This is such a lame argument. The original contention was that the lack of new features in Windows will either drive people to buying Macintosh computers or drive people to buying bargain basement WalMart computers since this stagnation will force a reduction in PC Prices.

First of all, the outcome is not mutually exclusive. People have been buying more Macs. People have been buying more PCs.

Second of all, the lack of features in Microsoft Windows does not necessarily lead to a lower price for Windows nor does it lead to lower sales for Windows. If anything, people still buy Windows because the hardware prices keeps getting lower and more affordable. Windows still costs the same. People are forced to buy it with their computers because it is the “Standard”. If you want to play computer games, for example, you have to buy Windows. Linux has nearly zero games. The Mac version of computer games generally come out up to a year later than the PC version.

Third, Microsoft is increasing their sales by REMOVING features from Windows. Windows XP Pro should be the standard operating system. But Microsoft removed features such as networking in order to sell a lower priced model – Windows XP Home Edition. And sales are much higher as a result. For third world countries, Microsoft is now removing even more features, to sell a lower cost model of Windows, leading to even higher sales. Of course, this is all a great bait and switch in the grand scheme of things since eventually, people may need to UPGRADE to a fuller version model of Windows. And again, Microsoft will pick up the profit.

Fourth, people who buy Macintoshes generally are not people who buy low-priced PCs. They want high quality products, which are reliable, which are easy to use, which allow you to be more productive since you don’t have to service your computer so much (to keep up with multitudes of patches for bugs in the OS, to stop infections from the hundreds of thousands of PC viruses, etc.). If Mac buyers were to purchase a PC, it would be a high-end PC, not a low-priced model. They would purchase BMWs not Yugos. If forced to, they would buy Cadillacs, not Chevys.

The real difference is that Apple insists on making things that work. AFS was a proof of concept, but it never became actually usable for me under Linux.

I’m looking forward to switching from Linux to MacOS on my laptop. I’m simply too tired of managing everything by hand (hotplug USB, anyone?). I just want machines that work reliably and that don’t require me to spend my time managing them.

First of all, you cannot compare an alledged Dell laptop to an actual laptop selling in the stores. By that measure, I could announce a $99 Windows XP tablet PC tomorrow but could I produce it?

There are already $499 laptops – whether you’re willing to test out their relaibility with your money is another matter.

If you’ll notice, Dell is king of the bait and switch – yes, they ahve machines selling for $500 but how far will you get without a monitor and 128 of RAM? Do, by the time you add it up to get a minimal machine by today’s standards (isn’t it worth $79 to go from a 20GB to a 40GB HDD?), you’re pretty much at $1,200 – try it yourself. That will be the same with a Dell laptop. It might start at $499 but you want 128 of RAM or 512? 10GB HDD or 40GB? You want 1024 or 1280? After all is said and done, you’re at $1,200 – surprise.

So, while we love to hear that we can get a $1,500 laptop for $500 tomorrow – we shouldn’t just presume that someone (dell or otherwise) is telling us the truth – otherwise, we’d be all be Longhorn right now.

I agree with Phil. I am a photo freak. I have two digital cameras and six film cameras. I scan and upload my photos into a hard drive that serves the same purpose as the shoe boxes in the closet.

I am also an audio freak. I love my SACD setup. But I haven’t bought a CD/DVD/SACD for more than a year.

Fancy technology is not necessarily useful technology. Very few have the time or money for the fancy stuff these days.

I am also a Walmart stock-holder.

I came lat to this post, but I will say this. I’m a Java developer who taught himself C#. But since most of my money is made slinging Java still, I’ve been trying to find a reason to buy a Macintosh because they look so sexy and Java is near-enough a first class language on OSX. So when I got near a Mac to scratch that itch it was the $3500 massive 17″ laptop with a 1.3 GhZ G4. Running a test harness from the system I had been working on over past several months which had 15,000 tests in it took that laptop almost 4000 seconds to run. My 2-year-old 2GhZ P4 laptop (which was $1700 new) ran the same test harness in a little over 1000 seconds. The latest el-cheapo 3.0 GhZ machines in the lab at the company I was working at ran that harness in about 600 seconds.

Macs are slow and they are expensive. But maybe that will change now that IBM is taking over with the G5 where Motorola left off with the G4.

I’ve had a Dell, and now have owned a PB for near 18 mo. and there is no comparison. On price, the Dell was a bit cheaper, but it was a gimped one in terms of memory (128M). The Apple has a DVD burner and CD writer, something I didn’t have with the Dell.

In terms of software, Apple comes with iLife and ability out of the box to run any GPL/*nix GNU software, the Dell was gimped, not that I couldn’t run it, but company issued laptop denied admin access to box and I got in big trouble too for installing dual boot Red Hat.

Having native UNIX terminals and environment blows away Exceed and/or Cygwin setup.

Mac OS X is best of both worlds – being able to go low level and use power tools Perl, python, C, apache, etc… vs. Windows where I have to be concerned with adware, spyware, viruses, etc… …it’s not even a fair comparison – yet, there still are nifty GUI apps that for most users, wouldn’t ever have to get their fingers dirty and could enjoy full performance from just the GUI offerings.

Without any of the special deals that a lot of folks use to save money on Dell machines, the cheapest laptop is $719 and comes with a 14-inch screen, 256 MB of RAM, 30 GB of disk, a CD-writer, and a 2.2 GHz CPU.

An Apple laptop with a 14-inch screen and 256 MB of RAM is $1300. The Apple is slightly better than the Dell in a couple of ways, e.g., with a 40 GB drive instead of 30. Dell gives you a free wireless card and the Apple probably has it built in. Hard to say how Apple’s 1 GHz CPU compares to the 2.2 GHz CPU in the Dell.

If you go to http://www.gotapex.com/ today they tell you how to get a Dell laptop with a 15″ screen and 3 GHz CPU for $876 by using a 15%-off coupon.

It still surprises me that there aren’t laptops with 12″ displays selling for under $500.

Dell *could* cut the price of a laptop for $500, but they don’t. Apple sells one for $1100. This is a fair comparison? What’s the actual current price of that laptop? What could Apple cut its price to?

Regarding the .NET reference above, I couldn’t help remembering one of the things that Phil wrote in “Phil and Alex’s guide to web publishing”: “The original LISP Machine was amazing. It had things that, if we’re lucky, will be announced as innovations by Microsoft in 2005…”.

Well, we’re now almost in 2005, and what’s the Next Big Thing proposed by Microsoft for the future of software development? .NET. Managed memory. Garbage collection. No more buffer overflows.

Almost all (non-live) FM programming is played from CD or a computer automation system using digital compression — the three small-market rock music stations for which I’m the chief engineer use MPEG Layer 2 at 256 kb/s for the music cuts. Our digital satellite feeds (morning shows, etc.) use even lower bitrates.

I can hear the compression artifacts on the air, but when advertisers supply their commercial announcements as 64 kb/s MP3 files attached to e-mail, it’s hard to see them caring, and I don’t see how the listeners would know the difference, either — how many of them have actually heard the CD vs. an MP3 download?

Even with a pristine studio signal, you still have multipath and the nasty, nasty effects of the hypercompression management insists I enable in the processors (”LOUD-HOT+BASS”) to give the “loudest” signal possible while maintaining the FCC-required 75 kHz deviation. (I’ve watched our modulation meter sit at 100% for fifteen minutes straight — if there ever was any dynamic range in the music, it’s gone by the time we get it on the air.)

Perhaps your classical station is different; I, for one, wish we could have live orchestras in the studio again…