Apple to offer Windows

[Dan_]

Apple have their project boot-camp beta available for download.

Basically this mean you will be able to run both Apple OS and Windows on a Apple computer.

Soon you will be able to run Amibroker on a Apple Laptop

Now about their pricing.....

 

[wayneL]

Apple have their project boot-camp beta available for download.

Basically this mean you will be able to run both Apple OS and Windows on a Apple computer.

Soon you will be able to run Amibroker on a Apple Laptop

Now about their pricing.....

...and I just bought a crappy PC :swear:

 

[dutchie]

Do they still sell Apple computers?

 

[warney]

Do they still sell Apple computers?

no pop ups,no viruses! harder to get some software....but ya cant have it all

 

[wayneL]

Apart from some software availability issues, I don't know a single Mac user that would ever go back to PC. To paraphrase their sentiments, they would rather swallow razor blades, than use a PC. Hah!

 

[Smurf1976]

It's interesting to think back to the 1980's (or earlier) and remember just how many different computer systems were around at the time. Not significant consumer / business systems as is the case now but literally dozens of systems. And no, they weren't compatible with each other as far as software was concerned.

That Apple (Mac) has been the sole significant non-Microsoft / PC survivor says rather a lot for it. The Acorn, Amiga, Amstrad, BBC, Commodore, Spectrum, MSX system and a host of business computing systems are all long gone but the Apple, in it's 21st century form, is still around so they must have something going for them.

 

[warney]

it was commonly thought in mac circles that bill pinched the mac os and marketed it very well as windows 95....(or mac 86)....the fact still remains that macs are more powerful and dont have the crashes, and if they do you dont need a specialist to fix it.

 

[mlennox]

meh no matter how much people bitch about PCs... you can't live with them or without them... they're like women :

 

[JCB]

Once you've had Mac, you'll never go back!

 

[RichKid]

Once you've had Mac, you'll never go back!

Does this mean you'll have to have two whole operating systems installed on a Mac if you're a windows user and you want to try the stabler platform? I hear Windows is huge so would it still be attractive?

And if it is Windows which has the bugs why would you use it on a Mac? I'm not really an IT person so excuse any silly assumptions- my questions seem to be about software, I have a feeling it's the Mac hardware that sets it apart nowadays.

 

[Yezzy]

Does this mean you'll have to have two whole operating systems installed on a Mac if you're a windows user and you want to try the stabler platform? I hear Windows is huge so would it still be attractive?

Windows is big, but not big enough to actually warrant worrying about it not fitting on a modern hard drive. You can have as many operating systems installed on the one computer as you want, provided you have enough space.

And if it is Windows which has the bugs why would you use it on a Mac? I'm not really an IT person so excuse any silly assumptions- my questions seem to be about software, I have a feeling it's the Mac hardware that sets it apart nowadays.

Windows has bugs sure, but so does any software project. Whether they're as pronounced as they appear to be in Windows is another matter. Apple products are definitely nice, no arguements from me there, but I'd put their popularity down to good interface design(ease of use etc.) and a nice big marketing budget. As far as I'm aware, alot of their profits have been coming from the amount of iPods they have been selling, not so much their computer range. So I'd say it's combination of nice design, nice product, good marketing is what sets them apart.

That said, when I cash in some shares soon I'll be buying a new MacBook

 

[dreilly]

Does this mean you'll have to have two whole operating systems installed on a Mac if you're a windows user and you want to try the stabler platform? I hear Windows is huge so would it still be attractive?

And if it is Windows which has the bugs why would you use it on a Mac? I'm not really an IT person so excuse any silly assumptions- my questions seem to be about software, I have a feeling it's the Mac hardware that sets it apart nowadays.

From what i understand apple will offer OSX or win based platforms for their x86 line of computers, leaving the choice up to the user. Im not aware if they will offer dual boot options, but thats easy enough for the user to do on his own.

Yeah sure windows is a sloppy OS, it always has been. But you have to remember that M$ has had to support many hardware platforms/vendors over the years and all their derivatives. While Apple has had total control over what went under the bonnet of their products so developing a very stable OS for themselves was much easier. Not to mention that their OS was from the unix lineage.

This is a very clever tactic by apple. for years they have been struggling with a very small slice of the PC market share. By migrating their architechture to be inline with PC based hardware allows them to compete with everybody.

Jobs, the perfectionist that he is, was just waiting for intel to be able to deliver the grunt and stability he required to be able to make this transition. My opinion is that if he tried this pre-ipod days it would have backlashed on him, as the apple PC community consisted of only die hard apple advocates. One thing the ipod gave to apple was a new user community who decided that they loved their ipods so much that they would pair it up with mac.
Time for jobs to strike.
This move not only allows apple to compete with other mega PC retailers (dell, hp etc). it also opens them up to the VERY lucrative PC gamer market.

DR

 

[Dan_]

Does this mean you'll have to have two whole operating systems installed on a Mac if you're a windows user and you want to try the stabler platform? I hear Windows is huge so would it still be attractive?

You will have 2 complete different operating systems installed. This is often known as "duel booting". Basically when you start up the computer you will select with "system" to boot into OSX or Windows. Widows sure could use a diet at it's large (my current install is 3.5gb) but as 100gg drives are the norm these days you would still have around 46gb for programs and files (assume you do a 50/50 split of the drive)

And if it is Windows which has the bugs why would you use it on a Mac? I'm not really an IT person so excuse any silly assumptions- my questions seem to be about software, I have a feeling it's the Mac hardware that sets it apart nowadays.

Why would you use windows? unfortunately for a lot of people it's all they know and hence aren’t aware of any alternatives (OSX, Linux, etc) but due to it's dominance there are applications that will only run on windows, and if that application isn’t a massive seller then odds are it will most likely not be recompiled to run on OSX.

Whilst it is a common belief that windows has lots of bug and viruses (which it does) it's partly due to being a victim of it's success, and partly due to it's existence. IMO Windows is designed to be an interface with a pc which you can configure however you want. This has to allow for literally millions of different combinations of motherboards, processors, hard drives, graphic cards etc to all work together in some sort of harmony. Apple are different in where they only support "limited" configurations. This does provide a more stable and efficient environment. Note that I’m currently ignoring the fact that the two OS's are based on different codes

The big difference that sets Apple apart (again IMO) is consumer opinion, quality of products and marketing. Apple people are very passionate about their products and their products are (usually) very well made and very “intuitive” to use. Unfortunately this comes at a price premium (especially in laptops).

Look at the Ipod for example. It was not the first MP3 player to be introduced, the dial/wheel interface is a Microsoft patented interface, and it only "legally" works with itunes (especially here in oz for a long time) yet it's massively successful due to it's quality, brand awareness and simplistic use.

The interesting part about boot camp is showing where Apple is headed. No double they will work towards integrating Windows closer into their OSX. What does this mean? Ideally one day OSX will be able to “emulate” windows in the OSX environment so any program that can only run in windows will run directly from their platform.

Then if they release OSX on non apple computers Microsoft will be very concerned.


Anyway I hope this answers your questions Richkid and as soon as i make some serious money trading I’ll get a nice shiny apple notebook and run Amibroker on duel boot

 

[srivest]

I use linux at work and at home. I'd say that most of my time I use a browser and firefox is the same on win/mac/linux so it doesnt really make a difference. OpenOffice to replace MS office et voila! I'd say nowadays that's more about the applications you use than the OS itself that matters.

 

[RichKid]

A big thank you to everyone who posted for sharing your views and knowledge, certainly is a very experienced community we have here on ASF! Things look a lot clearer now, I'm eyeing those hot looking Mac notebooks as well...

 

[Fugazi]

Hi all,

pressure of work has kept me away from the forum for a couple of months, won't happen again - work is for suckers I've decided. Now I'm back, and armed with - you've guessed it - a shiny new MacBook Pro .

Slowly coming to grips with OS X (I have worked with Microsoft products for a living since the mid eighties) and I love it, but I don't want to go booting my sexy new Mac into Windows when I've got a half dozen PC's around the house to look after as it is.

I've bought the Mac specifically for personal use (including anything to do with trading) as even looking at my Toshiba Tecra, excellent as it is, feels like work these days.

So, has anyone come up with a decent charting program to run natively on OS X, preferably a universal binary.