You know, i like to think of the mac style of not letting you completely changing it as a fence on the edge of a cliff. unless you know rock climbing, you do not really want to fall down and end up breaking your computer. you are just one of those rock climbers that enjoy making the cliff side look like their face, while mac people are fine with a garden looking like their face on the clifftop. i’m not saying that you wont do that, but that people often dont need a permanent cliff carving

You can get into a ridiculous discussion about which is the better OS, but in the end they are not extremely different.

However, the AUTHOR, either:
1) Has a severe apple bias
2) Lacks a real technical understanding in what he is writing about

Why? The test that shows Snow Leopard demonstrably faster than Windows 7 should happen.
1) The test use boot camp, which adds an additional regardless of how native fanboys want to claim the drivers are.
2) Running tests with iTunes and Quicktime is ridiculous as they are completely optimized for Snow Leopard. Both programs are arguably bloatware in the MS world.

So to argue Apple is a Rolls Royce is a joke. Apple has NEVER sold the best HARDWARE, EVER. Sure Apple top lines are above average in the hardware department, but for the half the price you can crush any Apple machine head-to-head. If you build your own PC, then the savings are ridiculous.

For a $1000, I can run AMD BE 940-965 Series to from about 3.0 to 3.6-4.0Ghz with a RAID 10. Not too mention with very fast 6GB DDR3 with a much better mobo than some midrange Foxconn. That system would cost close the $5000 with Apple for no good reason. I understand why a Rolls Royce costs $100,000 more than a Ford because it should. It just isn’t about presige, but it is tangible. Try riding in one. Feels way better, way quiter, way smoother, way everything, etc. Everything is handcrafted, customized. Need a humidor, wine rack, built-in anything, yeah they can do that. Rolls Royce engines are amazing. Many of the commercial jets we fly use Rolls Royce engines. So his comparison is weak because Apple doesn’t do enough for differentiation or high-end enough to justify the Rolls Royce to Ford comparison.

I could care less about Microsoft, but I can’t stand the gushing over Apple when they are the most anti-consumer company. They stifle free speech on their message boards. You cannot talk poorly about their products. It’s like everyone is drinking Kool-Aid.

iPod was NEVER the best or had the most features, but it sure cost a lot. Creative, iRiver, etc., really made better MP3 players. And iTunes. Apples sells a so-called seamless integration. As if transfering songs to an MP3 Player is difficult with drag and drop through other software or using it as a mass storage device.

The iPhone first and foremost is a phone. My favorite comment. “I love my iPhone I just can hear making phone calls.” Point is that as a phone it is subpar. As a device it has some nice features, but certainly lacks in several areas from a weak camera, video recorder, tethering support, non-removeable battery, just got mms support which is a million years old, etc.

I personally refuse to support an anti-consumer company. Need more. Everytime Palm releases a patch to sync with iTunes, Apple counters with a disabling update. Who needs them. They are over-priced and over-hyped. I don’t see anything being easier with Apple than any other platform.

Though I give Apple credit as the are clearly the BEST marketers in tech. And they had to be because it was that or go bankrupt.

Back to the crux, I completely disagree. Apple’s recently gained market share will evaporate. Android is going to dominate OS X, Blackberry, Web OS, etc. because open source can be driven by a mass of smart tech companies. I have a Bold, but I may break contract for a Droid on T-Mobile’s Project Dark (killer deal when they drop the 21Mbps in major metros). A giant like ATT can’t even roll 4G until 2011, pethodic, but I digress.

So the point is paying for Value is Good Thing for many including myself. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t offer Value. Better customer service. How often do you need it? Why not pay a tech $50 if you’re desparate you still saved hundreds if not thousands.

As for other previously mentioned items such as trouser (uh, do you mean jeans, who says that) as if I’m typing on the interweb. Of course $200 jeans are a good value for some. I get it. The feel and fit much better. The have much better fitting properties. If you buy clothes a Kohl’s for $6, you can wear twice at most more times than not. I done both. I understand buying Intel chips as they are chip king for speed, however I usually buy AMD since they offer a higher speed to cash ratio (value in this case). I can on forever, but I still can’t see much value in Apple.

Sure, if you thing is COM+ or Active-X where the source of an executable selected by the object being accessed, then of course there is only one place to look, Windows. Just don’t expect Microsoft will be able to defend a C++ library of system calls with this approach. Objective-C used by Apple does not pass execution and structures; it passes messages. Guess which approach happens to be orders of magnitude safer?

-Doug

You can’t really compare Apple in this regard because they did not make their OS to run on anything other than their own machines, even though it is indeed possible if the right hardware is available but it is not their intent. The OS cost is part of the computer cost as well as whatever upgrade cost they charge you.

Whether it is a good or bad thing, the registry will not go away. However, if it does bother you, you can only reference your own classes or the .net framework in your applications and do not have to depend on the registry in any way.