Some iPod Fans Dump PCs For Macs 1036
dereklam writes "The popularity of the iPod could be boosting Macs' popularity as well. News.com reports that 6 percent of iPod users have made the switch from PCs to Macs. An additional 7 percent said they are planning to dump their old PC for an Apple machine, according to the survey." I wish the linked story had more details; it's not clear from the results mentioned whether there's a strong causal relationship here.
Only a study of 200 users! (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=8945 [osnews.com] [OSNews.com]
Re:It makes sense... (Score:5, Informative)
Build a dell with the same amount of functionnalities (not the first entry-level $300 machine), add the software that's bundled with the iBook (I'll exempt you of finding a GarageBand alternative) and then compare the prices.
Re:Not for techs (Score:2, Informative)
maybe (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It makes sense... (Score:5, Informative)
I'd been stuck on Windows for the longest time because I had to interoperate with clients who insisted on exchanging Micro$oft Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and so forth. On top of that, I was doing Java development for those clients. (Star Office didn't cut it, at the time.) Yes, it was a living hell, especially for someone who was nursed on SVR3.
Finally I played with a PowerBook: it had genuine Micro$oft Office from the Redmond behemoth itself. It had a killer Java virtual machine. But best of all, I could pop up a bash shell and run vi on my files. And all with glistening eye-candy.
I was in heaven.
So, I've got two of the systems. Yes, they're overpriced, but they're also damn stable and they stay out of my way, like Windows, but I can get in the way, unlike Windows.
(Oh, and it was after that that I got the iPod. But I'll never go back to Windows. And zealots out there, relax, I've got two Linux systems (and even a FreeBSD system) in my server closet.)
Re:Bought my iPod Mini on Monday (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Of course (Score:2, Informative)
My ipod is the only gadget I own that I can let someone play with and have them understand it immediatly and enjoy the the design of not only the hardware but also the software. My amazing phone doesn't have that effect on anyone or my amazing Clie. This creates a link between the Apple brand and a concept of easy to understand, elegant technology.
I blame Apple for the change in my attitude away from "bigger is more impressive" to "hide the technology and make it look like magic" mentality. The computers I used to build were big and obviously demanding of attention, my favorite machine now is the one that people don't even notice in the living room.
Re:What's th Difference? (Score:5, Informative)
I bought a Mac (G51.6) a yeah ago, the current OS runs a Mach kernel with a BSD layer for Unix compatibility.
It means you get the benfits of a microkernel in a Unix-like environment. (device drivers don't require a re-compile / linking, etc).
An accessible Unix like environment, with a large level of compatibility for open source programs.
A GUI that was designed to be used, not just look pretty. (It does though). A base set of applications that are strong enough for daily use, and easy enough for the casual user.
A programming environment that makes putting together a small application, with nice looking windows easy.
The next version of the OS (Tiger) adds in some system-wide features which will make the playform even sweeter.
Most of what I've grown to like about the Mac is that is appeals to the technical side of me in it;s clean design without limiting it's functionality.
(now if they can just fix openGL to not suck as bad as it does right now... )
Re:Bought my iPod Mini on Monday (Score:3, Informative)
OGG playback, FM-Radio, and remote. Those all exist in my iRiver iHP-120.
OGG is not important to me, I hate radio (use my iPod in the car, so it's irrelevant anyway), and I do have a remote - it's just not wireless.
Re:Bought my iPod Mini on Monday (Score:3, Informative)
Also, you just need to face the fact that Ogg support just doesn't matter to 99.999% of the general population. Just be glad like we all should be that the iPod isn't the only choice we have. If/when ogg gains acceptance by a lot more people, then I think it's a given that the iPod will support it. FM-radio on the other hand would be a great feature. I do wish it had radio.
Just switched (Score:2, Informative)
Re:If only my iPod would do that (Score:4, Informative)
Copying from the iPod is a different story. You'll have to download a freeware (sometimes GPL) app to do that, beacause Apple couldn't make it that easy to steal music and still pull off the iTunes Music Store.
Sorry, price isn't stopping you from getting a Mac (Score:3, Informative)
1) not a laptop- Mac laptops are pretty damn price-competitive with PC laptops
2) not a consumer-level Mac- Prices are also very competitive
3) Not a used Mac- If you want to try it without too much risk, get a used Mac on eBay. You'll likely be able to sell it for not much cheaper than you bought it for, if you don't like it (since Macs hold value much better than PC's). And it thus won't dent your precious mortgage payment.
The only way price (and I'm just talking the raw dollars) MAY be stopping you is if you build your own PC. But man, if those headaches are worth it to you, then I can't help you. The value of headache-free computing, quality components, and the nice, hassle-free interface should really be experienced to understand.
Re:Bought my iPod Mini on Monday (Score:2, Informative)
Ok, ok, I guess some people might want to do this, but I would think they are a minority, hence why the iPod sells better than the iRiver.
I too, think the iPod should do OGG, but I don't see it happening any time soon. If Apple were to add OGG support, they'd have to release the source, which I think they would be lothe to do for firmware.
The other issue with OGG is that, the chip in the iPod can decode MP3, AAC and WMA (WMA is not implemented in Apple's firmware), but to decode OGG, they would have to do the whole thing in Firmware/Software. You'd probably have to decode the OGG file to AIFF, drop it on the HD and then play it. This would seriously kill battery life. Ever notice how the other players out there that do OGG all state that playing OGG files decreases battery life?
Andy
Re:Not for techs (Score:3, Informative)
Safari uses the KHTML engine which has benefited largely from Apple's improvements.
Printing uses CUPS, but it is much easier to setup on a Mac.
The shell is bash, but most Mac users never touch it.
The only part of Linux that gets "bashed" by Apple is the kludginess of the GUI, utilities, and applications. Apple has never said Linux or BSD is based on poor foundational technologies. They just don't have the user experience down.
Re:Bought my iPod Mini on Monday (Score:3, Informative)
Not true. See http://www.vorbis.com/faq.psp#com [vorbis.com] for more on the vorbis license.
Audioscrobbler supports iPods on Macs only (Score:2, Informative)
That's almost enough to get me to buy a Mac.
-ScottPearPC - OS X under WIndows and Linux (Score:2, Informative)
Here are relevant PearPC and related projects:
http://sourceforge.net/search/?words=pearpc&type_
Re:Only a study of 200 users! (Score:5, Informative)
Depends on what you define as "decent". At a 99% confidence level, a sample size of 200 means that the margin of error for this survey is +/- 9%. Even if you open it up to a 95% confidence level, the MOE is still +/- 7%. If you wanted to drop the margin of error down to +/- 3% at a 95% confidence level, you'd need a sample size of just over a thousand respondents.
switched programming languages because of IDE (Score:1, Informative)
Dear, dear Steve Jobs, if you're reading this, please listen to my suggestion: dump XCode and let your XCode team contribute to Eclipse, like you did with bsd/darwin, khtml/safari, etcetera.
Re:Bought my iPod Mini on Monday (Score:3, Informative)
1. The iHP has both optical and analog inputs and outputs. Headphones, Input and Output ports built in. I/O ports can be switched from either analog or optical. Very handy for playing mp3's over a home stereo with one simple and better-sounding TOSLINK connection than a miniplug-to-RCA adapter. No, I've never used the optical input for anything, but it's there.
2. The iHP can record. On it's own. Simple enough to hook up my iHP to my XM radio, record a couple hours of streaming audio for playback at the gym. You can't do that with an iPod.
3. Drag-and-drop on most any computer (XP, 2K, Apple, Linux) with no driver installation necessary. MP3's are just a drag-and-drop away from being placed on my iHP, and so are any other type of file I want. I know that iPod's work the same way for non-music files if you install the right software, but my iHP is invaluable for transporting large files and documents without having to install extra software on either PC. My iHP has been invaluable for transporting huge driver updates to a relative's PC who does not have a broadband connection.
4. Battery life. It's hotly debated, but in my experience our iPod may have a problem. My iHP is about 13 months old, and I get the same battery life that I did when it was brand new. My wife's iPod is about 8 months old, and we think that its battery(ies) are starting to fade, as she must recharge the thing every few days, instead of a week+ when it was new. Same listening conditions, volume levels, etc. Leave it turned off and unused for two weeks and the batteries are almost drained. My iRiver can, and has, sat for almost a month unused and the batteries were still fully charged when I powered it back on.
My $.02 anyway...
Re:If only my iPod would do that (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Funny how the iPod is successful (Score:2, Informative)
An MP3 player doesn't have that network effect.
Re:switched programming languages because of IDE (Score:3, Informative)
I can easily manage my Xcode projects in Subversion, but I haven't been able to figure out what the hell Eclipse is doing with its "workspaces" or whatever. I couldn't figure out the debugger either. Xcode was extremely easy to get used to; I don't think you give it enough credit. It's clean, simple and does what it does well. Sure, there are some nuances I'd like to see cleaned up, but it's definitely my IDE of choice.
I Second That!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Still a small margin (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and I don't mean to say that all name brands are worth it, and I wouldn't even consider a Dell or Alienware, but between the unique stuff Apple offers (OS X, for one) and their excellent support (e.g. fixing my iBook with a ~5 day turnaround with free overnight shipping, including shipping me the box to pack it in), Macs are absolutely worth their price.
Re:It makes sense... (Score:3, Informative)
You can't use a model that's on sale for a comparison like that!
Re:I won't try iTunes (Score:5, Informative)
When a Nokia phone comes out with 20GB storage, will you be able to load your iTunes onto that?
YES. Yes, you will. The only songs that have Apple's DRM on them are songs purchased from Apple's iTunes Music Store; that is, downloaded.
The songs that you rip from your own CDs you can rip to either MP3, AAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, or even
So, to repeat--yes. The music stays your own, and you will be able to put it on anything that can understand your choice of format, be it MP3 or AAC, including a 20GB Nokia phone or a 1TB TiVo. Just don't download anything that you have to pay for.
Re:It makes sense... (Score:3, Informative)
Weight: starting at 6.9 lbs. (2.96 kg) with travel module, 9-cell battery and hard drive1
(Travel module means no optical drive BTW)
OTOH, the 12" ibook is 4.9 and the 14", for comparison 5.9, WITH the optical drives.
Re:Still a small margin (Score:5, Informative)
You were headed towards a point until you got to that..
All PowerMac G5's have dual channel DDR400 (except for the 1.6Ghz Rev A's which have dual channel DDR333)
Re:what is so great about iTunes? (Score:3, Informative)
iTunes I think defaults to 3 seconds between tracks. You can set it as low as no gap or turn it up to 5s.
Re:Still a small margin (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Still a small margin (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The iPod merely brought attention to iBook or G (Score:3, Informative)
Why? People do care about price.
Apple simply doesn't make a machine that can sell into the entry-level market. When Joe User can get a mini-tower PC with a flat panel for less than an eMac, he isn't even going to look at an iMac.
And Joe already has a PC, so upgrading to a desktop Mac is even less attractive, because he's already got a monitor he's happy with: it's almost certainly a better one than the eMac's (which is why the eMac doesn't interest him).
If Apple took the entry level eMac, stripped out the CRT, and stuck the rest in a pretty slab like the NeXTstation... and sold it for $600 (about the price of a good 17" CRT below the eMac) then they'd have something that Joe User could replace their PC with that only seems a little bit overpriced.
And now that Joe's looking at Macs, that iMac looks pretty damned cool.
And Apple would win, because they'd still get decent margins from the G4 "iSwitch" slab: it's still a good 50% more expensive than a comparable desktop PC.
I'm one of them.... (Score:2, Informative)
But fast forward quite a few years after that and I bought an ipod to use on the (long) train trip to/from work. It was great. That seemed to get me over the apple brand hurdle and as it was so well made it got me curious.
A few months later the time had come to buy a laptop. I looked at the PC's and they weren't bad - for kicks I looked at the powerbook and it looked very nice thank you. I deliberated for a couple of months over it....then bought a old G4 tower from ebay as a test to see if I liked OS X or not....
Well, I did. I'm a Unix/network admin at my Mon-Fri job and the unix underneath of OS X was great. Installed fink and starting running my unix progs, it was great. I was hooked.
In addition I do wedding photography on weekends, and used iDVD to great success with a wedding DVD. That clinched it. I sold the G4 on ebay (and bizarrely made money on it) and bought a 1.5ghz 15" powerbook with all the fruit including 2gb ram. It did cost a lot but it's probably the best machine I've used, simply trouble free.
Apple hadn't finished with my finances yet. When those airport express units came out i thought that would be very nice and bought 2 to wire my whole house up and stream music to my main hi-fi. excellent.
Then I decided a I needed a nice fat display to edit my wedding photos on, so I bought a 23" cinema display for home, and a wireless kb/mouse to make my laptop a "desktop" at home. It's the best display I've ever used. As it was a lot of money I did look around at different brands but the apple got the nod although it was noticeably more expensive, the quality of it is staggering.
Now my wife wants her own laptop after using mine a bit at night, or an iMac G5. And I want to get a dual G5 2.5ghz as one of the cameras I use for weddings generates 80mb files which does take a little while to load on the powerbook
So you can see from an ipod sale apple got a fair bit of money out of me. My wife being a school teacher we bought it all on education pricing but it was still a lot of money.
Re:Still a small margin (Score:5, Informative)
The eMachines notebook is very powerful, but heavy at 7.5lbs. It averaged about 2.5-3hrs of battery life. I lugged it around for a semester at college, but now I use it as a DTR only. It includes 54mbps wireless, plenty of usb ports, an excellent screen, firewire, etc.
At first I was concerned about reliablity from an eMachines product, but I've been pretty happy with the purchase thus far. Although, I have yet to take full advantage of the AMD64. XP64 is still in beta and not all drivers are available. 64bit linux kernels have become stable, but there are equal driver issues. For now, I have a dual boot with XP Pro and Mandrake 10.1 both 32bit.
I bought a new 15" Powerbook using Apple's Student ADC program ($2k) about 4-5 months after buying the eMachines notebook. I also bought an IPod as an accessory with it, or was it the otherway around
The Powerbook is much thinner and lighter. Its looks about 10x sleeker than the eMachines (thought the eMachines notebook does have some neat blue leds). It gets about 3 - 3.5hrs of battery life.
The Powerbooks power saving and management features are far superior. It can be put to sleep within a second and equally wake up just as fast. When you close the screen, it goes instantly to sleep. In the short time it takes to flip open the cover, it will be back on and your application are just as you left them. Although this is possible on a PC, it takes signicantly more time and has a hand full of compatibilty issues that may prevent it from working at all. Apple did an excellent job engineering their hardware and operating system to get the optimum performance. Its also pretty efficient in sleep mode. I've had my powerbook sleeping for a couple days, and when I woke it up, it was still at 99% charge.
Some other neat feature Powerbook include the back lit keyboard, built in mic, firewire 400/800, and bluetooth. It also has a sensor to detect ambient light. During low light situations, the screen will dim and the keyboard will light up automatically.
I primarly bought the Powerbook to play with OSX, and I've been extremely impressed with it. Its very stable, and I've rebooted only when forced to for software updates (uptimes usually span weeks). The UI in general just seems more refined. The dock and finder are just capable if not more than XP taskbar or KDE/Gnome eqivalents. I particularly like Expose (an extremely easy way to switch between open tasks). It also has a unix backend. You can open up a terminal and many familiar tools from *nix are available. Its also easy to develop crossplatform code for other unix like systems, which is something I've used for some of my computer science classes
After buying my Powerbook, I've definetely become a believer in Apple products and OS X. Though, I still wouldn't be able to make a complete switch. There are still many things you can still only do on a PC. For example, certain games are only developed for the PC. Though, there seems to be more and more games being released for both. Theres also some application that only work on PC. However, this is less of an issue since Microsoft has released Virtual PC for Mac. But what I'd probably miss the most is plethora of options/peripherals available and the resulting prices in the PC market.
I think you can defintely find better deals in the PC market because of the competition there. The 50% off Dell notebooks is a perfect example. You pay a premium for the Powerbook and Apple hardware in general, but I think its worth it. But if you're just looking for a notebook or computer that gets the job done, you can probably find PC that does it for less.
Re:Still a small margin (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Still a small margin (Score:3, Informative)
I've been running a D-Link DI-624 for over a year with an AirPort equipped Powerbook G4. I don't think I lack a variety of options. :-)
Re:Happened to me... (Score:2, Informative)
You can export/import Visio XML files in the Pro version.
Re:It makes sense... (Score:3, Informative)
You can also set the size of Windows widgets in the same Display control panel -> Appearance Tab -> Advanced.
Mac OS X has similar window and UI scaling functions built in but not available for the user to change, for now it's 72 dpi, same as it always has been.
Problems arise from two things: sloppy programming on the Windows side assuming that 1 twip = 15 pixels (a 96 dpi resolution) meaning that control layouts get buggered up when set to any other resolution.
Second clueless web page authors. Most will mix unit types on pages and use resolution independant units such as pixels for images and resolution dependant units for fonts such as points. This means when the resolution setting is anything other than 96 dpi the layout gets screwed. Thanks to this almost all Mac browsers assume 96 dpi for web pages so they don't look like ass when the system default is 72 dpi.
I think the main thing holding us back from a resolution independant interface for a desktop OS is the pull of having to provide support for legacy apps.
Re:If only my iPod would do that (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not for techs (Score:3, Informative)