Last Night BBC2: Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy 9-10pm

Jobs is one of those people who are either loved or hated. People who hate him see him getting way too much credit for other people innovation and see him being a big a-hole. People who love him see the fact that he created some really awesome polished products and brought easy to use computing to the main stream. The thing is they are both sort of right, he was a human being who had flaws, he didn't live in a vacuum but he did create some great products.

I interpreted your point as being summarised as "macs easy to use, yo!"

Stephen Fry was, as predicted, a total cock. Shouting down Evan Davis's perfectly valid point that £-for-£ Macs represent appalling value for money when stacked next to their immediate alternatives in the the PC world. I defy anyone to prove Fry correct in his insistence that Macs are somehow better and more useful than PCs 'because they look nicer'.

£2500 would these days buy you the ultimate gaming PC of your very wildest dreams. How much of a Mac will it buy you?

In the end, though, Fry's baseless assumptions of Mac supermacy and his disagreement with Davis amounted to nothing more than play-acting; we could see both men were clearly in thrall to the House of Apple, to the Cult of Steve, the BBC's adoptive (and now beatified) 'lifestyle' geek messiah.

All in all, this paean to Jobs spoke more about the blinkered, doe-eyed adoration the BBC still maintains for ('the eternal hippy') Jobs, than for the company he built and its questionable practices (for instance, not a word about working conditions in it's overseas factories, the worker suicides, nor anything much to say on Apples' continually over-inflated prices on the high street and online).

Kwanzaa-bot wrote:

TheTurnipKing wrote:You'll struggle to crash Linux

rm -rf /*

Srs though, Linux stuff is great, but as user experience goes, not so great. I'd not hesitate to use certain linux distros for work related projects though.

Meh. Wouldn't you have to be the root to do this? You could just as easily strawberry float Windows up by deleting some systems files.

Cal wrote:£2500 would these days buy you the ultimate gaming PC of your very wildest dreams. How much of a Mac will it buy you?

£2,500 will buy me a Mac I would absolutely love to use. I couldn't honestly say that it would buy me a PC I would love to use. End of the day some of us love Mac's and even if a lot prefer PC's thats still cool by me

Holy gooseberry fool. Just read iCal's opening post. Evan Davis is gay? Who knew?

Drunken_Master wrote:

Kwanzaa-bot wrote:

TheTurnipKing wrote:You'll struggle to crash Linux

rm -rf /*

Srs though, Linux stuff is great, but as user experience goes, not so great. I'd not hesitate to use certain linux distros for work related projects though.

Meh. Wouldn't you have to be the root to do this? You could just as easily strawberry float Windows up by deleting some systems files.

I think it would depends on whether the shell has admin privelidges or not.

Which is of course, the kind of thing that Miaaaw is talking about turning off the clueless.

Also with Windows you have to try and break it these days. By default you wont have the rights to delete anything important.

Drunken_Master wrote:Holy gooseberry fool. Just read iCal's opening post. Evan Davis is gay? Who knew?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1224482/Dragons-Den-presenter-Evan-Davis-ditches-smart-suits-punkier-look.html

I don't need to read the autobiography now.

One thing that stands out was his approach to his personal battle with cancer.

Cal wrote:Stephen Fry was, as predicted, a total cock. Shouting down Evan Davis's perfectly valid point that £-for-£ Macs represent appalling value for money when stacked next to their immediate alternatives in the the PC world. I defy anyone to prove Fry correct in his insistence that Macs are somehow better and more useful than PCs 'because they look nicer'.

£2500 would these days buy you the ultimate gaming PC of your very wildest dreams. How much of a Mac will it buy you?

Well I've just bought a new MacBook Air for £1099. It's more expensive than a comparatively specced Windows machine, but nearly all Windows laptops look horrendous. They are all made from cheap plastic. The cheap plastic creaks, the screens have huge bezels, the screens themselves are very poor quality and the battery life is almost always horrific. Apart from the top end VAIO's, there is nothing to compare the MacBook's to. You are paying extra because it's a vastly superior piece of tech.

iMac's are expensive, but if you was to get a PC with the same spec and a screen of the same quality, you are not really paying that much more for the iMac.

Cal wrote:(for instance, not a word about working conditions in it's overseas factories, the worker suicides, nor anything much to say on Apples' continually over-inflated prices on the high street and online).

Apple pays the contractor (Foxconn) to do a job. Whilst I'm sure Apple have investigated this internally, it's really Foxconn who have to answer the questions. Apple are so secretive, no one will ever know what did regarding the deaths, but as I said, it's Foxconn's issue to deal with really.

If you pay a building contractor to build you a house and one of the builders dies on site, it's not your problem as such is it?

Another issue I have when people complain about the price of Apple hardware is this: it's your decision to buy! If you buy something and feel ripped off then you have a right to moan. If you can't afford something and moan about the price, then tough gooseberry fool. There's plenty of excellent alternatives out there.

Regarding working conditions, I suspect Dell, HP, Lenavo and whatever other PC manufacturer you want to name are all the same.

Beans wrote:Regarding working conditions, I suspect Dell, HP, Lenavo and whatever other PC manufacturer you want to name are all the same.

Most of them probably use Foxconn anyway. Don't the console manufacturers use them as well?

You've bought another Mac? You'll be selling it in a few months Also do they even make plastic laptops any more? I know you're playing up to the stereotype but my Dell has a full metal casing and most big name brands seem to these days too.

Steve wrote:

Cal wrote:Stephen Fry was, as predicted, a total cock. Shouting down Evan Davis's perfectly valid point that £-for-£ Macs represent appalling value for money when stacked next to their immediate alternatives in the the PC world. I defy anyone to prove Fry correct in his insistence that Macs are somehow better and more useful than PCs 'because they look nicer'.

£2500 would these days buy you the ultimate gaming PC of your very wildest dreams. How much of a Mac will it buy you?

Well I've just bought a new MacBook Air for £1099. It's more expensive than a comparatively specced Windows machine, but nearly all Windows laptops look horrendous. They are all made from cheap plastic. The cheap plastic creaks, the screens have huge bezels, the screens themselves are very poor quality and the battery life is almost always horrific. Apart from the top end VAIO's, there is nothing to compare the MacBook's to. You are paying extra because it's a vastly superior piece of tech.

iMac's are expensive, but if you was to get a PC with the same spec and a screen of the same quality, you are not really paying that much more for the iMac.

Cal wrote:(for instance, not a word about working conditions in it's overseas factories, the worker suicides, nor anything much to say on Apples' continually over-inflated prices on the high street and online).

Apple pays the contractor (Foxconn) to do a job. Whilst I'm sure Apple have investigated this internally, it's really Foxconn who have to answer the questions. Apple are so secretive, no one will ever know what did regarding the deaths, but as I said, it's Foxconn's issue to deal with really.

If you pay a building contractor to build you a house and one of the builders dies on site, it's not your problem as such is it?

Another issue I have when people complain about the price of Apple hardware is this: it's your decision to buy! If you buy something and feel ripped off then you have a right to moan. If you can't afford something and moan about the price, then tough gooseberry fool. There's plenty of excellent alternatives out there.

I guess we now know where the server donations go....

FEstive FEast wrote:You've bought another Mac? You'll be selling it in a few months Also do they even make plastic laptops any more? I know you're playing up to the stereotype but my Dell has a full metal casing and most big name brands seem to these days too.

Yep. Still have my VAIO Z which is probably the best laptop you can get on planet earth but do you know the main reason I bought a new MBA? Well, there's two actually. The keyboard is finally backlit so I can now see what the strawberry float I'm doing in the dark/por light like I can on my VAIO and then there's that glass touchpad. The touchpad is so clever, intuitive and perfect, I can't praise it enough. It's genius.

Surely the screen lights the keys at night? I never look at a keyboard anyway, even my laptop one.

Moggy wrote:I guess we now know where the server donations go....

Ha, you must be joking. Regarding donations, I'm highly concerned about this month. There's not a lot of money in the kitty and donations last month only brought in £60 or so and nearly half of that was made by one contributor.

It obviously didn't apply to the iPad, where you had to download and install iTunes on a PC before it even let you boot up the device. 'Just work' my arse. Although I believe they've fixed / are fixing this. It still doesn't excuse the shitty way you have to sync files to and from an iDevices. Pain in the strawberry floating arse.

Things are worse in other areas on other platforms, but Apple devices certainty aren't much more 'simple' or intuitive than the alternatives.

No I just have to help all the casual users I know get files to and from iDevices because they're too strawberry floating stupid to do it themselves.