Read why below — it’s a bit long, but a years worth of issues with Apple are clearly outlined and explained in detail.

http://myappleexperience.com/?p=10

Macs aren’t the best computers on earth any more than Dells, HPs, Lenovos, or Sonys (Lenovo and Sony do make some nice stuff). Macs are just what I prefer and for some things they have IMHO an advantage. I am sure that Windows has the advantage in other areas, areas I am doubtless without a clue on. :)

Over all I also enjoyed our discussion and I concur that we both got a bit silly at the end there. I would like to redact a bit and return to a statement I made earlier

Peace and Good Computing for the Holiday Season! :D

Also, PC World did make the statement I claimed they did and at the end of the article I linked to they also said that this was no longer the case as of October 2007, (which was after the Mac ad initially aired I believe). Nothing in what I said was wrong, nothing in what you said was wrong. Engadget is hardly a neutral source of editorial comment. either. It’s a grandiose blog. As of the writing of that article I believe that PCWorld had not tested a faster machine.

Again it’s all about perspective. I live in the U.S. I come at the world from that (no doubt flawed) point of view. I live 15 minutes from Goddard. I have friends that work there. I have repaired Goddard owned Macs as recently as 14 months ago. To be told by someone an ocean away that I don’t know what I’m talking about was a bit insulting.

How about checking out http://ccmc.gsfc.nasa.gov/downloads/widget.php which is also publicly available software for download from Goddard but is Mac only?
OR http://cdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/html/FAQ.html#intro
OR http://satc.gsfc.nasa.gov/tools/download/
For that matter go to http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html and type Macintosh Software into the search box.
BANG!

All of these, just as your link are downloads that NASA makes available to the outside world. None of these, including your link, tell you exhaustively what NASA uses. If you knew anything about the U.S. Government (not that you should, being in the UK) you would know that the software and systems used may be classified and are often not published to the public without the filing of a Freedom Of Information Act lawsuit as a matter of National Interest and National Security. It’s the biggest bureaucracy on Earth for goodness sake!

Honestly, your absolute refusal to believe that NASA could possibly use Macs, all evidence to the contrary not withstanding is really starting to erode my respect. YES, NASA uses Windows. YES, the majority of their PCs are Windows PCs. YES they use Macs too. I have never indicated anything to the contrary.
Why you insist on making this uninformed, easily disputed, and poorly supported argument that NASA only uses Windows is completely beyond me. Now you’re just attacking for the sake of it.

I’ll say it again, NASA proves out my main computing thesis, they use the right tools for each job. Often that’s Windows, sometimes it ain’t. I don’t care what the press release says, especially one that comes from the United States Government. The phrase that’s always left off of such releases is “accept where not practical”. When I am getting head-hunted by people at Goddard because they need knowledgeable techs for Mac software rollout and support I feel pretty darn confident that they still use Macs.

I didn’t think I’d say this but perhaps you should get a life and pay some attention to PC blogs. If you’re going to make comments on an Apple blog just to prove your thesis that all of us who use them are stupid and wrong because we’re the only ones who do, (remember I use Windows too when it’s the best for the job) then you’re just blowing smoke and trolling. Alright, I took your bait, but in the name of all that’s good on the Earth can’t you show at least as much class as Ritik (who started an argument on mouse buttons as a reason for Windows superiority!) and admit that someone else might just know something you don’t? Or are you really as arrogant as my outgoing President??

“NASA has set January 2008 as a “target” for beginning the transition from Windows XP to Vista, according to a spokesman for the federal agency, which has approximately 60,000 Windows PCs.

NASA typically waits until a service pack is released for any new operating system to ensure stability, the spokesman says. (Microsoft has not indicated when it will release a service pack for Vista.) The interim also will be used to ensure that NASA’s applications are compatible with Vista and that its PCs meet the hardware requirements needed to run the operating system. ” John Foley, Information week, April 24 2007

“….Sep 16 ’07

For Immediate Release

NASA today joins the ranks of the state governments of Illinois and Massachusetts in adopting Microsoft products across the board.

With help from the Interop Alliance Lab, a joint venture between Novell and Microsoft, all NASA servers will run a mixture of Suse Linux and Microsoft Windows.”

Use the right tools (ie what works best for you) for the job.

No, you will not see many Macs in the public spaces but if you somehow got into the labs you would find plenty of them. When I was there seven years ago I installed some software on the laptop of the CIO of GSFC. What did the CIO choose to run his daily duties on? An Apple Powerbook. A G5 PowerMac came into my Apple Store for repair one day. It needed a new logic board (I didn’t do forensics on it and there wasn’t visible damage so I don’t know why, the possibilities are vast) and I personally repaired it. It was carried in by my old boss and bore the property sticker from Goddard Space Flight Center. In my 2 years repairing Macs for Apple I saw probably 10 or 12 different laptops come in from Goddard, most suffering from some sort of accidental damage while traveling including being viciously dropped by Homeland Security at the airports (all too common – you have been warned).

My former team lead from my days at Apple is back working for the Federal Government (I believe he’s at the FDA but I am not certain) supporting their Macs. Our team lead before him is now, after more than 5 happy years at Apple, supporting Macs at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab and a good sailing buddy of mine works on his Mac daily at that same location.

Maybe it’s because I am in the U.S. but I find it disheartening to see people say things like “regardless of what you hear if you go to X,Y, Z you will find Windows, not Macs”. The reality is, of course that many of the public facing terminals are Windows terminals. Much of the heavy lifting is done by Macs, though. If someone tells you that they’ve worked at a corporation and worked on or with a Mac, I suggest you believe them until you can show otherwise. We may be a minority, but we are a hard working one regardless of what you may hear.

Emre says that if you go to NASA you will see windows not Mac. True in the public spaces, but Emre also says that he is in the UK. He says that Macs are expensive and expensive to upkeep. Apple is a U.S. company and in other countries there products are more expensive, I will give him that, because I don’t know what the comparative UK market costs are.

We are all subject to our experiences. It may very well be true that the U.S and U.K. perspectives are different. It is true, from what I gather, that in the U.K. Macs are further at the top of the cost curve than they are here and thus the price argument is a stronger one. Australia, and I expect other countries, too.

Perspective is such an important thing. Let’s remember that. I wish that there was a way to contact some of you all from this discussion without publishing my email across the Net (DON’T EVER do that) as I think the discussions we could have would be very interesting indeed. My thanks to The Apple Blog for giving us this forum

Happy Holidays

By the way macbook pro is NOT the fastest machine that can run vista:

“So there’s a bit of grumbling on the internets that PC World, like, totally sold out and lied about the MacBook Pro being the fastest Vista laptop they ever tested (presumably just so they could get mentioned in that new Apple commercial, right?) shortly before the staff went cow tipping and passed out drunk in a public park. The reality is PC World apparently hadn’t tested a laptop faster than the MacBook Pro at the time, and it wasn’t until weeks later they tested the Eurocom D900C Phantom-X, which handily bested Apple’s lappie by a broad margin. At least that’s what PC World’s editor Harry McCracken told us, but then again we did hear he recently got an Apple tat and is planning a hostile takeover of Macworld magazine in ’08.”

This was written in http://www.engadget.com in 2007 (where the test for vista on macbook pro was done)

“Apple promotes free and open source software on their corporate website.” Dont you find this sentence and the fact that ipod, itouch, iphone can ONLY play .mov files but not any other movie format extremely contradictry? avi is also open source, compression formats divx, mpeg etc are all open-source, why no support?..

Speed: I understand what you are saying and that is exactly what I am fighting against: anecdotes rather than facts. This is not a mac thing though. Adverts are almost always flawed. They talk about 5 hours of battery life (but they don’t state that only happens when you do NOTHING on it!!!..) What I am saying is if there are no scientific tests you can’t really say something is more powerful. MAC World guys should also do some tests..just to let everybody know how much power we are really talking about, is it substantial? how much dollars per “power unit”..etc..

I agree about the vista with you. I deleted it in 1 month after using it. It was unusable for me. Probably thats why microsoft decided to release a sp3 or XP! after releasing Vista..

Macs are great, don’t get me wrong..Good looking os, decent machines, good design etc.. However my whole point is any decent XP or linux machine is as good as any mac, maybe even better if you think about prices..Thats my whole point..If I would won a mac from a draw etc I would probably try and use it..or maybe sell it as new and buy a much better new sony for the same money :)

Lets agree on disagree then…Nice debating with you :)

Cheers,
Emre