tao51nyc's Profile

Apple is smart not to engage in a "race to the bottom" with commode-box makers. There is no upside for them in that space. None. That's why they don't make anything for large-scale point-of-sale (POS) operations, either. Margins aren't just razor thin in that space, they're actually non-existent. Those $399 specials are usually there just to get folks to the store so they can upsell them something that will actually turn some coin. But they're loss leaders, by and large. Apple has a market cap, today, even with all the fiscal problems out there, of over $85 billion. That's 4 times that of Dell, the biggest commode-box maker, just slightly less than HP, and just over half that of IBM. They have no debt, and $25 billion cash in the bank. Why risk the farm trying to crank out cheap Macs at a loss, in hopes of some halo effect? Vaporware.

How about "Virtual Reality for the Rest of Us"? I've been searching for various solutions of late, and they're largely PC of big-iron 'nix based, and cost you your first born.

That last would almost make me want to move back to California!

Microsoft has no choice but to be "the good guy" because Zune's aren't selling worth a damn.

"3. Hardware ...Every few years, I would upgrade the motherboard and processor, and re-use the case, the hard drives, and power supply... I can never do this with a Mac." A year ago, I was in a big bind, as my department desperately needed HW upgrades, but there was no budget until the following fiscal year. There were about 100 Macs in the department, more than half of which were old Graphite towers from 2001-2, running OS 9. I created a standard OS X (Tiger) build on a 2nd 80GB hard drive, so users could dual-boot, maxed out the ram at 1.5 GB, and in many cases (particularly the Quicksilver machines), I installed PowerLogix processor upgrades that boosted the Graphite boxes from 400mhz to 1.2 ghz, and the Quicksilvers from a single 1.25 ghz to dual 1.42. It was a risky kludge for an editorial/production environment at a major publisher, but the Editors were desperate for an OS X build of any kind, as the old OS 9 browsers were failing them (they couldn't even see our own website correctly!) So Reason 3 is technically incorrect - legacy Macs can be updated at low cost. (I also once installed a G4 chip in an old G3 PowerBook purchased new in 2000 - it ran really HOT, but it kept me going through Panther.)

When buying this for your living room, I suggest you ensure beforehand that the rest of the furniture visually matches the inevitable BSOD. Sorry, couldn't resist...

Well, I'm half way there. The main issues of the account migration may have revolved around the fact that the "old" computer's account carried 166GB of load (!), including some major apps like the entire Adobe CS2/Macromedia übersuite, Quark 6.5 AND 7.0, and a ton of video files. Migration Manager just choked on it. So I manually reinstalled the huge app suites, manually moved the docs and vid files over, then hosed all that from the old Mac. Then, on impulse, I tried migrating again (to a "new" account, separate from the one just created) - THAT worked, and took only 42 minutes. Of course, now I'm in "fast user switching" mode if I want to use Mail. (But ARD didn't move over properly, and refuses to work! *grrr* Separate issue.) But at least I'm down to ONE computer, albeit with two user accounts - it's now a matter of migrating Mail across from one account to the other, and presumably the techniques offered by you guys will be of benefit. Thanks all! (Ben: This will probably be the last Mac tower I ever have at this company - I managed somehow to milk the upgrade strategy for all it was worth.) tao

Also remember that many of those 10 years where Apple lost its tech lead to an inferior product were years where a Steve Jobs was NOT at the helm...if nothing else, he learned from the glaring mistakes of Scully, Spindler, and Amelio, and was determined not to repeat them.