UPDATE: Windows WGA Validation Server Goes Down — Vista and XP Machines Begin to Die Worldwide!!

And of course they’re not smart enough to just make every request return as valid until the problem is resolved…

Better to inconvenience all your paying customers than let one pirate get updates they are not entitled to.

Yes. The name “Windows Genuine Advantage” doesn’t specify to whom the ‘advantage’ accrues…

One could be forgiven for thinking the creators of the WGA abortion have significant holdings in Apple stock.

That’s too funny. What a hole!

You’d think Microsoft would have learned long ago to avoid this sort of scenario.

>>BWAhahahahahahaha!!! :>

I never thought I’d echo your sentiments, Pike Place Man, but allow me to be the first to admit when I’m wrong:

BWAhahahahahahaha!!!

And :> to boot. Fucking Micro$oft. Why didn’t we break them up when we had the chance? This monopoly thing sucks ass. Bring back WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3.

Its amusing to see people recommend Apple as the best alternative to the M$ monopoly. Apple would be worse of a monopoly if they took over, they make the hardware, software and OS

Really? When I install OS X on a machine it doesn’t phone home to Cupertino.

Apple realistically acknowledges that no matter what they do, some percentage will pirate their stuff. But because they don’t so blatantly mistrust their user base, like M$, they don’t generate the resentment that M$ does, and more people are motivated to go ahead and pay for the software.

Of course, the M$ policy of inspiring hatred instead of cultish loyalty must be better for business, what with Vista floundering in the shallows and ever-increasing record numbers of users buying Macs, both newbies and defectors from Windows… right?

’m sorry to inform you that the Windows Genuine server might be down for few days. I have escalate the issue to our Genuine team, kindly try to validate again on Tuesday 28 Aug 2007.

Get real…what do you expect when the individual sending a message, ostensibly to tens of thousands of users, cannot conjugate a verb, incorrectly uses a comma instead of a period, etc.

LMAO
ROFL
LFAO
LOOL
ROTGLMAO

Head falls off, laughing so hard, I walk over to pick it up, and kick it farther. I think, forget it, wait till it stops Laughing, it wont bounce so much.

If John is on the next episode twit, I predict a major rant on this issue.

Once I bought a Mac classic, (yes fish man, I did.) and it came with Microsoft works. The darn thing had this twisted anti-copy scheme, that if you fumbled up and uninstalled the mac way (ie. throw the program to trash) it could never install again and kept asking for diskette nr. 1.
That became so annoying that, although I had the original, I installed a pirate copy.
That was a valuable lesson.

BTW if you really need windows updates and don’t want the hassle of WGA, check out http://www.autopatcher.com

Microsoft stock was already a BUY. At this rate, it will be a STEAL!

IT’S FIXED ALREADY, geez. Tested personally just now.

Everyone jumping the gun, as if Microsoft couldn’t manage High Availability Servers in professional data centers.

Just a taste of what will happen when M$ pulls the plug on XP. God forbid you have an old PC that won’t run Vista.

#25 And what software are you running on your free OS?

Cheers

http://www.apple.com/support/

The website speaks for itself.

I feel sorry for the PC folks.

Because if Apple did allow sales of OS X for PCs they didn’t sell they would go broke because Macs are overpriced pretty boys…

Cheer

26 — “Everyone jumping the gun, as if Microsoft couldn’t manage High Availability Servers in professional data centers.”

Apparently, they couldn’t.

“37 Yes, but you can switch it off.
But what for? For me it’s the cutest part of OSX, and the reason I still haven’t ditched the 733mhz G4 back at the office…

(that and the fact that sometimes there’s the odd USB thumb that was formated in OSX and isn’t recognized in windows, or the odd Fh11 file that doesn’t open on windows…)

37: On OSX: the bouncing icon effect on the bottom row is optional. While I’ll give Apple big points for stability, mostly because BSD Unix is the real OS under OSX, and they only have to make OSX compatible with Apple Macs. I just find the Mac interface on my wife’s Mac laptop to be…weird.
It’s not just the bouncing icons, it’s the detached menu bar at the top of the screen, the singularly useless “widgets,” the odd iLife “lifestyle” software (Wife bought Microsoft Office for Mac to use for her writing; she only uses iTunes in the iLife package), and religious fervor of Mac users (which I don’t share even though i own an iPod, which I do like, and have monkeyed with my wife’s Mac for awhile).
Windows, Motif (Unix) and the Linux menu systems are much more like each other, so less unlearning is necessary when you switch among them.
Incidentally, I consider Vista to be a big step back in OSes, if for no other reason than it imitates OSX weirdness. Give me simplicity. I use WinXP currently, and it just works, though I have messed around with Ubuntu on a boot CD.

Can you say:

Microsoft Genuine Disadvantage?

I knew you could.

Now, go out and buy a Mac. It’s time to vote with your dollars. Whining on here isn’t going to help anything but hitting MS in the bank account will.

Ubuntu!

#40 – Floyd

“…it’s the detached menu bar at the top of the screen…”

But the single menubar shared by all windows is the original way. M$ had to change to menus attached to windows because of their infringing copycat ways. The same menu position and structure, plus the same keyboard shortcuts, is overall faster and more efficient. Fact.

“…the singularly useless “widgets…”

Whatever you call them, on OS X or on Windows, many millions of people find them very useful indeed. If you don’t, OK – but proclaiming them “useless” when that’s merely YOUR take – that’s rather egocentric…

“…the odd iLife “lifestyle” software (Wife bought Microsoft Office for Mac to use for her writing; she only uses iTunes in the iLife package),…”

Again, YOUR take. Even diehard Windows defenders admit that PCs come with nothing of the kind. They are extremely popular, extremely intuitive apps that are recognized as being a major value point for Macs.

But entirely aside from that, I see that you don’t understand what iLife is about, despite the fact that the name is all the clue you need. It is a suite of LIFESTYLE apps, for HOME and PERSONAL ENJOYMENT. So why are you comparing it to M$ OFFICE??? Apple’s equivalent of Office – if you don’t like the Mac version of that suite, which for years was even better than the Win version – is iWork. Compare THAT to Office. A lot of people already have, and that’s reason enough for many to get a Mac.

“…and religious fervor of Mac users…”

Yes, well, as I may’ve remarked before, those idjits at Apple foolishly sell a hardware / software platform that inspires cultlike devotion – rather than those genii @ M$ (w00t!), who, in their infinite wisdom, sell software that people despise, that inspires bitter resentment of it’s creators, stuff that treats you like either a criminal or a moran – but has more than enough engineered-in flaws to make support of Windows and Win apps an industry in itself.

That shit on the Mac is too easy. As every good Puritan knows, more work = more virtue, and medicine has to taste bad to be any good. Centuries-old habits of thought die hard…

ITunes is not part of the iLife suite… me thinks…

The funny thing is Microsoft has pretty much alienated/pissed off everyone in the universe! They may have thousands of employees writing programs, but there are millions of M$ haters around the world, gleefully writing programs against them.

Unless M$ changes it’s monolithic policies, it’s going to be the biggest “Ma Bell-type” failure in the 21st century!

46. Just because you mother named you after a chick, is no reason to get pissy.

You guys that argue over which computer is the best crack me up. I’m sure Apple is terrific and PCs can be terrific. I’ve never had the slightest problem with XP, but I don’t bash Macs. I wouldn’t switch to Mac because I’m totally unfamiliar with it and it’s OS. I’ve always had PCs. People always think what they have bought is the best.

#54 But Mac users are 10X more fun…(@ least to tease.)

55#

lol if it makes you feel any better… I’m writting this from an Ubuntu PC

I totally agree with #54 I never said I agreed with everything I said…. just that I’m thinking a lot of people do feel that way… so meh just thought I’d sit on the fence a bit.

Amusing,

If you cant laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at

Actually – WGA is totally optional on XP. If you are a serious computer user, you DO NOT allow automatic updates to install ANYTHING without your specific approval (the notify but don’t download option).

Then, when you install XP let it auto detect the updates and list them for you. Then you simply deselect WGA and an option comes up to never notify about that update again. WGA is not installed and Auto Updates never tries to install it again till they change it (and you simply repeat the process).

This means no WGA on XP and thus no hassles like this, yet you can still get all the other updates as normal.

To extend on Ghoti’s remarks

After IBM officially coined their Intel machines PCs. Other manufacturers reverse engineered the IBM PC and called it ‘IBM PC compatible/clone’

Up until the switch from PPC to intel… PowerPC, and Motorola processors were anything but compatible with IBM PCs. If you look at games even made up till just a few years ago before Microsoft tried their ‘games for windows’ FUD campaign, almost all IBM PC compatible games were put in the genre of PC-CDROM.

Does that mean to say Macs should be able to play them fine then? No… although by your logic they should. (I’m not saying you should be right or wrong here….) but what I will say is that I have a whole stack of old PC-CDROM games that would never work on a Mac without Windows and/OR an emulator.

Just as DOS/Windows games (notice the OS requirement also) became PC-CDROM, Mac games were branded ‘Mac’ which guaranteed that as long as you had the current flavour of architecture in Steve Jobs shrine, then you could likely play the game on your Macintosh.

What does amuse me is that people like to call Macs as MACs… i’d never thought of my Mac as a network address before, its not a 3 letter abbreviation … but then, I also dont pull anyone up about it either do I #59

(and yes you probably did use caps for emphasise, just couldn’t resist

#64 – Ian

“What does amuse me is that people like to call Macs as MAC…”

Since some of them have never been exposed to the technical term “MAC” I hypothesize that they must be making some association with the far more publically-visible brand name of cosmetics. But even that’ s wrong, because that company’s name is M•A•C (with bullets, not periods), for Makeup Artists’ Cosmetics.

In second place in technoilliteracy (or maybe ‘techno-obliviousness’, to be more charitable) after ‘MAC’ is ‘Apple Mac.’ I’ve seen every model they’ve ever built and some they haven’t – and not a solitary one of ‘em ever said ‘Apple Mac’ anywhere on ‘em…

#62, Karmakaze

…you simply deselect WGA and an option comes up to never notify about that update again. WGA is not installed and Auto Updates never tries to install it again …

Uummm, not quite. I have to keep an eye on my updates other wise it will install. Although I have deselected WGA several times, it will still keep coming back. I have also noticed they changed the text description a few times too.

If only it was that simple.

64,
Mac=Macintosh
And even you understand that a Windows program from win3.11, win 95, 98, 2000, xp will not ALWAYS work on the other versions…
Even if it says it will work on a PC, you have to look at WHICH version its going to work with.
I have some NICE old programs that I would LOVE to be running, but they wont even TOUCH the current windows…and I havent even touched on Vista or 32bit and 64 bit. Even the Windows games, have the SAME problems…

PC was designated for the smaller more portable computers…something that DIDNT take up 1 room in your house.

“Now, go out and buy a Mac.”

DAMN, what is it with you people?! Its like the gun debate – get a gun, get a mac.

Did the turtle neck close off too much blood to the brain?

Not every person who has a PC is in a ‘life and death struggle’ to turn it on. You know there aren’t any stories to tell about all the PCs that just have no problems – like mine and my wife’s and many others.

Compare a Mac in a side by side comparison with a PC of the same cost Macs are terribly overpriced ‘pretty boys’. “I’m a Mac don’t I look good? We all heard that OS X is the heavenly host and its like you know, it like operates itself (with the rising intonation at the end) – gosh!

People are quick to point out that MS is so restrictive – and Apple is not? You have no other option than to buy a Mac to use OS X, while Windows has endless hardware possibilities. See how well OS X does if it had to suit the same hardware options as Windows. Sorry that is not possible, that is so outside of what Apple can ever achieve.

So, Apple is not restrictive?

iPods – you MUST use iTunes, you MUST open an account to get album art. All other mp3 players – feel free to use what you want and the album art? Well that is a given.

iPhones – well gee, what is there I could add to that, huh?

When you buy a Mac is there like a book you get with all the catch phrases and scripted responses to PC users?

Shame you all don’t get a life when you get a Mac.

Cheers

72. “See how well OS X does if it had to suit the same hardware options as Windows. Sorry that is not possible, that is so outside of what Apple can ever achieve.

Touche, I have nothing to add.

#73 .

I’ve donated $1200 over the years to Mandrake before they became Mandriva. I buy OSX each time knowing that I’ll get a good product, and I pay for all software that I actually make any money on in return.

I do pay for what I believe in but sadly Microsoft lost that belief years ago with their war against Netscape. In the same way I pirate music and then go buy 3 – 4 T-shirts at gigs to compensate the artist.

Bottom line is, if you screw your customers – they WILL screw you back.

Congratulations #70, as I stated in my post #64 Mac does indeed = Macintosh, I’m glad you felt you had to show your knowledge but I think I was the one that told you in said post look back over, you’ll catch on eventually – I’m sure.

“Even if it says it will work on a PC, you have to look at WHICH version its going to work with.”

Which then goes to back up just what I said about PC vs Mac. If a Mac is a PC then PC compatible software should work fine on the Mac PC right?

/class finished

Off topic but in the same vein, check out the DRM hassle being experienced by buyers of the new game Bioshock.

Some say it’s a rootkit, some say it isn’t. Either way pirated hacked versions are having less trouble than legitimate buyers.

I have to add to above.. we care so much about monopolies – i think there is far more morally tiwsted monopolies in the world and if we spent our time on those then M$ something might change, like say oil, child abuse, slave labour, etc etc…. whatever its a bug life goes on…

79#

“sigh.. it amazes me.. how long have most of u been alive? MAc = UNIX so you can praise your nothing but a GUi interface all you want.”

hehe obviously longer than you, OS X only received its UNIX certification a few weeks ago… so how can MAc = UNIX? for the last god knows how many years you are trying to suggest?

OSX is UNIX in the same way that Windows is UNIX

The majority of Windows code is based from the berkley BSD license which doesnt require the code to be revealed. OSX is the same but equally in the same sense that they use a very different code base and kernels. The reality of it all is very complex… so I’ll spare you the details.

if you had been paying attention of course you would have also realised that a Mac is a Macintosh and not a M A C.

#76 “Bottom line is, if you screw your customers – they WILL screw you back.”

Let me make sure I understand what your logic. People pissed off at MS and Windows ‘get back’ at MS by pirating MS software and Windows? WTF? Where did you learn marketing principles?

People pissed off at a brand or product switch brands or products. That is not that difficult to understand.

E.G. People pissed off at US car manufacturers switch brands e.g. imported cars. Don’t whine that “MS has a monopoly so we can’t switch” BS! Apple has been around forever as an alternative.

People pirate things they want – not to ‘get back” at the manufacturer.

#81 BFD, OS X worked for you…on a non-Mac box you built, so….how many other hardware options did you test bed to further support your point? Ok…

This is like debating religion and guns…. All sermon, no substance.

Cheers

The problem…
Is that NOT enough people KNOW there are other options, or OS’s.
they also do NOT know how to setup a computer from scratch.
And when we talk about drivers/inf/dll they go blank…

I would say that 70-80% of ALl computers AFTER setup are never changed…Unless some SMART ass thinks WIN XP would look great on a P133(yes, I had 1-2)…

#54 hhopper…the lucent lone voice of reason.

The week that was…what a week!

Guns

Religion

Apple Mac / MS Windows

Sex

Gays…?

Ok everyone lets try real hard and find a story about some Gays who got married, one who uses an Apple Mac and the other Windows Me and that were shot at by a gun activists (that were actually looking for blacks and Hispanics or anyone who is not “American”) on their way to adopt a Chinese baby that was abandoned outside of a Chinese labour camp by parents finding Jesus and wanted to be Seventh Day Adventists after feeling bad about painting baby toys with radioactive lead to get back at the Japanese on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima which they thought was a pretty good idea after all the shit Japan did to the Chinese who deserved it anyway….did I miss something…oh yeah the Gays are HIV positive and it is a violation of their rights to have to tell anyone…Windows Me is pirated from China……and they do drugs………with children………to make them gay.

That just about does it…

Cheers

#87 Germany, India, Pakistan, and others.

So what do they use?

I got an business trip to India and Turkey in a few weeks followed by a trade show Brazil, we have clients in Pakistan, Germany, France. Israel and our Italian distributor is coming here soon – I should ask them…

Cheers

#64 Ian.
Yes, I was using caps to emphasize. I’m surprised nobody said that to some circles MAC is Multiply ACcumulate.

This is a fun thread too. We’ve got all this anti-mac bashing, and nobody referred that it was a response to the “Win sucks – buy a Mac” reasoning at the beginning.
I don’t despise the Mac. Nor I use the Logic Mr. fishsticks (#65) uses of cultural relativism to justify either ones point-of-view (although he finishes saying that even with cultural relativism he’s right all along…). Macs just have some things that make me frown, and so, I’m not a buyer for now.
What really really makes respond is these fanboys…I mean, “buy a Mac” as a be all response to problems…c’mon! It comes across as a snobish remark and seems to imply that “we (PC users) are all laboring on a mistake because are too dumb to see the light”.
People, I’ve got news to you, there are more ways to look at things and there’s something called freedom of choice. And some of us, just some, have been riding different horses all their lives and they’ve chosen one that is to their liking…I know, I did.

Ian, just by curiosity: are you from Scotland? You quoted a price in £ and something you wrote (#81 …speading “shite”). Just curious.

Damn! this is definitely the hot post of the weekend. Just sad that I’m in a time zone that puts me away from the live debate…

#84 – TIHZ_HO

“Let me make sure I understand what your logic. People pissed off at MS and Windows ‘get back’ at MS by pirating MS software and Windows? WTF? Where did you learn marketing principles?

People pissed off at a brand or product switch brands or products. That is not that difficult to understand.

E.G. People pissed off at US car manufacturers switch brands e.g. imported cars. Don’t whine that “MS has a monopoly so we can’t switch” BS! Apple has been around forever as an alternative.”

Jeez, T_H, what a load of crap.

To most users’ minds there is no viable alternative to Windows. Tens of millions of sheeple have picked up on M$’s false implication that they’re the only game in town. Only recently has the tide turned and Apple appeared on the radar of Mom and Pop.

Personal computers are unlike most consumer goods in an extremely important way: never before in history has there been such a commonplace, ubiquitous product about which consumers know so very little.

Joe Sixpack buys a Windows box because he knows nothing about computers. He is a sheeple. People like him have kept outfits like Compaq and stores like Circuit City in business for years, with their assists to M$ in hornswoggling the typical computer-illiterate consumer into thinking that only a fool would buy into anything but Windows, that Windows is easy and simple. When they buy their box of user-unfriendliness, it typically takes a long time, and many hours on the phone to various tech support lines before a sheeple starts to snap to the fact that all the problems he has getting things to work are not due entirely to his ignorance, that many manufacturers just don’t give a shit.

You’re all wet, T_Z. If the PC marketplace resembled just about any other – where consumers understand what they’re buying, what it should and shouldn’t do, M$ would’ve been ridden out of town on a rail 20 or more years ago. As it is, it’s no coïncidence that most of their spending is not on R&D or code creation, it’s lawyers, and most important of all, propaganda marketing; marketing to sheeple, capitalizing on peer pressure, ubiquity and blue-sky bogus promises of things that their competitors already do a much better job of delivering on.

No company has ever inspired so much hatred and resentment. And no company has been a bigger victim of piracy. And you actually think that’s a coïncidence?? Whatever you”re smoking, stop. It’s destroying your critical faculties.

#91 “My boss told me a couple weeks ago to scrap his XP installation and set him up with Fedora, just to see for himself how hard “this Linux thing” really is.”

Sounds good… your company is mainly using computers for emails, documents, spreadsheets – Standard stuff ?

Lets not forget in this ‘debate’ (debate? more like “mine is better than yours”) that computers are just tools used to do something – like typewriters used years ago. Common sense dictates using the correct tools to do what you want. If the tool involves more work to do the work use a different one. Its not rocket science.

Most small to medium businesses have basic needs for their computers – like I said emails, documents and so on. There are gains in productivity which makes work easier and quicker – out side of operating system choices. This is a common problem in offices today – how much time was spent on typewriters 20 years ago? People just did the work not working to do the work.

As an example our companies use Windows XP for mostly emails, documents, spreadsheets and presentations with some CAD and graphic designs. We are happy with MS Office as it does what we need it to do whereas the free OS office suites which technically does the job however for us it has an effect on productivity, plus don’t have any problems at all with what we have.

If I might make a productivity suggestion for all those who need to archive tons of emails and be able to retrieve them easily get Acrobat 8 Professional. It integrates with Outlook so you can select a email folder and convert it a PDF file with an searchable index which can be added to. I am sure that is not possible with free software.

Cheers

#94 “No company has ever inspired so much hatred and resentment. And no company has been a bigger victim of piracy.” and “Joe Sixpack buys a Windows box because he knows nothing about computers.” “and To most users’ minds there is no viable alternative to Windows.”

And thank you! You proved my earlier point in another post that Apple Macs are not a viable alternative to MS Windows, for ‘Joe Sixpack’ who you say is the major market, and Joe Sixpack does not have the nouse to use Linux.

So….one can only conclude from your rants that Apple desperately needs to get another advertising agency as they obviously need to change their marketing strategy and pricing too. Obviously Apple is either inept or arrogant for not perusing all the ‘Joe Sixpacks’ – why is that? Can’t blame MS for that. (Smug)

You can’t have it both ways ranting on how Apple Mac sales have rocketed up (your other posts) and then blame MS because Apple Macs aren’t attractive to Joe Sixpack. Which is it?

It seems to me that your marketing skills are lacking at best.

Cheers

Oops, looks like it came whilst I was typing…

Specious reasoning there, m’boy. M$ for many years, spent more on advertising and marketing than Apple’s entire budget. ( “Where do you want to be dragged, kicking and screaming, today?” ) Falsely pretending to be ‘hip’ and ‘cool’, artfully switching their true role as the greedhead, overlawyered, right-wing corporatist, conformist, unoriginal copycat suits for Apple’s pioneering, original, minority, counterculture, nonconformist, minority, user-empowerment origins… It is to laugh.

So you say that in order to succeed, Apple should ape M$ and start snowing the masses with bullshit about their products, ’cause – that’s how you get ahead, right? In a world without anything resembling corporate conscience, responsibility or ethics, I guess it is…

I should be fair though; M$$$ fucks their employees with just as much Big-Business Republican sociopathic greedhead gusto as they do their sheeple – er, USER base.

#97 “Last week I bought my wife a new laptop to do her scrapbooking… NOT compatible with VISTA.”

That happened a lot with XP as well. Apple Macs also have compatibility issues with some software which needs a newer version of OS X – so that is not unique to MS.

Regarding the Vista licence working for WinXP – no that doesn’t work.

You might be able to get re-image disc(s) for your laptop from Acer as you used the service partition for WinXP. Its too late now, but Vista could have resized and created a new partition on your primary drive to make room for WinXP so you didn’t need to dump the service partiton.

I had a similar issue with HP on transferring Vista licences. I am in China and my new laptop from a HP shop only had Chinese Vista available. HP Shanghai’s solution was to install a pirated version of WinXP on a HP laptop sold with OEM Linux so I didnt have to pay for a useless Chinese Vista licence as it is not transferable.

So I let them do that just to see if they would and they did! When I got home I installed my legal version of WinXP. I eventually returned that laptop for a better one and replaced Chinese Vista for my WinXP. I am still trying to get a set of recover discs for English Vista from HP but no luck so far…

This has nothing to do with Microsoft as this is a language and HP issue. I am still shocked that the HP staff at a HP shop and the techs at the HP service centre would not only suggest a pirated copy of WinXp but also offered MS Office as well. This is when everyone complains about piracy and here HP helps it along. Truth is stranger!

Cheers

#101 – Joao

“…a Gant polo or with a GAP hoodie…”

In the beginning it was suit-and-tie ‘don’t alienate the old white money men’ conformity vs. Dead tour shirts, jeans and Birks. Just cause they’ve both been forced in toward the center by their size and the changing times, you only have to take the most cursory look at their respective companies’ ethics and practices to see that that L / R hippie / suit schism remains. Billyboy is still the spiritual descendant of the robber barons, with their smug New England elitist contempt for the working rabble. Their army of conformist, obedient temp drones, hoping to get a slice of the moolah pie stands in marked contrast to the creative, informal, far-less heirarchial structure and practices at Apple, which was and is the misfit, minority underdog.

So shall it ever be, world without end, amen, and the rest of that stuff.

#104 Fisherino…
lighten up. I wasn’t being figurative. Gant and Gap don’t represent, to the extent of what you imply, the debating parties. It was just a light remark.

remark: I don’t like the stereotypical dudes in Apple’s TV ads “mac vs. pc guys” either… (the actors are ok, the persona, not so…)

106 continued
… and come to think of it, it’s not the first time I hear that coming from you, my finned friend. You seem to embark on a dualistic view of these two characters (bill’n’steve) as two opposing forces. The old conservative and the new “open minded” visionary that is set to save our world from the clutches of oppression and status quo (not the brit band…). Reminiscent, no doubt of your sixties roots in political thinking. I don’t presume to teach and enlighten you, since I’m not an actively political person, nor did I experienced such strong youth engagement (too young to be a red when we had our revolution, too old to believe in liberalism afterwards). But seems to me that you act on the smell rather than the substance. You see, in my point of view, Mac vs. PC it’s not a political thing but an socio-economical one. And we know what they all stand for: $$$$$$$. Furthermore, if you believe it, I say it to you the more plainly I can spell it out: In my view of things Jobs appears much more Bigger Brotherish than Gates. Apple has mastered it’s public communications to the point of schizophrenic cleanliness and clinical minimalistic design, as on the other hand, Microsoft has this mix matched image, of confusion and erratic behavior. Ms seems much more ad hoc and plain than the elitist perfection on infinite loop. You see, I don’t buy into perfection and have become increasingly suspicious of it as I grow older. Just that.
Case in point, this WGA fumble. Love it or hate it, it’s an honest mistake. A server has errors and collapsed, so some guys had their Windows copies marked as fakes. So what? Shout that we had it coming because of the choice in OS? That’s ridiculous. Is the Police gona storm troop their houses and demand their Original Windows stickers? No. Life will go on eventually.
And remember, just how many millions of Windows copies won’t, justifiably, pass the WGA test? I bet the number will be High up there in China and Russia…does society collapses there? No.

So who cares? I just like this “do it as you like, buy it as you want” freedom I just can’t get under the white and silver bitten apple world. And it’s all I care. I might even advise my boss to buy a 20″ Glass mac over a Dell. He recently spent more on a 19″compact Dell, that clearly is not worth it. With the Mac and an inexpensive Parallels copy he would have a better machine and protection on his legacy software investment. I’m open to this, no problem.
Me, well, I just like to build my boxes, and I’m proficient enough to protect myself from system quirks and attacking wares. So I’ll just have it the way I like it. Perfection? Bah, it’s overrated…

I dunno? “Boo”?

Just DL the hacked version and get on with your lives.

Great, It finally happened. Now, several people are aware of what will happen when MicrShaft decreets the OEL to xp. No more data, no more OS. I just hope people would wise-up, once and for all regarding MS stupid activation scheme and WGD-A.

#78 You make an excellent point I was going to bring up before this nugget appeared. Bioshock is not only riddled with a rootkit, but also limits you to two (yes 2) installs only (afterwards, the thing’s dead) and it phones home before allowing you to see any gameplay. Screw them.

Hey folks, there was this item in the news about Amtrak ticket sales computers being down because of “newly installed software”. But they didn’t say what software. This has me wondering if the WGA failure wasn’t what was screwing them up. But of course, the guttless news service can’t report THAT! And BTW, good timing by M$. If you’re going to have a major screw up like this. Do it on a weekend and fix it before the stock market opens on Monday morning. I’ll bet not a single analyst even mentions it by then. The “fix is in”, in more ways than one.

#105 LtG Your welcome.

I was wrong to only using the term ‘Macs’ and also PC does not mean MS Windows so it should MS Windows(version) PC.

Cheers

#100 Ok – Here is your rebuttal.

Apple and Microsoft start out at about the same time. Apple chooses to go one way with hardware and OS and Microsoft chooses to go another OS and software.

Looks like Microsoft had the better plan. So don’t whine on how Microsoft became so big because if Apple had better management they could have been right up there instead of being one of the crowd like Dell, Acer…

When Jobs was fired he had a good idea – NeXT CPU independent for both PowerPC (Apple) and X86. Smooth – works on anything you have. So what happened? Apple is going broke (cause their inept) so they hire Jobs as a consultant, buys NeXT and does a purge of Apple executives for NeXT execs and ‘poof’ OS X is born….BUT Apple stifles NeXT’s cross platform ability and aims for the high end market. Another smart move like IBM.

So now Apple not wanting to be another IBM – out of the personal computer game is doing as much damage control as they can…

How people view Apple Macs is how Apple wanted people to view them – high end and different – only it didn’t work out as well as they thought.

So now you want to blame Microsoft for having good business sense to read the market potential very well. So in your mind Bill Gates should have said “Oh wait…Apple is falling behind…lets slow up fellows and let them catch up!”

Apple marketing strategy is based on FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt)

The I’m a PC and I’m a Mac campaign – Why not use Peter Griffin for the WInPC and Stewie for Apple Macs.

Peter: I’m a PC………………………………………………..(farts)

The dopey girl whose homework was eaten by her PC…..

Be different…….

The sheep you refer to aren’t that stupid to believe all the Apple rhetoric about (Win)PCs as so in the end Apple cried Wolf too many times.

Microsoft marketing is geared towards being productive – Office became #1 because it is easy to use and has more features than what you could ever need. If Office is so terrible then why not use Word Perfect or OS?

One thing that Microsoft has done VERY well is their software is easy to use – the commands, tools are all intuitive. This flowed over to other software so if you use Office you can use so many other programs. Just what Joe Sixpack can use.

Is Apple like this? Not that I can see. I use AutoCAD, and graphic programs every week. I have Adobe Illustrator and CorelDRAW – which was the one easiest and more intuitive to use? Not Illustrator, oh boy take a course first and get ready to punch the keyboard for even simple shit like Undo (Ctrl+Z) and Redo (shift+ctrl+z) while CorelDraw just has a button to press. Like to customise the menus in Illustrator – NOPE use what you have – CorelDraw go ahead make your work easier. It wasn’t until CS2 could you use the mouse wheel to zoom!

This is software designed for Apple’s platform and ported to Windows which gives me a reasonable insight into Apple’s world. I accept that both Illustrator and Photoshop are industry standards and are superior but not needed by everyone. Which is why there are other alternatives.

Sorry again that Apple made market choices that placed them exactly where they are…less than 20% but now is expected to rise because they can run MS Windows, but don’t blame Microsoft for that one! LOL!

Cheers

Ian,
Is your last name, McIntosh??

#123 freedom, as in “be locked with at&t” freedom? or in “use only itunes” freedom?

#119 yes and yes.

#125 I have a Nano – nice – but iTunes pisses me off to no end because unless I open up a iTunes account (and I why should I have too?) no album art. I put a in a CD and in seconds MS WMP 11 has the album art up. And MS is bad? They both have their issues, but Apple…

Unless you drink the Apple cool-aid they sure do get people pissed off!!

Cheers

Here, T_Z, pedro.

You guys apparently devote about 0.002 µS to a problem before throwing up your hands and bitching.

Try this.

#131 I know about all those alternatives, but they’re not advertised. I settled for winamp for my kid’s oy!Pod suffer. Not to mention that this oy!tunes alternatives are not all compatible with all the different oy!Pod models

#130The fact is, this is what MS does that people don’t like. Shipping with automatic stuff turned on. not to mention the frown you see in Cupertino every time some oy!Tunes alternative goes out. They load customer made stuff, specially they one that makes people get away from their grip. They label them under “unsanctioned” software and throws the evil eye on them.

So don’t com telling me how sanctimonious mac is, specially on a thread were we’re all kicking MS to death with good reason. You have no call in here, since, like a good’n loya macfan, you cannot see anything bad from steve god.

Oh, and BTW, that link you show? forces you to install .net framework, talk about bloatware.

#123 freedom, as in “be locked with at&t” freedom? or in “use only itunes” freedom?

#124
Pedro,
freedom that I use a windows mobile XDAII with hacked firmware
freedom that I’ve never bought music from itunes or any other DRM restricted store (and yes I know you can buy DRM free tracks in itunes now)

Here is a question for you though Pedro, does your plays-for-sure play for sure on your Zune? no…. didn’t think so.

“freedom, as in “be locked with at&t” freedom?”

Any phone you buy in the UK via contract is ‘locked’ to a certain provider. One thing is damn sure though, they WILL NOT get away with what AT&T have done, for a start its white market legal to open a phone in the UK, you will still be under contract from the provider you signed up with, but after half of your contract is over you can phone them up and cut it down to £15 a month if you wished.

I couldnt give a rats ass about itunes to be honest, ipods are nice but I’m in no hurry to buy one….

The iphone on the other hand? man you guys are getting shafted…. just get a winmobile HTC phone with GPS, wifi, HSDPA etc.

I hate to say it but apple will need to put 3G minimal in the iphone before it will be a success in the UK, we are used to far better phone than that.

#130, 131 Thanks for that Usually I do do a search when I need to do something – but I didn’t think about this one.

If I make a point about this in that one has to install a ‘hack’ or other software to get around Apple meanwhile the Apple Mac community points a finger at WinPC users for using ‘hacks’ and buggy programs to get around MS. See that?

I guess it is the same as people in other countries pointing out how stupid the US is when they are stupid as well. Doesn’t change the fact that they might be right.

Cheers