A day when the computer industry pay's it's respects.

Ok, I think everyone by now has heard that Steve Jobs passed away last night after suffering from pancreatic cancer for 7 years. What's mad is the fact that he died just 2 months after leaving Apple, the business that he founded. It's tragic to see that someone important in the computer industry has just died. Maybe this'll be a good thing to point out my views about Apple and why I like and hate them.

To put things rights, I like Apple to a certain degree, my first "real" computer was an Apple Mac Performa 450, a machine that runs on a Motorola 33Mhz processor, 8MB of RAM, a 128MB Hard drive and used an external CD ROM drive. I was really excited to have this machine, before this I had games consoles and a Commodore 64, so having a real computer with a mouse was amazing to me and I loved the machine. I got the machine in 1995, I didn't know at the time, but I could've got something a bit beefier than what I got, but I loved the crap out of my Mac, my Mum bought it for me for my homework, got the Mac with a printer, and hey it was an Apple branded printer, a Style Writer, which was a black and white only printer, heh!

My Apple Mac Performa 450 that now lives in my Mum's cluttered spare room.

What I remember the most from my Performa 450, was the games I got for it! Now yes, I am aware that compared to PC gaming, Mac gaming is almost non existant, but Mac gaming during the 90s was great. Playing games such as Theme Park, Star Wars Dark Forces, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiago? and my favourite game I ever had on my Mac, Sim City 2000! What I find funny about Mac gaming then, and Mac Gaming now, is that Mac Gaming now is a lot more on the iDevices rather than Apple computers. There are plenty of games being made for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, but hardly anything for actual Apple computers. It's cool that Valve made an effort to put Steam on the Mac, but the selection of games are limited and people have difficulties to run games on it.

This was Mac gaming in 1995, and I loved it!

OK, time to fast forward to 2004! the iPod is mega popular! My Dad was having a hard time trying to think of what to get me for Christmas, to be honest, I didn't know what I wanted either, but I randomly said "I think an iPod would be cool", and ta da, I got an iPod for Christmas, it wasn't like I needed it, nor was I terribly excited to get one. But after using it I started to understand what was cool with the iPod, putting all my music onto it, not needing to take tapes or CDs with me, I was a part of the MP3 digital revolution. Funny thing with me and the iPod, was that I never caught onto the whole "Buy the new iPod" each year thing, even when the iPod Touch got released, there wasn't anything there that was making me want to have it. This was when it was clear that the iPod was getting VERY popular, and it this point I wasn't the only one in my university that had an iPod, to this day I still have my iPod 4th Gen, fixed it a lot of times and made it work. I replaced it's battery 3 times, the hard drive once, and I've gone through more ear phones and head phone than I wanted to, gah! lol!

The Good ole' faithful, I fixed it many, many times! and it's still with me!

OK, time to talk about the present... It's clear to see that Apple has become more popular over the decade than what they were during the 90s, however there are a few nit picky pet peeves that I have about Apple and their supporters. First off are the Fan boys, oh boy, the amount of times that I've dealt with fan boys at work drives me nuts! "Oh...  Apple Mac are so more reliable..." "Apple Macs are so superior than PCs..." "My Mac makes PCs look bad". Now...  for someone with a Computer Science degree these statements are utter bullshit, it's more to do with comparisons more so than "What's the better one?". Firstly a Mac can be deems as a superior product than a PC mainly because a Mac is made more for a single purpose. If you're doing things like video editing, music recording, typesetting and design, yes the Apple Mac is the superior product, ever tried running a recent game on it with the graphics up full whack and compare it with a PC that's built for games? There's a big difference, the Apple Mac isn't made the gaming, so the Apple Mac isn't just a superior product in the general sense, it's to do with what you want out of it. "Apple Macs are way more stable than Windows, Apple Macs can't get viruses!", this statement is a bit hit and miss, because for stability and security, it's more to do with what's the majority. Viruses on the internet, at least a large bulk of them, were built on PCs, and therefore can only be run on PCs, Apple Macs and PCs running Linux can't run them, therefore nothing happens. There are a handful of viruses that can effect a Mac, but compared to PC virus it's very small, but this is nothing to do with stability, it's more to do with the fact that when you compare the amount of people with PCs and people with Macs, there are a lot more people running PCs with Windows. So why would someone build a virus for a system that's the minority? After all, if you're some deviant script kiddy building a virus from other people's viruses, you're hoping that it'll infect A LOT of peoples machine, so why pick the minority when you can pick the majority and cause havoc? That there is why you hardly see a lot of viruses on a Mac from the internet, it's not worth it.

And yes... I hated these commercials, they forgot about Linux! D:

Other issues go towards the way in which the "New Apple" markets their products, now as a business it's fine to try and aim for success, it's more to do with how to get there, and to be honest, the new Apple become popular wasn't through their computers, but from other stuff. And yes I mean the iPod... Before the iPod, Apple was an underdog company that could only sell to those or were either faithful from the start, or companies in Design and editing. The iPod on the other hand brought the layman into the Apple brand, which is fine, but I don't recall Apple being an electronics company like Sony, I thought they were called "Apple Computers". It's fine that the iPod became the success it was, but it wasn't Apple's computers that became the successful product, it's as if to say that Sony became successful not for the Walkman, but for a product that had nothing to do with electronics. Now that's not to say that the iPod is not a computer, it has a processor, RAM and a BIOS, therefore an iPod is a computer, but why couldn't the iMac be the reason of Apple's success, or the G4s and G5s, after all they were more of a computer than an iPod. But hey, maybe I'm thinking too hard into this and taking things too seriously, but it's sad to see that someone very important in the computer industry is no longer with us...

Rest In Peace Steve Jobs...