Would I Be Correct In Saying..

steveDOTcom · Joined: Aug 10, 2008 Posts: 4

Windows Is Built For People Who Want To Play Games

And Macs Are Built For People Who Want To Be Creative..

This Is My Theory On The Why People Dont Like Either Macs Or Pcs
For Instance A Windows Person Cant Play The Games On The mac Due To Compatibility
Therefore They See It As 'useless'

Where As Mac Users Like Something That Just Works Witch Pcs Never Seem To Do Properly

Thats My Theory..

Whats Yours?

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1546 Location: Central FL, USA

You've not been around this business very long have you?

If you had, you'd know that when the PC and the Apple II were competing with each other years ago, you could build your own PC for about 20% of the cost of an Apple.

There were cloned parts for the PC coming out of Japan at a mere fraction of the price for an Apple, for which there were NO parts at all available, so you couldn't build your own.....you were forced to buy it from Apple at whatever inflated price they wanted to charge for it.

And you could get copies of any program you wanted from a friend for virtually nothing. NOT so with Apple.

So what computer enthusiast in his right mind would opt for an Apple?
You could do virtually NOTHING with it, but sit there and run whatever overpriced software you could afford. Evil or Very Mad

I started building XT Clones in ~1980 and just quit building IBM compatibles two years ago when I retired.

XP, finally, since SP3, is fully beat down to size and docile as an old dog.
If set up and run properly, BSOD's are nothing but a not-so-fond memory.
I've not seen one in several years now.

Vista on the other hand, is a huge, bloated monster.
Don't believe that?.....just look at the long list of "Services" running in the background.

I've just written a batch file that shuts down 24 services that just DON'T need to be running all the time. I use it now on every Vista PC that I set up.

So it's not any reach at all to say that of the two options.....XP is my favorite.

Cheers mate!
The Doctor Cool

goretsky

Hello,

The Apple II computer was introduced in 1977, priced in configurations from $1,298.00-2,638.00, depending upon the amount of RAM (source: Wikipedia). The IBM PC was introduced in 1981, priced in configurations from $1,565.00-3,005.00 (source: Wikipedia).

One of the problems that the fledgling Apple Computer company had was that a lot of companies were cloning its Apple II computers. The Wikipedia article referenced above claims there were over 190 companies copying the design for the Apple II. I was in a school during the late 970s-1980s that had a few of the Franklin Ace and VTech Laser 128 clones. I recall liking the Laser 128 better than the Apple II; I think they were equipped with more memory than the Apple II, or at least the ones we had were configured that way.

One of the things I remember about the Apple II was that it had expansion slots, which allowed one to plug in all sorts of different types of peripheral cards. There were many companies which made them, such as Sweet Micro Systems' Mockingboard, AE's Serial Pro card (which, coupled with a Hayes 1200 baud modem, allowed me to get online for the first time), parallel port cards for printing, video cards which allowed one to switch from the default 40 characters per line on the diplay to 80 or even 132 (these latter modes required a separate monitor to view clearly, as on a TV they would be too blurry to read), a clock card with an onboard battery, and, my personal favorite, a card with a Zilog Z80 CPU which allowed one to run CP/M, a popular operating system for businesses at the time, on the Apple II. This was the Microsoft Z-80 Softcard, named after its manufacturer. It is a bit ironic that one of Microsoft's most popular products was, at one time, hardware that allowed an Apple computer to run an operating system created by Digital Research, who would later make DR-DOS and GEM. Two other pieces of hardware which was seemed amazing at the time were aKoala Pad, a digititzing tablet one could draw on with a plastic stylus about the size of a pencil, and the Gibson Light Pen, which allowed one to draw on the screen. It probably sounds a little strange today to have to buy all these expansion cards from third parties to connect a printer or a modem or a digitizing tablet, but at the time, it was not unusual for computers to come with a keyboard and connectors to add a tape cassette for storage and output their video to a television. While peripherals like modems, printers and even monitors were not rare, they were expensive and if they weren't needed, a manufacturer could keep costs down by selling computers which did not have them and then sell the upgrades later.

On the software side, there was a wide variety of educational software available for users from around first grade or so up through high school, productivity software like VisiCalc (spreadsheet) and word processors, and the BASIC, LOGO and Pascal programming languages were available for programming--probably other ones were as well, but those are what I remember. One of the later developments was a graphic shell called GEOS, which provided a Mac-like experience on the Apple II (as well as the Commodore 64 and 128).

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1576 Location: London

Or to put it another way.
There used to be lots of computer types.
Somewhere along the lines Apple specialised in stylish, inflexible, integrated proprietary systems that costed more, looked good and had to be bought from them and used their way. But they could be relied on because Apple controlled everything.
IBM PCs went the route of flexible, customisable and potentially cheap machines that anyone could make. Mostly, but not necessarily, running Microsoft's operating systems and Office suite.
And all the other versions went to the wall. Or in the case of the Acorn/BBC machines, turning into ARM based computer systems, such as PDAs.
And all along there were Unix/Linux based systems. Mostly using the PC platform, because anyone could manufacture these. Which, ironically, is also what sits inside Apple Macs.

Vista (Home) (to me) is more annoying than XP. At least part of that problem is that Vista went pear shaped in production, losing it's new file system, lacking drivers etc.
But also Microsoft still seem to be stuck on the idea that Home versions mean just cut down Pro versions. And they don't seem to know which bits to cut down. Not just the OS, but software too. The cheapest version of Office, the one that home users are likely to buy and the Works suite, both have a spreadsheet, but no DTP. How many home users would rather create a spreadsheet than a poster or a birthday card?
Vista Home has no fax facility, something that Home users are more likely to want to use than office workers - who have access to fax machines if they need them. But the Pro version does.
And Shadow Copy and Backup and Restore are missing from Home versions, but exist on Pro versions. So home users don't have vital documents?
But Windows cardspace is in the Home version. Rolling Eyes

So is VPN support. I can just imagine thousands of home users setting up Virtual Private Networks with er...well ..erm....???? Laughing

Microsoft Mail makes sharing a mail box difficult if you each have your own log-in, which is fine for Pro workers. For Home use you probably want to have a log-in with your own preferences, etc. but still share those e-mails from Aunty Ethel. After all, you probably each have your own clothes closet in your home, but you only use one mail box.

Edit: .....And i've just discovered that the programme that allows fast user switching in Vista to be put on the desktop (C:\Windows\System32\tsdiscon.exe ) isn't included in Vista Home versions. I don't know what they use instead. Why Microsoft think that Vista Home users should only be able to switch users by clicking on the Start menu, then again on the arrow on the bottom right and then again on a menu item beats me!
I can understand it the other way around, business users probably shouldn't be switching between each other's account. But Home users probably do this all the time, ("Could I just use the computer for a minute.....?"). So of course Microsoft makes it easy for Pro users and impossible for Home users. Madness.