It's a smiley-face - when I check my mail on my ipad instead of my regular mail-client, smiley-faces turn up as 'J's for some reason. Some wingdings-thing I think.

Is this a no-go then for the perks you guys have been talking about of working on an open source project?

fwiw I strongly dislike your avatar. that was the worst $40 i ever spent in my life. I wish I could have gotten a refund... sigh.

I don't like the game much either - this one is awesome though:



Made the avatar after watching that and only got the game a while later... only played it for an hour or so and never felt like playing it again.

I have been wanting to open source some stuff (the project that will be running on our $15,000 windows server ) I have been working on at work and was trying to find out what our organizations policy on releasing os software was. This was essentially how the email chain went:

For desktops it's a nobrainer to get something non-Apple imo. For 1k$ extra...you can get lots of nifty stuff for that, superduper high end GPU, bigger/multiple SSDs, 30" monitors etc.

What I don't get is people who spend a ton of time in front of computers and have measly monitor setups. I only have 2x27" 1920x1200 and would certainly upgrade to 2x30" or something before most other stuff.

Neko: That's hillarious but you also did it completely wrong.
Unless you are working for a hippy-nonprofit that line is poison. Should have gone with "we would greatly benefit from other people improving our software for free"

FWIW, I only use a laptop because I don't want to sit at a desk.

I can see your point up to a certain size, but the difference in a set of 27" and 30" monitors is almost $2,000. I'd rather have a $2,500 PC and a pair of 27" monitors than a $600 PC and 30" monitors.

Depending on your desk/office environment, the larger monitors might not even be a real improvement.

I recently learned something about Macs...

So I'm working with some students on a final project that we decide will be in HTML. Most of them have literally never coded anything ever, so I work up a boilerplate .html file and start walking them through the process of making an article from it. Upon hitting the first person with a Mac, I realize that I have no idea what the default Mac text editor is and neither of us can find it. After a minute or so of this, one of the Mac users remembers that he saw someone edit a text document on his machine once.

He opens a shell and types "emacs"...

Yeah, should have clarified that we're public/government funded so there is no concern about helping the competition or anything. Open sourcing it is for the greater good of all

that is a man on the path to enlightenment.

TextEdit is the included GUI text editor, I prefer Text Wrangler. Unforunately we're a VIM shop and that's on there too...

While we are on the subject of editors, came across this today

https://github.com/alevchuk/vim-clutch

Its a hardware pedal to switch between insert and edit mode in VIM

LOL excellent!

Juk

Haha, that clutch is amazing.

The basis of the cost argument comes down to specs. Someone says "I can buy the same specs in a pc for $1000 less" while completely ignoring the build quality, design, support, and software they Apple is offering. Those are harder to quantify on paper.

The retina display kind of blows that argument up as well, because you can't get that resolution on any other product on the market (and probably won't be able to for 12-18 months).

Interesting.

I settle for using PC Keyboard Hack to map Escape to Caps Lock.

Rebinding to caps lock is not the same as making car noises while coding and then having a co-worker ask wtf you're doing and then you show him your clutch in which cases he gives you a head nod and you resume as you were.

Yeah. I think it's mainly just build quality and the long list of specs that don't get included in a standard description of a computer because they're tiny by themselves. Apple invests a ton of money into a few products, and it shows.

It took me about 3 laptops to learn that the cheapest computer for the specs was probably a pretty ****ty computer.

That's probably true for some people. To me, that resolution is ridiculous overkill, though. I'll still probably be buying the MBP w/ retina, but I wish they sold a version that was just 1080p or so. Maybe when/if I buy it, I'll find myself really enjoying the resolution, though.

Haha: If emacs is really built into Mac, then I am officially a fan-boi, for the pure irony of such a default installation.

Of course, access to live people at the Genius Bar is worth a bit as well, and aren't they high-rated and have to pass something that resembles a test to get the job?

I think the further case can be that with the Mac, you don't have to install an AV. This could run up the price for a normal PC really fast if you believe the hype around freeware not being efficient enough for personal use.

I bought my computer at Best Buy, and if I had taken what they were asking me to buy, I would have paid an extra $200 for the protection plan, which I know from third-hand experience pales compared to Apple's default plan. Then they will also sell you on buying McAfee or Norton, or whoever that you not only have to pay them to install, but pay whoever for the next few years. Oh, yeah, you're also encouraged to buy MS Office for whatever more, and then also pay for this and that. By the time you're done, you end up paying nearly $1,000 for a $600 computer and heck, if you do buy a $1,000 computer, you may as well get the Mac.

Sure, I said "no" and saved the $60 they wanted to charge me to create an OS recovery disk (50c for a disk and 3 minutes of staring at the computer), and said no to all the bloat they wanted to install, and the protection plan, the AV, and yadda yadda. Screw that, I'm thinking this is supposed to be a "Personal Computer" and I'm only thinking I want to uninstall 50% of whatever is on this thing as it is and they want me to install more? And what exactly are they going to do to "update all my drivers" or "optimize it for speed?"

Of course, if I want to call support, I'm getting patched through to the Phillipines. Imagine the poor soul who doesn't know how to clean out a virus, and they have to pay the Geek Squad's A+ techs $300 for virus clean-up or take the "broken" computer in for "repairs." How much does Geek Squad, et.al., charge for defrag and disk cleanup compared to Apple?

I'm not entirely sure how much Mac tries to sell you on before you walk out the door, but from Apple users I know, I get the impression you get a lot of stuff by default that would normally cost you an arm and a leg with a PC, which is all-win for those who know how to say no the PC-add-ons and about break-even for those who can't say no.

In regards to retina display: I have poor eyesite and I don't work in graphics, so why do I care?

ugh Apple lol

this.

even though you will never benefit from opening your code unless you are linus or someone with a similarly killer project. you *will* benefit from the cleanup and disentanglement required before you can post the code somewhere.

obligatory fyp troll.

It was mentioned earlier that there are fewer viruses on mac. Is it true? And if it is, why? Is it just the number of users or is it something in the fundamental design of Windows that makes it more vulnerable?