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Originally Posted by edvislee
How about all the claims that the Apple Iphone "pioneered" GPS, etc. on a phone- such BUNK! Pocket PC (read Microsoft) users have been doing these things for almost 10 years.
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I've never seen a claim the Apple pioneered the GPS-equipped phone. But yes many of the iPhone's features existed in prior mobile devices.
But while the iPhone can't do some things, Apple deserves credit for releasing the first phone with a capacitance touchscreen, multitouch, and visual voice mail. Additionally, the iPhone might have been the first phone with a 3.5" >QVGA screen squeezed into a <.5" thick, <5 ounce formfactor (I'm not sure). Less measurable, but also important, is the iPhone's near-desktop browser experience (despite the lack of flash), effective and intuitive gesture-based interface, automatic and lag-free orientation switching, proximity sensor, tight application integration, and the app store.
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Originally Posted by edvislee
Let's be honest... they're just afraid to get down to the nuts and bolts of REALLY tweaking, tuning, and learning an OS and its hardware.
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I would say that the percentage of Apple users that don't tweak their OS is not greater than the percentage of Windows users that don't tweak their OS. At the university I work at, the computer science department is mostly Mac and the majority of OSX users I know are programmers who prefer a Unix-based environment (but don't want to deal with Linux... though that's often not the PITA it used to be).
Back to the topic, Apple is not going to get a lot of sympathy given how smarmy their ads are. But I agree that Microsoft shouldn't be so misleading. The reality isn't so much that Apple is overpriced (some of their models are and some aren't) but rather that they simply don't sell low-end hardware. Compared to mid-range and high-end Dell, Lenovo, and Sony models, Apple's base 13" MacBook Pro and iMac are actually pretty reasonable (especially with the educational pricing and specials... which pretty much anyone can qualify for).
For example, the 13" MacBook Pro's education price is $1099 and that comes with a free iPod touch and printer after rebate (both of which can be sold on Ebay, making the effective price of the MacBook Pro <$900). It's not a cheap laptop, but it comes with a maglock connector, tiny power brick, high quality LED screen, aluminum unibody case (it's the most solid laptop I've ever used), backlit keyboard, fast CPU, large multitouch pad, FW800, and 58 WHr battery (real-world battery life of 6-7 hours) in a thin 4.5 pound package. Also Apple's support is excellent and OSX is at least comparable to more expensive versions of Vista.
To get a Windows laptop of that caliber, you're going to spend a similar amount, if not more.