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pixelsmith said:
funny guy, actually i need to run photoshop, indesign, quark, illustrator and painter on a daily basis.
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Me too.... and add Adobe Acrobat, DreamWeaver, ProTools, SparkXL, Cubase SX, and MS Office... oh and some circuit design apps.

I don't have any blinky lights though... except when I used to have that holiday lights thing that ran around the screen. ;)
 
leftystrat said:
I am sorry you feel you need to be smarter than a Mac user to run linux.
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Hey, I love Linux. It's so, you know, retro! It reminds me of my old favorites like CP/M and DOS 3.2. You get to use a command-line interface and run all this great software like JOE (Joe's Own Editor) that uses Wordstar commands! None of this cut and paste for me. Ctrl-KB, Ctrl-KK, Ctrl-KC. Gotta love it. Yay! It's like having Borland's Sidekick all over again! And none of this gui stuff for me. I get to use a $ prompt, or, if I am truly the head guy in charge, a # prompt! Now THAT'S special. And that bash shell is truly wonderful. I get to write my own scripts to get anything to work at all. It kinda makes me feel a part of things, not just an 'end user,' you know? Gimme Linux and a dot matrix printer and I'm a happy guy. And I've got a low six digit slashdot uid, too. I am truly blessed. Every time I want to return to 1979--I just use Linux.
 
Microsoft has one good product, although I hesitate to call it good for obvious reasons. The Xbox 360 is by far the most fun videogame console I have ever owned, and I've owned many. The only problem is that it breaks quite easily. I do have to say that Microsoft customer service was quite good about getting a working Xbox to me quickly when I had to return it (sent it on a Wednesday and I got it back on a Friday).
 
Hoffmeister said:
ok thanks! By the way, the main thing i upgrade on my pc's over the years is the Graphics card, is that as easy to do on Macs?
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It's only really possible to upgrade the graphics card on Mac Pros.
It really depends on what you're going to do with the computer as to if you're going to upgrade a card. If you're going to play games, don't get a Mac because many games come out on the Mac, but ALL games are available for Windows. Yes, you can run Windoes on a Mac, but if you want a good gaming PC, build one yourself for much less than a comparible Mac. Or do what I do - get an Xbox 360 (or PS3) to play games, and get a Mac to do computery stuff!
 
Thanks. The show has been around since 2002, one of the first Podcasts on the planet. But we really haven't done a whole lot to push it beyond its humble beginnings, though it has a loyal audience and some loyal sponsorships. :)

Feel free to rate us on iTunes and get the word out.
 
I happened to look up one of your new advertisers... Roni Lynn Deutch. it seems she has a lot of complaints against her firm, and had to pay NYC $300,000 for deceptively advertising tax services. I don't know anything about her firm, but there seems to be people saying she's a crook.

Might be something to look into. You don't want to have the show get a bad name.
 
DavidRavenMoon said:
I happened to look up one of your new advertisers... Roni Lynn Deutch. it seems she has a lot of complaints against her firm, and had to pay NYC $300,000 for deceptively advertising tax services. I don't know anything about her firm, but there seems to be people saying she's a crook.

Might be something to look into. You don't want to have the show get a bad name.
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lol

I love that ad. Every week when I hear it I find myself talking along out loud with the day.

"Hi, my name's Roni DOICH"

Thats how I say it anyway.
 
Gareth said:
lol

I love that ad. Every week when I hear it I find myself talking along out loud with the day.

"Hi, my name's Roni DOICH"

Thats how I say it anyway.
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That's what made me look her up! You can tell she's been shouting for a long time... like a Carny. I was curious what she looked like. It's very funny.
 
DavidRavenMoon said:
Roni Lynn Deutch. it seems she has a lot of complaints against her firm, and had to pay NYC $300,000 for deceptively advertising tax services.
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I was surprised to hear her on the Paracast. I think she's had TV ads for years (at least where I live). I hadn't heard good or bad about her until you just mentioned it. And it's on the first page of Google results..a press release from NYC Dept of Consumer Affairs.

My favorite TV attorney is a local ambulance chaser that calls himself "The Texas Hammer" and a "Tough, smart, lawyer" in a really loud twangy, voice. Classy.


PS. You know, /doich/ is the proper pronunciation of "Deutsch" though she spells it without the S. It's just German for "German". Did you guys think she was avoiding pronouncing it like "douche" or something? Oh lord.
 
Assuming she has her act together now, we'll run the ads. If there is any other evidence of potential deceptive practices, however, we'll reconsider.
 
In Microsoft's defence one good application I would mention is Visual Studios, and the .Net framework therein. They might be poor at writing general use applications themselves but their development environments are top notch in their own right.

I've not used Macs much myself, other than fixing the odd thing here and there on my mother's who is mad keen on them. Using Windows, Linux & Unix gives me everything I need, and I have the habit of updating hardware on a semi-regular basis so it just suits my purposes to go for the beige box that I can potch about with at a relatively low cost. Obviously if the need arose to use one then I would get one.

But I think that's the whole thing with software and hardware, if it's the best solution for you specific purpose, then use it without fear of reprisal, if things changed tomorrow and Macs suited mu purpose far more than any other I think my first comment would be 'Bill who?' :D
 
Better than development tools for Linux or Unix? Really?

For general-purpose apps, Apple's Xcode beats 'em all hands down. When you consider that AOL brought out an iPhone version of AIM within 2 days and optimized it for release in two weeks, you can see where Apple has a compelling alternative. All their tools -- iPhone and Mac OS -- are built from the same core code.
 
Gene Steinberg said:
Better than development tools for Linux or Unix? Really?

For general-purpose apps, Apple's Xcode beats 'em all hands down. When you consider that AOL brought out an iPhone version of AIM within 2 days and optimized it for release in two weeks, you can see where Apple has a compelling alternative. All their tools -- iPhone and Mac OS -- are built from the same core code.
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Well again its all about your needs. For instance by the same token if I was using Windows systems exclusively, I could write one piece of code in C# that would compile on a desktop app, website, Windows mobile app, Windows mobile website, web service etc etc with between little and no need to change any of the code as I migrate from one solution to another. The reality is there are a heck of a lot of potential clients out there that have cheap Windows end user contracts for their computers and only care about the fastest way to develop something on that particular system.

If however, your need is for multi platform development then a lot of people will jump towards Java and boo and hiss at something like Visual Studios and .Net, and presumably XCode as well. Most would be found using dev environments like Eclipse, Net Beans etc. Which are good environments in their own right. However amongst the many pros in using multiplat, open source environments, there are plenty cons along with it. The main one in my opinion being 'every man syndrome', where they try to suit every different type of potential developer, and end up leaving everyone slightly irritated by the way it generalizes one process or another.

With VS it's aim is to make writing applications specifically for Windows systems as intuitive a process as possible. Being that it only has to worry about catering to Windows developers, with the number of years development & money that has gone into it, it is at this moment an exceptional piece of work in terms of the goals it is attempting to achieve. Then there is the .Net framework coupled with C#, ignoring the lack of multiplat abilities, getting into the guts of just writing code, it is the most intuitive out there IMO.

If for instance someone wanted a user interface app that worked on Linux & Windows I would jump into Net Beans with Java in an instant, if instead they only wanted it on Windows then it would be VS & .Net every day of the week.

I've not used XCode so it wouldn't be fair for me to make any throw away comparisons, I'm sure Apple care as little about multi platform development as Microsoft do, so in my experience I'm sure that works in their favour for the same reasons.
 
Xcode is super simple compared to other programming languages. It's why iPhone apps are done in weeks rather than months, and why Apple can build Mac OS X with a fraction of the money and personnel as Microsoft.
 
Well I try never to miss an opportunity to learn something new (never know when you might need it in this game).

So I've been doing some reading up on Mac development, with some interesting info I found along the way. Just for clarity, (me being the pedantic programmer), but XCode isn't actually a programming language, rather it is the development environment. Just one part of the 'holy trinity' in programming. The other two parts being the programming syntax and development framework.

As far as programming syntax goes ,the Xcode IDE is very similar to eclipse & net beans in that you can write applications using the likes of C, C++, Java etc. The major programming language used (esp for iphone) being Objective-C.

Objective-C is like C + Smalltalk, so very much of the same ilk as C++ in object orientation, these languages are old as dirt, but pretty tough customers. Indeed looking at the syntax, to migrate from one to the other is effectively line for line, just changing the keywords. The philosophy behind each is quite different, but syntactically neither is more complex than the other.

Incidentally in the 2nd version of Objective-C brought out a couple of years ago, a few of the features common to C#, C++.NET & Java were implemented, so in that respect its a bit more feature rich than standard C++, but still lagging behind the latest programming languages, which to be fair is to be expected given the ~20 years between the current & original version.

The last part of the developers staple diet being the framework, for instance the iphone sdk. Which looks to me like it uses a pick n mix of C, C++ & Obj-C. I was interested to find that the GUI development enforces and MVC (model, view, controller) design pattern. Another harken back smalltalk I believe. A popular choice among web developers nowadays, I myself and developing a Java website using an MVC pattern as we speak!:D

It's pretty standard stuff as GUI libs go, I think where apple get brownie points is dragging in quicktime libs & linux opengl for games all under one umbrella as part of the standard sdk. MS tend to like breaking sdk's up into separate disciplines, so you have to dig around to find a mobile games lib etc. Ive always thought MS's XNA framework (building pc games that automatically work on xbox too!) should be part of the standard framework. This cutting up of business & pleasure is one of the things that makes MS look like a stuffed shirt IMO.

Certainly from a standard application GUI development, apple is by far the sexier looking, but no less difficult to develop in really. The Aim app is a good example, the bulk of the work being done by the Yahoo messaging framework (common to any system) means that the job of throwing a few controls onto a screen to interface with it can be done in a matter of days on any system in most languages, thanks to the WYSIWYG features all modern IDE's posses.

So thanks Gene for the insights, I know people like to draw a line in the sand between OS's, but as can be seen from the above, no matter what the system us developers are a pretty incestuous lot :D
 
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