For those who were offput by Mark Frauenfelder’s clunky “clunkiness” comments, and were tempted to write him off, you might want to take a look at his website, Boing Boing and especially his list of writing credits. He’s a former editor of Wired Magazine and has been published everywhere from Playboy to the NY Times Magazine. The guy has cred.
Still, he looked like a screaming fucktard in the ad. To be fair, all of those drooling knuckle-scrapers looked like fucktards in the Apple ads.
A) I just ordered my eMac. Should be in late next week.
B) In the ‘comments’ section of the online order form, I shared my opinion of the new ads with Apple. But I refrained from saying ‘fuck’.
Would you be so kind as to point out where I can get complete software for Windows that will run X and classic apps?
I’ve skipped reading all of this, but in general, we all need to remember that not everyone in the world can be a computer geek. There simply isn’t enough time or inclination to learn everything about everything, and many people aren’t going to learn much about computers, and that’s ok.
I remember the first time I saw some line about C:\Programs… I had NO idea what the HECK it was talking about. I still think it’s a bit geeky, and I’ve had a job specifically teaching people user-end apps. Apple seems to have a better handle on how to make things easy to figure out. Isn’t that somewhat universally acknowledged?
[sub]The above user has never owned a Mac, and is not a Jobian cult member.[/sub]
“and” is not the same as “or”.
In my post I meant an inclusive or, as in you can’t run X apps or you can’t run old apps, not ‘it is impossible to run any mac programs on a pc’.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Depending on the task, it may be fast enough.
I’ll fire up Virtual PC on my 450 MHz iMac once in a while; I have Office 2000 on Windows 98 for it, for those times when someone insists on having a file in Office 2000 format. So I drag my files from the Mac to the PC window, dink around Office, and send 'em off. The emulated PC is fast enough that I could easily work all day using Word in there without complaints. And until AudioGalaxy got nuked earlier this month, I’d sometimes fire up AG in my imaginary PC and snarf MP3 files.
The only time my Virtual PC wasn’t “fast enough” was when I was using it to run a Windows-only Sega Genesis emulator (yes, I was running an emulator within the emulator 
). The slowdown there was noticable but not crippling. Fortunately, since I was just capturing audio at the time, I didn’t have to do much more than access a few option screens. If I want to play games, I’ll just fire up a Mac-native Genesis emulator instead. 
Obviously (unless someone shows otherwise) the Mac emulators for Windows are pretty pathetic. You probably will need a Mac ROM (something not everyone will be able to get) and the emulators will only run on OS 7x. There seem to be no decent Mac emulators available commercially, either. (If I’m wrong about this, please let me know!)
We are up to OS X now, OS 9.2 being the most recent pre-OS X system. So, an emulator that only goes up to OS 7x is pretty useless. My current Mac software (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver) needs OS 9, or at the very least, OS 8.6. An emulator that does OS 7x would be only a novelty, nothing more.
And I hasten to add, I’d love to be able to run my Mac software on my PC. It would save me the trouble of acquiring PC software for my PC. (A Windows version of Photoshop, etc. etc.)
I’d love it if there were a decent Mac emulator out there. I mean, if there were a decent Mac emulator available, that would mean that all the PC people could run Final Cut Pro! And I don’t see anyone doing that.
While a Windows emulator on a Mac will run slower, it’s apparently not that pathetic. (I don’t know personally, but other Dopers who use Windows emulators make claims that they can be pretty decent.) And, even if the emulators are slow, at least they run the current Windows OS, and WILL run the latest apps (perhaps a bit slower). Virtual PC sure saved my friend in her college class. She was able to run a Windows-only app (required for the class) on her iMac. She’s not complaining!
And while I was writing that statement, rjung was right above me, explaining how well his Windows emulator works! Talk about timing!
My comparison was not to say why PCs are more cost effective than Macs…it was to say that the money I saved can be used to pay for the extra software you get with OS X. I am by no means saying that everyone should own a PC…it goes by user. I was just responding to what Kirkland said.
BTW, Gigabit ethernet is useless for 99% of users, since their networks don’t go that fast. Winmodems vs real modems is also a pointless differentiation due to the extremely low processing power required to do the modem decoding. Yes, my case locks. No firewire, but I can add a firewire card for about $25. I have 3 slots free.
As for emulation…the only Mac apps I want would be pointless to have run in emulation. If I’m doing Final Cut editing, the emulation would slow it down so much that it would make the program all but useless. Try playing 3D games, or rendering things with 3D Studio Max through Virtual PC, and see what happens.
For me, the reasons to own a PC outweigh the reasons to own a Mac…but that’s not the same for everyone.
Jman
OS 7x and earlier MacOS versions must be pretty useless then, if it’s useless to emulate them.
I believe Apple lets you download MacOS 7.5 and earlier for free from their web site. Now that’s pretty darn useless…