macintosh marketshare now at less than 4%

[adzski]

Originally posted by Henchman
I can't believe they still haven't incorporated the 2 button mouse in their basic system.

Actually, it is kind of incorporated now. I dont know if new macs ship with a 2 button mouse or not, but right-clicking in OSX brings up a limited contextual menu. Its hilarious to think this was a major design "feature" for macs - talk about "dumbing down"!!

[max cooper]

"ND runs as efficiently as OSX is astounding. Hats off."

"Window Xp Does not run as effectively as OS X... come on...."

"Yeah, it does. Hate to burst your bubble."


Seems like this debate can only ever devolve into an ideological argument where each side mysteriously feels the need to validate their own choice of operating system by convincing users of the "other" operating system they've made the wrong choice.

If you've always used Windows and always will, Mac OS still provides you with something. A viable choice. If Apple were not around, and no one else popped up to fill their shoes in a real world, practical way, wouldn't it feel like you were using Windows because you had to and not because you chose to?

[max cooper]

Originally posted by Henchman
I can't believe they still haven't incorporated the 2 button mouse in their basic system

As a long-time mac user, I've always had this beef with them (not to mention several others). I use a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 4.0.

It includes software so that whenever you open a different app, all five buttons and the scroll wheel can perform different functions. I'm sure Windows users are familiar with that feature. It's a very good one.


I think that if you plug a 2-button mouse into OS X, the right button performs the same function as "control-click"

[Henchman]

Originally posted by max cooper
I think that if you plug a 2-button mouse into OS X, the right button performs the same function as "control-click"

About friggin time. It only took them what, 15-20 years to incorparte that on the old mac platform.

Hold on. We're moving at lightspeed mow!!

[manning1]

i think next year will be a watershed for the computer industry and daw users. if amd adjust their pricing of the powerfull
amd64 processor down , it will continue to take a big share of the market. and lets not forget the amd sempron processors.
a couple of these on a motherboard could be quite an interesting alternative.
ive also recently been checking out amd 64 laptops.
its my firm belief next year these will curry a lot of favor with
daw users. with 7200 rpm internal drives - these will be very powerfull solutions.
in summary - unless competitors come through with something better. ive a feeling next year will be very big for amd.
right now , if i someone were looking for a new desktop or laptop, there is no contest , amd desktop systems in my area go for 350 to 400 bucks. and these are NOT wimpy systems. no other competitor comes close.

[Henchman]

My amd64 laptop arrived today.I'll leave some feedback as soon as I get soem time on it.

[manning1]

will look forward to your experiences h'man.
i'll also feed back to you.
i was playing around with an acer ferrari the other day.
but 2500 bucks. compaq version was 1400.
but i noticed this averatec as well yesterday as i was whizzing past the laptops.
its the firewire side to be carefull of.
what are you using for firewire ?

[robdarling]

Not a mac basher- I owned the original 128k mac, have owned 20 macs over the years, still own 4 of them. But if you want to call the Mac a Porsche, you'd probably have to call it a 914- it looks cool, feels great, has nice leather, but it's still really just a volkswagen tuned up, at the end of the day.

As a studio tool, the Mac OS offers no advantage over Windows in host-based audio. The bloated graphics take an enormous tax on the cpu, and hardware is consistently 18 months behind in its power. PCI handling is always weak and disk performance can't be tuned at all. And since Nuendo stabilized in v. 2.2.3, I haven't had a crash in months- not something I can say even of Safari. In addition, the capricious nature of Steve Jobs leads to constant changes in hardware and software that leave the relatively small developers that are music companies in a constant state of catch-up.

I originally had to switch to XP in order to be able to do high res work- I just couldn't get the Mac to do it the way the XP machine could. I hated it at first, but once I got over the hump of learning a new language, I was fine. XP is nowhere near as pretty, but for host-based audio, I won't buy another Mac anytime soon.

[manning1]

rob and h'man.
heres an interesting link showing performance of amd vs competitors.
http://www.geocities.com/sw_perf/

[robdarling]

The problem with tests using static programs like this is that they don't at all account for the needs of realtime audio. Audio may not have the huge data manipulations of graphics, but its timing needs are much more stringent. Time has to correlate only 24-30 times a second in video, never for Photoshop, but 44, 48, 96 thousand times a second in audio. This is a huge thing, especially when you consider how much more intense a use of the whole system audio demands. Communications between the disk, the memory, the graphics engine, the cpu, etc, is much more complicated than doing a big job in the cpu and ram that just spits out a result at the end- it is a deeper test of the system design as a whole. For example, the current generation of Macs has a big disadvantage over other systems because the power pc does not support ordered i/o writes. The machine, in a nutshell, is setup for heavy processing, but not i/o. When audio info is trying to get back and forth between disk, cpu, memory, video system, processing cards, and i/o devices, you get bottlenecks and performance suffers. In addition, the massive cpu overhead that the mac's system graphics take is a big ro******* for a lot of the system's functions.

This kind of thing isn't new to Apple. Neither is the Apple tendency to stick with the same architecture for a very long time (how long did we have the same g4 just overclocked, with louder fans every six months.)

[ttauri]

Originally posted by Henchman
About friggin time. It only took them what, 15-20 years to incorparte that on the old mac platform.

Right-click support's actually been there for quite a while, I believe. I'm pretty sure I was using it in OS 9.

Stefan, I thought that Jobs actually bought the GUI stuff from Xerox (for a song--much to the dismay of the Xerox guys who originated it--because management didn't see a use for it).

Peece,
T. Tauri

[DistortingJack]

I just thought this would be funny to revive ; )

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by DistortingJack

I just thought this would be funny to revive ; )

Yeah, hilarious.

Unsubscribing now.

[drew]

Originally Posted by Henchman

Yeah, hilarious.

Unsubscribing now.

Didn't you switch to Mac OS Mark?

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by drew

Didn't you switch to Mac OS Mark?

No. Might get one end of this year.

[loopy]

You folks are missing the boat.
Haven't you heard the news?

Linux is going to take over the industry.
All industries from audio to video to games to electric vibraslappers.

That's what my Linux friends have been telling me for years.

According to them, Windows is dead and Macs are for fanbois with a lot of money.

YIKES!!!!