actually marketed macs?

Maybe the 'Switcher' add? But very rarely, if ever, (besides the first mac) does/did apple push the macs.

… and this is a very interesting article, especially where it concerns comparing OS X and Linux. Hope somebody at Apple marketing reads it, too ! They might learn a thing or six !
Actually, a reprint of the article might be a good way for them to put their foot in the door in a lot of places …

I have an iBook, myself, but am mainly linux user. For a laptop, the Macs really can't be beat, but I could not equip my classroom, office and home with all Macs. No way. I have three linux boxes in my classroom and three at home. I built all six for less money than I spent on the iBook. Besides, there are still many things that I can do with greater ease on my linux boxes (run OpenOffice, for instance), and, I hate to say it, but I believe Linux is a bit more stable. I get occassionaly hang-ups and spinning beach ball behavior from the iBook that I never get from my linux boxes.
I love my iBook, have no doubt. I sure does play nice with all kinds of networks, its pretty, iTunes rocks for sure, but Macs will never replace all of my Linux boxes, ever.

I might add that there is nothig in this article that would convince me, as a tech decisino maker in my school, to switch out. The pretty interface and iTunes are hardly a reason to bring Macs to my school. Utility, efficiency and price are key. Linux is vastly useful, and I've access to thousands upon thousands of open source applications to run on it, only a fraction of which are yet available for Darwin/OS X. OS X is also way more stable than windows, of course, but Linux still has it beat there, too. And of course, the linux boxes in my present classroom actually cost me nothing. I took PC hardware others were discarding , rebuilt several machines and loaded them up with linux, all for FREE. No licensing costs on the GPLed software, and linux runs fine on old machines, because it's not a resource hog. The advantages of Linux over any other paltform in academia are truly myriad.
Again, unsterstand that I love my iBook, honestly, and have many great things to say about OS X and Macs, especially their laptops, but really, this article is a joke.

Linux is free only if your time is worthless. Most Mac users just want to get things done, not spend excessive time assembling, compiling and debugging frankenboxes. However if that's what turns your crank, then by all means go for it.

DD

Which linux applications do you mean ? OS X has a port of pretty much anyhing ive wanted to use. Linux being more efficient isn't neccesarily the case when most users pack on the bloat of gnome or kde and run openoffice. I like linux alot but i mostly use it as a development server on one of my old macs(runs YDL 3.0) and I use the debian based knoppmyth on my HTPC. I do all my work on either panther or jaguar
I agree that free isn't always the better when you just want it to just work without having to sift through a ton of documentation

This is inaccurate. As a single parent and a full-time educator, my time is immeasurably important. I can not afford to waste time, and linux works just fine for me. I loaded all of my linux boxes with Fedora Core based K12lstp linux. It worked perfectly out of the box, so to speak. No tweaking, debugging, etc. Assembling the machines took about 30 minutes each.
I guess if you don't know enough to plug a hard drive in and slam in a ram stick, and you're a rich spoiled kid with money to waste, Macs are for you.

I havent had to sift through documentation.
Heck, I'm an English teacher, and I've only owned a computer for 4 years. I am no unix guru or computer expert, and I use linux at exclusively home and in my classroom. I don't understand why people are so intimidated by it. It is not difficult to use.

It's interesting to see the Linux folks who have made their way to this article. Welcome to TMO, folks.

This article is an interesting example of "Techhies" growing up and becoming more business-oriented. In business, the old adage is "TIME IS MONEY" and the real truism with Apple that most people fail to recognize is that their "free" time is not truely free: you can spend your time with hassles of getting stuff to work, or you can simply pay someone else to do that and enjoy more free time to do something else with.

FWIW, I often find it ironically hilarious when various "Do-It-Yourself"-ers complain so loudly about a $200 difference on a $2000 laptop, ignoring that it will take them a day of babysitting to get their "Free" OS installs done, etc, etc, etc...and then squander their savings at JiffyLube (instead of spending the half hour to do the oil change themselves) and so forth. The classic has to be the guy who pays for a lawn service and a gym membership instead of pushing his own lawn mower.

-hh

Most of the software you run on your linux will run on Os X. Once you install, and even most times without, X11 you are ready to roll.

#@!$ you

I'm enticed & even bought a powerbook. But fact is...OSX has way too much eye candy, unbunto performance on my old p4 blows away Tiger on 867, then 1Ghz then 1.3ghz. Tiger also introduced more eye candy than i can handle with spotlight,widgets,etc.

And in the end Apple is a corperation with investors and the more popular they become the more MS like they will become...its just life in the please the investors world $$$$

And with OSX being a dog, it gets really expensive really quick. I'd have no problem paying but all the eye candy really makes it crawl.

I've gone back to dual booting windows/ubunto (which has showed me really how far linux desktop has come...i was using linux on servers since 1.0 desktop always sucked...ubunto is impressive) these days except for high end packages in gis,stats,video...you can spend most of your time in linux unless you need the features of the higher end packages.

How is Spotlight "eye candy"?

Quote

Intruder wrote:
Macs put the Spotlight on "eye can't do it."