Sinking the value of the G5 series
Priam
Fa-Broom wrote:
> And, indeed it is. This charge of older Macs being useless is from
> the same Wintrolls who defend MS' insistence that Windows be able to
> run every piece of software since DOS 1.0 irrespective of how it
> holds the platform back.
Well, of course, all Wintrolls. Let's see.
Let's learn more about what will happen next for people who use Leopard.
On Apple's site, we learn that:
"*Snow* Leopard is an upgrade for Leopard users and requires a Mac with
an Intel processor."
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MAC_OS_X_SNGL
Oh, fine! But that's *Snow* Leopard. No instruction to explain what
happens about security updates or backporting some applications to
Leopard. Let's search: Leopard -"Snow Leopard" ("-" is NOT "Snow Leopard")
<http://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Aapple.com+"leopard"+-"snow+leopard">
There are 164,000 entries and there doesn't seem to be much about
updates, even if you enter "updates" in the search.
Let's try with Linux:
<http://www.google.ca/search?q=linux+%22power+pc%22+OR%C2%A0PPC+support>
In the first links you learn that Debian, Crux, Gentoo, Yellow Dog
Linux, Arch, etc. support the PowerPC architecture. The choice is yours.
We did the wrong search at Apple, I suppose. Let's try with the same
keywords on Apple's site:
<http://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Aapple.com+"power+pc"+OR PPC+support>
First we have updates that were made in 2009, then LOTS of discussions.
No need for Apple to explain, of course. Let's add 2010. Ooops, now only
discussions!
What about the main Linux distros, Fedora and Ubuntu? Second search
result at Google's on ubuntu.com site is:
Mac (PowerPC) and IBM-PPC (POWER5) desktop CD
For Apple Macintosh G3, G4, and G5 computers, including iBooks and
PowerBooks as well as IBM OpenPower machines.
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/9.10/release/
You click the title, you download the iso.
Fedora?
http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora-ppc
Etc. Pretty much all Linux distributions support PowerPC. Why not? It's
just one more architecture. As kernel,org puts it:
"Linux also runs on (at least) the Alpha AXP, Sun SPARC, Motorola 68000,
PowerPC, ARM, Hitachi SuperH, IBM S/390, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, Intel IA-64,
AMD x86-64, AXIS CRIS, Renesas M32R, Atmel AVR32, Renesas H8/300, NEC
V850, Tensilica Xtensa, and Analog Devices Blackfin architectures; for
many of these architectures in both 32- and 64-bit variants."
Errr... Does Apple still support 68000? What's going on at Apple's?
Well, in order to figure out what's going on, you have to understand
poor Jooby's POV. Of course, he's got all OS X code at hand and all he'd
need to do is recompile it for the PowerPC architecture and make it
available on Apple's server.
But that would cost a few extra dollars and you must understand Apple's
not rich.
"As of June 27 (2009), Apple had a whopping $31.1 billion in cash and
investments, up 27% from the year-earlier figure. The company�s cash
position is the strongest among all technology companies, reckons Brian
Marshall, an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech."
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/08/14/apples-cash-hoard-it-just-keeps-on-growing/
As for poor Jooby, he really has a hard time: backdating is not allowed!
Fortunately, though it was found that backdating was also common at
Pixar, he knew nothing about it. Which year was it that he got some $600
million in stock options? So, you must understand that the man being
rather thin these days, he must save money to put some butter on his toasts,
Finally, do you see how easy it is to understand why, 6 months after the
extended guarantees were over, Jooby decided to sink the value of the G
series by not compiling the code for PowerPC.
M&Ms don't like to be left out of the gang. They flock to Apple stores
and buy Intel Macs. Then, they rejoice that Apple could buy Dell cash down.
I don't know why I always think of M&Ms as cows. You know how cow are.
They live in herds, are shy, good humoured and they rejoice whenever
their owner makes money with their milk.
Happy Jooby, who succeeded in bringing together such a herd of happy Morons!
Maurice
"Priam" <pr...@notsosure.com> wrote in message
news:hhqnh3$vfn$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Marshall, an analyst at Broadpoint AmTech."
>
> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/08/14/apples-cash-hoard-it-just-keeps-on-growing/
>
> As for poor Jooby, he really has a hard time: backdating is not allowed!
> Fortunately, though it was found that backdating was also common at Pixar,
> he knew nothing about it. Which year was it that he got some $600 million
> in stock options? So, you must understand that the man being rather thin
> these days, he must save money to put some butter on his toasts,
>
> Finally, do you see how easy it is to understand why, 6 months after the
> extended guarantees were over, Jooby decided to sink the value of the G
> series by not compiling the code for PowerPC.
>
> M&Ms don't like to be left out of the gang. They flock to Apple stores and
> buy Intel Macs. Then, they rejoice that Apple could buy Dell cash down.
>
> I don't know why I always think of M&Ms as cows. You know how cow are.
> They live in herds, are shy, good humoured and they rejoice whenever their
> owner makes money with their milk.
>
> Happy Jooby, who succeeded in bringing together such a herd of happy
> Morons!
I think it was unconscionable. Imagine buying a brand new G5 less than
three years ago, only to find that it became obsolete with a CPU switch.
They are practically useless now.
Steve Carroll
> On Sun, 3 Jan 2010 13:46:34 -0500, "Maurice" <Maurice504...@aol.com>
> wrote:
>
> >I think it was unconscionable. Imagine buying a brand new G5 less than
> >three years ago, only to find that it became obsolete with a CPU switch.
> >They are practically useless now.
>
> the PowerBook Ti for example. It has no problem running Leopard and
> watching fullscreen non-HD video. Could you expect to install Windows
> Vista onto a Pentium III and watch youtube videos at >2 seconds per
> frame?
>
> G5s still have some value on the used market because people still seek
> them out.
>
> --
> Alec
> I am pro skub.
Among the several Macs I own I have a dual G4 1.0 GHz and a dual G5
2.5 GHz, the latter runs an audio rig and works great. I feel no need
to replace it yet. The G4 is operating as a server, though, it doesn't
get a lot of use. I may put linux on it to play around (never run
linux before).
-hh
>
> I disagree-- they are still useful. Even the G4 is still useful; take
> the PowerBook Ti for example. It has no problem running Leopard and
> watching fullscreen non-HD video. Could you expect to install Windows
> Vista onto a Pentium III and watch youtube videos at >2 seconds per
> frame?
Of course they have utility - - the premise of this troll's thread is
a classic example of the "Specifications Chase", where the perception
is that the instant that something can't run the absolute latest
revision, it is utterly worthless. And they wonder why they're in
debt up to their eyeballs :-)
> G5s still have some value on the used market because people still seek
> them out.
Not only that, the OP's premise of "3 years" is purposefully &
maliciously misleading: what their "3 years" is actually referring
to is the maximum duration for which they can buy a full service
extended warranty from the OEM...which has nothing to do with what is
"Support".
For providing support, Apple's formal & published policy is 5-7
years: at five years, the computers move from Standard to
"Vintage" (ie, some limitations apply) and at 7 years, Vintage moves
to "Obsolete" (effectively, an explicit legal statement of no
guarentees of spare parts availability, etc).
Perhaps the OP could show us all for how long automobile manufacturers
are required by law to provide repair spare parts after one of their
cars has ceased production :-)
-hh
Joel
>Alec Lourmier <a...@abortedirc.net> wrote:
>>
>> I disagree-- they are still useful. Even the G4 is still useful; take
>> the PowerBook Ti for example. It has no problem running Leopard and
>> watching fullscreen non-HD video. Could you expect to install Windows
>> Vista onto a Pentium III and watch youtube videos at >2 seconds per
>> frame?
>
>Of course they have utility - - the premise of this troll's thread is
>a classic example of the "Specifications Chase", where the perception
>is that the instant that something can't run the absolute latest
>revision, it is utterly worthless. And they wonder why they're in
>debt up to their eyeballs :-)
I just saw a G4 in action the other day, and I was impressed - as far
as that goes, running Tiger or Leopard seems fair.
But. If Apple *genuinely* wanted to support the G5 Macs, they'd have
made Snow Leopard for them - it's not like the CPUs aren't capable of
running it, performance-wise. They're *sticking* the people who
bought the newest of the PPC Macs with Leopard. It's *immoral*. I'd
fuckin' sue them, if I had one.
As for the Pentium3/older-Athlon computers, many of them can run
Windows 7. If Apple wanted to change CPU architectures, they
should've committed to upgrading the OS for the G5s at least including
Snow Leopard, if not for the next upgrade, for that matter. Win7 is
superior on supporting older hardware, period.
--
Joel Crump
Steve Hix
Alec Lourmier <al...@abortedirc.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Jan 2010 13:46:34 -0500, "Maurice" <Mauric...@aol.com>
> wrote:
>
> >I think it was unconscionable. Imagine buying a brand new G5 less than
> >three years ago, only to find that it became obsolete with a CPU switch.
Writes someone who apparently doesn't actually use computers.
> >They are practically useless now.
No apparently about it.
> I disagree-- they are still useful. Even the G4 is still useful; take
> the PowerBook Ti for example. It has no problem running Leopard and
> watching fullscreen non-HD video. Could you expect to install Windows
> Vista onto a Pentium III and watch youtube videos at >2 seconds per
> frame?
>
Alan Baker
Joel <joel...@gmail.com> wrote:
I know.
They're "sticking" G5 owners with a really nice OS.
--
"The iPhone doesn't have a speaker phone" -- "I checked very carefully" --
"I checked Apple's web pages" -- Edwin on the iPhone
"It is Mac OS X, not BSD.' -- 'From Mac OS to BSD Unix." -- "It's BSD Unix with Apple's APIs and GUI on top of it' -- 'nothing but BSD Unix' (Edwin on Mac OS X)
'[The IBM PC] could boot multiple OS, such as DOS, C/PM, GEM, etc.' --
'I claimed nothing about GEM other than it was available software for the
IBM PC. (Edwin on GEM)
'Solaris is just a marketing rename of Sun OS.' -- 'Sun OS is not included
on the timeline of Solaris because it's a different OS.' (Edwin on Sun)
Joel
>I know.
>
>They're "sticking" G5 owners with a really nice OS.
It may be "really nice", but it *better* be, since they aren't
bothering to give them the choice (unless they'd like to be good Apple
customers and buy a new box, of course).
--
Joel Crump
Joel
>Hardware manufacturers releasing Windows 7 drivers notwithstanding,
>old hardware will eventually become incompatible with new Windows
>releases in a gradual fashion. So, while your OS might still run,
>certain things may not-- your sound card, video card, SATA controller,
>etc. Microsoft can do this because it doesn't make its money from
>hardware.
As a general rule, though, such incompatibilities tend to follow the
usefulness of the basic hardware (CPU, RAM capacity). If a single PCI
card, or whatever, has to be replaced, to upgrade the OS, it's not
such a big thing. However, there are undoubtedly a few cases where
Win7 really would be tough to put on an otherwise-capable machine.
>That's not how the Mac world works, though-- since the OS is designed
>exclusively to operate on Apple hardware, it must either support a
>machine completely, or not. You'll never install a Mac OS on an Apple
>machine and find that one particular piece of hardware isn't working
>(for obvious reasons I'm referring to internal hardware such as
>chipsets, not USB or firewire peripherals). It's simpler, because
>that's how it's designed to be.
There are some advantages to that, no doubt.
> Oh, and Apple needs a revenue stream.
>It sure as hell doesn't make its money from selling operating systems.
I think it *could*, though, if it were to open its software up to
other hardware.
>Two different platforms, two different styles of planned obsolescence.
Well, I really was specifically attacking their relegation of the
G5 Macs' OS options. I don't think they intend to stop supporting
them in terms of the installed base (running Leopard, etc.), but it
seems pretty rough not even to match Windows 7's support of older CPUs
than the G5, for the latest and greatest software.
--
Joel Crump
Priam
> In article<lth6k5ti7brfe0ilq...@4ax.com>,
> Alec Lourmier<al...@abortedirc.net> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 3 Jan 2010 13:46:34 -0500, "Maurice"<Mauric...@aol.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I think it was unconscionable. Imagine buying a brand new G5 less than
>>> three years ago, only to find that it became obsolete with a CPU switch.
>
> Writes someone who apparently doesn't actually use computers.
>
>>> They are practically useless now.
>
> No apparently about it.
Still dropping support when you have the code at hand and all you have
to do is compile it is totally unacceptable.
If there are any, instructions on how to proceed to get security patches
are really hard to find on Apple"s site. I still stand by my title.
Forget Maurice. If you can find one good reason for Apple to drop its
support for the G series, please state it!
Joel
>>> Oh, and Apple needs a revenue stream.
>>>It sure as hell doesn't make its money from selling operating systems.
>>
>>I think it *could*, though, if it were to open its software up to
>>other hardware.
>
>It absolutely could. I'd like to see it, too. Unfortunately a lot of
>the "it just works" functionality (which in itself is up for debate)
>would be lost if Mac OS were to start supporting other hardware.
They would probably do well to keep the products distinct, but even
there, it would complicate their process (having multiple development
domains, etc.), admittedly.
>Of course, in that case, I think it would become a (gasp) *true*
>competitor to Windows.
Yup, at the least, I'd have it as a second OS. Who knows, I might
even make Windows my second OS.
>>>Two different platforms, two different styles of planned obsolescence.
>>
>>Well, I really was specifically attacking their relegation of the
>>G5 Macs' OS options. I don't think they intend to stop supporting
>>them in terms of the installed base (running Leopard, etc.), but it
>>seems pretty rough not even to match Windows 7's support of older CPUs
>>than the G5, for the latest and greatest software.
>
>I agree, although Apple would undoubtedly claim they had their reasons
>to do so. One such reason I've heard from my peers is "code
>optimization," which makes logical sense but I don't have any proof of
>how necessary or beneficial it actually was.
It certainly would have been more work to make both versions. I
wouldn't have expected them to support the G4 with it, for example,
even though it probably *could* have been done theoretically. But the
people who invested in a G5 Mac do have the right to be upset, imo.
It's just not cool, for people who desire to spend money on the
upgrade, not to have the option.
--
Joel Crump
-hh
> Joel <joelcr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>[Alec writes]
>
> >> Oh, and Apple needs a revenue stream.
> >>It sure as hell doesn't make its money from selling operating systems.
>
> >I think it *could*, though, if it were to open its software up to
> >other hardware.
>
Unfortunately, an observation that they could "make money" doesn't
also necessarily mean that it would be as profitable as their current
business model, either in terms of simple fiscal revenue, or in other
terms, such as the corporate "innovator" mindshare, etc.
> I'd like to see it, too. Unfortunately a lot of
> the "it just works" functionality (which in itself is up for debate)
> would be lost if Mac OS were to start supporting other hardware.
YMMV, at fortunately, you've recognized that there's no such thing as
a free lunch.
Here, this can be viewed simplistically as a "You can pay me now, or
you can pay me later" type of trade-off: Choice #1 is to pay less
cash upfront (more hardware competition = lower initial purchase
price) but be burdened across its lifecycle with the time/money it
takes to resolve "oops it doesn't just work" glitches; Choice #2 is to
pay more upfront (fiscal, as well as fewer hardware choices) so that
there's fewer hassles across the product's lifespan.
There is no utterly "right" or "wrong" answer to this question - just
personal preference.
Currently, because Apple is actually being differentiated from Windows
in this regards, the consumer actually has the luxury of being able to
choose. Thus, if Apple were to sell its OS alone and 'commoditize'
the hardware (and the subsequent proliferation of permutations), then
the consumer is effectively denied this choice.
> Of course, in that case, I think it would become a (gasp) *true*
> competitor to Windows.
By some yardsticks, Windows is already in second place behind the Mac,
because there's more ways to measure success than merely raw market
share. Again, there's no simple "right" or "wrong" because which
metric is most appropriate to use depends upon what particular
question is being asked.
> >>Two different platforms, two different styles of planned obsolescence.
>
> >Well, I really was specifically attacking their relegation of the
> >G5 Macs' OS options. I don't think they intend to stop supporting
> >them in terms of the installed base (running Leopard, etc.), but it
> >seems pretty rough not even to match Windows 7's support of older CPUs
> >than the G5, for the latest and greatest software.
>
> I agree, although Apple would undoubtedly claim they had their reasons
> to do so. One such reason I've heard from my peers is "code
> optimization," which makes logical sense but I don't have any proof of
> how necessary or beneficial it actually was.
The better explanation is their business model, which seeks to
minimize overhead costs, which manifests itself both in terms of
minimized proliferation of harware permutations as well as focusing on
the User Experience and understanding the need to not be bogged down
in supporting everything for forever.
Even so, there has been very good backwards compatibility afforded.
For example, until OS 10.4 (Tiger), through its OS 9 "Classic"
support, very old applications could still be run, assuming that said
"old applications" had originally been written faithfully following
Apple's programming guidelines. IIRC, one example was "Reversi", a
game from circa 1987. Given that OS 10.4 was officially being
maintained by Apple until this past November (2009), this effectively
represents a look back to a nine year old legacy OS (OS 9), plus
whatever age of software applications that were older than that. Of
course, this backwards compatibility does require a PPC architecture,
but buyers of the non-PPC Intel CPUs knew of this limitation to legacy
support when they were choosing to buy the new architecture after 2006
- - which effectively reveals that there were at least all of the OS X
10.x years ... easily a half decade's worth, if one was the earliest
adopter of the Intel architecture.
In the meantime, we also hear of one individual who has been recently
"impressed" with a G4 Mac, which is at least a 5+ year old machine
that's "Vintage" and bordering on Obsolete. This certainly validates
the general observation of a long useful lifespan.
And a timely comment, published today at LEM:
<http://lowendmac.com/misc/10mr/obsolete-technologies.html>
-hh
Joel
>In the meantime, we also hear of one individual who has been recently
>"impressed" with a G4 Mac, which is at least a 5+ year old machine
>that's "Vintage" and bordering on Obsolete. This certainly validates
>the general observation of a long useful lifespan.
Yes, I was impressed with its usefulness as a used computer. A friend
was given one as a gift. He's happy with it, so I'm happy for
him - but personally, both in it being one of those all-in-one
"desktops", and in not running the latest software, I wouldn't be
happy with it as my primary computer.
--
Joel Crump
-hh
IMO, you're simply not a very "happy" person, no matter what the
circumstances: you could hit the lottery and all you would do would
be to whine about how much you would lose paying taxes.
Before you continue denigrating that which you don't use, I suggest
that you get some real world "seat time" using Leopard/PPC, Leopard/
Intel and Snow Leopard, to experience what, if any, functional
productivity differences exist in their day-to-day routine use.
From the perspective of the Pareto Principle, you'll find that the
difference is 80% perception - - a Placebo Effect. The technological
reality is that the differences aren't yet significant, because Snow
Leopard's functional divergence is predominantly through the under-the-
hood changes, which will take the Application developers upwards of 2
years to realize in their updated products to become meaningful for
the mainstream.
Thus, there's essentially no harm in generally continuing to use the
old stuff (if you have it). The only major exception is MS Exchange
using the Exchange 2007 Server, but that's not something that one
expects to find for the personal home consumer...and as Muahboy keeps
on trying to claim, "Macs are banned from the workplace" (sic), so
since the Trolls can't have it both ways, there's allegedly no one who
will ever use this new feature ;-P
-hh
Priam
> On Sun, 3 Jan 2010 13:46:34 -0500, "Maurice"<Mauric...@aol.com>
> wrote:
>
>> three years ago, only to find that it became obsolete with a CPU switch.
>> They are practically useless now.
>
> the PowerBook Ti for example. It has no problem running Leopard and
> watching fullscreen non-HD video. Could you expect to install Windows
> Vista onto a Pentium III and watch youtube videos at>2 seconds per
> frame?
I had a Celeron 850 some ATI 256 MB video card and it played youtube
videos at standard size no problem. It even played Windows Media at full
screen. Of course, when I started mplayer from a console, the were tons
of warnings saying the CPU would never do it. I'd close the console, and
everything was perfect.
It must have been borderline...
Priam
> Oh, and Apple needs a revenue stream.
> It sure as hell doesn't make its money from selling operating systems.
Apple gets it's revenue stream when it sells its hardware at almost
twice the price. People who bought the G series paid more than enough to
have at least 10 years of upgrades available. Now they get 6 months
after the extended guarantee is over!!!
It's because you Maccies have this kind of senseless reasoning that
Jooby makes a fortune on you and that I say you are Mac Morons.
Priam
>> Oh, and Apple needs a revenue stream.
>> It sure as hell doesn't make its money from selling operating systems.
>
>
> I think it *could*, though, if it were to open its software up to
> other hardware.
If this was to happen they'd never sell their Mac crap at the price they
get now. All this because Maccies figure their OS X with the crappy
abandoned by everybody Mach kernel is the Holy Grail :)
Priam
> On Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:17:40 -0500, Joel<joel...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>>> Oh, and Apple needs a revenue stream.
>>> It sure as hell doesn't make its money from selling operating systems.
>>
>> I think it *could*, though, if it were to open its software up to
>> other hardware.
>
> the "it just works" functionality (which in itself is up for debate)
> would be lost if Mac OS were to start supporting other hardware.
>
> competitor to Windows.
>
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, I really was specifically attacking their relegation of the
>> G5 Macs' OS options. I don't think they intend to stop supporting
>> them in terms of the installed base (running Leopard, etc.), but it
>> seems pretty rough not even to match Windows 7's support of older CPUs
>> than the G5, for the latest and greatest software.
>
> to do so. One such reason I've heard from my peers is "code
> optimization," which makes logical sense but I don't have any proof of
> how necessary or beneficial it actually was.
Tell "your peers" they know nothing more than you. All Apple had to do
is what Linux does for you Maccies: maintain 2 different versions, one
for Intel, one for power PC.
David Empson
> On 01/05/2010 01:54 PM, Alec Lourmier wrote:
>
> > Oh, and Apple needs a revenue stream.
> > It sure as hell doesn't make its money from selling operating systems.
>
> Apple gets it's revenue stream when it sells its hardware at almost
> twice the price. People who bought the G series paid more than enough to
> have at least 10 years of upgrades available.
Apple have never suppported a ten year old Mac in the latest OS release.
The computer model they supported the longest was the Blue & White G3,
discontinued August 1999, fully supported by Tiger but not supported by
Leopard in October 2007, so that's 8 years after it was discontinued.
Most Macs lose support in a new OS version released about 5 years after
the model is released. Sometimes that is cut shorter: a few models are
around the 4 year mark, Leopard cut off one model after 3.5 years, and
Snow Leopard has cut off some after 3 years.
> Now they get 6 months after the extended guarantee is over!!!
Rubbish. The newest Mac that is no longer getting any updates is an
entry level iMac G3 discontinued in February 2001, which was limited to
Panther. Its last update was in mid 2008.
Tiger is still getting some updates (iTunes, Safari and probably
QuickTime). They will probably cease about the middle of 2010 if the
same pattern is followed as Panther.
Leopard will get security updates until 10.7 is released, then will get
limited updates (e.g. Safari) for a few more months. 10.7 is likely to
be released in 2011, so its final update will be some time in 2011 or
2012.
That means a PowerMac G5 purchased in August 2006 will be getting at
least four years of support for security and minor software updates,
probably closer to five years, plus further minor software updates for a
few months past that.
--
David Empson
dem...@actrix.gen.nz
-hh
> On 01/05/2010 01:54 PM, Alec Lourmier wrote:
>
> > Oh, and Apple needs a revenue stream.
> > It sure as hell doesn't make its money from selling operating systems.
>
> Apple gets it's revenue stream when it sells its hardware at almost
> twice the price.
Factually incorrect. As has been extensively discussed many times,
Apple's gross profit margin on their Macs is roughly 30%, which means
that even if the WinPC manufacturers were literally selling at cost,
there would only be a 30% price markup, not the 100% markup that's
claimed above.
And "zero profit" by other PC manufacturers isn't necessarily an
exaggeration. "Beleaguered" Dell has fallen from 6.5% to 1% for their
consumer business:
<http://online.wsj.com/article/
SB10001424052748704204304574546073087724470.html>
But what has also been ignored is that Apple's smaller market share
works against them on retail price, due to having a lesser economy of
scale factor for their manufacturing variable costs, plus more
importantly, that smaller base for which to amortize their fixed
costs. YMMV as to how much you want to gage this as a source of their
costs, but equal-to-equal product price comparisons consistently put
Apple to within roughly 10% of their peers, so what this really comes
down to is that claims of "twice the price" are objectively
incorrect.
> People who bought the G series paid more than enough to
> have at least 10 years of upgrades available. Now they get 6 months
> after the extended guarantee is over!!!
First off:
As of tomorrow, the very very last G series will have been superseded
3 years and 5 months ago. As such, what you're claiming is that
Apple's support for 10.5 (Leopard) is going to end next month (7 Feb
2010): what proof do you have for this claim?
FYI, Apple did just drop support for issuing new security updates to
10.4 (Tiger) in November 2009: that's 4.5 years since it was
released (April 2005) and if the same period is applied for support to
10.5 (Leopard), it means that it is reasonable to expect that Leopard
will be supported until Spring 2012, or roughly 6 years since the last
G series was replaced...and roughly also a year beyond where Apple
shifts its product support from standard into "Vintage", as well as
roughly 7 years since the Intel hardware transition was announced (for
those who think in the longest terms for their lifecycle planning).
Secondly:
Who is it that picked this "10 years" value as their expectation? And
who gave them the authority to set the mark for everyone else?
As was already pointed out to you here...
<http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.mac.advocacy/msg/
29f75c390f811e66?hl=en>
...but which you've conveniently overlooked,
"Perhaps the OP could show us all for how long automobile
manufacturers
are required by law to provide repair spare parts after one of
their
cars has ceased production :-)"
While you're at it, you should also take a moment to think about the
expectations and habits of new car buyers: what percentage of all
people that you know who buy new cars actually keep them for ten (10)
years like you're expecting a mere personal computer (of 1/10th the
cost) to last?
> It's because you Maccies have this kind of senseless reasoning that
> Jooby makes a fortune on you and that I say you are Mac Morons.
It would be easy to ignore such fanboi ranting.
But, in looking at the claim's basic observation that any company who
we give our business to profits from that and then asking how much
Apple could have in theory profited from my consumer purchases over
the years, assuming a best case of a uniform 30% margin and reasonably
accurate recollection, the numbers work out to a value of $121.15 per
year. Of course, now the question is how this number compares
relative to all of the other products & services that one consumes.
Looking quickly at two local media service providers, the minimum
cellphone family plan is roughly $64/year and the cable TV "Triple
Play" value package works out to $177/year.
And taking a quick look at the vehicle in the driveway... we find
that those ever-popular SUVs were in the 15-20% profit margin range,
so $25K net @ 15% for...heck, let's say 10 years of ownership...$375/
year. And the fuel consumed is going to be roughly 6% of pre-tax (~
$2/gal); 15K/yr @ 17mpg another $106/year, so we're at $480/year and
haven't yet counted the retail dealer's profit margin (2%), wear items
(ie, tires: 2%+44%), insurance (??%) or maintenance (37%)...swag to
roughly $50, $55, ?, $55 ... which puts the running "profiting on you"
sum to over $640/year.
As always, claims without relevant context are useless and utterly
meaningless.
-hh
Snit
9:53 AM:
> -hh <recscub...@huntzinger.com> wrote:
>> Alec Lourmier <a...@abortedirc.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> I disagree-- they are still useful. Even the G4 is still useful; take
>>> the PowerBook Ti for example. It has no problem running Leopard and
>>> watching fullscreen non-HD video. Could you expect to install Windows
>>> Vista onto a Pentium III and watch youtube videos at >2 seconds per
>>> frame?
>>
>> Of course they have utility - - the premise of this troll's thread is
>> a classic example of the "Specifications Chase", where the perception
>> is that the instant that something can't run the absolute latest
>> revision, it is utterly worthless. And they wonder why they're in
>> debt up to their eyeballs :-)
>
>
> I just saw a G4 in action the other day, and I was impressed - as far
> as that goes, running Tiger or Leopard seems fair.
>
> But. If Apple *genuinely* wanted to support the G5 Macs, they'd have
> made Snow Leopard for them - it's not like the CPUs aren't capable of
> running it, performance-wise. They're *sticking* the people who
> bought the newest of the PPC Macs with Leopard. It's *immoral*. I'd
> fuckin' sue them, if I had one.
The idea of Snow Leopard was to let go of the past... while this is
understandably frustrating to some, it allows Apple to focus on one platform
and thus, at least presumably, push the technology faster. Much of Snow
Leopard was designed to make better use of the hardware (largely the GPU,
but those have been updated a lot as well).
> As for the Pentium3/older-Athlon computers, many of them can run
> Windows 7. If Apple wanted to change CPU architectures, they
> should've committed to upgrading the OS for the G5s at least including
> Snow Leopard, if not for the next upgrade, for that matter. Win7 is
> superior on supporting older hardware, period.
The difference is MS did not change CPUs... Apple has done so twice now and
each time they have handled it well though not perfectly. I am still amazed
at how well Rosetta runs - pretty much as a well as native programs with no
difference the general user would ever see.
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
Snit
4:34 PM:
For a tinkerer such as yourself I am not surprised... I also would not be
happy with such a machine as my main machine. Heck, my wife's 800 MHz G4 is
getting a little long in the tooth even for her, and she does not push her
machine like I do mine. She is "stuck" back with 10.4... and does not
really like being 2 OS generations behind.
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
Joel
>That means a PowerMac G5 purchased in August 2006 will be getting at
>least four years of support for security and minor software updates,
>probably closer to five years, plus further minor software updates for a
>few months past that.
Funny, my computer is older than that, and it runs Windows 7
beautifully. Then again, Microsoft actually makes its money from
Windows *software*, not primarily from hardware ...
--
Joel Crump
Joel
>> Yes, I was impressed with its usefulness as a used computer. �A friend
>> was given one as a gift. �He's happy with it, so I'm happy for
>> him - but personally, both in it being one of those all-in-one
>> "desktops", and in not running the latest software, I wouldn't be
>> happy with it as my primary computer.
>
>IMO, you're simply not a very "happy" person, no matter what the
>circumstances: you could hit the lottery and all you would do would
>be to whine about how much you would lose paying taxes.
I see.
>Before you continue denigrating that which you don't use,
You mean like how I said "I'm happy for him"? Yeah, what a real hater
I am.
> I suggest
>that you get some real world "seat time" using Leopard/PPC, Leopard/
>Intel and Snow Leopard, to experience what, if any, functional
>productivity differences exist in their day-to-day routine use.
That's not the issue, and never was. When I commented on Win7 on
Newegg's page for the specific edition I ordered, I gave a rave
review, but I did specifically say that it doesn't really do anything
WinXP can't do, *productivity-wise*. I wanted to make it clear that I
was more reacting to it as a "cool new thing", because I *do*
understand that not everyone gives a crap about Aero and the newer
features.
Hell, even I *don't* like some of the Unix-style security features of
Vista/7. UAC is lame as fuck, and not giving my applications the same
Administrator privilege level I run with is too much of a nuisance to
bother with (although not hard to fix by just setting permissions on
each of my root drives and C:\Program Files\).
>From the perspective of the Pareto Principle, you'll find that the
>difference is 80% perception - - a Placebo Effect. The technological
>reality is that the differences aren't yet significant, because Snow
>Leopard's functional divergence is predominantly through the under-the-
>hood changes, which will take the Application developers upwards of 2
>years to realize in their updated products to become meaningful for
>the mainstream.
I don't think I ever said anything to contradict that. But there's
not a good enough reason why Apple didn't support the G5 with Snow
Leopard. For the next upgrade, OK, fine, drop it, but in 2009? Way,
way too soon. *That* is what I'm talking about, in this thread. You
can ignore it and "correct" me on something I didn't actually say, but
that's why I got so hostile, in other threads. Think about it.
>Thus, there's essentially no harm in generally continuing to use the
>old stuff (if you have it). The only major exception is MS Exchange
>using the Exchange 2007 Server, but that's not something that one
>expects to find for the personal home consumer...and as Muahboy keeps
>on trying to claim, "Macs are banned from the workplace" (sic), so
>since the Trolls can't have it both ways, there's allegedly no one who
>will ever use this new feature ;-P
I *myself* used WinXP for many years, until going with 7. I didn't
like skipping Vista in the sense that I missed gaining awareness and
knowledge of its distinctiveness, but I did prefer something more
reliable, and until 7, that was still XP. From what I've read about
Snow Leopard, though (compared to Leopard), it sounds like a "gotta
have" kinda upgrade, *for* a real enthusiast - not for *everyone*, but
I am not everyone, and neither is anyone else.
--
Joel Crump
Maurice
"Alan Baker" <alang...@telus.net> wrote in message
news:alangbaker-B24C5...@news.shawcable.com...
Since Snow Leopard is outdated, Tiger must be ancient.
Joel
>> But. If Apple *genuinely* wanted to support the G5 Macs, they'd have
>> made Snow Leopard for them - it's not like the CPUs aren't capable of
>> running it, performance-wise. They're *sticking* the people who
>> bought the newest of the PPC Macs with Leopard. It's *immoral*. I'd
>> fuckin' sue them, if I had one.
>
>The idea of Snow Leopard was to let go of the past... while this is
>understandably frustrating to some, it allows Apple to focus on one platform
>and thus, at least presumably, push the technology faster. Much of Snow
>Leopard was designed to make better use of the hardware (largely the GPU,
>but those have been updated a lot as well).
I guess my biggest problem (other than the fairness aspect of not
having the "cool new thing") is that it at least *looks* like they're
"hinting" at people with relatively new hardware to buy yet newer
hardware. If for no other reason than to avoid the appearance of
gouging their biggest enthusiasts, they should've supported the G5 for
10.6.
>> As for the Pentium3/older-Athlon computers, many of them can run
>> Windows 7. If Apple wanted to change CPU architectures, they
>> should've committed to upgrading the OS for the G5s at least including
>> Snow Leopard, if not for the next upgrade, for that matter. Win7 is
>> superior on supporting older hardware, period.
>
>The difference is MS did not change CPUs... Apple has done so twice now and
>each time they have handled it well though not perfectly. I am still amazed
>at how well Rosetta runs - pretty much as a well as native programs with no
>difference the general user would ever see.
I agree from what I've heard about the 68K-to-PPC and PPC-to-x86
transitions, as far as supporting applications goes. But the OS
upgrades are an important feature to many people, and I would bet that
if anything it's *more* so with Mac users.
--
Joel Crump
Joel
>For a tinkerer such as yourself I am not surprised... I also would not be
>happy with such a machine as my main machine. Heck, my wife's 800 MHz G4 is
>getting a little long in the tooth even for her, and she does not push her
>machine like I do mine. She is "stuck" back with 10.4... and does not
>really like being 2 OS generations behind.
This one apparently could run 10.5 well with a RAM upgrade, which I
think he intends to do (it has 10.4 currently). But yes, I was glad
to finally get rid of XP (re: two generations behind). Change is
good, as long as it's not Vista.
--
Joel Crump
Priam
> Priam<pr...@notsosure.com> wrote:
>
>> On 01/05/2010 01:54 PM, Alec Lourmier wrote:
>>
>> > Oh, and Apple needs a revenue stream.
>> > It sure as hell doesn't make its money from selling operating systems.
>>
>> Apple gets it's revenue stream when it sells its hardware at almost
>> twice the price. People who bought the G series paid more than enough to
>> have at least 10 years of upgrades available.
>
> Apple have never suppported a ten year old Mac in the latest OS release.
> discontinued August 1999, fully supported by Tiger but not supported by
> Leopard in October 2007, so that's 8 years after it was discontinued.
>
> Most Macs lose support in a new OS version released about 5 years after
> the model is released. Sometimes that is cut shorter: a few models are
> around the 4 year mark, Leopard cut off one model after 3.5 years, and
> Snow Leopard has cut off some after 3 years.
>
>> Now they get 6 months after the extended guarantee is over!!!
>
> Rubbish. The newest Mac that is no longer getting any updates is an
> entry level iMac G3 discontinued in February 2001, which was limited to
> Panther. Its last update was in mid 2008.
I recently looked on the Apple's site and found nothing about this.
-hh
> Snit <use...@gallopinginsanity.com> wrote:
> >
> >The idea of Snow Leopard was to let go of the past... while this is
> >understandably frustrating to some, it allows Apple to focus on one platform
> >and thus, at least presumably, push the technology faster. Much of Snow
> >Leopard was designed to make better use of the hardware (largely the GPU,
> >but those have been updated a lot as well).
>
> I guess my biggest problem (other than the fairness aspect of not
> having the "cool new thing") is that it at least *looks* like they're
> "hinting" at people with relatively new hardware to buy yet newer
> hardware.
Competitive capitalism - - do you really expect them to do anything
less? And by choosing to be more agile than Microsoft, they have
greater growth potential.
> If for no other reason than to avoid the appearance of gouging
> their biggest enthusiasts, they should've supported the G5 for 10.6.
Not really: the big early adopter enthusiasts make it a selling off
their 1-2 year old stuff and buying the newest, sometimes even before
the newest has been formally announced. And for true power users,
they're going to be upgrading to get more power on a cyle of roughly
every ~2 years anyway, so they've already transitioned off of PPC.
Note that both of these groups are the ones that are more profitable
to Apple, since they buy new products more often.
> I agree from what I've heard about the 68K-to-PPC and PPC-to-x86
> transitions, as far as supporting applications goes. But the OS
> upgrades are an important feature to many people, and I would bet that
> if anything it's *more* so with Mac users.
OS upgrades that deliver tangible improvements are naturally to be
expected to be of higher value. But to say that it is "more"
important on the Mac is creating a comparison versus Windows, which
has obviously been such crap that roughly 2/3rds of Windows customers
have rejected, as evidenced by them sticking with XP. When you set
the bar that low, its not hard to be better.
In the meantime, as per hitslink data, nearly 70% of all Mac users are
currently not using an Intel-only OS (10.6), and roughly 20% of them
are using OS 10.4 or older versions. This is a fairly faithful
parallel to routine hardware lifecycle replacement rates plus a
forward adopters bump, which infers a fairly neutral customer attitude
towards OS, unless the current situation on the Windows side of the
business is defined as what is "normal": with Vista having now been
out for 3 years and that time period being roughly 60-70% of the
typical hardware lifecycle, if the residual share of XP were normal (=
paralleled OS X) then XP should now be down to well under 20% of all
Windows OS installations...but its currently at a shade over 73%,
which illustrates that over 50% of Windows consumer base has
explicitly rejected Microsoft's OS "improvements". Hardly what any
reasonable businessman would want as his "normal".
-hh
Priam
> Priam<pr...@notsosure.com> wrote:
>> On 01/05/2010 01:54 PM, Alec Lourmier wrote:
>>
>> > Oh, and Apple needs a revenue stream.
>> > It sure as hell doesn't make its money from selling operating systems.
>>
>> Apple gets it's revenue stream when it sells its hardware at almost
>> twice the price.
>
> Factually incorrect. As has been extensively discussed many times,
> Apple's gross profit margin on their Macs is roughly 30%
You have absolutely no idea about this. If you add the cost of airing
day in and day out their 66 brainwashign no-content ads, it already
makes much more than that.
As I said time and again, he're the computer that I bought 6 months ago
for $682 CAD assembled:
AMD Phenom II X3 Black Edition Triple Core 2.8 GHz CPU
Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P mobo
4 GB of DDR3 1333 MHz RAM
9400GT video card 1 GB RAM
640 GB Western Digital HD
450W Alpha RaidMax PSU
Alpha RaidMax black case with enough room for 3 or 4 additional drives
Keyboard, Logitech mouse
Guaranteed one year at a local shop. The store has been in business for
more than 10 years.
It has 7.1 Dolby, Macs have 5.1. And mine can use ECC memory, just like
the Mac Pro. I have more than enough power and space to add 3 more HD
and use RAID if I need it.
What does Apple offer for the same price? The iMac, with a 2.26GHz, dual
core, a 160GB HD and 2GB RAM.
> But what has also been ignored is that Apple's smaller market share
> works against them on retail price, due to having a lesser economy of
> scale factor for their manufacturing variable costs
They sell less because their markup is too high.
> As of tomorrow, the very very last G series will have been superseded
> 3 years and 5 months ago. As such, what you're claiming is that
> Apple's support for 10.5 (Leopard) is going to end next month (7 Feb
> 2010): what proof do you have for this claim?
If his was on Apple's site, it should be front row center. I didn't find
it anywhere.
> Secondly:
>
> Who is it that picked this "10 years" value as their expectation? And
> who gave them the authority to set the mark for everyone else?
You can get Linux for free and your hardware will be supported faor at
least that long.
> As was already pointed out to you here...
> <http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.mac.advocacy/msg/
> 29f75c390f811e66?hl=en>
> ...but which you've conveniently overlooked,
I didn't. I answerd David Empson on this matter:
"I recently looked on the Apple's site and found nothing about this. "
> While you're at it, you should also take a moment to think about the
> expectations and habits of new car buyers: what percentage of all
> people that you know who buy new cars actually keep them for ten (10)
> years like you're expecting a mere personal computer (of 1/10th the
> cost) to last?
You're a complete Moron! I suppose you expect toasters to be garanteed
10 days?
(snip)
-hh
> >that you get some real world "seat time" using Leopard/PPC, Leopard/
> >Intel and Snow Leopard, to experience what, if any, functional
> >productivity differences exist in their day-to-day routine use.
>
> That's not the issue, and never was.
Except that you did explicitly state: "...and in not running the
latest software, I wouldn't be happy with it..."
So other than it not being the "newest" (shades of "Specifications
Chase" again), what specifically is there about it for which you
wouldn't be happy?
With zero seat time, you have very little basis with which to base an
informed decision.
> When I commented on Win7 on Newegg's page...
Sorry, I wasn't aware of this, nor have I read it. Link please.
> ... I gave a rave
> review, but I did specifically say that it doesn't really do anything
> WinXP can't do, *productivity-wise*. I wanted to make it clear that I
> was more reacting to it as a "cool new thing"...
Cynical translation: "Yippie...I gots me a shiny new toy!".
Check.
> >From the perspective of the Pareto Principle, you'll find that the
> >difference is 80% perception - - a Placebo Effect.
>
> I don't think I ever said anything to contradict that.
Since you're now admitting that you bought it based on its eye candy
toy, you're correct. However, that flies in the face of making
comparisons to other peoples' purchasing preferences, which you've
been pretty confrontationally rude about claiming how great of a
"value" you got.
> But there's not a good enough reason why Apple didn't support
> the G5 with Snow Leopard.
Good Enough Reason#1: the legacy support delays and holds back
adoption of new capabilities, which are desired by power users who are
willing to buy the more expensive, leading edge hardware.
Good Enough Reason#2: the legacy support makes upgrades less
compelling, which delays consumers from buying new Apple hardware at
all levels, not just the above 'power' users
Good Enough Reason#3: providing legacy support on discontinued
products costs Apple money without a compensating upside in product
sales.
Good Enough Reason #4: providing legacy support reduces Apple's (&
Software Developers') technological agility, which allows their
competitors to remain closer, which narrows their niche of product
differentiation.
> For the next upgrade, OK, fine, drop it, but in 2009? Way,
> way too soon. *That* is what I'm talking about, in this thread.
But your claim of "too soon" is merely based on your personal
opinion.
For customers who have been paying attention, they've known that this
day of reduced support has been coming for awhile. Specifically,
since 2005.
And consumers of IT also recognize that over the past half decade, the
state of the shelf has continued to improve, which makes the objective
need for updates to legacy systems increasingly moot. For example, if
one were to have bought the most powerful Macs back then (pre Intel
announcment)m, it would have been a dual single-core CPU system and
its xbench performance benchmark would have averaged around 97.
Flash forward now to the end of 2009 and we find that this performance
level is beaten by every single model that Apple currently sells,
including the derided mini.
> You can ignore it and "correct" me on something I didn't actually
> say, but that's why I got so hostile, in other threads. Think about it.
But think about this: with you again trying to invoke a "value"
paradigm, what you're saying is that others are getting "ripped off",
even though you give yourself the free pass from that by your
frivolous purchase of something that you admit doesn't provide you any
productivity gains.
If you were to be consistent, then there's only two ways you can go:
A) if the money spent made the buyer "happy";
B) if the money provided a tangible productivity benefit to the buyer
Simply put, you can't conveniently keep (A) for yourself, put everyone
into (B) and then make a "value" comparison...its Apples-vs-
Oranges.
> From what I've read about
> Snow Leopard, though (compared to Leopard), it sounds like a "gotta
> have" kinda upgrade, *for* a real enthusiast - not for *everyone*, but
> I am not everyone, and neither is anyone else.
By definition, the enthusiast is going to want the latest, so that's
not really worth pointing out too strongly. Unfortunately, by
emphasizing this without sufficient clarity that it was of limited
"enthusiast" application, your previous statements were suggesting
that Snow Leopard was an utter "must have" for everyone. That's the
position that I had taken exception to, and based upon your above
clarification, you're apparently in agreement.
-hh
-hh
>
> >> > Oh, and Apple needs a revenue stream.
> >> > It sure as hell doesn't make its money from selling operating systems.
>
> >> Apple gets it's revenue stream when it sells its hardware at almost
> >> twice the price.
>
> > Factually incorrect. As has been extensively discussed many times,
> > Apple's gross profit margin on their Macs is roughly 30%
>
> You have absolutely no idea about this. If you add the cost of airing
> day in and day out their 66 brainwashign no-content ads, it already
> makes much more than that.
If it were false, then someone at Apple would be thrown in jail by the
SEC.
> As I said time and again, he're the computer that I bought 6 months ago
> for $682 CAD assembled:
>
> AMD Phenom II X3 Black Edition Triple Core 2.8 GHz CPU
> Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P mobo
> 4 GB of DDR3 1333 MHz RAM
> 9400GT video card 1 GB RAM
> 640 GB Western Digital HD
> 450W Alpha RaidMax PSU
> Alpha RaidMax black case with enough room for 3 or 4 additional drives
> Keyboard, Logitech mouse
>
> Guaranteed one year at a local shop. The store has been in business for
> more than 10 years.
A one year guarentee, when you have the audacity to complain about
Apple's 3 year extended warranty.
> It has 7.1 Dolby, Macs have 5.1. And mine can use ECC memory, just like
> the Mac Pro. I have more than enough power and space to add 3 more HD
> and use RAID if I need it.
>
> What does Apple offer for the same price? The iMac, with a 2.26GHz, dual
> core, a 160GB HD and 2GB RAM.
And thus, you have an "Apples vs Oranges" comparison - - so how do you
suggest that these two systems be adequately and objectively compared
for their value-added utility? Be specific.
> > But what has also been ignored is that Apple's smaller market share
> > works against them on retail price, due to having a lesser economy of
> > scale factor for their manufacturing variable costs
>
> They sell less because their markup is too high.
"Too High" is merely your personal opinion for what is an acceptable
level of profit.
If you are content in merely buying commoditized state-of-the-shelf
technology, what you're essentially doing is getting a free ride by
leeching off of the R&D investments that others were willing to pay.
The simple bottom line is that progress costs money and there has to
be appropriate incentives for those who are willing to take the risk
in order for the investments to be made. You can either lead, or
follow ... and you've selected yourself to be a follower.
> > As of tomorrow, the very very last G series will have been superseded
> > 3 years and 5 months ago. As such, what you're claiming is that
> > Apple's support for 10.5 (Leopard) is going to end next month (7 Feb
> > 2010): what proof do you have for this claim?
>
> If his was on Apple's site, it should be front row center. I didn't find
> it anywhere.
By calling others "Morons", you've forfeited the courtesy of having
your research done for you.
> > Secondly:
>
> > Who is it that picked this "10 years" value as their expectation? And
> > who gave them the authority to set the mark for everyone else?
>
> You can get Linux for free and your hardware will be supported faor at
> least that long.
So it was some guy named "Linux" who decided this? What's his email
address?
And FYI - - please show us where the owners of any of the Linux
distributions have made a written promise that they'll still be around
in ten years, providing free updates and support.
> > As was already pointed out to you here...
> > <http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.mac.advocacy/msg/
> > 29f75c390f811e66?hl=en>
> > ...but which you've conveniently overlooked,
>
> I didn't. I answerd David Empson on this matter:
>
> "I recently looked on the Apple's site and found nothing about this. "
As if all the info in the world is put on Apple's website...especially
about federal regulations on automakers!
> > While you're at it, you should also take a moment to think about the
> > expectations and habits of new car buyers: what percentage of all
> > people that you know who buy new cars actually keep them for ten (10)
> > years like you're expecting a mere personal computer (of 1/10th the
> > cost) to last?
>
> You're a complete Moron! I suppose you expect toasters to be garanteed
> 10 days?
As opposed to a warranty of 10 years?
The point that you missed is that your "10 years" expectations for a
mere computer is a longer duration than most new car buyers keep their
cars for, which illustrates the absurdity of your **personal**
expectations.
Of course, it says volumes about the personal character of an
indvidual who loudly wants everything, yet is willing to sacrifice
(pay) nothing.
-hh
Priam
I can get a 3 years extended guarantee just the same, Moron. I just find
that it's not worth.
-hh
Is that because you don't necessarily believe that the shop's going to
be around 3 years from now?
The problem with the "been in business for XX years" claim is that
past performance isn't an assurance of the future. For example, I've
had three (3) local pro-friendly photography stores go belly-up within
the past few years ... and I know that two of them had been community
staples since at least the 1960s, and the third since at least the
1970s.
In the meantime, I had a visit to our local professional electronics
supply store. Even though they've been a professional supplier for
the past 35 years, I'm not particularly confident that they're going
to last through 2010, because their stocked inventory is the lowest
that I've ever seen...quite scary.
In the meantime, thank-you for your post, for you now can't as easily
deny that you failed to see all of the other questions that you've
conveniently cherrypicked around and avoided answering.
I'm particularly waiting for you to provide the full name/email of
this "Linux" guy who made those grandious lifecycle support
claims. :-)
-hh
Priam
> Priam<pr...@notsosure.com> wrote:
>> -hh wrote:
>>
>>> A one year guarentee, when you have the audacity to complain about
>>> Apple's 3 year extended warranty.
>>
>> I can get a 3 years extended guarantee just the same, Moron. I just find
>> that it's not worth.
>
> Is that because you don't necessarily believe that the shop's going to
> be around 3 years from now?
I wouldn't care if it closed tomorrow.
Joel
>> I guess my biggest problem (other than the fairness aspect of not
>> having the "cool new thing") is that it at least *looks* like they're
>> "hinting" at people with relatively new hardware to buy yet newer
>> hardware.
>
>Competitive capitalism - - do you really expect them to do anything
>less? And by choosing to be more agile than Microsoft, they have
>greater growth potential.
I expect Apple to commit to reasonable support of their products with
OS upgrades - the G5s are only not viable here because of Apple's own
failure to go with x86 in the first place, and their own laziness/evil
in not releasing Snow Leopard for the G5.
>>�If for no other reason than to avoid the appearance of gouging
>> their biggest enthusiasts, they should've supported the G5 for 10.6.
>
>Not really: the big early adopter enthusiasts make it a selling off
>their 1-2 year old stuff and buying the newest, sometimes even before
>the newest has been formally announced. And for true power users,
>they're going to be upgrading to get more power on a cyle of roughly
>every ~2 years anyway, so they've already transitioned off of PPC.
>Note that both of these groups are the ones that are more profitable
>to Apple, since they buy new products more often.
Well, that's certainly a great summary of what's wrong with the Mac
platform. Hardware-brand-locked software, incessant hardware
upgrades - lack of choice. Hell, maybe the G5 owners *deserve*
Apple's abuse.
>> I agree from what I've heard about the 68K-to-PPC and PPC-to-x86
>> transitions, as far as supporting applications goes. �But the OS
>> upgrades are an important feature to many people, and I would bet that
>> if anything it's *more* so with Mac users.
>
>OS upgrades that deliver tangible improvements are naturally to be
>expected to be of higher value. But to say that it is "more"
>important on the Mac is creating a comparison versus Windows,
You God damn lying idiot, I was comparing individuals' *desire* to
have the latest software, not OS X and Windows themselves. Read what
you're replying to. I know it's hard, whitey, but fucking do it.
> which
>has obviously been such crap that roughly 2/3rds of Windows customers
>have rejected, as evidenced by them sticking with XP.
Don't bring Vista into this. It's an anomaly, period. Win7 will
easily replace XP. Vista was an unfortunate necessity, but it's
irrelevant.
> When you set
>the bar that low, its not hard to be better.
When you're that obsessed with Mac, it's hard not to talk out of your
ass about Windows. Windows is a fantastic product. If you don't like
it, don't use it.
>In the meantime, as per hitslink data, nearly 70% of all Mac users are
>currently not using an Intel-only OS (10.6), and roughly 20% of them
>are using OS 10.4 or older versions. This is a fairly faithful
>parallel to routine hardware lifecycle replacement rates plus a
>forward adopters bump, which infers a fairly neutral customer attitude
>towards OS, unless the current situation on the Windows side of the
>business is defined as what is "normal": with Vista having now been
>out for 3 years and that time period being roughly 60-70% of the
>typical hardware lifecycle, if the residual share of XP were normal (=
>paralleled OS X) then XP should now be down to well under 20% of all
>Windows OS installations...but its currently at a shade over 73%,
>which illustrates that over 50% of Windows consumer base has
>explicitly rejected Microsoft's OS "improvements". Hardly what any
>reasonable businessman would want as his "normal".
You're simply using data to mask your lie about Vista being just
another upgrade. It's not working. Everyone knows why Vista sucked,
and why 7 is the real upgrade. Done and done.
--
Joel Crump
Snit
8:37 AM:
> Snit <use...@gallopinginsanity.com> wrote:
>
>>> But. If Apple *genuinely* wanted to support the G5 Macs, they'd have
>>> made Snow Leopard for them - it's not like the CPUs aren't capable of
>>> running it, performance-wise. They're *sticking* the people who
>>> bought the newest of the PPC Macs with Leopard. It's *immoral*. I'd
>>> fuckin' sue them, if I had one.
>>
>> The idea of Snow Leopard was to let go of the past... while this is
>> understandably frustrating to some, it allows Apple to focus on one platform
>> and thus, at least presumably, push the technology faster. Much of Snow
>> Leopard was designed to make better use of the hardware (largely the GPU,
>> but those have been updated a lot as well).
>
>
> I guess my biggest problem (other than the fairness aspect of not
> having the "cool new thing") is that it at least *looks* like they're
> "hinting" at people with relatively new hardware to buy yet newer
> hardware. If for no other reason than to avoid the appearance of
> gouging their biggest enthusiasts, they should've supported the G5 for
> 10.6.
The only way to do this, that I can see, is to push the focus on the new CPU
and newer GPUs until 10.7... and to use 10.6 to make some back-end
improvements but also work on UI issues and the like. This would have
slowed down progress.
Keep in mind that the user experience on 10.6, while refined and better than
on 10.5, is not *that* different - more what you would expect from a sizable
service pack than from a whole new version. The bulk of the work for 10.6
was back-end work designed to handle newer hardware better... thus excluding
older hardware.
This does not mean that some of the UI advances could not have been brought
to 10.5. Things might not work quite the same and this could lead to
confusion.
>>> As for the Pentium3/older-Athlon computers, many of them can run
>>> Windows 7. If Apple wanted to change CPU architectures, they
>>> should've committed to upgrading the OS for the G5s at least including
>>> Snow Leopard, if not for the next upgrade, for that matter. Win7 is
>>> superior on supporting older hardware, period.
>>
>> The difference is MS did not change CPUs... Apple has done so twice now and
>> each time they have handled it well though not perfectly. I am still amazed
>> at how well Rosetta runs - pretty much as a well as native programs with no
>> difference the general user would ever see.
>
>
> I agree from what I've heard about the 68K-to-PPC and PPC-to-x86
> transitions, as far as supporting applications goes. But the OS
> upgrades are an important feature to many people, and I would bet that
> if anything it's *more* so with Mac users.
Whatever Apple did with Snow Leopard, I had more apps break in that upgrade
than I have had with any other - including when they have gone to new CPUs.
Clearly things changed in the background!
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
Joel
>> > I suggest
>> >that you get some real world "seat time" using Leopard/PPC, Leopard/
>> >Intel and Snow Leopard, to experience what, if any, functional
>> >productivity differences exist in their day-to-day routine use.
>>
>> That's not the issue, and never was.
>
>Except that you did explicitly state: "...and in not running the
>latest software, I wouldn't be happy with it..."
Who are you to tell me what to be happy with? You wouldn't accept me
telling you what version of what OS to run on which hardware. And I
wouldn't tell you, in the first place. Then again, I'm not you.
>So other than it not being the "newest" (shades of "Specifications
>Chase" again), what specifically is there about it for which you
>wouldn't be happy?
If I wanted the newest in the sense of "specifications", I'd be
running 64-bit Win7. I would have built a new computer. Clearly,
it's not that. We've been through this. Your skull must be
bulletproof.
>With zero seat time, you have very little basis with which to base an
>informed decision.
Wrong. I want Win7/Snow Leopard. With a G5, it ain't gonna happen.
I don't need to be "informed" to read the simple system requirements
of the newest OS versions. I meet them, the G5s don't.
>> �When I commented on Win7 on Newegg's page...
>
>Sorry, I wasn't aware of this, nor have I read it. Link please.
I didn't think you would be aware of it, nor is that relevant to what
I said, but since you asked:
Joel
Tech Level: high
Ownership: 1 week to 1 month
This user purchased this item from Newegg
10/28/2009 9:23:13 PM
Rating + 5 I recommend it.
Pros: I only have a 32 bit 1.6 GHz CPU (Athlon XP-m in a desktop
machine), and 1 GB RAM, but it runs virtually as well as Windows XP
did. And you finally get to ditch the outdated 2K/XP architecture (and
gain the beautiful Aero interface).
Cons: Some might find the changes from XP to be confusing, at first,
but they aren't bad. Sometimes it's worth learning something new.
Other Thoughts: I was almost tempted to buy Vista when it came out,
just for the change of pace, but it seems I was wise to hold off. This
is the mature version of the new architecture for the home/workstation
user. Well worth investing in, and worth the time in reinstalling. I'm
not going to tell you that it really does anything XP can't do
(productivity-wise, I mean), but it does give you a great refresh, and
it's every bit as much a quality OS. Personally, if you have the
hardware for it (and who doesn't, by now), I say go for it.
>> ... I gave a rave
>> review, but I did specifically say that it doesn't really do anything
>> WinXP can't do, *productivity-wise*. I wanted to make it clear that I
>> was more reacting to it as a "cool new thing"...
>
>Cynical translation: "Yippie...I gots me a shiny new toy!".
>Check.
Blah, blah, blah. You are such a dumb fuck, I swear. It's not that
it being a "cool new thing" is the *only* benefit, but *if* that's not
worth anything to someone, they might not want to bother switching. I
didn't want to sound like someone who thinks the world revolves around
myself. Other people have other needs than my own, and I get that,
and I would bitch-slap you for telling me what my needs are.
>> >From the perspective of the Pareto Principle, you'll find that the
>> >difference is 80% perception - - a Placebo Effect.
>>
>> I don't think I ever said anything to contradict that.
>
>Since you're now admitting that you bought it based on its eye candy
>toy,
It sure is fun talking that kind of crap anonymously, isn't it, pussy?
You can't get cracked in the jaw. Of course, it makes you a
ridiculous coward, but if that works for you ...
> you're correct. However, that flies in the face of making
>comparisons to other peoples' purchasing preferences, which you've
>been pretty confrontationally rude about claiming how great of a
>"value" you got.
NO! *YOU* fuckfaces did that to *ME*.
>> But there's not a good enough reason why Apple didn't support
>> the G5 with Snow Leopard.
>
>Good Enough Reason#1: the legacy support delays and holds back
>adoption of new capabilities, which are desired by power users who are
>willing to buy the more expensive, leading edge hardware.
Translation: Fuck the people who aren't willing to piss more money in
Apple's direction.
>Good Enough Reason#2: the legacy support makes upgrades less
>compelling, which delays consumers from buying new Apple hardware at
>all levels, not just the above 'power' users
See above.
>Good Enough Reason#3: providing legacy support on discontinued
>products costs Apple money without a compensating upside in product
>sales.
See above.
>Good Enough Reason #4: providing legacy support reduces Apple's (&
>Software Developers') technological agility, which allows their
>competitors to remain closer, which narrows their niche of product
>differentiation.
Oh, boo-fuckin'-hoo. Their *FAILURE* with using PPC chips in the
first place made it hard to upgrade Leopard to Snow Leopard, aww. How
can you defend that *evil*?
>>�For the next upgrade, OK, fine, drop it, but in 2009? �Way,
>> way too soon. *That* is what I'm talking about, in this thread.
>
>But your claim of "too soon" is merely based on your personal
>opinion.
It's based on common sense, not that you would understand anything
about that.
>For customers who have been paying attention, they've known that this
>day of reduced support has been coming for awhile. Specifically,
>since 2005.
Maybe I won't buy a Mac, then. I'd been thinking that I'd get a Mac
laptop at some point, but why bother? Sounds like I was
overestimating their support.
>And consumers of IT also recognize that over the past half decade, the
>state of the shelf has continued to improve, which makes the objective
>need for updates to legacy systems increasingly moot. For example, if
>one were to have bought the most powerful Macs back then (pre Intel
>announcment)m, it would have been a dual single-core CPU system and
>its xbench performance benchmark would have averaged around 97.
>Flash forward now to the end of 2009 and we find that this performance
>level is beaten by every single model that Apple currently sells,
>including the derided mini.
Then why does Win7 run on 1 GHz P3s?
>> You can ignore it and "correct" me on something I didn't actually
>> say, but that's why I got so hostile, in other threads. Think about it.
>
>But think about this: with you again trying to invoke a "value"
>paradigm, what you're saying is that others are getting "ripped off",
>even though you give yourself the free pass from that by your
>frivolous purchase of something that you admit doesn't provide you any
>productivity gains.
*STOP PUTTING WORDS IN MY GOD DAMN MOUTH*. The context of that
comment was my comment on Newegg. *PERIOD*. There *is* more of a
real reason than that to upgrade - XP is not in mainstream support.
For some people, that doesn't yet matter, but for me, it does.
>If you were to be consistent, then there's only two ways you can go:
>
>A) if the money spent made the buyer "happy";
>B) if the money provided a tangible productivity benefit to the buyer
>
>Simply put, you can't conveniently keep (A) for yourself, put everyone
>into (B) and then make a "value" comparison...its Apples-vs-
>Oranges.
Simply put, your conveniently kindergarten-level comprehension of my
articulate writing is just more online-coward bullshit, from your
online-coward ass.
>>�From what I've read about
>> Snow Leopard, though (compared to Leopard), it sounds like a "gotta
>> have" kinda upgrade, *for* a real enthusiast - not for *everyone*, but
>> I am not everyone, and neither is anyone else.
>
>By definition, the enthusiast is going to want the latest, so that's
>not really worth pointing out too strongly. Unfortunately, by
>emphasizing this without sufficient clarity that it was of limited
>"enthusiast" application, your previous statements were suggesting
>that Snow Leopard was an utter "must have" for everyone. That's the
>position that I had taken exception to, and based upon your above
>clarification, you're apparently in agreement.
I never said it. It's just that simple. You're still just lying,
because you hate me. And that's good - I wouldn't want anyone of your
type to like me. I must be doing something right.
--
Joel Crump
Snit
7:33 AM:
>> I suggest
>> that you get some real world "seat time" using Leopard/PPC, Leopard/
>> Intel and Snow Leopard, to experience what, if any, functional
>> productivity differences exist in their day-to-day routine use.
>
>
> That's not the issue, and never was. When I commented on Win7 on
> Newegg's page for the specific edition I ordered, I gave a rave
> review, but I did specifically say that it doesn't really do anything
> WinXP can't do, *productivity-wise*. I wanted to make it clear that I
> was more reacting to it as a "cool new thing", because I *do*
> understand that not everyone gives a crap about Aero and the newer
> features.
The implication here is that Snow Leopard's usability changes are not
significant. They are not as big of a difference as with other OS X updates
but they still have been significant for me. I suspect many others
experience much the same - a usability benefit from Snow Leopard.
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
Snit
b43943a4-09f5-4d8c...@k19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com on 1/6/10
9:53 AM:
> Joel <joelcr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> -hh <recscuba_goo...@huntzinger.com> wrote:
>>> I suggest
>>> that you get some real world "seat time" using Leopard/PPC, Leopard/
>>> Intel and Snow Leopard, to experience what, if any, functional
>>> productivity differences exist in their day-to-day routine use.
>>
>> That's not the issue, and never was.
>
> Except that you did explicitly state: "...and in not running the
> latest software, I wouldn't be happy with it..."
>
> So other than it not being the "newest" (shades of "Specifications
> Chase" again), what specifically is there about it for which you
> wouldn't be happy?
>
> With zero seat time, you have very little basis with which to base an
> informed decision.
As a techie, it is a value to him (and to me) to have the newest... for
curiosity sake, to keep up with the tech, to better help others, etc.
This has been beaten to death - not sure why you still struggle with it.
...
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
David Empson
> Keep in mind that the user experience on 10.6, while refined and better than
> on 10.5, is not *that* different - more what you would expect from a sizable
> service pack than from a whole new version. The bulk of the work for 10.6
> was back-end work designed to handle newer hardware better... thus excluding
> older hardware.
>
> This does not mean that some of the UI advances could not have been brought
> to 10.5. Things might not work quite the same and this could lead to
> confusion.
Apple's policy with paid software (such as Mac OS X) is that notable new
features only get introduced in paid upgrades. Free updates may
introduce minor tweaks but almost never introduce significant UI
changes, or outright new features.
On this basis, Safari and iTunes are regarded by Apple as
semi-independent of Mac OS X, since their updates are separate from Mac
OS X version updates, and they can gain new features without having to
buy a later version of Mac OS X (at least until the point where your
system version is so old that Apple drops support for it).
--
David Empson
dem...@actrix.gen.nz
David Empson
They don't publish articles announcing when specific machines or system
versions are not being supported - my post was based on observation of
updates as they were released and knowledge about the last system
versions which run on various Macs (which can be derived from the system
requirements and characteristics of each Mac model, or is available from
a variety of web sites; I use an application called MacTracker which has
a database with technical info about all Mac models and system
versions).
I don't think I've ever seen an officially published policy on how long
updates of various types will be supplied for particular system
versions, but the pattern for minor version updates (current major
version only) and security updates (current and previous major version)
has been consistent as far back as I can remember, and I've been running
Mac OS X as my primary operating system since late 2001 (10.1 era).
If you actually have one of the computers in question, you use Software
Update (under the Apple menu) to find out what free updates from Apple
are currently available for your computer, and download and install
them.
If you want to do it manually, go to http://support.apple.com/downloads
to see almost every free update Apple have released during the Mac OS X
era, in descending order of release date. The system requirements for
each update are listed on the detail page, but the prerequisites are
complex enough that I always use Software Update to check what can be
installed.
--
David Empson
dem...@actrix.gen.nz
Joel
>>> The idea of Snow Leopard was to let go of the past... while this is
>>> understandably frustrating to some, it allows Apple to focus on one platform
>>> and thus, at least presumably, push the technology faster. Much of Snow
>>> Leopard was designed to make better use of the hardware (largely the GPU,
>>> but those have been updated a lot as well).
>>
>> I guess my biggest problem (other than the fairness aspect of not
>> having the "cool new thing") is that it at least *looks* like they're
>> "hinting" at people with relatively new hardware to buy yet newer
>> hardware. If for no other reason than to avoid the appearance of
>> gouging their biggest enthusiasts, they should've supported the G5 for
>> 10.6.
>
>The only way to do this, that I can see, is to push the focus on the new CPU
>and newer GPUs until 10.7... and to use 10.6 to make some back-end
>improvements but also work on UI issues and the like. This would have
>slowed down progress.
I can accept that the G5 version would have been "stripped down" in
some way, but not that it *couldn't* have been done. I don't see why
the Intel version had to be limited by also having a G5 version.
>Keep in mind that the user experience on 10.6, while refined and better than
>on 10.5, is not *that* different - more what you would expect from a sizable
>service pack than from a whole new version. The bulk of the work for 10.6
>was back-end work designed to handle newer hardware better... thus excluding
>older hardware.
I definitely could see that limiting PPC support to the G5 would be
reasonable.
>Whatever Apple did with Snow Leopard, I had more apps break in that upgrade
>than I have had with any other - including when they have gone to new CPUs.
>Clearly things changed in the background!
Yup, that does seem to indicate a pretty big technical change - not
unlike Vista (in a very *general* sense, before anyone thinks I'm
literally comparing the two specific products), in that ultimately the
initial release is more of an "almost release candidate", and certain
things are fixed after general release.
--
Joel Crump
Joel
>The implication here is that Snow Leopard's usability changes are not
>significant. They are not as big of a difference as with other OS X updates
>but they still have been significant for me. I suspect many others
>experience much the same - a usability benefit from Snow Leopard.
Exactly - they don't have to be overwhelming to be useful.
--
Joel Crump
-hh
> -hh <recscuba_goo...@huntzinger.com> wrote:
> >> > I suggest
> >> >that you get some real world "seat time" using Leopard/PPC, Leopard/
> >> >Intel and Snow Leopard, to experience what, if any, functional
> >> >productivity differences exist in their day-to-day routine use.
>
> >> That's not the issue, and never was.
>
> >Except that you did explicitly state: "...and in not running the
> >latest software, I wouldn't be happy with it..."
>
> Who are you to tell me what to be happy with?
I'm not: I'm merely reminding you of your own statements. If you
don't like them, then blame yourself for making them.
> >So other than it not being the "newest" (shades of "Specifications
> >Chase" again), what specifically is there about it for which you
> >wouldn't be happy?
>
> If I wanted the newest in the sense of "specifications", I'd be
> running 64-bit Win7. I would have built a new computer. Clearly,
> it's not that. We've been through this. Your skull must be
> bulletproof.
>
> >With zero seat time, you have very little basis with which to base an
> >informed decision.
>
> Wrong. I want Win7/Snow Leopard.
Because its the latest that your existing hardware will run?
> >> When I commented on Win7 on Newegg's page...
>
> >Sorry, I wasn't aware of this, nor have I read it. Link please.
>
> I didn't think you would be aware of it, nor is that relevant to what
> I said, but since you asked:
>
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=32-116-756&Sort...
Thanks for providing this.
Actually, my expressed cynicism is well founded in your Oct comment,
specifically the statement of "...just for the change of pace [didn't
upgrade]", which illustrates your willingness to be an early adopter
of cool new things without particular cause to what the pragmatic
benefits might be.
> I didn't want to sound like someone who thinks the world revolves around
> myself. Other people have other needs than my own, and I get that,
> and I would bitch-slap you for telling me what my needs are.
If you are offended at what you perceive are others telling you what
your needs are, then perhaps you should consider what you're doing
yourself. Specifically, you're being reminded of how you've made
critical comparisons of yourself to the personal choices that others
make.
> >> >From the perspective of the Pareto Principle, you'll find that the
> >> >difference is 80% perception - - a Placebo Effect.
>
> >> I don't think I ever said anything to contradict that.
>
> >Since you're now admitting that you bought it based on its eye candy
> >toy,
>
> It sure is fun talking that kind of crap anonymously, isn't it, pussy?
> You can't get cracked in the jaw. Of course, it makes you a
> ridiculous coward, but if that works for you ...
Simply more false bravado from a foul mouthed little boy hiding
bethind a gmail account who has publically dared people to come say it
to his face, then when that bluff is called...bravely hides.
> > you're correct. However, that flies in the face of making
> >comparisons to other peoples' purchasing preferences, which you've
> >been pretty confrontationally rude about claiming how great of a
> >"value" you got.
>
> NO! *YOU* fuckfaces did that to *ME*.
Do you really need to have your nose rubbed in the cite of your post
where you introduced the "V" word?
> >> But there's not a good enough reason why Apple didn't support
> >> the G5 with Snow Leopard.
>
> >Good Enough Reason#1: the legacy support delays and holds back
> >adoption of new capabilities, which are desired by power users who are
> >willing to buy the more expensive, leading edge hardware.
>
> Translation: Fuck the people who aren't willing to piss more money in
> Apple's direction.
Pretty much correct, because making money is the basic perrogative of
capitalism: a business isn't in any way obligated to lose money to
its customers, beause they're not a charity.
> > [...]
>
> Oh, boo-fuckin'-hoo. Their *FAILURE* with using PPC chips in the
> first place made it hard to upgrade Leopard to Snow Leopard, aww. How
> can you defend that *evil*?
"Evil"? Why does the typical user frankly have any need to care about
what particular chipset is within his box? Its not like he's
programming the damn thing in machine code: he's wiggling a mouse on
a GUI and typing up emails in plain english.
In any case, the future rarely works out the way that we expect it
to. For example, we were expected to be all using 5-6GHz CPUs in our
computers today ... golly gee, what happened there?
Did PPC turn out to be a dead end for Apple? Yes. But that's the
wrong question, bucause there's two more important questions to ask:
#1 is to look back to before 1994 when Apple decided to go to the PPC,
and ask what were their options, what were the technology
prognostications of the day and did they make a reasonable choice
based upon only what they could have known then? If you recall, even
though Intel eventually responded, the PPC did surpass the performance
of the Intel architecture for awhile.
#2 is to look at how they responded to their adversity: did they fall
and fold, or did they pick themselves up, dust themselves off and move
forward? The basic complaint that you have with the PPC not being
supported in 10.6 is actually a manifestation of their recovery and
"move forward".
The simple reality of technology is that the current Intel x86 based
architecture will someday become a dead end too...
> >> For the next upgrade, OK, fine, drop it, but in 2009? Way,
> >> way too soon. *That* is what I'm talking about, in this thread.
>
> >But your claim of "too soon" is merely based on your personal
> >opinion.
>
> It's based on common sense, not that you would understand anything
> about that.
Golly, what a clever way to try to avoid answering the question.
What's particularly interesting is your self-contradiction, because
you've said that it would have been acceptable to you if Apple had
dropped PPC at 10.7 instead of 10.6. This is because 10.7 will
invariably ship well before 2016, so not all of those PPC Macs will
yet meet your "10 year old" critera.
So please __try__ to explain your obvious self-contradictory claims.
> >For customers who have been paying attention, they've known that this
> >day of reduced support has been coming for awhile. Specifically,
> >since 2005.
>
> Maybe I won't buy a Mac, then. I'd been thinking that I'd get a Mac
> laptop at some point, but why bother? Sounds like I was
> overestimating their support.
You're overestimated the "charity" that exists within capitalism
overall. All businesses invariably strive to minimize their
liability of incurring future cost expenses, particularly after the
sale is completed...accountants don't like those. Thus, product
warranties will be as short as they can get away with, employee
defined benefit pensions get replaced with defined cash value plans,
etc.
> >And consumers of IT also recognize that over the past half decade, the
> >state of the shelf has continued to improve, which makes the objective
> >need for updates to legacy systems increasingly moot. For example, if
> >one were to have bought the most powerful Macs back then (pre Intel
> >announcment)m, it would have been a dual single-core CPU system and
> >its xbench performance benchmark would have averaged around 97.
> >Flash forward now to the end of 2009 and we find that this performance
> >level is beaten by every single model that Apple currently sells,
> >including the derided mini.
>
> Then why does Win7 run on 1 GHz P3s?
Because Microsoft's overreach on Vista got them burned, so they didn't
raise that standard versus what they called for under Vista. This
cleaning up of their act was an effort to try to avoid pissing off
their customers on this go-around and losing sales, in conjunction
with some risk management of what the Nth percentile hardware levels
are. Its merely yet another manifestation of how all businesses
invariably strive to minimize their liabilities.
> >> You can ignore it and "correct" me on something I didn't actually
> >> say, but that's why I got so hostile, in other threads. Think about it.
>
> >But think about this: with you again trying to invoke a "value"
> >paradigm, what you're saying is that others are getting "ripped off",
> >even though you give yourself the free pass from that by your
> >frivolous purchase of something that you admit doesn't provide you any
> >productivity gains.
>
> *STOP PUTTING WORDS IN MY GOD DAMN MOUTH*.
The words are yours, for which you are ultimately responsible. If you
don't want to be held responsible, then you could alternatively choose
to simply shut up.
> Simply put, your conveniently kindergarten-level comprehension of my
> articulate writing is just more online-coward bullshit, from your
> online-coward ass.
Golly, should I follow your lead and say "come say that to my
face"? :-)
> >> From what I've read about
> >> Snow Leopard, though (compared to Leopard), it sounds like a "gotta
> >> have" kinda upgrade, *for* a real enthusiast - not for *everyone*, but
> >> I am not everyone, and neither is anyone else.
>
> >By definition, the enthusiast is going to want the latest, so that's
> >not really worth pointing out too strongly. Unfortunately, by
> >emphasizing this without sufficient clarity that it was of limited
> >"enthusiast" application, your previous statements were suggesting
> >that Snow Leopard was an utter "must have" for everyone. That's the
> >position that I had taken exception to, and based upon your above
> >clarification, you're apparently in agreement.
>
> I never said it. It's just that simple. You're still just lying,
> because you hate me. And that's good - I wouldn't want anyone of your
> type to like me. I must be doing something right.
You grossly overestimate your importance in the world, "Joel".
-hh
Snit
1:34 PM:
And my having the newest update is useful in indirect ways as well - when
people come to me as the tech expert, as they often do, it is of value for
me to have experience with the new stuff... and be able to talk about the
pros and cons. This is where you and I lost out by not using Vista... we
were less capable of discussing it in detail.
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
Snit
1:34 PM:
> Snit <use...@gallopinginsanity.com> wrote:
>
>>>> The idea of Snow Leopard was to let go of the past... while this is
>>>> understandably frustrating to some, it allows Apple to focus on one
>>>> platform
>>>> and thus, at least presumably, push the technology faster. Much of Snow
>>>> Leopard was designed to make better use of the hardware (largely the GPU,
>>>> but those have been updated a lot as well).
>>>
>>> I guess my biggest problem (other than the fairness aspect of not
>>> having the "cool new thing") is that it at least *looks* like they're
>>> "hinting" at people with relatively new hardware to buy yet newer
>>> hardware. If for no other reason than to avoid the appearance of
>>> gouging their biggest enthusiasts, they should've supported the G5 for
>>> 10.6.
>>
>> The only way to do this, that I can see, is to push the focus on the new CPU
>> and newer GPUs until 10.7... and to use 10.6 to make some back-end
>> improvements but also work on UI issues and the like. This would have
>> slowed down progress.
>
> I can accept that the G5 version would have been "stripped down" in
> some way, but not that it *couldn't* have been done. I don't see why
> the Intel version had to be limited by also having a G5 version.
If it was "stripped down" it would have fragmented the user experience of
Snow Leopard - Apple likes to keep one version (as opposed to MSs several
and Linux's hundreds).
>> Keep in mind that the user experience on 10.6, while refined and better than
>> on 10.5, is not *that* different - more what you would expect from a sizable
>> service pack than from a whole new version. The bulk of the work for 10.6
>> was back-end work designed to handle newer hardware better... thus excluding
>> older hardware.
>
> I definitely could see that limiting PPC support to the G5 would be
> reasonable.
As an 800MHz G4 owner I am still bummed that *Leopard* does not run on it...
no less Snow Leopard.
I think you are I are in agreement that it is reasonable for people to be
frustrated that Apple has left them behind so quickly - not supporting the
newest OSs (and sometimes apps) on relatively new machines. As I have
noted, I still am bummed Apple has dropped Classic support... just the other
day I ran into an old game online I would have liked to download and play
with for a bit - not worth loading on my wife's machine.
I think I give more allowances to Apple, though, for the trouble of
switching CPU platforms and doing what they can to work with the strengths
of being able to focus on having modern hardware and modern software being
built with each other in mind.
>> Whatever Apple did with Snow Leopard, I had more apps break in that upgrade
>> than I have had with any other - including when they have gone to new CPUs.
>> Clearly things changed in the background!
>
> Yup, that does seem to indicate a pretty big technical change - not
> unlike Vista (in a very *general* sense, before anyone thinks I'm
> literally comparing the two specific products), in that ultimately the
> initial release is more of an "almost release candidate", and certain
> things are fixed after general release.
For my situation that is what it was - as I have said, OS X 10.6.2 was the
first workable version of Snow Leopard for me. But even more than that,
even with 10.6.2, a lot of my software had to be updated. Some of it still
does not work perfectly with it, such as iClip, which is not going to be
updated at all for Snow Leopard.
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
Snit
1/6/10 1:23 PM:
Sure.. but Snow Leopard is a bit different than most of their updates. It
is mostly technical, not user related. With that said, I am not suggesting
I expected Apple to "back-port" the UI updates to Leopard.
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
Joel
>And my having the newest update is useful in indirect ways as well - when
>people come to me as the tech expert, as they often do, it is of value for
>me to have experience with the new stuff... and be able to talk about the
>pros and cons. This is where you and I lost out by not using Vista... we
>were less capable of discussing it in detail.
Absolutely agree.
--
Joel Crump
-hh
> Joel stated:
> > Snit <use...@gallopinginsanity.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> The only way to do this, that I can see, is to push the focus on the new CPU
> >> and newer GPUs until 10.7... and to use 10.6 to make some back-end
> >> improvements but also work on UI issues and the like. This would have
> >> slowed down progress.
It also would have forfeited the competitive advantage that Apple had
from a lack of legacy baggage on the Intel platform.
> > I can accept that the G5 version would have been "stripped down" in
> > some way, but not that it *couldn't* have been done. I don't see why
> > the Intel version had to be limited by also having a G5 version.
>
> If it was "stripped down" it would have fragmented the user experience of
> Snow Leopard - Apple likes to keep one version (as opposed to MSs several
> and Linux's hundreds).
Its not a question of if it was technologically possible or not: with
enough resources, something could have been cobbled together.
However, Apple already had at least two generations of dual
architecture under their belt (that we know of !), so its quite
resonable to conclude that they didn't do this simply because they
maliciously felt like it: the under-the-hood changes being introduced
in SL are elements that the now-dated PPC architecture can't
realistically be expected to support, and Apple has enough of a
problem getting companies like Adobe to let go of creaky old legacy
code without giving them yet another free pass.
> >> Keep in mind that the user experience on 10.6, while refined and better than
> >> on 10.5, is not *that* different - more what you would expect from a sizable
> >> service pack than from a whole new version. The bulk of the work for 10.6
> >> was back-end work designed to handle newer hardware better... thus excluding
> >> older hardware.
>
> > I definitely could see that limiting PPC support to the G5 would be
> > reasonable.
>
> As an 800MHz G4 owner I am still bummed that *Leopard* does not run on it...
> no less Snow Leopard.
To their credit, Apple does publish a policy standard for hardware
support. You may not like the specific numbers within it, but that's
a different debate, and one that comes down to the question of
individual expectations versus what makes sense for the business.
An 800MHz G4 is vintage 2002, which means that the 2007 release of
Leopard would have occurred five (5) years into its
lifecycle...alligns with "Vintage", and thus, limited support. At
roughly the 7 year mark of "Obsolete", Apple ceased their active
updates to 10.4 (Tiger).
> I think you are I are in agreement that it is reasonable for people to be
> frustrated that Apple has left them behind so quickly - not supporting the
> newest OSs (and sometimes apps) on relatively new machines.
Sure, it would be nice if we could receive 'free' support from Apple
for 'forever', but the grim fiscal reality is that that's no way to
run a business..it would necessitate that someone like Apple make
their intitial purchase price even higher, so that they get paid for
those lifeycle costs that you want.
Since all businesses do have to make a decision on what is no longer
profitable at some point, so rather than just complaining about what
Apple has decided, how about offering a logical and supportable
position? For example, can we all accept a decreee of obsolescence
from the manufacturer's point of view when an old machine has ~10% the
performance of a new one? Try applying Moore's Law to calcuate how
many years that works out to. Surprise!
> I think I give more allowances to Apple, though, for the trouble of
> switching CPU platforms and doing what they can to work with the strengths
> of being able to focus on having modern hardware and modern software being
> built with each other in mind.
The vertical integration quality has been Apple's product niche for
years, and OS X with the directions it is taking is no exception. The
technolgoy trend shifted away from faster and faster CPU clockspeeds
awhile back and is increaasingly headed towards parallel computing, so
SL's underpinnings puts them in a leadership position. Personally,
I'd not be too surprised to watch the next Mac Pro with Photoshop CS5
be a real eye-opener performance wise, and I'd not be too surprised if
there aren't already are some customers who are planning their IT
budgets around that anticipation...afterall, the same thing happened
back when Mac buyers were waiting and waiting and waiting for the
G5.
> >> Whatever Apple did with Snow Leopard, I had more apps break in that upgrade
> >> than I have had with any other - including when they have gone to new CPUs.
> >> Clearly things changed in the background!
>
> > Yup, that does seem to indicate a pretty big technical change - not
> > unlike Vista (in a very *general* sense, before anyone thinks I'm
> > literally comparing the two specific products), in that ultimately the
> > initial release is more of an "almost release candidate", and certain
> > things are fixed after general release.
>
> For my situation that is what it was - as I have said, OS X 10.6.2 was the
> first workable version of Snow Leopard for me. But even more than that,
> even with 10.6.2, a lot of my software had to be updated. Some of it still
> does not work perfectly with it, such as iClip, which is not going to be
> updated at all for Snow Leopard.
With a purposefully broad brush, apps that tend to break on an Apple
update are often the product of that developer overlooking or ignoring
a chunk of Apple's software development guides. I can recall way
back with the transition from 24 to "32 bit clean" and how Apple told
developers for months and months to get updates out because its-a-
comin' and those that put their heads in the sand failed, and when
they tried to beg off the customer complaints and point at "bad"
Apple, the customers told them that they were simply full of crap
because they had received more than adequate advanced notice. It has
taken over a decade, but business is finally starting to learn that
the consumer's ability to collaborate BS stories will invariably
backfire to bite them if they choose to lie to their customers.
-hh
Snit
98e551f7-7cc3-441a...@a6g2000yqm.googlegroups.com on 1/6/10
4:29 PM:
...
>>> I can accept that the G5 version would have been "stripped down" in
>>> some way, but not that it *couldn't* have been done. �I don't see why
>>> the Intel version had to be limited by also having a G5 version.
>>
>> If it was "stripped down" it would have fragmented the user experience of
>> Snow Leopard - Apple likes to keep one version (as opposed to MSs several
>> and Linux's hundreds).
>
> Its not a question of if it was technologically possible or not: with
> enough resources, something could have been cobbled together.
> However, Apple already had at least two generations of dual
> architecture under their belt (that we know of !), so its quite
> resonable to conclude that they didn't do this simply because they
> maliciously felt like it: the under-the-hood changes being introduced
> in SL are elements that the now-dated PPC architecture can't
> realistically be expected to support, and Apple has enough of a
> problem getting companies like Adobe to let go of creaky old legacy
> code without giving them yet another free pass.
Adobe, at least publicly, has been kind in their comments of Apple as Apple
pulled 64 bit Carbon out from under them. I hope Adobe and MS were in on
that before the general public was. Either way, it is Adobe which has given
Apple the "free pass", at least on that one.
>>>> Keep in mind that the user experience on 10.6, while refined and better
>>>> than on 10.5, is not *that* different - more what you would expect from a
>>>> sizable service pack than from a whole new version. �The bulk of the work
>>>> for 10.6 was back-end work designed to handle newer hardware better... thus
>>>> excluding older hardware.
>>>>
>>> I definitely could see that limiting PPC support to the G5 would be
>>> reasonable.
>>>
>> As an 800MHz G4 owner I am still bummed that *Leopard* does not run on it...
>> no less Snow Leopard.
>>
> To their credit, Apple does publish a policy standard for hardware support.
> You may not like the specific numbers within it, but that's a different
> debate, and one that comes down to the question of individual expectations
> versus what makes sense for the business.
>
> An 800MHz G4 is vintage 2002, which means that the 2007 release of Leopard
> would have occurred five (5) years into its lifecycle...alligns with
> "Vintage", and thus, limited support. At roughly the 7 year mark of
> "Obsolete", Apple ceased their active updates to 10.4 (Tiger).
I understand why - just would have liked Apple to have supported it. Not,
though, at the expense of progress. A 3 year old machine not being able to
support the newest OS, however, is a bit more of a problem.
>> I think you are I are in agreement that it is reasonable for people to be
>> frustrated that Apple has left them behind so quickly - not supporting the
>> newest OSs (and sometimes apps) on relatively new machines.
>
> Sure, it would be nice if we could receive 'free' support from Apple
> for 'forever', but the grim fiscal reality is that that's no way to
> run a business..it would necessitate that someone like Apple make
> their intitial purchase price even higher, so that they get paid for
> those lifeycle costs that you want.
>
> Since all businesses do have to make a decision on what is no longer
> profitable at some point, so rather than just complaining about what
> Apple has decided, how about offering a logical and supportable
> position?
What complaints do you think I have made - I have noted I understand where
Apple is coming from, but also understand why people might be upset when the
current OS does not run on their 3 year old hardware.
> For example, can we all accept a decreee of obsolescence from the
> manufacturer's point of view when an old machine has ~10% the performance of a
> new one? Try applying Moore's Law to calcuate how many years that works out
> to. Surprise!
>
>> I think I give more allowances to Apple, though, for the trouble of switching
>> CPU platforms and doing what they can to work with the strengths of being
>> able to focus on having modern hardware and modern software being built with
>> each other in mind.
>>
> The vertical integration quality has been Apple's product niche for years, and
> OS X with the directions it is taking is no exception. The technolgoy trend
> shifted away from faster and faster CPU clockspeeds awhile back and is
> increaasingly headed towards parallel computing, so SL's underpinnings puts
> them in a leadership position. Personally, I'd not be too surprised to watch
> the next Mac Pro with Photoshop CS5 be a real eye-opener performance wise, and
> I'd not be too surprised if there aren't already are some customers who are
> planning their IT budgets around that anticipation...afterall, the same thing
> happened back when Mac buyers were waiting and waiting and waiting for the G5.
Sure: and OS X 10.7 will likely make a difference in speed and usability as
well. Expect big user-visible changes with it.
>>>> Whatever Apple did with Snow Leopard, I had more apps break in that upgrade
>>>> than I have had with any other - including when they have gone to new CPUs.
>>>> Clearly things changed in the background!
>>>>
>>> Yup, that does seem to indicate a pretty big technical change - not unlike
>>> Vista (in a very *general* sense, before anyone thinks I'm literally
>>> comparing the two specific products), in that ultimately the initial release
>>> is more of an "almost release candidate", and certain things are fixed after
>>> general release.
>>>
>> For my situation that is what it was - as I have said, OS X 10.6.2 was the
>> first workable version of Snow Leopard for me. �But even more than that, even
>> with 10.6.2, a lot of my software had to be updated. �Some of it still does
>> not work perfectly with it, such as iClip, which is not going to be updated
>> at all for Snow Leopard.
>>
> With a purposefully broad brush, apps that tend to break on an Apple update
> are often the product of that developer overlooking or ignoring a chunk of
> Apple's software development guides.
This was the case with some software - no doubt. I had one developer tell
me not only that was the case, but looking at his old code he has no idea
why it worked prior to Snow Leopard. :)
> I can recall way back with the transition from 24 to "32 bit clean" and how
> Apple told developers for months and months to get updates out because its-a-
> comin' and those that put their heads in the sand failed, and when they tried
> to beg off the customer complaints and point at "bad" Apple, the customers
> told them that they were simply full of crap because they had received more
> than adequate advanced notice. It has taken over a decade, but business is
> finally starting to learn that the consumer's ability to collaborate BS
> stories will invariably backfire to bite them if they choose to lie to their
> customers.
I was not looking to place blame - just noting that the number of apps that
broke with Snow Leopard show that it clearly made some big differences.
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
Priam
> Priam<pr...@notsosure.com> wrote:
>>> Rubbish. The newest Mac that is no longer getting any updates is an
>>> entry level iMac G3 discontinued in February 2001, which was limited to
>>> Panther. Its last update was in mid 2008.
>>
>> I recently looked on the Apple's site and found nothing about this.
>
> They don't publish articles announcing when specific machines or system
> versions are not being supported - my post was based on observation
Well, you see, the nice thing with Linux is that, beside being free, you
don't have to "observe". Everything is laid out clean.
You go to Google:
<http://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Aubuntu.com+release+cycle>
and the first link is what you want:
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/ubuntu/release-cycle
"We produce a new Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Server release every six
months. That means you'll always have the latest and greatest
applications that the open source world has to offer. Ubuntu is designed
with security in mind. You get free security updates for at least 18
months on the desktop and server."
18 months!!! That's rather short! Indeed, but all you have to do is
upgrade to the next version. As a matter of fact, it's better, if you're
not used to the intricacies of Linux/Ubuntu, to wait 2 months before
installing a new version. If Microsoft takes 5 years to produce a
failure such as Vista, it's hard to imagine will do better supporting
all the same material in 6 months.
But what if you want to stay put? Let's continue:
"A new LTS version is usually released every 2 years. With the Long Term
Support (LTS) version you get 3 years support on Ubuntu Desktop, and 5
years on Ubuntu Server. There is no extra fee for the LTS version, we
make our very best work available to everyone on the same free terms.
Upgrades to new versions of Ubuntu are and always will be free of charge."
What about Fedora? Same process: Google!
<http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&num=100q=site%3Afedoraproject.org+release+cycle>
"Release X is supported until one month after the release of Release X+2.
This translates into:
* Fedora 11 will be maintained until 1 month after the release of
Fedora 13.
* Fedora 12 will be maintained until 1 month after the release of
Fedora 14. "
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/LifeCycle
Fedora doesn't have a LTS version, but you may use Scientific Linux or
Centos.
Etc. No need to rely on "observation". No secrets for newbies,
everything is laid out flat.
And you people are glad to pay more because... Macs are about value :)
Gee, what would it look like if it wasn't? :)
Joel
>> I can accept that the G5 version would have been "stripped down" in
>> some way, but not that it *couldn't* have been done. I don't see why
>> the Intel version had to be limited by also having a G5 version.
>
>If it was "stripped down" it would have fragmented the user experience of
>Snow Leopard - Apple likes to keep one version (as opposed to MSs several
>and Linux's hundreds).
MS doesn't have several standards, though (and Apple's wouldn't have
been meaningfully fragmented). I bought 7 Pro for two
equally important (and happily coincidental) reasons: A) it's my
desktop, and B) Home Premium (and even Ultimate) are consumer
products, and my computer would not be likely to be upgraded to the
next Windows version. On a current laptop, I'd probably be perfectly
happy with Home Premium.
>I think you are I are in agreement that it is reasonable for people to be
>frustrated that Apple has left them behind so quickly - not supporting the
>newest OSs (and sometimes apps) on relatively new machines. As I have
>noted, I still am bummed Apple has dropped Classic support... just the other
>day I ran into an old game online I would have liked to download and play
>with for a bit - not worth loading on my wife's machine.
>
>I think I give more allowances to Apple, though, for the trouble of
>switching CPU platforms and doing what they can to work with the strengths
>of being able to focus on having modern hardware and modern software being
>built with each other in mind.
It's tolerable.
>>> Whatever Apple did with Snow Leopard, I had more apps break in that upgrade
>>> than I have had with any other - including when they have gone to new CPUs.
>>> Clearly things changed in the background!
>>
>> Yup, that does seem to indicate a pretty big technical change - not
>> unlike Vista (in a very *general* sense, before anyone thinks I'm
>> literally comparing the two specific products), in that ultimately the
>> initial release is more of an "almost release candidate", and certain
>> things are fixed after general release.
>
>For my situation that is what it was - as I have said, OS X 10.6.2 was the
>first workable version of Snow Leopard for me. But even more than that,
>even with 10.6.2, a lot of my software had to be updated. Some of it still
>does not work perfectly with it, such as iClip, which is not going to be
>updated at all for Snow Leopard.
Lucky for them, people like us exist. ;)
--
Joel Crump
-hh
> -hh stated:
> [...]
> >
> > Its not a question of if it was technologically possible or not: with
> > enough resources, something could have been cobbled together.
>
> Adobe, at least publicly, has been kind in their comments of Apple as Apple
> pulled 64 bit Carbon out from under them. I hope Adobe and MS were in on
> that before the general public was. Either way, it is Adobe which has given
> Apple the "free pass", at least on that one.
There was really far more going on than that. As always, because this
is capitalism and not a charity, it comes down to money.
Carbon exists to be a transitional aid to OS X by providing limited
support to old (as in OS 9 PPC) legacy code, and under 32bit Carbon,
it was successful at minimizing the near term cost impact of software
programming revisions. However, it is known to be sub-optimal, so it
was never intended to be a "one-shot" permanent solution: that's
Objective-C with the Cocoa libaries (some of whose origins are in
Smalltalk) which will take time & money. Similarly, a transition to
64bit was a known eventuality by everyone and the mainstream's first
consumer need for 64bit was with imaging, hence Adobe's involvement.
Having 64b Carbon would give developers (hence, Adobe in particular)
more time to complete their OS X software transition updates - - which
should have been underway since 2001 - - and avoid messing up their
commercial product release cycles and subsequent revenue streams.
But this is predicated upon software developers actually playing ball
with the long term transition plan of OS X....ie, actually spending
money on this portion of their software development, not just give it
"soon come" lip service. In Adobe's case, they believed that their
software was so critical to the Mac platform that they could force
Apple to roll-over and give them 64b Carbon, effectively allowing
Adobe to "defer forever" their expense for a proper transition to OS X
and let the bean-counters pocket that software development money as
more profit.
Simply put, Apple's "failure" to deliver 64bit Carbon meant that Adobe
Management had their bluff called.
So Adobe is now paying the price with having to pay what they knew
that they should have paid, plus its occurring on a now-shortened
development schedule, although this is a blessing from Apple in
disguise: this situation has been made worse not by Adobe or Apple,
but by the marketplace consumer demand for 64bit support, because the
digital camera industry's highly competitive expansion in megapixels
and bitdepth.
Of course, in public, Adobe tried to "gracefully" pin all the blame on
Apple for the problem, but what they conveniently didn't say is that
they had known of the expense of the rewrite for more than a half
decade and had kept on putting it off and putting it off, plus Adobe
also didn't really want to admit that they had been caught off-guard
by the rate of change in the digital image market: their beancounters
simply wanted to continue to milk their cash cow with minimal
reinvestment, even though that cow wasn't anymore a very good product,
due to the performance inefficiencies that existed by using the
transitional environment. As such, Apple's move also forced Adobe to
"do the right thing" in technical programming terms, which will at
least bring Apple Hardware up to equity in terms of runtime
performance. Essentially, all the technologists know what's right,
and that this is a net victory over the shortsightedness of the
corporate bean-counters.
> I understand why - just would have liked Apple to have supported it. Not,
> though, at the expense of progress. A 3 year old machine not being able to
> support the newest OS, however, is a bit more of a problem.
The only issue that I'm aware of with the Intel Macs is that several
of the 2006 releases had base configurations of only 512MB on RAM,
which is short of the 1GB minimum. Apple has since fixed this by
being less stingy with base model RAM, plus it can be argued that the
upgrade expense is relatively minor, particularly if SL had been a
full priced update. Still, it could have been handled better.
> >> I think you are I are in agreement that it is reasonable for people to be
> >> frustrated that Apple has left them behind so quickly - not supporting the
> >> newest OSs (and sometimes apps) on relatively new machines.
>
> > Sure, it would be nice if we could receive 'free' support from Apple
> > for 'forever', but the grim fiscal reality is that that's no way to
> > run a business..it would necessitate that someone like Apple make
> > their intitial purchase price even higher, so that they get paid for
> > those lifeycle costs that you want.
>
> > Since all businesses do have to make a decision on what is no longer
> > profitable at some point, so rather than just complaining about what
> > Apple has decided, how about offering a logical and supportable
> > position?
>
> What complaints do you think I have made - I have noted I understand where
> Apple is coming from, but also understand why people might be upset when the
> current OS does not run on their 3 year old hardware.
As soon as you're making statements like your "3 year", above, you're
suggestively complaining that you have a particular customer
expectation that's not being lived up to.
My point is that you've not been specific on what your customer
expectations are - - which then begs the question of how can anyone
ever expect to be satisfied by anything that Apple could do when
they've not clearly told them what you want?
So be specific: what do you want?
Do you want 3 years of full lifecycle support? Or do you want 5
years? Or 7? Or an IMNSHO highly unrealistic 10 years?
Now granted, you may not have necessarily thought about this in these
terms, so this is simply an invitation for you to think about what
specifically you want, and by being specific, you can critique
yourself for how (un)realistic it may very well be. To this end,
this is why I suggested:
> > For example, can we all accept a decreee of obsolescence from the
> > manufacturer's point of view when an old machine has ~10% the performance of a
> > new one? Try applying Moore's Law to calcuate how many years that works out
> > to. Surprise!
Now barring no objection from you to the above, is this something that
you can agree to live with?
If yes, then you've helped the industry by clearly articulating your
customer expectations.
If no ... then what concrete suggestion will you make to provide clear
consumer guidance?
Yes, committing to a specific value does mean that you're potentially
subject to that assertion being critiqued for how (un)realistic it may
be, but the reason for asking is based upon the value statement that
it is unrealistic to criticize anyone for not being able to
successfully hit a vague, poorly defined target.
-hh
Snit
2:04 AM:
> Snit <use...@gallopinginsanity.com> wrote:
>
>>> I can accept that the G5 version would have been "stripped down" in
>>> some way, but not that it *couldn't* have been done. I don't see why
>>> the Intel version had to be limited by also having a G5 version.
>>
>> If it was "stripped down" it would have fragmented the user experience of
>> Snow Leopard - Apple likes to keep one version (as opposed to MSs several
>> and Linux's hundreds).
>
>
> MS doesn't have several standards, though (and Apple's wouldn't have
> been meaningfully fragmented). I bought 7 Pro for two
> equally important (and happily coincidental) reasons: A) it's my
> desktop, and B) Home Premium (and even Ultimate) are consumer
> products, and my computer would not be likely to be upgraded to the
> next Windows version. On a current laptop, I'd probably be perfectly
> happy with Home Premium.
I was in reference to all the versions of, say, Windows 7. This confuses
people. Apple tends to have one versions (for desktop users). To have a
"full" version of Snow Leopard for Intel and a "stripped down" version for
PPC would not have been a good thing.
>> I think you are I are in agreement that it is reasonable for people to be
>> frustrated that Apple has left them behind so quickly - not supporting the
>> newest OSs (and sometimes apps) on relatively new machines. As I have
>> noted, I still am bummed Apple has dropped Classic support... just the other
>> day I ran into an old game online I would have liked to download and play
>> with for a bit - not worth loading on my wife's machine.
>>
>> I think I give more allowances to Apple, though, for the trouble of
>> switching CPU platforms and doing what they can to work with the strengths
>> of being able to focus on having modern hardware and modern software being
>> built with each other in mind.
>
> It's tolerable.
It certainly has pros and cons. I think some in CSMA refuse to acknowledge
the "side" that does not support their side of the never-ending religious
wars.
>
>>>> Whatever Apple did with Snow Leopard, I had more apps break in that upgrade
>>>> than I have had with any other - including when they have gone to new CPUs.
>>>> Clearly things changed in the background!
>>>
>>> Yup, that does seem to indicate a pretty big technical change - not
>>> unlike Vista (in a very *general* sense, before anyone thinks I'm
>>> literally comparing the two specific products), in that ultimately the
>>> initial release is more of an "almost release candidate", and certain
>>> things are fixed after general release.
>>
>> For my situation that is what it was - as I have said, OS X 10.6.2 was the
>> first workable version of Snow Leopard for me. But even more than that,
>> even with 10.6.2, a lot of my software had to be updated. Some of it still
>> does not work perfectly with it, such as iClip, which is not going to be
>> updated at all for Snow Leopard.
>
> Lucky for them, people like us exist. ;)
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
Snit
33c84f71-febf-47f8...@a6g2000yqm.googlegroups.com on 1/7/10
4:32 AM:
Where did Apple say Carbon would not be kept on equal footing? Apple said
Carbon would work *and* would be moved to 64 bit. Apple then changed their
plans. Their may have been some very good reasons for this - some technical
reason why it was not feasible or a cost-benefit analysis where it was found
the only two major players who would have to do a migration were Adobe and
Microsoft - and it was deemed they could migrate (likely with help from
Apple engineers).
> But this is predicated upon software developers actually playing ball
> with the long term transition plan of OS X....ie, actually spending
> money on this portion of their software development, not just give it
> "soon come" lip service. In Adobe's case, they believed that their
> software was so critical to the Mac platform that they could force
> Apple to roll-over and give them 64b Carbon, effectively allowing
> Adobe to "defer forever" their expense for a proper transition to OS X
> and let the bean-counters pocket that software development money as
> more profit.
Again: where did Apple day Carbon was not going to be maintained?
> Simply put, Apple's "failure" to deliver 64bit Carbon meant that Adobe
> Management had their bluff called.
Bluff? What bluff? Adobe was going to use a technology Apple said they
would support. When Apple back pedaled on that, at least in public Adobe
did not say one unkind word (that I know of anyway). They did note how it
would change their plans a bit and delay 64 bit Photoshop for OS X. They
also took extra time in developing CS4 for both OS X *and* Windows.
> So Adobe is now paying the price with having to pay what they knew
> that they should have paid, plus its occurring on a now-shortened
> development schedule, although this is a blessing from Apple in
> disguise: this situation has been made worse not by Adobe or Apple,
> but by the marketplace consumer demand for 64bit support, because the
> digital camera industry's highly competitive expansion in megapixels
> and bitdepth.
How did Adobe "know" Apple would flip flop on their plan?
> Of course, in public, Adobe tried to "gracefully" pin all the blame on
> Apple for the problem
Where? Adobe (through Jack Nack) spoke very kindly of Apple's
late-in-the-game change.
> , but what they conveniently didn't say is that they had known of the expense
> of the rewrite for more than a half decade and had kept on putting it off and
> putting it off, plus Adobe also didn't really want to admit that they had been
> caught off-guard by the rate of change in the digital image market: their
> beancounters simply wanted to continue to milk their cash cow with minimal
> reinvestment, even though that cow wasn't anymore a very good product, due to
> the performance inefficiencies that existed by using the transitional
> environment.
Even before they moved to Cocoa they were moving to using more OS imaging
technologies.
> As such, Apple's move also forced Adobe to "do the right thing" in technical
> programming terms, which will at least bring Apple Hardware up to equity in
> terms of runtime performance. Essentially, all the technologists know what's
> right, and that this is a net victory over the shortsightedness of the
> corporate bean-counters.
>
>
>> I understand why - just would have liked Apple to have supported it. Not,
>> though, at the expense of progress. A 3 year old machine not being able to
>> support the newest OS, however, is a bit more of a problem.
>
> The only issue that I'm aware of with the Intel Macs is that several
> of the 2006 releases had base configurations of only 512MB on RAM,
> which is short of the 1GB minimum. Apple has since fixed this by
> being less stingy with base model RAM, plus it can be argued that the
> upgrade expense is relatively minor, particularly if SL had been a
> full priced update. Still, it could have been handled better.
Why are you speaking only of Intel Macs... in the context of the
conversation could you not figure out I was in reference to PPC Macs? Those
are the ones which could not run an OS released three years after people
were still buying them.
>>>> I think you are I are in agreement that it is reasonable for people to be
>>>> frustrated that Apple has left them behind so quickly - not supporting the
>>>> newest OSs (and sometimes apps) on relatively new machines.
>>
>>> Sure, it would be nice if we could receive 'free' support from Apple
>>> for 'forever', but the grim fiscal reality is that that's no way to
>>> run a business..it would necessitate that someone like Apple make
>>> their intitial purchase price even higher, so that they get paid for
>>> those lifeycle costs that you want.
>>
>>> Since all businesses do have to make a decision on what is no longer
>>> profitable at some point, so rather than just complaining about what
>>> Apple has decided, how about offering a logical and supportable
>>> position?
>>
>> What complaints do you think I have made - I have noted I understand where
>> Apple is coming from, but also understand why people might be upset when the
>> current OS does not run on their 3 year old hardware.
>
> As soon as you're making statements like your "3 year", above, you're
> suggestively complaining that you have a particular customer
> expectation that's not being lived up to.
Sure: it is a reasonable expectation that your hardware will be able to run
relatively near-future updates. Three years seems a bit fast to not be able
to. I get why... but I also understand why people might be frustrated.
> My point is that you've not been specific on what your customer
> expectations are - - which then begs the question of how can anyone
> ever expect to be satisfied by anything that Apple could do when
> they've not clearly told them what you want?
>
> So be specific: what do you want?
>
> Do you want 3 years of full lifecycle support? Or do you want 5
> years? Or 7? Or an IMNSHO highly unrealistic 10 years?
>
> Now granted, you may not have necessarily thought about this in these
> terms, so this is simply an invitation for you to think about what
> specifically you want, and by being specific, you can critique
> yourself for how (un)realistic it may very well be. To this end,
> this is why I suggested:
I think it is reasonable to expect my machine to be able to run the newest
OS for five years or at least close to it. It is common for people to keep
machines that long. I tend to keep mine longer, but so be it.
-hh
> > support to old (as in OS 9 PPC) legacy code, and under 32bit Carbon,
> > it was successful at minimizing the near term cost impact of software
>
> Where did Apple say Carbon would not be kept on equal footing?
First,
<http://developer.apple.com/Carbon/>
First paragraph:
"Carbon is a 32-bit procedural API for developing Mac OS X
applications. Carbon provides backward compatibility for existing Mac
OS X software, while serving as a stepping stone for developers
porting procedural applications from other platforms.."
Note that it highlights:
1) backwards compatibility to legacy Mac _for_ OS X software (not "of"
OS X software)
2) states that it is a 'stepping stone' instead of a 'final
destination' for porting applications
Then,
<http://developer.apple.com/Cocoa/>
First paragraph:
"Cocoa is Apple's name for ... the development layer of Mac OS X. By
developing with the Cocoa frameworks you will be writing
applications ... with complete access to the full power of the
operating system, including the signature Mac look and feel. Cocoa is
simply the best way to create native Mac applications. "
Key points; emphasis added:
1) Cocoa is "THE" development layer.
2) Has COMPLETE access to the FULL power of the OS...
3) Is simply the BEST way to create native Mac Apps
> >> I understand why - just would have liked Apple to have supported it. Not,
> >> though, at the expense of progress. A 3 year old machine not being able to
> >> support the newest OS, however, is a bit more of a problem.
>
> > The only issue that I'm aware of with the Intel Macs is that several
> > of the 2006 releases had base configurations of only 512MB on RAM,
> > which is short of the 1GB minimum. Apple has since fixed this by
> > being less stingy with base model RAM, plus it can be argued that the
> > upgrade expense is relatively minor, particularly if SL had been a
> > full priced update. Still, it could have been handled better.
>
> Why are you speaking only of Intel Macs... in the context of the
> conversation could you not figure out I was in reference to PPC Macs? Those
> are the ones which could not run an OS released three years after people
> were still buying them.
Because I consider such a claim to be invalid.
While I could say that the time between the last PPC Mac being
replaced by the Mac Pro (Aug 7, 2006) to the release of Snow Leopard
(August 28, 2009) is technically more than 3 years, this is splitting
hairs.
I could also point out the pragmatism that Snow Leopard didn't have
dramatic overt changes for the customer experience: as we've already
beaten to death, its enhancements were "under the hood" in laying
groundwork for enhancements to be incorporated into new Application
software, which was why it wasn't a $129 MSRP upgrade. Since neither
Mac Office 2010 nor Adobe Photoshop CS5 have shipped yet, the
advantages of Snow Leopard are effectively still only theoretical in
nature...so as of today, a hypothetical "put out" customer hasn't yet
been "put out"; this argument adds 5 months (and counting) to the
above date.
One could also consider that due to hardware shortcomings, a large
percentage of those final year G5s had major hardware failures and
were subsequently replaced by Apple with a new Mac Pro for free, so
these buyers haven't yet been abandoned. The first year failure rate
was roughly 20%, so an important question is how many of these
customers remain who haven't already been upgraded to Intel? Maybe
its only 50%?
No, what's most significant IMO is that we're trying to apply a
generalized expectation to a situation where there clearly are
extenuating factors. So while I do agree that only "3.01" years
doesn't meet my general expectations either, this is clearly a special
circumstance for which one's general expectations are overridden.
Specifically, that hypothetical customer bought that product 3.4 years
ago is presumably also not sufficiently clueless to have not missed
the fact that Apple had made a very public announcement of their
intended architecture shift to Intel more than a year earlier than
that (June 6, 2005). As such, Mr. Hypothetical informed buyer knew
that they were buying a **trailing edge** technology, which carries a
trade-off of near term advantages versus long term disadvantages.
FYI, note <http://lowendmac.com/musings/05/1021.html> and that its
very first line reads:
"Apple will begin migrating to Intel CPUs next summer, but the PowerPC
isn't dead yet."
Based on the above, anyone who bought a PPC Mac after June 2005 should
have reasonably known the implications of such a purchase decision in
terms of its pros/cons. From this perspective, the customers who made
such a trade-off can & should be discounted from consideration.
As such, for examining conformance versus one's _general_
expectations, it is more valid & appropriate to count from before the
Intel annoucement. Here that's the period from 5 June 05 to 28 Aug
09, which is a "full support" period of not less than ~4.2 years...and
from the pragmatic perspective of "but have there been real world
gains that they've been unable to realize?" by not having the latest
OS, these customers who didn't have the knowledge of the impending
Intel annoucement are now at 4.6 years and counting.
With that benchmark, and your stated expectation of:
> I think it is reasonable to expect my machine to be able to run the newest
> OS for five years or at least close to it. It is common for people to keep
> machines that long. I tend to keep mine longer, but so be it.
Then its clear that Apple has in this particular circumstance fallen a
bit short. Its up to you to decide if the magnitude of this
shortfall is signficant or not versus your lattitude of "...or at
least close to it".
To offer some additional perspective, let's also not forget that there
are product release buying cycles. Specifically, the G5 had been a
long time coming and it was 18 August 2003 when the G5 PowerMac
finally shipped. What followed was a "pent up demand" buying cycle
of a peak and a subsequent dip - - and thus when the Intel
announcement was made in June 2005, these machines were all still
under 2 years old and thus not yet really subject to the hardware
upgrade/replacement cycle. The question at that point was if these
customers could hold out with their G5s until the Mac Pro shipped, and
looking at the calendar, the oldest G5 PowerMacs were just barely
hitting 4 years old when the Mac Pros shipped on 7 Aug 2006.
...and looking forward to today, those buyers of G5s when they first
came out in 2003 got a run of 6 years before SL shipped, which exceeds
your above stated expectation. Splitting these two extremes gives
us an average of 5.1 years (or higher, if 'pragmatisim' is being
observed).
-hh
Snit
0aae9e93-0ccb-4c0c...@q4g2000yqm.googlegroups.com on 1/7/10
2:47 PM:
Has this been the way it was written since before Apple back pedaled on
Carbon 64 bit support? I believe before that Apple was claiming it was an
API that would be on equal footing.
>>>> I understand why - just would have liked Apple to have supported it. �Not,
>>>> though, at the expense of progress. �A 3 year old machine not being able to
>>>> support the newest OS, however, is a bit more of a problem.
>>
>>> The only issue that I'm aware of with the Intel Macs is that several
>>> of the 2006 releases had base configurations of only 512MB on RAM,
>>> which is short of the 1GB minimum. �Apple has since fixed this by
>>> being less stingy with base model RAM, plus it can be argued that the
>>> upgrade expense is relatively minor, particularly if SL had been a
>>> full priced update. �Still, it could have been handled better.
>>
>> Why are you speaking only of Intel Macs... in the context of the
>> conversation could you not figure out I was in reference to PPC Macs? �Those
>> are the ones which could not run an OS released three years after people
>> were still buying them.
>
> Because I consider such a claim to be invalid.
Instead of discussing a claim you ignore it because you find it invalid.
Odd.
> While I could say that the time between the last PPC Mac being
> replaced by the Mac Pro (Aug 7, 2006) to the release of Snow Leopard
> (August 28, 2009) is technically more than 3 years, this is splitting
> hairs.
Did Apple not sell them past Aug 7? If not, well, sure, 3 years and a
couple weeks. Yeah, splitting hairs. :)
> I could also point out the pragmatism that Snow Leopard didn't have
> dramatic overt changes for the customer experience: as we've already
> beaten to death, its enhancements were "under the hood" in laying
> groundwork for enhancements to be incorporated into new Application
> software, which was why it wasn't a $129 MSRP upgrade.
Sure, the UI differences were not that great, but they do make a difference.
And if I was using an older machine I would not get to work with the new
user experience, which would hurt my ability to support others, if nothing
else.
> Since neither Mac Office 2010 nor Adobe Photoshop CS5 have shipped yet, the
> advantages of Snow Leopard are effectively still only theoretical in
> nature...so as of today, a hypothetical "put out" customer hasn't yet been
> "put out"; this argument adds 5 months (and counting) to the above date.
Snow Leopard is what is in discussion. Those other software packages are
not... so no adding 5 months to the date.
> One could also consider that due to hardware shortcomings, a large
> percentage of those final year G5s had major hardware failures and
> were subsequently replaced by Apple with a new Mac Pro for free, so
> these buyers haven't yet been abandoned.
This is a bit of a cop-out: gee, your hardware is likely to have died and
been replaced so it would not matter.
> The first year failure rate was roughly 20%, so an important question is how
> many of these customers remain who haven't already been upgraded to Intel?
> Maybe its only 50%?
>
> No, what's most significant IMO is that we're trying to apply a
> generalized expectation to a situation where there clearly are
> extenuating factors. So while I do agree that only "3.01" years
> doesn't meet my general expectations either, this is clearly a special
> circumstance for which one's general expectations are overridden.
I have talked about how the transition makes a difference and I get that...
but that does not mean I would not be bummed if I had such a machine.
> Specifically, that hypothetical customer bought that product 3.4 years
> ago is presumably also not sufficiently clueless to have not missed
> the fact that Apple had made a very public announcement of their
> intended architecture shift to Intel more than a year earlier than
> that (June 6, 2005). As such, Mr. Hypothetical informed buyer knew
> that they were buying a **trailing edge** technology, which carries a
> trade-off of near term advantages versus long term disadvantages.
While the announcement had been made, and Intel Macs were shipping, Apple
sold them the Mac as a Pro machine.
> FYI, note <http://lowendmac.com/musings/05/1021.html> and that its
> very first line reads:
>
> "Apple will begin migrating to Intel CPUs next summer, but the PowerPC
> isn't dead yet."
Not in contention that the migration was already started.
> Based on the above, anyone who bought a PPC Mac after June 2005 should
> have reasonably known the implications of such a purchase decision in
> terms of its pros/cons. From this perspective, the customers who made
> such a trade-off can & should be discounted from consideration.
Ah, so Apple's transition means people should not be frustrated at not
having their 3 year old machine not support the newest OS. Nope.
> As such, for examining conformance versus one's _general_
> expectations, it is more valid & appropriate to count from before the
> Intel annoucement. Here that's the period from 5 June 05 to 28 Aug
> 09, which is a "full support" period of not less than ~4.2 years...and
> from the pragmatic perspective of "but have there been real world
> gains that they've been unable to realize?" by not having the latest
> OS, these customers who didn't have the knowledge of the impending
> Intel annoucement are now at 4.6 years and counting.
3 years. Not 4.6.
> With that benchmark, and your stated expectation of:
>
>> I think it is reasonable to expect my machine to be able to run the newest
>> OS for five years or at least close to it. �It is common for people to keep
>> machines that long. �I tend to keep mine longer, but so be it.
>
> Then its clear that Apple has in this particular circumstance fallen a
> bit short. Its up to you to decide if the magnitude of this
> shortfall is signficant or not versus your lattitude of "...or at
> least close to it".
The "magnitude" is such that I understand why users would be frustrated and
feel like they have been let down. Note: no boycott, no lawsuit, no stomping
of feet. :)
> To offer some additional perspective, let's also not forget that there
> are product release buying cycles. Specifically, the G5 had been a
> long time coming and it was 18 August 2003 when the G5 PowerMac
> finally shipped. What followed was a "pent up demand" buying cycle
> of a peak and a subsequent dip - - and thus when the Intel
> announcement was made in June 2005, these machines were all still
> under 2 years old and thus not yet really subject to the hardware
> upgrade/replacement cycle. The question at that point was if these
> customers could hold out with their G5s until the Mac Pro shipped, and
> looking at the calendar, the oldest G5 PowerMacs were just barely
> hitting 4 years old when the Mac Pros shipped on 7 Aug 2006.
>
> ...and looking forward to today, those buyers of G5s when they first
>
> came out in 2003 got a run of 6 years before SL shipped, which exceeds
> your above stated expectation. Splitting these two extremes gives
> us an average of 5.1 years (or higher, if 'pragmatisim' is being
> observed).
The discussion is about those who bought them near the end of them being
sold. Had they been sold for 50 years before that it would not matter
(though it would be major bragging rights for Apple supporters to talk about
how far ahead of PCs Macs were 50 years ago!)
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
Joel
>>> If it was "stripped down" it would have fragmented the user experience of
>>> Snow Leopard - Apple likes to keep one version (as opposed to MSs several
>>> and Linux's hundreds).
>>
>> MS doesn't have several standards, though (and Apple's wouldn't have
>> been meaningfully fragmented). I bought 7 Pro for two
>> equally important (and happily coincidental) reasons: A) it's my
>> desktop, and B) Home Premium (and even Ultimate) are consumer
>> products, and my computer would not be likely to be upgraded to the
>> next Windows version. On a current laptop, I'd probably be perfectly
>> happy with Home Premium.
>
>I was in reference to all the versions of, say, Windows 7. This confuses
>people.
Right, but they aren't actually different. I have Ultimate installed
right now, and so do all Home Basic and Home Premium users - it's just
that only the Pro (and lower) features are active.
> Apple tends to have one versions (for desktop users). To have a
>"full" version of Snow Leopard for Intel and a "stripped down" version for
>PPC would not have been a good thing.
Well, I don't think it would be all that stripped down. I doubt it
would be anything the vast majority of people would be aware of. Some
of those G5 Macs were *killer* machines.
>>> I think I give more allowances to Apple, though, for the trouble of
>>> switching CPU platforms and doing what they can to work with the strengths
>>> of being able to focus on having modern hardware and modern software being
>>> built with each other in mind.
>>
>> It's tolerable.
>
>It certainly has pros and cons. I think some in CSMA refuse to acknowledge
>the "side" that does not support their side of the never-ending religious
>wars.
True - it's not that I don't recognize the advantage of dropping PPC
support, but I simply can't agree with it philosophically. Not when I
see how well Win7 runs on this old CPU. There were G5 Macs that
*easily* beat my performance potential.
--
Joel Crump
Snit
5:16 PM:
> Snit <use...@gallopinginsanity.com> wrote:
>
>>>> If it was "stripped down" it would have fragmented the user experience of
>>>> Snow Leopard - Apple likes to keep one version (as opposed to MSs several
>>>> and Linux's hundreds).
>>>
>>> MS doesn't have several standards, though (and Apple's wouldn't have
>>> been meaningfully fragmented). I bought 7 Pro for two
>>> equally important (and happily coincidental) reasons: A) it's my
>>> desktop, and B) Home Premium (and even Ultimate) are consumer
>>> products, and my computer would not be likely to be upgraded to the
>>> next Windows version. On a current laptop, I'd probably be perfectly
>>> happy with Home Premium.
>>
>> I was in reference to all the versions of, say, Windows 7. This confuses
>> people.
>
>
> Right, but they aren't actually different. I have Ultimate installed
> right now, and so do all Home Basic and Home Premium users - it's just
> that only the Pro (and lower) features are active.
Look at the uproar that occurred based on Vista's low end version not having
many of the GUI features that the other versions had. Apple is avoiding
that.
>> Apple tends to have one versions (for desktop users). To have a
>> "full" version of Snow Leopard for Intel and a "stripped down" version for
>> PPC would not have been a good thing.
>
> Well, I don't think it would be all that stripped down. I doubt it
> would be anything the vast majority of people would be aware of. Some
> of those G5 Macs were *killer* machines.
The GPU likely would not be supported for many of the features. I am sure
that things such as the Expos� updates could have been.
>>>> I think I give more allowances to Apple, though, for the trouble of
>>>> switching CPU platforms and doing what they can to work with the strengths
>>>> of being able to focus on having modern hardware and modern software being
>>>> built with each other in mind.
>>>
>>> It's tolerable.
>>
>> It certainly has pros and cons. I think some in CSMA refuse to acknowledge
>> the "side" that does not support their side of the never-ending religious
>> wars.
>
>
> True - it's not that I don't recognize the advantage of dropping PPC
> support, but I simply can't agree with it philosophically. Not when I
> see how well Win7 runs on this old CPU. There were G5 Macs that
> *easily* beat my performance potential.
The difference, though, is MS did not have to back-port new features to an
old CPU.
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
-hh
>
> Has this been the way it was written since before Apple back pedaled on
> Carbon 64 bit support? I believe before that Apple was claiming it was an
> API that would be on equal footing.
I didn't bother to go check for older revisions of the pages on the
Wayback Machine. If you believe that it may have been significantly
different, you can now go do that research and let us know what you
find, either way.
> >> Why are you speaking only of Intel Macs... in the context of the
> >> conversation could you not figure out I was in reference to PPC Macs? Those
> >> are the ones which could not run an OS released three years after people
> >> were still buying them.
>
> > Because I consider such a claim to be invalid.
>
> Instead of discussing a claim you ignore it because you find it invalid.
> Odd.
No, its called providing the rationale for my assertion.
Since you find that odd, our conversation is over.
-hh
Snit
81bb033b-8a2c-43c5...@m25g2000yqc.googlegroups.com on 1/7/10
6:21 PM:
You changed the topic... and when asked why, you said because the comments
about the topic were, to you, invalid.
Your behavior was odd.
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
Maurice
"-hh" <recscub...@huntzinger.com> wrote in message
news:81bb033b-8a2c-43c5...@m25g2000yqc.googlegroups.com...
Plus all the other stuff you clipped. Guess you were winding up on the short
end, eh? A shame - all that lame rethoric.
Maurice
"Steve Hix" <se...@NOSPAMmac.comINVALID> wrote in message
news:sehix-7E7C72....@5ad64b5e.bb.sky.com...
> In article <lth6k5ti7brfe0ilq...@4ax.com>,
> Alec Lourmier <al...@abortedirc.net> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 3 Jan 2010 13:46:34 -0500, "Maurice" <Mauric...@aol.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >I think it was unconscionable. Imagine buying a brand new G5 less than
>> >three years ago, only to find that it became obsolete with a CPU switch.
>
> Writes someone who apparently doesn't actually use computers.
Writes someone who runs WIN7 with Aero on an over four year old Dell.
-hh
> "-hh" <recscuba_goo...@huntzinger.com> wrote:
> Snit <use...@gallopinginsanity.com> wrote:
> > > Instead of discussing a claim you ignore it because you find it invalid.
> > > Odd.
>
>> No, its called providing the rationale for my assertion.
>> Since you find that odd, our conversation is over.
>
> Plus all the other stuff you clipped. Guess you were winding up on the short
> end, eh? A shame - all that lame rethoric.
Sorry "Maurice", but to claim that I wasn't discussing something and
then delve into comments on my discussion that was indeed present is
simply a lie, and such individuals do not have to be tolerated.
The bottom line on the 'Apple Support' debate is very simple:
everything is parsed into specificity and generalizability, and the
former always amends the latter. Thus, while is is IMO reasonable to
_generally_ say that, for example, ~5 years of support should be
expected, the _specific_ circumstances regarding the last of the
PowerMacs was that it was not routine business-as-usual: these were
impacted by an announcement that they were being EOL'ed, and there was
15 months worth of advanced notice beforehand. So one technique for
adjusting one's generalized expectation is to use this time context to
effectively adjust the rule of thumb.
This use of specific information to amend generalized is not unlike
just like buying a new Saab today: is anyone here really so naive to
think that the ending of that brand isn't going to have any impact at
all on any aspect of them buying one?
Of course there's an impact: the good news is that short term, you're
probably going to get a steep discount off the MSRP today. But the
bad news is that its resale value is going to be take a big hit, plus
the dealership that you bought it at has a much higher chance of not
being around to provide warranty or regular service, which are
examples of long term sacrifices.
-hh
Joel
>>> I was in reference to all the versions of, say, Windows 7. This confuses
>>> people.
>>
>> Right, but they aren't actually different. I have Ultimate installed
>> right now, and so do all Home Basic and Home Premium users - it's just
>> that only the Pro (and lower) features are active.
>
>Look at the uproar that occurred based on Vista's low end version not having
>many of the GUI features that the other versions had. Apple is avoiding
>that.
Apparently, with 7, they limited the Home Basic version to emerging
markets. Most Vista users had Home Premium (or higher), though (and
if they bought Home Basic, they should've read about the differences,
first).
>>> Apple tends to have one versions (for desktop users). To have a
>>> "full" version of Snow Leopard for Intel and a "stripped down" version for
>>> PPC would not have been a good thing.
>>
>> Well, I don't think it would be all that stripped down. I doubt it
>> would be anything the vast majority of people would be aware of. Some
>> of those G5 Macs were *killer* machines.
>
>The GPU likely would not be supported for many of the features. I am sure
>that things such as the Expos� updates could have been.
Hmm, so you mean that the G5 Macs used a radically different system
for video output? I admittedly don't know enough about the history of
Mac hardware.
>> True - it's not that I don't recognize the advantage of dropping PPC
>> support, but I simply can't agree with it philosophically. Not when I
>> see how well Win7 runs on this old CPU. There were G5 Macs that
>> *easily* beat my performance potential.
>
>The difference, though, is MS did not have to back-port new features to an
>old CPU.
Wouldn't that mainly be a compiling/testing issue (which I do realize
is costly, of course), though?
--
Joel Crump
Joel
>"Steve Hix" <se...@NOSPAMmac.comINVALID> wrote in message
>news:sehix-7E7C72....@5ad64b5e.bb.sky.com...
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> >I think it was unconscionable. Imagine buying a brand new G5 less than
>>> >three years ago, only to find that it became obsolete with a CPU switch.
>>
>> Writes someone who apparently doesn't actually use computers.
>
>Writes someone who runs WIN7 with Aero on an over four year old Dell.
The latest BIOS update for my machine is dated 9/05. When the machine
was given to me, it didn't even have that BIOS version installed. And
yet, like you, I'm running 7 with Aero.
--
Joel Crump
Maurice
yAAAwwwn - I feel fatigued. Could it be the tedious boredom you inflict on
us?
Maurice
"Maurice" <Maurice504...@aol.com> wrote:
> "-hh" <recscuba_goo...@huntzinger.com> wrote:
> Snit <use...@gallopinginsanity.com> wrote:
> > > Instead of discussing a claim you ignore it because you find it
> > > invalid.
> > > Odd.
>
>> No, its called providing the rationale for my assertion.
>> Since you find that odd, our conversation is over.
>
> Plus all the other stuff you clipped. Guess you were winding up on the
> short
> end, eh? A shame - all that lame rethoric.
Sorry "Maurice", but to claim that I wasn't discussing something and
then delve into comments on my discussion that was indeed present is
simply a lie, and such individuals do not have to be tolerated.
So KF me.
The bottom line on the 'Apple Support' debate is very simple:
everything is parsed into specificity and generalizability, and the
former always amends the latter. Thus, while is is IMO reasonable to
_generally_ say that, for example, ~5 years of support should be
expected, the _specific_ circumstances regarding the last of the
PowerMacs was that it was not routine business-as-usual: these were
impacted by an announcement that they were being EOL'ed, and there was
15 months worth of advanced notice beforehand.
Total appologist BS. Apple could have easily made SN backward compatible.
They only had to write for one CPU not thousands of apps.
So one technique for
adjusting one's generalized expectation is to use this time context to
effectively adjust the rule of thumb.
More empty -hh retoric.
This use of specific information to amend generalized is not unlike
just like buying a new Saab today: is anyone here really so naive to
think that the ending of that brand isn't going to have any impact at
all on any aspect of them buying one?
Not ending a "brand" - ending a company.
Of course there's an impact: the good news is that short term, you're
probably going to get a steep discount off the MSRP today. But the
bad news is that its resale value is going to be take a big hit, plus
the dealership that you bought it at has a much higher chance of not
being around to provide warranty or regular service, which are
examples of long term sacrifices.
So you now you equate a defunct car company to a viable electronic company.
You truly are amusing.
BTW: your quotes are still broke.
I know Google Groups is free - but cheap Usenet service is available. But
all that sock switching does add up in coin.
Snit
6:33 AM:
> Snit <use...@gallopinginsanity.com> wrote:
>
>>>> I was in reference to all the versions of, say, Windows 7. This confuses
>>>> people.
>>>
>>> Right, but they aren't actually different. I have Ultimate installed
>>> right now, and so do all Home Basic and Home Premium users - it's just
>>> that only the Pro (and lower) features are active.
>>
>> Look at the uproar that occurred based on Vista's low end version not having
>> many of the GUI features that the other versions had. Apple is avoiding
>> that.
>
>
> Apparently, with 7, they limited the Home Basic version to emerging
> markets. Most Vista users had Home Premium (or higher), though (and
> if they bought Home Basic, they should've read about the differences,
> first).
The fact there are so many different flavors is a source of confusion in the
market place. Of course, with the bigger market share the idea of different
versions makes more sense.
>>>> Apple tends to have one versions (for desktop users). To have a
>>>> "full" version of Snow Leopard for Intel and a "stripped down" version for
>>>> PPC would not have been a good thing.
>>>
>>> Well, I don't think it would be all that stripped down. I doubt it
>>> would be anything the vast majority of people would be aware of. Some
>>> of those G5 Macs were *killer* machines.
>>
>> The GPU likely would not be supported for many of the features. I am sure
>> that things such as the Expos� updates could have been.
>
> Hmm, so you mean that the G5 Macs used a radically different system
> for video output? I admittedly don't know enough about the history of
> Mac hardware.
They had different video cards. Many of the video goodies only work with
newer cards.
>>> True - it's not that I don't recognize the advantage of dropping PPC
>>> support, but I simply can't agree with it philosophically. Not when I
>>> see how well Win7 runs on this old CPU. There were G5 Macs that
>>> *easily* beat my performance potential.
>>
>> The difference, though, is MS did not have to back-port new features to an
>> old CPU.
>
>
> Wouldn't that mainly be a compiling/testing issue (which I do realize
> is costly, of course), though?
It would be costly and time consuming... and likely not work quite the same.
I suspect the new Finder is tied to some Snow Leopard only features, for
example.
--
[INSERT .SIG HERE]
-hh
> Snit <use...@gallopinginsanity.com> wrote:
> >
> >The GPU likely would not be supported for many of the features. I am sure
> >that things such as the Expos updates could have been.
>
> Hmm, so you mean that the G5 Macs used a radically different system
> for video output? I admittedly don't know enough about the history of
> Mac hardware.
There's probably technical challenges, but there's also the more
important question of if those old GPUs were powerful enough to really
offer any meaningful bump up in performance if the work to "Grand
Central Dispatch" them was actually done. Historically, we're talking
about roughly 2005 vintage Macs from a period where every new release
was promptly followed with strong enthusiast complaints about how
Apple was going "cheap" with "old" GPU technology. For example, the
last G5s' baseline videocards were the ATI Radeon X600 Pro or XT and
nVidia GeForce 6600.
> Wouldn't that mainly be a compiling/testing issue (which I do realize
> is costly, of course), though?
Not necessarily: one has to consider the trade-off versus the
original intent. When it comes to reworking code for competing
architectures, there's invariably a performance hit, and since the
objective of SL was to provide enablers for performance gains, the
potential is that including this backwards accomodation would "lower
the tide for all boats".
For example, when you look at Apple's technology marketing hype, they
try to infer that it was because of 64 bit that allows for some of
their new applications to load 20% faster. Golly, but this sounds
like BS to me, since we also know that they deleted the PPC
"Universal" branch, which means that the file would have been smaller
and thus, simply had fewer bytes to be transferred & loaded.
-hh
-hh
>
> So KF me.
No can do, since I'd rather kill you through boredom.
And as per your other post complaining of your "fatigue", I'm clearly
making progress :-)
-hh
-hh
> -hh <recscuba_goo...@huntzinger.com> wrote:
> >> I guess my biggest problem (other than the fairness aspect of not
> >> having the "cool new thing") is that it at least *looks* like they're
> >> "hinting" at people with relatively new hardware to buy yet newer
> >> hardware.
>
> >Competitive capitalism - - do you really expect them to do anything
> >less? And by choosing to be more agile than Microsoft, they have
> >greater growth potential.
>
> I expect Apple to commit to reasonable support of their products with
> OS upgrades - the G5s are only not viable here because of Apple's own
> failure to go with x86 in the first place, and their own laziness/evil
> in not releasing Snow Leopard for the G5.
It comes down to the question of what one personally considers
adequate for "reasonable support" of their products.
For example, my G5 PPC is over 6 years old, which is more than Snit's
definition of "~5 years" of support (YMMV), plus the OS version I'm
running is still being supported with security patches, etc, which I
consider to be "reasonable" at this time. True, I'm not running the
latest OS on this machine, but when a pragmatic look at just what new
software applications have shipped which make real the potential
advantages of 10.6 that would be of relevent benefit, the answer is
that there aren't any new "killer" application updates yet, which
means that there's a zero penalty to wait before upgrading this
desktop system. As such, the decision for how & when to upgrade can
be based more so on other considerations & factors....in other words,
the customer's schedule.
> >> If for no other reason than to avoid the appearance of gouging
> >> their biggest enthusiasts, they should've supported the G5 for 10.6.
>
> >Not really: the big early adopter enthusiasts make it a selling off
> >their 1-2 year old stuff and buying the newest, sometimes even before
> >the newest has been formally announced. And for true power users,
> >they're going to be upgrading to get more power on a cyle of roughly
> >every ~2 years anyway, so they've already transitioned off of PPC.
> >Note that both of these groups are the ones that are more profitable
> >to Apple, since they buy new products more often.
>
> Well, that's certainly a great summary of what's wrong with the Mac
> platform. Hardware-brand-locked software, incessant hardware
> upgrades - lack of choice. Hell, maybe the G5 owners *deserve*
> Apple's abuse.
Not really, since that was just an observation of one small group.
The behavior of "buy and hold" is more typical, and in the specific
case of the G5s, many were not particularly satisfied with the G4's
lag so there was pent up demand that surged once the G5 finally
shipped, resulting in sales in the 2003-04 timeframe. By 2005, the
jig was up with PPC, which at that point, their machines were <2 years
old, so the consumer decision process became one of one's ability to
wait for Intel versus knowingly buying an interium machine that would
soon be obsolete.
> Don't bring Vista into this. It's an anomaly, period. Win7 will
> easily replace XP. Vista was an unfortunate necessity, but it's
> irrelevant.
Vista was merely the latest manifestation of Microsoft's business
practices in terms of how they push off development costs to 3rd party
hardware suppliers (driver development), which simply increases MS's
in-house profits. The reason why Win7 didn't have this same problem
is because MS conciously avoided changes that would have required
another rewrite - - but they haven't changed their business policies
to eliminate this process, which means that MS will repeat this
mistake at some point in the future: it might not be Win8, but it
will invaribly happen again...you can bet your life on it.
> You're simply using data to mask your lie about Vista being just
> another upgrade. It's not working. Everyone knows why Vista sucked,
> and why 7 is the real upgrade. Done and done.
Everyone knows? Why don't you give us your version.
FYI, here's mine, which is an expansion on what I just said above:
Vista sucked was because MS must periodically mandate major
architecture changes, but since they offload this work to 3rd Party
hardware suppliers to write thier new drivers and because said 3rd
Parties have gotten screwed so many times before by MS with late
changes, they're understandably are reluctant to spend their own money
to then get screwed by MS, so some now won't update their product at
all until the final MS version ships. The net result of this is that
the early MS adopters have problems due to these missing drivers, etc,
which results in a poor customer experience. MS has done this
before, they did it with Vista and they'll invariably do it
again...all because this development approach is cheaper for MS, which
makes it more profitable for them.
-hh
Maurice
The classic "snip" to avoid answering what you cannot.
BWAHAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAA!
-hh
>
> >> So KF me.
>
> > No can do, since I'd rather kill you through boredom.
>
> > And as per your other post complaining of your "fatigue", I'm clearly
> > making progress :-)
>
> The classic "snip" to avoid answering what you cannot.
> BWAHAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAA!
Its already been addressed. I simply don't feel like repeating
myself.
-hh
PS: Gee - - I haven't changed a thing, but your quoting now works
properly!
Tim Murray
> yAAAwwwn - I feel fatigued. Could it be the tedious boredom you inflict on
> us?
Well, you certainly didn't put any effort into proper quoting.