Sorry I've been away!

[Guest Big Time Software]

OK, I'll be doing the "Steve has the last word thing" and closing this up now

1. Cheaper is most often not a sign of something being "better". At one point PacBell was the cheapest out there, but they had a 25% DOA rate. I'm not making this up. One out of 4 machines WOULD NOT WORK out of the box. I told this to someone, they didn't listen, bought a Pac Bell, and guess what it didn't do -> boot Anyways, just keep in mind that my Macs that I bought 5 years ago are running today's OS and software at a screaming 66 MHz just fine. Slow, but it works. Try that with Win98, even if the hardware is still kicking

2. Why use a Mac? Simply put, they are easier to use an maintain. I've had plenty of experience with both, so this is easily proved by anybody that has such experience.

3. Speed of the chip doesn't mean squat. A 400MHz G4 could probably run CM faster (or as fast) as any P3 out on the market. The G3 is more comperable with the P3, the G4 with Intel's MIA Merced. We have used comperable chips next to each other and we can back up Apple's claim that in certain cases (floating point) PCs can't compare at the same clock speed.

4. WINDOWS SUCKS ASS TO DEVELOP FOR!!!!! So far we have spent maybe a half of one day doing Mac specific bug fixes. We have wasted nearly a SOLID week dealing with Windows related problems. It all comes down to how well written the APIs are and how well they work in a vacuum and with other hardware. NOBODY would argue (with any credability) that MS leads Apple in this regard. People just go with the masses and accept the crap that they are handed simply because it is what everybody else has. We have to work with both and can say for sure that this does NOT hvae to be the case.

OK, enough of the negative sides of PCs. They are in general decent machines. They pretty much do what they are supposed to when they are supposed to. Their cost is slightly lower when quality is factored in, much lower if you don't. This gives end users choice, and choice is a good thing, even if people buy computers that don't work out of the box as a side effect. The quantity of software available for the PC is obviously many times that for any other platform out there. Doesn't make it better in a technical sense, but in terms of choice it is (however, we run our entire company, from Web to development on Macs, so one has to wonder about this mattering ).

In the end, each to his/her own. We are sticking with the Mac because we think it is a much better place to be. It does all we need it to do, and more. And note that we could have released the demo by now if we didn't have to cater to the PC market, simply because WINDOWS SUCKS to develop for We think companies should be able to sue MS for lost development and support hours, just like states are suing tobacco companies to get back medical expenses

Steve