On Feb 9, 2004, at 21:19 , h christmas wrote: > On 9.2.04 10:37, "Matthew Klahn" <mklahn at mac.com> wrote: > yes, but you do not have the options that you have with an x86 based > machine. but then, you also don't have to do any research. Apple will > tell > you what you can use. True enough. Few options for the proprietary motherboard and processors. In fact, one wonders if the board goes if it is just time to upgrade. That's actually what always happened to me when I would have something major go wrong with a PC I'd built; it was a great excuse to get a better motherboard & processor, which then used DIMMs instead of SIMMs, so I'd have to get more memory, different harddrive, etc. > Hopefully Apple will stop their crippling DVD drives and allow their > DVD+R > capable drives to actually write that way soon instead of just DVD-R. I've never had a SuperDrive, so I guess I don't know this particular issue. I do hate how Apple tends to cripple hardware, though. They have this issue with the video cards they put into the consumer machines; in order to differentiate between consumer & pro models, they only let you do monitor mirroring instead of spanning. Kinda irritating... > you do have to note, however, that Apple has built many of their cases > to > limit the number of optical drives you can add. If, for some reason, > you > wanted a ZIP drive and two optical drives in the Quicksilver line, you > were > out of luck. The new G5s also have an insane limit of two internal hard > drives, I believe, which makes it impossible if you want to have a > raid and > a separate boot drive. Bad decision on Apple's part I would say. But > then > they want you to buy the Xserve if you want to raid. Much of your > expansion, > should you want to expand either with optical or hard drives, must be > done > with external drives which are more expensive and take up more space. True, true. They do push for external storage more. But, I think that their cases are marvels of engineering compared to any PC case I've ever seen. They are better laid out, but more limiting. Again, I also hope they will change this in future revs like they did with the G4 cases. > This is actually surprising and not all that true for the film industry > where some houses have moved from Sun to Linux lately. I work with a > film > major who would not consider doing his editing on compositing on a mac > as > there are better software packages (for less money) for his PC. Ok, I guess Pixar itself is only just now switching over to Macs now that the G5s are out (they've ported Renderman to Mac OS X, btw). But, while I don't have names of studios, I do hear that Final Cut Pro is becoming widely adopted for film editing. I know the Coen brothers recently did a film using FCP. From what I understand, it's becoming widely adopted, but maybe I was overstating? And, also from what I hear, Final Cut Express ($299) is pretty darn good for the cost. Are you sure this file major isn't misinformed/biased? Have they researched all the options? $1100 G4 iBook + $299 FCE seems like a pretty darn good deal now that they've added real-time rendering to FCE... > Most modifications to the iMac, except for the easily accessible one > stick > of RAM will, however, void your warranty. But the iMac is great for > someone > who primarily wants to save space, surf, email and do word processing, > which > is much of the population. Right. I actually just read a quote that something like 80% of the computer using public don't use expansion in any computer they buy. (Lies, damned lies and statistics, though.) > All in all I think both platforms have their uses and like them both > for > different reasons. The thing that bothers me most about both platforms > are > the zealots, but that bothers me about anything. I think you'll find zealots on all sides of this argument. In my experience, Mac people tend to be more defensive (hey, they just spent thousands of dollars, what do you expect?), Windows people tend to be more scornful and Linux people tend to be more arrogant. Heck, I was once an arrogant Linux user! But, it's basically a holy war; as you say, all are good for certain things. But, my original thesis wasn't that Macs are the best, but that for what Steve does, maybe it's a better alternative. I guess that got lost in the noise & fury. -- Matthew S. Klahn Software Architect, CodeTek Studios, Inc. http://www.codetek.com