarily proprietary. This is known as vendor lock-in. These practices are harmful to the consumer, the company (in the long term), the software industry, and can hinder the spread of technological advancement throughout society. And especially in Apple's case, it's hypocritical.
OSX is UNIX, which was most recently developed by The Open Group in the 90s. Their goal was to create a standardized operating system independent of proprietary hardware. This was extremely valuable, because whenever software was designed for one architecture, it had to be redesigned, often and significant cost and effort, to run on another architecture (this is one reason why DirectX is so valuable to game designers). UNIX allowed developers to create software for one platform, but sell to a much larger market. UNIX was designed to OPEN UP THE SOFTWARE MARKET! It is extremely hypocritical for Apple to take an operating system that was developed for the purpose openness and compatibility and artificially restrict it to "approved" hardware and software. While it is true that OSX is a stable, reliable operating system free from many of the flaws of its competitors, OSX is little more than a flavor of Linux that excluding all but the most rudimentary functionality, repackaged and sold back to the consumer as if these artificially-imposed limitations were its most attractive feature.
What Apple has done is analogous to downloading Firefox, installing a theme and some popular extensions, making their own flavors and variations of the most useful websites on the internet (admittedly with improvements), and selling this specialized version of Firefox to you at a premium under a different name. THERE IS NOTHING NECESSARILY WRONG WITH THIS. This is great, if Apple stopped there. But what Apple does that makes absolutely no sense - they restrict you from downloading themes and extensions made by other people, they don't allow you to go to any of the unapproved websites on the internet, and the worst part - they close off what was once open source so that no one can learn from, improve-upon, modify, experiment, debug it. This drives away many of the brightest minds in software development, their time is better spent developing for a community that nurtures rather than discourages and exploits it. This stifles healthy competition, significantly restricts the universe of possibilities both functional and aesthetic, and results in products that cost more than their value BY DEFINITION.
And this is the worst part - the scariest part for me as a computer professional - Apple markets its product to consumers with the promise that it will be easy - they will take care of everything. You won't have to fix strange problems, compare different types of software and hardware, learn about how to keep your computer secure, etc. You can sit back, relax, and use your computer while they do all the annoying, nerdy stuff for you.
This is true, and it?s a great selling point. It's why I recommend Macs to those who have the smallest desire and/or ability to learn about and adapt to the challenges of using technology. However, and this is the point of this whole wall of text:
it is the ability to learn and adapt to new technology and the challenges it will bring that will be THE ABSOLUTELY MOST CRUCIAL SKILL to possess in our lifetimes.
If the pace of hardware development truly does continue to progress exponentially, and if software continues to keep up, you cannot afford to rely on a company like Apple to do the hard stuff for you. You are doing yourself a disservice if you view a cursory understanding of technology as a virtue, and the modest time and effort required to be prepared to confidently adapt to an uncertain future as an unnecessary inconvenience. Within barely a decade if not sooner, companies like Apple and Microsoft will not be able to keep up with the speed of the development cycle necessary to turn out a product that will be useful for long enough to justify the cycle. Perhaps something new will arise, but currently, only open-source communities will be able to handle this breakneck pace of development, simply because they don?t ?release? software in the traditional sense ? they offer an older, stable version and a work-in-progress. If you discover a new and you cannot wait for the developers to fix it, YOU can learn to fix it yourself, and your solution becomes part of the latest work-in-progress.
But most importantly, if Apple continues to attempt in vain to grab market share, rather than share the market, Apple users will be left in the dust while the majority of the technological world embraces the future of computing as a collaborative, open, living process, a future that will need what Apple does best ? creating an appealing and inspiring user experience, using design to drive hardware development, not the other way around. Unfortunately, the future has no room for what Apple also does well ?clinging to its failures as stubbornly as its successes.
I?d like to see Apple customers should demand that Apple open things up while continuing to innovate. Allow developers and their consumers to take their products into the future. Apple does not have to sacrifice anything - consumers can decide to use only Apple-approved products and maintain the level of quality and the cohesive aesthetic they have come to expect. Or not.
I can hardly wait to tell the vast armies of Mac using programmers here in the Bay Area that they don't exist. You do know that being able to run Windows, command line Unix, and OS X on the same machine is kind of a selling point for coders?
And the idea that the average PC user is developing their 21st century tech chops by dealing with Windows, while poor, coddled Mac users fall ever further behind is priceless.
Did I say "bizarre"? I mean "awesome."
However, I must admit that I would never buy an Apple computer.
Gee, you're impressive. I bet you built lots of things from Heathkit back at the end of the last ice age too, huh? Still know Morse code? Can field strip that 1903 Springfiled blindfolded, too?
So, why waste your time (and bandwidth) trolling around a Mac news site being smug.
We CHOOSE to use Macs because we can't be bothered dicking around with a shitty OS like Windows and the crappy software that runs on it. OR for that matter dicking around with half-baked "solutions" like Linux. For some, aesthetics and things that work well are important.
It doesn't mean that many of us can't or couldn't fuck with Windows or Ubuntu and make it work. We simply don't want to and can't be bothered.
We've really got better things to do with our time.
If that's what you want to do, hey that's great.
They seem to be crawling out of the woodwork lately. I've actually seem other posts... not QUITE like this ... on other blogs.
It's as if the ship is starting to sink and all of the basements of all of the moms are filling up with water and armies of frightened little dweebs suddenly have nowhere to go.
And then they set forth to make sure that can't happen, because just the idea of that is intolerable?
I mean, I honestly can't even begin to imagine seeking out a PC forum and registering just to tell them that they're wrong. It seems literally insane to me.
That's got to be one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen on these boards.
Where in the world could this guy have a computer science degree from? He is either lying or needs to get his money back.
In ten years Open Source will still be where it i today. Either it getting folded into a commercial product, like Apple's vast use of and funding of open source that makes up the OS X and its software. Or it will have to ad supported to make any money. Either way, it will be a small market that the average person will never support because it will never be as easy to use to show people it is the best option, as well advertised to let the public know its there nor as well supported to offer the public peace of mind if something does go wrong.
His premise that Macs are for people without computer skill is so far from the truth. It's the computer professionals that are tied to fiddling with Windows and tweaking Linux all day at that work that just want to come home to a computer that has the power of Unix and is easy to use that are buying Macs in droves since the switch to OS X.
Signed,
Competent user with computer science degrees and certifications out his ass.
In ten years Open Source will still be where it i today. ... it will be a small market that the average person will never support because it will never be as easy to use to show people it is the best option, as well advertised to let the public know its there nor as well supported to offer the public peace of mind if something does go wrong.
Absolutely. Users first need to to know what's out there... advertising, reviews, etc.
AND they need to know the software is reliable and they can get support when they need it.
It's a bit like the shareware ecosystem. I've stumbled across some great applications and utilities and unless they're reviewed or recommended regularly, most people will never have heard of them. Not everyone will take the time to hunt for useful tools, they'll take their pick from mainstream developers.
It's a double-edged sword. There are amazing pieces of shareware that have been around for years... ie: Default Folder X, Graphic Converter, 1Password... that you KNOW will be around. Then there are things from small developers that are great, but slowly lose support and the developer eventually disappears. Then you're stuck. Recent examples: Concierge, WeatherPop.
In point of fact, Apple is a major contributor (both of code and resources) to the OSource communities it works with rather than the predatory repackager you make them out to be. This is of course muchly in their own interest since OS X rests on an open kernel, but over the years, after some or much difficultly, reports are that by and large both Apple and most of the Open folk with whom it works lately mostly find their relationship mutually beneficial.
Further, they are not alone in this. IBM may be the biggest funder of the open source projects which get big corp funding.
Again, this is not purely altruistic on anyone's part - but it also indicates neither Apple nor IBM buy the ridiculous assertion that Linux is about to move into heaven's 7th house and rule the binary planet until Jupiter aligns again with Mars. Open source is wonderful. Open source has its place. Open source gave us Firefox and more. But it couldn't even keep its hold on the windup laptops distributed to the 3rd world which ended up mostly running XP just as "netbooks" have.
So it's a laboratory, a seed bed, a great testing environment, and an alternate development environment for those who can't live under suits, but saying it will become the mainstream source of OS and apps is an oxymoron, along the lines of "the world of the near future will be run by anarchist procrastinators."
Another shot you deserve across your down-looking brow is the idea that real techies can't get jiggy on a Mac running the latest iteration of OS X. Which as everybody except you reading this thread knows has complete command line access and can do anything any Unix computer can do. And constantly improving sophisticated development environments.
Sheesh, Watson, it's elementary......