Ima Fish says:

I think the Apple/Segway connection is pretty clear. Both sell overrated and overpriced stuff that look really cool.

I remember reading an article about a police department trying out the Segway. During the test the Police were using them instead of their usual bicycles.

One officer was bitching about having to change the batteries every hour and a half. He couldn’t wait until the test was done so he could go back to using his bike.

If the Segway is not a toy, then it’s a solution to a problem no one has.

Ima Fish says:

Ed, if you were talking to me, $500 bucks for a computer that NEEDS upgrading (i.e., more RAM and larger hard drive), that NEEDS a monitor, which NEEDS a mouse and keyboard, BEFORE you even buy it, IS OVER PRICED!

Do you even realize you can get a Dell with everything AND plenty of RAM and HD space for the same price?!

Sure the Dell won’t look “cool” but that only proves my point.

Ed Campbell says:

I bought the Mini for exactly the reasons Jobs hoped for — to replace noisy, buggy, insecure hardware and OS. I moved over a cordless keyboard and mouse [which had Apple drivers] and my LCD monitor and never looked back.

OS X is solid, virus-free — and Mac software designers price their products below the Wintel stuff. I’ve regained desktop real estate — and have a quiet home/office for the 1st time since 1983. The best software I use, day-to-day, came with Mac versions that, now, accomplish more, The few pieces I replaced were half the price of Wintel.

I kept my 2-year-old tower running until last Friday — with an old keyboard and monitor I had leftover. If you’ve been computing long enough — and you own your own gear instead of contributing opinions on the boss’s PC — you always have stuff left over from previous commodity computers. I moved the collection of files accumulated over years [for my last 2 employers] over to the Maxtor jukebox I’ve been using for backups since 2004 — and downloaded NeoOffice/J to the Mac.

It was free. It’s still Beta — which had me nervous having been through serious beta disasters with M$oft in the past. Guess what? It runs just fine. Does everything I need it to do for my employer. The tasks the developers are concerned with — apparently have to do with perfectly imitating the look and feel of OS X. That’s why “Beta”.

I can understand Ima Fish’s conclusion. After all, for most of my 22 years of computing, I thought all the rationales for Wintel dedication were relevent. Preconceptions about computers — were something I thoroughly re-examined — rarely. In the past year, I began a series of experiments with Linux — fed up with lousy security and buggy, overpriced software. The best was about 90% ready for prime time. OS X is already there.

However, I don’t understand the defensiveness and stereotypical nature of the response. Well, maybe I do. Sorry, dude. Although I stepped back from my own misconceptions about Apple — just a couple of months ago — to give one of their products a fair trial, I don’t hold out lots of hope for other [and probably younger] folks being openminded. Between my Social Security checks and my part-time job, I figured I could afford to try some different hardware. I did and I’m pleasantly surprised at the result.

Not really any different from when I bought my 1st Japanese car, color TV or left the Republikan Party.

Ed Campbell says:

Jon — casually, hours later, what the French call a “staircase argument” also occurred to me. More like staircase questions.

Folks seem to be stuck on challenging Apple’s hardware, requiring comparisons with the cheapest commodity crap out there. And, yet, I’d question whether they extend that ethos to their usual shopping strategies — for example:

Do they do all their food and household shopping at Wal-Mart? Are they walking around in $14 sneakers or shoes that fit and last? If they’re cyclists, is a Huffy good enough? We can extend the list of questions, ad infinitum. The point should be understandable.