neven's Profile

Agreed... The OS is intuitive for intended uses; you went third-party and willingly performed a very unintended operation. You can't have your userland cake and eat your hacker cake too.

Nelson: Skinner gets paid $25,000 a year. Bart: Let's see, he's 40 years old... Wow, he's a millionaire! Milhouse: And in the summer, he paints houses. He's a billionaire!

I really wanted to like this app. I tried the beta version of Tangerine and found the application beautiful but essentially useless. Version 1.0 is slightly enhanced, equally pretty, and still producing the same (non)results. My top twenty "fastest" and "most intensive" tracks (out of a library of 6,000 ecclectic songs, consisting in equal parts of jazz, prog rock, alt rock, punk, classical, and electronic music of all sorts) include a scratchy Django Reinhardt ballad, Neu!'s "Neuschnee" and Tricky's "Ghetto Youth" - tracks I'd describe as fairly slow and mellow. No matter how I twiddle Tangerine's (precious few) knobs, I get good-as-random playlists. Also, your iTunes-purchased songs will not be included in the analysis; I understand that Potion can't legally break Apple's DRM in order to analyze these songs, but it does cripple the whole enterprise significantly. Keep the UI and rethink the algorithm.

I think this is leaving some reasons for Apple's philosophy of not allowing OS X to run on non-Apple hardware: it's much, much easier and bug-free not to have to support the sea of hardware out there. This would end up COSTING Apple a whole lot. Also, the Mac is sold as an Experience, not a set of software and hardware. It would reduce the 'value of being a Mac user' if the OS were shipped with gray boxes. You can consider this baloney, but I'm pretty sure that Steve & Co. don't - to them it's a major part of the Mac brand.

You offer no disproof or counterpoint to my points. Do you have some aversion to specifics, or are you just practicing your epithets? And way to quote an illustrative final paragraph as the gist of my post. Here, I'll use the same distillation technique on your last post: "ass." P.S. "who's" is not a word.

First of all, let me just say that you could replace every noun in this article with the equivalent by another manufacturer and come up with the same conclusion: upgrades cost money. Point by point: "If you’re going to have trouble anyway, why not just buy a cheap computer? No wonder people choose cheap PCs over Macs." I love these "there couldn't possibly be a good answer to this, right?" questions. You don't buy a cheap computer because it a) breaks more often, statistically speaking, b) works like crap when it works. There is no reasonably complex product in the world that doesn't break. No Lexus driver has had zero service done on their car. People who choose cheap PCs over Macs (as opposed to people who choose expensive PCs over Macs, and there's plenty of those) end up with crappy computers that break more often, sooner, and more seriously than Macs. Is this even debatable? "Excuse my cynicism, but has Apple managed things nicely to make you replace your shuffle every year or so?" Using a replaceable battery in a Shuffle would have made it pricier and less elegant. If that doesn't bother you, you're free to buy another tiny flash-based player. I'll take the cheap, awesome (and yes, *cool*) Shuffle myself. And mine hasn't been replaced in two years (your mileage may vary). "It will have been two years since you bought Tiger so you wont mind, will you?" Of course not! If Leopard delivers on the mix of previewed and expected features, it will be absolutely worth it. I pay money for things I need and want; if Leopard is one, why wouldn't I pay for it? "Until you discover you’ve got to fork out more than that again to take advantage of its new features, in particular Time Machine." You don't say. And I'll end up with a new hard drive and what looks like a brilliant automatic backup feature. Are you saying the feature and the hard drive should be free, or are you saying that they're not things worth owning in the first place? "Also, if you want to take advantage of Boot Camp and run Windows, that could cost you another $199 or more." As opposed to those other dual-boot solutions that come with a free copy of Windows? By the way, if this article is talking about a typical Mac zealot, those will most likely not want to take "advantage" (yikes) of Boot Camp. The same argument applies to iLife and iWork as does to your other points: if I need/want them, I'll pay for them. Here's the conclusion, then: "it does stretch the budget and friendship when it so regularly cajoles the loyal customer into forking out their hard earned for yet another “necessity”." Who ever said this? Does Apple not support older versions? How often do they phase out hardware or software? I can run most Apple software on a G3 laptop. Let's have some perspective - running Vista, for instance, will require *most* users to buy a whole new machine. If the hype surrounding Apple's products makes them feel like a necessity, you can deal with that mental problem in two ways: give in to it or accept that you don't need the latest toys. Isn't that the case with all products? Why pick on Apple? Does Sony run ads saying, "Remember that TV you bought in 1999? It's still our hottest item. We just wanted to let you know you don't need a new one." "Some people will argue it’s optional, and so it is, but that doesn’t and shouldn’t justify it." This is close to meaningless. Why should Apple have to "justify" the fact that they come out with fantastic, desirable new products regularly? Maybe they shouldn't charge for them? "Although some years more than others, the cost of discipleship is often too high." Compared to what? Compared to the cost of not buying Apple products and ending up (most likely) with lesser ones? Or compared to the cost of not buying every single new thing Apple comes out with? There are valid complaints to be made about Apple's products. The iPod scratches. The notebooks get hot. No brand or manufacturer is immune to problems, but the point is that both the intended and the real-world user experience with an Apple product is better than even the advertised experience with most competitors. This isn't always quantifiable, but just look at the Mac community - we love this stuff the way we don't love most our other possessions. That's the *value* of Apple discipleship, and I for one think it's the best deal around. I run the awesome Tiger on a PowerBook G4. I'd love to get a MacBook, and I can't wait for Leopard. In the meantime, here I am, running a beautiful OS on an amazing machine, looking forward to even better toys in the future. How is this a bad thing?

There's a market Apple might be targeting whether they're aware of it or not: the dude-like masses who are just now buying their first computer (or their first "serious" computer). They've used the family machine up to now, or it was basically a parental purchase. But now they're making their own decisions. Hey, they've got an iPod already, and they really find their PC a drag. You know, Ellen-style. This is the precise market for the smartass humor in these ads. Will they feel made fun of? Heck no. They won't identify with the PC. Sure, they like him, but they're not HIM. It's not the biggest market in the world, and perhaps they're not worth going after at the expense of everyone else. But this will work with them.