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The Ultimate MacDate
Hack Jandy writes "Anandtech - the PC hardware site - took the Apple challenge and tried a Mac out for a month. The result was the most indepth Macdate I have even seen. As quoted by Anand, 'In the end, Apple has developed a very strong platform.'"
Sounds kinda ghey. Makes sense, considering the orientation of most Mac users I've met.
Once you're under Windows,you want the Linux hackability, once you are on Linux, you miss the bells and whistles, since I switched, I got both and I am happy :)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
without having to put another man's balls in my mouth?
Is she hot?
She better have some nice ones, I'm not going out with another one of your flat chested skanks.
From the article:
...
When writing an article (especially big NDA launches), I'd have around 20 IE windows open, Outlook with another 5 - 15 emails, Power Point with NDA presentations,
20 IE Windows??? Man, this guy has got to get a copy of Firefox and learn the joy of tabbed browsing.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Why lock yourself into a single vendor platform?
and wondered "How many of these features have been incorporated into Linux / BSD?" I just recently installed MEPIS on a spare box to start learning about linux, so I am quite a bit in the dark on some features he mentions. Are a lot of these available in KDE/Gnome/???
Mod Me, Bee-yotch!!!
He keeps mentioning things like iCalendar, Office 2004 for the PC and Outlook 2004 for the PC. But I can't seem to find these anywhere? Am i going insane?
Needless to say, at almost $3000, the G5 was one expensive system considering its specs
Used to be every new system cost $3000. Only relatively recently have decent new systems droped below that price mark.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Well, to install an application, you simply drag the application's installer to any folder on your hard drive and it's "installed". Doing so actually triggers a number of files to be copied to various places on your drive, but the fact that you are separated from that process, it really made me feel like I wasn't in control of my system. On the flip side, installing and uninstalling applications couldn't be easier. There are no full screen installers to deal with; just drag and drop, and get back to work while the application installs. The fact that I don't know where everything is being copied contributes to my feelings of file system disconnect. Then again, maybe I'm being a bit too philosophical about my OSes.
:-)
He doesn't need to feel so disconnected. All the files are exactly where he put them, nowhere else. Mac applications are actually directories packaged up to look like individual files. All the files he saw copying were just part of the application directory. Nothing to worry about.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Have McDonalds started selling girlfirends?
i rid myself of all WinTel PC's in my home (still need them for my job)... but since going to the Apple side i have to say i have had pretty painless computing. My Apple iMac just works and the apps that go with it. People argue that it is a single vendor platform but there is something to be said for that. The tight integration between the hardware and software makes things work smoothly. No mucking around with silly patches or resource settings. Personally i feel that Apple will be gaining a lot of ground in the 'market share' department in the next 3 years.
Plz 2 advise
It's nice to see a respected hardcore site like Anandtech confirm what we Mac users have known all along.
Apple created a very good operating system, which would actually probably be more to the liking of the average PC user - who just checks their email and surfs the web. They really should start advertising the usability and stability of Mac products, I see that as the quickest, and most effective way. The only downside to Macs really at this time is the lack of support for gaming, and I just don't see why more people don't switch, or at least give Macs a try.
This, my friends, is where Windows is seriously lacking as far as usability goes. He makes a good point. I for one can't stand more than about 4 Windows open at a time when I'm using windows, where as when I'm using Linux (I'm not a OSX guy) I usually have 20+ windows open on 6 virtual desktops.
Unix based window managers (along with others) have had virtual desktops for years, where did Microsoft drop the ball?
Slashdot = ((Technology + Politics) / Trolls) % Grammar Nazis
Unless Apple works out a deal with most major software vendors to allow free cross platform upgrades (would also have to be cross app in many cases) the cost of switching to a Mac would run me close to 100k. So in other words, its not gona happen. That having been said I have owned Macs off and on, last was a 500mhz iMac G3 I built. The end result has allways been that while I like the OS, I end up not using the things because all my software I own and most of the software I want wont run on it without emulation.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
While Anand has done an excellant job of descrbing the Mac platform to people like me who have never used a Mac but always wanted to, he does not tell us how a cheaper Mac, say a $1500 Powerbook would compare to a $1500 Windows machine. I am considering buying a Powerbook, but am hesitant because I don't want a $1500 system that feels slower than a $1200 system. So all you Mac users, please help. Is there a significant/noticible difference between a Powerbook which costs $1599 or $1799 and a similarily priced Windows laptop?
And a comparably equipped Dell will run you about $1000 more. Spec out a PC that has all the features of the G5 and you'll see that the PowerMac is very reasonably priced. When comparing it to the crap Dell and Gateway advertise, yeah it sounds expensive. But those machines are crap.
For those Mac OS X people with Linux envy, there is a lot of open source programs available on http://fink.sourceforge.net/.
To install fink, you need to give a root account on Mac OS X even though there is an administrator account. Mac OS X does not have a root account as default for security.
They're not using an Xserve.
From the article:
...
Maybe it's just because of the nature of my work, but I tend to have a lot of windows open at any given time.
When writing an article (especially big NDA launches), I'd have around 20 IE windows open...
Two words: Use Firefox!
You mean like this?
The owls are not what they seem
Article could have been written without bashing the Americal election system.
We've /.'ed his Windows servers. I've always found the Anandtech site to be rather sluggish. Must be a Windows thing.
Unfortunately, it looks like it may have been slashdotted before anyone loaded the whole cache..
but, you're free to try it
If their Apple isn't working, they end up buying a new one. And Apple users call themselves geeks. HA!
I applaud Anand for taking the time to thoroughly put the G5 through its paces. If Apple were still running the 'classic' OS, I seriously doubt Anand would have even bothered to look at the platform, let alone review it. OS X is the main reason why I prefer Macs. It doesn't get in the way of what I want to do. At work, I have a G5 on one side, and a HP XW8000 on the other. Both have their advantage, but as far as OS intuitiveness goes -- the Mac wins hands down.
The PC Weenies:Tech toons with a byte!
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
...from the article.
If you want any sort of software compatibility, driver support and don't want to be made fun of, Windows is the way to go.
Huh?
Actually, if you want to be made fun of (by those who count) you would be running Windows.
Someone sent me a copy of Go screen and I've been using it for the past 5 years on two different work PCs (NT and 2k).... and it does what you'd expect; it acts like a virtual desk top!
I'm sure there are a thousand others out there.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
After doing the necessary research to make sure that I could actually get work done on a Mac, I whipped out the trusty credit card and decided to give the experiment a try.
That single sentence gives quite a bit of insight into a very major reason that Windows is so popular. The very fact that one has to research into applications is a drawbridge for many would-be switchers. With Windows, you have no doubts that there is going to be an application out there, already written, somewhere in cyberland...all you need to do is download (or buy). Gamers and "specialists", who require either very today-trendy or very specific function software, are turned off by the belief (or disbelief, possibly) that Linux and Mac simply can't support their needs.
Then, of course, there is the whole hardware debate. Once again, for Windows...it's out there somewhere; go find it. For Linux, well, it's out there, but have fun finding drivers and getting Linux to be a happy landlord. For Mac, it's out there if Apple or an approved sales associate has decided you need to have it.
In short, very few users are debating the worthiness, usability, or power of an operating system these days. It's the flexibility that they want. That may sound like quite a trite argument to have in favor of Microsoft...but in the context of the applications and hardware discussed above, I think it's pretty appropriate.
12 pages, all of them slashdotted, the print command runs some MS-only WinOpen script that doesn't work in Safari, the email command runs some MS-only WinOpen script that doesn't work in Safari. Bah. Maybe he's got something useful to say, but I'll never get past the first page. At least it's not green on black like ArsTechnica.
As for linux envy... OS X is a BSD derivative! http://darwinports.opendarwin.org/ and http://gentoo-wiki.com/Gentoo_MacOS are some more ports friendly systems, as opposed to Fink's apt-style system. Maybe "Linux curious" would be a better term ;)
Building it yourself is a very different proposition. You've paid less in dollars, but more in the requisite time, knowledge, effort, tools, parts acquisition, and additional responsibility for its functioning.
Which might very well be a worthwhile deal for you, nothing wrong with that. But it's not really meaningful to compare just the price in dollars for these two systems and pretend that the other costs don't exist.
I wonder if Apple ever intends to crack the gaming nut.. I think there is a huge community of gamers that would drop windows in a heartbeat if Apple even came -close- to being a competitive games platform. Gaming also drives hardware sales like nothing else imaginable. If I could play all the same games on a Mac that I do on a PC, I think I'd be willing to pay around $400 more for a similar powered computer without the wintel platform nuissance.
Actually, from my perspective, it's becoming too late. Whereas Windows 98 was pure hell in terms of usability, hardware compatibility, inconsistency, and stability, Windows XP massively shrunk the gap between itself and the overall Mac platform. By the time Apple would catch up, if ever, in the gaming market, the gap might be too small to bother a migration.
Mirror Anyone?!?
Last week, I got my 20" iMac G5 and decided to shut down my Windows box and my debian server and see how it went.
:)
:) )
Moving the Linux stuff to the iMac was a breeze. I was mainly using the linux box for running Squid, for acting as a shell server for IRC, and for a general purpose file server. The iMac does all that and now does easy print sharing for me as well. With BSD under the hood and the power of (a href="http://fink.sourceforge.net">Fink, anyone used to Linux can probably easily move their stuff over to OSX painlessly.
Moving the Windows files was painless using the built-in SAMBA on OSX. I installed OpenOffice (under X11) for times when I need compatibility, but I'm intentionally staying away from MS Office on OSX for now, just to see if OpenOffice is good enough. I'm giving up gaming on the PC, which I'll miss a little, but I've got a GameCube and PS2 which can get more use now.
The real strength of OSX is in iLife. My wife really had a lot of trouble with Windows and the complexity of all the different apps we had to use to manage media (ThumbsPlus, Premiere, etc.) With iLife, she can publish or email or get prints of photos out of iPhoto very easily. iChat and iTunes are nice too. I've had quite a few MP3 players, but the iPod plus iTunes is the first one I didn't have to manage for my wife.
As an aside, the iMac G5 is a beautiful machine too and it's totally silent. Spookily silent. When I walked into the home office after shutting down the windows and linux box, I thought we had a power outage.
I think Anand's review is accurate and very fair. The only thing I would add is just a comment that for anyone non-technical or anyone with a lot of digital media, I think an apple machine makes a lot of sense, especially with the low cost of the new iMacs.
(disclaimer: apple employee
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
I can't reach TFA, but if you tell me what features you're looking at, perhaps I can help you. I am a hardcore Debian user, but I know OS X as well (I used it before I installed Linux on my iBook).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Tabs are nice for a number of usability reasons.
* The browser window size is predictable; that is, it won't change from one tab to the next, unless you change it for all of them.
* The browser window location is predictable; same reason.
* The number of things floating around on your desktop/taskbar is controllable. Having all those browser windows open slows you down in the most common use scenarios.
OTOH, your point about being able to switch back and forth between web pages is well taken. For that reason, it's still easy to open a new window: right click, new window (same as IE). Middle click is tab by default; I'll bet there's a FF extension somewhere that lets you do double-middle-click as new window.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Grey Type on a red background! You even have a drop shadow. DId you design that crap yourself?
The parent makes a good point. Darwinports is a much "nicer" system, as far as staying true to the OS's roots goes. I picked up a free G4, and started off the first day of using with Darwinports. Much smoother than fink.
The design is nice too, but OsX is the seller. If apple was still offering Os9, even with top hardware the only people who would buy them would be the apple zealots. Instead, with OsX you get fast expansion of the apple zealot tribe :D
You've /.ed my favourite hardware review site.
What else am I supposed to read when I'm supposed to be working??!
I am the maverick of Slashdot
From reading the posts thus far, I have this nagging feeling:
Am I going to be one of those MacIdiots now? It's starting to look that way...
(I am imagining a world where my PC is mostly in my control. Very few viruses. Very little spyware. Things run as I expect them to. Actually, now that I think of it, very few problems at all. There seems to be very little to "fix". Shit, now what am I going to spend my time doing?)
If you're interested in a cheaper Mac, not necessarily a laptop, have a look at the iMac. G5 processor, just like the PowerMac, starting at around $1200. The correct term I believe is "badass".
MacDate? Sounds more like staying home and Mac-sturbating to me!
AHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHA...haha...ha?
THANKS FOLKS, I'LL BE HERE ALL WEEK!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I mean, get out and meet some people, man.
Kissing some Karma goodbye...
;-)
I was a bit underwhelmed by the review. While there were some fair cops (video card underpowered, not enough RAM, game releases lagging behind, etc.), I was bugged by some of his comments.
A few examples:
It's iCal, not iCalendar. He seemed to have gotten it wrong more often than right. (If you use a program you can see its name in the menu bar.)
He didn't bother to check on how the drag-n-drop installs work. (Not good for a supposed hard core tech site.)
No, Macs aren't overpriced against other name-brand manufacturers. They are price competitive. (I'll grant you that if you build your own and zealously look for bargains you can build a slightly cheaper PC.)
Of course Windows is going to be more stable if you buy specific hardware for Windows servers as (is implied) using any old hardware for Linux.
He's used Unix at university and he still doesn't feel comfortable about the concept of home directories? Or the Unix hierarchy? (The names can be cryptic, but the hierarchy is pretty simple compared to Windows splatter approach.)
Unfortunately it is little glitches in reviews that leave you wondering just how technical the reviewer is in their other reviews. This one could have stood a little more fact-checking. I know I would hesitate before recommending this article to a knowledgeable Windows-using friend. I'd probably point them towards Ars Technica instead.
Funny note: I think he meant he's used Windows since 3.0, not 2.0. Using Win 2.0 would have been the act of a masochist.
"All the darkness in the world can not quench the light of one small candle."
all this great stuff about the mac gui. I dont' know why people say that a disappearing application bar is useful. oh wow, some slow window animations that have no use.
The great things about mac get weighed down by the fact that there are so few utilities available without a high cost that get work done. I always hear about a Mac user saying.... well it runs macromedia, and it runs what I need. What if you don't have money for that. what if you need some screen capture software and you need specific optoins. Well, your either going to spend $$ getting it done for the single time you need it, or you are going to suffer through the inflexible screen capture. Command shift F3??? yeah I'll remember that. How about "print screen" that's a little more user friendly I think.
How about give me a different keyboard and mouse. How long will this single button crap stick around as a default purchase? Is Ilife included with the OS? Or is it extra?
I'm so sick of mac users on their high horse, convince the rest of us that we just haven't seen what the mac can do... Um, I've seen it, and it sucks.
Hmm, let me pay an extra 90 dollars for the CD burner that is compatible with Mac, because it can't understand anything else. wow, theres some flexibility.
Well, mac is better for graphics, always have been right? ummm, no. I've yet to see anything that a Mac does better... All these people that have told me about how Mac has a command line now, you can do anything you want... I have yet to see anyone who can use it. The fact is that Mac users want Jelly and flipping windows and Adobe Photoshop. they want 3 gooey buttons to edit a video, or dump to ipod, because they don't want options.
They love proprietary. You know what my favorite thing about mac is. The fact that they trademarked a friggin trash can for their desktop. Wow, what a waste of their customers money.
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I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
Better than switching between tabs, IMHO.
For the Apple Challenged like me (x86 boxen both at work and at home) there's this nifty little app called "winplosion" wich mimics Expose exactly, and costs all of US$9.95. In fact, it mimics it so well that I'm surprised they haven't been hit with a C&D from apple.
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with WinPlosion. I just found that it is the best Expose clone there is for windows, and, as bonus points, doesn't require you install something like the .net framework. Only requirement is a bit of RAM (I woulnd't use it in 128MB systems) and some _REAL_ 2d acceleration hardware, since it relies in DirectX/DirectDraw to do the thumbnails/animation (a friend tried it with a SIS based integrated-graphics laptop and it sucked :).
This guy raves about his iMac, plugs 10+ Apple applications, then discloses that he's an Apple employee. You still mod him up.
An Xbox or PS2 (and soon, PS3) or GameCube are all sub-$150. Why even bother gaming on a lowly computer?
In the end, Apple has developed a very strong platform.
Anyone that's USED one in the past 15 years will tell you that. There's no question that Apple has some good technology in their arsenal. The question is "Is Apple right for you?". For me it used to be, but now it's not.
There's no need to make it any more complicated than it needs to be.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm primarily used to running Linux on my desktop, but lately I've been considering buying a laptop. I've heard many good things about OS X, so I'm thinking of buying an iBook.
I have a question for people who've used both sorts of systems: Are there any features/characteristics of x86 Linux machines that are lacking on OS X machines?
The article actually brings something up that I have always noticed on a Mac (os 9 & X), surfing the web is painfully slow compared to a windows box. I've used IE, Netscape, Opera, everything I could get my hands on, but it is still slower than on a pc. Is this a rendering thing, but it happens in os 9 even more than X? Just curious if anyone out there knows why this is.
Im.
I'm an astronomer, and my work involves a lot of coding (and running) CPU-intensive C programs, as well as intensive image processing. In the 1980s, a lot of people in our field were using VAX systems, but in the 90's they began switching to Sun/Solaris platforms because of their speed and stability; that's what I used throughout graduate school. In the late 90's, Linux-Intel became a player, because it could offer such a dramatic cost reduction compared to Suns, which were exorbitantly priced (at its most disparate, I believe a Linux-Intel system with comparable performance to a given Sun cost 25% less).
Now we are at a point where many people at my institute are switching to macs. The top reasons are: 1) Hate to/don't have time to RTFM. Need a situation where hardware you buy just works. 2) High-end mac prices are now comparable to high-end intel prices 3) Any document can quickly be made into a PDF (a standard in our community)
As a fan of free software, I feel guilty about this. However, I do think many of Apple's products are aesthetically pleasing, and things like iChat works with amazing simplicity. Clearly they put a lot of thought into design, and I agree with a lot of choices they've made, so I feel OK about supporting them.
I wish Linux would eliminate the RTFM. Some of us just don't have time for that. But I still have an Intel laptop, and I intend to see how far things have come since RedHat 9 by installing sarge when it is out.
Re: "In order to launch the file or open the folder via keyboard, you have to hit Command-Down Arrow (Command-Up Arrow will traverse up a folder tree). This takes a bit of getting used to and if approached with an open mind, you can get used to it in a couple of days, but it can be frustrating at first - especially if you are a keyboard addict used to Windows."
Very frustrating. Until you figure out how to use Cmd-O.
Is that Mac finally put out a good OS. How am I supposed to sneer at crapintoshes now?
Oh well... I can still badmouth windows.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
After doing the necessary research to make sure that I could actually get work done on a Mac, I whipped out the trusty credit card and decided to give the experiment a try.
You should do exactly that.. the necessary research part, because you're just full of crap at this moment.
Until about half a year ago, I had never even thought about buying a Mac. Then I broke a bezel on my laptop. Ultimately, that forced me to evaluate every laptop I could get my hands on for durability. A couple months and about $3K later I was a happy 17'' Powerbook owner. The only downside to that was that another couple months later my lady decided she can't live without a Powerbook either...
And then it occurred to me:
My only problem with Microsoft is the severity of bugs in their software.
I can relate to all of what you said. I used to be a PC/Windows use because of the broad Software selection and ease of use (Point n click has some advantages), I was a also a PC/Linux user because of the stability security powerful server apps etc... OS.X is an acceptable compromise, even on my G4 PowerBook (which incidentally makes any PC laptop I have yet seen look like a brick when you see them side by side). Plus OS.X beats both Linux and Windows hands down when it comes to ergonomics (I am relly hooked on Exposé for example). Another boon is immunity to Worms/Viruses and best of all it integrates 95% into the windows network at work. My only gripe is that I wish Apple would increase the stability of its OS and the Window manager instead of adding so many 'eyecandy' features. In eight months of using OS.X have had one Kernel panic and five window manager crashes which is only marginally better than my experience with Windows XP, considering what I paid for the Mac I expected the stability of OS.X to be greater.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Yeah. I sell Macs. Yet, my $1350 laptop can crunch more audio plugins (pure CPU) than a desktop dual 2.0 ghz G5.
That being said, I'm getting my girlfriend a PowerBook. Why? Because she surfs the web, does some e-mail, adores photography, and wants a laptop that will last. My eMachines is starting to crack around the hinge, even though it's only 7 or 8 months old. I use my laptop every day for hours on end, and so do my colleagues, but they've had their 17" Powerbooks for two years, and nothing - nothing - is falling apart on them.
For me, I have to have Linux for sanity, and Windows for work. But if you're a "casual" computer user, Macs will work. No problems, no viruses, no bugs, no esoteric error messages or random crashing. They turn on and compute.
That's why I like selling them - the customers don't call until two years later when they want another one.
I'm glad to see that Anand is open to trying a new OS. I give him lots of credit for plunking down a few grand, buying a nice Mac, and giving it an honest go. And I'm glad that in the end he had a positive experience and continues to enjoy using his Mac.
It's pretty interesting to read the impressions of someone trying out MacOS X for the first time, particularly if that someone hasn't travelled outside the world of Windows. Anand writes:
The uniformity really extends far beyond keyboard shortcuts...a menubar always exists at the top of your screen in MacOS X, regardless of what application you're in.
Talk about getting down to basics, eh? I think that's a very interesting comment. It would never have occurred to me to explain that to a new Mac user, particularly one with extensive computing experience on another platform. Kudos to Anand for capturing the newness of it all.
That said, there are a number of things that bug be about the article. For one, it seems pretty ballsy to switch to an entirely different platform and think that you've learned enough in 30 days to write an article of this length (printed, it comes to 24 pages). He clearly is laboring under a number of misconceptions that probably would have been cleared up if he'd spent some more time with his system.
Another thing is that he seems to want his Mac to work the way Windows does. That's a pretty common thing with switchers, and it's totally understandable. But if you're going to review an OS you should really try to come to it with an open mind. To his credit, he's pretty up front about his bias being due to using Windows for so long, but his "the directory structure seems very foreign because it's different from Windows" comments make me want to choke him.
A good editor (human editor, not text editor) would really help this article. Anand tends to use 50 words where 7 are called for, and he even manages to contradict himself occasionally. Though it clearly was not, it should have been reviewed by a knowledgeable Mac user or two to clear up some of the obvious misconceptions.
Anand criticizes the price of the system he bought several times. He spent about $2700 on a top of the line, dual processor G5 because:
I knew that if I was going to give the platform a good chance, I needed to get the fastest system that Apple had to offer.
It's great that he knew what he wanted and all, but as a newcomer he wasn't really in a position to know whether he really needed that much power or whether he could have gotten along just fine with a G4 iMac. He never considered that something less than the fastest thing available could meet his needs, and he doesn't bother to try to find out. So it's a little unfair to whine about the price when something costing half as much very well might have performed acceptably.
Overall, I'm glad he wrote it and I'm glad he's happy with the Mac. Keep at it.
... the native OS.X installer for *.pkg packages does not seem to have an uninstall feature (at least on one that I am aware of) which obviously starts to really suck as soon as you try to remove some crappy *.pkg packaged program you downloaded on a whim. Fortunately there is OSXPM but it still sucks that Apple did not do a better job at thinking the OS.X package manager system throug.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
And want the link opened in the current window instead, do the following:
In the url bar enter without quote marks "about:config" and hit enter.
In the filter bar enter without quote marks "new".
Then double click browser.block.target_new_window so that it is set to "true".
c'mon, there is still a browser flamefest article of the front friggin page! Take it over there!
What bugs me most about Mac users isn't whether or not Mac's are the OS of choice, it's how stupid they sound when they meet somebody who doesn't use mac. Like we've missed it. We haven't missed anything.. And the more times you quote Mac commercials and Steve Jobs, doesn't make you smart or cool. Neither is the spacious design of the apple store feel good.
The problem with Mac is like the problem with the president. The company is full of shit. It's followers simply repeat what is said. And those who don't believe must be ignorant - or terrorists. Geez, it's a good thing there are mac forums, otherwise you'd see Mac users in Black suits and ties riding bicycles around town teaching the good book. because they just have to let it out.
keep it to yourselves. We're not buying the BS.
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Steve Jobs is just like Bill Gates.
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I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
No, Macs aren't overpriced against other name-brand manufacturers. They are price competitive. (I'll grant you that if you build your own and zealously look for bargains you can build a slightly cheaper PC.)
Well I wouldn't mind having a Mac at home as a second machine - but the limited choices really suck. I like the expandability and choice that the PC gives me. With a desktoo Mac I basically get a choice between a reasonably price but totally non-upgradeable iMac or a very expensive PowerMac G5. Is there no middle ground? How about a $1500ish desktop Mac with a single G5 with no built in monitor? I hate all in one designs and I really hate that Apple went with the useless 5200 graphics card on the iMac.
Sure the G5s are great but I cannot afford to drop $3000 at a time for a new computer. With a PC I can upgrade a bit at a time - and only need to drop about $800 once every few years for a new motherboard, cpu and ram.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
Don't get me wrong, I would not mind having one to toy with but as for I use my PC for the MAC will not suffice.
That being said.
At 1299 I can buy the lowest cost iMac. A similar PC system, discounting the nice packaging but keeping a similar sized LCD, will set me back 999 from DELL. It is the same or cheaper from some other vendors. For the very basics that most users do that price and "Windows familarity" will be all that is needed to keep people from looking at the iMac. Throw in the fact that your standard department store doesn't carrry Mac or anything related and the potential drops furhter.
There are laptops cheaper than both that satisfy the needs of many people. Then there are the bottom end PCs that put the masses onto the net and what other progression in buying do you expect them to take? When they out grow their 499 PC they probably will end up with yet another 499 PC!
The geek side of me says, The iMac combined with OSX is better than WinXP. The geek side in me says , SO FRICKING WHAT! I want to play game X now! The gaming geek isn't going to budge. The FPS gaming geek wouldn't even have a iMac pass the laugh test.
Yes MAC has an OS that finally appeals to some of us. The trouble is it is still too expensive, too hard to find software for, and too hard to get general support for if your not part of the culture of Apple or geek.
What I would like to see is a bottom end 4 piece (case, monitor, keyboard, mouse) Mac computer. It would feature OSX, at most a 15" LCD, a 1.4 or slower G5 (make them all one speed and don't publish the number), 256mb ram expandable to 512/768 and about 40gb of disk with a CDRW. Have it all for around 699 or so. I don't know if Apple can reach this low or wants too? They seem to want to maintain an air of exlusivity yet at the same time want more people to pay attention to them.
My only worry is that Apple will steer to far away from their PC side and it will wither. I like the fact that Jobs has transformed Apple so that it is not so vulnerable to one market but I hope he doesn't take it to far away from what it was.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Slightly off topic, but I feel compelled to urge Anand on this point.
I've been using a 12" PowerBook and it's the finest piece of hardware I've ever used. Obviously I haven't tried everything, but between many desktops and laptops, this is the easiest, most usable machine for light-to-medium office work and database development.
Portable, snappy, painless wireless and bluetooth (out-of-the-box), and OSX. It's just beautiful.
never thought about it like that.
So perhaps I'll reside down here, in the under city of Slashdot that is the AC's home.
It's where most of the low-lifes and dregs of our society reside it seems. So I might as well join em...
I've found that a lot of people complain about the price they paid for their Apple hardware when confronted with software problems...
Yes, Apple hardware is expensive. However, OS X 10.3 (latest version) is MUCH cheaper per license than Windows XP.
Windows XP Pro (Upgrade): $189.99
Windows XP Pro (Full): $279.99
Mac OS X 10.3 (Full): $129.00
For an admittedly "better" operating system, Apple sure gives you a good deal, eh?
Note: I neglected to mention XP Home on purpose; the lack of configurability with regards to disabling default services with known security vulnerabilities (Messenger, UPnP, etc.) make it unadvisable as a real consumer OS.
"Life in every breath... that is bushido"
If I wanted a cheap Mac (and didn't need portability), I'd look around for an older dual-G4 desktop, and load it up with 1-2 GB of RAM. The Mac really shines with dual processors and a good sized chunk of RAM. The OS seems to do a really good job of spreading the load between the processors. A dual-450 MHz G4 Mac feels very snappy, more so than, say, an 800 MHz single-processor Mac. It's not that it has a lot of raw power, it's that it never seems to bog down, no matter how many applications and windows you have open.
If one more reviewer mentions "gaming" as a valid consideration to selecting a PC, I'm going to kill people. The $1,000's a "gamer" spends on their "toy" is fine... but don't assume that the rest of the world prefers to sit in a desk chair on their computer... instead of on the couch with a beer & xbox.
As a Mac user (desktop and laptop), I can tell you that the most important thing you can do is buy ram. You will be surprised at how much faster that 800MHz G3 feels after you put more ram in it. This is especially true if you use Office or Flash (or just like keeping a lot of apps running at once).
I love my Mac let me tell you why:
... BSD has been around for so long, and it's widely supported. It only makes sense to take the best Unix OS and throw the Mac GUI on it. It's the best of both worlds!
I've been using computers for roughly 18 years now. When I started using computers, I was 11 years old and it was a C=64. I'd use my C=64 for initially for games, however I was more interested in the technology behind it so progressed writing small applications, minor games, subscribing to Commodore Run magazine, and basically just following "the scene" which was around at the time. There was no Internet, and the only means of communication between these computers was BBS's and analog modem lines.
During the "BBS phase", I transitioned from my C=64 to IBM / compatibles because the computer market changing. C=64's were starting to have very little support, and soon withered away and all that was left was this IBM compatible PC spectrum, and Apple. At that time, after seeing the C=64 support disappear quickly, I looked at the support level for IBM hardware/software and it was rather high. I also kept watch on Apple and at the time, and their support level was low. I also personally didn't like their hardware/software because it just didn't feel right. Back in the mid 80's through most of the 90's, Apple has fallen short with their OS and it was pretty clear with the total lack of support from the entire computer community (1-3% of the computer owner population). I really couldn't figure out why schools would insist on using Apples, when you get out of school and see the "real world" doesn't use Apple computers.
I used an IBM compatible for many years, and basically thats the only thing you could use comfortably if you were an avid PC person like myself. I don't mean to offend the "early Apple users", however most people I knew that were pro-Apple were big time snobs and I'd try to "sway" them to use a PC and free themselves from the held that Apple had on them. At the time i think I was right just because back in those days it seemed like Apple had no future.
On the PC side, Linux started getting popular which in my eyes breathed new life into PC's. Using Microsoft Windows makes me cringe, and as i sit and stare at the hour glass it feels like I'm walking on egg shells, and every week that I read Slashdot I see a new security advisory for a MS product. Enough is enough!
A few years ago, Apple came out with OS X , which is built on top of Unix (BSD). This was where things changed.
If you look at the Linux OS field, there's been various distributions of Linux released, and some disappear as quickly as they surface. Even Redhat who was around for years, and even I believed would be the end all OS for Linux
Apple also gives it's users many utilities built into the OS that if you were on a Windows box, normally you'd have to buy that software or find a Shareware/Freeware version. The fact that Apple OS X / BSD can compile open source software, is simply amazing. This takes me back to the C64 days of reading that Commodore Run magazine, staring at the pages keying in lines from a program that some user submitted back in 1984.
Apple is basically taking the Open Source thoughts behind linux/unix, and opening it up to it's user community, and Microsoft basically keeps that door shut so they can profit!
I'm sick of this Microsoft world we live in, and it brings a smile to me every time I see Linux take a step forward, or Apple release something new in OS X.
Maybe the point of this post was not to say Apple is great, and Microsoft sux, but people who use computers need to know where we were with computers, where we are now (not where Micrsoft wants you to 'think' you are), and also know where we're all going and how to get there.
-Rainman
..like playing games.
"The only downside to Macs really at this time is the lack of support for gaming, and I just don't see why more people don't switch, or at least give Macs a try."
I'm certain most Mac owners realize this, but a lot of software out there is mixed disc, like PC/MAC. But one usually has to check in the PC section, not the Apple to find it(1). The same goes for hardware, look in the PC section.
(1) Is the sale counted for the PC, or the Apple?
I regularly have 20 Opera windows open. By choice.
And no, of course they are not maximized. I organize them by using the windowshading and the windows-menu features of my window manager. This is of course under Linux.
---
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
But much like the U.S. election system, although there may be the illusion of multiple options for your OS, in reality, there is really only one. If you want any sort of software compatibility, driver support and don't want to be made fun of, Windows is the way to go. There have been righteous attempts by smaller OSes to gain traction, and some of them have (e.g. Linux), but for the most part, we're dealing with a one-party OS system.
Heh. I've been a Mac user since 1984. I continued using Macs for several years. I switched to Unix, and then NeXT, in the 90's at school (during the Mac "lean years"). I switched back to Mac when the original iMac was introduced. I am using a PowerBook right now. I considered the NeXT the perfect system until Mac OS X came out.
I should probably also mention I self-employed Unix consultant.
I have *never* used Windows. For *anything*. I never really paid attention to those things he's talking about (people always make fun of me anyway, and 95% of the software you can buy is badly-written garbage).
Now that Mac OS X is here, Windows is the "odd man out". I can write programs in Ruby, PHP, whatever, that run on FreeBSD, Mac OS X, Linux, etc., with minimal changes and without having to install too much stuff (similar tools available on all platforms).
Windows is always a pain. I have to get other people to write Windows code for me, and it's always in some foreign language like VB.
Get with the program dude...Mac is here to stay and LOTS of people are using it. Same with Linux.
Not that either the Mac or a BMW is a bad thing, its just out of most people's price range.
I think that's the reason why the Mac snobs bug me more than Linux snobs or MS snobs. Not only are they developing religious attachments to an OS, but there's an economic side to their snobbery as well.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
There's DarwinPorts and Gentoo too!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I took a look at SafariSpeed (linked here: http://www.scifience.net/safarispeed.html ) and it looks like it's just an applescript wrapper around a shell script.
Kill safari, open a terminal and paste in (without the ""):
"defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay 0.0001"
To change the timeout. To turn it back off:
"defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay 1.0"
Try it out. I just made the adjustment so I can't tell at the moment.
Hope that helps someone out!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that a function of symbolic links? (the shortcut capability, not the textedit one)
I know I'm the last guy to the party on this one, but I just recently tried Cygwin, and it's too cool for school. One of the other windows open on this WinXP machine right now is running an X server, which is talking to an X client (via OpenSSH) that's running on the crappy old PII (450 mhz, some puny amount of RAM) that sits beside my desk. I can use my big monitor and my good keyboard, and sit in my comfortable chair, to play around on my for-practice OpenBSD server that would never, ever rate all this expensive hardware on its own. And I can alt-tab to Mozilla and waste time on Slashdot whenever I want to.
Killer app.
Could it be that an 800lb gorilla, known for fuck you deals, has made things expensive for Apple? You know, "We will use your format if you give us X per copy and charge everyone else way too much money for it," kind of deal. Sort of like the "You must make OS/2 more expensive than Windoze or we cut off your oxygen," deal they gave computer builders.
All of this hinges on Mac not being able to play a video format, which I doubt. Macs are well known for doing video stuff out of the box. Anything is possible.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User's Perspective
Date: Oct 8, 2004
Type: Macintosh
Manufacturer: Apple
Author: Anand Lal Shimpi
Page 1
This is, quite possibly, one of the most difficult articles to write; for starters, it's not a review of hardware, and it's not actually a review of anything concrete - it is a review of an experience. We all go about using our computers knowing that if we don't like something about them, if they are too slow or too unreliable or don't do something we need them to do, then we can upgrade them, or we can swap out the faulty part and put in a new one. Now, it costs us money (sometimes lots of it), but it is possible. But much like the U.S. election system, although there may be the illusion of multiple options for your OS, in reality, there is really only one. If you want any sort of software compatibility, driver support and don't want to be made fun of, Windows is the way to go. There have been righteous attempts by smaller OSes to gain traction, and some of them have (e.g. Linux), but for the most part, we're dealing with a one-party OS system. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing; quite contrary, in fact. I believe that Windows XP is the best thing to ever come out of Redmond and I have very few issues with the OS. I actually liked the XP theme when it first came out and I've been happier with Windows XP than any previous Microsoft OS (except maybe the good ol' DOS days). When installed on the right hardware with the right drivers (and with an eye to be wary of poorly written apps), I found that Windows XP was just as stable as any other OS that I'd ever encountered. My personal machine would go months between reboots without a single problem. It's not that there is anything wrong with Windows; it's that if you want the option, if there's any particular thing that you don't like about the way Windows works, you're straight out of luck.
I think that a bit of me was feeling, after being a strictly Windows user ever since version 2.0 (with the requisite mix of DOS back then), that there were a couple of things that had started to annoy me about Windows, which I would rather do without.
For starters, heavy multi-tasking management under Windows had caused me a lot of grief. Maybe it's just because of the nature of my work, but I tend to have a lot of windows open at any given time. I like quick access to the information that I need when I'm working and much like a messy desk, there is a method to my window-madness that only I know. When writing an article (especially big NDA launches), I'd have around 20 IE windows open, Outlook with another 5 - 15 emails, Power Point with NDA presentations, Word with my article, maybe Dreamweaver if I was starting to put it into HTML, not to mention Acrobat, some sort of MP3 player, Trillian and a bunch of explorer windows as well. After a certain point, the cramped taskbar became difficult to use as a locator tool, and while I could ALT+TAB forever, I just felt like I was idle for too long. I knew what it was that I needed to get to, and I knew I had it open, but the process of getting to it was a pain.
The other issue was with the way Windows handled having so many windows opened; after a certain number of windows were opened, stability and performance both went down the drain. Sometimes applications could no longer spawn additional windows or dialog boxes, requiring me to close a handful before I could continue doing anything, and other times, applications would simply crash.
It's not that I was dissatisfied with Windows and the PC experience in general, but I thought it might be time for something new - to see what else was out there.
I've always been a fan of trying alternate Oses - I was even an OS/2 user (both 2.0 and Warp) for a little while in my early years. So, a while back, I conjured up this idea to try using a Mac for a month. At first, it started as just a personal experiment, but it later developed into the foundation for the article that you're reading now. After doing the nec
max is windows only, and at one point it was really Intel only, as they had based some of its pipeline on Intel extensions.
You're generally limited to Blender, Lightwave and Maya for 3d work. which for real commercial animation out of the box leaves you with only Maya. (I know there are a lot of Lightwave fans out there, and I own/use it myself.[ Maya used to be a lot more expensive.] but lightwave lacks any sort of good 3d tracking to make it worth while.)
If there are any others, I would love to know. I've been out of the market for a while...
btw any one know if cinelerra is getting ported to osx?
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Going down to the store is a good idea. I did this for myself last month and was stunned by how well the Macs worked. I thought about it for a while and it made sense. OSX is a clean OS, much like Linux or BSD and requires much less processing power for what it does.
I ended up getting a used PII thinkpad and put Sarge on it. It is a little slow for big honkers like OpenOffice and KDE3 but can easily have multiple documents up and would do everything the reviewer wanted as "work". Running Window Maker and KOffice, I don't have to wait for it. The availability of multiple named workspaces makes it easy for me to organize and find my work. This is still a killer feature of X and free software.
Gigahertz class Macs will do everything just fine. They really are snappy.
The same thing can not be said of the same hardware running Windoze. The OS does not do as much out of the box and most "bundles" of software only include enough to get the most basic work done. You will have to buy/download movie editing software, music ripping software, and other stuff that the Mac just comes with. You might even get your hands on some crippled version of Office that will make you even crazier than Office itself. Worse, everyone knows how Windoze gets buggy and craps out if you load it up with software or just use what you have for a couple of years. Sooner or later, some malware will get through and screw things up for you.
My conclusion was that $1000 was about the price for a decent laptop in either camp but the Mac will be easier. When my mom's PII laptop dies, I'm going to recommend she gets a Mac.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Page 13
.com URL would never work for me in Firefox. Some can get used to these quirks of Firefox and won't have a problem, but I wasn't one of them.
.com will eventually find the site that you are looking for after a short lookup delay.
.com for you in the appropriate places. It's not a huge time saver, but it's a nice feature to have.
Web Browsing
Safari is a tabbed browser much like Firefox and its usage is pretty straightforward. I've been a die-hard IE user ever since IE4 and have always appreciated its rendering speed and enjoyed its compatibility with the majority of websites out there. For an IE user, or any user for that matter, Safari is real easy to get used to.
But before I get into the little features that make Safari a good browser, let me address its biggest shortcoming: rendering speed.
Back before Firefox's release on the PC, the one argument that I'd always hear against IE was that it was too slow compared to lesser used browsers such as Opera. Having used Opera, I could hardly tell any performance difference in rendering speed in comparison to IE. It was the lack of any appreciable difference coupled with no real application level benefits over IE that kept me from using it on the PC.
But when comparing Safari rendering speed to IE, the difference is much more noticeable. Webpages render instantaneously under IE compared to the multiple second delay that exists under Safari. In order to show the difference, I ran a couple of informal tests:
IE (PC) Safari (Mac)
www.anandtech.com 2.825 4.073333333 0.306464812
www.cnn.com 2.75 4.123333333 0.333063864
www.slashdot.org 2.33 2.373333333 0.018258427
www.apple.com 2.625 4.073333333 0.355564648
www.microsoft.com 2.365 2.44 0.030737705
What we see here is that IE on the PC is consistently a lot faster in rendering webpages than Safari, and although the numbers may seem small themselves, they make the Mac (and actually your internet connection) feel a lot slower when browsing normal web pages. Considering the amount of web browsing that we all do on a regular basis, Safari's rendering performance is nothing short of unacceptable.
One solution would be to use Firefox, which is available for OS X, and in doing so, performance is improved tremendously - although Firefox under OS X continues to be slower than IE on a PC.
The performance problem, although alleviated by Firefox, is still a serious issue since I found that I personally preferred using Safari under OS X over Firefox. Safari feels much more polished and looks much more like the rest of the OS. The other problem with Firefox is that scrolling in Firefox is much less smooth than under Safari, and can get annoying when reading large web pages that require lots of scrolling. The other issue I had was that I couldn't seem to find a keyboard shortcut to switch between tabs in Firefox and for whatever reason, the autocomplete URL keyboard shortcut for a
So, now that we know what Apple needs to improve about Safari, what is so great about this browser?
Built-in pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing support are both must-haves with any current generation browser.
Safari also includes a built-in Google search bar and a download manager; again, nothing revolutionary, but a nice must-have for a web browser.
As with the rest of OS X, keyboard shortcuts are plentiful in Safari. As you would expect, Command-T will open a new tab while Command-N will open a new browser window. There is no auto-complete URL function, unfortunately (e.g. no equivalent to IE's CTRL-Enter). Although, just typing in the URL sans www. and
While Safari lacks an autocomplete URL keystroke combination, it does make navigating to a particular directory on a website easier without unnecessary typing. For example, if you want to visit www.anandtech.com/mac/, you can simply type in anandtech/mac and Safari will fill in the www. and
You cannot watch mpeg2 video in Quicktime without buying an addon.
This is true, but then again you don't have to limit yourself to what's bundled with the system. Two capable open source players available for the Mac are VLC and MPlayerOSX. As for editiing I can't help, since I have not needed to investigate this.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I did read all of Anand's earlier blogs on this.
From the parts of the final that I did read it seemed to me that his comparison is between a regular Mac OS X system and a Windows high performance gaming system that behaves well on a regular basis as a work machine. I wonder where they found that Windows system or at least who configured and maintains it and at what cost in time and money. Regarding price, It would seem that a fair comparison would be to a name brand PC like Dell or HP with similar specs and features and with similar support options. Dell's $599 TV advertisement really set me up for some serious sticker shock when I went to their website to price high end work machines. Its also my understanding that the support included in the price is basically for hardware only. As a support system for hardware and software on a work machine AppleCare is an incredible service. It costs about 10% but at least its available and based on my experience it is fantastic service and a real bargain. I haven't seen anything like it for any PC. For a hobby/gaming machine I can see Anand's point about price because you don't need to pay for a lot of the features and quality of a PowerMac and you don't need a hardware and software support option and you don't have to account for all of the effort that it takes to keep it working well. You just need to run it until you discard it for the next speed bump or until it won't take the next Windows upgrade. To some extent its an Apples and Oranges comparison.
You can grab the edge of the Windows taskbar and expand it like any window, to about half the size of the screen. If you make it not always on top you can then switch to any running application in two mouse clicks, one to bring the taskbar to the top, the second to select the application. You can also put lots of programme groups on the taskbar and pretend it's a Program Manager.
I do have to say that i am not done reading yet but i do really like his out look. It's always nice for me to hear the outlook of the windows world. there are 2 points that i don't think are very accurate however. Those are the memory and the video card. I don't understand why he says it has DDR400 RAM? my G5 which sadly is one of the 1.6ghz towers has DDR2700 RAM so why would a later more powerful machine have slower RAM? The other issue with the Video card is something i saw as well before i made my purchase. However what is so far unnoted is that you can get a Radeon 9800 pro (128mb vRAM) for only 45 bucks more. I know it's still more but double the video power foronly $45 bucks? yes please!
OS X has X11 built in. you can run, at the same time:
OS X "Aqua"a complete KDE or Gnome desktop environment, including KOffice, OpenOffice, Gimp...
ssh -x into any Linux box anywhere
run multiple Windows or x86 Linux emulations in VirtualPC
VNC into your office Windows PC to work with your specific software
distribute all those windows onto virtual desktops, either in OS X (extra app.), or using your X11 environment (KDE, some WM)
too lazy to open up all those options; usually i don't do more than OS X or X11; wouldn't touch Windows (last time for the online german tax system :-( ).
regarding screen estate: every powerbook supports monitor spanning: so you can have a 17in widescreen laptop + a 23in LCD; but your neck will hurt (like from watching tennis from close by). one reason to do it: the window minimizing effect: put the dock on one side of one screen, and minimize a window on the other one. better than any game (for five trys...)./p/
"I could go on, because there are tons of "little things" that make it so nice."
Yeah! Like it's awesome ablity to default any file manager you open into a "details" view.
Oh.. wait. It can't do that.
I like OS X, sure. But there are a lot of "little" things about it that bug the hell out of me, which is why I still prefer linux.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Running the risk of suggesting a Lexus when you have a Rolls-Royce (I don't know that much about Gentoo), I have had fantastic luck running X applications using FinkCommander via Fink. It requires that Apple's X11 (or OSS equivalent) be installed but I have been running Gimp, OpenOffice, and GNUCash with no troubles.
I've used many many platforms over the years, but I never owned a Macintosh until a few months ago. I still won't give up my x86 system, but I do like the mac and find myself using it more and more for "simple" tasks like writing a letter for example. It's hard to put your finger on, but the Mac OS is comfortable and friendly in a way Windows XP is not. That said, like the writer I would never give up my REAL computer. kevin
TaskSwitch XP might be of interest to you. It's a Windows alt-tab replacement that lets you click on object windows as opposed to bashing tab repeatedly (you can still bash tab if you like) and it shows screenshots of the windows you hover over. Open source project.
...they want their cut-n-paste Mac troll back.
In an attempt to sound unbiased, the guy basically ruins the article...
The line that caught my eye:
$3000 for a top of the line G5 isn't a bargain regardless of what you compare it to.
Umm... it may not be a bargain per say, but it is most certainly on par with pre-built name brand x86 offerings... running quickly through the Dell configurator I was easily able to make a Dimension XPS hit >$3000 with similar RAM, HD, optical drives and software components selected...
Playing an FPS on any console is not fun or even comparable to playing it with a mouse/keyboard combo.
As well as playing an RTS on the console. The menu hunting is just not very intuitive on a console with you only having a few analog sticks and 4-6 buttons.
And with a pc I only have to upgrade a few pieces of hardware (if I choose to) to stay current. Console makers rarely make their console backwards compatible.
Consoles do have games that work best on them, whereas pcs have games that work best on them. That's why I own the 3 newer consoles as well as my windows gaming pc, my gameboy and also my linux boxen for servers and other stuff.
There's room in my home for everything. Only reason I own no Macs is that I can't afford the price of their systems.
You can enable login for the root account with the Netinfo Manager utility. Under previous versions of OS X you had to follow a long and slightly risky procedure to manually edit the user data; under Panther (and possible Jaguar) there is a handy "Enable root account" menu item.
You don't need to do this to use sudo, of course.
We have a 20" G5 iMac.
The hardware performance is OK (nothing special) but its design is awesome. As is pretty much everything about OS X. But there is a huge disadvantage in software choices compared to Windows (I'm a recent switcher... I've found replacements for most programs, but not for everything). So I'm surprised that Anand didn't talk about Windows performance under Virtual PC 7.
Unix based window managers (along with others) have had virtual desktops for years, where did Microsoft drop the ball?
:o)
Without the use of a shell replacement? It's right here (only a 161KB installation file and no restart required
It's a Windows XP Power Toy. It's not as zip-zip! as the unix variety, but it's about as configurable (multiple wallpapers per desktop, WINKEY + 1-4 for switching, even a full-screen view!), . It acts as a toolbar which cannot be made smaller or put into the notif area, so it takes up a bit of taskbar real estate on < 1024x768 resolutions. I like it, but as I mentioned, takes up a bit of taskbar real-estate (IMHO).
Screenies!
the default view after installation
the right-click on the toolbar thinger
desktop settings (the choosing of multiple wallpapers)
shortcut settings (for switching between desktops and full-screen)
view of full -screen
That's all folks!
Okay somebody said this already. 20 IE windows? Sheesh. This is the editor of a hardcore tech site? IE faster than firefox? Is he on E? What the hell? Since when has Gecko been slower than Mosaic? Also has he heard about spyware? www.getfirefox.com
http://www.blender3d.org/cms/Animatics_for_Motion_ Pictures.393.0.html/
Blender helped with Spiderman-2
Wings3D is also good for doing models in.
Note the difference between the http addresses of first page of the article and the 1 page version.
First page: http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2232
1 page version: http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2232
Just replace everything between ".com/" and ".aspx?" with "printarticle"
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
I think this is a generally well written article. It was long, but I was left wanting him to talk about so much more. Some gripes of his were due to lack of info/knowledge, but nothing major. Some things he likes are going to get even better very soon, like Mail's slew of new features coming in Tiger. Anyhow, my story reads much like Anand's. I've been using PCs since a Tandy 1000EX 8088, and have been building computers since I was in 5th grade. I was always a die hard PC guys until about 3 years ago, and I've slowly all but abandoned PCs. What I like most, is a general trend: less hatred between the two camps. I hate petty crap, people seem more open minded these days. PC guys seem to respect Mac guys and Mac guys PC guys, maybe not completely, but it's not a blind hatred anymore. Multiple systems can only benefit everyone, as it breeds innovation. Thumbs up to Anand.
One other nice thing which he did not touch on, was that OS X ships with a very nice text editor that's actually useful (TextEdit), unlike Wordpad or Notepad. It handles rich text well, and can save in RTF or (and this is kind of neat) .Doc format! In fact it can even read most Word documetns as well, though currently it lacks table support which is a big stumbling point as just like with HTML, people LOVE to use tables.
Fortunatley in Tiger TextEdit adds table support for reading word docs (and possibly for editing?)
I find TextEdit to be totally capabile for all the document creation I do (though again, I'll admit tbales would be kind of nice mostly to read other peoples stuff).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Seriously, if you miss PC games get an XBox and a PS2 and be done with it. I can think of no game category that is not ripe with offerings on the consoles. And I can think of a number of categories (like the whole rhythm game area) that is pretty much a wasteland on the PC.
I'll admit Half Life 2 looks pretty cool. But you know what? It will be out in a year or so for a console anyway, and I can play it then - and a number of console games support keyboards and mice. I was on that PC game upgrade wheel for a time, and it just got old (and expensive).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When you get OS X, Terminal.app is sitting right there - like an XTerm with a real bash shell, only with MUCH better system integration than you'll see from Cygwin! You can drag files from the Finder (explorer) into the shell and it expands the whole path out.
X11 is also right there, as are libraries to compile X11 apps (when you install the dev tools).
OS X also has an SSH deamon included that you enable/disable through the standard config GUI (same with Apache which is also bunded by default). And of course that means you have real ssh/scp capabilities included by default. It also uses CUPS and Samba, also built in.
You were right about one thing - having the full set of UNIX utilities included by default in an OS with a great GUI is indeed a killer app. That's why so many technical people are going for mac laptops, then desktops.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
and frankly, I think everyone update software too fast and patches too slow..
Exposé is a very fast and efficient way of switching to a desired browser window, competing with tabs for ultimate poweruserness.
The feature doesn't (yet) expose the individual tabs within an application, so you'd have to have the browser pages open in separate windows.
Separate windows also allow for faster drag&drop between them, another feature which was praised in the article.
J
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR's and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
Peace
Troll.
Please post URLs backing up your claims.
yeeucckk.
The best comparison that I know of is http://www.xvsxp.com/ XvsXP
Both OSes' features are compared in detail such as:
-Login
-Find/Search
-Drag & Drop
-Network capabilities
I learned much about my new Mac on this site, as it explains how to do certain tasks on both Systems. Every switcher should have a good look here. Even a Windows-savy friend of mine learnt new stuff about XP there.
This is not a troll, although it may at first seem like that is my intention.
The biggest barrier to entry for Apple's products has been cost. It's clearly stated in the article as well. There is no way to get around this fact. If you buy a Mac, you pay a premium. And you can argue all you want about how that premium buys you a more reliable and integrated system, but the fact is when 3,500 dollars buys you less than what the competition is hocking, many people are going to be turned off.
And I find three ways this could go. One, Apple tanks. With the company gone under, I can only hope that they'd fully release OS X to the open source community. Eventually, I'd hypothesize that an Intel clone would be made. With this hypothetical clone, the hardware barrier to entry would be nil. Assuming, of course, emulating Classic could be done at a decent speed. If I recall, OS X itself is highly portable - as were its NeXT predecessors.
Next solution. Apple designs a tight, Intel box. Or AMD. They use a custom design, but it is an Apple branded machine with Intel inside. This is believed to be a route Apple would never go. But, I'm all for it - if it could be done. There needs to be a vendor who can sell chips to Apple at a low enough price that Apple can reduce their own margins. Heck, sell at a loss even - and play the Microsoft.
Also, the Mac does need to be pumped as a gaming platform. This isn't as hard as it seems. Hardware wise, currently, no. But for the casual gamer to mid-performance gamer, Apple could easily sway the mindset. It just needs to put some high profile ads out like has been done for the iPod. I'm sure the iMac could fulfill the mid-range gamer's needs and it's a sleek design to boot.
Now, the third solution - games. With the release of the PS III, X-Box II, and Gamecube all on the PowerPC chipset - the market for these will become so huge that Apple's prices, by scale of economics, will drop. In which case, the barrier is removed.
In all cases, though, price is the key factor.
I give Mac 1,000,000 bonus points when it comes to the design and usability of the OS and wish very much they could port it to x86, but am I the only one here who thinks it should perform a little better? I'm still running my WinXP system on a 1.6 Ghz Tbred with 1 Gig of RAM and it doesn't slow down a hitch unless I start doing CPU intensive multitasking, like video encoding + multiple browser windows + mp3 playback.
I fear the same thing is going to happen with Longhorn. Between Avalon and the 3D desktop and everything else I fear it's going to slow the system to a crawl unless you have top of the line hardware. And donning my tinfoil hat, maybe that's the point - the industry is now choosing to boost lagging hardware sales through the OS instead of just games.
Looking at the performance of OSX doing non-CPU intensive tasks I can't help but think that Apple has already gone that route.
Is it too much to ask for a simple, clean, effecient UI that has multitasking convenience built-in without fancy graphics and translucence and animations and all the other useless crap?
"Trying is only the first step towards failure." - Homer
Its just too hard to not go with the 95%. What I like to do is give in on the OS, but run neato GNU and other cool apps on Windows, and write my own little stuff using the tons of dev environments out there. Forget the OS ... its the apps you live in!
He can use one of the 'browsers' that wraps itself around the IE browser to add functionality. MyIE2, SlimBrowser, etc. come to mind.
I have been using Macs at home since 1994, but also put in at least 40 hours per week on Windows 2000 at work, and before that, NT.
Here are the things I notice most when making the daily switch back and forth from Windows to Macs.
1. On a Mac, when you start typing, the arrow cursor disappears, and doesn't reappear until you move the mouse. I was so used to this feature, that I really noticed its absence in Windows. I was constantly highlighting a word, typing, then having to reach over and move the arrow cursor away from what I had just typed, so that I could see if I typed it right. I watched Windows users in action, and found that they would use the mouse to place the text cursor, then instinctively move the arrow cursor out of their way.
2. With Macs, background windows are not live until after the first click. Mac people do this all the time: Highlight some text in Document A, then switch to Document B, highlight and copy some text, then switch back to Document A and paste the copied text, replacing the highlighted text. You can't do this in Windows, unless you are very very careful about clicking a non-clickable part of the window. Even then, some Windows apps lose their highlight no matter where you click. Interestingly, MS Excel works like Mac apps in this regard.
3. Navigating sub-menus. This demos best if you have your Recent Items set to a really high number. From the Apple Menu, you can pull down to Recent Items, then across and down to the item you want. Or you can go directly to the item you want, diagonally across 'open space.' The freaky part is this -- move the mouse straight up and down quickly, and the various sub-menus come and go -- or move the mouse diagonally, and quite slowly, to go directly to an item in Recent Items. Try it, and see how weirdly brilliant the Mac UI can be.
4. Single-click to get a text cursor. Double-click to highlight a word. Triple-click to highlight a line. Quadruple-click to highlight a paragraph. These shortcuts are almost universal in Mac applications. Unfortunately, recent versions of IE for Windows are so broken that you can't even highlight the text from part of one word to part of another. (This was the final straw that made me switch permanently to Firefox for Windows.)
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Every article on the Mac and OS X makes a big deal about the lack of games for the platform. While I agree, what I don't understand is why use your computer for games when there is PS2, XBox and GameCube. These platforms are cheap and there are tons of games for them and the controllers are great. If I want to play a game, I fire up my Xbox or GameCube. Would never even consider using the computer.
Let me get this straight. You have a DUAL 2.5 GZ system with half a gig of memory, and running office is sluggish? Dragging and dropping pictures taxes the system???
I think you just fed the troll... of course Office isn't sluggish. I use it on a 600MHz iBook and it's perfectly fine (though its interface quirks are irritating, but that's another story). I can drag and drop pictures all day long, rarely have I ever seen less than snappy response. I use a 1GHz G4 quicksilver at work and it just ain't slow. I haven't used a G5, this is an education establishment for god's sake - but I would not expect it to feel slow!! If that user's experiences are genuine (which I doubt), there must be something seriously wrong with his setup.
In all honesty I don't think the systems is as slow as Anand makes it out to be. Most of the inherent sluggishness is more perception than reality. Menus are given more delay for the animations to run which makes the system seem to respond more slowly. While I forget exactly where you can change this, it is possible to lower the delay and make the system respond faster.
As for office, I have a 800MHz Powerbook G4 and it runs the latest Office 2004 fine. Much of the problems are the same as those in the Windows world where animations, sound and all that other relatively useless crap slow things down. Additionally, while the Mac BU is among the best group of programmers in Redmond, their own engineers admit that the releases for OS X are more of a boiler plate hack job than anything else and that there's a lot of work ahead of them in regards to removing legacy code, and cleaning it up. There's an interesting interview I read where they point this out as being one of the problems getting Unicode and long filename support in Office 2004. If they ever stop adding useless features and focus on optimizing, it would actually be a great product instead of an acceptable one.
Personally, while I like the idea behind OpenOffice, I'm waiting for someone (Hello, Apple or Omni Group!) to create an OS X office suite. Based on what I've seen of the OpenOffice port to OS X, it simply looks like it will be as bloated in inefficient as MS Office.
What I'm looking for is something like Camino is to Mozilla, A platform specific implementation of OpenSource ideas. Ideally, the new suite would use the same file format as OpenOffice and offer full compatibility with MS Office documents. The difference, however, is that this will take advantage of all the cool OS X technologies like Quartz, CoreGraphics, Spotlight, Voiceover, etc. That is what I want in an office suite... not another boilerplate hack like MS Office and I fear OpenOffice.