Is mac's switch to the intel a cry for help or a move toward the future?

[Hasbios]

Ive notice that mac has lossed almost all suport from its original companies . most have gone to linux or windows. i work in a vocational school and the only reason why they use macs is because mac pays them to. tell me what you guys believe.


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~ASUS P5ND2 with SLI
~Realtek ALC850 8-Channel
~lga775 Pentium 4 Processor HT running at 3.0 stock
~radeon X1300
~2 512mb DDR2 sticks-o-ram
~160 gig SATA hdd
~5 60 mm fans all running at atleast 2600 RPM

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[public_eyesore]

i think once windows becomes a completely stable os mac is going to become obsolete, and will be reduced to making ipods full time.

[R/C Pilot]

in my opinion Macs will never become obsolete. I have both a Mac and a PC. I prefer the PC but will admit that the Mac does come in handy. They are good for Video editing and Art Applications.
Mac OS X is an improvement and is still getting better, I think that the Mac OS will become superior to windows after a few more releases.

[Custom]

I like the fact that they are using Intel chips they are better for video editing and art programs like R/C Pilot said but windows is getting better and better now it is installed on around 80% of all PCs as standard!

[DaveW]

I think that the Mac-Windows comparrison has become increasingly invalid over recent years. This is mainly because Apple advertise and sell product: You can have an i-book, a G4, you can have it red, white, wide-screen, with a funky mouse, etc. etc.

Whereas with Windows, you get...XP Pro or Home. Because of this i forsee a 'underdog success story' akin to AMD vs. Pentium happening in a couple of years, with Apple using the sales of their other products, like i-pod, to lower the prices of Mac OS in a similar tactic to the one Microsoft used to ship the x-box. Because, and let's be honest here-the Mac has the most beginner/user friendly interface, it's going to become much more popular over time.

Although Apple have to make their OS a lot more Gamer-friendly in order to succeed. That's what i think.

-Dave

[Crimson Sky]

Mac's suck.

[ForceFedFlesh]

intels have always been crys for help

and AMD has always been there to answer them:)

[Rankenphile]

oh no, not this debate again! :P

[Jetty_200]

lol booyah AMD...well actually i do like Dave's point...however as our society is stupid and continues to repeat itself in history, i think that soon enough they will catch on. Atleast i hope. I must agree with crimson...mac's suck...however i've only used one and never owned one so i dunno how valid that point is...anyways go AMD :D

[Slug Toy]

well id just like to put my two cents in here because i cant take the torment of not participating in a timebomb debate.

ill start by stating what i agree and disagree with. ive heard it said that one of the few things macs have going for them is their looks, and i would tend to agree that they are probably the best looking stock computers available. i also see a lot of people saying thay macs are well suited for editing of any sort. i would agree with this too seeming as whenever i use a mac, the majority of programs are related to audio/video composition. one thing i disagree with is the outright statement that macs plain suck, because no matter how obscured they are these days, they are still a marvel of space management and technology. i also disagree with the idea that their OS is fairly first-timer friendly. i remember when i first tried to use one of those imacs or emacs.... one of 2004's new ones... man that was confusing. there was no description of icons or anything and i was utterly lost while fumbling with a school project.

now ill move to the question at hand. is switching to intel chips a cry for help? of course it is. any company would jump at the chance to get in on something new and promising. we see adds for intel everwhere, so people would most likely sway to what they know. ive already seen a couple adds for intel macs, and id say they did a good job of painting it as a minor step and making it look like a very good thing. it just makes business sense for macs to switch over to a more profitable platform.

i think another question that should be addressed though, is whether or not this was a good idea. now, in my opinion, it wasnt a very good idea. here is my reasoning. the fact that macs used powerPC chips set them apart from anything else, but now they are just melding in to create nothing more than another glorified x86 based PC with a nifty OS. i personally took a liking to what IBM was doing with technologies that could be implemented in powerPC's, and now with macs gone, im not really sure how the recent advancements in things like UV lithography and strained silicon are ever going to trickle directly from IBM to us... yes there will be servers and such, but i dont know if there will be a large scale distributor for the average person. im sure intel will pick up with the new technologies, but its a bummer to think that the company that originally thought that stuff up will no longer pass it directly to us. not to mention it will probably take intel a good 5 to 10 years to really adopt the IBM fashioned techniques if at all.

another reason why i think this isnt a very good move is because it further expands intel's hold on the market. now before everybody starts agreeing with me on the grounds that "AMD pwns all" im going to say that just because i dont like what intel is doing, it doesnt mean i support AMD. i support whatever is the best stuff out there at the present time. the number one crown will shift back and forth, so my support will shift back and forth. getting back to the market share deal though, i dont like the added share from macs because it just adds more squeeze on competitors. i like free competition because it speeds up creativity and everything to do with production of new technologies. thats just getting less and less possible now days. ideally... the macs should have gone to AMD for the sake of leverage in the market... just to make things slightly more fair.

im just going to keep on truckin here. moving on to why macs are still used so widely in schools for some reason... well i cant say for sure why that is. i doubt they're being paid to use them unless they're a big name school. i suspect that they are used so frequently because of the strong media background, and the need for something to do school projects on.

ok, the truck has stopped. im done with this for now. just one last thing though. for the people who are very pro-AMD, be careful these days, because as many of us have seen in the past day or so, the conroe processor came out from intel, and the early, non-optimized and non-tweaked tests show a large lead on AMD now. these are tests from IDF though, so they may be biased... but just beware that the company that everyone is supporting right now may fall behind again. its the never ending see-saw motion, and that's why i support no one in particular.

ok NOW im done. you may now proceed to burn me at the stake for even thinking that AMD might lose the crown. you may also stone me for saying that macs look good... or hang me for reasons to do with morality... just leave my shoes alone.

[Judgement]

im with crimson sky ask well Macs suck

however not because of there OS simply becuase of there hardware ive never been on mac that compaired to my PC and as far as simple OS's go Windows is by far the simplest it has a tutorial for god sake dont get me wrong its for advanced users to but most advanced PC users use Linux IMO id use it myself if not for the fact that im a gamer and if mac wants to get big they will have to get in on games like dave said

but thats all just IMO take it for what its worth

[Hasbios]

well id just like to put my two cents in here because i cant take the torment of not participating in a timebomb debate.

ill start by stating what i agree and disagree with. ive heard it said that one of the few things macs have going for them is their looks, and i would tend to agree that they are probably the best looking stock computers available. i also see a lot of people saying thay macs are well suited for editing of any sort. i would agree with this too seeming as whenever i use a mac, the majority of programs are related to audio/video composition. one thing i disagree with is the outright statement that macs plain suck, because no matter how obscured they are these days, they are still a marvel of space management and technology. i also disagree with the idea that their OS is fairly first-timer friendly. i remember when i first tried to use one of those imacs or emacs.... one of 2004's new ones... man that was confusing. there was no description of icons or anything and i was utterly lost while fumbling with a school project.

now ill move to the question at hand. is switching to intel chips a cry for help? of course it is. any company would jump at the chance to get in on something new and promising. we see adds for intel everwhere, so people would most likely sway to what they know. ive already seen a couple adds for intel macs, and id say they did a good job of painting it as a minor step and making it look like a very good thing. it just makes business sense for macs to switch over to a more profitable platform.

i think another question that should be addressed though, is whether or not this was a good idea. now, in my opinion, it wasnt a very good idea. here is my reasoning. the fact that macs used powerPC chips set them apart from anything else, but now they are just melding in to create nothing more than another glorified x86 based PC with a nifty OS. i personally took a liking to what IBM was doing with technologies that could be implemented in powerPC's, and now with macs gone, im not really sure how the recent advancements in things like UV lithography and strained silicon are ever going to trickle directly from IBM to us... yes there will be servers and such, but i dont know if there will be a large scale distributor for the average person. im sure intel will pick up with the new technologies, but its a bummer to think that the company that originally thought that stuff up will no longer pass it directly to us. not to mention it will probably take intel a good 5 to 10 years to really adopt the IBM fashioned techniques if at all.

another reason why i think this isnt a very good move is because it further expands intel's hold on the market. now before everybody starts agreeing with me on the grounds that "AMD pwns all" im going to say that just because i dont like what intel is doing, it doesnt mean i support AMD. i support whatever is the best stuff out there at the present time. the number one crown will shift back and forth, so my support will shift back and forth. getting back to the market share deal though, i dont like the added share from macs because it just adds more squeeze on competitors. i like free competition because it speeds up creativity and everything to do with production of new technologies. thats just getting less and less possible now days. ideally... the macs should have gone to AMD for the sake of leverage in the market... just to make things slightly more fair.

im just going to keep on truckin here. moving on to why macs are still used so widely in schools for some reason... well i cant say for sure why that is. i doubt they're being paid to use them unless they're a big name school. i suspect that they are used so frequently because of the strong media background, and the need for something to do school projects on.

ok, the truck has stopped. im done with this for now. just one last thing though. for the people who are very pro-AMD, be careful these days, because as many of us have seen in the past day or so, the conroe processor came out from intel, and the early, non-optimized and non-tweaked tests show a large lead on AMD now. these are tests from IDF though, so they may be biased... but just beware that the company that everyone is supporting right now may fall behind again. its the never ending see-saw motion, and that's why i support no one in particular.

ok NOW im done. you may now proceed to burn me at the stake for even thinking that AMD might lose the crown. you may also stone me for saying that macs look good... or hang me for reasons to do with morality... just leave my shoes alone.

the saddest thing is that he is the only one that actually answered the prompt. the prompt wasnt do macs suck it was is macs switch to intel a cry for help or a move to the future

[OvRiDe]

Ok .. just gotta put my opinion in..

I don't know if it could be considered a cry for help or maybe its that they are reaching the capacity limits of the ppc architecture? It could be as simple as someone from IBM said the wrong thing to an Apple exec on a golf course and pow.. its over.. heh As for good or bad, from what I have heard the Intel versions seem to run faster then the older PPC counterparts. I wouldn't mind having a Mac mini to play with but as of now I couldn't imagine using it as my primary pc.

[Cevinzol]

i think once windows becomes a completely stable os...
*Sprays Jolt all over his montior*
OMG! Warn someone before posting next time, I almost choked to death laughing!

I used to work for the evil empire. It will never be completly stable. Look at why everyone runs Firefox instead of IE.

And to answer the original question.. NO Apple will not go under. Macs are great for graphic editing. I have a friend who is a sysadmin at a pre-production publishing house and they all use macs. Besides Bill gates owns Stock in Apple. He wil keep it afloat so he can't be taken to court under U.S. anti-trust laws.

[DaveW]

I used to work for the evil empire. It will never be completly stable. Look at why everyone runs Firefox instead of IE.

One of my lecturers used to work...well...pretty much everywhere. Says MS office is the biggest example of bad programming since the days when you left 10 lines between each opcode in case you needed to add anything later :D

(His name's Joe Sventek, Lectures Software Development and implication, which is more theoretical than practical.)

And MS will never produce a completely stable OS, and neither will anyone else. There really isn't such a thing; although theoretically possible, it's in the same league as DaVinci's helicopter. It could work, but where will you find 4 men with the strength to crank it fast enough? That's why DaVinci spent a lot of time sketching ripped Apollo like figures in margins. Maybe Bill Gates spends his days drawing sketches of Multivac or some other world-controlling computers from Science Fiction novels. Who knows?

On the subject, i read in PC Plus that the UK government asked Microsoft to install a police only backdoor into Vista so that the Police can check files. ISP's are not allowed to give away your information according to the Data Protection act, but not all illegal files are transfered this way anyway. So 2 questions:

1) Who honestly thinks a 'built in' backdoor in windows will remain 'police only'?
2) Is this morally correct?

Opinions, please.

-Dave

[crazybillybob]

1) Who honestly thinks a 'built in' backdoor in windows will remain 'police only'?
2) Is this morally correct?

Opinions, please.

-Dave

1) for all of 5 mins. MS couldn't even keep XP from hackers before it launched..it was on the web some 35 to 45 days before it hit the stores.

2) Any thing that knowingly exposes your Personal DATA to unwanted parties is Immoral!



To answer the thread.

Switching to Intel was unavoidable...Big blue makes little to none of it's own machines anymore (other then Servers). They have been selling off whole divisions because they were not profitable. Yes they still sell IBM branded PCs but like the Death Star HDD they are made by someone else....Their like Gateway and DELL now. The PPC was going to get harder to get and at a higher cost per unit then the Intel So Switching was a must....Is it a bit early..maybe 12-18 months but not too much early.

I love my AMD, and Yes Intel may take the speed crown for a while but history shows that AMD will come back and take it again.....and If it's a repeat of last few battles AMD will come back BIG, and Intel will be wanting for 12+ months again. I also feel this is a good thing for us. We get faster cheaper procs :) Now we need the GPUs to do better battle for us!


CrazyBillybob
LocalNut job and AstromechTech........Part Jawa, Part Wookie........

[DaveW]

like the Death Star HDD they are made by someone else....

Is this an actual product, or a reference to the IG-88 sub-plot in Star Wars?

-Dave

[crazybillybob]

Is this an actual product, or a reference to the IG-88 sub-plot in Star Wars?

-Dave
It's a Street name that IBM's DESK Star Line of HDD got....They had a habit of dieing at the most inopertune times.....(Now made by Hitichi)

??the IG-88 Sub plot .....please explain....I'm a Starwarz Nut and this is new to me!


Crazybillybob

[DaveW]

Apparently there were 4 IG-88's, as you probably know one was offed by Dash Rendar on Ord Mandel, and Bobba Fett took care of another. I forget what happened to the 3rd, i think it dissapeared-but the 4th masterminded a plot to take over the 2nd death star and, when it was complete, use it to destroy pretty much everything in the universe. It got its personallity downloaded into the Death Star's main computer and was waiting for it to be complete when the Death Star, and consequently IG-88 A, was destroyed.

I think you can find the full story on the Star Wars Hyperdrive website...let me look for a link...
IG-88 Story (http://www.starwars.com/databank/droid/ig88/?id=eu)

Major Sci Fi buff myself. Don't limit yourself to Star Wars, there's a whole world out there-look up some Asimov for some decent Sci-Fi.

-Dave