My, AndrewC, you are a prickly one aren't you?
You come out all fire and scorching brimstone from the get-go on this
topic.
Expect push-back.
On Sep 8, 2006, at 1:48 AM, Andrew Crystall wrote:
On 7 Sep 2006 at 20:04, Gibson Jonathan wrote:
As an artist hovering around the computer industry since High School I
find it amazing that AndrewC initially claims to be a non-expert, yet
sells computers he regularly builds. Andrew, you undercut yourself on
Go back and actually read it. What I said is I'm not a technophile. I
don't get caught up in the wow factor, the tech for the sake of
itself. What the tech does, the end result, is all I'm interested in.
That I'm fully conversant with how to handle the tech relates to the
fact that it's a useful skill which I've maintained because it's seen
of value - I frequently do simple stuff like driver changes at work
for the less technically inclined when the IT department as too busy.
It's years since I was a professional coomputer tech. I design games
these days.
how else does one troubleshoot? I do not understand what is gained
from such a pre-loaded frame on the conversation. That you bluster
with rudeness and intended insults reveals an arrogance I find
irresistible - where's my pile of throwing rocks and favorite sling?
By the standards of clerks, teachers, bus drivers, cooks, you sir, are
a technophile. Let's call them Normals for this conversation. Your
hip deep in it by Normal standards and I have no reason to retract my
initial call. Your knowledge of arcane digital substrates is huge
compared to most grandmothers and although you may feel you still feel
there are vast technical reaches remain unexplored - you are in fact in
that specialized subspecies known as the Game Developer.
I simply found your claim of ignorance odd and wondered why.
As you couldn't even be bothered to properly read what I wrote, and
have put your own ignorant misunderstandings forwards purely so that
you could bash me, bluntly I'd of prefered it if you'rd of stayed
"busy". And personally I prefer an axe.
And I couldn't care less about the aesthetics of the case, for
example. My current PC's best features are not that it's blue and
grey, but that the power button is on the top front and that it has a
carry handle on top.
Some people think an enormous HVAC system hanging on the outside off
building is an engineering solution whereas I'd call it an eyesore that
reflects poor planning and design.
that irked so many, myself included. For instance, do you really care
if your iPod Nano isn't expandable {yet}? Damn things even look a tad
I don't have a MP3 player. There's nothing wrong with my minidisk
recorder (which I was given ages back for recording lectures in
University, since I'm dyslexic) for listening to music on the go.
Tender spot rubbed wrong?
Hey, stop jumping at shadows. I love mini-disc, but you have to admit
No Moving Parts makes more sense long term. Welcome to the new
millennia!
Ask your
mother writing letters, sister ripping CD's, or cousin working at the
car repair what machine perks their interest and more often than not
they point at a Mac
The asethetics have zero to do with function. Sure, most PC cases are
ugly. It's a case. I really could't care less on the topic.
In reality you, Andrew, are heir to the mainframe and mini support
class of technicians who migrated out of the air conditioned
I'm a games designer. To quote an overused phrase, "The medium is not
the message".
You're heir to the entire technophile snob legacy, the entire "It
looks good so it must be superior" class who are either gamers who go
for the PC with the blue LED's or the non-gamers who go for Mac's.
Rubbish. I'll thank you to not project your own shadows upon me. I
save my admiration for those designs that are the best of both worlds.
Anybody can, and they do, design swiss army knife dood-ads hastily
attached to a box trying to grab attention, but getting multiple uses
out of a single feature simplifies the overall design, makes for
greater product longevity, and fewer COG parts or repairs.
You do user testing of that game your working on don't you? Or, do you
let the programmers self-test in a vacuum
employed and users grateful to get them running, again. Macs simply
didn't require such overhead, and still don't - relatively speaking.
'Course not, you can support more 'NIX-based computers than you can
Windows with the same staff. Been known for ages. There's nothing
magical about Apple in that respect.
Even under the old Mac OS it was rare I had to do a fresh install
{even
as a developer} and since the advent of OS X it's even better as I've
only installed from discs when Apple issues a major upgrade - about
once a year.
So more frequently than I'm forced to reach for the Windows disks
then (24-30 months).
'Cept I don't "have" to do it even as often as your example.
I install fresh when I want a feature increase, not bug fixes. In
fact, I'm almost a year behind revs already and just getting around to
an update next month. I might skip the whole last version.
productivity rating! With the newest machines the canard of Windows=
cheap / Mac=expensive is finally ground into the dust of history books
Absolute rubbish. Again, Mac's are still far more expensive here (UK)
like-for-like. Good build quality and using deacent components will
let any PC run for as long as a Mac - it's the same hardware base.
The generic crap you get in many pre-builds won't last, no, but
that's just a reason to get one custom built by a local shop who
actually know what they're doing (or for people like my who can do
it, build your own).
slogans in Dr Dobbs? As we see with the explosion of malicious
digital
flora and fauna infecting the monoculture biz-tech plantation system
that is Windows there really is a high cost {to us} at the back-end of
how they organized themselves and you. Linux is interesting, but
Router with comprehensive firewall (on a linux core), check. Free
antivirus, check. Free anti-spyware, check. There we go! (Oh, there's
spam, but I haven't used Outlook in a decade at home)
Nice. Apple's is pretty good out the box as well.
In the end your only limiting yourself by denying the value others
readily find with this branch of the technical tree - there may be
more
opportunity for you than you realize if you can tear your ego away
from
the PC trunk w/o too much pain.
Right, so you're going to offer to re-write the DirectX/.NET apps
which I use on a daily basis? The professional games development
industry is tied very strongly to the Windows platform.
Yeah, I was at the GDC conference auditorium when MS 1st announced it
and paid the gate fee for everyone to the rides at Great America. As I
said, been there, done both platforms. Maybe another conversation can
explore this, but I have to run now.
BTW - when and what are you going to do with that uplift site?
Something cool, I hope?
Don't have the time, basically. Keep meaning to put a weblog on there
so I can put some thoughts about some current (windows) games up.
Because, y'know, I make games and all.
In the end, afaik, Mac's a resimply not worth my time because they
lose in price/performance for what I do with a PC (games) - the lower
end with the deacent ATI graphics card (ironically the same one I'd
want on a PC) and wifi comes in at slightly over £2000, which is
twice what I'd pay for a reasonable spec gamer PC. (Which doesn't
NEED dual-processors, for starters, and you can get a far better
price/performance out of the Athlon X2 than the Xeon).
For general working? Uh... Open Office is the same app on Windows,
Linux and Mac y'know. Zero advantage..
Tech-is-a-tool, not an end in itself. Evangelism of any particular
platform for anything but price/performance and functionality makes
me roll my eyes.
AndrewC
Dawn Falcon
Jonathan Gibson
www.formandfunction.com/word
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