Re: The fast and the curious (June 14)
Speed is relative and is useful depending on how many tasks have to be accomplished.
For Apple to claim to be the fastest “”in the world””
they must have a small world indeed. (By the way “”in the world”” is used in the States to the point they seem to think they are the world.)
Personally I don’t want a G5 (unless it’s free). I see no benefit except speed; it wont handle any of my Sys 9.x programs or peripherals.
I like 9.2.2 and 10.2.8 and am in NO hurry to upgrade.
Don Mitch
Re: The fast and the curious (June 14)
There are a couple of things that don’t add up in your article called “”The fast and the curious”” and I think it might be especially incumbent upon you to make sure you are not mistaken since the subject of your article is about not making false statements. Not that you intentionally made false statements, but intention doesn’t negate falsehood. Perhaps these are falsehoods due to inaccuracy on your part:
1. You say, “”Although the vendor won on two out of three counts – it is the first PC, as opposed to workstations, to use 64-bit chips, and it does have four GB in storage . . .”” Didn’t you mean to say that it has eight GB of storage? Having four GB of storage is of no consequence, and the Apple machines certainly do have four GB of storage, plus four more GB of storage. The top two machines have eight GB of memory storage and the bottom machine has four GB.
2. You say, “”The regulator also sounded shocked – shocked! – to learn that Apple HAD configured the G5 to do better than rival machines when it performed tests to prove its claims.”” (capitalization mine for emphasis). However, this is not accurately stating what the ASA said. The ASA used the conditional word “”might”” concerning the charge that Apple slanted the tests to favor their machine. “”Might”” is a very, very qualifying word, don’t you think?
It must be noted that I’m not a big fan of Apple overstating things, and sometimes overstating things in a lavish way. So my motivation in writing this is not to defend Apple at all costs as some Mac zealots would do. At the same time I am quite amazed at how quickly and easily professional tech journalists themselves fail to be accurate in reporting facts about Apple. Indeed, some of them seem to take glee when Apple messes up.
On a positive note, I think you had a lot of good things to say, and you have a good use of wording. I thought you had a great point that Apple should be mostly concerned about giving its customers machines of good value (and to stress that in advertising) instead of being preoccupied with having the fastest personal computer in the world.
John Grise
Shane Schick replies: Though it may not have seemed clear, my point was that Apple was correct in advertising how the G5 breaks the 4GB limit. As for qualifiers, I agree that I should have stuck with the word “”might”” in keeping with the ASA’s own comments. I don’t have anything against Apple, though — as a former editor of Computer Dealer New’s MacBeat section, I had ample opportunities to cover the company’s successes as well as its failures. I appreciate the feedback.
Re: The fast and the curious (June 14)
I find it somewhat amusing that the more powerful PCs get, the more their operating systems have to deal with the exact same problems of the mainframes of yore. The concerns of finding a simple, clear, standard, “”understandable by non-experts”” way of measuring a system’s “”power”” are the same — and we haven’t done it yet, in my view.
Don’t get the wrong idea — I’m not a mainframe champion. Although exposed to them at university, I came into the industry during the “”mini-computer”” era. We now view these as “”little mainframes.”” Well, I now view PCs as just “”tiny”” mainframes. The point is, this sort of distinction is no longer relevant. But through all these changes in technology, we haven’t solved some of the most fundamental puzzles.
What good are these fancy, modern benchmark tests if nobody really understands what the results mean? I’ve seen benchmark results published in magazines with wild acclaim about a certain product for beating its nearest competitor by “”0.2.””
“”Truth in advertising”” — add it to the list of 20th century oxymorons.
Bruce Edwardes
Re: RBC’s glitch: The post-mortem (June 10)
It is very obvious that the IT department needs an overhaul, whether minor or major. Why was this done at the end of the month? Why did it take a almost a week to correct the problem? Why did RBC process bills while knowing it couldn’t process its customers payroll into their accounts? As mentioned in the article, public relations in this matter were poor. I think RBC needs to think about hiring competent IT staff and competent management, because it failed miserably on this one also.
In this day and age, good, competent people are waiting to be employed while rookies run the show, and you have the kind of problem RBC had because of that. In this era of superior communication technology and changed attitudes, RBC failed miserably in notifying its customers. Have they become too big for their britches?
Michael MacDonald
Re: RBC’s glitch: The post-mortem (June 10)
It’s possible to believe the overall situation has been handled even more ineptly than most critics realize.
What has been discussed — and is totally bizarre — is that some cretin actually thought that making simultaneous changes to an online and a backup system makes any kind of sense. People with that kind of confused mentality don’t deserve to have anything but closely supervised jobs where their (lack of) intellectual power and judgment never come into play.
Tony Simon
Re: RBC’s glitch: The post-mortem (June 10)
This is the second time my end-month pay has been effected by a glitch with the Royal Bank. In both cases I contacted the bank but they could not tell me how long the problem was going to take to fix and their position was that they didn’t know who’s fault it was. I am seriously considering changing banks because of these problems and what I consider a lack of customer service on their part.
Jim Richmond
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