apple store sydney grand opening

[WRX22B1998]

well opened yesterday at 5pm. it was pretty cool. umm yeah. they used so much glass, all the outside, the stairs were glass. im sure i was in the first 75 to walk in. it was cool, heaps of stuff. abit crowded though

but of course apple with their pricing issues

"In the US, a set of these white headphones sells for $US29. That translates to $31, based on an exchange rate of 94 cents to $US1.

But in Australia, Apple sells the same headphones for $48 - a price difference of more than one-third, or 35 per cent to be exact."

from smh

not that i'd buy iPod headphones even if i was given the money

[MrLlamaLlama]

Alot of Apple's stuff is grossly overpriced.

You can argue it's worth it if you REALLY need the features they've got, but yeah. There's an Apple store near where i live (Milton Keynes, UK). Love going in, getting a mac, zooming in to 3600% and inverting the colours. The walk out casually, and watch. Even the employees are like 'holy shit, what's happened?'

Much fun.

[WRX22B1998]

i know the ctrl command 8 yeh to invert colours...someone did that to all the macs in our computer lab and the teacher was stumped. "what happened" lol.

how do you zoom

ohh i got one i do alot

apple + shift + a (opens applications), then apple + a (select all) then apple + o (open)

ahahha its the funniest watching someone go to it, then the dock has like 40 icons, all jumping up and down. then the deadly spinning rainbow thing comes

lol only mac would have such convenient shortcuts...why the hell would you want to invert colours with a keyboard shortcut..WTF

Edited June 20, 2008 by WRX22B1998

[Chris]

^ lol, trolling irl ftw.

I'm on my MacBook right now actually. I'm definitely not a Applefag though. In fact I've completely gone off the company now, several reasons. The main one is the users. Yes, the users.

1. Over zealous users who think they're better than everyone else just because they have a Mac

2. Absolutely everything is overpriced

3. I'm not a big gamer by any means, but gaming fucking sucks on a Mac, even through Windows emulation performance is way lower than on an actual Windows OS

4. Crashes more often than Vista. Seriously my Mac or programs on it crash way more than anything on Vista. My Vista machine has actually never crashed. To be fair my Mac doesn't crash a lot, but whoever all these people are that say macs never crash are liars.

The only things I still like about Apple:

1. Their designs are sexy

2. People write some awesome programs for OS X. Coda is the best program a web developer could ever want. Text editor, CSS editor, syntax highlighting, FTP - all in one easy to use, intuitive program. On Wndows I have to use a separate program for each thing.

That's all.

[WRX22B1998]

man some of the people there yesterday were like...freaks. to say the least.

1. Over zealous users who think they're better than everyone else just because they have a Mac

2. Absolutely everything is overpriced

3. I'm not a big gamer by any means, but gaming fucking sucks on a Mac, even through Windows emulation performance is way lower than on an actual Windows OS

4. Crashes more often than Vista. Seriously my Mac or programs on it crash way more than anything on Vista. My Vista machine has actually never crashed. To be fair my Mac doesn't crash a lot, but whoever all these people are that say macs never crash are liars.

yeh i agree with all of that...ive been on a mac doing something with final cut pro. i go to play the video. then says "dropped frames" which means the computer isnt fast enough to play the video back at its full frame rate (25fps) ... WTF. it wasnt HD or anything, and even then, it couldnt even PLAY the video back. yeh its so overpriced, yet so many people still buy there stuff.

yeh everyone is slack to vista, on my friends comp was goin alright, except now there was some windows update, but it crashed in the middle of updating (dont ask how idn) and now he cant boot to vista or safemode. he just gets a bsod on startup.

do u mean windows emulation ie boot camp or a emulation software like VMware parallels or something?

[Chris]

Final Cut Pro is actually an awesome piece of video editing software, easily as good if not better than Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas etc.

But yeah, my mates doing Film Production were using it and they got dropped frames errors a number of times, completely messed up the syncing when played back on a TV. Took them ages to fix the problem, video playback on other sources was fine though, it was the software being retarded for some reason.

And yes I was referring to both Boot Camp and Parallels. Great for most things you might need it for, but not great for gaming.

[WRX22B1998]

yeh i know its good software...macs just piss me off sometimes

ohh another thing me and other ppl in class would do

since our school has a proxy server, and we're all given username and password to log on. so when we open internet, a password thing comes up.

so u know dashboard right? with all the widgets or whatevr. well what we do, is open heaps that need the net. eg weather.like 100 or so. then click the middle button. so all these weather things come up. THEN 100 password boxes come up, u close it, but it re-appears a few seconds later. lol.

click here <-- page dedicated to the rainbow thing

Edited June 20, 2008 by WRX22B1998

[MrLlamaLlama]

We kept downloading loads of widgets in college.

The lecturer would leave the room, and come back only to find the whole 30 of us playing Stunt Mania on the macs. Apparently, it's a 'gross misuse of time and resources'. Bollocks is it.

[WRX22B1998]

lol that looks pretty fun.

we would always be playing marble blast. i think thats it.

you are this marble, and u have to go through all these maps..

or chess with voices

[Pandora]

^ lol, trolling irl ftw.

I'm on my MacBook right now actually. I'm definitely not a Applefag though. In fact I've completely gone off the company now, several reasons. The main one is the users. Yes, the users.

1. Over zealous users who think they're better than everyone else just because they have a Mac

2. Absolutely everything is overpriced

3. I'm not a big gamer by any means, but gaming fucking sucks on a Mac, even through Windows emulation performance is way lower than on an actual Windows OS

4. Crashes more often than Vista. Seriously my Mac or programs on it crash way more than anything on Vista. My Vista machine has actually never crashed. To be fair my Mac doesn't crash a lot, but whoever all these people are that say macs never crash are liars.

The only things I still like about Apple:

1. Their designs are sexy

2. People write some awesome programs for OS X. Coda is the best program a web developer could ever want. Text editor, CSS editor, syntax highlighting, FTP - all in one easy to use, intuitive program. On Wndows I have to use a separate program for each thing.

That's all.

1 - I absolutely HATE Mac-fags.

Mac world article about the GTX 2x0:

Who needs SLI? If Apple doesn't have it, it must not be important.

Oh, god, those people annoy me.

A friend of mine is slightly a Apple fanboy. Asked him why he thinks Mac's are superior. He's got no idea.. Just believes all of Apple's Ad's (which in essence are true actually. But heavily exaggerated).

His dad got an iMac. Pretty new and it's sloooow. Annoying in use too IMO. I'd prefer Windows to Mac OS any day.

2 - Most of their products are, but the computers themselves are actually fairly priced IMO (not the Air of course). But then they still don't really have superior hardware or anything..

3 - Uhm, yeah.

4 - Haven't used the OS long enough to really say anything about crashes in Mac OS. I've been using Vista for 2 months now though. And I only experience problems when getting out of sleep mode. IMO sleep mode is just a very, very crappy version of stand by.

pros:

1 - Matter of taste. I, for one, think their designs aren't nice at all. I don't like the iMac, the MacBook's and the power Macs are awful. The Air looks pretty good, but it's got far to much flaws to even consider buying. Their iPhone is sexy, and the iPod's too (except for the chrome. They spoilt the design by adding chrome).

2 - Maybe, I've got no idea TBH..

[Dmac]

Jeez, The whole place is pretty much glass.

I wonder how much Birds fly into the glass during the day.

[WRX22B1998]

lol i reckon yeh...

the stairs are glass as well.

[chris82]

Coda is the best program a web developer could ever want. Text editor, CSS editor, syntax highlighting, FTP - all in one easy to use, intuitive program. On Wndows I have to use a separate program for each thing.

Dreamweaver CS3

Most of their products are, but the computers themselves are actually fairly priced IMO (not the Air of course). But then they still don't really have superior hardware or anything..

Wut?

Ok, let's compare the Mac Pro and building on Newegg.

The Mac Pro is $2800 and comes with:

* Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors

* 2GB memory (800MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)

* ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics with 256MB memory

* 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive

* 16x double-layer SuperDrive

So let's get all those components on Newegg.

Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon “Harpertown” processors (X2=$1740) (Not available on Newegg)

2GB Memory 800mhz DDR2 $33

320GB SATA 3GB/s 7200-rpm hard drive $68

DVD/CD Burner (what a SuperDrive is) $31

ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics with 256MB memory $52

Now we need a case and PSU:

Antec case+650w PSU $230

For the fuck of it, let's add in a nice sound card and a copy of Windows:

Creative X-Fi soundcard$84

Windows XP Pro SP3$140

And a nice mouse and keyboard:

Logitech Keyboard/Mouse package$75

Now we're at $2453. You could add-in the motherboard and the shipping, and it would still be less than $2800. Hell, you could add a pretty nice monitor as well and it would still be under $2800. Apple's hardware is priced fairly my ass.

But if desktops aren't your thing, let's look at laptops.

The Base Macbook is $1100 and comes with:

* 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

* 1GB memory

* 120GB hard drive

* Combo drive

The Dell Studio 15 top model is the same price, and has the same speed processor, yet it comes with 3x the memory, a bigger hard drive, a better media drive (Macbook doesn't burn DVDs), a bigger screen, a better graphics card, etc...

If there's one thing Apple's not good at, it's fairly pricing merchandise.

[Chris]

Apple's SOFTWARE is fairly priced, in MOST cases. But yeah as chris82 just proved, their HARDWARE really isn't. RAM is the biggest culprit, you can actually buy the same amount of RAM from Corsair (leading make) at roughly half the price... in some cases.

Coda is the best program a web developer could ever want. Text editor, CSS editor, syntax highlighting, FTP - all in one easy to use, intuitive program. On Wndows I have to use a separate program for each thing.

Dreamweaver CS3

Yes but this is still quite bloated. I don't really like using it and couldn't get used to it, so I don't.

[Pandora]

I mean, compared to OEM PC's with about the same specs. Of course building the system witht the same hardware yourself will (almost) always be cheaper.

You have to know that having a high-end OEM built system in Europe (only the system. No speakers, monitor, mouse, keyboard ect.) will set you back 2800 USD and then you won't have 2 of those harpertowns. So in a sense, Mac's aren't all that expensive (at least, their high-end models).

Edit:

Saw Chris' post. Apple charges 100 EUR for just 1 effin GB of RAM. The must be out of their minds. You can get 2GB for just 40 these days. It really just shows how much knowledge an average Mac user has.. if Apple can just quote them those prices and they actually buy it..

Edit 2, one day later:

While the out-of-the-box Apple gear might have gotten cheaper, it is starting to look like Jobs' Mob are making all their money up charging silly money for components.

List prices for Apple 'add-ons' are nearly three times the prices set by Dell for similar gear. A 3.5-inch hard upgrade on the MacBook from a 120GB 5,400rpm drive to a 250GB 5,400rpm drive costs more than £90 while the same upgrade with a Dell XPS M1330 costs just £30.01. Ram upgrades are also a joke. Increasing your RAM from 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 to 4GB costs £120. However the same gear on a Dell XPS M1330 costs just £40.01.

Dell's Solid-state drive upgrades to a 64GB solid-state drive in an Dell XPS M1330 will cost shy of £400 while a MacBook Air allows you to go to a 64GB SSD for an extra £639.

The only thing that is comparable are CPU upgrades Moving from a 2.1GHz (T8100) to a 2.4GHz (T8300) CPU in a Dell will cost you £29.99. We reckon the Apple equivalent costs £30.01.

Ok, forget about what I said before.