<p>That’s for work. I’m referring to the consumer market. In the commercial market, there are people paid to make purchasing decisions.</p>
<p>“Virtualization seems to still be limited to the commercial market
though. I don’t see it being necessary in the consumer market. A big
reason for using virtualization is to provide backwards compatibility,
which businesses need. Apple has proven that consumers don’t care
about backwards compatibility, though. They regularly drop support for
old standards/features with no repercussions.”</p>
<p>Everyone I know with Intel Macs runs Windows with either Boot Camp or
Virtualization.</p>
<p>“Most popular consumer applications support 64-bit now. Ironically, one
of the most popular Windows applications that didn’t support 64-bit
until a year after Vista’s release was iTunes. But now that’s been
solved, I’m not sure if there are any common applications that don’t
support 64-bit.”</p>
<p>Palm Desktop.
Office 2000 (our Corporate standard)
Cisco VPN
MSYS (there’s a patch to get it to work and I’m doing some hacking to
try to get it to work).
Various Visual Studio/Platform SDK/SDK tools. I got my first BSOD
on the new machine trying to install Microsoft’s own tools on Vista
x64.
Antivirus software. The salesperson specifically asked me what office
and antivirus programs I was planning to use and apparently had a
list of applications that didn’t run or didn’t install on x64.
Embedded Flash, Java in 64-bit browsers. </p>
<p>I’ve been on x64 since 2004 and read planetamd64 which is one of
the better places to deal with x64 issues (drivers, hardware,
software).</p>
<p>“Most popular consumer applications support 64-bit now. Ironically, one
of the most popular Windows applications that didn’t support 64-bit
until a year after Vista’s release was iTunes. But now that’s been
solved, I’m not sure if there are any common applications that don’t
support 64-bit.”</p>
<p>iTunes did support x64 in one particular version and then it broke
in the next release. A little while after that, you could install
it but not all of the pieces worked. I’ve been running iTunes on
x64 for several years.</p>
<p>“Not exactly. It’s the integration between the OS and the hardware.
Ever tried setting up a Hackintosh? It works horribly, and rightly
so. Apple supports only Apple hardware; it makes hardware support
much simpler than it is in Windows.”</p>
<p>I try to stay on the legal side of software licenses.</p>
<p>What does the issue of Hackintosh have to do with battery life?
Did someone run a benchmark of a Hackintosh system?</p>
<p>“It’s not like 32-bit isn’t available anyway. There are plenty of
computers with 32-bit Windows available, at your local big box
electronics store or online.”</p>
<p>When I started with x64, there were no consumer systems available
with x64, and it was an incredible pain to install it and get it
working because OEMs didn’t provide drivers. So you had to either
hack or find drivers to get the hardware to work. Or buy another
card or device which had a driver available.</p>
<p>That x64 is in stores is a huge sea-change from 2003. 4 GB of
laptop memory runs about $100 retail these days. Computers with
Vista should come with at least 2 GB of RAM. When 4 GB has better
$/GB (maybe we’re already there), there will be a push to drop
in 4 GB of RAM and there’s your impetus for going to x64. I can
see people that consider themselves power-users going to x64
just because they want 4 GB of RAM in a consumer model instead
of the 2 GB budget model.</p>
<p>“My point is that with something as complex as electronics, the quality
of the product isn’t nearly as important as the marketing when it
comes to sales. Apple manages to grab the consumer’s attention and
hold it in a way that no other OEM seems to be able to do. The Vista
disaster contributed greatly to their success as well, of course.”</p>
<p>In terms of quality, I’d say that Apple’s service quality beats the
major OEM’s hands down. In terms of marketing I’d say that Apple
doesn’t spend a lot of money on it. Especially compared to Microsoft,
HP and Intel. Their web site is awful and that’s the portal to the
company’s products. Where they shine is word-of-mouth recommendations.
I think that Garmin is another electronic company that gets a lot of
sales based on personal recommendations.</p>
<p>In the example of Toyota, their quality produces personal
recommendations. Yes, Consumer Reports or other ratings companies can
get you interested but personal recommendations carry more weight if
the personal recommendation is deemed credible. And I think that this
is true for Apple too.</p>