For those who worship at the altar of Steve Jobs

[Ann n Gene]

I agree with Gun Wiz, I don't know a lot about all that technical stuff and frankly do not care. All I know is that I buy Apple because they just work PERIOD, no blue screens, no flawed bill gates operating system, no spending time getting them up and running on a different network etc, THEY JUST WORK. In the long run (and I have had many windows machines as well) the Mac is cheaper for me considering the time saved, was of use, THE AMERICAN, ENGLISH SPEAKING, CARING SERVICE and many other factors. I guess for me, the quality I perceive for me is worth the extra cost. No go ahead and attack me like you do anyone who does not drink the windows based platform Koolaid. I will not respond as this is my opinion and my choice and my belief that Steve Jobs was an incredible talent (no one saying he was perfect or even a role model, just a genius at what he did). As I said, all just my opinion, yours obviously will vary and thats one of the great things about this country, we are all entitled to an opinion and to express it. It just also happens to be a great feature of this forum.

[Billieg]

Originally Posted by EndeavorV10

I don't agree that Microsoft shot themselves in the foot. They went 64bit because computer hardware is advancing. You can of course also run Windows 7 32bit (if you don't mind only 3.5gigs of memory being addressable), nobody is forced to use 64bit unless they are buying it that way, that's their choice.

Also, Windows 7 can run Windows XP at the same time if your CPU supports it and most do these days. Windows 7 64bit can also run many 32bit applications, there are ways to do it. There is no excuse for your program not to work with Windows 7 in some way.

If it takes 5 years to re-write just 24 different .exe's and the dll's etc.. that go with it, I would fire the programmers. There is no excuse for that kind of turn around time unless 1 guy is writing the code.

OS's progress, they advance as do the programmers writing the applications for it. Microsoft hasn't lost any good programs or programmers to Windows 7, all of the good ones have been or are being ported to be used in Windows 7 and then Windows 8 after. If they aren't they aren't worth keeping.

You missed my point. They shot themselves in the foot not making the OS run both 64 and 32 at the same time in the same interface and not making converting software for all the 32 bit programs out there. Of course they needed to go to 64 bit.

I guess you don't know much about programming (I've been doing it over 30 years). A lot of programs were written in Visual Basic to run on 32 bit. Now you need to change the whole language and use Visual studio net which is a totally different language (which you have to learn) and retype all your code into that language in a different interface.

Just one small .exe program of mine is over 30,000 lines of code. How fast can you learn a new language and interface and type? Then test it..... It took us 3 years to write our main program, test it and to make sure it all worked.

If they had made Windows 7 run both 32 and 64 bit in the same interface and had a converter for the code, we would have time to learn the new language while our clients used our program. The "virtual 32 bit" interface in Windows 7 is a joke and none of my clients will use it. Right now over 64% of businesses are still using XP because like me they think Windows 7 sucks.

It also was a good ploy to only do 64 bit because now you have to buy (from MircoCrap) all new software.... keep the customers coming and make Billie Gates even richer....

[hondo122]

Originally Posted by Billieg

You missed my point. They shot themselves in the foot not making the OS run both 64 and 32 at the same time in the same interface and not making converting software for all the 32 bit programs out there. Of course they needed to go to 64 bit.

I guess you don't know much about programming (I've been doing it over 30 years). A lot of programs were written in Visual Basic to run on 32 bit. Now you need to change the whole language and use Visual studio net which is a totally different language (which you have to learn) and retype all your code into that language in a different interface.

Just one small .exe program of mine is over 30,000 lines of code. How fast can you learn a new language and interface and type? Then test it..... It took us 3 years to write our main program, test it and to make sure it all worked.

If they had made Windows 7 run both 32 and 64 bit in the same interface and had a converter for the code, we would have time to learn the new language while our clients used our program. The "virtual 32 bit" interface in Windows 7 is a joke and none of my clients will use it. Right now over 64% of businesses are still using XP because like me they think Windows 7 sucks.

It also was a good ploy to only do 64 bit because now you have to buy (from MircoCrap) all new software.... keep the customers coming and make Billie Gates even richer....

I'm no expert but my choice is XP, 7 seems to me to be trying to emulate the MAC experience, but when things go wrong it's harder to correct. JMO

[MegaRoadie]

Originally Posted by JimM68

oh boy.... is this our first purely political thread since the "new rules"?
Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound.
If it was possible to produce goods in the USA for the same cost as producing them overseas and then shipping them here, it would be happening.
American unions have priced our country out of manufacturing.

Amen to the union quote !

Had the experience of riding from Chicago O'Hare Airport to Pittsburgh, Pa airport back in 68 when I came home to get married and was placed in First Class amongst 6 of Jimmy Hoffa's Legal team lawyers... I left that experience with a severe distaste for lawyers, for unions, for Hoffa and for greed, and never in the years since have I had the motivation to change that opinion. Look at US Steel and Detroit for glaring examples of Union greed and it's effect on an entire industry ! Nuff said or I will need those darned nitro pills.....grrrrrrr

[stepside454]

Ive seen alot about corporate freed vs. Union costs/ greed on this thread. In my eyes there is greed in every class. Yes there us corporate greed. I also think the unions have become very greedy, as well as entry level/ minimum wage employees, as well as welfare recipients. There are greedy people in all of those catagorys, let's not forget politicians .
Alot of the reason for our manufacturing jobs being lost is due to corporate profits, as well as high cost of labor including wages, pensions, insurane( health, unemployment , liability etc.), as well as EPA regulations, taxes, fuel etc.

[RedneckExpress]

Originally Posted by EndeavorV10

I'm glad it worked out so well for you, having been dealing with Apple since they became a company I can tell you long term the bad has out weighed the good but it's always good to hear the positive.

You have never had a virus on your Mac because 99.99999% of the script kiddies and virus writers ignore the Mac because it's install base is simply too small to make it worth while. However, this is changing.

Virus's do happen in the OS X world and in fact there was a large outbreak recently that Apple tried to cover up and if it affected you, they would claim it was impossible. Public pressure finally got them to own up to it.

Best Buy can't be compared to Apple stores, BB sells everything, Apple only sells their own computers so you should get better service from the Apple store.

I am what you might consider an insane power user. I use my gear much more to its fullest potential than the average person so I find weaknesses very quickly. I am still happy with my Mac Pro mostly, the MacBook Pro, not so much. I have never owned a Windows PC that I didn't build for myself so I can only say if you buy a cheap computer you shouldn't expect stability period, if you buy a decent computer it should be stable. I have never had an issue with stability in the workplace or at home except in the case of Windows ME, which was a turd and Microsoft dropped it so fast it was just a foot note, but a blemish none the less.

Having used Windows since 1.0 I can tell you they aren't perfect, but they have to build a product to run on thousands of different computer types, Apple has to build for only a few and they make them. Cut Microsoft some slack here since they operate in a much more open environment than Apple does.

I hope Apple products continue to work out for you but try to keep an open mind about where they produce their product, how many people are affected by Foxconn/Apple policies and keep in mind there is no reason for Apple to be that much more expensive than other top gear, but they are because they know like Starbucks, the perception is better product, but reality can be quite different.

Have a Merry Christmas!

Actually any Macbook past 2004 is basically the same Intel hardware with a slightly prettier wrapper and a Linux OS (OS X).

These days, its all the same x86/x86_64 architecture underneath.

So in reality, all Macs are PCs that simply haven't come out of the closet yet .

Originally Posted by Billieg

You missed my point. They shot themselves in the foot not making the OS run both 64 and 32 at the same time in the same interface and not making converting software for all the 32 bit programs out there. Of course they needed to go to 64 bit.

I guess you don't know much about programming (I've been doing it over 30 years). A lot of programs were written in Visual Basic to run on 32 bit. Now you need to change the whole language and use Visual studio net which is a totally different language (which you have to learn) and retype all your code into that language in a different interface.

Just one small .exe program of mine is over 30,000 lines of code. How fast can you learn a new language and interface and type? Then test it..... It took us 3 years to write our main program, test it and to make sure it all worked.

If they had made Windows 7 run both 32 and 64 bit in the same interface and had a converter for the code, we would have time to learn the new language while our clients used our program. The "virtual 32 bit" interface in Windows 7 is a joke and none of my clients will use it. Right now over 64% of businesses are still using XP because like me they think Windows 7 sucks.

It also was a good ploy to only do 64 bit because now you have to buy (from MircoCrap) all new software.... keep the customers coming and make Billie Gates even richer....

Hrm.... we use the same master code base for most of what we write here at Intel, our build servers are setup to compile the code with the necessary libraries for 32 bit or 64 bit flavors.

VB code works properly when compiled with the latest editions of Visual Studio. Visual Studio works with Visual C, B, C#, VBScript and quite a decent range of software.

32bit software in all of my validation work has also worked properly on 64 bit OSes, be it WinXP64 or Win7x64 or now Win8x64. Windows has a 32bit emulation mode that kicks in for 32bit applications.

When you change architectures to 64 bit, the memory addressing changes, hence why you can have no greater than 3 gigs of ram in 32bit OSes, that's the physical limit of the addressing.

64 bit is what everything will be moving to as systems continue to go higher and higher in their ram sizes until 64 bit addressing is exhausted.

Business are still using XP because Vista was horrible, many are now beginning the migration to Seven, but given the financial cost of doing upgrades, and the economy, most are holding off.

Intel went from XP to 7 and has been upgrading employee systems as an ongoing process since the OS came out, it'll be a long while before we finish all of ours.

As a software engineer of 30 years you should also be intimately familiar with the fact that languages are always evolving and one has to constant continue to learn and relearn as they change or you will be left behind.

[Billieg]

Originally Posted by RedneckExpress

As a software engineer of 30 years you should also be intimately familiar with the fact that languages are always evolving and one has to constant continue to learn and relearn as they change or you will be left behind.

We were well aware they were going to 64 bit but we also thought they would provide a converter to go from 32 to 64. They did, we bought Visual Studio (3 copies) and tried to convert our code. Every other line was in red and had to be changed. None of our third party .ocx or .dll's will work in 64 bit so we are sunk. Rebuilding all the screens, finding new software to do our routines and changing all that code in this economic time is just not worth it. I know a lot of other companies that feel the same way. We have a routine .ocx that takes text and formats it into a PDF file. They quit on Windows 7 as well as all our other vendors.

We have gotten around the problem by designing a website that sends the information to us via email and we parse it and run it via XP and then email the results with a PDF file. A lot simpler solution.

I'm sure everyone else is bored with this conversation but thanks for posting.

[hondo122]

Originally Posted by RedneckExpress

Actually any Macbook past 2004 is basically the same Intel hardware with a slightly prettier wrapper and a Linux OS (OS X).

These days, its all the same x86/x86_64 architecture underneath.

So in reality, all Macs are PCs that simply haven't come out of the closet yet .



Hrm.... we use the same master code base for most of what we write here at Intel, our build servers are setup to compile the code with the necessary libraries for 32 bit or 64 bit flavors.

VB code works properly when compiled with the latest editions of Visual Studio. Visual Studio works with Visual C, B, C#, VBScript and quite a decent range of software.

32bit software in all of my validation work has also worked properly on 64 bit OSes, be it WinXP64 or Win7x64 or now Win8x64. Windows has a 32bit emulation mode that kicks in for 32bit applications.

When you change architectures to 64 bit, the memory addressing changes, hence why you can have no greater than 3 gigs of ram in 32bit OSes, that's the physical limit of the addressing.

64 bit is what everything will be moving to as systems continue to go higher and higher in their ram sizes until 64 bit addressing is exhausted.

Business are still using XP because Vista was horrible, many are now beginning the migration to Seven, but given the financial cost of doing upgrades, and the economy, most are holding off.

Intel went from XP to 7 and has been upgrading employee systems as an ongoing process since the OS came out, it'll be a long while before we finish all of ours.

As a software engineer of 30 years you should also be intimately familiar with the fact that languages are always evolving and one has to constant continue to learn and relearn as they change or you will be left behind.

Originally Posted by Billieg

We were well aware they were going to 64 bit but we also thought they would provide a converter to go from 32 to 64. They did, we bought Visual Studio (3 copies) and tried to convert our code. Every other line was in red and had to be changed. None of our third party .ocx or .dll's will work in 64 bit so we are sunk. Rebuilding all the screens, finding new software to do our routines and changing all that code in this economic time is just not worth it. I know a lot of other companies that feel the same way. We have a routine .ocx that takes text and formats it into a PDF file. They quit on Windows 7 as well as all our other vendors.

We have gotten around the problem by designing a website that sends the information to us via email and we parse it and run it via XP and then email the results with a PDF file. A lot simpler solution.

I'm sure everyone else is bored with this conversation but thanks for posting.

WOW I really wish I had a clue what you guys are talking about. With out guys like you we'd still be sending smoke signals.

[jillie]

An article on pcworld.com today on PC reliability and satisfaction. There are links in the second paragraph to more information on various devices. Steve must have done something right.


Desktop PC Reliability and Satisfaction: Dell and HP Home PCs Get Poor Grades | PCWorld

[hondo122]

Originally Posted by jillie

An article on pcworld.com today on PC reliability and satisfaction. There are links in the second paragraph to more information on various devices. Steve must have done something right.


Desktop PC Reliability and Satisfaction: Dell and HP Home PCs Get Poor Grades | PCWorld

The question isn't whether they are good products, rather should Jobs be venerated after moving so many jobs offshore, producing them in sweatshop like conditions.

[LokiGT]

Originally Posted by Billieg

You missed my point. They shot themselves in the foot not making the OS run both 64 and 32 at the same time in the same interface and not making converting software for all the 32 bit programs out there. Of course they needed to go to 64 bit.

I guess you don't know much about programming (I've been doing it over 30 years). A lot of programs were written in Visual Basic to run on 32 bit. Now you need to change the whole language and use Visual studio net which is a totally different language (which you have to learn) and retype all your code into that language in a different interface.

Just one small .exe program of mine is over 30,000 lines of code. How fast can you learn a new language and interface and type? Then test it..... It took us 3 years to write our main program, test it and to make sure it all worked.

If they had made Windows 7 run both 32 and 64 bit in the same interface and had a converter for the code, we would have time to learn the new language while our clients used our program. The "virtual 32 bit" interface in Windows 7 is a joke and none of my clients will use it. Right now over 64% of businesses are still using XP because like me they think Windows 7 sucks.

It also was a good ploy to only do 64 bit because now you have to buy (from MircoCrap) all new software.... keep the customers coming and make Billie Gates even richer....

Actually, I do know about programming, Windows 7 64bit is capable of running 32bit code and does so with no problem. I also mentioned how you can run Windows XP in a virtual environment giving you full backwards compatibility. I run Windows 7 64bit on well over 200 business computers with no issues what so ever. I know too many companies to count that do the same. I really don't want to get into a big debate on this thread about what is good or bad about Microsoft's decision to go a very obvious route.

We'll end up getting over technical and probably still not seeing eye to eye, I get the impression you aren't open to an opinion about "Billy Gates" that doesn't jibe with your own.

I'll just agree to disagree for now. Have a very Merry Christmas.

[LokiGT]

Originally Posted by RedneckExpress

Actually any Macbook past 2004 is basically the same Intel hardware with a slightly prettier wrapper and a Linux OS (OS X).

These days, its all the same x86/x86_64 architecture underneath.

So in reality, all Macs are PCs that simply haven't come out of the closet yet .

One correction, it was 2005 when it was announced and 2006 when it was introduced. You read my blog, you know that I know that Mac's are PC's and why they became that way. I got pretty detailed about it.

I have gotten into pretty heated debates with some Apple faithful that to this day don't get it and still call them Power Macs. I even pulled the CPU out of my Mac Pro and showed it to a guy (family member) and only then did he admit he was clueless about hardware, which begs the question, why do people who are clueless about a subject argue about things they know nothing about?

Rhetorical question....

Hrm.... we use the same master code base for most of what we write here at Intel, our build servers are setup to compile the code with the necessary libraries for 32 bit or 64 bit flavors.

VB code works properly when compiled with the latest editions of Visual Studio. Visual Studio works with Visual C, B, C#, VBScript and quite a decent range of software.

32bit software in all of my validation work has also worked properly on 64 bit OSes, be it WinXP64 or Win7x64 or now Win8x64. Windows has a 32bit emulation mode that kicks in for 32bit applications.

When you change architectures to 64 bit, the memory addressing changes, hence why you can have no greater than 3 gigs of ram in 32bit OSes, that's the physical limit of the addressing.

64 bit is what everything will be moving to as systems continue to go higher and higher in their ram sizes until 64 bit addressing is exhausted.

Business are still using XP because Vista was horrible, many are now beginning the migration to Seven, but given the financial cost of doing upgrades, and the economy, most are holding off.

Intel went from XP to 7 and has been upgrading employee systems as an ongoing process since the OS came out, it'll be a long while before we finish all of ours.

As a software engineer of 30 years you should also be intimately familiar with the fact that languages are always evolving and one has to constant continue to learn and relearn as they change or you will be left behind.

Not meant for you Matt but people in general. I hope this doesn't get taken the wrong way, but in my experience the only people complaining about the move to 64bit are the ones who can't seem to get their code to work properly.

I don't see how this is Microsoft's fault as they have done quite a bit to help developers, had they not the outcry would be pretty extreme.

Anyway I digress, we have really gone OT in this thread, no offense meant to anybody. This is almost like a political discussion or a debate about Ford vs Chevy, people won't agree.

[wnytaxman]

I think we need a new special tech section for you guys. You're way out of my realm of knowledge. Shoot, I just mastered DOS last week!

I don't know much about what the teckies are saying, but I do know that I bought an iPad and it's a pretty neat gadget. That got me to go to a MacBook Pro after my HP died and it's a great machine. No issues yet other than I should have gone with the 15" screen. Now that my Android phone started acting up I went to the iPhone 4S and that's a lot better phone than my Android was.

If we are going to blast anyone for their overseas jobs then all of you Honda, Toyota, Kia, BMW, etc. drivers need to stop driving those job destroying vehicles and stop buying Nikes and Reebok while you are at it also. Everything that is made overseas will be made in worse working conditions than we would allow and with practically no environmental controls. If you want to blast Jobs then you better also go after Gates and Wal Mart and both major political parties because they were the ones who got us into this mess.

[hondo122]

Originally Posted by wnytaxman

I think we need a new special tech section for you guys.

If we are going to blast anyone for their overseas jobs then all of you Honda, Toyota, Kia, BMW, etc. drivers need to stop driving those job destroying vehicles and stop buying Nikes and Reebok while you are at it also. Everything that is made overseas will be made in worse working conditions than we would allow and with practically no environmental controls. If you want to blast Jobs then you better also go after Gates and Wal Mart and both major political parties because they were the ones who got us into this mess.

Agreed, we need to buy from those that treat their workers fairly, and support those that support the American worker,Union, nonunion doesn't matter, we're all Americans