Apple Mac - what's that?

**Soquili** · 11 June 2008, 03:15 PM

Paul as in all things beauty (or design) is in the eye of the beholder.

Windows machines do not necessarily come in bland boxes.
http://www.xoxide.com/
http://www.xoxide.com/moneual-lab-m550f25-case.html
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowIm...+Computer+Case

**pauland** · 11 June 2008, 03:22 PM

LOL - bland they are not, nor are they Apples.. ;-)

Paul

**Soquili** · 11 June 2008, 03:38 PM

nor are they Oranges

I've used about every computer imaginable from huge mainframes to handheld models.

They all do about the same thing when you look deep into them. They look at voltage levels, store some, move some, and eventually lose some.

**pauland** · 11 June 2008, 03:56 PM

I think that in general, if you don't know what you want, buy a PC.

That way you won't regret buying a linux box and not having access to many mainstream applications and not enjoying explaining to everyone you meet what Linux is and why you chose it.

That way you won't have to explain why you bought a Mac, why it looks so good and why it doesn't run the latest shoot-em up games.

That way you won't need to worry about making the wrong decision.

Of course, for someone who knows what they want from a computer, the decision is easy.

Paul

**Soquili** · 11 June 2008, 04:05 PM

Cray supercomputer.

http://www.cray.com/products/xt4/

And for Linux users http://www.cray.com/products/xt5/index.html

**pauland** · 11 June 2008, 04:12 PM

Originally Posted by Soquili

Cray supercomputer.

Gosh, they've gone downhill. Used to be they could double up as a sofa..

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/05/tob_cray1/

;-)

Paul

**Soquili** · 11 June 2008, 04:18 PM

Yes they have lost their seating capacity

There is an extra benefit of the new designs. You no longer have to have all the plumbing for the liquid nitrogen cooling system.

**steve.ledger** · 11 June 2008, 07:29 PM

I agree with everything Paul said except the 'bland boxes' part.
Bland is definately a definition for the Mac. Perhaps I'll call it iBland

**a4hire** · 12 June 2008, 02:11 PM

Well, I should have known that the Mac is not much different from any other computer. I guess the Macs are packaged a little differently and the OS is a little different. I have only have had a PC and used Linux boxes at work.
Maybe someday I will have more of an opportunity to use an Apple computer and experience how they operate.
Years ago, the company that I worked for actually made a few Apple clones, I guess you would call it. But the boxes that we were making were faster than the ones coming from Apple at that time. They did not like that and then wanted a huge licensing fee for their OS, so that kind of shut that operation down.
I never really got the chance to use any of the computers as I was only doing regulatory testing on the boxes.
It is also interesting to see that Bill brought up Cray Super computers.
Again years ago the company that I worked for made a computer that Cray used as an end user station that connected to the super computer. We had to upgrade all of the boxes that we had sold to Cray and I got to spend a month in Wisconsin and Minnesota going to the Cray facilities and replacing parts to the user stations. It was pretty neat to see those big super computers with the liquid cooling.

**Albacore** · 12 June 2008, 03:31 PM

I am an old person and can remember my first computer I used, BBC mk1 at school and I think it came with 32 K of memory. The first one I bought was a BBC Master and then I went into Acorns for many, many years and I was very happy with ArtWorks and Publisher. Both of these programmes were written by a company called Computer Concepts which became Xara.

The whole point of this ramble is to say that it does not matter what type of tool that you use be it a pen and paper or Adobe Creative Suite it is what you are comfortable with and if you know how to use it (skill). The same thing can be said about operating systems for that is all the difference is now between the Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, AmigaOS, Linux, Solaris and Riscos. Riscos (Acron) it is still going and they are even still selling them, so why do I use Windows? as the programmes that I am comfortable with are sold for the windows system and that is it. It is not about price, for I bought an Acorn 12 years ago for about £1300, its not about design as I have had Mac's. It is all about how easy it is to use, how reliable it is (that's why I don't use a Mac) and how comfortable you are using the software.

If Xara had ported still into Risco's and Publisher had developed proper CMYK and PDF support I would still be using Riscos. I would never be like Sally trying to emulate a PC running windows while using a Mac it does not make logical sense. It would be far easier just to buy a cheap PC to run Xara and network to two.