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X vs. XP.com Site Launched
Dan Pouliot writes "I've been compiling a shootout of X vs. XP for some time, but I've finally given it it's own domain xvsxp.com. Sure, I prefer Macs, but I've tried to have this site be as objective (and thorough) a shootout as possible."
>> You have to buy 4 additional macs to use "five licenses".
No, you are wrong, idiot. I have 3 Macs running OS X at home and the family pack @ $199 is still a good deal even if it's just for 2 machines.
>> OS X now seems quite expensive.
You are talking shit. At amazon.com, Mac OS X sells for $96.99, much cheaper than Red Hat 8 Pro for $116.99 and Win XP Pro for $199, and comes with more and better software than the other two put together.
>> IMHO OS X loses out here completely because it doesn't feature the classic directory tree + file list style of GUI file management which I find to be the easiest and most efficient to use (when partnered with good keyboard shortcuts).
What the fuck are you talking about? The OS X Finder does have "the classic directory tree + file list" called list view, and is miles ahead of Windows Explorer in at least 6 ways:
(1) Column View is the best feature for file browsing not available on any other OS.
(2) Spring-loaded folder makes it possible to drag and drop files to any depth without opening lots of windows.
(3) Finder toolbar is much more configurable than Windows Explorer.
(4) Music, graphics and movies can be played or viewed right in the Finder preview pane without starting applications.
(5) One-click search by content, size, type, date, extension, or visibility.
(6) Automation with AppleScript.
Oh, if that's not powerful enough, there is always the Unix terminal to play with: csh, tcsh, bash, Perl, Python, Ruby and lots other tools all preloaded. Windows is not even remotely close.
>> Connecting to remote machines in Windows is vastly superior. You can navigate directly to machines, the shares they have and manipulate things in those shares - even launch programs - all without having to map or mount the share.
Do you know anything about networking at all? Windows only understand Windows or SMB, while OS X can handle Windows as well as NFS, UFS, HFS+ and SMB. What do you mean by "without having to map or mount the share"? Surely you still have to login to a remote machine before accessing it. And OS X comes with Rendezvous ZeroConf so that devices (not just computers) can discover each other.
...I'm running my web server, mail server, FTP server, QuickTime Streaming Server, internet sharing, file sharing, and name server on MacOS X 10.2 on a beige G3. When I had my main machine out at a client's site, I used the beige G3 for all of my daily use for a couple of weeks. It worked fine.
I will admit that I've upgraded the memory to 320 megs or so. But even on a 300 mhz G3, running with a Rage Pro chip, things work surprisingly smoothly and well. I wouldn't do all my development on that machine if I had a choice, but for day-to-day usage it's perfectly fine.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
>> What possible "processing" could an interactive application be doing in the background isn't related to a open document (or analogical equivalent) ?
Why couldn't you MS trained monkeys see things from a slightly different angle? A file manager like Finder might have a background thread for content indexing or repairing the file system, even if there is no browsing windows.
>> As previously mentioned, the user shouldn't have to think about the application at all. The whole concept is simply unintuitive.
That's just your simplistic world view. People do think about applications, and frequently choose different tools for the same document.
>> The Mac in front of me has 512MB of RAM and an uptime of less than a day. Thus far OS X has create 3 "swapfiles" of 80MB apiece for paging reasons. All that is running is X11, MSN Messenger, Mail, Safari, Terminal, Word and Excel. That's a _lot_ of memory usage.
And my 400 MHz iMac with 512MB RAM runs 24/7 for weeks or months as a software AirPort base station for web browsing and for kidds playing games and my wife doing research (statistic analysis, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc). My 700 iBook is used for programming Unix / Java / C++ (X11, tcsh, bash, Ruby, Perl, JBuilder, Eclipse, NetBeans, Project Builder, Interface Builder, etc), web design and graphics (FireWorks, Flash, DreamWeaver), database (MySQL, PostgreSQL), web browsing (Safari, Camino, OmniWeb, IE), networking and web serving (FTP, Apache, SMB, AFP, Firewall, NetInfo, AirPort wireless, iDisk, iChat, iSync, Network Utility), Word, Excel, PowerPoint, QuickTime, iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie, Mail, Address Book, OmniDictionary, World Book, and more. Typically, there are 70 to 80 processes running, and I generally don't quit applications, so they run continuously for days or weeks, and everything remains responsive virtually all the time.