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OSX/Win2K Deathmatch
Michael Paci sent us linkage to a pretty good article on CNet where win2k and OSX duke it out on a variety of categories like ease of installation, UI, and hardware support. It's an interesting report and better written then most of the stuff that you'll see like this.
Compare that to iTunes. Bit of a difference, no?
They certainly should repeat this test after the final build of XP. But they need to include 'making a mix CD of CDs that you own' in the tests. People _want_ to get their music onto their computer for easy random access. There is no denying that.
The difference is, Apple is banking on the good PR from their supporting people's fair use rights- and Microsoft has just put into action their whole copyright control apparatus, complete with the software phoning home to some server somewhere to check up on whether it should bust you- and complete with mp3 being taken away. Sucks to own mp3 playing hardware huh kids?
I give it a 20 percent chance that they literally go through disks deleting files if the security check says you're a bad-boy.
The CNET test is just the beginning. We may see a CNET test with XP against some future version of _Linux_ where they side with Linux! There is only so much you can do blatantly against consumers before you stop winning these sorts of tests.
The process took me 45 minutes on a fairly decent machine (AMD600MHz, 128MB Ram, ATA/66 disk), almost none of which was me having to think about questions or read help. That wouldn't be so bad, but the installer litters questions through the install process so you can't just leave it alone for a while to do the install; you have to be there for those 45 minutes (or more; an install time of an hour isn't unheard of), mostly twiddling your thumbs.
What would have been far better would have been an installer that saved all the questions for the start or end of the install process (ie, at the start it asks for disk partitioning and install options; at the end you configure things like admin password).
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Let's combine 'em and call it OS/2K.
Or would that be too warped?
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You are probably right that lack of knowledge and prejudice are very real reasons why people hate Windows 2000.
However, you shoot yourself in the foot here. You should not have to read a 300-page tome about the operating system before installing it for the first time.
Granted, scripted installs are great if you're setting up 500 machines at once. But someone who just wants to get their single unit up and running shouldn't have to learn a scripting language to do a routine installation easily. They probably can't, anyway; how do you write the script if you don't have an OS already on your computer?
I'm sorry; if the default installation routine is too clumsy and cumbersome, it's Microsoft's fault, and Microsoft should fix it. End of story.
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MacOSX: we're better because of A, B, and C.
Windows rebuttal: Your OS sucks because of A, B, and C.
Windows: We have D, E, and F.
MacOSX rebuttal: Your OS sucks because of D, E, and F.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Apparently you're not aware that Win2K is crippled as a web server platform. First, Win2K professional DOESN'T come with Apache. Even if you install it, you are limited to a fixed number of incoming TCP connections (something in the range of 10) that make it utterly useless as a web server. Unlike Microsoft, Apple is not selling you a crippled OS.
install the developer tools that CAME with the OS. then you'll have gcc and make.
-- "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." -Joseph Stalin
>Argument for Windows 2000
t ts.html If one studies a user's habits, one often observes that users will click large, labelled buttons far more than the small, unlabelled buttons because on an unconscious level, the user understands that these buttons are faster to access. Compare the large, labelled buttons with big icons that you tend to find in browsers with the tiny, unlabelled icons you find in Microsoft office, and you'll notice that users will tend to use the browser buttons but will avoid using most of the MS Office buttons. The OSX dock has much larger buttons than the system tray, so users will most likely end up using them more and with greater efficiency. Really, one of the biggest weaknesses of the entire windows development world are the small, cryptic toolbar buttons. They are neither fast to access nor useful in graphically explaining most features. Their only purpose is to be mysterious and unusable and intimidate the user by cluttering their environment with even more stuff they won't understand.
>Matt: The year: 1995. The operating system:
>Windows 95. The interface: a taskbar along the
>bottom of the screen, containing a button called
>Start and a series of little buttons
>representing each open program. At the left of
>the bar, a clock and a few little icons for
>launching background programs (the kind of >things Mac folk would probably call plug-ins).
Unfortunately the user is given no choice as whether to have those plug-ins in that corner. Those buttons appear pretty much without rhyme or reason (in other words, at the whim of the developer). The user does not have the option to add stuff to that corner (called the system tray). The icons are almost too small to be discerable. And their smallness presents a drawback I explain in the next paragraph
>If you were unsure about anything on the screen, >you could right-click it, and a menu would
>appear with loads of options, usually including
>a Properties box that explained everything.
If the user will be unsure of what something does, you are supposed to label it. The user should never have right click on something to find out what it does. You don't have to write the entire contents of war and peace in the label, but the label should clearly announce what action the button performs. The icon such as those in the system tray should also be made bigger, because a larger icon will have more detail that will betray the true purpose of the button. OSX doesn't use labels for items in the dock like it should, but at least Apple made the dock icons large enough that the user is able to understand what the icons do. Why make buttons larger by labelling them and giving them big icons? It has to do with something called fitt's law, which states that the time to access a visual target (e.g. a button) is due to the distance to that target and it's size. This link gives a good explanation of the phenommenon. http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFi
>Fast-forward to Windows 2000 and you don't see
>too many changes. Certainly, a few evolutionary
>tweaks have shown up along the way. A toolbar
>appeared next to the Start button that launches >new programs with a single mouse click. Then
>there's bubble help: rest your mouse near an
>item for long enough, and Windows 2000 pops up a
>cartoon bubble explaining what to do (a nice
>feature that, yes, first showed up Mac-side).
>And Windows 2000 sports an adaptive menu feature
>as well, which drops infrequently used items
>from the Start menu to make it easier to launch
> commonly used items.
Many user interface designers have thoroughly bashed Microsoft for the adaptive menu "feature" in office 2000. The same really applies to Windows 2000 as well. The interface should never decide to rearrange itself without the users explicit permission. And just because a user does not often use something does not mean that they won't want to be able to find it when they *do* need it. I don't ordinarily use the fire extinguisher in my kitchen, but that doesn't mean I don't want it in plain sight when I need it.
>Now, some might call this interface dull. In
>fact, it is dull--as dull as having the gas on
>the right and the brake on the left.
Actually, Microsoft tends to do the opposite. They put the break on the right and the gas on the left. I'm referring of course to their ordering of dialog buttons, which puts the affirmative/"go ahead" button (typically "OK) on the left, and then negative/"go back" button on the right. This contrasts with the way that Western culture (as well as the mac) does it. In a car, the left pedal stops the car, the right pedal goes ahead. On an analogue clock, to go back in time, a hand goes to the left; to go ahead, the hand goes to the right. To go back in a book, you go left; when you go ahead in a book, you go right. In web browsers, the arrow button pointing left goes back, and the arrow button point right goes forward. Apple was smart enough to understand this; Microsoft wasn't.
>Not everyone drives a car, of course, and
>likewise, not everyone knows Windows' interface
>(ha!). But at least Windows 2000 is predictable,
>and any enhancements come so naturally that you
> may not even notice that they're there. For an
>operating system, that's a pretty good thing.
Microsoft has shown a complete unwillingness to correct bad interface decisions made in a previous version of their software with improvements made in the next one. Probably because of this "predictability" (not to be confused with consistancy, which *is* a good thing in a UI). How long did it take before microsoft killed the "window-within-window" MDI in Office? Then there's clippy, the talking paperclip. This idea was ill conceived from the start, but it took Microsoft 4 years too long to him. These were ideas that any UI designer 10 years ago would tell you are stupid, but that didn't matter to Microsoft. I've heard microsoft has their own usability people and supposedly there are well funded usability labs, but they are either completely incompetant or the programmers don't take any of their advice or apply any of their data.
As for arguments with CNET's conclusion, Windows 2000 does make far better use of contextual menus, which are UI elements with the fastest access time of all (as they appear right under the user's pointer). Apple should add a second mouse button and improve contextual menu support. However, Windows 2000 has weakness of having pull-down menus attached to each window instead of a menubar at the top of the screen. Menus that are attached to each window are far slower to access than menus on a menubar at the top of the screen because it the user has to spend extra time making sure that the mouse doesn't vertically overshoot the menus attached to the windows. Menus at the top of the screen are impossible to overshoot because they sit right on a border. Such menus are up to five times faster to access than menus attached to windows. Again, this is due to fitts' law.
If CNET took these serious interface factors into account, I seriously doubt Windows 2000 would have won.
Who cares what your Athlon box costs? You still have to put up with the same old PC rubbish. Sure, it runs games hella faster than my G4/400, but that's irrelevant to me, because I use my computer primarily for work, not games. But that's fine if you play a lot of games. That's what you use it for. For me, I just want to get stuff done, and it's not worth my time to have to putz with Linux and/or (I pray not) Windows.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Round 1: Installation
OSX has to deal with a much smaller supported hardware set (Macs) than
Windows 2000 (or Linux, BSD, and BeOS for that matter). Taking
this into account, one might see where Apple's OS developers could
spend more time on the front end of the install, instead of needed
more effort put into the supportive foundations of the hardware detection.
OSX still wins here, but its racing on its own track.
Round 2: Interface
OSX takes the lead for now in the cool GUI department, but those who
accuse MS of stealing ideas from Aqua are overlooking a key point in
the embrace and extend philosophy. Like Win95, 98, and ME before it;
Windows XP will not only adopt new interface ideas, but those ideas
will actually be tested for usuability and integration with existing
user practices.
Apple seems to design on "Make it look cool, and they will come"
MS seems to design on "Make it look cool, and work with the stuff that
didn't look as cool in the last rev, and they will upgrade"
Round 3: Software compatibility
Windows 2000 is the better example of what both companies needed to do
to insure future growth and legacy compatiblity. It wins the match, but
the real winner overall is GNU/ the Open Source Movement.
I'm not saying that to be a Slashdot shill, because it is not the "free"
aspect I'm looking at. It's that OSS is for the most part designed with
portability in mind that it has held to the best ideas for software compatibility,
despite the forks in the roads of OSS history.
Round 4: Hardware compatibility
Same point as in Round 1, OSX deals with its hardware better, but it
has a much more limited range of configurations that it has to deal with.
Round 5: Internet support
OSX is more compatible with the existing Internet infrastucture; because
it is based on much of the same ideas/technology.
Microsoft's flaws were in targeting Windows 2000 more for the Intranet and
plain vanilla business use, than for the space beyond the corporate proxy.
Damn, I was about to go out and but a Mac, but I've never thawed a hot dog and I don't fancy learning now
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
What the author was saying, in a nutshell, was: "File sharing? That's nothing. We can share files and Internet connections!". See the Mac guy's previous comment:
This is actually one of the few cases where their technical savvy wasn't completely transparent.
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fat lenny's gonna lick your brain today.
Preface: I am a Mac fan too. I've had one since the very beginning, though now I have a lot of other kinds of computers too.
That said...
Apple isn't innovating so much as dusting off its old NeXT technology.
I am very happy with the technical foundation of OSX. It rules. BSD stuff in my Mac! But I hate the new GUI. Apple -- no, STEVE -- threw out a decade of GUI evolution so that he could force his pet project onto us, that being the NeXT way of doing things. NeXT was his baby, and he can't let it go. Steve has an incredibly large ego.
Aqua isn't revolutionary. It's retarded. It may look good when you compare it to the GUIs that you can get for the free Unixes, but if Apple REALLY wanted to make its CURRENT users happy, they would have given OSX a MacOS 9 style GUI.
By any measure, the OS9 interface is better. The could have added new features to support the new OS's foundation, but instead they built up a new monstrosity which has, for me, about 10% of the usability of OS9. I suspect that Aqua will be useable a year from now, but only for the people who want to spend $100 on shareware GUI tweaks that Apple/Steve are too pig-headed to build in for us.
Just another Mac guy's opinion...
...would be "Psycho" Steve Jobbs vs. "Battlin'" Bill Gates in a last-man-standing no-holds-barred steel cage match. I'd pay to see that one on pay per view...
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"The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad." - Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Linux is good for those who value their freedom (speech and beer)
Your comment is tongue and cheek, I know, but just to be clear: Linux is for those who value the freedom to see the source -- that's it. There are other kinds of freedom, and I doubt you can make platform-dependent generalizations for these.
Back to the article: Of course such comparisons are meaningless, but I found it interesting that they gave the Interface comparison to Windows (by a nose). Their argument was essentially 'we know the Windows interface, it remains unchanged, therefore it's better'. By this logic, OS X will only win when it becomes more familiar (read: Windows-like). Weird.
That said, they need to do it again when Windows XP arrives (and Mac OS X has a few more *nix software offerings available). There will be enough improvements in the interface and usability that the results should be significantly different.
Quote from the article:
"Before you use our death match as a reason to run out and buy a new dual-processor G4, though, let us remind you that this matchup is all in good fun. If you're making decisions about operating systems and even entire platforms--especially for your business--you should do your research. Check out CNET's reviews of both Windows 2000 and Mac OS X and decide for yourself."
Nuff said.
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
From the article:
What's more, the OS X installer automatically finds your hardware and recognizes it. No driver problems (what's a driver?), no hardware conflicts, nada. Don't be fooled by its fancy core; just as it did in previous Mac OS incarnations, Apple designed OS X for your Mac hardware. OS X is even better than OS 9 at recognizing hardware, and it even configures USB printers--no "plug and pray" here.
Well I know I've lost some hardware. I have a beige G3 and I no longer have the built-in SCSI port. My CD burner doesn't work either and it did work in 9.1. So I can't say I have had no hardware problems.
I like the "plug and pray" shot though.
Check out Althea for a stable IMAP email client for X. Now with SSL!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I'd love to see a comparison of the two as servers It's pretty rare that you see a Apple serving anything (especially dynamic websites).
Dear CNet,
CNET's decision: Mac OS X
What do you mean by that?
I thought we are always friends. I know you've taken efforts to make us win on "Interfaces" part.
But I'm not satisfied. You know that.
Can't you be more unethical?
You can kiss my future first-hand Microsoft news goodbye, sucker.
Yours master,
Bill G.