Alfiejr's Profile

everyone has anecdotes, but those aren't the same as stats. of the dozen or so Mac products i've purchased, three failed. two during warranty and easily replaced on the spot at the Apple store, one after three years (dead PPC motherboard), which was one year sooner than my four year replacement cycle. so i was unhappy. anyway, you can find bitter buyers of every brand of PC in the world on any blog forum with similar tales of woe. the people who think it's all about them get nasty. the rest just chalk it up to the law of averages. things break. reliable stats on the hardware reliability of various brands and models of computer gear are hard to find. to the extent they are available, Mac products fare well compared to others. that's about all one can say definitely. (and that the 2007 XBox 360 was definitely a lemon.)

"If you argue that OS X makes the Mac much more valuable, I'll argue "go stick it on a PC then"" well, yeah, you can try that comeback, but then you'd be really stupid, since reality does actually matter. 99.99% of buyers of all kinds are not ever going to even try to install Mac OS on a PC. a significant number tho do install Windows on Macs - since it is fully supported by OS X and can be seamlessly integrated on the desktop with third party software. the obvious bottom line question for all buyers is, is the quality of the Mac OS and its ecosystem (including its near perfect integration with its own hardware, and the convenient tech support at your local Apple Store, etc.) worth the extra cost of the hardware, whatever it is? for most buyers, when you add up all the various expenditures involved, including software important to them, the cost difference is some hundreds of dollars. obviously, you're cheap (or maybe just another blogger scraping by). so several hundred dollars is a big deal for you. i'm not cheap, and i make a decent living. i always buy better/best quality products if i can afford them, and several hundred bucks is not a big deal at all. and backing up to look at the big picture, the price of both PC's and Macs have gone done over the decade, especially when you discount for the impact of inflation, while their powers and abilities have increased dramatically. at this point, whining about what you get plus or minus a few hundred bucks compared to Win 2000 PC's and OS 9 Macs that actually cost quite a bit more in constant dollars is just so silly. i don't think i ever want to split a restaurant bill with you.

well, you're right, but you missed the other half of Ballmer's strategy. Since Windows 7 is going to be a blatant knock-off of Leopard for much of its UI, his argument then will be Win 7 is 'just as good and $500 cheaper.' which the generally pro-windows media will eat up, along with the current meme 'there's is no real difference' between Mac OS and Windows.

Correct! all we really need is a bigger Touch - a 7" or 9" screen - plus some improvements everyone has already asked for, like running at least a few apps in the background. someone will then provide the necessary 'Office' style app suite - a simplified GoogleWorks or even Apple's iWorks. this would take half the netbook market almost immediately if priced at, say, $499.

this blog post wasn't done very well. two bad omissions of known facts: - as Infidel points out, the ATV hardware CAN and DOES handle 1080p. so the limitation is really with the iTunes service, not the ATV hardware. thus this post is mis-directed. - the competing Vudu system does offer 1080p rentals/purchases - using its own torrent-like download network of Vudu units. reportedly it works well. the post fails to mention this very significant available alternative. the one thing the post does well is discuss the pricing differential between ATV/iTunes and Netflix/BluRay movie rentals. you pay quite a bit more for on-line rentals and get somewhat less in picture quality with much worse usage limitations. for me, this - not the PQ issue - is the fatal flaw of the ATV. i figured out quickly the money i save renting by mail will pay for the cost of buying a PS3 in a few years.

You know, you're just being a grump and you're cookin' the books. Apple's list of 300+ new Leopard features, large and small, obviously includes many that were not previously identified on its website preview earlier this year or identified at any Apple conference. (Rumors/blabs from developers who got Leopard betas do not count.) so these features were in fact "secret" until now. your beef really is that none of these "secret" features are major breakthroughs like Boot Camp and Time Machine. Ok, that is true. but Apple didn't promise that. so stop being such a whiner.