-Pro?

Hmm...

two points:

1. Apple Top 5... that may as well say Apple Current Lineup... And including the Mac Mini that will soon be discontinued in a Top anything is bad advertising!

2. I just got a MacBook. I also have an iMac. These are both aimed at "home" users. I use Pro apps every day. I've had a PowerMac G5 and found it to be too big. The intel iMac was basically the same machine in an all-in-one enclosure. I do miss the lack of upgradeability, but I don't have much space!

Same goes for the Macbook. 13" vs. 15" is quite a lot! I prefer them small. It does mini-dvi and has (albeit analogue) audio in+out... Keeps me happy :)

Re: Jenner

I agree that isolating applications for simplicity, management and security is definitely the way forward for business apps.

I work mainly with Citrix and Vmware and the reason is that for business i generally strongy recommend those kind of environments. Once all business apps are running on pristine citrix boxes or app servers on vm's that are configured to drop all changes to the virtual-hdd upon reboot and software roll-outs are no longer an issue it's amazing how responsive IT can really be.

Plus, the user can start his usual collection of craplets on the PC with not impact to the business systems and the two environments shall never meet apart from the craplet ridden PC displaying whatever's going on in the citrix/vm env. To me and most clients i deal with the flexibility and security provided by this is plenty.

And as a bonus, if it's Citrix i get to recommend staff to buy macs for home use, knowing that everything will work just as nicely for remote work, while still letting me play with macs to learn more about them in my spare time... :)

BTW Jenner, apologies about before, didn't mean to come across so deriding...

@Anonymous Coward • Thursday 29th November 2007 23:12

So, DOS then? No not quite!

In my first post on this concept, I suggested that the "old stuff" would run 20 or so applications concurrently, as far as I know Dos only ever ran one..... and very crudely at that, but if your requirement was to run just one game in a 16bit real mode environment, then why not? I am suggesting that we could have 16 or 32bit real mode, or escape from that and call 16, 32 and 64 bit protected mode apps, in their own genuinely isolated environments.

More like this: You are analysing a database containing highly sensitive data which it would be very dangerous to compromise. You are doing this, one record at a time (batch processing), removing for instance, bank account records, before you send the file to the auditor. Inadvertently publishing or losing this sort of data could lose you your job (unless you are a politician!). This application, does not have any networking/internetworking capability, because for the reason stated, you did not load it. It does not have any gui, you did not need it.

It is your lunch break, you decide to check your email and surf the web for a while. Easy... start a child window loaded with the tools you need for this, assign a different area of memory and a separate core if you want to.... any crapware that gets into this environment is completely isolated from the first, "highly sensitive" one. There is so little loaded overall, that there is nowhere to hide for any little viral monsters, or spyware.

Back from lunch you decide that while the batch process is still running (you only gave it a small piece of the available system), you are going to compress a full motion video that you promised a friend. Start up another child window, load the data, and set the compression running, this might require 64bit addressing, again, this runs completely independently from the other two apps that are running.

In other words the user is in control, not the OS, or some script kiddie hacker in a cyber cafe in Timbuktoo or Lagos.

As I said, this concept is not supposed to be a replacement for the MacWindows model, just an alternative. The biggest problem with these, is that they make your hardware a prisoner of the OS, they make themselves into a piece of virtual hardware.

This modular approach to system management is actually under development at the moment. Probably, in my old blokish and amateur way, and due to lack of space, I have not done justice to it either.

I have wittered on, completely off topic, from what really just started as an aside, for far too long now. So back on topic, the choice as to whether to buy a PC or a Mac, and which Mac, etc. really must be up to the individual. I was merely saying, I have owned/used all of them, and they are all equally poor, and it is not due to the hardware, which by any standard, is fantastic.

Mac Mini

"Customers do have to buy a display, mouse and keyboard if they don’t have spare ones already though” says the article.

I interpret this with the following caveat: "However, if they do NOT have a display, mouse OR keyboard (AND they can prove it (terms and conditions apply)) they are exempted from this compulsion to purchase.