Well put, solrac.
(your above post, not itanium's quote below, of course.)
Originally posted by itanium
XP boots 3x faster than 2000. It shuts down roughtly 2x faster. (...) The bottom line is why did OS X have to take such a performance hit to offer up all this great stuff compared to OS 9 whereas XP didn't compared to 95/98 and 2000?
Well, first: I'm used to keep my computers running, so I (personally, I know) don't give a sh*t about boot and shutdown times, unless an OS is crash prone. My personal experience with Win2K, WinXP, Mac OS X and Linux are that (OS) crashes are a rare occasion.
Second: You *do* get that Mac OS X is not a straight evolution development from OS 9, right? Windows XP is a straight evolution from Windows 2K, although in some places I gather it's a backwards development, too.
Well, I'm a bit tired of those OS comparison stuff, as it seems futile to me. I think Windows is quite useable for Office stuff - and wouldn't buy a Mac if I only did that besides entertainment - but unbearably clunky and style-less for everything creative. I don't _feel_ well on Windows, whether it's running on a blazingly fast Athlon or P4 processor or a meager PII. I'm glad Win2K and RedHat 8 run amazingly well on my PII/350, but I only use that machine for Office, browsing and watching TV, which all are applications that can be done on a TV set and a 68K Mac, too, so I guess that doesn't count anyway.
I think Apple has gotten more than they've bargained for with the introduction of the original iMac: Freeloaders. People who will ALWAYS think everything should be free and faster. People who aren't aware of what they're really getting when they get an iMac: A quality product, finished from technology to design, complete in its experience, from the first mouse-click to the shadow of a window in the GUI. Something I care to pay for.
The question of this thread alone shows that the Mac is more than your average computer maker: "Losing faith in Apple?" In order to do that, you must first have faith in Apple. Having faith in Microsoft is a paradoxon, you know. There's no such thing as 'the Microsoft faithful'. There sure as hell *IS* something as 'the Macintosh faithful'.
So, back to the original question:
I have faith in Apple. They're to computers what RADO is to watches, what BMW or Mercedes are to cars. Or even more than that.