What I will miss, though, is the really useful 20 Mb of ad-free storage - it's bailed me out on quite a few occasions, as my 10 Mb ISP space ran out some time ago. Now, being the skanky bastard I am (won't pay for anything) and an avid ad hater (they really make sites look cheap to me, although Geek Culture ads are at least relevant and tasteful, and limited to one per page, so they aren't as bad as other sites) - I'll have to make do with my university webspace for the next year. Of course, it only puts off the inevitable by a year though.

Someone's going to have to put a positive spin on this - I mean, Apple surely can't go on playing right into my cynicism... I suppose they genuinely need the money - oh well. They won't be getting any from me unless, at the bare minimum, "uilleann" buggers off and leaves me his or her username in their will ;)

Nobody is forcing you to change all your contacts. If the hassle is too much you could always pay to keep your .Mac stuff. I know somebody with two dozen photo galleries at homepage.mac.com and if they weren't just webcam shots of herself and her friends she could certainly justify the cost, but very few people have that much content online. Heavy users can get web hosting with a domain name, unlimited email accounts and unlimited bandwidth for $100/year so why would they pay Apple that much for one email addy and severe bandwidth restrictions? "ooooo a free copy of Virex, what do I get next year?"

I'm highly annoyed that there is no low cost or free option for people who don't want 100MB of web space. I also think Apple is shooting themselves in the foot. iTools was one of the few Mac only services around. I considered it part of the value of buying a Mac. If Apple continues to eliminate the free software and services it offers Mac owners, it will get increasingly difficult to justify their exorbitant hardware prices.

I've been a Mac owner since 1992 but I really don't know if I can justify buying a new one ever again. My job is mostly Windows oriented and I can get a PC with top of the line components for much less than a low end PowerMac G4 so why should I bother?

I seriously doubt that few people made the choice to go Mac simply because of a few megs of free disc space and a web mail account. This isn't the first time a free web mail account has charged, and a lot of them have gone under.

I recall how frustrating it was when it happened on Deja. After that I didn't take those web accounts that seriously -- mostly used them as a SPAM cache when I posted on public forums that required an e-mail addy.

Peculiarly, Apple got me with iTools, and at least for the first year while the charge is just $49.00 (just $4.09 a month) I'll go with it and see what happens. If they keep their backup and virus packages updated, it will save me the hassle of keeping that part of my life current.

The other criticism I'm hearing is the charge for Jaguar. I don't get it. For me this OS update looks like a dream come true. For the mixed platform environment I work in the iCal, Mail and iSync apps are worth the money alone. To have ONE set of apps that can sync with the others my work associates use, plus the ones I use in my personal life really solves a huge set of problems for me.

As for abandoning a platform because of these minor charges, it does not make economic sense for me. Simply switching over all my software would cost more than a new computer. And I STILL would have a hard time finding an acceptable substitute for Final Cut Pro in the Windows world.

Bregalad, I appreciate your frustration. However I don't think there is a $1,300 windows box out there than can match the functionality of my flat-panel iMac. I'm still amazed that I can have a day's shoot dumped on to mini-DV, sync time code to a frame or two, offset the difference in Final Cut Pro, assemble a rough cut, and burn it to a universally-acceptable format (DVD) for review and approval the next morning -- and I can do that on a home computer that costs under two grand American $, with software that costs under a grand. Plus, if I get approval on the rough cut, I can export and EDL to any NLE in the area, and finish the project. (Yes, I would have bought the 17" mini-cinema model in a heartbeat).

Between my Pismo and 8600 tower (my audio powerhouse this iMac has allowed me to put off purchasing my own home tower until the G5 is introduced.

Generally speaking, I work in the communications industry, with deep personal involvement in Radio and Television, plus I have an art staff to handle print and web work. Since I first began to leave behind the world of flat beds, Ampex audio editing stations, razors, tape, blue pencils, wax and paste, no other company has matched my personal vision of communications in the digital age.

I think what Jobs showed us on Wednesday was brilliant, and 90% of the market (not just the 90% who are windows devotees) simply has not grasped what Apple is up to. I think Bill Gates understands, which is why M$ seemed so pissy this week.

Right now, with so much computing involved with tasks that are not processor intensive, the challenge in the industry is not improving the machinery at people's fingertips, but the ability to get their ideas from their brains into a digital format that is easily shared. From my perspective that's the problem Apple is working on.

As for machinery, with Apple's G4 technology breaking the gig limit even the most processor-intensive apps (video) becomes so easy to execute that my Aunt Helen can do it. It's not the machines right now, it's the software and integration.

Now, why are Apple's tower sales so slow? Everybody's sales are slow -- window-box manufacturers are dropping like Shaquille O'Neil dunk shots on an elementary school playground.

And why are sales slow? Take a look at cost/benefit. Right now, in a very processor intensive business it's taking editors, producers and directors longer to decide on an edit than it takes for editors to execute them. It made sense to switch my audio production supplier in 1988 from a $100/hr. analog shop to a $300/hr. digital shop because I knew I could complete a 4-hr. analog job in one hour with a digital station. And for simpler tasks, it's been a while since equipment improvements made word processing and spread sheet excecution significantly more efficient. The result is that incremental increases in processor speeds that Moore's law provides are now only giving us diminishing returns on productivity. And productivity is what sells most computers, not frame counts on Quake.

The real improvements in productivity will be in the ability to solve problems. At one time processor speed answered a lot of those problems. Right now, I think Steve Jobs has the vision to identify those problems and the dedication to solve them. The rest of the crowd is left behind only trying to solve the problem of how they will make money today.

I'm willing to spend money to keep a company with vision afloat. Over the past 15 years Apple Computer with Steve Jobs at the helm has rarely let me down. He makes my job easier and helps me solve my problems faster so I have time for more important things -- like post silly things in Geekland.

I don't see why anyone should expect a for-profit corporation give away waht it produces.

Yeah, I meant to say 'waht'!

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Originally posted by Bregalad:
Hikaru,
Nobody is forcing you to change all your contacts. If the hassle is too much you could always pay to keep your .Mac stuff.

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Ah, but how much would you pay to keep all your friends from changing email addresses*?

*Yours for the low low price of only $19.99, GeekCulture will function as your outgoing mail server, rewriting addresses and automagically tracking down your friend's new email addresses [ex-(girl|boy)friends extra] after they refused to pay $100 a year for dot Mac. Act now and receive a witty comeback that can cut through a tin can and still slice through a tomato. Operators are standing by...

I think the US$129 price tag for 10.2 is well justified and know that iTools was too good to last as a free service. What disturbs me isn't the loss of an email account I virtually never used or an iDisk that took forever to mount and navigate it's the direction Apple is going. All the perks of being a Mac owner are disappearing into the worm hole of fee for service agreements. The hardware is premium priced and you have to get something extra for that money.

Unlike you I work in the institutional database industry, one that is almost 100% non-Mac. It makes very little sense for me to have this sentimental attachment to what is, for my purposes, an overpriced computer, but I still like my Macs.

What your industry isn't getting from Windows is an application like FCP, but all the other pieces are there. The processors are faster at non-Altivec operations than Macs, the buses are faster, the RAM is faster, and the same video cards cost much less. More than anything else the sheer size of the PC market allows for a lot of choice. I can get FireWire on my motherboard if I want to or I can opt for just USB 2.0, I can choose between AMD and Intel, I have a choice of bridge chips (Intel, nVidia, VIA, SIS, ALI), and I have access to true professional video cards like 3D Labs' Wildcat 5110.

My C$1300 PC (roughly US$850) isn't full of cheap components either. It has an Antec case with a good power supply and easy access features, AthlonXP 1700+ processor, 512MB of PC2100 DDR RAM, the same 60GB hard drive you might get in a Mac, a 16x10x40 CDRW and a 16x DVD-ROM (I can't do that in my G4 tower), and a two year warranty, double what you get with a new Mac. I opted for a motherboard with limited features because my PCs are used mainly for database, office and internet purposes. If I lost everything on the hard drive tonight it wouldn't be the end of the world. If I'd wanted to spend an extra C$100 I could've had FireWire, USB 2.0 and ATA-133 hardware RAID on the motherboard.

I do expect Apple to finally join the 21st Century next month by introducing professional Macs with DDR RAM and a high speed bus, but the rest of the world got there on January 1, 2001.

You do make an excellent point regarding the efficiency of a computer user being more important than the underlying equipment. In your industry and a few others it's just silly to consider anything other than a Mac. The rest of the world, however, won't see an increase in efficiency with MacOS X in place of Windows. Some of us would actually see a drop because as nice as Web Objects is, it can't compete on a large scale with Oracle or the combination of SQL Server and .NET web applications. Plus the company I work for is doing things in .NET enhanced web applications that aren't even possible in traditional web apps.

Don't get me started on my Aunt Helen. Hoooo-boy!

i do understand that 10.2 is practicaly a new os, but cmon, is it really 130 dollars? what is the point to "up to date" if they won't give me a discount. They'll just charge me 20 dolalrs "shipping" for an upgrade if I had purchased a computer after it was announced that didn't have 10.2. So? i could send a receipt. receipt has serial number, serial number verifies whether it has 10.2 or not. I could see a 40-50 dollar upgrade path from 10 maybe, but 130$? Remember when mac os 8 was 90$? how did it get to be 130 so fast? it's because of windows, always being at 130$, so apple said why the hell not, just what they did with .mac.
that's why they charged me for the beta, then they charged me again, and again, and again, and now yearly.

so they say they give me virex. big deal. 40 dollars. but i don't need to buy it every year..... same thing with backup, they should be provided *free* and the cost should be knocked down to 60 dollars or so.

I do realize that 15 megs imap/pop/web mail could run about 40 dollars... for a company that ONLY provides mail services as a source of income. And who really uses their current 5 megs of mail? I certainly dont come close. I get new mail, and file it locally, taking it off of the servers. the most i ever have is 2 megs or so.

100 megs of space.... 50 songs or 40 pictures roughly (very very roughly). If i'm really going to use the picture thing then it won't let me have all to many. if i wanted it for web hosting, then i'd want it to support php.

Didn't Uncle Steve say the words,"Free for LIFE" once upon a time?

I'm still very disheartened. I just bought 10.1.5 like two weeks ago. Great, 75 free pictures printed through iPhoto! Whoopee! I'd gladly give up that promo in exchange for upgrade pricing. I mean, they include those coupons in the box with the bar codes on 'em for a reason, right? It even says right on 'em something about keeping them in a safe place in case you have to mail 'em in for proof-of-purchase in order to get an upgrade or something.

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However, there's an extremely important life lesson here: when someone gives you something, they gain power over you. If you buy your own laptop, you'll get to do whatever you want with it (modulo government abuse). But when someone gives you a laptop, they get to control it -- and through it, you.

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