A Challenge for apple users

[Prestidigitweeze]

How are the viewing angles? I have the matte screen, but it isn't an IPS panel. The angles are less than stellar.

[Barcey]

How difficult it is to change the hard drive on the iMac.

Lack of bluray support.

Apple's direction to move to the closed Appstore approach for 3rd party software.

[monkeyluis]

Originally Posted by Barcey

How difficult it is to change the hard drive on the iMac.

Lack of bluray support.

Apple's direction to move to the closed Appstore approach for 3rd party software.

You can still get 3rd party software. The only difference is to get "certified" by apple to make sure your app is good to go. The internets has this information. Google.com

Bluray came & went. Well for me at least. Apple chose not to invest because they have movies in their iTunes catalog. External bluray players are cheap though.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Changing the hard drive used to be incredibly easy on certain models (the old MacBook line) and less so on others (my MacBook Pro 15"). Correct me if I'm dung, but more recent unibody models are bound to make the task harder if not impossible for the reasonably handy user.

(Dung, dung, dung, went the badger. . . .)

[WillAdams]

My perspective is a bit different, since I gave up on the Mac shortly after the Macintosh II, preferring a real laptop (GRiDcase III for the morbidly curious), then used a NeXT Cube for a desktop and having since moved to Tablet PCs.

At one point in time I actually had access to machines running Windows, NeXTstep and Mac OS w/ similar CPUs and memory specs --- the machine running NeXTstep was far more elegant, capable, productive and stable than the other two. While Mac OS X has pretty much kept the stability, and capabilities have improved, elegance and productivity have lost.

Things which I miss:

- vertical / repositionable main menu
- tear off sub-menus which allowed customization of the interface at will
- Display PostScript --- it kills me that in the 21st century it's still possible to get a graphic on-screen, but then be unable to print it.
- Print, Hide, Quit and Services are no longer top-level menus (which made sense) but are hidden.
- the clear demarcation between Command and Control shortcut key combinations has been lost
- TeX is no longer installed by default
- nor is a PANTONE color library / license

William

[Prestidigitweeze]

You actually owned a NeXT Cube? I'm so jealous! I've only ever seen ads for those in old magazines, but the specs and options seemed amazing for the time. I recall reading about banks of virtual synths by Roland at a time when no one was doing that yet. There was also a 600 dpi laser printer included, wasn't there? Comparatively high res for that point (1988-1990). No one I knew had such a thing at their studio.

[WillAdams]

Still have it. One of these days I'll get around to checking and see if it not booting is caused by a bad SIMM (I've got a set of 4 4MB SIMMs to swap in to test). Also have a Slab (which was owned by Wolfram), a couple of monitors and the NeXT Colorprinter (had a NeXT CD-ROM drive, but it was single speed and wasn't that cool looking, so traded it). Unfortunately my in-laws tossed the empty NeXT box which the '040 motherboard upgrade came in, as well as the similarly-sized empty box a NeXT-logo SCSI cable was in.

The NeXT Laserprinter was 400 dpi, w/ an option to run it in a fast mode at 300 dpi --- the difference between the two was marked and I once had to re-print a stack of résumés 'cause I'd forgotten to check that setting.

Also nice was having the ability to schedule printing to the Fax modem for when phone rates were cheap and knowing that the fax machine at the other end was essentially a 200 dpi PostScript printer (it was often noted that my faxed in résumé looked much nicer than others which were scanned first).

Running Mac OS X is nice, but frustrating at the same time for the reasons given previously (and others).

I'm especially going to be sad when Mac OS X 10.6.7 is no longer an option and I won't be able to run Macromedia FreeHand MX (which at v4 was a port of the NeXTstep program Altsys Virtuoso).

William

[ScotiaBurrell]

not have mac. ios was good but others always tell me what it cant do. now i think maybe better means more screen and capable of expanded memory. Not wanted befre, but maybe would be useful

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

I'm especially going to be sad when Mac OS X 10.6.7 is no longer an option and I won't be able to run Macromedia FreeHand MX (which at v4 was a port of the NeXTstep program Altsys Virtuoso).

William

First, I thought I was the only person in the world outside of recording studios, production rooms and film editing/post facilities who lamented the passing of options that will fade with pre-Lion OS iterations. It isn't a question of preference but functionality.

Second, a friend from Australia has made half of his living maintaining the database and presentation software he built around Macromedia Director. It seems there are professionals who despise Premiere so much they're willing to deal with finicky one-person-maintained alternatives instead.

Again, I'm impressed. I've worked with $200,000 workstations and $180,000 Sony PCM 24-tracks on a daily basis; I've had Mac towers with state-of-the-art digital recording software and hardware and have kept a few racks of vintage synths and anomalous analog/digital effects. But I've always wanted to play with a full-on NeXT system and it's a pleasure to meet someone who actually owns a few. I hope you took a few photos when that setup was in its prime.

[jojoba]

I've only had my mac since last November but so far I'm loving it. No gripes yet.

[heySkippy]

I've had Macs from the beginning and while I've had plenty of gripes over the last (almost) 30 years, there's nothing seriously bothering me right now. The usability and stability of the whole Apple ecosystem has become quite good over the last few years.

[David Munch]

Originally Posted by Barcey

How difficult it is to change the hard drive on the iMac.

Pretty difficult, as you have to remove both the screen and the motherboard, but it can be done. I'm going to do it myself with my 27" iMac within the next years time, to add an SSD.

Regarding the OP's question, I have the following points, as I've been a Mac user for almost 25 years now:
• I feel that OS X 10.7 Lion is step backwards for pro users. I do see how it is easier to use for Mr. and Ms. Jones though, so I do get why they are doing it.
• Apple tend to do changes to things that don't need changes, including the operating system. Sometimes for the better to move the industri forward, but in many cases, these are steps backward.

I think that was it? The hardware is excellent, and not more expensive than comparable PC's these days, and the OS is great (See above though). The software line is expanding, and except for the lack of a few AAA games which I don't have time to play anyway, I'm not lacking anyway.

I'm wondering though, why is the OP asking that question? It didn't seem like your run-of-the-mill-trolling-question..

Edit: I certainly don't like Apple's current approach to not having a unified user interface across applications.