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The official I hate PCs discussion

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Comments

  • Any particular reason apple refuse to let the iPod play WMAs?
  • edited November 2006
    Um, why ask me mate? I have an iPod, never once came across a WMA file I needed to play. I'm assuming it's a proprietary Windows format?

    But my point was:
    "Plays For Sure" is Microsoft's own format that its own player can't play.

    Later: (Maybe this answers your question Minisweeper)
    Windows Media Audio: An audio compression format similar to MP3, but with digital rights management (copy protection and usage restrictions) built-in by Microsoft.
  • So? Plenty of other players manage it? Perhaps it's so people dont buy iPods and then use a different online music store? Couldnt live with that i guess...
  • edited November 2006
    By "Other Players" you mean the ones Microsoft licenses to work with its crappy WMA format? (Not even mentioning "Plays For Sure" and the fact that Apple didn't buy into that luckily for us, er me... er... non-lemming types).

    I don't think so, the iPod and the iTunes Music Store cater for everything I need (and in case you hadn't noticed, millions of other peoples' needs) elegantly, inexpensively, fairly, consistently... and all the other adjectives associated with the Mac experience.

    Also, in case you haven't noticed, the iPod and iTunes package also supports PCs and Windows, a bit one sided don't you think?

    As for the other crappy players, which of them support Mac OS X? I went looking for a digital voice recorder recently, nothing but crap Microsoft supporting little plastic gadgets with switches and sliders all over the place priced for the (lemming) corporate market. I finally found one that connected to my Mac but it recorded in a proprietary format which needed be converted to mp3 using another app in real time. Are they for real? If I record 15 minutes of voice it would take me another 15 minutes to play/convert it to mp3 so I took it back and gave the sales guy a piece of my mind. (Yes I was able to spare a little:-)

    The PC mentality at work yet again folks, it never ends, shut me up if you wish, that won't make it go away. The PC mentality is out there and plenty of lemmings following unquestioningly and burning anyone (who tries to open their eyes) at the stake.

    And while I'm at it, you can all thank Apple for sticking to its 99 cents per song iTunes policy even though they were threatened by the music companies that they'd walk away unless Apple raised prices for latest releases. Apple of course (being testicular by nature and having principles and ethics) stuck to its guns knowing if they walked it wouldn't be far!

    Disclaimer For the Easily Offended: If the cap fits, wear it!
  • Minisweeper. the other player are dummy players. they don't have a drm solution of their own. hence they go beg for MS and Apple. Apple turned them around and gave a kick in their ass, and then they went and cried to MS, and MS gave them something to "suck for sure". IN the end MS got tired of its little playmates and told them to go screw themselves and made Zune. end of story

    I bet the day Apple starts licensing fairplay drm. all these other companies will be willing to sell their mom to get the piece of the ipod pie. they are going the MS route cause they have no choice. Its either MS or Apple. (remember Real hacking ipods)

    Btw why should apple use MS DRM which isn't MS drm anyway. Its Intertrust DRM which MS stole and had to settle the lawsuit by agreeing to pay $440 million to license Intertrust DRM.

    your asking why doesn't Apple allow wma on ipods
    I ask u why doesn't MS allow wma with drm on macs. MS media player for macs cannot even play drm wma. Whose fault is that. Apples or Microsofts. Apple Fairplay drm works on Windows and macs. Microsofts doesn't.
  • I didnt know that, thanks for enlightening me. It just bugs me that I cant buy an iPod to work with Napster and I have to get a crappy zen or something.
  • edited November 2006
    Um, just between you me and the gatepost guys, I think "fairplay drm" is just a ploy to keep the ignorant, out-of-touch music companies happy.

    All you have to do is use iTunes to burn purchased music to a CD and bingo, drm gone bye byes. Suck it back into iTunes and do with it what you want, within the terms of the license agreement of course :-)

    And, if you don't want to waste a blank CD there are ways to "burn" to a dmg (disk image) but I won't go into that.

    zuneFloats
  • Really people, is a new folder shortcut really that fscking important? I would hate to imagine how many folders and shortcuts all of you have all over your desktops. Eeek.
    I like folders. :P But usually creating a folder is so I can store whatever file I've downloaded with a reasonable and rememberable name: videocard drivers and the like. Then I drop that folder in my archive folder and I'm done with it. Or grouping a site's wallpaper that I've found and would like to come back to later. Etc. The contextual menu takes too long to populate (create a new... 20 items, open with... 10 items, etc.) when all I want is a new folder, now.
    FYI, triple clicking the URL bar invariably selects the whole thing. Or single clicking it infact.
    Yes, in the browser. But beyond the URL bar I find it very convenient to select the rest of a (any) text field by just dragging the mouse down slightly after clicking. Saving a webpage, but renaming part of it first, for example. If the text I want as the name is partially there, it's annoying to select all, delete, retype it. One file, fine. Several files if I'm collecting information, torture.
    Why all this fuss about new folder creation?
    It's an important issue for those with nothing better to do.
    hehehe... :D
    Yes Mini, but I would obviously rather click the address bar, then hold down shift and press the down arrow rather than just clicking it once. Jeez I hate my PC.
    The point is that there are alternate ways of working with the computer. Mac OS 9 sucked for not having enough keyboard shortcuts assigned (although the Mac pushed a universal cut-copy-paste), and that having to hold the mouse button down to keep the menu open, etc. Mac OS X fixes some of that. On the other hand, there are lots of little things that make the Mac experience something enjoyable, which are missing from Windows. Selection via dragging the mouse is one. There are more.

    Both platforms have their faults. I can't stand the Dock (thankfully, there are alternatives). Windows is always asking me whether I want to do what clearly I want to do. As has been pointed out, which platform is best depends on what you need it for. I think overall, the Mac is a better platform. YMMV.
  • edited November 2006
    I guess ur using napster for its subscription services right minisweeper. well with subscription music u cannot burn to CD's to get rid of drm. There is a MS drm stripper on the net, u can use that to strip the drm and then convert them to mp3 or aac and put it on ipods. Its not a hassle. its all automated, so u just run it and sit back and have coffee. Zune isn't going to be in Europe until late 2007 or early 2008. so ur out of luck there as well. Does sandisk sell in england. cause sandisk is second after ipods. Its a very good player and will work with napster. Wanderer that stripping itunes drm is no fun since ur paying for it in the first place. Stripping MS drm is the fun one cause u have access to subscription model and potentially steal millions of songs for $15.
  • Yup, what pbear said, although I don't mind the dock, I have it tamed with shortcuts and a utility to cut out the dock bloat.

    And just to be clear about "Both platforms have their faults", Windows itself is just zeros and ones just like Mac OS X, it's the PC mentality that makes it suck.
  •  Quote: MySchizoBuddy  Wanderer that stripping itunes drm is no fun since ur paying for it in the first place. Stripping MS drm is the fun one cause u have access to subscription model and potentially steal millions of songs for $15.
    Wow, I never thunk of that, but keeping it all legal and moral and all that, if I buy a song I should be able to play it wherever I want, whenever I want and on whatever device I want.

    While I have no interest in stealing music, I don't want to rent it either, just playing what I purchased for my own enjoyment without restriction.
  • "Windows is always asking me whether I want to do what clearly I want to do." - although I agree with that, the thing about it is that it's there in an attempt to stop idiot users from fucking their systems up too much. Granted it's a pain in the arse for people who know what theyre doing but if someone is messing around and they get a message warning them it might be bad they might not do it and that would usually be a good thing.

    Then again they'll probably do it anyway so it remains pointless. And i suppose someone will tell me that even idiot users cant break macs or some such rubbish. I'm not really making much of a point here but whatever. I'm just saying that it means well.
  • dan39dan39 New
    edited November 2006
    Just thought I'd point out that iTunes will automatically convert your unprotected WMAs to an iPod friendly format:

    From Apple.com: "In iTunes for Windows, you can convert your unprotected WMA files to AAC files (or whatever file format is chosen in the Importing pane of iTunes Preferences) without changing the original WMA file. Simply drag the WMA files into your library in iTunes and iTunes does the grunt work, converting them for you. Windows Media Player 9 or later must be installed to convert unprotected WMA files."

    Also, DRM aside, a lot of people don't realize that while WMA is a proprietary format, AAC is actually an open-standard codec.

    AAC:
    From Dolby.com: "AAC, developed in part by Dolby Laboratories, is one of several audio coding systems defined by ISO MPEG standards, where it was first specified as MPEG-2 AAC, and then enhanced and extended within MPEG-4. Apple's popular iTunes® music service employs the AAC format."

    http://dolby.com/consumer/technology/aac.html

    From Apple.com:"The same [developers] who created the popular .mp3 file format — a.k.a. MPEG-1 layer III — developed the new Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) codec, providing much more efficient compression than MP3 with a quality rivaling that of uncompressed CD audio."

    With iTunes you get Dolby technology and ISO standards. With Zune and Plays For Sure, you just get proprietary Redmond coding.

    For me, it's Apple's strong support of open-source, using open standards and even contributing to them that makes it an appealing choice. Here are just a few examples:

    UNIX:
    From Apple.com: "The Mac OS X kernel...is based on FreeBSD 5 and Mach 3.0. The Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD, first developed at the University of California, Berkeley) is one of the most widely respected UNIX implementations. BSD provides Mac OS X with the stability, performance, and compatibility for which UNIX is justly famous. Apple has enhanced BSD by adding Mach 3.0 technology based on the OSF/mk microkernel from the Open Software Foundation, providing memory management, thread control, hardware abstraction, and interprocess communication services."

    Efficient kernel threads:
    From Apple.com: "The Mac OS X kernel directly implements the pthreads API (from the POSIX 1003.1c standard) for efficiently handling multithreaded applications on one or more processors. Each thread is individually scheduled and migrated by the kernel, without the overhead of user-level thread libraries, minimizing CPU and memory overhead. Tiger includes full support for POSIX threads, including cancellation and synchronization."

    perl, php, python, ruby, tcl:
    From Apple.com: "perl, php, python, ruby, tcl. These scripting languages are all built in, making Mac OS X the platform of choice for script-based development. In fact, the Python and Perl 6 core teams do much of their work on Apple's iBook and PowerBook computers. Tiger features several new modules for Perl (such as those for Apple events and Carbon integration) and Tcl (AppleScript, XML/HTML, SOAP, SSL, QuickTime, objects, ODBC)."

    WebCore:
    From Apple.com: "Apple uses software created by the Open Source community, such as the HTML rendering engine for Safari, and returns its enhancements to the community." (WebCore is also used in many other OS X apps, including connecting iTunes to the iTunes music store).

    From Apple.com: "XML/HTML processing is supported via GNOME’s libxml2 and libxslt, which along with libtidy form the basis of the Cocoa NSXML APIs. The KDE project’s khtml and kjs similarly form the basis of Apple’s open source WebCore framework and the Cocoa WebKit, which now supports HTML editing and scriptable plug-ins. This technology also undergirds support for RSS feeds in Safari, which works with various versions of RSS, RDF, and the Atom API."

    W3C:
    Last year Safari was the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project's Acid2 test for supporting CSS:
    http://webstandards.org/2005/04/28/acid2-goes-on-safari/

    OpenGL:
    From Apple.com: "OpenGL is an open, cross-platform, three-dimensional (3D) graphics standard with broad industry support. OpenGL greatly eases the task of writing real-time 2D or 3D graphics applications by providing a mature, well-documented graphics processing pipeline that supports the abstraction of current and future hardware accelerators."

    Image processing:
    "Core Image is a new graphics library from Apple designed to maximize use of the powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) on today’s video cards. This library is used to provide hardware acceleration facilities for Apple’s Quartz graphics on capable cards, as well as being available to applications. Core Image takes advantage of the open source libjpeg, libpng, and libgd libraries to speed up the import of very large data files in a variety of formats."

    Video authoring:
    From Apple.com: "Final Cut Pro, now supports an open, standards-based XML Interchange Format. It's a decision that veteran Hollywood film editor Walter Murch calls 'courageous' and significant for the film industry because the open-standard format invites software developers to create new products to improve the film editing process."

    Video streaming:
    From Apple.com: "Real-time streaming using QuickTime Streaming Server delivers media in real time over the Internet, from modem to broadband rates. With the open standard Real-Time Transport Protocol/Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTP/RTSP), no file is ever downloaded to a viewer's hard drive. Media is played, but not stored, by the client software as it is delivered. Real-time streaming is often preferable to progressive download for webcasts of live events, delivery of long-form video, and 24/7 Internet radio and TV channels."

    Video codecs:
    From Apple.com: "A few years ago, the International Organization for Standardization selected the QuickTime file format as the basis for MPEG-4. QuickTime in turn embraced open standards and now leads the market in MPEG-4, 3GPP and 3GPP2 content creation and playback. Apple continues to build on this commitment to open standards by incorporating H.264 — the latest MPEG-4 video codec — directly into QuickTime. And since H.264 is an open standard, companies around the world can create products that will interoperate with one another. In addition to the enormous benefits of H.264 being a worldwide standard, Apple is very excited about the incredible video quality that H.264 can provide. Not only does it deliver excellent video; it does so at data rates much lower than MPEG-2 and plays back seamlessly on today’s shipping hardware"

    FireWire:
    From Apple.com: "FireWire, based on Apple-developed technology, is an industry standard (IEEE 1394) for connecting peripheral devices to a computer or each other... Mac OS X provides drivers that take full advantage of the hot pluggability, daisy chaining, and power management capabilities of FireWire, so most devices just work right out of the box."

    Ethernet:
    From Apple.com: "Apple was the first personal computer company to incorporate Ethernet in all its systems and continues to aggressively adopt new Ethernet technology. Mac OS X supports Gigabit (1000BASE-T) Ethernet as well as 10BASE-T and 100BASE-T Ethernet—and even 10 Gigabit Ethernet...Mac OS X now supports IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregation, which combines multiple links for higher performance or interface failover."

    Bluetooth:
    Mac OS X has built-in native support for Bluetooth right out of the box.
    http://apple.com/bluetooth/

    IPv6:
    From Apple.com: "IPv6 is the next-generation, 128-bit Internet Protocol. Apple's implementation is based on the KAME open source project for BSD, ensuring that it can interoperate freely with other IPv6 hosts and routers used on cutting-edge research networks... Apple's low-level CFNetwork API seamlessly supports both IPv4 (today's 32-bit Internet standard) and IPv6 addresses, making it easy for developers and applications (such as Safari) to transparently support both."

    Apache HTTP:
    From Apple.com: "Apache is the world's most popular web server, providing reliable, high-performance delivery of both static and dynamically generated web content. Users can configure a basic Apache httpd server with a single click in Sharing preferences, or they can edit the configuration files using a text editor, as in other UNIX implementations of Apache. Both mod_perl and the PHP server-side scripting language are included with Mac OS X for easy creation of dynamic web pages and Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts."

    (...continued)
  • dan39dan39 New
    edited November 2006
    (...continued from above)

    Mobile Data:
    From Apple.com:"Apple, Ericsson and Sun believe open standards are critical to bringing revolutionary technology to new markets and to delivering the future of mobile data services. All three companies are leaders in their industries in the development and use of open standards. Ericsson is a founding member of the 3GPP, and Apple and Sun are co-founders of the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA). Both the 3GPP and ISMA are organizations dedicated to ensuring interoperable, standards-based technologies and products in the market."

    CUPS Printing:
    From Apple.com: "Mac OS X uses a PDF-based printing architecture built entirely around the open source Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS). CUPS provides full compatibility with existing UNIX tools (lpr, lpstat) as well as secure printing via the IETF's HTTP-based Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), making it safe and easy for Windows and UNIX systems to share Mac printers and vice versa. Mac OS X not only includes hundreds of built-in, vendor-supplied raster drivers and PostScript Printer Description (PPD) files, but also works with hundreds more legacy printers thanks to the open source GIMP-Print printer driver project. The included raster image processor (RIP) even allows a Mac to export a local inkjet printer as a network PostScript printer for use by Windows computers."

    SMB/CIFS:
    From Apple.com: "SMB/CIFS, Microsoft's proprietary Server Message Block/Common Internet File System file service, is the primary file sharing protocol for Windows. Mac OS X includes Samba, the popular open source SMB server, to enable Windows users to access files on Mac computers. In addition, BSD-based SMB client support in Mac OS X gives Mac users the ability to browse and connect to Windows file servers and volumes."

    FTP:
    From Apple.com: "FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the standard protocol used to move files between computers on TCP/IP networks. An FTP server can be activated in Mac OS X with a single click. In addition, FTP servers can be mounted as Mac OS X file systems, where they can be accessed from either the Finder or the command line."

    OpenSSH:
    From Apple.com: "Mac OS X uses OpenSSH as its default protocol for secure command-line access between computers. SSH encrypts remote command-line traffic (including passwords) to effectively eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other network-level attacks to which rlogin and telnet are susceptible. Mac OS X includes the full suite of OpenSSH client and server functionality, including ssh (command execution), sftp (file transfer), and scp (file copies)."

    Certificates (PKI):
    From Apple.com: "Public key infrastructure (PKI) authentication is now integrated throughout Mac OS X. PKI keys and other X.509 certificates can be stored in smart cards, keychains, Address Book, or LDAP directories and used for iChat, IPSec-based VPN, S/MIME, document signing, and numerous other services. There's even a lightweight Certificate Authority in Mac OS X so workgroups can establish their own local web of trust, as well as full certificate management in Mac OS X Server. Single place to manage passwords, certificates, and smart cards."

    Cryptography:
    From Apple.com: "Mac OS X is the first and only system to integrate the Common Data Security Architecture (CDSA) standard for flexibly and safely managing strong cryptography (such as AES-128), public key infrastructure (such as OCSP, the Online Certificate Status Protocol), and secure transport (such as SSLv2/v3 and TLSv1) and user interaction (for example, approving new root certificates). Apple's robust open source implementation is integrated with Linux Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) for easy two-way interoperability. Mac OS X also includes the OpenSSL security library for use by legacy open source applications, and it supports NTLMv1/v2 and NTM2 for Windows compatibility."

    DAV:
    From Apple.com: "DAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers via HTTP. Mac OS X includes the Apache mod_dav module, enabling it to act as a DAV server. The DAV file system, which mounts DAV servers on the desktop, has been completely rewritten to use CFNetwork and now supports SSL authentication."

    Open Directory:
    From Apple.com: "Open Directory is an extensible framework for managing authorization and configuration information for users and systems. While designed primarily for use with LDAPv2/ v3 (the IETF standard Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), Open Directory is flexible enough to handle stand-alone desktop systems as well as legacy systems. These services can be managed using the graphical Directory Access application or the directory services command line (dscl). Apple provides an Open Directory server as part of Mac OS X Server, which uses Berkeley DB as its back end and can provide directory services to LDAP, SMB, or NetInfo clients."

    Bonjour:
    From Apple.com: "Bonjour is Apple's new name for open, zero-configuration networking standards built around multicast DNS. Bonjour makes it easy to find systems and services on a local network without requiring a network administrator. It is supported by a wide range of devices (such as printers and webcams), servers (such as Apache and ftpd), and other network-enabled services (such as ssh). It leverages existing IETF standard protocols such as DNS service discovery and is part of the IETF's ongoing standardization work via the Zeroconf Working Group. It is also available for numerous platforms as open source."

    VPN via L2TP/IPSec or PPTP:
    From Apple.com: "Mac OS X includes a Virtual Private Network (VPN) client that supports the Internet standard Layer 2 Tunnel Protocol (L2TP) over IPSec (the secure version of IPv4), as well as the older Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP). This allows users to connect to Cisco, Microsoft, or other standards-based servers to create a secure, encrypted connection from the public Internet to a private network, such as those used in corporations and educational institutions. Tiger adds peer-based "site-to-site" VPN, avoiding the need for a centralized server when directly connecting two gateways. Secure access to Virtual Private Networks over L2TP/IPSec or PPTP."

    Kerberos single sign-on:
    From Apple.com: "Apple has adopted the MIT-developed, IETF-specified Kerberos protocol (v4/v5) for systemwide single sign-on—allowing users to authenticate against multiple services without retyping passwords or sending them over the network. The Kerberos clients in Mac OS X are fully compatible with Microsoft Active Directory as well as Mac OS X Server and other standards-compliant implementations."

    X Windows:
    From Apple.com: "X11 for Mac OS X includes a complete, smoothly integrated X11 Window System, enabling Mac OS X to run UNIX GUI applications side by side with Cocoa, Carbon, and Java applications. X11 for Mac OS X is primarily based on XFree86 and shares the bulk of its code with X11 on Linux, BSD, and other UNIX-based systems."

    SQLite:
    From Apple.com: "SQLite, the embedded, public domain SQL database, is now available as a framework for developers, as well as being part of the new Core Data framework in Cocoa for data modeling and automatic persistence."

    CalDAV (in Leopard)
    From Apple.com: "iCal Server uses open calendaring protocols for integrating with leading calendaring programs including iCal 3 in Leopard, Mozilla’s Sunbird, OSAF’s Chandler and Microsoft Outlook. These open standard protocols include CalDAV — a set of extensions to WebDAV — and interchange formats such as iCalendar, iMIP, and iTIP. Apple is a member of the CalConnect Consortium and is committed to open, standards-based calendaring and scheduling protocols. To further the widespread adoption and deployment of these calendaring standards, complete source code will be released to the open source community as part of the Darwin Calendar Server project, hosted on the opensource.apple.com website."



    From Apple.com: "Apple believes that using Open Source methodology makes Mac OS X a more robust, secure operating system, as its core components have been subjected to the crucible of peer review for decades. Any problems found with this software can be immediately identified and fixed by Apple and the Open Source community."




    For me, the choice is simple. Apple has made an enormous effort over the past few years to take all of their products and software and give them open-standards and open-source foundations to promote security, stability and performance in OS X. (The slick interface and museum quality encasings are just icing on the cake). With Microsoft, you just get more of the buggy coding, obsolete DLLs, old-fashioned BIOS and endless proprietary codecs and software. To me, it's no contest.

    The full list of standards and open-source projects that Apple supports and contributes to is too long to list here. For more examples of Apple's commitment to open-source and standards:
    http://apple.com/opensource/
  • edited November 2006
    OMG!! Can you people just stop with this war between Apple vs PCs

    Truth be told that you can never be happy with any product until you actually use both. I have both a dell laptop and apple mac book pro. There are pros and cons about each of them. Lets break it down into a session which a normal user use. Im not big on technical terms, so I'll just explain it like how I use it.

    <strong>First, lets go to MUSIC!</strong>
    I love music, I listen to music any chance I get. A great song does not have to be played by the greatest audio player, though it helps. Both of my laptop/notebook plays music well. On the Mac Book Pro, I use iTune because I can't use anything. On the Dell, I use window media 11 because it works best for me.

    <strong>Videos</strong>
    I love watching movies on my computer, and I do all the time. Thought I always watch it on my dell laptop because I can't watch most of the video formats on the Apple. I also watch a lot of asian movies with subtitles. I spend a week trying to find something that will play .avi .omg and others on the mac, and then spend another week or two trying to find something will support subtitles. I gave up! Doing this on my dell is less than half an hour.

    Editing videos!! Though I'm not a big on this, I have edit some home holiday videos for my family. What's with the thing apple claims they have supperior blah blah load time on video is all BS. If you edit a 1 to 5 minutes video on an Apple is all cool. Yes it load faster than my dell, but when u start editing videos that are an hour or two long, the MAC BOOK PRO CRASH!! It took my dell a while to render and load the video, but at least it doesn't crash.

    <strong>Pictures</strong>
    Of course on the Mac, we all use iPhoto. At least I use it, and its great! But I get the same experience on my dell using Adobe PS Family, thought I have to pay for it, which I never do. Don't blame me, blame bitorrent!

    <strong>Wireless/Bluetooth/Printing/or Others Connectivities</strong>
    On my dell, I can connect to anything that is accessable. On my Mac Book, sometimes I think its read and write in another language. Apple claims it would work with anything, and yet sometimes it doesn't.

    Like I have a bluetooth print server, my dad pc destop can connect to it from across the room. Yet, my Mac refuses to connect to it.

    Wireless, we have a linksys wireless router, it took me a while to get it to work because it wouldn't find the wireless network on my mac.

    Blue Tooth phones and other devices, please!! Don't even get me started on it.

    <strong>Working</strong>
    Yes apple has Microsoft Word, big deal for a spanking 300 or 400 dollars extra, they didn't give me a cent discount when I bought my Mac. Dell gave me a 150 dollars discount.

    Half of the time, I don't even use MS Office to work.

    <strong>Gaming</strong>
    On my dell, install a game play!

    On my Mac, spend another 300 bucks on Windows, install and play!! Wait, buy another mouse!!

    <strong>My Experience with Tech Support</strong>

    About 3 months into my Dell laptop, it got really hot and I couldn't even touch it anymore. I called dell tech support, they first apologize for the inconvenience, second, they asked me to do a few stupid on and off test. Third, they told me to send the laptop back, they will pay for shipping. I waited a day for the free shipping package to arrive, and I then send it back to them. They fix the computer within 3 days, and by the end of the weekend I have my laptop back and ready for use. Actually, they gave me a new computer because something was wrong with the power source. They asked me if I want to keep the old harddrive for any back up, and they send both the new computer and the harddrive in the old laptop back to me for free.

    I got my Mac Book Pro for about a week, and I tried to install MS Bluetooth mouse driver in it. It installed, and then the cd got stuck and the mac won't load after reboot. I called support, stating that after installing the MS Bluetooth Driver from the MS Bluetooth Driver CD, the CD got stuck and now I can't get it out and my Mac is stuff at the Chime part. The guy told me to press a few keys but all I hear a cluck sound and that was it. He told me that, things like this is not suppose to happen, and I don't know how to use or manage a computer. After an hour or trying stupid repeatedly techniques, he told me there is nothing he can do to help me, and suggested that I take my Mac to an Apple Geniuses. I took it to CompUSA the next day, what genius? He didn't even know what to press to eject the cds. I had to drive 2 hours to an apple stores, just to have them say the same thing to me. Sorry, we can't help you!

    I got home and was kinda pissed off. I went online and search for helps, apparently, about 30 out of every 100 mac book pro users have this problem. Yet apple proclaim genius didn't even know about it. What worst is that people are screaming for help on their site/their forum.

    Forward to about a month or two with the mac book pro. All of the sudden, my mac book pro also gotten really hot. It was impossible to touch. I called tech support up again. I spoke to a woman, who is very nice. She promptly asked me to do a few things for her so she can diagnose the problem, after two talking on the phone with her, she said atm there isn't anything she can. Though she didn't ask me to take it to genius bar, she said that she will report this problem up to the engineer and she'll call me back. A week gone by without a call, I decided to call back. Guess what? My two hours with that lady was not in record. So I had to go the same damn thing again. They asked me questions like, am i using my notebook on the flat surface. Warned me about 1 billion times not to use it on my laps because I might get burn. I asked them is the heating issue a well known issue and the guy said apple notebook are generally hotter than most pc laptop, and its normal for an apple notebook to get really hot. I asked them if its hot to the point where i can't even touch is normal and he didn't say anything. I send the notebook back, and got another one. I had to pay for the shippings. Both to them, and when they send it back to me, about 100 dollars total. I asked them what the problem was they never really told me about it. They just go on rambling about some other stuff..

    <strong>Overall</strong>
    As a user and a consumer, Technical Support is very important to me. Because unlike you PC and Mac Pros out there, a lot of us who do not understand how to fix something therefore we rely on the company for technical support.

    As for user experience, if I want to see some nice and smooth animation with every clicks, I'll definitely use a Mac. But there are good things and bad things about this.

    On a mac, when u install a new software, it gets placed in the doc. Once u installed about 20 programs, it gets clutter. If you remove them from the dock, then everytime u want to use it. You have to go to the harddrive to access it.

    On a windows, once something is install. It gets placed in the Start -> Programs. A list of all the programs you installs. You can also do uninstall from the same place easily!

    What I love about the mac is that it is more secure. I do not need to worry about viruses, spy wares, and other crap.

    What I love about the PC is that it just works. Everything I want to do, I can. On a mac, you have a 50/100 chances that something might not work.

    ps: For all of those who say that Mac do not crash or have the blue screen of death. Its true, mac don't have that. What Mac do have though is the sudden lock up. The entire system FROZE, and I mean FROZEN UP!! The power button don't work, nothing works. The only way to shut down a system is to pull out the charger and the battery.

    So you tell me, which is worst?

    My system spec.

    Dell Dual Core 2.0
    1 gig memory

    Mac Book Pro Dual Core 2.1
    2 gig memory
  • edited November 2006
    Algebra, you obviously suffer from a pc mentality disorder. You should see a doctor or stick to the dell.

    Edit: I was obviously, I thought, teasing wanderer logical.
  • And i suppose someone will tell me that even idiot users cant break macs or some such rubbish.
    Hasn't stopped them from trying! :D

    (Macs, unfortunately, are not idiot-proof.)
  • dan39dan39 New
    edited November 2006
    (clearly.)

    Hey Algebra, sounds like you're having a lot of trouble.

    - For the odd video formats, try adding a little Perian to your QuickTime:
    http://apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/perian.html

    - The dock does more than you think it can. You can make any folder on your hard drive into a "Start Menu"-eque folder:
    http://apple.com/pro/tips/dock_folder.html

    - iMovie is not exactly a Pro app. Apple offers high-end video software like Final Cut Studio and Shake Shake (Shake is Apple's high end special effects software for Final Cut Studio). For nearly a straight decade, movies created with Shake have won the Oscar for best visual effects. (Seen Lord of the Rings lately?)

    - Throw away your Microsoft mouse. It's killing your Mac (probably on purpose).
  •  Quote: algebra  OMG!! Can you people just stop with this war between Apple vs PCs
    Hey buddy, hit the HTML option if you want your tags to work!

    By the way, it's not a war it's a discussion now, the war's been won. :-)

    And do us all a favor, as Dinoboff says: "...stick to the dell..."
  • edited November 2006
    What is wrong with you wanderer? What mean that "Do us a favor..."? Who are "us"?

    Why Algerbra experiences would not be valid? He is no good enough to have Mac I suppose, and that's why he doesn't realize how macs are wonderful.

    Wanderer, do us a favor, grow up!

    What ever the qualities of osX, Apple produces are expensive and there are less programs and accessories available on osX than Windows.
    And the issues that the Mac Book Pro has with overheating and with wireless connection are well known.
This discussion has been closed.