Kodak to stop making digital cameras

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

most software is sold online and hardware is rapidly following that
trend. it's already happened with cameras and video stores.

So where can you buy components to build your own Mac online, and OEM copies
of the Mac OS to install on what you build?

most people buy fully built computers, not parts.

yet they're still buying new computers.

Some are. There's always a degree of turnover.

which means one day, those dos laggards you mentioned will need to
update.

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

It's pretty much the same thing. Mac users are often religiously attached to
their platform. Most PC users couldn't care less about their platform, as long
as it does what they need to do.

nonsense. bashers love to claim it's some wacky cult, but that's
nothing but bull****. people buy apple products because they like the
products and *want* to buy them.

almost nobody runs dos anymore.

What did I just say? Yes, some people still run DOS, especially in business
environments, which are slow to change.

not enough to matter. it's a shrinking market.

hardware wears out, and when it does, you will have to replace it with
something that might not run those old apps.

Why?

because new computers might not run ancient software.

in other words, stagnate.

You make it sound like a bad thing. A stable environment need not and
generally should not be changed.

it is a bad thing. in your world, we'd still be running dos.

compositing window manager is one of the bigger ones, but also grand
central dispatch (open source, btw) and opencl, along with others i
can't think of at the moment.

Maybe someday both operating systems will catch up to mainframes.

maybe someday you will stop with irrelevant comments.

only if you don't ever change anything.

There is no reason to change anything if what you have works.

there is if the new system can do something more efficiently.

if you want a faster computer or want a new feature, you may find old
software no longer works on the new system.

If you don't need a faster computer or a new feature, that doesn't matter.

and if you do, it does.

bull****

I take it you don't run a lot of old PC software.

why would i when newer software works a whole lot better, faster and
easier?

why not just use a manual typewriter. it works without batteries and
without needing to be plugged in. try that with your pc.

nobody said anything about constantly upgrading. however, there comes a
time when people want something faster or want to do something that is
not possible on the system they currently have.

Not necessarily. For most people, computers are like washing machines or
refrigerators, except that computer software doesn't wear out, and thus can be
used forever.

people don't build their own washing machines

at the time, nikon didn't have autofocus and canon did, which made for
a compelling reason to switch. it was a very smart move on canon's
part.

I still buy Nikon, so it wasn't that smart a move.

it was a very smart move. canon was more popular than nikon was in the
1990s.

except for all the ones that don't exist on windows, such as final cut
pro. a lot of people bought macs *just* to run final cut.

Dedicated machines are a special case.

not really. it proves that there is mac software that's not available
on windows, so much so that people buy an entirely different platform
for it.

Odd that when an application runs only on a Mac, Macheads use that to prove
that Macs are important. But when an application runs only on Windows,
Macheads claim that it's unimportant.

except that a mac user can run both, natively.

macs can run all windows and unix apps natively alongside all mac apps.

No, it cannot. Only an actual Windows system runs Windows applications
natively, by definition.

macs run windows natively, and therefore run windows apps natively.

it's the only computer system that can do that.

It's the only one that has to, since so many applications will run only on
Windows.

quality versus quantity.

bull****. far more windows users switch to mac than the other way
around. just look at apple's financial reports. half of all mac sales
are to first time mac customers, i.e., pc switchers.

How do you know they switched from a PC?

apple market surveys.

And how many PC buyers are
first-time computer users?

very few. you said yourself that everyone who wants a computer has one
already.

desktop computers are becoming a niche. mobile is the future, and intel
is not strong in the mobile space.

Mobile is not the future, except for mobile applications. Mobiles and desktops
have very little overlap.

mobile absolutely is the future. if you can't see that happening,
you're in denial.

right now, arm processors dominate the mobile space. smartphones and
tablets are almost all arm based. intel has *nothing* that comes close
to the battery life that's needed for mobile, although they say they
might sometime in the future.

Irrelevant to those who use desktops.

it is a shrinking market.

wrong. apple bought it from xerox. microsoft stole it from apple, xerox
and next.

Everyone steals from everyone else.

no, not everyone steals from everyone else.

early on they were more expensive, but that ship has long since sailed.

They are still expensive, which is one reason why I still don't have a Mac.

actually, they aren't for similar specs.

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

But you can build your own PC. You can't build your own Mac.

most people don't build their own pcs.

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

most people don't build their own pcs.

Most people don't use Macs. Be careful which arguments you use.

be careful about twisting things.

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

Can you actually build such a thing by yourself I doubt it.

Sure you can. Most cults, in fact, are built by one person.

except, this so called apple cult wasn't built by one person. there are
a lot of people at apple, and steve jobs himself wasn't even there for
over a decade.

Few things are done for that reason, think of cult things we they done
for that reason.

Steve Jobs really did do it explicitly for that purpose. He wanted it that
way. That's why he was so inflexible on so many points, and why Apple
maintains such an iron grip on its products. It's Apple's way or the highway.

wrong.

But I've used Macs since 1987 and PCs which is why I have Macs at home
and PCs at work.

I used Macs a few times decades ago, but they've always been to expensive to
buy on spec. I know what PCs can do, so I stick with those.

in other words, you are blindly following the herd, not looking at
options that might do a job more easily.

In article , tony cooper
wrote:

But you can build your own PC. You can't build your own Mac.

most people don't build their own pcs.

It's questionable if you can say that anyone builds their own
computer. You can buy the parts and components that are used in a
computer and assemble them to make a working computer.

But, have you really built anything? Few people who say they built
their own computer did any soldering, cutting, fabrication, or other
functions of building. They assembled.

more word games.

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

which means one day, those dos laggards you mentioned will need to
update.

I doubt it. They are not changing their applications, and the applications do
what they need done. There's no reason to "update" anything.

there will when they can't get replacement parts and have to buy new
hardware that won't run the old software.

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

that's an idiotic statement.

It's a true statement. You cannot buy a Mac from anyone except Apple.

you cannot buy a canon from anyone except canon. you cannot buy a
toyota from anyone but toyota.

There
are no Mac clones or compatibles.

there are no canon clones or compatibles. there are no toyota clones or
compatibles.

You cannot run Mac OS X on any hardware
other than Apple Mac hardware,

yes you can, but who cares? people want to get work done, not fixate on
who built the computer. if a mac does it more easily, then they buy a
mac. why is this so difficult to accept?

and Mac OS X is also proprietary and owned by
Apple.

only some parts are. the rest is open source, which is a lot more than
can be said about microsoft.

for example, google chrome, google android and hp webos (what's left of
it) use apple's webkit for their browsers.

On 2012-02-22 07:53:15 -0800, Mxsmanic said:

Le Snip

If Macs were really so great, you wouldn't need to be able to run other
operating systems on them.

Most Mac users running other operating systems on their Macs are
switchers from Windows PC's. Most run Windows natively via BootCamp, or
Windows and/or Linux with an emulator partition using Parallels or
VMWare do so because they have Windows software they have yet to find a
Mac replacement for. However it is usually a security blanket when
making that switch because Windows represents their comfort zone and
regardless of making the switch to Mac, they are reluctant to cut those
ties. They soon find that they are using the Windows OS and software
less and less.
Very few of those I know who run a Windows partition on their Macs,
continue to do so after their fears of Mac have been allayed.

I have always been an Apple user at home, and have had to use terminals
and various generations of Windows machines at work. At home I used the
Mac edition of Office. Once I graduated to an Intel Mac I thought that
it would be interesting to run a Windows partition with Windows XP SP2
which I had bought, so I would have full compatibility with some of the
custom DOJ software at work. I never found the need to install that OS
partition, and now that I have retired I doubt that I will ever install
it, maybe one of these days just for the Hell of it. So I Have an
unused copy of XP SP2 gathering dust and I have no sense of being
deprived of anything other than the frustration of running Windows, I
had enough of that at work.
I always joked at work that I endured Windows at work, and went home to
use what a computer system should be.


--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

nonsense. bashers love to claim it's some wacky cult, but that's
nothing but bull****. people buy apple products because they like the
products and *want* to buy them.

Like and want are not objective buying criteria.

like and want means they buy out of their own free will, not due to
some cult following.

if anything, windows users are the ones who follow a cult since they
refuse to even look at possible alternatives.

because new computers might not run ancient software.

Why not? Intel x86 computers still run ancient software.

install windows 3.1 on a quad-core i7 with a 27" lcd display. good luck.

maybe someday you will stop with irrelevant comments.

It only seems irrelevant if you're not familiar with mainframes. Just about
everything "invented" for desktop computers and servers was actually done on
mainframes decades earlier.

quite a lot is done on personal computers that was never done on a
mainframe, such as using graphics co-processors to offload work.

there is if the new system can do something more efficiently.

You don't necessarily need more efficiency.

it saves time and money, which means more time and money to do other
more interesting things.

why not just use a manual typewriter. it works without batteries and
without needing to be plugged in.

Some people do use manual typewriters, for exactly that reason.

why don't you start selling manual typewriters then?

people don't build their own washing machines

They don't build their own Macs, either. Be careful about the arguments that
you use.

what is this obsession with building computers? most people walk into a
store, buy a prebuilt computer, go home and plug it in and then start
using it. some of them buy macs and some of them buy windows systems.

it was a very smart move. canon was more popular than nikon was in the
1990s.

Is it important to be popular?

it is if you want to be profitable, which canon and other companies do.
companies do not succeed by making unpopular products nobody wants to
buy.

except that a mac user can run both, natively.

A Windows user doesn't have to run both, since he can typically do everything
he wants under Windows alone.

except as noted before, he can't always do that.

macs run windows natively, and therefore run windows apps natively.

Native = under the operating system for which it was designed. Thus, by
definition, only Windows runs Windows applications natively. That's what
"native" means.

yes, and macs can run windows, therefore it's native.

quality versus quantity.

Windows applications are of the same quality as Mac applications. It depends
on the vendor, not the platform.

not all are of the same quality. there may be hundreds, or even
thousands of image editors, but only a tiny, tiny handful that come
close to photoshop, let alone match it. more importantly, if you use
photoshop, then the existence of the hundreds of others is irrelevant.

apple market surveys.

Apple is not a disinterested party.

are you accusing apple of fabricating their numbers?

mobile absolutely is the future. if you can't see that happening,
you're in denial.

I've been watching things for a long time, and I see no indication whatsoever
that mobiles will replace desktops.

then you are blind. laptops have been outselling desktops for over half
a decade and tablets are starting to eat into laptop sales.

Mobiles are a new market, not a
replacement market.

it's a replacement.

That's like saying that everyone is going to start
watching TV on his iPhone instead of his home television set.

in fact, they are doing that. people are streaming netflix to laptops,
tablets and smartphones. some people may have a slingbox at home so
they can watch tv wherever they are and get their favourite channels,
some of which may not be available where they happen to be.

it is a shrinking market.

The desktop market is still growing, albeit slowly, since so many people
already have computers among those who can afford them.

it's shrinking.

no, not everyone steals from everyone else.

If you know the history of information technology (or of technology in
general), you know that everyone steals from everyone else. That includes
Apple.

no, they build on what came before. stealing gets them into trouble.

actually, they aren't for similar specs.

Every time I price them, they are far more expensive than PCs.

then you are not pricing similar specs.

as i mentioned before, the ultrabook manufacturers are having a tough
time competing with apple and are even asking intel for better pricing.
or, they cut corners, maybe with a lower quality display, shorter
battery run time, etc.