WTF 8800GT for mac

[lopri]

I tried Mac mini when it first came out and there was no way to start the system without registering first. I returned it right away. Not sure if there is a way getting around it, but it was a huge turn-off at that time for me.

Granted, today's Mac machines are a lot more attractive and price competitive. There isn't even an excuse with regard to OS X since you can just install Windows on it. But then again, if that was the 'thing' that I had with computers in general I could have been satisfied with a $500 Dell machine a long time ago.

 

[taltamir]

As for the "it just works"... back in the day I worked at a video editing place.. we had around 10 PC (winXP) graphic workstations and 10 MAC graphic stations (OSX, G4, and G5, and mac pro stations)... we also had some older macs and pcs, as well as some linux computers doing OTHER stuff... (we even had an amiga or something from the 1980s..)

All the workstations were loaded with creative suite, as well as a variety of commercial video rendering software...
The macs constantly crashed and broke. It was really annoying to have a 3 hour render fail because the mac renderer just crashed 2 and a half hours in... sometimes they wouldn't turn on when you click the power button (the "bios" hung), so you had to unplug and replug it and try again. We had bios issues (well, if you can call that crap that apple uses a bios), and a variety of other failures. The really ANNOYING part was how hard it was to actually FIX mac problems, because everything works against you.

On the other hand, there was a single case where a virus took out all the PCs at once.. It actually usurped norton... I had to first gut norton, then manually remove the virus from the registry, then manually remove the files using special software (cause of permission issues). It was quite the virus really, I never saw something like that before or after... The funny thing is, I was employed as a simple tech at the time... I was just the most knowledgeable computer geek in the store.

http://www.macfixit.com/

 

[Syntax Error]

Originally posted by: Phynaz

Originally posted by: Lithan
To be honest it's not us who's making mac users look bad. It's the mac ads, they basically say, "Hey, you! You're a retard who can't tell his ass from a hole in the ground... buy a mac cause PC's are too complex!"

Regardless of how you feel about Macs, the ads are correct that PC's are too complex for the general population.

So you buy a Mac to compensate? See what the ads advocate, they've slowly changed the perception that "PC"s are too "hard" and "unreliable" to use.

So buy our more expensive Macs and prettier UIs and maybe, just maybe, you'll be as "hip" and chic as the Mac guy.

While the rest of us PC users are that geeky, dorky PC dude.

:disgust:

 

[taltamir]

If my 53 year old mother who hasn't EVER used a computer before the age of 51 can deal with winXP and now vista, then PCs are not "too hard"...

At first it was hard on her, but now she spends almost all her time on the internet. She browses, she searches, she uses word processing and email, etc...
The only things she DOESN'T do is game, or do graphic editing...

Her questions have gotten advanced too, at first she was wondering why the computer wasn't turning on (the monitor was off) when she pressed the power button again and again...
Last week she asked me "how do I clear the history on firefox so people can't see what websites I went to"... I never even told her what history IS...
But now she routinely clears her private data. Not bad for someone who used a computer for less then two years, and started at such an advanced age.

I doubt she would have done better on a mac. I used macs, they aren't that simpler... or even less prone to breakage or errors...

 

[XNice]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: v8envy
In the olden days the cards had support for OpenFirmware, the powermac equivalent of BIOS. If your video card couldn't talk to OpenFirmware you couldn't use your monitor until the OS came up and loaded drivers. Which made troubleshooting boot issues a big problem.

These days I'd be shocked if the boxes contain anything more different than a mac OS driver disk vs a windows disk. But I still wouldn't be adventurous enough to try it on a real mac.

The video card firmware is still different, Mac video cards need to support certain EFI features that traditional video cards don't. Furthermore the firmware for the Intel Mac video cards is 128KB, as opposed to 64KB for PC video cards, so you can't just flash a PC card.

As for the price, it's a custom built low-volume part. It's going to cost more just because there are fewer people to spread the R&D costs around to.

Actually it's more to do with the concept of economies of scale. When you have some sort of assurance demand will be a certain number you can produce the correct number for that. If you have assurance that demand will be huge, you can make the decision to produce more per factories, open more factories, improve the process, etc. It's one of the main reasons we in the PC hardware scene are accustomed to and almost expect price drops over time. 8800GT anyone?

 

[taltamir]

but xnice, it is the exact same chip. It is even almost the same card. The only difference is that the card if flashed with different firmware. and MAYBE has a bigger firmware holding chip...
Its like saying that using different tiers or audio player on a car should make it go up 10,000$ because of scale economics... you already make the car for other markets. A superficial change would not add such a cost.

 

[XNice]

You have a point, as long as it is certain that thats all it entails. Plus you have costs related to distributing it through a different channel. There is a lot of work that has to be done to get that card from the factories it was made from into the stock of store inventory. But you do have a point, if there is no significant manufactoriing cost, but there is still distrubtion costs that also are affected by EOS.