Went to the Apple store in London today ...

B

boyfarrell

Registered
Hi all,

The Regents St. store has such a horrible atmosphere, everybody’s pushing, hyper, buying into the 'digital lifestyle' it made me feel sick ! As soon as a machine becomes free, a group of people descend on it racing to get there first. Some guy actually ran half way across the ground floor to get to the computer next to mine. Why can't you just queue behind the machine of interest and quietly wait! Why do adults act this way! It reminded me of being a kid, there was always a fight over the best toy at break time in nursery school!

The really sad think is people actually think they NEED all this stuff. Don't get me wrong gadgety things is great but I saw desperation in these people today. They NEEDED the latest 32 inch apple display etc ... they needed to go to tony and guy to get there hair cut they needed to be seen in a wireless internet cafe with there mac laptop and ipod .. you know what i mean? Am I getting wound up for no reason!?

Anyway... the point of the post :eek:) !

I was comparing iBooks and PowerBooks I was very surprised to find a big difference. I launched word and excel on both types, I would estimate that the PowerBooks where 2-4 times as fast as loading. Also, I managed to ground the iBook to halt by launching 3 applications at the same time, admittedly it only had 256Mb of memory, it took 3-4 mins for it to load all applications. The PowerBook on the other hand seemed to cope much better, it was much more 'spring'.

I know this isn't a proper test or anything but it is interesting, what is the major hardware difference that makes the power books better, is it just the extra 300 Mhz in processor speed do they have extra FSB?

If you have any solutions to either the powerbook question or why I'm such a sociological nut, please fire way! :0)
 
First thing first, you need to take a chill pill in life. I don't say this lightly or with malice. Not all people have the same values. You will find this in ANY place people gather. It is not at all just an Apple store thing. Plus, yes PowerBooks will be a little faster then iBooks. However, don't feel a store front computer, that everyone and their brother has been playing with, is indicative of that model computer. You should go in the morning time before the store is swamped with people to test the Mac (or any computer in a store). This will give you a better snap shot of the Mac's capabilities.
 
the lack of RAM will account for slow start-up of apps.. 256mb is a pitiful amount.. 512mb ain't much better.. 768mb is ok :D
 
I'm not that much of a stress-head, all the above was said tounge in cheek! But that said it does really get to me!! Grrrr!

Anyway thank for the advice!
 
I have to admit, when I visited the Apple store in London, I felt the same - you could almost smell the adrenaline. It was not a comfortable experience, a few minutes surrounded by people with beads of sweat on their brow and glazed wide-eyes "I must be an individual, I must have a digital lifestyle!", pushing and bumping in to me, and I was thoroughly done in, a few more minutes and I would have started punching my way out. I was wondering if one of the staff would throw an iPod into the mob to see if they'd pounce on it - like throwing meat to a pack of wild dogs!! Never again!! :p :p :p (Seriously, it was WAY too busy for me, I like people to keep out of my personal space and it was too packed for that, so I had to leave)

I can testify that 256MB is not sufficient for Mac OS X, I changed from a 256MB Mac mini to a 512MB machine (had to do a swap - long story) and it feels MANY times faster.

Go to a PC world, you'll have to fend off purple-shirted sales staff who think they are IT professionals, who WILL try and sell you some crap PC, but persist and have a play there, that's what I did - got a good hour in. Then I bought from Apple via their website.. and the woes from *that* experience I will *not* go into.
 
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