You’ve all seen the ads.
“Hi, I’m a Mac.” “And I’m a PC.”
The old-fashioned PC winds up crashing or freezing, leaving the hip, cool Mac standing there looking pleased with himself.
Terminology aside, (it’s “Windows PC” — there are lots of PC OSes) Apple is ignoring what is fast becoming a major competitor: Linux.
I haven’t seen an Apple ad that even goes so far as to mention Linux. Why? Because they can’t compete. Think I’m kidding? What are all the things Apple hypes?
OS X has a pretty slick user interface. Linux has a cooler one.
OS X is easy to use. So is GNOME.
OS X is stable and doesn’t get viruses. Neither does Linux.
Hardware just works on a Mac. A good share does on Linux too. GNOME even mounts removable media that I plug in, just like OS X does.
Oh, and Linux is free. Including all of the software the average desktop user needs.
And that’s why Apple ignores Linux. If they brought it up, people would get curious about it, look into it, then wonder why they forked over three grand to Apple when they could have installed Linux on the box that they already have. It’s the same reason why companies that demo their audio codec against competitors’ never include Ogg Vorbis: because it’s better than theirs, and it’s free to boot.
Linux is sweet and easy to use!! If I can use it any one can!!!
first off, xgl doesnt compare to aqua/quartz/rest of apple interface. xgl is a pixelated version of most things ready to go with a mac 5 years ago. and second, ‘a good share’ is not comparable to apples ‘it just works’ statement. if you have a mac and you plug something in that isnt such a vaguely used device, you know what they mean.
and no, gnome is not the best alternative to anything. can you say resource hog? aqua was built to not bog down the system while still remaining to be eye candy. and it even runs perfectly on a mac you bought in the 90s. today to run gnome you need a high end box with perfect driver support, and forget if you want to upgrade, lets see your grandmother do that in linux.
dont get me wrong, i love linux, long live debian and apt-get, eh? but youre missing the point of the mac ads. they arent ‘avoiding’ linux, they are a FLAVOR of linux (BSD, so you wont attempt to call me on that). they dont care about a NON marketshare, people who use linux are going to keep it, but WINDOWS users are the ones who need to be educated and open their eyes to the world of apple/linux/bsd/open source all together.
you come off like any other script kiddie who wants to ‘fight the power’ and feel superior because you can sniff someones network or get on their open wifi.
youd think it would show a sign of something good when your creator switches platforms…just food for thought.
another note, apple gives you its os for free as well…go download darwin…
Let me respond paragraph by paragraph.
The Xgl architecture is exactly what Quartz is (a hardware-accelerated compositing window manager) only it’s 3D accelerated, where Quartz is 2D.
I have a friend running GNOME on a 766MHz box and it’s pretty snappy. Of course Xgl doesn’t run on it. I don’t imagine the older Macs do as well at the eyecandy either, but to be clear which generation of Macs are we talking?
My complaint with the ads is that they imply that there is a dichotomy when in fact there is none. If they want to reach Windows users, more power to ’em, but they could start by maybe mentioning Windows in the ad. Instead they lump everything PC together and say it’s crap.
This one isn’t worth the effort to respond to. Less trolling, more useful content.
I can’t parse this sentence. Who is “my creator” and how is he “switching platforms?”
IIRC Darwin does not include any of the GUI elements.
correct, apple SHOULD start every ad with a disclaimer ‘when we say ‘pc’ we mean windows and not something youve most likely NEVER heard of, called linux’. that would reallllly appeal to people. besides, their argument of macs ‘just working’ where pcs do not, TOTALLY applies to linux as well. so i suppose they arent only talking about windows.
my mistake on the quartz comment leaving out opengl, which is apples 3d renderer. and if you know anything about RISC architecture, a slower clocked chip loaded with ram will easily outperform a higher clocked CISC processor, so yes, older macs (back to g3) will flow nicely with the eye candy with very few things omitted.
what was at all ‘trolling’ about this? did i come in shouting youre wrong without any backup? i believe i gave valid arguments and actually compared you to a ‘troll’ whatever the hell that really means.
and your difficult to ‘parse’ (big bad programmer terms) part, http://digg.com/apple/Linus_Torvalds_buys_Mac_mini — check it out, must happen for a reason. and of course darwin doesnt come with the gui that mac does…ITS NOT MAC! it merely throws out any argument of a free/commercial os.
your rebuttal was weak. i expected more. i expect more with this one, eh?
What’s wrong with, “Hi, I’m Windows.” “And I’m Mac.” And FWIW most hardware I’ve used “just works” on Debian too.
Any box with a halfway decent GPU should run Xgl just fine too. A cube doesn’t take a lot of juice to render.
A comment like “you come off like any other script kiddie who wants to ‘fight the power’ and feel superior because you can sniff someones network or get on their open wifi” is generally considered trolling. Your tone throughout the entire last post is likewise trollish. If you want to debate points, fine. Let’s not have this degenerate into sarcastic jabs (like “big bad programmer terms” — “parse” is perfectly standard English).
What Linus does with his own money is not my concern. I never said Mac sucked. It’s certainly better than Windows for a lot of things. If Darwin is “not Mac” as you say, then I fail to see why you brought it up in the first place.
If you “expect more” than you are going to be disappointed. We are both looking at this issue from a different perspective, and I doubt we will be convincing each other of anything. Likewise, I didn’t find your response all that strong either.
*Grabs popcorn. Munch munch.