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Pros and Cons of Switching From Windows To Mac
It's been a couple of years since Apple ran their Switcher ads — but folks are still making the switch. Rockgod writes to point us to his list of pros and cons after he switched from Windows to Mac recently. From the article: "It took me a long time to be convinced that Windows 3.1 was a better program launcher than X-Tree Gold, but it happened eventually. Since then, I have been a sucker for every upgrade — 95, 98, NT 4.0, 2000, XP... I bought the cheapest Mac available, a Mac Mini with a single-core Intel chip and the minimum of RAM — 512 MB. It cost me AU$949. Since plugging it in, I have barely used my $3000 Windows desktop... All this time later, I have almost exclusively switched to the Mac."
PRO - you won't be using windows
CON - Your sexual preference could come into question...not that theres anythign wrong with that of course
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
First, it isn't 10 Pros, and 10 Cons, it's 10 Pros and Cons (which I guess is technically what the article "says").
I recently ordered and am expecting a Nov 29 ship date (why?) for a new Mac Mini, the very first Mac I'll have ever owned. I'd never hesitated in the past to recommend to friends and family an Apple over a Windows box, and those who chose Mac virtually never came back with support issues.
As the blogger states, he's never looked back - my reasons for getting a Mac are more for being able to test my software on all platforms. I will review my experiences in my journal when the box gets here and I've burned it in for a few laps. I'm looking forward to it.
For the record, though the author loves his machine, I'd guess anyone considering today a Mac should look at a heftier configuration. (I'm getting the dual-core, super drive, 2G memory, 160G drive configuration.) I guessing I'll be happy with this box.
You'll just be able to buy more of those $300 jeans with all the money you will save not buying games.
A $3,000 Windows desktop?! Fucking gamers...
signal, noise, to me it's all the same.
"The GUI: It didn't take me long to get used to it. It is super smooth, even on the cheap Mac Mini .. It makes Windows XP look very late-nineties."
.. I don't run as an administrator. This simple action protects you from about 99% of malicious software. It is a simple fact."
"It's Unix!: You've got a very, very nice GUI but under the hood is good ole' Unix"
"It is only when you open the Terminal and get to a shell that you see all the ancient Unix directory structures, combined with Apple's more hip and happening directory names like Applications, System, etc"
"Notice I didn't say anything about viruses, trojans, spy-ware? I haven't been infected in three months on the Apple
"unless you are a rabid freedom-fighter it is a step above any Linux distribution out there. KDE and GNOME are still a long way away from achieving the polish that Apple has delivered with Mac OS X"
davecb5620@gmail.com
Our company did last year, city of Vienna did, it should work out very nicely for you too. Our former XP users love KDE.
No need to put yourself through pains when you can improve security, save money and achieve a good deal of vendor independence all at the same time. Why exchange overpriced software (Microsoft) for overpriced hardware (Apple), when you can run Free software on the industry standard (and thus inexpensive) hardware?
Knowing everything I know now, I only regret that we did not migrate to GNU/Linux sooner.
Probably more relevent to the /. crowd would be this article from someone that switched to Ubuntu from OS X and then went back to OS X:
http://digg.com/apple/Mac_OS_X_vs_Ubuntu
Let me say that if I could go into a store right now and buy a reasonably priced copy of OX X that would run on a plain PC, I would be running OS X at the moment (Yes, I understand that running on *any* hardware would make OS X less stable, but I would be willing to take the risk...and huge amounts of people would rather pay more for Apple's hardware and stability, and I wish Apple could see that and make us both happy).
But since that isn't going to happen, I'm really considering going to Ubuntu because I think MS is just going insane with Vista.
As the above mention, he doesn't think Ubuntu is too far behind OS X.
I would be interested in hearing others thoughts on this?
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Back to the insipid article - yep, I'm on XP, nope I'm not going to Vista. And I'm probably not going to Apple - too much of a pain in the ass for another vendor lockin.
When I get around to it (next year or so, perhaps), I will start playing with linux again and getting Photoshop and Vue to behave on crossover. Until then, XP just keeps on kicking (and rebooting and rebooting).
Well, I have to go know, Zone Alarm wants me to reboot and I really should do something more useful than sit in front of this screen.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Since then, I have been a sucker for every upgrade -- 95, 98, NT 4.0, 2000, XP...
He at least had the good sense to skip Windows ME.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
But this is a great way to generate comments.
:Must be a slow news day
What's bad about discussing someone who made the switch?
was
davecb5620@gmail.com
God I hate the mouse acceleration on my Mac Mini. Either you set the acceleration high so you don't need, you know, the entire desk to move the mouse a reasonable distance at the loss of fine movements, or you set the acceleration low so that you gain precision at the cost of having to drag and drop the mouse a few dozen times to get the cursor across the desktop. Windows doesn't have this problem. If you move the mouse a tiny amount your cursor moves in tandem; move it a lot and so does the cursor. Wow. Why can't my Mac do that? It's so retarted.
Don't get me wrong here, I love my Mac, but the mouse thing drives me nuts.
I'm buying my Mom an iMac, for the sole reason it's SEXY. It's slim, compact, and doesn't make alot of noise. Better tha the dell portable desktop they just made. Macs are like computing with a built in safety net. You can almost never break it. The only people I know that hate windows are the poor souls that manage to still run AOL, download weather bug, and install every piece of software that wants to install itself. I run windows XP, with firewall and firefox, and I watch what I download. My virus infection rate? 0. People need to LEARN how to surf, instead of just going out there all willynilly.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
This are done slightly differently on OSX than on Windows. Getting used to adequately use OSX takes time and experience. This can be frustrating. It *really* helps if you have friends who can help you make the best out of the OS.
:-).
/. ...). Learn, ask questions. After a time, you'll probably like your mac more than your windows machine. Why? It depends. Generally, it's for the details. The little intuitive things that makes you happier using a Mac.
One simple example. I love Spotlight. This feature changes the way we work with computers. If you switch from Windows and no one told you to try if that feature is for you, than you're missing one potential benefit for switching. Same for many other features. Mail is very good too (I'm an open source fanboy, but hey, I'll use the best free/open tools available
Be curious. Try things. Discover your new OS. Maybe the icons view is not for you and you'll prefer the column view? It's worthed to attend to some Mac User Groups in your area. They'll be able to show you some nice tricks, and, important, answer the questions you have. (oh, there's some great mac-oriented mailing lists for that too)
Switching is *not* that easy, especially if you're not a geek (but since this is
Animoog.org
I'm enticed by the new iMacs -- particularly that juicy looking 24" -- but it would appear that it's impossible to add hardware to those machines. Over the years, I've gotten used to extending the life of a PC by upgrading components like memory, vidcard, etc. I get the impression that few MacHeads do things that way. I'm not sure I could get used to that way of life, since I love to tinker, and it's kept my last desktop machine usable since early 2002 and it's still my main workhorse. I'm guessing that the Pro models are more upgradable, but those prices(!) keep me from making that jump. Has anyone managed to open up a new imac and replace a hdd or the like?
.nosig
While this is indisputably true, it isn't really the point.
Do most of the households in the world have a telephone? That is a far more relevant question.
And the sad fact is, yes, most of the households in the world most likely do. Despite Kofi Annan's 2000 statement to the contrary, it is very probable that more than 50% of households in 2000 did, and with the explosive growth of cell phones in Asia and Africa, an almost certainty that >50% do today.
Pros: everything
Cons: nothing (if you're a gamer, get a 360 or something... yes its a decent Microsoft product, unlike Windows and their other crap)
One of my fellow goons created this to illustrate the mentality of someone going through the Windows > OS X switch, and I thought it was relevant to this discussion, as it perfectly illustrates the joy and agony of moving from one platform to another:
The OS X Satisfaction Chart
My roommate got the Mac, and I have to say that I was highly disappointed at using it.
It is just as slow, crashy, inconvinient and annoying as the rest (With a few less annoying "update me" popups than Windows, perhaps).
Expose is cool, and the smooth movements of some appearing windows (rather than a one-frame screen-update) is also nice. But these are the only 2 serious improvements I've seen. Things are still very slow to launch, programs crash, and things fail for configuration reasons.
It doesn't have any easy and useful way of exposing available keyboard shortcuts (as in KDE's readily available shortcut settings dialogs, Emacs's show-keybindings command, etc).
For people with a background of both Windows and KDE, who had no troubles with either or with Gnome/etc, it is still very difficult to figure out how to make shortcuts to applications, copy files (rather than make shortcuts), etc.
All in all, the Mac is yet-another-lousy-GUI, in my opinion.
Disclaimer: I'm a KDE fan [though I believe all of today's GUIs, including KDE are very lousy], and not too fond of closed-source applications in general.
Yep, it's true: OS X is a better desktop OS than Linux. Who knew?
Pro: You have a lot of high end computers.
Con: You've shown how Western society values electronics more than charity/equity. - I don't understand your Con. Even if it was the case, that he has shown something, why is that a Con?
Pro: You have a choice of computers.
Con: Most people in the world don't have a telephone. - How is that a Con for him?
You can't handle the truth.
I use on a daily basis: Mac OS/X Tiger, Ubuntu, Fedora Core and Windows XP Pro. I consider myself an advanced user and a very good sysadmin on many platforms. I still prefer Windows.... - why? I'm not sure myself! (No I do not work for Microsoft). I've been trying to switch to OS/X as a primary OS admitting that it's driven mostly because of peer pressure - it's just not happening for me. I don't feel that compelled to switch - I don't see a good reason and I'm being opening minded about it, I feel like it's much more trouble than it's worth. Is there anyone else that feels the same way? I feel alone!
So, I have a 3840x1200 desktop (2x23" displays), and I can move from side-to-side with ~4 inches of mouse movement on the desktop if I move it fast. At the same time, when moving slowly, it's perfectly pixel-accurate. I guess I don't see the problem. FWIW, I have my tracking speed set about mid-way.
As far as I can see, it works in exactly the way you describe as how you want it to work. Not so "retarted" after all... Maybe you need a better mouse ?
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Okay, so he purchased the lowest priced Mini Mac. Here is the specs:
1.66GHz Intel Core Duo processor
2MB L2 Cache
667MHz Frontside Bus
512MB memory (667MHz DDR2 SDRAM)
60GB Serial ATA hard drive
Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
Built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0
Apple Remote
I'm just curious what the specs are on his $1500 Windows PC. Unless he bought it like 3 years ago (which would make this an unfair comparison), then it's hard to imagine that the Windows machine doesn't come with atleast a DVD burner and a bigger hard drive. It probably comes with more memory (very important) and a faster processor (isn't important for most people) as well. I've looked at getting a Mini Mac and when you try to customize it, the price gets ridiculous.
Want an extra 512MB of RAM? $75
Want a bigger hard drive? Add $50 for 80GB, $150 for 120GB (!!), and $250 for 160GB (!!!)
The next model up atleast comes with a faster processor (1.83GHz vs 1.66GHz), a DVD burner, and a bigger hard drive (80GB vs 60GB) but that costs $200 more alone. They offer you a base model knowing you will want more, and then rip you off when you customize it. I know thats how Apple "rolls", and they provide the "system of your dreams", but still the price can easily become anything but that.
To solve the Apple's mouse acceleration problem, install a utility called SteerMouse or better yet, buy a third party mouse like Microsoft and Logitech and use their driver. Then your mouse acceleration will be just like Windows. Switchers are always complaining about this and rightly so, it's a pain if you aren't used to it.
"Pro: You have a choice of computers.
Con: Most people in the world don't have a telephone."
Con- you are a fucktard that is using a computer to type this message... and I'll bet you have a telephone.
Pro- Your so mentally retarded you don't realize you are a hypocrite.
I couldn't pass it up. It's got 256 Megs of RAM OS-X 10.3. I use it, too, for checking how sites I design look on a Mac. Even given that it's old and a bit slow, the experience is not bad at all. I think a Mac Mini is in my future, too.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I have a small fleet of old laptops in my lab and Xtree is on all of them, been using Xtree for years.
I use a Mac as well and Quicksilver is better.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Home User: No real downside since most home users surf the internet, send e-mail, do a little word processing, play some MP3's. Pretty basic stuff, easily covered by a Mac.
Gamer: Lots of cons, no real pros. Are there any games for a Mac that do not suck?
Business User: Many of the industry specific vertical apps are written for a baseline of Win2K. Some of these vertical apps *MAY* run on Win98 but many of them use very specific features that are tied very closely to the WinNT/2K kernels. Almost none of them, unless they are browser based and standards compliant, work with a Mac. Then again, the server side of many of these vertical apps require that you run them on a Win2k/XP/2k3 system running IIS.
Overall I'd say OSX is an excellent choice for Windows users who want the advantages of UNIX without having to learn arcane lore, for Linux users who need a laptop that will just work without requiring a virgin sacrifice during a full moon and for people who need to talk to a variety of different systems in a heterogenuous network. It's a bad choice for Microsoft executives, MCSEs or anyone else who makes a living on Windows being the dominant OS in the market. If you're somewhere in the middle you should probably pick OSX for the better security. It's not perfect, but any improvement is better than nothing.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I completely agree with the Mouse Acceleration issue. If you use nothing but a Mac, you get use to it. But if you switch back and forth between PC/Linux/MacOS X, it's a HUGE pain.
Another big concern is that you can't change the system-wide font sizes on a Mac. I'm stuck having to upgrade my grandparents 17" LCD (1280x1024) to a larger 19 or 20 inch screen.
Why? They can't read the system-wide fonts, and there is no way to increase the system-wide font size except for dropping the screen resolution down. Of course if you go too low, you lose out on desktop space. The only option for me anyway is to buy my grandparents a larger monitor and run it in 1024x768 so they have larger fonts, or switch them back to Windows.
I feel sad for people who invested in those 30" Apple LCD's (which are overpriced now compared to the Dell's - ~$1250@ Dell, or $2000@ Apple). You've got this glorious amount of workspace, made impossible to read by tiny-text.
Windows does a VERY good job with handicap-assisted features. It has themes and font-styles built in for hard-of-site users. Apple has some features (magnifier, read-text-aloud), but they still lag severely behind Windows and even Linux (KDE and Gnome have most of the features seen in Windows, plus you can change system-wide font sizes).
I have a hunch that design has taken a step ahead on usability on this front, particularly seeing that Microsoft has had this stuff in Windows for more than a decade, debuting in Windows 95/98.
Actually, the iMac could be upgraded in many ways. The CPU and GPU are socketed... so they could very well be upgraded down the road. Also, you can throw a good amount of ram in these systems.
The HD, RAM, etc. are obviously upgradable (We Mac users are sheep, but not THAT bad!), in fact, it's not that difficult.
If you need upgrades beyond USB 2 and Firewire, you really need a Mac Pro.
You'll just be able to buy more of those $300 jeans with all the money you will save not buying games.
Woah and I thought I had some money left money for a PS3. Actually not that it matters, my PC friend didn't either.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I like the level-headedness of the article, since there seems to be so few level-headed discussions when it comes to mac vs. ms. I'm thinking about buying my first mac. I went down to the Apple store the other day and played around for a few hours. I have to say that I was impressed.
"I don't understand your Con. Even if it was the case, that he has shown something, why is that a Con?"
If there is gross inequality in society, it tends to result in revolutions between the poor and the rich. Civil war tends to be a con. While switching from a $3000AU Windows to $1000AU Mac isn't likely to be the sole cause of such a revolution, it certainly paints a picture of a society more concerned with trivial details, than putting even a tenth of that money into something that matters to his community or world.
"How is that a Con for him?"
See above. Not only that, they can't even phone him up to tell him they think his OS switch is very important, considering there are $3000 worth of technology sitting around.
Pro: You have a lot of high end computers.
Con: You've shown how Western society values electronics more than charity/equity.
Stop posting on Slashdot and join the International Youth Core then!
But seriously, buying electronics actually helps these people because it sends jobs to places like India and China. Wheras if the electronics industry did not exist, then they'd be unable to feed themselves and be stuck with living on meager charity handouts.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Thing is, the small footprint of the Mini is appealing, and now that it can run Windows XP I thought about upgrading to an Intel Mac Mini some time in the future. So I did some price checking, and to get the spec of Mac Mini I want, 1.8Ghz intel, 1GB memory, 120GB HD, DVDRW and so forth, it'll cost me about 700 quid from Apple's site. Plus I'd have to add at least 60 quid to get a Windows XP licence, My local store, on the other hand, has a small footprint HP PC for £400 that comes with that same spec - actually, a 200GB hard disk in fact. So what it boils down to is that I'd have to pay 360 quid extra just to run OSX.
Granted, my Mac Mini is still working fine, and I'm not upgrading just yet, but the cost is a major consideration and right now it's not making financial sense to get a Mac Mini. Certainly, if someone could get a proper release of OSX - not the warez Developers Edition running on a PC, I'd go for that.
"I just backed over a family of four in my SUV, and I never looked back!"
"I was miraculously born with no neck, and I never looked back!"
and so on...
Really, there's nothing wrong with being straight.
Finder > View > Font size.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I used to use Windows exclusively, with Linux at work when I had to. I recently got a Mac and figured that I'd still use Win32 most of the time. Boy was I wrong.
After using OS X for a few months, I'm very happy to use it *all* the time. My 'favorite' apps--Firefox, PowerPoint, Excel, Word, iTunes, PhotoShop--all run there. After I figured out the OS it seemed slick and easy to use compared to Windows. And the things I like about Unix are all there at the command line when I want them. Now my PC is for games only, and with the amount of hassle of PC gaming, it is second string there to consoles.
-m
When I got my Mac, the control panel and features gave me no problem whatsoever. Very neatly organized, common-sense names..... But when I tried Vista last, the control panel was terrible... Different then XP, but by no means more user friendly. Might have changed since when I tried it (Beta 2 or Pre-RC1), but doubtful....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
I bought my first Mac a year ago, and honestly it will likely be the last.
Despite what the fanboys say, there are just too many things that are irritating or poorly implemented (can you say "Finder?"), and too many places where you're forced into doing things the "Mac way", even if there are better alternatives.
I've given this machine a go for a year as my primary machine, and find it slow, crash prone, and often inefficient in the hoops through which one has to jump to do otherwise simple tasks.
Added to that is the relative lack of quality freeware and open source apps and utilities (compared to Windows or Linux platforms). There are at least a dozen such programs that I relied on on a daily basis on Windows. In almost every case I was boxed into paying what I considered an overly high price for a commercial app on the Mac.
Overall though it's the cumulation of a hundred little things that has convinced me that the Mac is not the machine for me. I just find the whole affair annoying, and I always seem be stopping work to change something that shouldn't have happened. A good example is the Dock, which invariably covers up a scroll bar or other part of what I'm working on, and which honestly is much less efficient than a good old Windows Task bar.
Maybe on a 30" monitor this doesn't happen, but on a 12" Powerbook it's an endless source of irriation. It's just bad design.
Three Squirrels
*sigh* yet another /. circle jerk on how Windows is inferior to other operating systems. Reading slashdot when Linux, Microsoft or Apple come up is like watching Fox News during elections.
FTA
"On a 19" [monitor], the available screen space is used more efficiently - the shared menu bar and the dock being the main reasons."
Yeah, but on a Apple's 30" monitor it sucks. When you have a window open and positioned, say, in the lower RH corner and you need to access the menu bar, it is a long drag to move the mouse to the upper LH corner. And often you can accidentally click on the desktop or other window along the way and lose focus of the application's menu bar causing you to go back and repeat the procedure.
I like OSX but this design feature should be a user's choice.
HA!
Back in my day if you wanted graphics, you taped a picture to your monitor. As far as color we had none. We were given black or white and loved it.
This works for all Cocoa apps:
0 119152725322&query=Quartz%2Bdebug%2Bmenu
http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html
But the Finder isn't Cocoa. You can set Desktop and folder font size in the Finder's view settings, but if you want to change the font size in the menu, you'll need to wait for 10.5 or play with the following -- It can change the scaling of any application, including the Finder:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006
Son of a bitch. Thank you so much for that! I humbly retract most of my previous comments. :)
Thanks for the links! I'll definitely check them out.
You stop getting conned by M$ and become a pro user.
If you're trying to land a job with Gartner, you'll have to stop posting anonymously.
Blank until
I find it funny that Vienna switched to OS X before Microsoft got Windows code name "Vienna" out the door, but then again, I'm a geek.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
In the same way, MS Windows, if you run simple applications and games, was a very good choice, particularly through the 90's when people were migrating from Unix and Apple had trouble refreshing Mac OS. Now, however, with vista being increasingly delayed and features dropping away, Mac OS X is becoming a very viable alternative. It is here now, it works, it has a time tested CL interface, and in many ways there is much less vendor lock in than with MS. For instance, the OS Update does not require IE, although MS has gotten rid of that limitation in exchange for an update process that insures the User is running a version of MS Windows that MS believes is legitimate.
You know, I am on the other side of the fence. I appreciate MS for allowing a liberal development process which allows quick and dirty coding in the languages I know, particularly C and C++. But I never believed they were capable of producing an OS that would allow me to work without the OS getting in my way too much. Certainly MS Windows NT proved that they could, but it was never so good to make me move from my Mac. It does not look like MS Vista will do so either.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
You do have a point in that the people in China making the parts don't care if they are high end $3000 ones, or low end computer parts, they still make their same poverty wage.
Oh You POS
"It cost me AU$949. Since plugging it in, I have barely used my $3000 Windows desktop"
Pro: You have a choice of computers.
Con: Most people in the world don't have a telephone.
You don't get it, do you? This is /.! The home of the pinnacle of creation. Who cares about people who haven't got a telephone - they obviously didnt do well in life or simply chose to be born in the wrong country! They should get with the program, find a used PC among the scrap heaps we've charitably shipped to their countries and start making money producing open-source software.. eh, by providing support services for them. Then they can afford to buy the latest macs and ipods and deserve to join the rest of humanity here at /. where it's all happening! And who sais they don't have a choise of computers: they've got OLPC in all the candy colours !
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
I have been a PC Wiindows(Microsoft) bubba for over 20 years. I have a taught many classes on PCs and Windows. I recently purchased a Mac Book Pro. I started off dual booting. After about a month I realized I was hardly ever booting to the PC side. I deleted the Windows side and reclaimed the space.
l
;)
There is simply no good reason to get a PC. If you want to run Windows, fine, get a Mac and dual boot. At the least you double your chances of getting things done. It also makes you more versatile and more marketable. Apple was genius to first change to a BSD based OS and then to move to intel. The BSD based Mac OS X has the best of both worlds. Simply the best most powerful command line interface, and the most impressive and user friendly GUI.
I recently wrote and article for the Ins and Outs Magazine.
Viva La Revolution!
http://www.insandoutsmagazine.com/content_tek.htm
I advise all my clients and students that, if you are going to get a computer, get a mac. Once you go Mac, you will never go back!
Mod me down if you will, but I stand my point; this is the most substance-less post which tried to make a point out of statistics I've seen. If you have any data, please share with us and with Kofi who might be interested. Like, have you been to africa, china and india lately? and I don't say New Delhi, Hong Kong or Casablanca, but those places where the majority of the world lives... you know that 70%(*) of world population that makes your shoes, phones and diamonds? you don't really think those guys each have a phone in their house, or else you just don't know about the real world... I've been to jamaica and haiti and it was a hell to find a single phone outside my hotel(**), and it was richer than most countries in africa and philippines.
I mostly hate people who haven't seen the world at all, think that everyone but them (or america anyway) are wrong, and who don't even have arguments to back up...
(*) yeah that was made up.
(**) yeah ask that guy in the street, not the business man but about anybody in the places where the majority lives. There are other places than Varadero you know outside of the USA...
Of Code And Men
Con: You've shown how Western society values electronics more than charity/equity.
That's nice. I don't give a fuck about charity. Let them buy their own electronics.
Con: Most people in the world don't have a telephone.
That's actually a pro - who wouldn't want to be able to do away with their phone?
Pooh. That's what machine guns are for.
If the six families of useless eaters that I am supporting with my taxes don't like their lot in life, they are welcome to work as hard as I do, or leave the country, I don't care which.
But if they take up arms, they should be cut down in the street like rabid dogs.
A much better way to fix the problem would be to uncheck the Internet > Slashdot > Troll setting.
Sorry, meant Linux, obviously. *confused by change of OS topic*
very true, if Apple started selling thier OS to the OEMs and offering retail sales for generic x86 PCs i would buy one just because it is not Windows, and and dual boot with Linux, currently i am with FreeBSD and Slackware :)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
This is why I've been running OS X for five years. Back then, I recall that Linux was so much better than the old endless config file hacking days thanks to distros like RedHat and Suse. But OS X Just Worked out of the box. Performance was weak, partly due to the limitations of PPC.
We now are 15 years into the Age of Linux...and Linux *still* has a 'way to go', while OS X has continued to improve and continue to acquire more users.
Since a computer is just a tool, it all depends what you want to do.
As a game player and game developer (PC, consoles), using a Mac would be a painful exercise in disaster.
But if it runs all of the applications you want, in a more user-friendly and efficient environment, then why not switch?
Hardware is irrelevant - software rules. The OS is irrelevant, whether it runs the software you want is all that matters.
sig fault
I maintain a school district full of Macs (almost 1200 machines, including desktops, laptops, and servers) so I'd say I'm fairly familiar with their hardware and software, including the new Intel macs and OSX 10.4. So here are my criticisms of the Mac platform: 1. The finder is the worst file manager I have ever used. Nautilus, Konqueror, and even Explorer are vastly superior for manipulating files. You can't set it to default to list view or even alphabetized icon view, its "column view" is absurd, its tree view shows you everything in every folder(instead of just showing the folders), so moving something from one folder to another is a real pain, you can't have it list folders before files, it's slow over the network, it can connect to ftp sites but only in read only mode. It remembers how far you were scrolled down in a file list, even if you change view modes, so if you switch from icon view to list view and you're scrolled down to the bottom, you're suddenly looking at a blank space and have to scroll up to view files. If someone moves stuff around in a folder, and then you go to look at it, you see it as they left it - an arbitrary mess. In every other file manager you can set it to ignore customized folders, but not in the finder. I could go on but I think you get the point. 2. The Dock sucks. If you're using a resolution of 1024x768 or less (which is the default, and maximum size of the 12" powerbook and ibooks, which I use every day), then the dock constantly gets in your way. If you have it set to hidden, if your mouse gets anywhere near the edge of the screen it pops up, even if you moved to an area where the dock isn't - it's centered on the screen, and doesn't take up the whole width of the screen, but if you move the mouse to the corner of the screen it pops up anyway. You have no idea where the dock is when it's hidden. On windows and in gnome, kde, xfce, etc. you see a thin line on the edge of the screen to show you where you hidden taskbar/panel/whatever is hidden. With the dock, you just have to try the left, right, and bottom of the screen until you find it. The difference between running and non-running programs in the dock is minuscule - running programs have a tiny black triangle underneath them which is very easy for a new osx user to miss. We have people in our district who have been using osx for 3 years who still don't get this distinction. Since mac applications can still run without having any windows open, it's very easy for someone to have a bunch of stuff open and not realize it, then wonder why their computer is performing so slowly. 3. There's no "maximize window" button. I like to run some applications in full screen, such as my web browser. Instead of "maximize window", the mac has "optimal size". It makes the window just big enough to show you everything it contains. If you happen to be viewing a web page that's very small when you hit this button, then browser window will be very small. In order to get it to fill the screen, you have to move the window so it's top left corner is in the top left of the screen, then grab the resize handle and drag it into the bottom right of the screen. Also, the window controls are ambiguous - the don't show their icons until you hover on them, then they show the "dash square x". Granted, these glyphs are ambiguous in themselves, but at least someone familiar with other operating systems would be able to figure out what there were immediately. 4. OSX seems to corrupt its own file system through normal use. We have a lot of incidences of computers not booting - either they get to the apple logo and hang, or they flashing mac logo with a question mark icon. In order to fix them, we have to run a third party utility called Disk Warrior. Yes, macs come with fsck but this doesn't always do a good job of fixing the errors, and it doesn't fix the metadata in the filesystem (aka, the "resource fork"). I'm sure I see these kind of problems far more often than a home user does since I deal with so many computers on a daily basis, so my view of this is probab
Saying your "phone ran out of batteries" is like saying your "car ran out of gas tanks".
No, they switched to GNU/Linux.
Uhh, no, I'm glad I did not migrate to Linux sooner. Back in 1996, it was friggen almost unusable - sooner - no... ;)
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I've been a hardcore PC user since birth. I started working for a mac retailer which really piqued my interest in these machines that i previously scoffed at. Being of the build-it-and-upgrade-later mentality, my first thought was to get the base model mac mini, throw a 2.0ghz core2, a 7200rpm 100gb drive, and 2 gigs of ram into it, etc.. But i calculated the price: 1.66ghz solo base model mac mini = $600 core 2 duo 2ghz = ~$200 2gb 533mhz ram = ~$200 7200rpm 100gb sata 2.5" drive = ~$250 keyboard / mouse = ~$75 Total cost = $1325 before tax. Without a display. Instead i settled on a used core duo 2ghz 20" iMac with a 7200rpm 500gb hd, 1gb of memory, and 256 vram, which threw me back $1250 - and saved me lots of blood, sweat, and tears. Even a new 2.13ghz 20" model would have been cheaper @ $1500 if you figure in the cost of a display. All i'm saying is, get what you want. Not what's cheap to begin with. All the mac geeks at work drilled 'just go get an imac' into my head but i wouldn't listen because i usually build my own systems and to buy something pre- built and non-upgradeable was previously unthinkable to me. I am beyond satisfied with the speed and features of this machine. my pc building skills could never produce something engineered this well, plus, now i have a viable escape from windows, with the option of crawling back. Being able to play fairly recent PC games w/the radeon x1600 is definetely a perk also. And the screen is practically of apple cinema display quality, something i'd normally pay $300-$400 in the pc world, easily. So as a note, if you're thinking of switching, consider craigslisting your old setup and going iMac.
Amen! Switching sucks. Understand that I'm definitely not a fanboi. I understand that productivity, ease of use, multi-tasking, etc. factors in a person's technical aptitude, and usage patterns among other things. So I'm objective enough to NOT shoot down and discard an alternative just because it does something Different, or it does so in a way that I'm not used to because I've used Windows for that past 8 years.
I've owned my Mac Pro for a little over a month now. It's my first Mac. I'd label myself as a casual gamer: I like playing just about every type of game out there, i.e. WoW, Half-Life 2, Planescape, etc.. but I don't need to be running at 1600x1200 with 60fps. Hence, I was fine ordering the Mac Pro even though I knew I'd get better gaming performance from a Core 2 Duo system. I plan on running either MS Virtual PC or VMWare to run multiple VMs so that I can experiment with network environments, linux, etc.. so this is a good middle ground for me.
The reason I bought it was mostly because Dell and HP's dual Core 2 Xeon systems were significantly more expensive than the Mac Pro. This is also mostly due to the fact that Dell wouldn't let me order one without an LCD screen, and HP had very limited configuration options. So I'd get a Dual CPU PC, with quad cores for a relatively good price (3 Ghz, low end Nvidia 7300 card), and be able to give OS X a fair chance.
Yet try as I might, using my OS X on my Mac Pro and throwing everything I could at it to get familiar with the OS and the applications available to it.. it's a long way from winning my heart.
1. Interface
I honestly don't like the interface. It is more inconsistent between applications than I have seen in XP. Trying to click on round minimize/quit buttons is a pain compared to square buttons because they have less surface area for me to click on. The bubbly scrollbar also does not seem very responsive.
For the non-visual aspects of the interface, I absolutely love Expose. I've had Vista RC2 on a seperate system and it's Windows Flip pales in comparison to Expose. It's just easier to see the previews of your windows in Expose instead of Vista's cascaded view.
3. Resizing windows.
I'm used to being able to resize windows from any of the four sides. I've tried to adapt and live with only being able to do it on the lower-right. Yes, I can live with it. I don't want to, because I know this could be easier.
4. App closing.
Quitting applications doesn't always quit them. They "hide" in the dock. Why? I know I can hit Command+Q to close the window, but when I click on the "Quit" button, I expect the program to quit.
5. Performance.
OS X has been perhaps SLIGHTLY more stable than XP. Applications still crash and hang. The OS still kernel panics without giving a reason. The console logs don't always have the explanation either. This one irks me enough to point out because there seems to be some kind of mantra that is always implied by my Mac fanboi friends that such events are practically non-existant on OS X. Far from it.
6. Customization.
With XP, I at least had the option to change the themes to my UI. Not only do I prefer the visual style of XP, and now especially Vista's.. I liked being able to change the window colors. I even liked being able to change my cursors (I think that OS X's cursors are terrible.).. and change the system sounds. The Brain telling me it's time to take over the world every bootup is a small tiny perk. I know it might be possible to do this to OS X with 3rd party apps, but it's easy as pie in XP.
7. Responsiveness.
I've installed Boot Camp and XP just FEELS more responsive when I ALT+TAB, open programs, and use them. (Word, Excel, Outlook.) I've tried having OS X not do the genie animation when minimizing apps, but moving around in the UI doesn't feel as fast. Scrolling up/down documents is slower, navigating through Finder is also slower because of my personal issue with rounded scrollbars and "aquafied" ui elements. iTunes esp
*sigh* yet another /. circle jerk on how Windows is inferior to other operating systems. Reading slashdot when Linux, Microsoft or Apple come up is like watching Fox News during elections.
*sigh* yet another ideological circle jerk on how Fox News is oh so biased when compared to other news outlets. Listening to ideologues when Fox News comes up is like reading /. articles about operating systems.
The teachers in our district had the same problem till I showed them that. Kept setting the screen to 800x600 because they had no clue how to change the font size.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Is a deal breaker for me.
(Yes I know the OS supports non-Apple mice, but it's
still an issue with notebooks/laptops.)
"Never bullshit a bullshitter" All That Jazz
So what is a reasonable low-end development system for software development? Can you do anything useful with a Mini and 512MB?
Why? Because the article tries to imply that Macs are cheaper than PCs. I have a ton of respect for Macs, but they are not cheaper than PCs.
$3000 Windows deskop? I guess it's possible, but $300 windows desktops are far more common. About a year ago I bought a complete brand-new windows system for my brother-in-law for $200 after rebates. It's not the greatest system, but it's perfictly acceptable for ordinary home use.
Now tell me where I can buy a brand-new complete Mac system for under $300?
I'm a sysadmin in a Windows shop for my day job, and I have a Mac at home. I've always been partial to them, but I went back from a PC about 2 yeats ago.
The pros are definitely that I have to worry less about the computer. Security is an issue, no matter what anyone else says, but things like installing software and upgrading versions of software are much more predictable. I have a very busy day-job, and the fact that I can come home to a working computer for my personal tasks is nice.
The cons stem from lack of industry support. If you're a gamer, your choices of ported games are limited. Certain specialized software either doesn't exist for the Mac, or the Mac version is inferior to the Windows version. To combat this, I keep a Windows machine to run the occasional Windows-only program. Also, virtual machine technology can be a help here.
The software support issue may be going away soon anyway, given vendors' rapid move towards hosted applications. Take Windows Live mail for example (the hotmail replacement.) The UI is almost as good as MS Outlook, even in browsers other than IE.
We'll see what happens in the next few years. Personally, I'm happy paying the premium for what I feel is a better designed machine.
Well I would have to say that I agree with my old CIS instructors comment on a Mac...
'You know what a Mac is? A Mac is something you buy when you're too stupid to realize that you could have gotten the same performance from something cheaper'.
To be fair Windows is by no means a good tradeoff for Mac OS.
However
You could have just bought a Win PC for less and then erase Windows and put Linux on it.
Linux Vs Mac == No Comparison in cost efficiency and stability
Linux is just as stable if not more than Mac OS.
And it's free!
I also use Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Ubuntu Linux on a daily basis- desktop, laptop, and server, respectively.
There is something about Windows XP that just makes me feel efficient. I can get things done really quickly. If I need to do any sort of tedious computing task, I'd like to do it on windows.
However, sometimes I get in a "mac" mood and want to use my laptop. But as flashy and cool as it is, everything usually feels clumsy and cumbersome. Simple tasks seem to have many steps and seem to take longer. I feel like I am swimming in molassas, as opposed to water with windows. But it's a warm and comfortable molassas.
Ubuntu is bringing a very polished product to the table. If open source ever catches up with applications and drivers, Ubuntu could be a very real choice for many people. Linux was my primary OS on and off through college. Mark Shuttleworth is doing a great service to the public with Ubuntu. If I ever made it big time like he did, bringing high quality open source applications to Linux (video editing, etc.) would be high on my list. As they stand, Linux applications are simply too limited/unstable for my daily needs which include music and video production.
I still think that a mac is an excellent choice for the "casual computer user," due in no small part to the fact that you can bring it back to that Apple store and they are going to fix it. Computers are complicated machines and they have problems. The Apple Store is not going to tell you it's a hardware problem and so it's not their fault. They're not going to tell you that it's a software problem so it's not their fault. They're going to fix it, and that's what casual computer users need - service and support.
The windows desktop/mac laptop/linux server setup has been working very well for me and satisfies all of my OS moods, so I will probably continue with this for a long while.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Based on the article, it's not like his PC was really that old. Given the heavily upgraded, top-of-the-line PC he was using, even if it's was a few years old, and the minimalist Mac (512MB? Jeez...), it's a pretty fair comparison. Actually the hardware edge might go to the PC.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
but none of that stuff is Con for the guy who posted the story. You are connecting things that have nothing to do with each other.
You can't handle the truth.
Let me say that if I could go into a store right now and buy a reasonably priced copy of OX X that would run on a plain PC, I would be running OS X at the moment
The problem is that if you could run OS X on a plain PC, you wouldn't have OS X anymore. You'd have something else.
Part of what makes Mac good is its limited universe of hardware. That's one of the reasons I stay away from Mac--I can't buy any old remote control, TV tuner card, or CD-ROM drive and plug it in and expect to get it to work. Apple can focus on getting a small universe of hardware working correctly, and that hardware works very well. But you're chained to that universe.
If you want ease of use and an integrated experience, get the Mac. If you want an OS that works with huge amounts of hardware, get Windows or Linux. But I'm afraid you can't have an OS that both works perfectly and works with a huge amount of hardware.
Penny - plain text accounting
You definitely know your cons, but at least one of them actually can be solved--
7. You can't alt-tab between windows in the same application. You can switch between programs that way, but not between windows. So if you're typing something in one window (say in Word or whatever) and you need to switch to another document, you can press one of the function keys to get expose up, take you hand off the keyboard, grab the mouse, select the window you want, then put your hand back on the keyboard. This takes far longer and requires much more thought than just pressing alt-tab. You can also select the wind you want from the "window" menu or click and hold the application's icon in the dock until the menu comes up and then select it. Both of these are slower than having a context switch that shows all windows.
While you cannot alt-tab (er, well, Cmd-tab on the Mac) between windows in the same application, you *can* Cmd-` between application windows. No, it's not an obvious command, which really bit for me at first. I spent a month very frustrated with my first Mac because of that. But then I discovered it by accident, and it made everything much, much easier.
I'm also not sure why you think you need to grab the mouse to select a window in Expose--if you just use the arrow keys to go around and select the given window, then press Enter or Space, it will select the window. I can understand Cmd-` being nonobvious, but this method is a lot more accessible.
I own both a mac and a PC. They even sit on the same desk. I'm touching the mac right now...
That is true for every OS. Key words being "full potential." If all you want to do is surf the web and exchange email, no cli necessary. If you want to do more, cli necessary.
You know, I get more and more sick of postings like this.
No need to put yourself through pains when you can improve security, save money and achieve a good deal of vendor independence all at the same time. Why exchange overpriced software (Microsoft) for overpriced hardware (Apple), when you can run Free software on the industry standard (and thus inexpensive) hardware?
Don't get me wrong, I liked the Linux desktop, but I switched back to Win2k before ultimately moving to OS X. Free software is excellent when it's available. Even on Windows, I used loads of free software. If your company does a lot of office work, Linux is great. I've heard it's excellent for scientific work too. However, exactly how do you do things like desktop publishing, video editing and real graphics work (a la Illustrator and Photoshop). You don't.
Software availability has and will continue to cripple Linux on the desktop. People can scream about "choice" all they want and say, "See, I have 30 browsers to choose from (running a whole 2 rendering engines) and a bunch of IM clients, three office suits and a program that makes a pair of shifty eyes sit on my desktop. I even have two whole major desktop environments to choose from!" Of course, you have zero choices for much of the above mentioned software.
Linux works where it works, but just like Windows or Mac, it's not the be all, end all nor is it a universal solution.
Dunno, Gartner just announced Mac US marketshare had jumped by some 30 percent year-on-year. Pretty decent.
I guess I am a little weird, but after 4-1/2 years of running a Mac with OSX I just went full time to a Linux machine. I loved the Mac, but:
- I spent over $3,000 for it in 2002 (PowerMac system with LCD)
- In order to keep current and keep all your software running, you have to buy a new MacOS X distribution once a year ($80-$129)
- Even an iMac replacement would have cost me $1,700 (20" with extra SDRAM and upgraded graphics) vs. $1,000 (HP AMD64 X2 4600+ with 20" high res LCD and upgraded graphics)
I have struggled a bit with configuration but the new system is humming along pretty well now.
Apple did not "get dumped" by IBM. The PPC chips they were using were manufactured by Motorola, not IBM. IBM simply partnered with them and Motorola to develop it, and went on to manufacture their own version of it. At one time, they did buy the IBM version, but moved to Motorola a few years ago.
Apple has been running an Intel version of Mac OS X since the very beginning. They began developing it in a dual process from the git go. How do you think they were able to switch from PPC to Intel in less than a year? You don't think they actually DEVELOPED the OS Intel version from scratch in a year? D'oh! So, actually, Intel really was their first choice!
And given the fact that their US share went from 4.8% to 6.1 % in just one quarter, then I'd have to say that, yeah, there is an increasing number of people in the computing world that ARE willing to pay for Apple computers, and they aren't all higher priced anymore, either. (and along with the US market, their standing worldwide went up too, just not quite as dramatically.)
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
I think I understand the difference between /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, and ~/bin as far as installing applications, but then I get the programs that insist on /opt/bin, or even /var/opt.
/opt, I've redirected them to /usr/local. Have I committed a great philosophical error, oh wise ones?
On my desktop system, for the things I'm not compiling from source that demand
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
The primary reason was the hardware. I don't mean this in the sense that I have a particular affinity for homebuilds, or that there aren't any other reasons. The cost was simply prohibitive with Apple, and this was big enough to cut short any consideration I might have otherwise given to the platform, regardless of merit.
.sit and .dmg files downloaded from various websites (Apple, VersionTracker, etc), and so on. With Ubuntu, it's all available from a single interface. One front end handles all the installations, removals, and updates. Even proprietary things like video card drivers and Sun's Java are handled this way. This cuts way down on the time it takes me to get a system set up with all the various apps I need. Downloading something from VersionTracker isn't difficult, but doing that over and over again for dozens of different things takes a significant chunk of time. With Ubuntu, I've found that I don't need to do it all at once, because clicking a checkbox and clicking "apply" in Synaptic takes seconds -- installing an app is barely more difficult than lanching it, and making a list of things I need would be more trouble than installing them when I notice they're missing.
I needed a workstation, but I have no use for a quad-core machine, so a Core 2 Duo or Athlon64 could easily meet my needs. I also needed a large RAID array and a scratch disk, as well as other things like multiple ethernet ports, PCI/PCI-E slots, and so forth. With Apple hardware, the only way to get what I want is to spend large amounts of money on stuff that won't benefit me (like that extra Xeon). When I tried to price out a Mac Pro to meet the same requirements it couldn't be done without more than doubling the price. Even if I were willing to go around upgrading the thing with cheaper 3rd party hard drives, RAM, etc, that stuff wouldn't be covered by Apple's warranty, and that's a big downside for me. Even then, it would still cost thousands more, and it wouldn't even be that much easier than a homebuild when all was said and done.
A secondary reason was that I've had an iBook up until recently, and getting the various *nix software I need was significantly more annoying there. A good distro's package manager will have many times the selection of the Mac alternatives such as Fink and Darwin Ports, and the time I spent compiling the missing stuff by hand on MacOS was significant. This easily overwhelms any savings of effort that I might have gotten from MacOS initially, and that's not even that much with easy distros like Ubuntu. I'm not a rabid freedom fighter, I just know empirically it's a lot more trouble for me to use MacOS.
Another way this advantage applies is that the software I need comes almost entirely from one place. With MacOS, it was a mix of Fink, Darwin Ports, stuff I've compiled myself, various
I've seen what Macs have to offer, and I don't think I'd be interested even if it didn't cost so much more to meet my needs.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Or should we just hold hands and sing Kum Ba Yah now?
Let me break it down.
My translation of this: Give me a fucking break. The only reason Apple gets good media reviews is because they'd basically gotten in good with the media. And none of these guys wants to feel like an idiot for "choosing the wrong thing". So they continue to add to the hype, as a form particularly virulent form of buyer's remorse.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
~~~~ Pro - Graphic Designers will talk to you: The company where I work has developers and designers working closely together. Designers using Macs, wearing $300 dollar jeans. Developers using Windows PCs, wearing $20 jeans (but earning much higher salaries). When you can talk about the Mac with a designer they will suddenly like you 50% more. It may sound stupid, but the results are there. ~~~
man i just as soon have those arrogant, vapid...etc design pricks take their $300 jeans and go fuck themselves.... fuck I hate people like them... seriously if the mac made people like that leave me the fuck alone I'd buy two.
anyone that likes you better cause of your choice consumer items is a total twat.... and should be avoided at all costs.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
I got a mac last January. I like, a lot, and won't be going back anytime soon.
.mac). .mac page too! Very good!
Nitpicks? I miss "cp -r", "top -i" and iptraf.
As for the GUI, can I have Ctrl-tab back, please? And, when I'm on a 12in screen
I NEED A MAXIMIZE BUTTON THAT ACTUALLY MAXIMIZES. What sick cripplewit thought a
"lets-randomly-resize-and-move-your-window" button was a valid replacement???
Apart from that, I love the way PDF "just works". Spotlight's cool. Expose is very
handy. The mail.app is useable, but could do with better threading. Searchable mail
is a great idea, but when I tried to import my mail archive, about 4GB, it thrashed
for about 4hrs and then exploded. iPhoto's perfect for my snaps (but IPTC support
would be cool, and I'd like to be able to publish to somewhere other than
iTunes sulks if the samba server with my mp3 collection on isn't mounted first;
it tries to play a tune while mounting, but times out and puts a (!) mark as unplayable,
so never does that tune again, leading to library rot.
The whole searchable metadata is *very* nice. I was a 4DOS junkie and love being able
to add my own tags to files. RubyCOCOA is finally a GUI environment that doesn't my
my brain hurt. And I love the way I can sync my Treo and the address/calendar/todo
is on my laptop and I can even get it from my
Overall? 8/10, better than anything else I've tried by a good bit.
(But I really mean it about the maximize button!)
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
Heh heh, I guess I'm not alone in thinking this is proof of a slow news day.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
You can't build your own. I'll NEVER buy a prebuilt machine. Also, the article lists a lot more pros than cons - the idiot is obviously an Apple fanboi.
PRO- you wont have any virus'
CON- you wont have access to a very high percentage of software
I realize that not everyone's computer environment is the same, so things can go wrong, but honestly, my Ubuntu install was as simple as inserting the CD, letting it run, answering a couple of basic questions about what my account would be, and 20 minutes later I had a fully functional system, complete with commonly-used apps, Open Office, music players, video players, CD burning software, DVD software, IRC and AIM clients, and email client. In other words, everything your average user would care about.
Now, here is how a recent install of XP went at work -- and keep in mind that when it's done, you have a bare-bones OS. If you want an office package, an AIM client, or anything else, really, you're going to have to go find it on your own, with the possible exception of Outlook Express, which seems to install on some systems but not all.
Two identical questionos about install vs repair.
Partition manager makes no recommendations, issues dire warnings. Like "your mother" knows what the hell to do here?
Setup is copying files... Takes forever, but not complicated, I admit.
Reboot.
Then this gem: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: System32\drivers\ntfs.sys.
Run setup to repair console as per suggestion:
File setupdd.sys could not be loaded. The error code is 7.
Setup cannot continue.
Press any key to exit.
Fifth reboot, finally loads.
ETA 40 minutes.
Answer questions about keyboard layout, timezone, computer name, password.
Wait some more. 20 minutes of commercials about Windows Movie Maker.
Stall at 13 minutes with "Registering Components..." No progress indication except for occasional new advertisement.
Reboot.
"Let's spend a few minutes setting up your computer!"
First boot.
Resolution sucks ass. Go to adjust it, interrupted by TAKE A TOUR! Along with about fifty windows and popups flying around the screen screaming about virus protection, firewall settings, registration notifications, and other irritations.
No network -- no ethernet, no wireless. No sound.
No: Ethernet controller. Multimedia audio controller. Network controller. O2Micro Smartcard reader. PCI modem. Video controller.
"Ethernet controller. It is recommended that you connect to the Internet so that the wizard can search online and look for the appropriate software."
It was at this point that I had to crawl around online and find individual drivers for each and every one of these devices, even though there is no reason generic drivers couldn't have sufficed at least to get me online. Since I couldn't use that machine to find these drivers, I had to use my (Ubuntu) laptop, then burn all the drivers to CD, and load them from there.
Now, you tell me that this is easy for an average user.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
Here's my set-up:
Typing this on a 17" Intel iMac running OS X Tiger and Windows XP. Next to that machine sits a G4 Powerbook running OS X Tiger and Ubuntu linux. Across the room is my lovely wife at her own desk. She is using a G5 iMac running Tiger. Next to that is the only pure Windows machine in the place: a Toshiba tablet PC running XP, which is only even turned on at the moment because it is acting as Internet server to share our Verizon datacard connection through (you guessed it) an attached Airport Express router.
The ONLY time I ever log into XP on my iMac is to play some game or another that I can't on Tiger. (Hitman: Blood Money and GTA: San Andreas are my two biggest time wasters at the moment.)
The reason is so simple yet so apparently overlooked by would-be switchers. Aside from the above-mentioned gaming, there is nothing I can't do with my Mac that I can with XP. Even my wife can run her statistical analysis software on her Mac (SPSS). I have complete compatibility with all Office formats, along with Adobe Photoshop, Maya, and Poser. I have both Safari and Firefox for web browsing and an ever more muscular Mail program which accesses every email account I have. I can listen to music, watch movies, and even play some ported games. In short, there is absolutely NOTHING a mainstream user does on an XP machine that I cannot do on a Mac and with a greater degree of visual appeal and seamlessness between applications.
Aside from that, I have no fear of some new security flaw or virus infiltrating my Mac systems whereas the XP installs are continually needing updates, patches, and new virus definitions. Then there is the integration of hardware. The iSight cameras, built-in and the external one for the laptop, are among the highest quality webcams on the market. The Apple remote has proved unexpectedly useful for truly making the iMacs into entertainment centers. The three digital cameras in the house (one Sony and two Canon SLR) are all recognized with no necessary driver installations, as are the two photo and one inkjet printers. Managing our little wireless network is also a simple and elegant task with Apple's easy to use Airport interface. Upgrading the RAM on all three Macs was a simple as removing a small panel with a screwdriver, whereas the XP machine required removing the keyboard, unfastening a panel and navigating a myriad of wires and interface points I would never trust my wife to do on her own.
The bottom line is that Pro and Con lists are largely irrelevant and becoming ever more so as Apple's market share grows and more people become fed up with the bloated and buggy Windows interface that is only going to get worse with the graphically demanding Vista.
If you live in London, one man's Polish is one man's cheap plumber, and another man's tenant who'll happily share a 3 bedroom house with 27 others for 100 quid each a week.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
ULTIMATE OS REVIEW!!!
;-)
Let me shed some light on users' unaware of a superior choice.
Mac O$$$$$$$$$X con$:
- is not FREE, you have to pay for the damn thing.
- lack of customization, stuck with the same WM forever.
- HUGE bloat!!! I've witness this with a friend's laptop who had a 1.5G RAM. He was working on something and kept crashing because thousand unnecesary packages where utilizing a thousand resources!!
- a scam, Apple developers leech more than 70% of open source programs to create their crappy O$$X. And stupid people buy this.
m$$$ XcraP con$$:
- I think it is universally agreed for slashdot readers that m$$$ is a piece of XcraP, so I don't really need to go into details.
Ubuntu con($):
- their Xubuntu allegedly for slow systems ain't really that pruned. They should've use fluxbox or enligntenment or a real WM.
- not optimized for cpu's
- weird upgrade of distro.
- their license claims that it's free only for 12 months, after that you have to pay.
GENTOO PROS:
- Completely FREE.
- Eternally up to date system.
- astonishingly many different ways of create your system and optimized for you own needs.
- wide variety of choices.
- best community
- best HOWTO's out there on internet.
- Gentoo users usually are pioneers in hardware support and software setup.
- also the most innovative commutnity. In contrast binary distros discourage and stiffle innovation due to their constricted static design.
This concludes the review
hope you guys anjoy it!!!
Worked for Lot. Too bad about his wife...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
After reading your post, I can now see that Mac's apparently lack the ability to start new paragraphs. ;)
I didn't realize that Steermouse required registration. It's been a year since I last used it so either my memory is faulty, things have changed, or some other option I can't think of at the moment. Anyway, the ideal solution is to get a Microsoft mouse and get the Mac driver from their website. Then you go into the preferences and select "Intellipoint tracking speed" and set it to whatever you're used to. Now your mouse will have the exact same feel as Windows. I'm using a basic 3-button Intellimouse on an iMac. To an old Windows user like me, it is pure heaven compared to OS X's acceleration.
G5's are IBM, not Motorola.
Motorola switched gears and was targeting the embedded market and no need to move towards something like the G5.
I agree with some of your points, if not to such a degree of vehemence as you.
1. The finder is the worst file manager I have ever used.
I admit it has a few default behaviors I too would like to change,
especially in tree view.
2. The Dock sucks.
If Apple would put the barely-visible tiny black triangles above the program icons, I think the Dock would be fine.
3. There's no "maximize window" button.
I heartily agree with you on this.
Actually, I'd prefer having the ability to adjust size using any edge or side of the window, instead of "drag top bar to upper left; resize lower right corner to lower right".
4. OSX seems to corrupt its own file system through normal use.
5. The mac gui seems sluggish when compared to windows or Linux
These complaints of yours, I do not second.
You may well be experiencing these problems. I have not.
6. Mac mice are a cruel joke.
While a 1-button mouse might be easier for beginners, it can be maddening for multi-button users.
Thankfully, I can plug in any external USB (or with cheap adapter cable, PS/2) mouse or trackball I wish, and the Mac recognizes them and honors their extra buttons with no quibble.
7. You can't alt-tab between windows in the same application.
By accident, I stumbled on ctrl-tab for cycling through tabs in Firefox 1.5/Linux
I very much thank rmcd and coyotecult for telling us about cmd-` on MacOS/X.
That improves my interactions with Macs.
8. There's no eject button for the cd drive.
9. Maintaining Macs is very un-user friendly.
These complaints of yours, I do not second.
Then again, I have only maintained up to a dozen macs at once, not hundreds.
If I needed to maintain hundreds of OS/X machines, I might start by investigating Apple Remote Desktop and anything like it.
10. Apple's smug, childish attitude towards Windows
In my experience, Apple's machines just work.
Much less driver fiddling than with Linux.
Vastly less security worry than with Windows.
I tolerate some smugness from them for that.
I've only needed to curse for 1-3 hours/year per each Macintosh I maintain,
vs. 1-10 hours/month for each Windows PC I use in any fashion.
It's true that playing games with OSX is pretty much a joke. The OS might detect a new Camera from Japan but it won't even recognize my USB gamepad unless I install a shareware program!!! It's like Apple doesnt want or care about games on OSX or maybe they just gave up? However with Bootcamp and WinXP on a partition I can play Prey, F.E.A.R., and all my other PC games and they work just fine on my 20" Imac. Sure, my graphics card built into this Imac is gonna be a bottleneck for games eventually, but unlike Windows machines which fall behind and become doorstops in 3-4 years (if you are really into games ona pc a motherboard/cpu/gpu is necessary every 2 years anyway ) I have an old G3 Imac 500mhz 512mb ram from 2001 too and while it can only play old games it still runs the latest Mac OS (10.4.7)!! Try running Vista on a 5 year old PC. I may fall behind in a year or so game wise on my Imac but my Imac will have a longer useful life overall. If all you are buying a computer for is games then by all means get a pc or better yet get a Mac and a XBOX360 or maybe a Wii/PS3..
I was going to spend $399 on a full retail copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, but then I caught wind of the EULA they're including with it, and now I'm noticing that the low-end Mac Mini is only 50% more.
I'll likely be making the switch before Vista is released.
Since when was Windows 3.1 better than X-Tree Gold?
I still yearn for X-Tree Gold's simplicity.
Here's my main concern with Macs. They're better machines with better OSes, but here's what I can't do with a Mac. I can upgrade a component in the Macintosh but only after doing extensive research on what is and what is not Macintosh compatable. This was a major problem for me when I moved to a house that did not have Wired ethernet, only unwired ethernet, and my computer could only take Airport instead of Airport Express -- eventually I looked around for a compatable card, and found a Motorola - but I was very lucky in that regard. If the power supply goes bad in my Macintosh, I have to order a special part. There are no "off the shelf" MacCPUs or MacMotherboards that I can quickly replace. The Macintosh is tied to the Macintosh chassis - I got a little burned by the fact that my 800mhz PowerMac did not allow for two optical disc drives - when I already had a DVD-Rom drive that I could have used. I'm not -unsatisfied- with my Mac experience - I used a Macintosh for three years... but the problem was that in the intervening time, I couldn't make the tiny little upgrades - esp. to the CPU/motherboard - that would have enabled me to keep it. Instead it just ran slower and slower to the point that I was frustrated with response times. After three years, I just built my own, and for the cost of a Mac Mini, I have a PC that can be upgraded; I plan to drop in a dual core Athlon 939 chipset chip when I save up the money for it - I'm thinking of adding a TV tuner for $60 (instead of $200 for the Mac) etc, etc, etc. The thing is, I'm not happy with either proprietary vendor - Apple's DRM forbids you from running MacOSX on your own hardware, Microsoft's DRM forbids you from upgrading your computer (with Vista, which is why I'm not upgrading.) But if I'm going to get screwed, I'd rather be screwed to the order of $500 for an upgradable box than $500 for a tiny, non-upgradable box.
I bought an iBook last year, and I love it. If Windows was my primary platform, I would have switched. The only reason I haven't is that my primary platform is FreeBSD/KDE. As such I'm still divided between the two.
Why (non-gamer) Windows users haven't all switched to Mac is beyond me.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
1) Just have your DVD writing program test the files for validity. Guarrantees they're written right. ...
2) Save oodles of time.
3)
4) Profit
Come on Apple users, add with replies of your own!
1. Pro: Expose, visual, context window switching
2. Pro: OS X runs great on a G3 400Mhz, even better on new Intel Mac
3. Pro: Mac Mini Intel can be upgraded!
4. Pro: Built-in color calibration
5. Con: One button mouse included. Thank god for Logitech
6. Con: Lack of open source software
7. Pro: Superior apps: Audio Hijack, OmniOutliner, NewsFire, Camino, QuickSilver
8. Con: iTunes lock-in
9. Con: Lack of games, everybody cites this one
10. Pro: Can run Windows now via Parallels or BootCamp, fast
Most guys here prefer having sex with their computers over women anyways. quad GPU, raid0, dual core rigs. how can women compete really.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I am washed and informed about Linux, yet I still use windows. I wonder why? Could it be that such a paradox is causing the space-time continuum to collapse in on itself? Or could it be that Linux has certain compatibility issues with most software and hardware?
Oh, and BTW, some of my friends are Christian. They especially like the community they get with their church group. They get good, polite people (in accordance with "Love thy neighbour"). You might say they are ignorant (assuming you can actually disprove the existence of God), or you might say they are harmlessly ignorant. How exactly does their ignorance adversely affect their lives? And who are you to judge?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Running Matlab (XP version) using Parallels on my 512MB MacBook works just fine. :-)
(I realize you can also purchase a Mac version of Matlab).
A word of advice for "switcgers", Apple is notorious for excessve memory costs.
If you need more than 512MB, it's easy to add up to 2GB on MacBooks yourself.
I've done that on most MAcs I've ha and saved a bundle (make sure you order the correct memory).
i assume most switchers (from PC's) are adept at adding memory. (I've nver seen a Mac PC comparison
I believe as they all reflect the high-priced Apple memory. Most techncal people I know add their
own lower-cost memory to Macs whether at the office or home.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
I wasn't implying that OS X was any more of a RAM hog than Windows, just that for the stuff that I do, 512 MB seems a little cramped.
You could definitely use a Mac with that and be fine, if you don't like to run a lot of stuff at the simultaneously. Apparently for what the guy does, he's fine with it. However, my point was that if he really has a $3000 Windows PC, even if it's a few years old, it probably has more than 512 MB in it.
I'm actually typing this on an older G3 12" iBook with 128 MB -- so it is possible to run OS X in a very small memory footprint, it just thrashes the disk a lot whenever I try to open more than an application at a time. (It's my backup system; I'm not a masochist.) I can imagine that Windows or even most "maximalist" Linux distros would do the same thing.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Put it this way. Say your system has 100 features, and your "polish" level is such that the average user can understand half of them. Effectively it has 50 features. To reach 70 available features you can either improve the polish to 70%, or implement 40 new features.
And I claim that for the vast majoriy of software, doing the actual "polish" work is much more bang for the buck.
What about an article on the Pros and Cons of switching from Windows to Linux?
As of RC2, Vista is a good example of something that has eye candy yet still rough and unpolished.
Not just Home and End keys but text selection. On a PC (Windows OR KDE) I hold down shift+Ctrl and left/right cursor to select text one word at a time. I asked the designer who owned the machine I was borrowing what the equivalent keys were on a mac. He didn't know but the closest we could find (I can't remember what it was now) would select the first word then de-select the word and select the next.
I haven't used a mac in ages so maybe they have sorted this now but in general I have found it very mouse-centric, a lot of kb shortcuts seem to involve more keys than the equivalent PC shortcut.
For me the cons of a Mac are:
complicated kb shortcuts,
more expensive for equivalent power.
For me any cons of a PC could be solved for free by installing Linux/BSD, the only reasons I haven't is because I need to test webpages in IE and I haven't had a virus/malware since I bought my XP laptop 4 years ago (I run no anti-virus software just Firefox/Thunderbird and a bit of common sense) so the security advantages of *nix (lack of malware written for *nix anyway) aren't an issue. As soon as I have enough cash for a new PC my old one will become my Windows test machine, the new one will run *nix.
I realise that others have different requirements of their machines but for me it is no contest.
>> ... bought the cheapest Mac available,...It cost me AU$949. Since plugging it in, I have barely used my $3000 Windows desktop...
Since downloading Linux which cost me precisely $0, I haven't booted windows in years. It also means my existing PC hardware isn't going to waste either.
It may cost an extra $15, but I've been using Sidetrack for the last three years to turn my 3.5 year-old TiBook trackpad into a five-button trackpad with trackwheel. It's very smooth and I've never had a problem with it. (Left-, Right-, Middle-clicks, two Expose functions, and vertical scrolling. Plus drag-lock, and an improved acceleration curve.) I also have a graphics tablet, a 3B+wheel pocket mouse, and the iGesture tablet for input devices.
:)
I'm considering whether to buy USB Overdrive ($20) to get the full 10-button support for my new laser mouse at work..
Point is.. there's simple work arounds for minor annoyances, just like there are third-party replacements for Windows Media Player, and replacements for the gawd-awful Explorer and Finder. So I think you're being silly if you let the one-button default be a deal-breaker. Not able to run your company's CRM app? --that's a deal-breaker.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Talk about leaky abstractions, you could fill your pool with the water gushing from that one.
"where the warranty is void (Are Mac's still this way?) as soon as you upgrade anything yourself"
In th US (and I assume worldwide), Apple warratees what they make. It's perfectly fine for you
to add memory, disk, etc., bt naturally they will not warrant parts that you have added.
Obviously, if you somehow damage the computer by making additios, Apple will not pay for any damage you
have done. I've made additios to Macs and later taken them in for warranty unrelated to my
additions and Aple honored their warranty.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
Each and every time this type of discussion takes place on ./ I am struck by the apparent fact that a great many people have strong views about Windows XP, but very few of them reflect any serious time being spent to learn the OS and optimise the user experience.
Granted, it would be best if Windows 'just worked' out of the box like OSX (allegedly) does.
Nevertheless, if you sit down with Windows and seriously dig around for a while you may be surprised to discover that XP is highly configurable and can be tweaked and optimised to the point where it really is very slick and usable, and is absolutely lightning fast. Combined with the right hardware, it is also extremely stable - since upgrading to XP not long after its release, I have had perhaps 5-10 crashes on a PC that runs most of the time. This compares very favourably with the Apples I have used, including recent model iMacs.
Seriously, try it before you decide that OSX is 'better' for your needs. Some suggestions:
- read up on services and turn off everything you don't need
- turn off absolutely everything that loads at startup other than the essentials, and for god's sake learn how to use MSCONFIG and other undocumented but powerful MS tools
- learn how to PROPERLY use (file) explorer, windows networking, device manager, and the numerous other system tools
- be disciplined in the way you allow software to modify the system, and where you install it. You would do the same in Linux, presumably.
- check out TweakUI and similar software which can get you around most of Microsoft's more annoying 'assistance' and add a few cool features to boot, such as visual task switching (yes, like in OSX)
- spend what you would spend on Apple hardware on your (preferably custom-built) PC and appreciate that the increased performance and stability is a reflection of better hardware quality, not just a reflection of the OS
- learn how to adjust the GUI to look much prettier and be much more user friendly: play with icon sizing, fonts and typeface rendering, the taskbar and quicklaunch bar and their size and position - you can even achieve a 'dashboard' type arrangement with a clean install of Windows XP if you think about it creatively
- if you're really adventurous, look into some of the alternative shells you can use with Windows - some are virtually indistinguishable from those that come with current Linux distros and are extraordinarily customizable
- work out what your software needs are and get your system loaded up with the best open source or freely distributed solutions, such as the Mozilla suite, Winamp or VLC, and so on
- pick up the free software that will keep things running nice and smoothly, such as AdAware, AVG and so on
- learn the shortcuts used in Windows - you can do a lot more than you might think with the Windows key, control, alt and tab
I will happily agree that it would be much preferable not to have to do all this stuff just to get your system running nicely, and that non-IT types would struggle with most of the above. I am just a little tired of people rambling on about how 'bad' Windows is when they've never really applied themselves to getting it running sweetly and experienced the results. Considering that a large proportion of the people on this site would presumably spend as long as neccessary frigging around with a Linux install to get it working with their hardware and customised to their liking, the criticism of Windows is generally pretty rich.
Read Pynchon.
Good design (a separate thing from candy such as windows warping out of the dock) makes the UI disappear from your consciousness as you concentrate on what you're actually there to accomplish.
If you've ever used a really good screwdriver you know what it means to have the device in your hand making your every move easier. You can pay $300 for a ratcheting magnetized screwdriver set from Snap-On, and it's a sound business decision for a lot of mechanics.
If you watch non-geeks use it, you'll see that the OS X interface is no simpler than Windows, KDE, or Gnome. While it's simpler in some areas, it has its own pitfalls in others.
In terms of clutter, I suppose the main difference is that Macs don't ship with a lot of desktop icons pre-installed.
The OS X dock is probably one of the most debated parts of the OS. Somebody's always making that claim that it "doesn't let them see enough about what's running" and so on. I'm not sure I understand that one? Every app that's running shows a black triangle under its dock icon. Many apps show a miniature status bar in their dock icon while they're busy doing a task like burning a CD or encoding a video too. (You can always press ALT-TAB just like in Windows to tab through all of your running apps also.) If you need more info than that about what's running, you're talking about something you'd want to do elsewhere in an OS anyway, right? (EG. The "Task Manager" on a Windows box, vs. the bar along the bottom of the screen showing what's running.)
I'd also say that the wireless setup on Macs is one of the most straightforward I've ever seen! Not sure what you found so confusing about it? My experience has been the opposite. On Windows boxes, you've got several different possible ways they might handle your wireless connection, depending on if you've got some manufacturer's software loaded or you're just using the connection manager built into Windows. If you don't use XP, you can't even get WPA wireless security to work without a 3rd. party helper application. On a Mac, all of these formats are always built in and working. I can't speak for wi-fi in Ubuntu since I haven't yet tried it, but like you said yourself, wi-fi in Linux was never traditionally an easy thing to get going.
The MacBook and MacBook Pros use Matsushita DVDs that implement region restrictions in the DVD firmware. The only way to circumvent it is to purchase an external region free DVD player.
In sum, these lap tops are no good for anyone who travels from region to region and likes to rent DVDs at a local kiosk.
If I had it to do over again, I would rethink my mac purchases.
"It makes Windows XP look very late-nineties."
Well duh, Windows XP came from the late nineties.
/* No Comment */
THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE RIGHT JOB
Please please please no more Mac vs Linux vs Windows articles. We all know the score
- In corporate enterprise space, its MS hell, so deal with it - I would love to see mass linux migrations but just thinking of the scale of the task... (shudders)
- Run linux on servers wherever possible + your IT shop has the expertise to maintain it
- Graphic designers and music producers are the only people who can really benefit from a Mac in the workplace
- On your personal / home / media PC, whatever the **** you want, who cares
- If in doubt, run Windows (not talking about mission critical or specialist e.g. large scale batch processing etc. apps!!!), it will get the job done somehow
the cult of Apple is no better than Windows FUD, its just that (since the late 90s anyway) they actually have a superior product. if anything the vendor-lockin is even worse - OPEN STANDARDS PLEASE, I don't need a solutions provider (ie Apple), I want options so I can figure out my OWN solutions (ie my needs are that of a geek, not the average 'i want it to just work' user)
*Disclaimer* I use linux whenever possible i.e. I use windows when I have to (work) or I'm too lazy / linux-n00b to figure it out (media centre)
Yes, I am aware that XP was not actually released in the 90's. But most of its development occurred during this time.
/* No Comment */
6. Pro - Graphic Designers will talk to you.
Just by switching to a Mac, graphic designers will talk to me?
Shit, forget all of that technical blabber... I'm sold!
/* No Comment */
The main problem with my Macbook is running non-Universal applications under Rosetta.
Fireworks runs fine on PPC with 512MB; on my Macbook it kills performance. I have similar problems with Word and Excel.
Perhaps he's in the gin mill (a cross between the moulin rouge and a gin den?) too.
the "Sorry, an error has occurred" box popping up in 5 or 6 languages on an almost daily basis) - maybe we both just had lemon hardware, though. You definitely had "lemon" hardware, or a severely corrupted installation. Kernel panics under OS X are just as common as they are on debian, which is to say they never happen unless something in your hardware or kernel is totally fucked up.
I got one of the duo mini's for use as a media playback on my 40" LCD.
Now the hardware itself is brilliant, very quiet and fairly easy to use (cept having to write applescript to properly map network drives).
The frontrow feature would be cool...cept it can't playback anything cept quicktime (though at least its fullscreen unlike the standalone quicktime!)
As soon as Apple either update the quicktime engine to playback all mpg and avi variations, or better yet allow a codec system for third partys to add support, then the mini will be perfect for this type of use.
Until they do, your best bet is VLC, but it can have problems with divx/xvids and is confusing as hell once you get into the options.
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
I switched from MacOSX to Windows, and then later Linux.
As a professional developer, I just got tired of the poor quality of Apple's operating system, deadend Apple languages like Objective C, and MacOSX's inability to copy with writing writing scalable, heavily multithreaded applications (which I must do on my own machine). Kernel bugs don't get fixed, and Apple keeps adding more features that only idiots would want to use, like bloated animated GUI effects, and stupid file browsers that are much slower to use than either the Windows GUI, KDE, or the command shell. MacOSX reminds me of Gnome - make something for an idiot, and only idiots will want to use it. Although MacOSX is pretty, it suffers from being built on a kernel that scales poorly on multi-CPU architectures, and the threading / OS performance seems to be seriously sub-par in programs that depend on threads, or make many system calls. Also, TCP performance with a high number of connections is dismal on MacOSX (and yes, I know all about how to tune TCP window sizes etc.), and Myrinet cards seem to perform with much higher latency than under Windows/Linux using MPI. I like Apple hardware, but am never again willing to spend my own money on it. Apple do not seem to have any quality control at all. It is hard to believe the succession of design flaws that have plagued the Apple machines that I have owned. From overheading, to PSU failure, to screen failure, to mainboard failure. I have owned 7 Apple machines in all, and every one has died. The last few years have been truly dismal for Apple quality. In addition, I have owned 15 PCs of various types, and suffered only a single failure of an Abit mainboard due to faulty capacitors. If you are thinking of switching from Windows to MacOSX, I question your sanity. This kind of article is all to commonly posted by one of the Cult Of Apple - Religious Zealots, that like the Jehovas Witnesses, come knocking on your door trying to convert you. Like all zealots, they mostly scare people away. If you want a good non-windows OS with good dev tools, look at Linux or BSD.
Well that just goes to my theory that people like to feel 'special' and that they have common link with others...so they pick out a religion and you get instant friends who believe along with you that:
1) All other religions are lies, and the practicioners will be punished
2) You get to live on even if your body dies
3) There is a magical man who sees and knows all, can do anything, and loves you...but statistically won't do shit to help you out.
4) You get to look down on and 'feel sorry for' those who don't share your particular delusion about the universe.
5) You get a 'meaning for life', as if just existing and experiencing this crazy universe wasn't enough!
Blar.
Funny, all my Mac-zealot friends are switching to Windows one by one, tired of lack of software, compatible devices, ... I've never seen a single major company (and I have business at quite a few of them) having even one Mac.
Here's where I slapped my forehead and said, "this guy has no idea what he's talking about." At the very end while talking about viruses and malware he comments, "I don't run as an administrator." Amazingly enough, in Windows XP you can set up multiple accounts!!! Wow... You mean, you can make one administrator and then use a non-administrator account for your daily use? Amazing... It's probably best that he switched over to Mac OSX. It's simple for simple people.
gay fashion toy.
I've never found them to live up to the hype.
Doesn't change my point, which was that Apple was running OS X parallel to PPC on Intel for most of OS X's developmental life. So they didn't "get dumped" by anybody. Sounds more like they were at the very least hedging their bets, and possibly eyeing the jump quite a while in advance. Steve may have been concerned about the future development of the PPC chip (by both IBM and Motorola) very early on, and decided to make sure they didn't get blind-sided by either company.
Just good planning.
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
Exactly. Good interface means "user doesn't have to think too much about using it". A good screwdriver is an extension of your arm; a good GUI is an extension of your brain. If it throws your hand out of balance or your brain out of sync with the task at hand, it's either not correctly designed, or is not the interface for YOU. (Or perhaps both.)
:)
Since brains vary, what's seen as "good UI" varies, but the good ones (whatever mindset they're geared toward) all have *internally-consistent* FLOW in common; that is, when you're doing some task, each action leads you along the necessary path to accomplish that task, because any given action is a logical extension of the previous action.
Personally, I find that Windows and KDE both "flow" for my brain, whereas the Mac and Gnome UIs cause endless abends and restarts. Your brain may vary.
[BTW, interesting journal link..]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
One of Apple's problems during the 1990's was leadership. John Sculley ceasewd to pay attention to the nuts-and-bolts toward the end of his tenure, and a lot of time, money, and effort were wasted on projects that advanced the state-of-the-art but withered on the vine. Newton deserved a lot more attention than it received. The company was essentially out of control and being run by guys who knew nothing about computing.
To this day, I have no idea what the deal was with Michael Spindler. The company basically hurtled on without him, making the transition to PowerPC, developing QuickTime, shoring up its firelsharing products, ensuring future Windows compatibility for removable media, adopting the CD, and pushing the design side of the industry (PC keyboard and mouse ports still closely resemble Apple's ADB) and defining the laptop as we know it.
When Gil Amelio came on board, hopes were high. They were quickly dashed. The Performa was a debacle. Rumors that the company was going to license Windows made some of us wonder whether the company was going to survive. The scariest development was the complete absence of any marketing savvy. There was a sense that the executive staff was making the best of a bad situation by milking what--even in its worst times--was still a cash cow. And there was always that four billion dollars in the bank. It was Apple's loyal customers and the engineering staff that kept Apple going.
Rhapsody was like working on a car while it was moving down the highway. The tensions created didn't make working there fun. When Rhapsody came to a halt in fall of 1996, the guessing game started on what Apple would do next--so to speak. We were paid from late summer of 1996 until the layoffs in March of 1997 to stay in place and wait.
Steve Jobs's return to the Big Chair and the subsequent announcements of Mac OS X and the iMac marked the end of the Flailing Era. Apple had a CEO that understood computing AND their marketing and design. Through it all, the people were what made it a great place to work. It was also gratifying to have the chance to be the first person in the world to try something. I got to do that a couple of times with new networking technologies Apple developed. It was worth every moment.
Are Mac Users Liberal, PC users Conservative, and *nix users Alternative Party types?
Or should that be shuffled differently? Is there a relationship at all?
Perhaps I should re-categorize this. There are those who. . .
A) Build their own computers to their own specs and like having that power of self-determination.
B) Don't know a thing about how to make things go and like having such decisions made for them.
--Ignorance leads to fear. "Viruses are bad. Terrorists are bad. I don't want to know how any of that stuff works, but I know they scare me, so I want somebody to deal with it for me who is strong so I don't have to be." I know lots of PC users who fall into category 'B'.
Although, I'm sure I've met some home-brew self-determination-type PC builders who are also conservative. Perhaps because the building requires rules and specific knowledge, which can be easily learned, nobody will laugh at, and thus keeps one safe so long as the official rules are followed. --Which is based on fear of not fitting in.
Hm. . . Must ponder this more.
-FL
Here's my thought's on a windows-mac switch
Pros: It's not windows
Cons: It's not linux
That was an attempt at humor, by the way
In order to keep current and keep all your software running, you have to buy a new MacOS X distribution once a year ($80-$129)
Really? Where can I buy my once-a-year upgrade? That would mean I can get 10.7 about now....
I started at 10.1 in June 2002 and we are currently at 10.4 four years later. One-two-three-four... They have slowed down, however: the time between releases has been 7 months, 10 months, 12 months and 18 months. 10.5 was due to come out after 18 months, but delays by Apple look like it will be 22-24 months before it is released.
Or you just use VLC and... watch the movies anyway.
I can upgrade a component in the Macintosh but only after doing extensive research on what is and what is not Macintosh compatable.
... right up until the Mac mini came out. It would have cost more than the price of the mini to upgrade my G3 to 1GHz.
:)
Unless you have two grand to spend on a Powermac you can't even do that much.
That's what kept my upgrading my old G3/266 all the way up to a G4/466, 768M RAM, Radeon 9200
But now... I'm stagnating again.
I have a Macbook Pro through work, but like all laptops it's got the same problems of upgradability as most of Apple's desktops.
Apple really needs a "Mac mini Pro":
* Either a "fat" Mac mini or a Next-style "slab"
(if they could make it a thin slab 1RU high it could also serve as an "XServe mini").
* Socketed Core Duo CPU.
* 16x PCI-E slot for video.
* At least one 1x or 2x PCI-E slot for other peripherals.
* Accessible 3.5" drive bay.
* Accessible 5.25" drive bay.
* Two RAM slots.
Basically, comparable to a typical Mini-ITX motherboard.
With a video slot they can keep using the GMA950 for motherboard video, though I'd like to see at least the Radeon X200 there.
Base price should be no more than $600 *without* bluetooth or airport express (for the thin-server role where they're redundant) to maintain their traditional 40% margins.
Oh, and it should have at least one USB and firewire port on the front of the case.
Even stranger, he was then allowed to have sex with his daughters not very long thereafter, without being turned into salt himself, kinda screwing up the whole "immorality" part of the story already stated previously.
+++OK ATH
Amazingly enough, in Windows XP you can set up multiple accounts!
In OSX the 'Administrator' account has very few more rights than any other user ID, it's a user ID that is allowed to run privileged programs after a manual authentication step. It's more like a toned down version of "Power User" in Windows. The OSX version of the Windows XP 'Administrator' account, 'root', is disabled by default.
And in OSX you don't have to perform that authentication step and become 'Administrator' for a lot of operations that Microsoft requires you to be 'Administrator' for.
Finally, the higher level of local security in OS X (or, allegedly, in Vista) is a relatively minor advantage over Windows, compared with the higher level of remote security. Without the integrated browser and desktop, and with services that don't bind to non-local interfaces by default, an OS X box with no firewall software running is still much better protected from remote attacks than a Windows box with a full panoply of firewalls and anti-virus.
Have you tried following the directions?
As soon as Apple either update the quicktime engine to playback all mpg and avi variations, or better yet allow a codec system for third partys to add support, then the mini will be perfect for this type of use.
When Quicktime finds a codec it can't play, it brings up a dialog box offering to take you to Apple's page for all the third party codecs and other plug-ins supported under quicktime.
If you need a third-party codec that's not supported, that's a problem... but it's not caused by Apple missing the "codec system" you're looking for.
There's a lot of free and commercial programs for remapping keys. I use Controllermate, which has all the GUI loveliness you could like and a reasonably versatile flowchart-style configurator.
But, yes, Microsoft's user interface is more keyboardable, and more consistently keyboardable. Though I will never forgive them for deciding that the standard keyboard navigation would bypass the task bar, requiring a separate set of keystrokes to access it, and that toolbars wouldn't be keyboard accessible at all. Windows 95 has much to answer for.
Something like Controllermate, but operating at a higher level (generating events like 'paste' or 'beginning of line') and that applications would register hotkeys with ('expose - show desktop', 'spotlight - search selected word') is something that Apple should have had long ago. Automator, Applescript, Spotlight, all these tools are frustratingly close to the tool that's needed...
I'm not sure why it was modded up, but there's definitely no shortage of idiots.
Divine Inspiration doesn't exist. Never has been proven by the people who claim it exists.
Next.
Blar.
Unfortunately, VLC doesn't work either. Nor MacTheRipper, FairMount, or HandBrake. If you don't want to use one of your 5 region changes, you need a region free external drive.
ok, ok. I figure you aren't going ot read this but if you even take the time to read it,
try microsoft word out. alt+f+u. there are three options that use u(though they are underlined). now if I reduced the number of options to one by modifying the file menu, it acts just like a mouse click. else, I can cyle through all three adn press enter on the one I want to select. The funny thing is though, they seem to match your definition of accelerator keys in all other ways.
witter is UK slang. it is not a real word. similarly, just because Doh now appears in the dictionary doesn't mean it is either a real word or one to be used in proper conversation.
try out dictionary.com. it doesn't include slang for the most part. It may help you expand your working vocabulary(of real words). I'm glad though you finally realized you were being mocked. unfortunately, I lose my evening laugh at your arrogance (and slight ignornace). Such is life.....