I doubt Mac OS X will ever be sold on hardware Apple isn't making. It's too much trouble to write all those drivers, to test all that hardware, and I beleive Apple has a good chance of thriving for a very long time on its niche market, that of the home consumer/multimedia-based system. They do a good job at it. It's too bad they dropped business supports, but whatever.

While we're talking about Rox, is it possible to just use the file manager? Or do you have to go for the entire DE?

Time and time again I hear this arguement. What hardware is apple making, seriously? The processor is provided by intel, they are using a standard hard drive, standard memory, the graphics card is supplied by ATI, therefore ATI has the be the one writing the MacOSX drivers. So, what is it that Apple themselves are making? The case?

The fact that Apple now has switched to x86 arch. which is ironic in of itself because throughout time, they have always beat their chest about certain things. First Apple beat their chests about IBM, and how bad they were, then up until the intel transistions, their PowerPC chips were provided by...lets see... IBM. And even before the intel transistion, they touted how much better the PowerPC arch was better than x86, now they are on x86, and the fact that they chose x86, then there is no surprise that people are trying to run MacOSX on "non Apple hardware", which as far as I'm concerned is still standard pc parts, I can't see why they can call it apple hardware, when 99% of the time, they get their hardware from other parties (intel, ATI, seagate or western digital, etc), with some kind of slight modification to the board itself.

Now it is going to be interesting, since ATI was bought by AMD, will they transition to AMD, or use an NVidia card instead, or use graphics provided by intel.

Anyways, as I have stated earlier, it is not pc vs. mac. It is just pc vs proprietary pc now. I do not recognize pc vs. mac, mac is now just a pc, macheads, get over it, you are no longer "thinking different", but just like us now, ironic, isn't it?

Sorry, should have been more specific; I meant the bundle. I know they don't make ANYTHING at all themselves, and I hate that for themselves, but you'll never see Mac OS run on something without a big ugly apple sitting on it.

And it is just Windows vs Mac. Linux isn't there, neither is BSD, because they're going to hit it big soon enough, in one big boom. I don't think Linux can survive with a slow transition lasting more than 3 years total. Otherwise MS will just beat the consumer senseless with FUD.

Intel graphics would be a possibility. I think they're already using them on most models.

It's ironic that (possibly; don't know about Commodore) the biggest competitor to IBM, and the IBM PC, was a PC in itself, that used CPU's made by IBM, and IBM itself never made a PC to run with its own CPU's.

Jeebizz, you're right. Macs have always been PC's. It's just that now you can install OS X on regular PC's with some fiddling and right hardware. Haven't tried that self, though.

About the drum-banging: IBM was the dominating Big Bad in early years of PC's for all others. PowerPC architecture was/is (see this generation of consoles) superior but IBM didn't succeed delievering low-power G5's, let alone G6's. Apple is rational and able to refresh when needed. Rest is marketing.

Thinking differently: for some odd reason more than half of creative businesess use Macs. Compare that to 5% of rest of us.


about rox: I tried it in Window maker. There you had to configure it to run whole DE. Haven't tried in gnome.

I tried it on four different machines including one built with as close to the Apple developer reference as I could get and none would boot. Finally ran across a used G4 iMac and bought that I must say I can see why everybody usually has such nice things to say about OS X it is one good working little OS/hardware combination they have built.

Thats true, the biggest thing that affected the G5s were that IBM's priorities were not with the processors for the mac at the time, because they were busy developing processors for the PS3 and Wii, ultimately making transition to the x86 arch.

Well.... I don't know about that, because for the majority it has always been pc(windows) in the business world, due to the use of office software, usually MS. Office, though of course there was a Ms Office for the Mac. However, you would commonly see macs used more in graphics and multimedia, but more of the business (mundane tasks like word, presentations, spreadsheets), that was and still relatively dominated by windows.

I can remember in my days years ago in elementary school, all school computers were apple, starting from a mac model I can't even remember, to Performa to MacPowerPC LLC (I think it was LLC, I can't even remember), until finally around my freshman year of high school is when I saw a major change, and have not really seen any macs at all, just windows machines. I'm not saying that macs faded away comepletely, but most people I have seen, in education, and business and maybe some (but not much) in multimedia, used a windows machine.

You can use rox-filer as just a file explorer and not the whole DE. Most people use it to add icons to the desktop and have a nice basic file manager for systems like fluxbox and icewm

and like sega stopped making systems and just made games apple just needs to throw in the towel on the computer market while its ipod sales are high and there not in financial trouble and just make ipod's and an operating system. I think that if they did that they would make allot more money and not have to slather the world with stupid advertising and pay millions to have there computers in every movie that requires a computer to be shown. Hell if they just made an os i would love to have it as my dual booted system choice rather then windows.

"what is apple providing?"

Apple provides good system integration between hardware, software and the general user experience.

I have experience with unix, microsoft, and apple. I would say that the worst is a tie between old macos and microsoft, and that for many people the new macos on reasonable hardware is inexpensive typically does the right thing. I use debian and macos - except for a few bits of software (FCP/Studio), I find that debian has a better selection - but many programs and utilities are ported or copied between the two.

Macs are very nice

Ok, so it sounds like people have mixed feelings about OS X. Would you say it would be a worthy investment to pick up a Mac? (I unfortunately have to say semi main-stream, my work requires it.) I need excel, word and a few other proprietary programs, but other than that, Windows serves little purpose for me (aside from games).

Yup

I see no reason for why not. One of the best things about having a mac is that they hold their value much better than regular PC's. Thanks to design and silentness, I think.

I have a mac and it's nice, but it's just a pc. Mine isn't the outragously expensive one but it's a mac none the less. I have seen some differences between mac's and windows but for provided software mac isn't all that great. ILife was wasted on me as I don't make movies, have a digital camera or any of those types of things. Yes I do have an ipod and it's proprietary nature cheeses me off. I attempted to dual boot Debian powerpc and osx panther but the Linux partition imploded (it was a first) so I bought a laptop (a regular pc) and installed Slackware, and it works. The only reason I keep OSX is to update and charge my ipod.
So in short is a mac a worthy investment? Maybe, but if you don't like the proprietary nature of windows how is switching to a mac any different?

I know this is probably going to upset some people and for that I am sorry but it is my opinion.

No harm done. I really would like to hear everyone's opinion. I got a chance to talk with one of the guys in the Apple store the other day, he was (for the most part) pretty useless, I asked about a C compiler since I couldn't find gcc or the like anywhere on their laptops. I see your point about the proprietary software as well. It very well may not be better. It does seem to me that with OS X you'd be able to keep some of that open source spirit alive, while keeping the "necessities". I haven't dealt much with Wine, is this a better way to go? (I figure I'd just emulate Excel and what not) The more I hear about Vista, the more I cringe, it may be time to switch over fully to Linux. (Of course I'll keep my XP box around for games!)

Why bother even using WINE for Excel? You may just run openoffice.org, and it has compatibility with existing microsoft formats, from word/excel/powerpoint 97, 2000, xp, and 2003, I don't know yet about office 2007, but I'm sure the folks at OO are working at it. Plus you can export your documents to microsoft's format as well as other formats.