Re: Guru needed

[Brett Dikeman <brett@pdikeman.ne.mediaone.net>]

>There is one small difference, though.  When you buy an Audi you are not
>totally locked into 100% Audi replacement parts.  Other suppliers produce
>parts which will work for most DIY repairs.  When you buy a Mac you become
>locked into the fortunes of Apple.
The only part I've ever had to replace on my Mac was a CD-ROM drive bezel.
Since the machine was still under warrantee(I didn't even have to prove it;
the start of production was well within the past 9 months) I got it for
free.  A roomate had the exact same piece break on his gateway.  Because
there's no such thing as an "authorized gateway dealer", no one had the
part or could get it for him.  He had to get the part directly from
Gateway, mail order.  It took 6 months to show up.

Apple has, unlike any other computer company, an extensive retail
service+parts network, like car dealers.  You can walk into any Apple
dealer, order a part, and have it 2-3 days later, sometimes overnight.


>In particular, there seems to be very
>little software other than Apple produced software for the Mac.  With

If you're referring to Claris, they were mostly a seperate entity.  They've
been completely spun off now into FileMaker Corporation.

Would you consider Adobe and Microsoft "nobody"?

Funny thing, but Office 98 runs on one computer platform.

Macintosh.

Only.

Wanna know why?  Remember that stock($150 million) purchase by Microsoft?
Lesser informed, ignorant people said "Yhea, they're bailing out Apple."
Too bad that was a symbolic exchange on the level of peanuts($150 million
to both companies is NOTHING.)  Well, what everyone didn't hear about was
that Microsoft promised Office98 would be for the Mac first, and both
companies exchanged a few rights to use various technologies; Microsoft now
has some rights to use Quicktime themselves.

Interesting that this Microsoft-Apple exchange was Microsoft sucking up to
Apple, and Billy-Bo-Bob Gates has been out kissing ass for the technocolor
fruit.  Why?  Microsoft Office for the Macintosh is a HUGE cash cow for
Microsoft.  I believe I remember hearing almost 1/2 of the company's
revenue comes from Macintosh product sales.  Let's put it this way; they
don't make big money off of operating systems or browsers.  They make it
off the applications, and Mac users are the biggest buyers of Word, Excel,
Office, etc.

Notice all the best stuff for your PC...came from the Mac _first_.
Photoshop(and all other Adobe products), Quicktime, all of Microsoft's
products except compilers(Word, Excel, etc were Mac-first programs), and oh
yhea...Win 95...but they lost a lot in the translation. :)

Notice that all the great features of OS's came from Macs...like a
consistent look+feel to applications(Apple Human Interface Guidelines.)

The only thing that bothers me about PC users is that they're so very
misinformed; they rely on myths like "no one makes any Mac software
anymore."

Notice that Win98 represents the first O/S Microsoft has released in 3
years.  Apple in that time, has:

Updated the system software from 7.5 to 7.6(big update) to 7.6.1 to 8(big
update) to 8.1
and has released 2 versions of the Unix/MacOS mixed Rhapsody(DR1 and DR2)
and has updated the major server software(Appleshare 4 to AppleshareIP 5.0,
now at AppleshareIP 6 in public beta.)

System 8.5 is due out within months; MacOS X (MacOS 10) is due out in a
year or so.

The only updates Apple charged for were 7.6 and 8.

How much did you get sucked into paying for Win98?

(oh, and btw, in the meantime, Apple has also released in the meantime
G3-based notebooks that are 2x the speed of the fastest Pentium-II
notebooks, and desktop G3 models that blow away the desktop Pentium-II's.)
Did I also mention that the top team in the RC-5 "Bovine" RSA contest is
the "Evange-lista" group, headed by Guy Kawasaki?  I run the client for
that contest on my machine(Pmac 8500) and funny thing, but it takes 3 PC's
to match the same keyrate...

I agree with the Audi car/Apple Macintosh analogy(comparing the companies
is silly though.)  Both sometimes required more maintenance than their
counterparts but have both cleaned up their acts in terms of reliability;
their owners usually hold on to them longer, they are more expensive and
harder to find, their owners are unbelievably loyal, they have stunningly
good looks, perform well, use technology no one else has(but they try to
imitate), and are a hell of a lot of fun to drive.


Brett
(Mac evangelist)

------
Brett Dikeman
brett@pdikeman.ne.mediaone.net
~)-|
Hostes alienigeni me abduxerunt.  Qui annus est?
Te audire non possum.  Musa sapientum fixa est in aure.
Ita, scio hunc 'sig file' veterem fieri.
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