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Um, they're the same sector. PCs and Macs are in almost direct competition. You don't see someone saying "I'm a Tablet user!" You see them saying "I'm a Mac user" or "I'm a PC user."
PCs and Macs run the same programs-not just e-mail, but Internet, word processing, almost everything down to the OS. The only difference is in the hardware setup and resource management.
In fact, your own statements attest to this. One is a "cheap" version, one is "simple." They're the same product, but they are designed to appeal to different people. I can easily substitute a Mac for my PC, or vice versa, and get all the same applications done. I can't do that with a "custom e-mail machine."
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Nah, if you want to run a lot of games, you have to stick with the PC. If you want to have a lot of graphic utilities and so on, you're better off with the Mac.
Granted, they are in the same industry, but I was talking about the service sector. Generally speaking, they differ in what service they provide.
You can look at the PC and Mac as two different kinds of mirrors, they're similar products, but one magnifies and the other doesn't. Their services differ.
I tried to look for a Steve Jobs quote that attested to my comment, but I can't find it. He said that Macs aren't in direct competition with PCs. Obviously they do overlap each other, that's why I said ?for the most part.?
But you can certainly browse the web, read emails, do word processing, even play some games without a PC... there used to be lots of ARM based systems out there like that!
I respond too quickly sometimes.
Some useful links while MER are active. [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html]Offical site[/url] [url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html]NASA TV[/url] [url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/]JPL MER2004[/url] [url=http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html]Text feed[/url]
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The amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth totals some 3.9 million exajoules a year.
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If that's how you want to define sector, fine, but this still attests to the new options in product capabilities that competition makes possible. A PC can perform almost all the functions of a Mac (technically, I think it can), yet Apple exists.
Why?
Because to cater to the market, they have made Macs into products that differ from PCs in terms of services, appearance, applications, and so on. To compete, they have focused on different applications than a PC. This allows them to cater to their own target market. PC companies have a different target market-their focus is more on the public. Yet it shows how a "monopoly" like Windows can be subject to competition (direct, or indirect).
A monopoly can be a good thing in the long run. It forces smaller companies to be more shrewd, and provide a better product, service, cost, etc. This mix doesn't guarantee they will be successful-but if the company doesn't offer something better they won't break the monopoly. This can create some very clever, innovative businesspeople.
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With emulation, sure, it can. And vice versa. At the hardware level they're completely different, though. The PC was built ad hoc with all sorts of junk nailed on at different points in its designed, requiring lots of backward compatablity stuff. The Mac was built with workablity in mind, but not necessarily expansion (when we moved on from the old Apples to the new Macs, backwards compatablity was lost, I believe).
Obviously I'm not denying that new options make competition possible. Clearly the Mac does offer new options to people who only had access to PCs (especially with the relatively new low priced iMacs).
I see what you're saying, and I agree with it somewhat.
I just don't see that Mac's were intended to cater to the PC market, though. If they were, they'd be cheap, have lots of open development, be easy to repair, easy to expand, have lots of software, and so on. Macs were created to cater to the, well, no offense to the Mac users here, but Macs were built to cater to the stupid market who like shiney things. Macs are infinitely easy to use, and they were designed that way. This puts them not in direct competition with PCs, for the most part. They really weren't explicitly designed to compete with PCs.
It's disingenuous to say that something which caters to a new market is competing with another market entirely. Which is what you're trying to say, really. I don't care if the markets themselves overlap.
Macs, for the longest time, up until OS X didn't even have proper multitasking or memory management. Their GUI might have looked nice, but that's about as far as it went. Macs used to be a joke in the PC (as in all Personal Computers, not just IBM compatables) community, because they didn't function right to PC users.
Some useful links while MER are active. [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html]Offical site[/url] [url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html]NASA TV[/url] [url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/]JPL MER2004[/url] [url=http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html]Text feed[/url]
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The amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth totals some 3.9 million exajoules a year.
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I believe the Mac and the PC demonstrate the advantages of being open, not propitary: The PC is more versatile because individuals can tinker with the various components of the machine, and from chaos, comes innovation.
The Mac, it's like a vacum cleaner. It does what it is designed to do, but no more.
I built a pc, and it is buggy as all hell, but it it designed to meet my needs as i define them. I can't really build my own Mac, becuase it is a closed system-it is a finsihed product where each component is designed specigfcally to work within the Mac.
PC's though, you have more choice, more opportunity for choosing the best individual parts. Unfortunetly, this leads to more instability... something that is improving though as time progress.
I am hoping that Redhat (linux OS) is getting to the point where it is easier to use, and can compete with MS- that's where much of the interoperability can be tackled for the PC.
Josh, have you tried rh8.0? I've been trying to get a better feel for it.
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Mars will NEVER be the life boat of humanity that you seem to indicate. We simply cannot launch enough people, ever, to Mars, to ever effect the population growth on Earth.
Sorry if you missunderstood me on this point. I believe that space is a "lifeboat" for humanity, but I said nothing about it being a lifeboat for Earth. These are two entirely different entities. Civilization on earth doesn't need to survive in order for humanity to survie. Granted those who leave will be much better off (in the scenario I have posed), than those who stay, but humanity will be better off when it moves into space.
In fact, humanity's expansion into space may be the very downfall of Earth civilization. Obviously there will be limits to who gets to go, and who will remain behind. Those who go will likely be the cream of the crop, the apex of humanity if you will. Every time you remove people from above the average, the average of the system gradually lowers. Thus humanity in space will begin in a far better position than earth will exist, and the divide will grow deeper the longer it goes on.
Slowly we will suck the planet dry of its best and brightest, while the rest of humanity continues to improve upon itself. Just like our ancestors in the homonid branch of life; the better survivors become better, while the others stagnate and die.
Sounds kind of harsh, but humanity will survive (hopefully) even if the Terrans don't. It won't happen overnight, but it will become more apparent as time goes on (if we make it that far).
Just another American pissed off with the morons in charge...
Motto: Ex logicus, intellegentia... Ex intellegentia, veritas.
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Let me just interject here - clearly at least part of this thread has gone completely off-topic. If you're going to talk about Microsoft vs. Linux/Mac or the different flavours of Linux, feel free to do so - in the Free Chat forum.
Editor of [url=http://www.newmars.com]New Mars[/url]
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Sorry, but when posts are inclined to economics examples can become anything, so it does seem to go off on a tangent, while still being relatively within the topic.
But I certainly agree with you Ranger, that barring extinction humanity will reach into the cosmos. I'm not afraid of us, well, becoming extinct, though. I can only foresee two ways that would happen, a major world war (in which case some of us could probably manage to survive), or a global catastrophe, like a huge planet killer asteroid. The odds are against any of those two events occuring, though.
Some useful links while MER are active. [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html]Offical site[/url] [url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html]NASA TV[/url] [url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/]JPL MER2004[/url] [url=http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html]Text feed[/url]
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The amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth totals some 3.9 million exajoules a year.
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