(no subject)

[unbibium]

The new Apple news has brought me to Apple's website again. But there's some rather old news about Apple that continues to amaze me.

Whoever came up with the name "Genius Bar" should be the next Poet Laureate of the United States. I only hope such inspiration never falls into the wrong hands.

Also, the Mac mini may have won me over. It occurs to me that I'm not doing entirely that much with my current PC. What's more, this could probably replace that old Pentium II that's choking on dust at my grandfather's house... though I'd also want to replace that fifteen-inch monitor of his too.

So, PC people... if cost weren't an issue, why would you keep your PC's? It's got World of Warcraft too.

Comments

[waystar.livejournal.com]

I keep my PCs because I run Linux. Sure, I could run Linux on a Mac, and modern Macs are largely BSD, but I have more hardware flexibility with PCs running Linux. I love being able to make my machines do whatever I want them to.

I also get a kick out of creating new PCs from the ashes of older ones. Modern Macs are great machines, but I (personally) have more fun with PCs.

[steeldreams.livejournal.com]

Because most games won't run on Mac and Macs don't play nice with PCs, which makes LAN parties that much more difficult. Plus, I have plenty of friends who can take apart and fix a PC, but none who can fix a Mac. And Macs, as a general rule, are not upgradeable. You have to just replace the whole thing.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

What this person said, and "Half-Life 2." The miniMac, if I recall correctly, will come with 256MB RAM and a 32MB Radeon card (well, chipset) for graphics. Adequate for WOW, but will you want to run Halo2 on that when it comes out?

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

Well, that's just it. I'm not as hardcore a gamer as I used to be, and I haven't been to a LAN party since I graduated from college.

though sunburn has a point about Half-Life 2. It does beckon me, slightly.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

My impression is the same as iayork's: Apple is pitching this thing as a second or third computer, or an enticement to PC users who use their PCs for Web/email/digital photo/digital music/word processing tasks and are sick of Windows. It would be fine for all those things. Its capabilities are also perfectly sufficient for people who want to perform Unix geekery. It's definitely not a high-testosterone gamer's box, though Apple always makes some halfhearted stabs in that direction in their marketing.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I can agree with that. And the gamer boxen are far enough removed from the basic photo/music/web/email/wp system that the 32MB Radeon, while about 4-5 generations old for gamer machines, is still pretty far above what most users need on the video end. Aside from games, you'd need more than than for digital video (compressed video will be great if not superb) or any serious video editing. Cutting together a little footage for DVD burning (or, I guess, SVCD burning) might not be too miserable unless it's a big hobby.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The Mac towers are as upgradeable as any tower PCs. But the Mac mini pretty much isn't, unless you count connecting Firewire peripherals as upgrading.

[pootrootbeer.livejournal.com]

I priced out some Macs in late 2003, and I did again just now looking at the Mac mini.

The primary reason I haven't made The Switch yet, I think, is that Apple has been ignoring the Media Center / living-room convergence market. It's kind of surprising

My PC is also my TV, has been for six or seven years. I see no reason to own a separate 23-inch display and DVD player and speaker system when my computer already has all those features.

I would need Apple to provide the following features to get me to switch:
- digital audio out or onboard Dolby/DTS decoding with 5.1 outputs, so I can watch DVD's with surround sound as intended
- ability to drive multiple displays at 1600x1200 resolution or better
- DVD burner drive that supports writing to dual-layer media
- ability to sit back on the other side of the room and control media playback or other functions via remote control

Some of these things are available only on the high-end Macs, but I'm not about to buy a high-speed G5 tower to do my websurfing when a middling G4 would do that job for 1/4 the price. Other of these are available as third-party add-ons, but that defeats the entire integration of hardware and software that Apple has as a strong point.

I'm frankly surprised that Jobs hasn't dipped Apple's toe in the pool yet. The iPod/iTunes line proves that they can do music playback well, and their products are favored by those in the creative trades. It seems like a no-brainer, but it looks right now like Apple is targeting the computer desk and belt buckle, leaving Microsoft with no competition in the living room.

I'm sure it'll happen eventually; it has to. But until then, I'm going to have to stick with XP Media Center.

[pentomino.livejournal.com]

I figure Apple's not quite invincible enough to do video the way they do music. They're probably not going to do video until they can do it better than TiVo. And even TiVo can't do it better than TiVo.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall that Jobs explicitly said he didn't want to be in the Media Center market. I'm not equipped right now to do as you do, but I aspire to, though I'm avoiding the Windows-branded Media Center, since I'm already halfway to the complete setup with products that were inspired by TV and such.

Already I don't turn my actual television on more than twice or three times a week (Amazing Race, Alias, and Ebert & Roeper), and yet I still watch quite a lot of TV during the week, thanks more to BT than to my tuner card. (My computer's part of the apartment has lousy reception, and I don't want to shell out for cable.)

[kirkjerk.livejournal.com]

I dunno. I had an ibook for a brief time. It just didn't click with me. (Also I got ticked when I realized I needed a DVD drive to run garageband.) I think the way the dock mixes running programs and shortcuts to new programs is icky, ditto the way it collapses all windows of, say, a browser into one icon. There might be workarounds for all this, but I still feel like Windows UI is better for me, and admit that a chunk of that is familiarity.

That Mini Mac is awfully cute though. I wish they could economically do that for PCs. (I'd also love to see a PC the formfactor of a Nintendo GameCube, don't know if its shrunked DVDs would be an issue though.)