Why Aren't Schools Adopting Open Source?

[PaulQ]

I don't understand why you'd limit yourself to ProTools anyway; the beauty of the PC is there is often better alternatives. In this case, I'd have opted for Cakewalk Sonar.

 

As for Compact Discs, I haven't bought one of those since Napster came out. In 2003-2006, I had already considered the Compact Disc "Dead," and was buying my music on-line.

 

It's long been a complaint that performance is seemingly sacrificed for look-and-feel; ever since the days of MS-DOS vs. Windows. Eventually, technology surpasses its current state, and the issue becomes moot.

[Guest]

Well, first off, I've been using PT for 14 years now, since ProTools III, I was trained on it, so it is not just intuitive for me, but instinctive. I strongly disagree with the company's business practices, yet I haven't found anything better than PT for audio. I wish they didn't limit the affordable rigs to 16 outputs and 32 tracks, but in another way, it forces to me to be creative in how I plan a session. And really, if you need more than 32 tracks to record a song, you're doing too much.

 

Secondly though, I work in professional audio, it's not a hobby. It's important that I be able to trade files with the rest of the studios worldwide, and PT is the de facto DAW standard, whether we all like it or not. Being well versed in PT can get me gigs anywhere, Cakewalk, not so much. ProTools isn't a limit at all. GarageBand comes free in Macs, but I can't stand using it. However, most musicians I work with are now using it, so I have to try and stay familiar with it. And while many rapers/ techno guys may use whatever software they want, in "real" studios nothing matters unless you can run PT.

 

And third, it is sad, but it helps to have name recognition to get work from the public. Many musicians (the ones that don't record themselves at least) don't know or care that Cakewalk does the same thing as PT, they just want to see the name ProTools when you boot the system up. In the same way as they want to sing into a Neumann mic, or use an SM-57 to record the guitar, even though I may have other options available. In most cases I can use what I want as long as they know I have the "big guns" ready and waiting, it's kind of interesting psychologically. Actually, many of them have tried to record themselves with a Cakewalk crack or similar at home and achieved bad results, and that's why they come to me. They really do think that the gear makes more of a difference than talent, and they've read that the pro use ProTools, so that's what they want.

 

I may have beefs with how PT limits the expandability of the sub-$30,000 systems, but all in all I love the software above anything else I've worked in. Just like the Mac OS, I feel things in PT are just organized in a more logical, user friendly way than in Windows. I realize we're getting into which is better, vanilla or chocolate (vanilla, of course), but in the end, that's what it all boils down to anyway, cause both platforms do the same thing. It's just that in my experience using both platforms for music production, internet surfing, word processing & printing for 14 years now, that Mac has given me considerable less headache and worry. I also find that the people who like to tinker with computers tend to be the fervent Windows supporters; I've just never been one of those guys.

 

Being an audiophile, MP3's sounded like crap to me for quite some time, still do for my hearing. And until recently, iTunes did not offer anything encoded above 128 mbs/protected, so I never bought from them. I use 256 mbs VBR AAC files for much of my stuff, .Wavs for my sound effect library, and Apple Lossless for a few of my "sound system adjusting" songs, although I can probably re-rip those in as wavs now that iPods are 100's of gigs...

In short, I like to still collect CDs cause I like to have the physical medium to encode however which way I want to. Although now I order everything used from Amazon because I refuse to give my money to record companies after the root kit thing...

[Thurisaz]

And why do you think it would be easier to write drivers for M$ in comparison to Linux?

 

Because Microsoft practically does it for you. [...]

 

At this point I'll have to take your word for it because, as I freely admit, I'm no driver programmer for either system. I have a very hard time believing it, however, as what you describe runs totally counter to the looooong history of arrogance and willful incompetence that M$ has (and still continues to write today).

[Thurisaz]

MS is overly concerned with look-and-feel, often at the expense of performance. Why does a fresh install of XP suck down 120 megs of RAM on boot (a huge amount when the OS was first rolled out, as most PCs shipped with 128 megs on board)? Memory-intensive GUI. Turn off most of the fancy graphics crap and XP runs like a champ. This same looks-over-performance bias can be seen all across the board with MS. They are the AOL of software companies, designed more and more for idiots, and less and less for people who know what they're doing.

 

100 % agreed. The real idiocy of it all is, however, that they mainly care about the impression their crap makes on private customers... but offer half-decent support only to business customers.

 

Combine that with their constant attempts to sabotage the opposition (see the recent stealth-install of a firefox add-on that makes the thing unsafe)...

 

...really, that's the way of those who can't beat the enemy in an open (fair) battle.

[Guest]

BTW PaulQ, I sent you a PM...

[PaulQ]

Being an audiophile, MP3's sounded like crap to me for quite some time, still do for my hearing.

 

Being an audiophile, you should know that any commercial CD made between 2003 and 2006 lost dynamic range due to the "Loudness War," and so lost any real audible advantage over a well-encoded MP3 file.

 

http://georgegraham.com/compress.html

[Guest]

Being an audiophile, MP3's sounded like crap to me for quite some time, still do for my hearing.

 

Being an audiophile, you should know that any commercial CD made between 2003 and 2006 lost dynamic range due to the "Loudness War," and so lost any real audible advantage over a well-encoded MP3 file.

 

http://georgegraham.com/compress.html

 

That is a battle we are waging from within the industry, and it's been going on since about the mid 90's. You can see each year the CDs got louder and louder until we reach today. The problem is (again) the record execs, who think louder is better, and do not understand that decreasing the dynamic range of music destroys the quality of it. It's not something the recording engineers have decided they want to do. And it didn't go away; it's getting worse, actually.

 

And "any" CD made is a stretch. Most pop CDs, yes. But jazz and classical still have full dynamic range, and many "older" acts will have a reduced dynamic range, but nowhere near the crushed level of popular acts. For instance, compare Green Day's new CD to Donald Fagen's new solo release, "Morph the Cat". Both have been mastered in the modern way with look-ahead brick-wall limiters, but Fagen has left considerable dynamic range on his CD. It still pops out and is at a competitive level with the rest of this decades releases, but you can hear that the Green Day CD sounds squashed, it doesn't breathe at all; it's terrible.

 

So while I agree it is a problem, it's severity depends on which style of music you listen to on a regular basis. And "well encoded MP3" is an oxymoron. While the loudness wars are destroying dynamic range and enjoyability of music, MP3's are very lossy encoding (only 10% of the original file), and make music sound hole-y, swooshy, and thin. As a test, rip a wav file into the computer, and then copy it and align it with the original. Then take the copy convert it to an MP3. The invert the polarity of the MP3 and play it along with the sync'd up wav version. If you did this with 2 wav files you'd hear nothing, as they will cancel themselves out. Do it with an MP3 and what you hear is the difference between the original waveform and the MP3.

 

Data compression (MP3's, etc) and Audio compression are two completely different processes. Although they both can leave undesired artifacts if used improperly, they are not the same. In many ways, over compression of the audio will help it sound better as an MP3 than as a wav; something that I think may be driving the loudness wars. But just cause something is over compressed does not mean it is the same or worse than an MP3. It's really apples and oranges.

[PaulQ]

The same thing happens with .jpeg files; if you were to overlay a .jpg with a .bmp file in a way that the similar areas cancel each other out, you get to see how much of the picture is really lost. I mention this because if you take a well-encoded .jpg set at, say, 95%, and put it side by side with the corresponding .bmp file, it's unlikely that a person could visually distinguish one from the other. They'd have to blow it up to 200% and get real close to the screen and squint to pick out the detail differences.

 

Fortunately, my ears are not digital; they are analog. This means that, at a certain level, audible differences between lossless and lossy compression formats become indistinguishable. That said, there are other very critical factors at play, such as the amp, speakers, environment, and type of music. Through the small set of speakers I use at work (where music needs to be quiet), there's little difference between 128kbps and 192kbps; but when I get into my car and play it on my Monsoon system, the difference becomes obvious. That said, even with the Monsoon system in the car, the nature of a car is such that I'm not hearing any difference between 192kbps and an actual original CD. When I put on my over-the-ear Senheisser headphones in a very quiet room, or listen on my hi-fi at home, that's when the differences become noticeable. At that point, I'd encode at 320 kbps VBR, and the differences vanish once again. I'd have to copy it into a computer, convert it, invert it, and do all sorts of crap to it to be able to tell the difference.

 

Fact is, I listen to most of my music in my car or through a set of decent headphones from my Sansa Fuze; I'm rarely in a studio where you'd have the equipment to need to be to hear the difference. I understand the differences between data compression and dynamic range compression; my point was that, since many commercial recordings during this time were (are) have lost a lot of dynamic range, they aren't really being hurt by being turned into MP3's. You've already lost a lot of the dynamic range, so it only makes sense to compress the actual file.

[Loren]

This has been a very interesting thread. When I first posted it, I expected two or three short replies and then a dead thread. I had no idea that it would turn into a three page thread. For someone like me, who's got only a very slightly better understanding of computer issues than the average user, it's been informative to have the opinions of you guys. (That's why I read Tech Republic. Because I have no idea what they're talking about. Every once in a while, I learn something I can use.)

 

Thanks!

 

Loren

[Guest]

I've had a few lingering questions of mine answered in this thread, so I'm grateful too!

 

Paul,

 

The loudness wars in many ways can be compared to over exposure of a picture, I guess. At first glance it may look striking, or get your attention, but it will be hard to see details and will strain your eyes and after a bit just becomes annoying. Dynamic control over sound is used on every individual instrument in every stage of production, sometimes many times, for the last 60 years or so. Compression is a useful tool. The real problem today is when you take the stereo masters and squash them so they look literally like 2x4's; just straight blocks of "waveform". You have to zoom into a closer level to see that the file is audio...that is what kills the sound. The article you linked is correct in that we have turned the wonderful dynamic range of the CD into that of the LP. It's actually worse when you consider LPs weren't mastered to only 3dBs of dynamic range like the above mentioned Green Day CD is...

 

But in other ways we are kind of used to that sound. It is closer to that of LPs and most everyone agrees that was when music really cooked!

 

Kidding aside, we do tend to like our music to be restricted in dynamic range somewhat. For instance without it your music would sound very different in the car. Many things would get lost in the mix. (think old 40's recording of big bands). Honestly, I think things are only being overdone by about 4 to 6 dBs, which isn't all that much. You'd perceive that much of a drop in the signal level, but that is what a volume knob is for. It's amazing how things open up so much when you back those last few decibels off, but the big name labels are paying to get every dB removed.

[greenhunter]

This has been a very interesting thread. When I first posted it, I expected two or three short replies and then a dead thread. I had no idea that it would turn into a three page thread. For someone like me, who's got only a very slightly better understanding of computer issues than the average user, it's been informative to have the opinions of you guys. (That's why I read Tech Republic. Because I have no idea what they're talking about. Every once in a while, I learn something I can use.)

 

Thanks!

 

Loren

 

it's always good to keep finding things out.

[PaulQ]

The Case Against Apple (APPL), by Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo.com and co-founder of the TechCrunch50.com conference taking place on September 14-15th in San Francisco.

 

Link:

 

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-case-against-apple-2009-8#comment-4a842d6c38578e1322f2a2e3

 

Article:

 

About six years and $20,000 ago, I made the switch to Apple products after a 20-year love affair with Microsoft. That love affair started with the humble PCjr and ended with an IBM ThinkPad. From DOS to the first version of Windows (the run-time version that only loaded one program), and on to Windows 95 and XP, I dealt with the viruses, driver incompatibilities and other assorted quirks of Microsoft's wildly open ecosystem.

 

It sucked to have to buy anti-virus software and reinstall Windows every 12 months, so moving to Apple's rock-solid and virus-free OS was, in a word, delightful.

 

Sure, everything on the Mac platform costs twice as much, but considering the fact that my entire career centers around a desktop connected to the Internet, it really doesn't matter if I spend $2 a day or $20 a day for my hardware. I replace everything at about a two-year pace (i.e. phone, MP3 player, desktop and laptop). So, at $10 a day, what some folks spend on Starbucks, I have a two year budget of $7,500 for my gear. In fact, the only things I don't replace every two years are my 30" and 24" Dell Monitors, which I tend to keep for five years.

 

Over the last 12-18 months, my love affair with Apple has waned. Steve Jobs' peculiar, rigidly closed, and severe worldview have started to cramp my style. It's not entirely Steve's fault, as Apple's style and grace are a large part of what drew me to the platform initially. My collection of Mac products now includes seven iPods ($1,500), four Mac laptops ($8,000), two Airports ($500), a Time Capsule ($500), two Mac towers ($4,000), a Mac Mini ($600), two iMacs ($4,000) and all three iPhones ($1,500).

 

The cost of these items is just over $20,000, or about $3,300 a year. That's almost exactly $10 a day--what I budget for technology in my life. Half of that is personal, half of that is probably business. While I know I am a high-end consumer, since I do this for a living, I think there are many folks putting $5-10 a day toward hardware. Blogger Robert Scoble of RackSpace must spend $20 a day and Leo Laporte of This Week in Tech must spend $40 a day!

 

Key Point 1: For the past six years, if Steve makes something, I buy it. Sometimes, I buy two (one for my wife).

 

Key Point 2: I over-pay for Apple products because I perceive them to be better (i.e. Windows-based hardware is 30-50% less--but at 38 years old I don't care).

 

 

The Love Affair Ends

===================

Steve's a great guy, and the love affair has been wonderful, but I'm starting to look past him and back to Microsoft for a more healthy relationship that is less--wait for it--anti-competitive in nature.

 

Years and years after Microsoft's antitrust headlines, Apple is now the anti-competitive monster that Jobs rallied us against in the infamous 1984 commercial. Steve Jobs is the oppressive man on the jumbotron and the Olympian carrying the hammer is the open-source movement

 

For folks in the tech industry, this is not a new discussion. Another radical visionary, Steve Gillmor, has been hosting this discussion since Apple's draconian iTunes updates led smart people to *downgrade* their software. Think about that mind bomb for a second: people downgrading their software to maintain their freedoms--is this a William Gibson novel?

 

Steve Jobs is on the cusp of devolving from the visionary radical we all love to a sad, old hypocrite and control freak--a sellout of epic proportions.*

 

[ * Important Note: I've written this piece three times over the past year and never released it. It felt like releasing something like this about a personal hero when they were, according to all counts, dying, was too harsh. With Steve back to work and healthy for what will probably be his last five to ten years of full-time work (based on when most folks retire), I feel obligated to let this out. I know many folks in the industry are saddened to see our LSD-taking, radical free-thinking and fight the power hero, turning to the Dark Side. This note is written from a place of admiration and love. ]

 

 

The Case, The Five Parts

===================

I'd like to discuss four major issues around Apple's current product line that I believe are stifling the industry, consumer choice and pricing. Instead of just giving a simple solution to the problem, I thought long and hard about the opportunities for Apple to be less controlling and more open. For example, if the iPhone was available on more carriers, Apple would sell many, many more units, which would inevitably lead to people switching from Windows desktops to Macs (which is what happened with the iPod).

 

Bottom line: Of all the companies in the United States that could possibly be considered for anti-trust action, Apple is the lead candidate. The US Government, however, seems to be obsessed with Microsoft for legacy reasons and Google for privacy reasons.

 

The truth is, Google has absolutely no lock-in, collusion or choice issues like Apple's, and the Internet taught Microsoft long ago that open is better than closed.

 

Let's look at the case against, and the opportunities for, Apple:

 

 

1. Destroying MP3 player innovation through anti-competitive practices

--------------------------

There is no technical reason why the iTunes ecosystem shouldn't allow the ability to sync with any MP3 player (in fact, iTunes did support other players once upon a time), save furthering Apple's dominance

with their own over-priced players. Quickly answer the following question: who are the number two and three MP3 players in the market? Exactly. Most folks can't name one, let alone two, brands of MP3

players.

 

On my trips to Japan, China and Korea over the past couple of years, I made it a point to visit the consumer electronics marketplaces like Akihabira. They are filled with not dozens, but hundreds, of MP3 players. They are cheap, feature-rich and open in nature. They have TV tuners, high-end audio recorders, radio tuners, dual-headphone jacks built-in and any number of innovations that the iPod does not. You simply will not see those here because of Apple's inexcusable lack of openness.

 

Not only does Apple not build in a simple API to attach devices to iTunes, they actually fight technically and legally block people from building tools to make iTunes more compatible.

 

Think for a moment about what your reaction would be if Microsoft made the Zune the only MP3 player compatible with Windows. There would be 4chan riots, denial of service attacks and Digg's front page would be plastered with pundit editorials claiming Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were Borg.

 

Why, then, does Steve Jobs get a pass?

 

Steve Jobs gets a pass because we are all enabling him to be a jerk. We buy the products and we say nothing when our rights are stripped away. We've been seduced by Steve Jobs: he lifts another shiny object

over his head with a new eco-friendly feature and we all melt like screaming schoolgirls at Shea Stadium in '65.

 

Simple solution and opportunity: An iTunes API which allows the attachment of any mass storage device,not just a short list of players that jumped through Apple's hoops. If need be, perhaps consumers pay a simple licensing fee of $1-5 a unit to attach a non-Apple MP3 player to iTunes (i.e. pure profit for Apple).

 

 

2. Monopolistic practices in telecommunications

--------------------------------------------------------

Apple's iPhone is a revolutionary product that has devolved almost all of the progress made in cracking--wait for it--AT&T's monoply in the '70s and '80s. We broke up the Bell Phone only to have it put back together by the iPhone. Telecommunications choice is gone for Apple users. If you buy an Apple and want to have a seemless experience with your iPhone, you must get in bed with AT&T, and as we like to say in the technology space, "AT&T is the suck."

 

Simple solution and opportunity: Not only let the iPhone work on any carrier, but put *two* SIM card slots on the iPhone and let users set which applications use which services. (Your phone could be Verizon

and your browser Sprint!) Imagine having two SIM cards with 3G that were able to bond together to perform superfast uploads and downloads to YouTube.

 

 

3. Draconian App Store policies that are, frankly, insulting

--------------------------------------------------------

Like lemmings, we fell for your bar charts extolling the openness of the iPhone App platform and its massive array of applications. We over-paid for your phone--which you render obsolete every 13 months, like clockwork--and then signed our lives away to AT&T. The way you pay us back is by becoming the thought police, deciding what applications we can consume on the device we over-paid for!

 

Yes, every application on the phone has to approved by Apple, and if you were interested in something adult in nature...well...you can't do that.

 

Apple's justification for this nonsense is that they have to protect AT&T's network. Oh really? Aren't there dozens and dozen of open phones on everyone's network? The network hasn't crashed yet, and even if someone did create a malicious iPhone application, you would know EXACTLY who was running the application and be able to block and/or turn off their phone. The network was MADE to deal with these issues on a NETWORK level. To say you have to control people down to the application level defies all logic. A second year CS student understands this.

 

Who in their right mind feels the need to control the application-level anyway? It's absurd.

 

Imagine for a moment if every application on Windows Mobile or Windows XP had to be approved by Microsoft--how would you react? Exactly. Once again we've enabled Steve Jobs' insane control freak tendencies. This relationship is beyond disfunctional--we are co-dependent.

 

Simple solution: Apple could have a basic system setting that says "Allow Non-Approved Applications." When you click this setting, a popup could come on warning that, if you click this setting, you are waiving your previously-understood customer service arrangement (i.e. only people with approved applications can hand over their money at the Genius bar).

 

 

4. Being a horrible hypocrite by banning other browsers on the iPhone

--------------------------------------------------------

Opera is a fantastic browser built by a company in Oslo, Norway. In fact, a decade ago, I had a speaking gig there and got to interview the CEO of the company for Silicon Alley Reporter. (Sidebar: Man, do I miss being a journalist. I wish I could split 50% of my time being a journalist and 50% of my time being a CEO.) For over a decade, Opera has been making lighting-fast, lightweight and quirky browsers. Long before Apple launched Safari, with the goal of designing the fastest browswer on the Web, Opera was already there.

 

Opera's mobile browsers are "full of WIN," as the kids like to say these days. If you're a Windows Mobile or Blackberry user, you've probably downloaded them and enjoyed their WINness. The company started an iPhone browser project but gave up when faced with Apple's absurd and unclear mandate to developers: Don't create services which duplicate the functionality of Apple's own software. In other words:

"Don't compete with us or we will not let you in the game."

 

The irony of this is not lost on anyone who had a computer before they had an Internet connection. Apple was more than willing to pile on after Microsoft's disasterous inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows. In fact, what Apple is doing is 100x worse than what Microsoft did. You see, Microsoft simply included their browser in Windows, still allowing other browsers to be installed. In Apple's case, they are not only bundling their browser with the iPhone, but they are BLOCKING other browsers from being installed.

 

Simple solution and opportunity: Don't be a control freak and hypocrite. Allow people to pick their browser; the competition to make a better browser will increase the overall use of iPhones and mobile

data services.

 

 

 

5. Blocking the Google Voice Application on the iPhone

--------------------------------------------------------

Apple took Google's innovative and absurdly priced phone offering, Google Voice, out of the App Store and is currently being investigated by the FCC for this action. This point is similar to the browser issue, in that Apple wants to own almost every extension of the iPhone platform. How long before Apple decides to ban a Twitter client in favor of an Apple Twitter-like product? Seems crazy, I know, but by following Apple's logic you should not be able to use Firefox or Google Chrome on your desktop.

 

Simple solution and opportunity: Let people have three or four phone services coming in to their iPhones and perhaps charge a modest licensing fee for those types of service. Or, just simply stop being jerks and let the free market decide how to use the data services they've BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. That's the joke of this: you're paying for the data services that Apple is blocking. You pay for the bandwidth and Apple doesn't let you use it because, you know, they know better than you how you should consume your data minutes.

 

 

In Summary

--------------------------------------------------------

I'm not a huge fan of government involvement in business, so I would rather see Apple resolve these issues for themselves.

 

In fact, I believe many forces are already at work, with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Peter Rojas of GDGT.com (and founder of Engadget) coming out publicly against these very issues. Neither of these two individuals will use an iPhone *specifically* because it is incompatible with their lives.

 

Apple will face a user revolt in the coming years based upon Microsoft, Google and other yet-to-be-formed companies, undercutting their core markets with cheap, stable and open devices. Apple's legendary comeback ability will be for naught if they don't deeply examine their anti-competitive nature.

 

Making great products does not absolve you from technology's cardinal rule: Don't be evil.

 

It also doesn't save you from Scarface's cardinal rule: Never get high on your own supply.

 

Questions:

 

1. Do you think Apple would be more, or less, successful if they

adopted a more open strategy (i.e. allowing other MP3 players in

iTunes)?

 

2. Do you think Apple should face serious antitrust action?

 

3. Do you think Apple's dexterity and competence forgive their bad behavior?

[Guest]

OK, so if I learned anything in this thread, it is that there is a reason that Windows crashes all the time, is super slow, and Macs always work. Windows tries to makes everybody happy by being "compatible" with any hardware on the planet. As a result, things in Windows are as complicated as a tax return, just to get your pics in the computer. Drivers, updates, virus protection, etc, all are needed because Windows is a crowded OS that everybody wants in on, and Windows says "come on in guys, there's still plenty of room!"

 

Mac, OTOH, controls what hardware they pair with their OS, so they can anticipate any problems or incompatibilities and fix them before it gets to market. From what I understand, this is the main reason why Mac appears to work much better and stable than Windows.

 

Now, without doubt, the only people I know or have spoken to that hate Macs are computer people who like to tinker with their machines. They do not like Macs policies because it limits what they can do with the computer.

Which is fine, if you know what your doing. But most people do not; they think computers are some big scary box of magic that you have to know the spells to make it work right. To them, they want something they never need to think about.

 

The actual computers aside, I find most software is far cheaper on a Mac. iWork (Apple's version of Office) is only $80, not to mention all the software you get bundled with OSX, like GarageBand, iPhoto, and iWeb. Sure, these programs are laughable for people who know what their doing (I'm sure iWeb is just as laughable for a web designer as GarageBand is for me), but for the average person and how they use their computer, the programs included in OSX are far better than what you get in any HP or Dell machine. (I built MartyMets.com with iWeb in my Mac, I couldn't have done that in Windows without buying more software)My one gripe is that iWork is not included, as I think office programs should be a necessity. But still, 3rd party software is far cheaper. I had SoundForge on my Windows machines ($300), which is a 2 track DAW, and Mac has SoundStudio, does the exact same things, for $80. The only thing I've found that is more expensive is the actual computer itself. And taking into account what I've posted above, I do not see a problem. I get far more for my money when I buy a Mac than when I go Windoze. So I can't open it up and change things around? That's fine, I have no desire to do that anyway. Nobody ever writes about how Mac crashes all the time, how slow OSX is, how many virus' they get on their Macs. No; the only complaint is that you can't tinker with it. Really, it's not a big deal for 90% of the country.

 

So a few hundred buck extra for useful, creative software and a seamless computing experience, hmm. If I have to go with a "closed" system to get these features, I will. I think it is way worth the money. [i know you'll tell me I can get this with Windows, but IME, not without long hours pulling my hair out, talkning with Tech support in India, and having to buy my friend dinner to come over and make my machine work. It may be possible with Windows, but I've not been able to make it anywhere close to a Mac experience, even building my own machines.}

[PaulQ]

This is actually the most honest Macintosh user I have come across, and reflects my own experience using the Mac:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCOlf_7BT-I

 

EDIT: I make my web sites using Windows running PageBreeze (PageBreeze is, IMHO, better than anything that comes with any computer, including the Mac), so it didn't cost me a cent. A few quick examples:

 

http://paulq.org/amiga/'>http://paulq.org/amiga/

http://paulq.org/

http://paulq.org/amiga/'>http://paulq.org/amiga/jumpdisk/

http://accentonphoto.com/

http://retro-link.com/

http://vic20.ca/

 

For people interested in trying PageBreeze:

 

http://www.pagebreeze.com/

 

2nd EDIT: I'm pretty sure you can get PageBreeze for Mac, also for free.

[woodsmoke]

Hee, I love that video.

[Ouroboros]

This is actually the most honest Macintosh user I have come across, and reflects my own experience using the Mac:

Hmm... The experiences he talks about in the video... I haven't had any of them yet.

 

My Macs runs just a great, or better, than my PCs (and I got several of each--I'm surrounded by two Macs, three PC laptops, one Linux box, three home-built Windows servers--and that's in my home office alone, and not including my wife's and kids' computers.) And the Mac keyboard, it works great. I don't have any strange key-combos. Powerbutton works great. If he has a problem, like he talks about, then click and hold for two, three seconds. Perhaps many of the old problems went away with the Intel Mac?

 

Anyway, his critique and your experience, really doesn't match mine, or the people I know using the Mac. I seriously wonder if your problems (and his) were based on some of the older systems?

[woodsmoke]

That video was produced around the turn of the millennium. I'd be absolutely flabbergasted if Apple still hadn't fixed most of the issues which contributed to his frustrations at this point.

[PaulQ]

[Jedah]

The negative things said in The Case Against apple are correct. However, there actually are very good alternatives, you just have to know where/how to get them.

 

One thing I own is a Sony PSP. What's special about it is that I hacked it by creating a Pandora battery and using it to install custom firmware.

 

 

My PSP can do almost anything now. It's an MP3 player, can stream movies from youtube and elsewhere, can run a huge library of homebrew including GPS, mapquest, googlemaps, MKV support, and it can even emulate a TI-92 graphing calculator. I can run either PS1 or PSP games on it, I can run tons of emulators, and hundreds of homebrew games do to an Open Lua scripting environment the PSP hacker community has. I can connect to Irc, skype, and a whole bunch of other shit you probably thought could only be done on Apple's crap. How much extra did it cost me to make my PSP do this? Nothing. Just some intermediate-level hardware knowledge and about 20 minutes of my time.