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Sign Out Sign In Register. Latest Insider. Check out the latest Insider stories here. More from the IDG Network. This has isolated Microsoft from the risk of cutthroat competition in the hardware market, but also meant the company had to support a wide variety of whatever hardware components manufacturers decided to use, from the cutting edge of the high end down to the bargain basement.
Microsoft has done a great job of supporting a huge range of hardware in Windows. However, the massive resources required to support a nearly infinite array of components also took its toll on Microsoft.
In the s, Microsoft worked with hardware vendors to create the Multimedia PC , which attempted to standardize a minimum specification for a sound card, video support, CD-ROM, and PC system resources.
The Advantage of Limited Support. Microsoft has since continually worked with Intel and PC manufacturers to further standardize the PC. Those efforts have helped to limit the range of odd ball hardware vendors throw in their machines, and make sure that basic machines have the minimum requirements to run the current version of Windows.
These efforts have also served to make PCs a commodity. Despite Microsoft's efforts, PC makers still act in their own interests to shave costs and remain competitive. Dell's highly efficient, high volume operation requires it to put whatever parts are available in its machines, while HP's emphasis on shipping cheaper and cheaper boxes forces it to use low quality parts.
Anyone who supports fleets of PCs knows that even within a single model of a PC, there can be a variety of different components used, each requiring different drivers that all need to be upgraded separately. Windows struggles to provide plug and play support for all these different variables, but the end result is far more complicated and ugly than the experience Apple can offer.
Dual Vendor Finger Pointing. Few other consumer products present the frustrating complexity of the dual vendor PC. Even Microsoft has abandoned the idea of licensing software on other's hardware in the consumer electronics arena. Windows Vista can't. It's stuck in a business model that has long been hailed by analysts as the only road to success, but it's increasingly obvious that that model really doesn't work well, particularly in the consumer space.
It's frustrating to have a problem with a PC and be pointed back and forth between hardware and software vendors who blame each other. Of course someone who's willing to install his own OS probably could just assemble the PC from parts anyway.
Integration has always been Apple's differentiator Score: 5 , Insightful. Apple is most definitely a hardware company, if you measure this by income. Their software is merely the hitch, at least as far as consumer level offerings. You see this most clearly in OS serialization.
Where MS has it calling home, wanting your first born child, and your left pinkie as collateral, the Apple OS has never been serialized. Legalities aside, you can install that. Re:Integration has always been Apple's differentia Score: 5 , Interesting.
Not with anyone I talk to. I feel like a broken record. Apple is not a hardware or software company. Apple is a technology integrator. They buy or get for free like BSD technologies, integrate them, pretty them up, and sell them for a huge markup. They don't manufacture their own hardware.
They didn't develop the vast majority of their OS. They didn't invent the portable music player or the online music store. They integrated technology in a way that the mass market finds useful. Re:Integration has always been Apple's differentia Score: 5 , Insightful. The thing is that the only companies that mattered, up to the mid 80's, were the system integrators.
They were the one that deliver the machines that would do the job. It made sense. Few people wish to have a compressor dropped off at thier door,and then be told they can build the refrigerator. Most people don't even want to repair the refrigerator. So the important companies were the ones that not only delivered complete solutions, but that supported those solutions as well.
Companies like IBM and Xerox. I'm not sure what you're getting at Score: 2. Re: Score: 3 , Funny. The instructions were rather humorous, because there were two steps for Windows users, and just one for Mac users.
I simply plugged in the drive and it worked. From the article: Macs aren't more expensive because Apple ships them with an OS, just as Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer does not raise its cost for Windows. That's because Apple has to recover the cost of developing that OS through sales of Mac hardware. Whether it would be worthwhile for them to do that I leave as a rather obvious exercise for the reader. Cheers, Ian.
Re:"Macs aren't more expensive.. Of course it wouldn't be a Mac either. Guess what? The price was almost exactly the same. And depending on how you configured each to get a close match between the two, either one could be more expensive. Bottom line, there is no appreciable difference in price when it comes to base features, warranty, ect. My late boss and I did an internal study for our company on the total cost of ownership difference between Macs and Windows pcs several years ago.
At the time we were and still are building our own pcs for desktops and servers and installing Windows XP Pro on the desktops and Windows Server on the servers. As far as hardware went, buying Macs were considerably more expensive than our build-it-ourselves machines. Software though w. Parent is wrong, not insightful Score: 5 , Informative. So, in other words, your argument is both wrong and stupid.
Have a nice day. Re:Parent is wrong, not insightful Score: 4 , Insightful. Let's cut the "more expsnsive" nonsense Score: 2. Apple MacBook 1. One dollar and one penny. I think Apple programmers are more productive than their MS counterparts, but not because they're in any way "better" - I think they have an easier life. A group of 30 clever people, experts in the language, can be let down by one not-quite-so-expert person not realising some subtle interac.
Hardware and software Score: 2 , Interesting. Sure, I could carry a mouse and fingerprint reade. Re: Score: 2 , Informative. That's two people - You and your friend - Who don't like Macs.
I have a powerbook and it works well for me. As to a fingerprint reader, I don't carry any national security files on my Mac. Between the login and built in 'filevault' encryption, I don't worry about someone getting at my data if my book is stolen. As someone who by profession has used a lot of laptops, I can tell you that the trackpad on Mac laptops beats any other trackpad. It just feels a lot better, not glassy or slippery, and I'm enchanted by the trackpad scrolling if you hold two fingers on the trackpad and move, it functions as a scroll wheel.
I can't speak for your friend or his PowerBook. PowerBooks haven't been on sale from Apple for months now. Ever since , the metal PowerBooks and MacBook Pro's had the wireless antennas underneath rubber patches on the side of the lid--i. You're not supposed to rest your wrists along the edge of the notebook. That's bad ergonomics. What's the practical use of a fingerprint scanner, anyway? Do you work for the NSA?
Re:Hardware and software Score: 5 , Informative. If Apple's hardware is so fantastic, why do they feel that the only way they can compete is by forcing people to use it? By making you buy complete Macs they know they got paid for OS X as well, the hardware is the biggest and most complex dongle possible.
By having just a few fixed configuration, testing and support is much easier. Many crappy experiences with Windows is due to crappy hardware and crappy drivers. Apple wants to have an image, for example they've never released a low-end machine. The iPod was built on image, like "You can have any color you want, as long as it's white" which most people thought died out with Henry Ford.
They're not going to give up on their hardware image easily. Apple doesn't really charge a fixed price for OS X, they can price-gouge you based on what hardware you intend to run it on. If they had to offer one price that'd run on anything from Mac mini-class to Mac Pro-class machines, they couldn't. Because OSX is only good on Apple hardware? By opening it to standard PCs they loose the advantage of developing operating system designed tested, supported for specific hardware parts.
I hate Windows and use OSX and freenixes only. But I have to admit that lots of "Windows problems" are related to the fact, that it is intended to try to run on any obscure piece of hardware.
Thats easy, they are afraid of MacOS X becoming another Windows clone, Windows just can't get the same integration with the hardware the way MacOS X can, because Microsoft just can't control the hardware that is used the way Apple can. I love how everyone has jumped on you for postulating that - maybe, just maybe - Apple hardware isn't all that it's cracked up to be.
Between heat problems, "mooing", dead logic boards, bad batteries, and all of the other problems that Apple's hardware has had, it's abundantly clear that Apple's hardware isn't really any different from the rest of the PC industry. I will never switch to an OS that only runs on one brand of hardware.
If Apple's two laptop models don't impress me, I'm screwed. There are litera. When you write for specific hardware I built a Smoothwall firewall last week, that kept crashing. I finally tracked the problem to a bad NIC that was just good enough to run in Windows and to not to generate error messages in the log. Does that make Macs better than SW? Why doesn't Apple themselves fight harder against this? It seems they'd have decent grounds with all these OEM deals. Or am I missing something and they actually are, or have been but have lost such a case?
It just seems without these deals, Apple would have quite a bit to win. Today I watched my dear father struggle for four hours 4! I could not believe the complications he experienced. On a Mac, this would have been simple, easy, intuitive.
What amazed me was his persistence. That's what Windows people do, they persist. See, the Windows experience is not just an OS experience, it is an application experience. Like most fans of the Mac, I let fanbois of the Mac do my talking for me. I sit back and keep quiet. I am more than a little pleased when they go overboard. As electric as they get in their praises for the Mac, I am silently even more electric. On a Mac, you hook your camera up to the computer and you're done.
On XP, you persist for 4 hours. What a difference a sixth of a day makes. So the "Mac user experience" is about how not to waste time. My dear old dad is in his 70s and won't switch to Mac. I enjoy watching his frustrations, actually, because his comments are priceless, and he doesn't have that much to do. But seriously, who would willingly accept Windows as the way to experience the wonders of modern CPUs?
People with a lot of time on their hands. Re:the silent mac minority Score: 5 , Interesting. OK, OK. Anecdotes are fun, and sometimes useful. But here's are some that may seem to counter yours too, just a story. Generalizations are always iffy.
About eight of the ten or so keys, though, have eventually failed on the OSX machines around here, though still work just fine for XP and linux. Also, plugging in my dad's digital cameras and my girlfriend's into OSX has never failed to bring up easy dialogues to transfer pictures, etc.
But they've never failed on XP without installing drivers nor on linux again, drivers are already in the system, and there are no problems. You think that's bad? On Linux, I couldn't get my camera to work other than as root for over a year. The distro installed a fucked up default config and there was virtually zero documentation on how to fix it. I actually considered reinstalling windows and the retarded MB of camera bloatware , just for this one thing.
So typing su was enough to make you consider retnstalling windose In the options section of the fstab, add the option 'user' to the mount point, e. PenGun Do What Now??? Standards and Practices! How unfortunate. I just plugged my new camera in and XP immediately offered up a Scanner and Camera wizard to transfer the images, with an Advanced option to just open an explorer window onto the camera as a filesystem.
No drivers, no hassle, zero-click. Mind you, this is a reasonably expensive camera Canon Powershot 3IS. Well, I'd say that is the standard on Windows too, I've never had a problem getting digital cameras to work and in general without own drivers.
Maybe there was something particularly odd about this camera, which might have made it far more difficult on Mac too?
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