T-Mac-Oz wrote:

So how do you explain iTunes then? [Mad]

I can't. Apple isn't perfect. Quicktime and Sherlock weren't the best creations either, although Sherlock II was fast as hell and still puts Windows explorer's search in the trash You need to understand that Apple is a huge company with a lot of product research, engineering, and development going on. Each project is like an individual company, and each product has anywhere from one to several dozen teams. With this said, you are going to get the best of the best engineers, programmers, and testers working on major projects such as the operating system or Final Cut Pro. And who do you think is assigned to the simpler projects? Quicktime, iTunes, Sherlock etc...

T-Mac-Oz wrote:

So go with Alienware, ASUS, Benq, Fujitsu, IBM/Lenovo, NEC, Sony, Toshiba, ... These days you can even go on being a total fanbois & put Windows on a Mac [Sigh] . I know this is a difficult concept for Apple devotees but: You have options!

Of course I have options. I have used Toshiba. I had this nice Toshiba Satellite Notebook with a HUGE screen, full keyboard, and 3.33ghz Processor. Problem is, it overheated every 15 minutes and shut off. Into the trash can it went as Toshiba claimed there wasn't a problem, even though every single owner of that model experienced the same thing. I also owned a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop. Bulky and poorly constructed piece of junk. Into the pawn shop it went. My Acer is actually the better of my two computers. My Dell desktop PC is 2.66ghz and if it sits for more than 15 minutes without being touched, it takes 10 minutes to get up off its lazy ass and decide to start doing something. My Acer is only 1.73ghz and runs faster than the 2.66ghz Dell Desktop, faster than the 2.2ghz Dell laptop, and nearly as fast as the 3.33ghz Toshiba. I would switch back to the Mac, but there are some reasons why I don't think I will ever do so. I was very disappointed in the switch from MacOS 9 to MacOS X. First Apple offered CarbonLib. You link with it and change a few things and wham bam, your program runs natively on MacOS X. My company was developing several products, one was a rapid development environment BASIC compiler similar to VisualBASIC which had about 100,000 lines of C code. The other was the same, but for Java. They were mated beautifully to pre-OS X, but had problems with the switch. We sent sev

Graham Bradshaw wrote:

Christopher Duncan wrote: However, while I'm sure there's a standard Mac API equivalent to the Windows API for developers, Apple's attitude towards developers makes me nervous. The difference is that Microsoft is a software company, and Apple is a hardware company.

Actually, you are wrong, as Apple goes both ways (hehe, I made a funny). They may have built upon a pre-existing system for OS X, but they built all operating systems from scratch before then. And them being in the field of hardware works to their advantage. They don't write crap software. Only when Steve Jobs was not working at Apple did they operate like Microsoft by simply repeatedly patching over the operating system. I guess that is why soda company CEOs shouldn't run tech companies. They also wrote the entire MacOS operating system up to 7.X (or around there) in pure assembly code. That is why the early versions of MacOS were only 128kb in size when compiled, and were more responsive while running on megahertz you could count on your fingers and toes, than Windows Vista on a dual-core 2.8ghz with 2gb of RAM. Maybe you weren't aware that Microsoft purchased it's first operating system and called it their own. And what about how Bill Gate's backstabbed his friend, stole the source code to said friend's operating system, as well as the code to all of its included software, renamed it, and called it his own. Maybe you have heard of this friend, he goes by the name Steve Jobs. Sounds like a script kiddie recompiling opensource products with a new title and calling it his own. Can you say Final Cut Pro? iTunes? iMovie? Macintosh Programmer's Workshop? Please don't get me started on the OS X suite of software. And while not directly made by Apple, but is pretty much the same company, Pixar's Animation Suite of tools. I am no longer a Mac user, I use Windows XP and occassionally Linux. I stopped using Macs in 2002 in exception to at work in 2003. Last Mac I used had a 500mhz G4 processor and 512mb of RAM....I would take that over this Acer and Dell crap I use now. I wish I didn't sell it... Four 2.8ghz processors, 2gb of ram, 7200rpm HD, Windows Vista, and a 10 minute startup from button press, to last startup task AKA bulkware loaded up. That's a REAL software company for ya...*cough*

One more thing. You need to be able to be able to adapt to any new technologies. You should have experience with several different programming languages, all with different styles because a REAL programmer should be able to start programming in a new language or framework within a day, begin to understand and be programming with it (with the help of a reference) within a week, and master it withing 2-3 weeks. Obviously with a huge language like C++ you can't master entire APIs within this time frame, but in 2-3 weeks of straight programming, you should be able to understand the language structure fully to the point where the only thing you should need to reference are the language specific functions. For example, C is a small language. The language structure itself is VERY simple yet BASIC programmers think it is overwhelming and cryptic. Well, if you had a REAL CS degree, you would understand that C is NOT cryptic and is actually simpler than .NET languages. Try learning Forth and assembly language :) Try programming in hex.

Regarding my above post, "Unregisters" is a typo. I meant "Registers"

I am getting sick of these colleges graduating students who can't move into a programming job and get into the groove within a few days. I am sick of graduates with only .NET experience. I am sick of graduates with only OOP knowledge. It seems that C, Fortran, Forth, Assembly language, software engineering, debugging, diversity, problem solving, and efficient coding skills are all becoming a lost art. If you are a CS graduate and you don't conceptually understand unregisters, binary, and bitwise operations Don't have knowledge of 5 or more languages, all the major operating systems (not just Windows, MacOS, and Linux). I mean all I listed including but not limited to Unix, OS/2, RiscOS, Sun systems. Experience with microcontroller and embedded programming, and not just PIC with PICBASIC, I mean embedded ARM7TDMI, PowerPC, etc... Conceptual knowledge of RISC, CISC, ZISC, and VLIW, the differences between each, and programming for each. Then you need to GO BACK TO COLLEGE. And obviously not the one you graduated from...a GOOD one. Here is a test to see if you got what you paid for with your CS degree. If you can't read this, go back to college...a GOOD college. global _fact section .text _fact: mov eax, [esp+4] cmp eax, 1 jnle L1 mov eax, 1 jmp L2 L1: dec eax push eax call _fact add esp, 4 imul eax, [esp+4] L2: