The curious pricing of the 27" iMac • Hacker News Board

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#11

Post by yangyang » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 8:58 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #9

chrischen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Are you a Microsoft programmer?

No, but OS X does not work for me. It powers a computer under my TV that I use for watching movies, but it doesn't even do well for that task. (OSX's VLC often crashes, NicePlayer can't play partial AVI files, the built-in DVD player doesn't let you skip the ads at the beginning, etc.) For development, I could never use OS X. I rarely use the mouse, and I need a package manager for installing random libraries. I trie…

Not wishing to get into an argument or stray off-topic too far, but Emacs (Carbon Emacs, at least), works absolutely fine on Mac OS. I've had no problems with it, and I use lots of extra libraries.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#12

Post by davidmathers » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:01 AM UTC

there’s an entire high-end computer stuck to the back of it

Actually, there's an entire discount-parts ($150 cpu, $70 video card) computer stuck to the back of it. If you configure it with high-end parts the price goes up to $2200 and even then you're getting a previous-generation video card (radeon 4850 rather than the new 5850).

It's not really so curious. Apple does the "make exclusive deal with a supplier and beat the rest of the market by 6 months in order to look cool" trick all the time. They did it with Intel for the Macbook Air CPU for example.

What it must mean is that e-IPS panels cost much less to manufacture than s-IPS panels. And that a new generation of higher-res e-IPS displays will be arriving in 6 months.

EDIT: I googled "e-ips" and found this at http://www.displayblog.com/2009/02/13/lg-display-e-ips-lcd-p...

LG Display has developed what it calls e-IPS. e-IPS is a version of the company’s trademark IPS technology that brings the cost down. Way down. LG Display target market is toward the larger LCD monitor market that is currently dominated by TN (Twisted Nematic) technology. LG Display has stated that its e-IPS LCD panels will be price competitive with TN LCD panels.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#13

Post by idlewords » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:07 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #9

chrischen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Are you a Microsoft programmer?

No, but OS X does not work for me. It powers a computer under my TV that I use for watching movies, but it doesn't even do well for that task. (OSX's VLC often crashes, NicePlayer can't play partial AVI files, the built-in DVD player doesn't let you skip the ads at the beginning, etc.) For development, I could never use OS X. I rarely use the mouse, and I need a package manager for installing random libraries. I trie…

It's not clear when you last made a serious effort to try OS X, but you may want to consider taking another look. A lot of the stuff you mention (emacs problems, inability to install packages, VLC crashing) doesn't reflect the current state of the OS.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#14

Post by clemesha » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:09 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #9

chrischen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Are you a Microsoft programmer?

No, but OS X does not work for me. It powers a computer under my TV that I use for watching movies, but it doesn't even do well for that task. (OSX's VLC often crashes, NicePlayer can't play partial AVI files, the built-in DVD player doesn't let you skip the ads at the beginning, etc.) For development, I could never use OS X. I rarely use the mouse, and I need a package manager for installing random libraries. I trie…

I developed for several years solely on a Linux laptop - it was my personal laptop too. Then I switched to OSX, and damn what an awesome breath of UI fresh air.

I would never deploy anything on any platform besides good-old Linux, but for a personal computer, I'm sold on OSX.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#15

Post by vdm » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:20 AM UTC

yangyang wrote: post #11

jrockway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but OS X does not work for me. It powers a computer under my TV that I use for watching movies, but it doesn't even do well for that task. (OSX's VLC often crashes, NicePlayer can't play partial AVI files, the built-in DVD player doesn't let you skip the ads at the beginning, etc.) For development, I could never use OS X. I rarely use the mouse, and I need a package manager for installing random libraries. I trie…

Not wishing to get into an argument or stray off-topic too far, but Emacs (Carbon Emacs, at least), works absolutely fine on Mac OS. I've had no problems with it, and I use lots of extra libraries.

I agree, if you're on 10.6 and you value your time, just use Carbon Emacs and stay away from Cocoa Emacs until more than 2 people start committing regularly. It's old but it Just Works.

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=emacs.git;a=history;f=...

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#16

Post by ubernostrum » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:30 AM UTC

vdm wrote: post #15

yangyang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not wishing to get into an argument or stray off-topic too far, but Emacs (Carbon Emacs, at least), works absolutely fine on Mac OS. I've had no problems with it, and I use lots of extra libraries.

I agree, if you're on 10.6 and you value your time, just use Carbon Emacs and stay away from Cocoa Emacs until more than 2 people start committing regularly. It's old but it Just Works. http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=emacs.git;a=history;f=...

Or run Emacs the way it was meant to be used: in a terminal window. I've been doing that for, oh, about a decade now and haven't seen much cause to switch.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#17

Post by jrockway » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:43 AM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #13

jrockway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but OS X does not work for me. It powers a computer under my TV that I use for watching movies, but it doesn't even do well for that task. (OSX's VLC often crashes, NicePlayer can't play partial AVI files, the built-in DVD player doesn't let you skip the ads at the beginning, etc.) For development, I could never use OS X. I rarely use the mouse, and I need a package manager for installing random libraries. I trie…

It's not clear when you last made a serious effort to try OS X, but you may want to consider taking another look. A lot of the stuff you mention (emacs problems, inability to install packages, VLC crashing) doesn't reflect the current state of the OS.

Unless something changed in the last 5 minutes, that is not true.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#18

Post by jrockway » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:44 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #16

vdm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, if you're on 10.6 and you value your time, just use Carbon Emacs and stay away from Cocoa Emacs until more than 2 people start committing regularly. It's old but it Just Works. http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=emacs.git;a=history;f=...

Or run Emacs the way it was meant to be used: in a terminal window. I've been doing that for, oh, about a decade now and haven't seen much cause to switch.

So you use OS X for the nice UI and yet you are willing to use Emacs with an inferior UI?

No thanks. I will stick to Linux.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#19

Post by jrockway » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:46 AM UTC

clemesha wrote: post #14

jrockway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but OS X does not work for me. It powers a computer under my TV that I use for watching movies, but it doesn't even do well for that task. (OSX's VLC often crashes, NicePlayer can't play partial AVI files, the built-in DVD player doesn't let you skip the ads at the beginning, etc.) For development, I could never use OS X. I rarely use the mouse, and I need a package manager for installing random libraries. I trie…

I developed for several years solely on a Linux laptop - it was my personal laptop too. Then I switched to OSX, and damn what an awesome breath of UI fresh air. I would never deploy anything on any platform besides good-old Linux, but for a personal computer, I'm sold on OSX.

I hate to turn this into an OS debate, but it looks like it has become one. I have used OS X. I have written software for OS X. I had a job that was to support OS X.

I don't like it; I don't think it works well. It doesn't do what I want and it's not particularly stable. Problems I have with OS X are nonexistent with Linux, so that's what I use.

Re: The curious pricing of the 27" iMac

#20

Post by davidmathers » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:48 AM UTC

vegai wrote: post #5

Perhaps the price of LCDs is about to drop sharply?

The price of IPS displays is dropping because LG has developed a new technology called e-IPS that costs much less to make than s-IPS, which it's replacing. The e-IPS displays still cost more than TN displays I think.