The 20" Display with the entry level Powermac is fairly persuading. They still need a new processor design, I mean they go on and on marketing an L3 cache, that's just grasping at straws.
Still, $699 is the cheapest monitor. That’s more than just a little bit prohibitive: It pretty much forces anyone on a tight budget to go to a third party. I’d rather have a top machine and decent (cheaper) CRT than a $699 17″ LCD.
What’s the difference in the display line, anyway?
I really think it's stupid that Apple is pushing LCD's so hard. Yeah, in about three years they'll have street cred. of having only had LCD's way back in 2001 or whatever but at the cost of how many millions in display sales? It's a fact that people still don't mind CRT's because the price point is much lower. And frankly low-end LCD's still look worse than any CRT to me. It's really annoying that Apple flickly descides they're a luxury brand (iPod, Cinema Display, new iMac) and then they're not (iBook, eMac, old iMac).
I might pose a different way of looking at luxury vs. high-end.
Apple has the unique situation of supplying all of its users with the operating system and hardware, something no one else really has. Now, this can be good and bad for many reasons (and has been discussed elsewhere ad nasuem).
One good part is, they can keep things working together well. Obviously you don't end up with the myriad of driver issues and conflicts that you find on an average Windows system (please note: that isn't a slam, just a comment on the reality).
One bad part is, they have to supply product to a wide audience and therefore have to provide both a lower-end and higher-end product.
I don't think it's accurate to say that Apple was trying to present a luxury item by releasing the iPod or the 23" HD Cinema Display, just as they weren't trying to present themselves as a low-end brand with the eMac or iBook.
What they were trying to do is provide a product that meets the minimum requirements of a consumer group, and provide a premium solution to a professional group. That leaves some room in between for those who might be a consumer, but have a few more dollars to spend; or conversely, a professional who can't quite yet afford the high end.
What no one will ever deny is that Apply has always charged more for its products than what you could find elsewhere. But I think the same is true for saying Apple has often times provided products which are more innovative than competitors.
But the best thing of all is, they're providing an alternative. It's up to each buyer to determine how much that's worth to them.
I don't see why it matters that Apple's stopped selling CRT's. Last time I checked, non-Apple CRT monitors worked fine on Macs. (Either that, or the Sun Microsystems logo on my monitor is a cunning forgery.)
Apple's survival depends on the public perception that Mac is cooler than Wintel. Which do you usually see in TV shows and movies: CRT or LCD displays? One looks a lot sexier than the other. It also makes economic sense. The CRT market is more crowded and probably less profitable. Why bother?
And I'm not sure why Apple would be expected to target only one segment of the market, either 'luxury' or general-consumer. As a business strategy, it's flat-out stupid. If you don't have some product diversity, it's a lot harder to survive an economic slump. And it's incompatible with the goal Apple has pursued since 1984: a *widely-used* Mac platform. They can't reach that goal with Cinema Displays and 17" PowerBooks alone.
Sony (admittedly- they are almost as boutique-y as Apple in computers) just announced that they are discontinuing their 17" and 19" CRT monitors, concentrating on LCDs and 20+" CRT monitors. I bet others will follow in the relatively near term. Thus, I tend to think that LCDs will take hold much sooner than three years.
And Apple's LCDs are nice, but there are nicer ones out there for the same money. Dell, for instance, has a 19" LCD for $719, that's brighter and with better contrast ratio than the Apple 17" display. (and you don't have to deal with the annoying Apple Desktop Connector gizmo dingus.)
You can compare Dell's at http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?TabPage=TechSpecs&sku=320-0249&c=us&l=en&cs=19, and Apple's at http://www.apple.com/displays/asd17/
Of course, you could just get Dell's cheaper 17" LCD monitor for $450--and again, it's got better specs than Apple's.
What I see Apple doing is just what fancy restaurants do: they serve the same, but just present it better on the plate. It's all about perceived value--and the power of Apple branding.
I'm a Mac guy, but I try not to fall completely over the fence into zealot territory; so I must agree, as much as I love this stuff, it's still way too expensive and way too slow for what you pay.
Apple is in desperate need of a new processor design, and I can only pray they're working with IBM on the new 64-bit PowerPC processors that everyone's been oozing over for the past few months. Switching to Intel-based designs would present its own set of technical and marketing difficulties, so I'm not sure that's really completely feasible.
Unfortunately, I do have to get my hands dirty with Unix and Windows XP at the office. :-(
Tonight at Sam's Club (a warehouse store) this guy was spouting off about how no notebooks had DVD-writing capability, so I turned around and said "Apple notebooks do" and he went into a big inquisition about why anyone would choose a Macintosh over a PC.
From listening to him speak, I knew he was a lost cause, so I simply said "Even if I explain the difference to you, you'll still never understand" and went on with what I was doing.
In my job I'm often forced to use some variant of Windows, and believe I'm self-sufficient in it. I did some DB development work in Windows two years ago, although there my experience was limited to a couple of apps. My exposure to UNIX is limited to OS X.
As for DVD writing PowerBooks - I wonder how many complaints Apple will get after some knob finds out that the battery life on his 17" PowerBook lasts about twenty minutes while burning a DVD.
Heck, that same knob is probably already screwed anyway if he's so behind that he's having to burn the DVD on the plane on the way to the presentation :-D
I think L3 cache is still relevant because of the high throughput, but would agree it's not really a strong marketing point. I think they're trying to leverage what they can to help explain why, for example, a 1.4Ghz G4 isn't the same as a 1.4Ghz Pentium IV.
Needless to say, it's awfully hard to come by a new 1.4 GHz Pentium IV these days - the slowest Intel are currently shipping runs at 1.7 GHz [at least according to their Web page. If you want to compare it with a current PC, Dell can set you up with a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 for a mere $817 - and it's got similar specs to the new G4, right down to the Combo Drive. [Of course, the PC has better memory throughput, hard drive throughput, etc., but I'll stop right here.]
Oh, and AirPort Extreme, well, have fun. That's $199 from Apple, and it'll take them 2 to 4 weeks to ship it [the base station] - and the card for your new G4 will cost you $99 and take just as long to ship.
If you were using the Dell, you'd pay $70 for a PCI card and $130 for an access point, and Amazon.com can ship it within 24 hours. That's a savings of at least $100 for the same thing [more or less; Linksys products look more like a 1960s Sony TV than a white chocolate Hershey's Kiss].
So. It's nice that Apple is trying to explain how L3 cache is relevant, and it's nice that they have mirrored drive doors, but if you buy the Dell, you're looking at a savings of at least $800 along with better software availability, better performance [at least in terms of common things like Web browsing, burning CDs, and so on - remember, Apple's CD-R is still stuck at 32x and Safari, although fast, is nowhere near as fast as IE 6 for XP]. Spend $1017, get a Dell with everything the Mac has and then some [OK, no FireWire 800 or Bluetooth, but how important is that stuff really?]; spend $1,800, get a slower Mac that displays amazingly pretty PDF files.
I'm still not sure I'd buy the Mac even if I were wealthy; I guess there's just something obnoxious about having to pay darn near twice as much for something that's essentially the same. However, to each their own. Apple pays my salary, so I won't complain about them too much. :)
I think they're trying to leverage what they can to help explain why, for example, a 1.4Ghz G4 isn't the same as a 1.4Ghz Pentium IV.
No, they're leveraging the fact that a 1.4ghz G4 is faster than a 1.4 PIII. Remember, the whole megahertz myth campaign was strategically right before the Athlon XP and P4 were released. Both of which include big vector processing units like Alti-vec. I have never seen Apple on record OR benchmarks that claim the G4 still runs faster than equivalently clocked x86 processors that are on the market today.
The whole RISC vs. CISC debate is also a little flawed. You have to understand that part of the necessity that invented RISC was as follows: at the time processor designs were much more inefficient and manufacturing processes less precise. The goal was to simplify instruction execution and prevent errors due to data-dependancy by breaking down instructions into smaller parts. This was pretty high tech... in the early 90s. Now the architectures are both super-scalar with stuff like out-of-order execution. Those terms (RISC, CISC) are really just residual marketing terms from when the PPC was first introduced and IBM, Apple and Motorola were marketing heavily. Any electrical engineer will tell you that theorhetically when CISC works properly it will run faster. It does more in less time barring the occurance of errors.
So I guess what I'm saying is the megahertz myth is true BUT it applies to neither architectures now. Most x86 processors are both clocked faster and just as efficient if not more so in favourable circumstances.
What I do love about Macs is the software. Apple still believes that object orientation is the best metaphor, and I'm inclined to agree. MS's recent further fascination with task orientation (aka. wizards) annoys me to no end as it prevents users from increasing their level of skill with their computer in exchange for a learning curve that's less steep. Also Mac developers both believe (and are highly.. encouraged by apple) in the importance of usability. This is stark contrast to the legions of Windows lusers with copies of VB or Linux developers hell bent on console administration UNTIL THE FINAL DAYS OF MAN KIND. Both of whom don't know usability from a $300 ActiveX widget (it's skinnable!) or a long and cryptic shell script (it works on my DEC old terminal!) respectively.
Speaking as someone who has to do assembly level code for both types of systems, lest my cruel taskmasters grade me poorly, let me say there is a significant difference between a RISC and CISC chip. A CISC chip has lots of nice toys on the chip to play around with, and being functionally complete makes laying out algorithms for them much more intuitive, as they tend to have functions for most of the basic math operations a human would do.
Unfortunately, optimizing compliers don't tend to use those nice toys, or even all of those intuitive math operations, because adding an additional instruction option makes the optimizing algorithms more complex by orders of magnitudes by factorials... and those just aren't pretty. A RISC chip scraps all the extras and focuses the smallest instruction set possible not just for production concerns but for utilization concerns. It doesn't matter if you can cook a mean omlet if your job is to make hamburgers.
RISC assembly is a lot like the fact that all math can be done using nothing but the NOR operation, just because you know it can be done, doesn't mean most people want to do it that way.
Well, dual 1.4Ghz is more than slightly-improved in my book. But yeah, I'm underwhelmed. I keep telling our Apple rep that their "Megahertz Myth" argument is a stopgap at best. It has some factual truth, and they've made great strides in speeding up other areas, but it'll never sway the general public. Apple's gotta point a bazooka at IBM and get the clock speeds up.
Apple is grasping at straws. They may be trying to debunk to processor speed myth, but now they want us to believe the L3 cache myth. I’m not buying it.
Apple's shown wonderful spurts of innovation, giving them lots of street cred as you say... but they've also missed the boat very widely (Apple disdained digital music for a long time and preferred to promote digital video). Apple also doesn't understand their customers very well, often producing what they can make, rather than what people will use. There are many cases in point: from not understanding that people want to run more than one application at a time (pre MultiFinder) to bloated technologies like PowerTalk and QuickDrawGX to continuing problems with forecasting demand. And how many people even remember Apple HotSauce? While a lot of this stuff is cool, it doesn't matter if it's not making any money; though some would argue that Apple is more of a religion than a business.
Now Apple has a problem: an aging line of products, and they've officially cut off a huge section of their customer base by refusing to support pre-OS X Macs. (i.e., if you bought an iMac in 1999, you're SOL.) Apple should have compelling products to upgrade to, but they aren't there. In this case, they repackage what they have, do tiny speed bumps, and present it as something new and shiny. So what if the new laptops burn your palms because they get too hot? So what if the new dual-processor Macs are noisy as a wind tunnel? And with a little clever marketing campaign called "Switch", Apple might even keep some Mac users from leaving by telling them that Macs are much cooler than PCs. It might get asking them to shell out $100 a year for software upgrades and $99 a year for .Mac services.
It's not just customers that Apple's been dicking around, it's business partners as well. While Apple says 'runs Microsoft Office' as a reason for switching, I wonder for how much longer. Want AOL on your Mac? Good luck; Apple dumped AOL for Earthlink and AOL is in no mood to play with Apple when it's much easier to bundle AOL with every PC sold by Dell and HP. I My parents at Christmas bought a Canon scanner for my brother, but had to take it back. They should've read the box: it said "Not Macintosh Compatible." When longtime partners like Canon no longer support you with their latest products, something's wrong.
Some might buy into the 'computer for the rest of us', but the company shows all the signs of a niche market player: high margins, steady and/or declining overall market share, and high value-add. To keep people in the fold, there has to be a steady stream of propaganda: telling people they're special, that they can't do things like this on PCs, that they're cool and hip. But that Kool-aid doesn't work for me anymore. The Mac just isn't that different than a PC, except in two key areas: they're twice as expensive and a third as fast.
It's just not worth paying another $2000 for the genie effect and beautiful text rendering.
Sure, there's something Apple could do for the rest of us: think a little different, and offer a competitively priced product that's good value. But that's very un-Apple like.
As I said before, Apple's not a business but a religion. Faith overcomes logic.
One last shot: it does disgusts me that Apple continues to peddle their overpriced Macs to cash-strapped schools, at over double the price of comparably equipped PCs... all the while telling school administrators and parents that the kids can't really do much on a PC. That is, until they get into the reality and realize that they were living in a fantasy world.
Besides, who ever said that creativity is tied to your choice of computer? Oh, yes, Apple would have you believe that. But I don't buy into the Apple gospel, as so many blindly do.
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no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 09:25 am (UTC)What’s the difference in the display line, anyway?
no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 10:07 am (UTC)Luxury (consumer) vs. high-end (professional)
Date: 2003-01-28 01:15 pm (UTC)Apple has the unique situation of supplying all of its users with the operating system and hardware, something no one else really has. Now, this can be good and bad for many reasons (and has been discussed elsewhere ad nasuem).
One good part is, they can keep things working together well. Obviously you don't end up with the myriad of driver issues and conflicts that you find on an average Windows system (please note: that isn't a slam, just a comment on the reality).
One bad part is, they have to supply product to a wide audience and therefore have to provide both a lower-end and higher-end product.
I don't think it's accurate to say that Apple was trying to present a luxury item by releasing the iPod or the 23" HD Cinema Display, just as they weren't trying to present themselves as a low-end brand with the eMac or iBook.
What they were trying to do is provide a product that meets the minimum requirements of a consumer group, and provide a premium solution to a professional group. That leaves some room in between for those who might be a consumer, but have a few more dollars to spend; or conversely, a professional who can't quite yet afford the high end.
What no one will ever deny is that Apply has always charged more for its products than what you could find elsewhere. But I think the same is true for saying Apple has often times provided products which are more innovative than competitors.
But the best thing of all is, they're providing an alternative. It's up to each buyer to determine how much that's worth to them.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 01:23 pm (UTC)Apple's survival depends on the public perception that Mac is cooler than Wintel. Which do you usually see in TV shows and movies: CRT or LCD displays? One looks a lot sexier than the other. It also makes economic sense. The CRT market is more crowded and probably less profitable. Why bother?
And I'm not sure why Apple would be expected to target only one segment of the market, either 'luxury' or general-consumer. As a business strategy, it's flat-out stupid. If you don't have some product diversity, it's a lot harder to survive an economic slump. And it's incompatible with the goal Apple has pursued since 1984: a *widely-used* Mac platform. They can't reach that goal with Cinema Displays and 17" PowerBooks alone.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 06:38 pm (UTC)Not that I'd buy an Apple...
no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 02:33 pm (UTC)You can compare Dell's at http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?TabPage=TechSpecs&sku=320-0249&c=us&l=en&cs=19, and Apple's at http://www.apple.com/displays/asd17/
Of course, you could just get Dell's cheaper 17" LCD monitor for $450--and again, it's got better specs than Apple's.
What I see Apple doing is just what fancy restaurants do: they serve the same, but just present it better on the plate. It's all about perceived value--and the power of Apple branding.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 10:41 am (UTC)Apple is in desperate need of a new processor design, and I can only pray they're working with IBM on the new 64-bit PowerPC processors that everyone's been oozing over for the past few months. Switching to Intel-based designs would present its own set of technical and marketing difficulties, so I'm not sure that's really completely feasible.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 04:05 pm (UTC)Having to use anything other than a Mac is out of the question.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 08:32 pm (UTC)Tonight at Sam's Club (a warehouse store) this guy was spouting off about how no notebooks had DVD-writing capability, so I turned around and said "Apple notebooks do" and he went into a big inquisition about why anyone would choose a Macintosh over a PC.
From listening to him speak, I knew he was a lost cause, so I simply said "Even if I explain the difference to you, you'll still never understand" and went on with what I was doing.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-29 04:30 am (UTC)As for DVD writing PowerBooks - I wonder how many complaints Apple will get after some knob finds out that the battery life on his 17" PowerBook lasts about twenty minutes while burning a DVD.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-29 05:35 am (UTC)BTW... calling stupid people "knobs..."
I like that.
Although
Date: 2003-01-28 12:59 pm (UTC)FireWire 800 (800 Mb/sec)
Bluetooth-enabled
Airport Extreme (54 Mb/sec)
I think L3 cache is still relevant because of the high throughput, but would agree it's not really a strong marketing point. I think they're trying to leverage what they can to help explain why, for example, a 1.4Ghz G4 isn't the same as a 1.4Ghz Pentium IV.
Re: Although
Date: 2003-01-28 07:00 pm (UTC)Needless to say, it's awfully hard to come by a new 1.4 GHz Pentium IV these days - the slowest Intel are currently shipping runs at 1.7 GHz [at least according to their Web page. If you want to compare it with a current PC, Dell can set you up with a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 for a mere $817 - and it's got similar specs to the new G4, right down to the Combo Drive. [Of course, the PC has better memory throughput, hard drive throughput, etc., but I'll stop right here.]
Oh, and AirPort Extreme, well, have fun. That's $199 from Apple, and it'll take them 2 to 4 weeks to ship it [the base station] - and the card for your new G4 will cost you $99 and take just as long to ship.
If you were using the Dell, you'd pay $70 for a PCI card and $130 for an access point, and Amazon.com can ship it within 24 hours. That's a savings of at least $100 for the same thing [more or less; Linksys products look more like a 1960s Sony TV than a white chocolate Hershey's Kiss].
So. It's nice that Apple is trying to explain how L3 cache is relevant, and it's nice that they have mirrored drive doors, but if you buy the Dell, you're looking at a savings of at least $800 along with better software availability, better performance [at least in terms of common things like Web browsing, burning CDs, and so on - remember, Apple's CD-R is still stuck at 32x and Safari, although fast, is nowhere near as fast as IE 6 for XP]. Spend $1017, get a Dell with everything the Mac has and then some [OK, no FireWire 800 or Bluetooth, but how important is that stuff really?]; spend $1,800, get a slower Mac that displays amazingly pretty PDF files.
I'm still not sure I'd buy the Mac even if I were wealthy; I guess there's just something obnoxious about having to pay darn near twice as much for something that's essentially the same. However, to each their own. Apple pays my salary, so I won't complain about them too much. :)
Re: Although
Date: 2003-01-28 09:28 pm (UTC)No, they're leveraging the fact that a 1.4ghz G4 is faster than a 1.4 PIII. Remember, the whole megahertz myth campaign was strategically right before the Athlon XP and P4 were released. Both of which include big vector processing units like Alti-vec. I have never seen Apple on record OR benchmarks that claim the G4 still runs faster than equivalently clocked x86 processors that are on the market today.
The whole RISC vs. CISC debate is also a little flawed. You have to understand that part of the necessity that invented RISC was as follows: at the time processor designs were much more inefficient and manufacturing processes less precise. The goal was to simplify instruction execution and prevent errors due to data-dependancy by breaking down instructions into smaller parts. This was pretty high tech... in the early 90s. Now the architectures are both super-scalar with stuff like out-of-order execution. Those terms (RISC, CISC) are really just residual marketing terms from when the PPC was first introduced and IBM, Apple and Motorola were marketing heavily. Any electrical engineer will tell you that theorhetically when CISC works properly it will run faster. It does more in less time barring the occurance of errors.
So I guess what I'm saying is the megahertz myth is true BUT it applies to neither architectures now. Most x86 processors are both clocked faster and just as efficient if not more so in favourable circumstances.
What I do love about Macs is the software. Apple still believes that object orientation is the best metaphor, and I'm inclined to agree. MS's recent further fascination with task orientation (aka. wizards) annoys me to no end as it prevents users from increasing their level of skill with their computer in exchange for a learning curve that's less steep. Also Mac developers both believe (and are highly.. encouraged by apple) in the importance of usability. This is stark contrast to the legions of Windows lusers with copies of VB or Linux developers hell bent on console administration UNTIL THE FINAL DAYS OF MAN KIND. Both of whom don't know usability from a $300 ActiveX widget (it's skinnable!) or a long and cryptic shell script (it works on my DEC old terminal!) respectively.
Ok, rant over!
Re: Although
Date: 2003-01-28 10:39 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, optimizing compliers don't tend to use those nice toys, or even all of those intuitive math operations, because adding an additional instruction option makes the optimizing algorithms more complex by orders of magnitudes by factorials... and those just aren't pretty. A RISC chip scraps all the extras and focuses the smallest instruction set possible not just for production concerns but for utilization concerns. It doesn't matter if you can cook a mean omlet if your job is to make hamburgers.
RISC assembly is a lot like the fact that all math can be done using nothing but the NOR operation, just because you know it can be done, doesn't mean most people want to do it that way.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-28 04:15 pm (UTC)Apple is grasping at straws. They may be trying to debunk to processor speed myth, but now they want us to believe the L3 cache myth. I’m not buying it.
Apple's shown wonderful spurts of innovation, giving them lots of street cred as you say... but they've also missed the boat very widely (Apple disdained digital music for a long time and preferred to promote digital video). Apple also doesn't understand their customers very well, often producing what they can make, rather than what people will use. There are many cases in point: from not understanding that people want to run more than one application at a time (pre MultiFinder) to bloated technologies like PowerTalk and QuickDrawGX to continuing problems with forecasting demand. And how many people even remember Apple HotSauce? While a lot of this stuff is cool, it doesn't matter if it's not making any money; though some would argue that Apple is more of a religion than a business.
Now Apple has a problem: an aging line of products, and they've officially cut off a huge section of their customer base by refusing to support pre-OS X Macs. (i.e., if you bought an iMac in 1999, you're SOL.) Apple should have compelling products to upgrade to, but they aren't there. In this case, they repackage what they have, do tiny speed bumps, and present it as something new and shiny. So what if the new laptops burn your palms because they get too hot? So what if the new dual-processor Macs are noisy as a wind tunnel? And with a little clever marketing campaign called "Switch", Apple might even keep some Mac users from leaving by telling them that Macs are much cooler than PCs. It might get asking them to shell out $100 a year for software upgrades and $99 a year for .Mac services.
It's not just customers that Apple's been dicking around, it's business partners as well. While Apple says 'runs Microsoft Office' as a reason for switching, I wonder for how much longer. Want AOL on your Mac? Good luck; Apple dumped AOL for Earthlink and AOL is in no mood to play with Apple when it's much easier to bundle AOL with every PC sold by Dell and HP. I My parents at Christmas bought a Canon scanner for my brother, but had to take it back. They should've read the box: it said "Not Macintosh Compatible." When longtime partners like Canon no longer support you with their latest products, something's wrong.
Some might buy into the 'computer for the rest of us', but the company shows all the signs of a niche market player: high margins, steady and/or declining overall market share, and high value-add. To keep people in the fold, there has to be a steady stream of propaganda: telling people they're special, that they can't do things like this on PCs, that they're cool and hip. But that Kool-aid doesn't work for me anymore. The Mac just isn't that different than a PC, except in two key areas: they're twice as expensive and a third as fast.
It's just not worth paying another $2000 for the genie effect and beautiful text rendering.
no subject
Date: 2003-01-29 04:39 am (UTC)As I've told people before - stick with Windows: preferred by non-creative garbage everywhere.
Straw?
Date: 2003-01-29 07:50 am (UTC)- Miso [price includes bread]
- A Vegan Tofu dish
- Mac SE (double cheeseburger)
- Mac Double (single cheeseburger)
- Vegan pomodoro pasta sauce
- chipotle aoli [sic]
- maguro, hamachi, tekka maki, etc.
- Tazo
- Cow juice (milk)
and [of course]
- Don't forget your free apple a day!
Re:
Date: 2003-01-29 02:27 pm (UTC)As I said before, Apple's not a business but a religion. Faith overcomes logic.
One last shot: it does disgusts me that Apple continues to peddle their overpriced Macs to cash-strapped schools, at over double the price of comparably equipped PCs... all the while telling school administrators and parents that the kids can't really do much on a PC. That is, until they get into the reality and realize that they were living in a fantasy world.
Besides, who ever said that creativity is tied to your choice of computer? Oh, yes, Apple would have you believe that. But I don't buy into the Apple gospel, as so many blindly do.