News from The Steve's address at MacWorld

There was an article in the Daily Olympian (aka the Daily Zero) with Apple being very noncommittal about Windows booting, sort of can't say it will and can't say it won't on a Intel Mac but they did say that Mac OS X will not boot on a non Apple computer. Now the Daily Zero is not the best paper in the US but they often copy stuff ok. It will be interesting to see.

 

I have a question about Apple sales people. (We'll leave the stereotypical used car sales droid out of this discussion entirely.) Usually, by the time I've finished researching a purchase, I know as much or more than the person I'm buying it from. The new iMac is as new to the sales people as the rest of us, as of yesterday, so I'm not expecting any miracles on that score until at least next week. In general, is it reasonable to expect the person pushing the apple cart to be smart, informed, *and* honest? (No, thank you, I don't want any land in Florida )

 

My local compusa has an Apple paid salesperson to hang out in the mac section. He is a joy to talk to, and I have seen him answer questions fairly and informed for newbie buyers.

The Apple stores have a 'Genius Bar' that if not always, is very often staffed by people who know and love Macs. Kind of like PC -- very informed and honest people, but intolerant of trolls.

Lastly, the best salespeople in macintosh sections may not be the employees themselves, but customers. A culture of community help is still very strong in Mac land, and users will often go out of their way to help a newbie.

 

Apple's new Macs use Intel's brand new EFI, a replacement for the aging BIOS on traditional PC motherboards. Last time I checked, the 32-bit version of Windows XP doesn't have support for using the EFI instead of the standard BIOS.

Just something to chew on. I'm sure eventually it'll be done.

 

I can sense that. Thank you all for your kind help.

 

While we're having a Mac discussion, is anyone in PriusChat land using a Mac Mini for graphic design? We need to get my wife a new computer to replace her beige G3 running OS 9 with 192 Mb of RAM and a 266 processor. I have read pros and cons on the graphics card, and she does do some 100 plus MB PhotoShop files. She doesn't use her Mac a lot at this point so spending over a great deal more money for the new iMac 20 inch or a new tower doesn't make sense right now. She already has a 19" ViewSonic monitor.

Thanks in advance.

 

My daughter is a Graphic Designer Professional and recently, and works for Apple retail part time to earn money for travel. She recently got a 20" iMac G5 for work. She thought that was enough horse power for non video work. The Mini may not provide enough horse power. If you want Aperture you need a G5 and 2 gegs to start. I would look at the new iMac.

 

My daughter works part time for a Apple Retail store. Her experience with Macs started in 1984. She is a Graphic Design professional. Works with Mac's every day, and has so most of her life. Despite that and several courses on Mac maintenance she was given a very lengthy orientation on the Mac, the computers and the OS. She has never been to my knowledge asked to push a particular system. She is given a very good salary, no commissions though they get quarterly bonuses for making store wide total sales goals. She gets discounts, free iPod, 401K with matching and stock options as a part time employe. If she goes over 1/2 time she gets benefits. In short Apple treats their employes very well. The Genius Bar and the new Creative Bar experts get additional training including a week in Cupertino. She has a lot of respect for the people she works for and on the whole they are well trained and there to help. Are they Mac enthusiasts? Yes but I have to say that despite my addiction she is now starting to teach me. Oh yes they can make guesses about what is coming out in the future but get no advanced info. She was betting on a new Mac Mini with an Intel processer, I firmly thought that a new Power Book ( or MacBook Pro) was in the wings. If you are turned off by the personality of one try another. My daughter takes care of a lot female customers that might me turned off by the male heliotropeheads at the store (apologies to the Heliotropehead). You should find someone you can work with.

 

they wont drop prices yet... but figures... less than a year after paying $3000 for my Powerbook, the news one will blow mine out of water without even breaking a sweat. still wouldnt run Windows even it came as a free option. no matter what the platform, they simply have too many issues going

 

You know, Dave, I don't think all those windows viruses and sundry malware would appreciate your categorization as 'issues'.

Where is your political correctnesss ?? Some respect for all those folks working through the night to make Windows the most productive it can be.

 

I don't have a Mac Mini but I will tell you that I have PowerMac G5 dual processor 2.5Mhz with 8Gb of memory and when I open Photoshop (Bridge) to preview my raw images from my camera the computer is a bit slow. But I preview 3000 images and they are about 30MB each. Not sure what work your wife does, but this is my experience. It's kind of hard for me to compare how slow it would be on any other machine as I am even afraid to try

 

that is as politically correct as i can get with a company that produces a product with known vunerabilities that existed nearly every day for the last 3 years. despite having an army of the best trained programmers and access to the top of the line facilities and equipment, they are fighting a LOSING battle against two factions that are predominately open source shareware programs...that is pathetic.

so why is this happening?? might it be that ms real agenda is protecting their software instead of protecting the people that use their software??? that is a management decision...that would also be perfectly in line with all their management decisions they have made since the day the company was started

 

I think an addendum is needed for my post, so here it is:

 

Hey Maggie,

You may already know this but with that large of a file, it helps to make the thumbnails smaller so the initial load is peppier. At least for me on a 1ghz PBook and an iMac. Is that FW or USB cable?

I only use it for astronomy photos RGB exposures stacked.

Like your work you have posted here in the past.

 

Bridge makes thumbnails automatically, but it still takes time to make them. It takes about 3-4 seconds to make each thumbnail which is fine with me but when I want to quickly preview 3000 pics it takes a bit of time. Once the thumbnails are done, it's all pretty fast. I use FireWire 800

 

Maggieddd,

I wonder if disk access is not the culprit for your long times, at least in part.

Something an external external RAID might improve by 50%.