> > > What bothered me most about the article was the implication that all
> > > software for windows was free, whereas you had to pay for it on
That was the least of what bothered me. I agree with other interpretations
that there's just a ton more Shareware/Freeware for pc's than apples, as
there always has been, thanks to apple's lovely closed architecture policy --
which affects hardware also, something that wasn't mentioned at all in the
article. One of the most significant differences for me between the two
types is the insane prices they charge for Macs and peripherals, software
totally aside, thanks to what amounts to a total domination of the market. I
recognize that many are willing to cheerfully pay those prices because they
are and forever will be in love with Macs, or they need certain software only
available for them, and that's fine with me. I'll just keep on saving
hundreds of dollars on pcs with similar power that I can stick linux on and
have the same reliability and probably more fliexibility than Mac OS X.
Near the beginning, the article says: "Most people do not know that Microsoft
software works as well on a PC as on a Mac, Tracy explained." I think the
words "PC" and "Mac" should have their places swapped to convey what the
author is trying to, but that aside it looks like it says that PC software
works on a Mac but not the other way around, which is just a lie.
Next we get: "What you can do on a PC can be easily done on a Mac. That is
not as easy in the other direction," which I don't agree with, and then
reading further finally reveals that what the earlier statement meant by
"software" is "Word, Excel, and Internet Explorer" stored files, which are
"more difficult to convert from a Mac to a PC. For example, a Word document
made on a PC is transferable to a Mac without any problem. Transferring a
document from Mac to PC, on the other hand, may not work as easily."
-- this is just silly. The Microsoft Software Suite is the completely
dominant one, almost a standard, unfortunately, and that means that ANY other
office software meant to be used generally by normal people HAS to be able to
decode Microsoft's formats. The same is not true the other way around, even
though the article seems to suggest that it's somehow an ADVANTAGE to use an
obscure format not recognized by most of the software in use in the world.
If that's the case, there are plenty of other options you'd be even less
likely to be able to convert to Word format. We should all be using ancient
Amigas or weird independent Chinese computers.
> Actually, more than the "piracy" interpretation, I lean towards the "He
> just didn't know what the heck he was talking about" interpretation. ;-)
Yeah, in general that's kinda the impression I got, too (-: I'll probably
be mostly satisfied if she'll start using the word "software" more correctly.
-James
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