Topic: Valhalla...debate

[Matthew]

I heard Lion really doesn't play well with Windows networks.

[TechPro]

...
I think it's quite nice from a Windows developer perspective that Mac has to resort to marketing and glitz and really ... quite deceptive advertising and this whole notion of the 'apple experience', whatever that is, to sell its crap these days.
Before, the apple computer was a valuable, useful sector of the market. It costed something to buy one but it was a useful OS, doing more with less and it was the best if you were in a production environment. Well, now Adobe and Apple are at loggerheads pretty much.

I mean, how long have Apple been on OS X? They just seem to me to be sticking on more useless, glitzy things like Time Machine, which hardly anyone will probably ever use.
I was speaking to someone who had to use it for lab research. He was saying how slow it was compared to Windows or even Ubuntu (which is a reasonably demanding Linux distro, obviously).

No, I think I'll just choose to disagree with the opinions stated in those two paragraphs.

I would have to say that Microsoft has struck a great balance RE: backwards-compatibility v breaking it.
It has made some weird choices with Win7 and Vista (ie. you can't seem to plug in a custom system midi controller ).

I think they broke what they had to with Vista and that's basically us sorted for the forseeable future.
I mean, that's one reason why Vista was so unpopular. It didn't run all the badly-written crap that people got to work with XP.
7 was everyone's sweetheart because it didn't have to go back and break anything - and it runs a good bit faster.
...

Yup, pretty much correct.

I heard Lion really doesn't play well with Windows networks.

Haven't seen any problems (yet) with Lion and Windows networks, but a lot of people are struggling with Lion and HP printers ... only because the HP drivers for Lion are only available through Apple Update instead of downloading them from HP.  Big wup. (IMO)

[Matthew]

Well, not just windows network, but Active Directory domains in particular.

[Crash]

Well you can't just say "I disagree" and then not say why.

Apple's marketing has become ridiculously selective. I went on their site the other day and here they were with a laptop advertised on their website "now 3x faster".
That was all the said about it.
Well, what does that mean? What does it refer to?
Someone might be forgiven for thinking that basically the entire operation of the notebook from CPU through to GPU to SATA, memory etc was 3x faster than the previous model, which is clearly a laughable claim.
I mean, that's tantamount to false advertising. I can't remember when I saw another manufacturer stand by such a bold and ridiculous claim.

I think it's fair to say that Apple are leaning on this "extra experience" nonsense. They are the kings of spin. There was a study recently that likened Apple to a religious cult.
Indeed, it was the same sectors of the brain being stimulated when Apple afficionados were shown products and pictures of the Apple stores etc. as were stimulated in religious types when viewing strongly religious imagery.

[Kaiaatzl]

Did they have a control group?  And did they say that the results for the control group were different?

Otherwise I could see this result being meaningless (maybe that section of the brain is stimulated by a new computer, period).  In fact, if they didn't say anything about their control group, it's possible that it wasn't any different but the so-called "scientists" were simply anti-Apple and they put some spin on it.

[Crash]

Haha, I don't know. I only saw it mentioned in a Care2.com article, lol.
It's always better to have a control group but the point they were making was that Apple was like a religion substitute for these people, which I can see some sense in.
There is a certain element of praise and mysticism about Apple (with its huge graven images and logos in glass-fronted, cathedral-like stores and dull, monastically-clad nerd sales assistants) and the fact that the same areas of the brain were responding to it is an interesting anecdote to say the least.

Another thing I dislike about Apple is the vast amount of slave labour involved in the manufacture of their products, all of which retail for a premium. I'm not saying it doesn't happen in many other companies. Sony aren't brilliant for example (and I have no time for them either) but Apple is in a league of its own and Sony et al. aren't as active in covering up the matter either.

[Scyphi]

Apple's marketing has become ridiculously selective. I went on their site the other day and here they were with a laptop advertised on their website "now 3x faster".

Not to pick a fight, but how is that different from any other computer company website? I mean, I bought a laptop from HP not too long ago, and as such made myself entitled to lots of ad-mail from them, and most to nearly all of them run along the same thing as what you claim.

And I've seen plenty of other companies do the same over the years, too.

[Crash]

Really? Maybe I'm being unfair to them then.
Although, that just makes HP in the wrong as well, doesn't it?
I don't normally buy PCs from big companies so I don't know how they all go on but when I saw this ad on Apple's front page I figured it was taking quite a liberty.

[VANGUARD]

overall, I like HP. Apple is alright, but not as impressive as I was hoping.
I'm still most impressed with Linux (Mandriva or even PCLinuxOS)

It's not just that Linux is basically free, but I think they've done a great job in how it's run.