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Mac OS X Versus Windows Vista
An anonymous reader writes "With Macworld set to start Jan. 8, InformationWeek has a detailed comparison that pits Mac OS X against Vista. According to reviewer John Welch, OS X wins hands down. The important point: he doesn't say Vista is bad, just that technically speaking, OS X remains way ahead. Do you agree?"
Vista still has all the games and applications people use, most not available on any version of OS X.
As a cross-platform developer (hail Qt!), I recently got a MacBook Pro so I could run both OS X and Windows on the road, and I will admit, the Mac has remained booted into OS X the vast majority of time. This is admittedly do to mostly Universal Binary testing, but I could easily see that if I wanted to, I could run my day-do-day stuff purely on OS X. Except for its continued mouse-happy interface (come on, make ALL of those popup dialogs keyboard accessible!), when running on a fast machine OS X is very nice.
At the end of the day though, I can do MORE stuff on Windows, and Vista will be no exception.
Technical superiority doesn't mean as much when you can't get vendor support. This is sad but true. For a long while to come Vista will enjoy all the attention and benefits of a larger install base regardless of technical merits (or lack thereof).
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
I'd love to switch from Windows, but I am a gamer and just can't abandon it. And I need to upgrade to Vista so I can run games in DirectX 10 :-(
Im sure that once we get the a couple of service packs then things will be a bit closer(i know this may take a while!). Apple have released 3 or 4 versions since XP launched so its no wonder they have more refined features. Microsoft would have been more concerned about stability and corporate needs, not something Apple has to worry too much about. Nope, this is just the beignning, give it a few years and the fun and games will really start.
I think it will be fair to say, wait till Tuesday.
Isn't this strange. Why don't they wait for the just-around-the-corner Leopard to compare with Vista. At least they would be comparing apple with oranges instead of pineapples and watermelons! ;-)
Animoog.org
In my opinion the only place where Windows is really far ahead of Mac OS X is .NET. Or more specifically: C# 2.0. C# is simply the nicest programming language and .NET the most consistent and easiest API that I've ever used. I went from a Java and Obj-C advocate to a C# maniac in about one month of using it. The biggest drawback with .NET is Visual BASIC which is horribly verbose and seems to attract idiot developers.
.NET I think Mac OS X 10.4 and the up-comming 10.5 are still much better operating systems than Vista. Mac OS X is more consistent, nicer to use and is more stable than any version of Windows I've ever seen.
I think it would be great if Apple would adopt C# as the future of development on Mac OS X. I hate to say this but in comparison Objective-C 2.0 looks positively dated.
Other than
...I don't think I've ever seen so many ad hominem attacks against a non hominem. ;)
Saying that OSX is better than Vista because OSX hasn't changed its UI much since 2001 (at least regarding buttons) and Vista has changed the look of the window bar buttons? That's just stupid.
Spending most of the first page of the article beating the dead horse of Cairo promises regarding WinFS and other things which have nothing to do with comparing Vista to OSX?
I'd much rather read an article by a Linux or Windows fanboy bashing each other unapologetically than listen to that author say "I'm going to compare A and B" and then spend half their time talking about C.
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When I use a system, I expect the source code to be fully accessible to me. I want to be able to inspect the quality of that system for myself, and fix it myself if the need arises. A system like FreeBSD is excellent in this regard, as are most Linux distributions.
Mac OS X and Windows Vista completely fail in this area, however. I cannot see the source code to the window systems of either, for instance. Nor can I inspect the kernel source code. Mac OS X is perhaps slightly less terrible in this regard, as they do make use of some open source software. For some of the stuff they modify, like GCC, they release the source code to. That's not at all the case with Vista.
f you believe all the hype, installing the new Windows Vista operating system will solve world famine, end the AIDS crisis and bring about world peace.
If those windows zombie botnets were used for scientific work instead of sending spam I'm sure it would in fact have a positive impact.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
2) What computer were they running Vista on? The Aero UI wasn't running, implying that either they were running it on an old PC, or that the author was so unfamiliar with the OS that he didn't realise!
If you actually read the article, he makes a point of saying he's not running Aero, and why.
- Roach
I been figuring out how to upgrade my Windows XP system to run Windows Vista. I can spend a bit of money on old technology that won't upgrade to a future system. I can spend a lot of money on current technology that will be outdated in the next year or two but some components will upgrade to a future system. Or I can spend too much money for a brand new system that might be good for the next five years. Ironically, if I need an entire new system, I just might get a Mac to run Windows Vista. Go figure.
"Technical superiority doesn't mean as much when you can't get vendor support"
What vendor support? A while back I set up a wireless/dell/btinternet laptop. I have been back in three times since for unpaid for tech support. The talking CD wasn't configured to pick up wireless connections. Sound doesn't work except under admin, Talk/Talk as stopped working for no reason. The spam blocker freezes on downloading of email. The call center in India wrongly advises me a) the router is incompatible with BT b)to replace the NIC card and/or c) reinstall.
was Vendor support (Score:3, You're kidding)
davecb5620@gmail.com
I'm a Windows user out of inertia. I will continue to use XP on my Windows Twilight machine I will get later this year with an Intel Yorkfield and a Terabyte drive. This is where I'll get my serious projects done.
Since learning something new takes energy, I decided to send a Christmas card to Tux. He responded with a menu of Builds&Distros. I am prepared to make my share of thundering Newbikin howler mistakes.
I think I have to get a copy of Amiga OS4 just for joke value.
I have absolutely no use whatever for Apple. Nothing screams AnimalFarm more than the "MS Bad OSX Good" aura surrounding them.
His example is of Safari in the background of something else, and the Back/Forward/Reload/Stop buttons being greyed out. On Vista, he points to the similar buttons still being full colour and equating that to confusion.
The only reason his Safari buttons are grey is because he hasn't loaded a web page and has nothing to go back to, reload or stop. In OS X, with a page loaded those buttons would indeed look active. Yes, I just tested ;)
Only big ligs use sigs.
if I could buy the DVD and install it on any computer. At least Apple could let any distributer buy the software to install on a computer with the required EFI chip instead of locking it down only to their hardware. Until Jobs stop this it's "mine, mine, mine!" idealogue with Apple OS's they will always have a limited marketplace. I predict the use of bootcamp to boot winXP on a mac will kill the Mac OS in one year. My mac frind now use winXP 99% of the time on his mac intel.
RTFA
It sounds like you have had limited experience with various programming languages. Most of the best features of C# 2.0 have been available in other languages for some time now. In the case of closures, Lisp has offered them since as early as the 1960s! The OO capabilities of Smalltalk are still superior to that of C# 2.0. OCaml has a far more performant and portable bytecode interpreter than .NET, while also allowing for native binaries on Windows, Linux, *BSD, and most commercial UNIX systems. Python offers a practical mix of OO and functional features, while also being very portable, and offering a very practical and complete standard library.
I consulted with some developers recently who thought C# 2.0 was the top dawg. After a 15 minute introduction to Python, they were sold. I have talked with them since then, and they are quite glad they switched to Python for their development. It not only has increased their productivity, but it has allowed them to easily move from Windows Server 2003 to FreeBSD and Solaris, decreasing their server costs while also vastly increasing their performance.
C# 2.0 is lightyears ahead of Java. But compared to other languages, Java shows signs of severe mental retardation, and C# 2.0 looks like a preschooler.
Most businesses don't care about games. As Microsoft's continued move to game consoles helps my strategies more, and more. Most businesses want to have easy access to their financial information and sell what they have. For the small business owner OS X is ideal, and I have deployed several iMac Core 2 Duos at business sites, replacing the far dated XP/Dos systems. In pharmacies we often deploy Linux based servers that run their core applications, and write scripts for OS X that automatically bring up the login to their Linux box to run their terminal applications via SSH.
I have been working on Windows replacement strategies for 3 years, and have so far converted more than %20 of my customer base from windows to another platform, mostly OS X and Linux. One or 2 scenarios involve FreeBSD, and Solaris. The next step is finding solutions to replace, and convert data from 3rd party software vendors that have little, or no support, and attempt to charge for support when their software is corroded with bugs. Ridding of these shoddy software vendors are my next target, which will cover %60 of my user base, which is about 800 businesses in Mississippi.
The replacement costs, or TCO is as estimated.
Average Dell = $700
Windows Costs = $250
Yearly Crap Cleaning = $300 (per machine)
Replacement options:
Average iMac = $1200
Average Linux Costs = $40
Yearly Maintenance = $40 (per machine if at all)
As for Vista, its happy hunting, and fair game for me. The TCO of Vista will be so high for many small businesses that when they see the numbers they will more than likely convert quickly. Microsoft continues yet again to hack off their own foot in a Monty Python skit while claiming "Its just a flesh wound", while I will continue the battle, and the fight will be mine.
When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. - Jefferson
I don't believe it's possible to get a fair comparison of two so completely different things unless you have been forced to use both of them for an extended period of time and have truly given them both a chance.
I am in that position where I work, and I have to support both macs and PCs in the desktop support world. For me what it all comes down to is simplicity of use. Just pulling an example out of thin air... 99% of mac software runs as non-admin, and better than 70% will run as a very restricted user. (kids) 98% of software can be installed as a non-admin so long as you know the admin l/p. Then we have windows. 0% of software can be installed as a non-admin, even if you know the admin l/p. After that, 80% of it requires you to be logged in as an administrator. So make them an administrator you say? (like THAT is a good idea in a school!) In OS X that is one check box and takes 15 seconds to do. I have a sheet of paper somewhere around here with all the steps needed to promote a user in Windows, I was astounded by what the PC tech said had to be done. Anyone that says windows is easier to use needs a closed door meeting with a baseball bat. When it all comes down to it, the amount of software available isn't truly what's important, it's how easy, pleasant, and non-frustrating the system is that actually matters to a lot of people, tho they may not admit it. Having a flying car isn't so great if it takes you 45 minutes to get it into the air every day and is prone to running into buildings. I admit I get a little personal enjoyment when I see a windows user is just totally frustrated and ranting and I say well you know how we can fix that? and they scream back, "Don't tell me about macs, I don't want to hear it. I *LIKE* my pc!!!" Yessir, I can see that, looks like you've having a great time. The 5% of them that finally switch come to me later and say why didn't you tell me about this before? I triiiiiied.....
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
There's fans of Media Access Control?
Hi:
Apple is a hardware company. It's how they make their money. You're basically saying you'll test a BMW if you can get it for the price of a Pinto. Asking companies to adpot suicidal business models for your benefit is a bit rich.
Managed executables that crash more, programming complexity, a dearth of programmers compared to C++, slower code. Visual Studio auto refactoring breaks code. Untraceable crashes, strange pauses.
For the small rapid little applications it's great, or so we thought, but as we got more into it with much bigger projects, I wish we hadn't.
because your web programming skills are atrocious.
kore-net.com. need i say more?
I will certainly admit that there are a lot of things to like about OS X, and for some people, it will be the better choice. For others, Windows is better, and Vista is a big step forward.
The article comes across as "Why OS X is better than Vista" instead of "Comparison of OS X and Vista". But that's par for the course. The author does have some valid comments about areas that could have been done better in Vista.
I do disagree on some of the evaluations of Vista's merits. The most misunderstood area is User Access Control.
Not that UAC is perfect -- I've got a nice list of things I don't like about it. For example, if the system incorrectly detects that a program probably needs to run as Admin, it is a bit of a pain to convince the system to just run it normally. And there aren't any good tools for working with UAC from the command line (i.e. I want an equivalent to Unix su). I've written some myself, but they really should have been included with the system. And some tasks that should be able to be done by accepting one UAC prompt end up requiring 5 or 6.
However, the author of the article passes UAC off as useless and annoying. Well, it is annoying, but so is finding my car keys every time I want to drive my car. But it is definitely not useless - just misunderstood.
UAC consists of three mechanisms, along with related tools for configuring them:
1. The shell of an Administrator can optionally be run with reduced permissions. This means that if UAC is enabled, the user's shell (explorer.exe) will drop privileges when it is initialized (after the user logs on). In other words, the shell tells the kernel that even though it is running under the account of an Administrator, the kernel should deny any requests to use administrator privileges, and should not grant any access to resources based on the user's membership in the Administrators group.
2. There is a mechanism to regain administrator privileges so that administrative tasks can still be performed. If you are logged on as a user in the Administrators group, this mechanism requires a confirmation dialog (ok/cancel). If you are logged on as an unprivileged user, this mechanism requires a username + password of an administrator ("over the shoulder login").
Note that this mechanism must be protected from abuse. Potential abuses include: keyloggers (capture the administrator's password), event injection (simulate a mouse-click or keyboard event to respond to the confirmation dialog automatically), and luring (put a malicious executable with the same name as a trusted executable into the user's path, then trick the user into trying to run the trusted executable). Protecting against these abuses leads to a bit more inconvenience, but a lot more safety. This is why nothing else can be done while the UAC prompt is active -- the UAC prompt turns on some security features to protect against keyloggers and event injection. This is something that is more annoying than OS X's system, but also significantly more secure.
3. There is a mechanism to detect programs that require administrator privileges. Vista-aware applications include a manifest that tells the program loader whether administrator privileges are required. Vista also tries to automatically detect non-Vista-aware applications that require administrator privileges (such as installers). For now, this is a bit of a pain when it doesn't work, but in the future, this will end up working well. For example, as the author indicated, it becomes more challenging to install a pre-Vista application to your personal folder without help from an admin (Vista detects that the installer probably needs admin privileges). In the future, the installer will have a manifest telling Vista that it doesn't need admin privileges immediately, and will ask for them only if the user decides to install the app onto the system instead of to a personal folder.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I bought a black macbook this morning. Needed a powerfulish but portable dev server. Wanted black because the plastic probably won't stain with heavy use the way the white ones do. But I talked them down on price so as not to get ripped off.
It's now running Ubuntu. The new wireless card isn't supported. Setting up xmodmap has been painful and should be unnecessary (and it's still not as I'd like it) but even so - nothing else comes close.
Believe with me, my saplings.
Dear god, Outlook is ugly in that screenshot. I hope vista is 3rd-party themeable without replacing system DLLs.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
MS OSes are clunky, bloated and visually apalling. And they get in my way. Apple OSes are bloated and, if you're used to UNIX, also clunky (the way they need to hide unix-y things from Joe Doofus.) I find their visuals svelte and luxurious. But OS X gets in my way just as much as XP. I prefer fvwm2 wrapped around my apps and, though I'm not at all a computer 'expert' I feel entirely comfortable with the little bit of vi that I know and use daily. (I know a retired supercomputing wonk from LANL who has ragged me to get off pine.)
The salient question here is why do so many people consider Bill Gates to be evil while so many consider Steve Jobs to be some kind of saint. I'm sure they'd both be capable of murder if their companies were at stake. Gates controls via bloodclad contracts with Dell & Co. while Jobs controls with proprietary hardware and design-as-heroin. Aren't these two really just Janus incarnate? In hindsight, couldn't either of their faces be on that screen in the 1984 commercial?
Believe me, there's a Mass Psych thesis here.
It has the best DRM that money can buy!
"As long as OS X cannot run on the computers I have available at home or at work, I cannot compare. So it is impossible to make that judgement."
:-) You buy the entire package. Sure, its a tired line, but there is truth behind it. Apple doesn't put subrate nonsupported rap into their systems. Their OS is built around a limited amount of hardware options and doesn't try to be everything for everyone...something your hardware that you want to run it on does. Sometimes less options are better. I don't want some 3rd world network card with drivers written by someone with an intro to asm course and paid to have the driver 'approved' (which doesn't validate the driver at all, but the OS company believes that if someone is willing to spend $50k on approval, it MUST be good).
Your company is so poor that it can't even afford a $600 machine for your secretary from which if it doesn't work out, you can STILL install Windows on and be done???
I'm sorry, but I've helped several of my clients switch and they simply had to ask me to show them around on my laptop and then pick up a single machine to play with. It would be moronic to switch all at once. Find the people you think could change over with the least amount of problem and go from there. You quickly learn that there are few limitations.
Apple just isn't going to open the OS to the public (and I hope I don't have to eat my words next week
So if you can't afford the $600 for a Mac Mini or $1100 for an iBook to evaluate, you probably couldn't afford to use anything more than subrate equipment in the first place. I've run my business on less than adequate equipment in the past, and sometimes thats the only choice.
For the most part, yes. Font rendering in OS X is terrible, though, rendering the user interface somewhat useless for several applications (anything that has to deal with small fonts). It's weird that Apple got font smoothing so wrong in OS X, turning an otherwise great system in something whose major interface (fonts!) is so annoying.
Anyone who looks at my post history will see that I am a Mac zealot, but I have to correct a small bit of misinformation in the review.
He praises Mac OS X for dimming toolbar buttons when windows are in the background, using the example of a Safari window behind a Finder window. Unfortunately, the reason the Safari window's toolbar buttons are dimmed is not that it's in the background, but that it's not displaying any page. Put a Safari window displaying any page into the background and its toolbar buttons (unfortunately) stay active. The behavior he describes is application-specific.
For example, both the Finder and Path Finder do the right thing.
There were other inconsistencies in the review. Two examples: First, he slammed Vista for requiring UAC approval for installations where it might not seem necessary, where OS X does the same thing. Second, he praised Vista's interface consistency, without mentioning the lack of consistency that has been typical of Mac OS X in recent years. (This lack of consistency, because it is strictly cosmetic and apps have remained well-executed, is something I think is OK or even valuable... but there are a whole lot of Mac users out there who violently disagree with me.)
It's pretty clear that the author of the linked article is a mac user.
OSX is a good OS, but it's not without its problems. Apple still hasn't really figured out how to handle a mouse with more than one button despite having it thrust upon them by moving to a BSD foundation. (Seriously, how many mac users were using one-button mac mice a month after OSX came out?) Apple's about face on the "One mouse button is all anyone will ever need" issue was probably just to protect their hardware sales. The new apple mice are fairly nice. They're not those god-awful puck-mice from a couple years back at least.
OSX does do some pretty non-standard things itself. For example, try inserting a CD or other removeable media into your mac and then copying the file to your computer. Most people who have ever used a linux box, windows box, or *even* an Amiga for chrissake will drag the file off the CD and onto their hard-drive or desktop. Then they toss the CD because the data is on their machine now. If you do that in OSX and you'll find the link you just made now leads nowhere because OSX *didn't* copy the bloody file, it only linked to it. No other OS I've used does this, and it's bloody counterintuitive. What were they thinking? Don't even get me started about the OSX task-bar...
I use OSX when I have to, but I still prefer other OS's. The eye-candy just doesn't do enough for me and I've been using other OS's a lot longer, so I tend to prefer them. That's a personal bias, and I admit that. My point here is that OSX isn't perfection itself and mac fanatics need to accept the fact that some people have tried their chosen OS and weren't blown away by it. (Some people have even been forced to spend extended periods of time developing software on their beloved OSX without falling in love with it... Myself included) OSX was certainly a revolution for mac users, but do consider how primitive MacOS was before OSX came out. Heck, it didn't even have pre-emptive multi-tasking! OSX I can tolerate, but the old MacOS was truly wretched. That's why OSX is viewed as such a revolution. Consider that even Windows users had pre-emptive multi-tasking from windows95 on. Microsoft had their revolution about 5 years before Apple did. It's lucky for Apple that Vista isn't another one.
Authentication before making system changes. This, the author implies, is acceptable on OSX, but not Windows? Why?
Because it's better implemented in OS X.
Wrong. http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/07/ 2359256
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
He explains the Aero issue (he turned off those features so it would more closely mimic the wider user base), and he also goes into quite a few paragraphs of detail about the difference between authentication and approval.
I'll agree, though, that he seems from the outset to show some bias. I've noticed many of these things in Vista (I'm running RC1 right now, waiting for the release), but I also happen to much prefer it to XP. They're getting better at this. And frankly, I have a Mac that I hardly ever use because I find the UI so strange sometimes. It's just me, I'm sure, as most other people much prefer it. But I find, for example, that the Windows MUST CLICK OK FOR EVERY ACT mentality suits me better.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The story about it being some conspiracy is just typical slashdot banter, and no Apple wouldn't release the source code just because the slashdot crowd moaned about open source. http://kernel.macosforge.org/ has the kernel source and pain-in-the-arse-free instructions for compiling. (If you knew what you were doing, it probably wouldn't be a pain in the arse anyway.)
Also the kernel is primarily for business users who actually need to adjust it for task specific optimisations, home users never need touch it.
But remember according to microsoft it's a matter of national security to show your kernel source code, so please apply your tin foil hats while reading any source code.
This isn't exactly fair either. The iLife suite is separate from the OS. Its not bundled with the OS (though it is with new computers) and is simply a suite of applications that runs on the OS. So stating that the atrocity that is iLife's UI consistancy, as being a problem with the OS, would be the same as complaining that MS Office's UI is inconsistent with windows. I'm not saying there aren't serious issues with the iLife UI (it drives me up a wall, and I REALLY hope that Apple follows its own UI guidelines in iLife '07), but I dont think it is fair to claim it is an issue with the OS UI.
IMO, looking across OS X itself, the UI is more consistant than the Vista UI.
I used Windows at the start of my personal computer days (1994) until I was introduced to Slackware. I then started to dabble in Linux (1995) but only occasionally due to the fact that it was quite young and didn't have much to offer in the way of use to me at the time. I knew of the Mac platform but it was pre-OS X and I wasn't interested in it at all. Then came OS X... a friend of mine, knowing that I liked Linux, re-introduced me to the Mac side of the computer world which was now OS X (2003) and I knew right off that it was for me. I now use all three OS's but I will *not* make the Vista transition... XP is my last version of Windows that will run on my PC's. I will continue to run OS X, SUSE and Slackware with a Windows XP machine for that odd occasion of needing something that just isn't offered on the other platforms. Far less headaches that way and I won't have to buy new keyboards all the time!
Get your FRAG on!
Apple made it available a few months after that storm in a teacup.
They were probably tidying up the code, and people thought that it was Apple not releasing the kernel source code anymore.
What's worse is that you replied with this to a post that gave you an explicit link to the page you could get all the sources from. One click on "Darwin" and what do I see?
Mac OS X 10.4.8
Darwin 8.8
Source (PPC)
Source (x86)
So, yeah, 100% completely wrong.
The author of the article did mention that the Office UI isn't the same as Vista's so in this respect its a fair comparison that he didn't address in the least.
In the Microsoft world, if Vista stacks up against the current Apple offering and is not "bad" in comparison, why, that means that Vista is just absolutely fantabulous.
Good is a relative term, you know.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
3) Because auth on Vista is such a tremendous pain in the ass that I end up disabling it.
This raises two points: 1) Authentication shouldn't be disable-able. 2) By preventing it from being disabled, MS would actually have to put work into making it usable day-to-day.
The real litigious bastards...
Well, I am not really talking about price. Just about options.
When I get a Dell Optiplex, I can run Windows (2000, XP, Vista), Linux or BSD. Probably even more. But no OS X.
When the company has bought hundreds of Dell systems, there is no way they are going to get to OS X from where they are now. They would go to Vista.
So nobody should be surprised when more companies migrate from XP to Vista, no matter what the qualities of OS X are. Even when they do it only when buying new systems.
Would there exist an option of running OS X on a Dell (and probably some other common business machines, like HP) it surely would be a different story.
But it is as you say, they are a hardware company and not interested in marketing their software.
This will keep the markets as separate as they are now. No chance to convert customers over from the Windows world, and probably the same vice-versa.
But that may still be the best option for them.
However, it is quite pointless to compare the systems in that case.
I use Windows XP at work and OSX, FC3, Win2000 and XP at home. I am a heavy duty business user and student developer. I offer the following observations: /.
1. I use OSX primarily, on a pre-Intel iMac. Speed is good. System slowdowns are generally longer under Windows than OSX, but the 'pinwheel' in OSX drives me insane.
2. The UI and system administration tools in OSX are hands-dows way easier to use. I used every version of Windows from 3.1, and worked at a support desk in college - and once I learned OSX (ok, BSD) - style system maintenance and operation, I never went back. *NIX is far more discoverable and has a well-engineered feel that I like.
3. I have yet to run into any software package that I needed that did not have a counterpart on Mac.
4. I still have not played Half-Life 2. I do not need to, but I would like to, and I bought WinXP just to do so. I can't really blame Apple for this. In fact, Apple, by moving to Intel, has made it easier for their user base to access windows apps. Microsoft, by making it more difficult (from what I've read - haven't tried it yet) to run Vista in any kind of virtual environment is not really helping the user base much. Although they probably don't care about Mac users, there are many business reasons to support virtual environments, from posts I've seen on
5. Searching in OSX returns better results than WinXP or 2000.
6. Mac help, for system related issues, returns more relevant results than WinXP or 2000.
7. Mac hardware just works. I have a hetogenous network - my Mac has no problems, nor does my FC3 laptop. I have a dual-boot PC with WXP and 2000 - 2000 recognized my wirelss card and the built-in ethernet adapter. WXP doesn't have a driver for the built in. The wireless card has a driver, but cannot acquire a network address from my AirPort. Win2000 has no problems with the wirelss card or network address. The driver in both OSes is up to date. I should NOT have to put in this much effort, especially for supposedly supported hardware - it stuns me that 2000 is actually better at 'figuring out' what to do than XP. Needless to say, the Mac setup has never caused any problems for my Mac hardware.
8. Development - I do mostly Java and Ruby. Java runs pretty much identically on both boxes, but setting up newer versions of the Java environment is more difficult on Mac. Installing and configuring Ruby also requires a lot more effort. However, it is easier to troubleshoot in the Mac environment. XP and 2000, the installs seem to 'just work' but if they go wrong or there is a misconfiguration, it is a lot harder for me to figure out what went wrong.
9. Licensing - I can install my OSX CD/DVD on any Mac I have, no registration necessary. I do not do this, but I can. Windows XP, I installed and because it couldn't get on my network, I had to use the dial-in service to validate my copy of XP, which was a PITA.
10. I took C in college, working in a UNIX environment. It was amazing and taught me a ton. I took Java in college, working on a PC with NetBeans. Worked great. I used VBA to do corporate work and learned two things - first, an IDE is very nice, especially to learn UI implementation and second, VBA makes it way too easy to write crap code. You can write crappy Applescript too, but I've seen far less of it. Xcode is a nice balance and can hit multiple targets. I like it, although I've not done much Objective C work.
11. I like scripting and *NIX tools. Scripting is far easier in a *NIX-like environment than on Windows. Yes, there is Cygwin, but that was designed to remedy the lack of such tools in Windows.
12. C# for web development is, in a word, crap. Sure, it is easy to learn. Sure, it is free. Sure, the MS IDE is ok if you choose to use it. HOWEVER, it is so wrapped up in Microsoft-specific 'stuff' it sucks to use. Example - to simply change the color of a button in a web-form, I spent several hours working through my code to see what went wrong. I sent it to my professor, who told me it was fine and worked. I was mystified
I find it hard to guess what you might have done to get some other (mistaken) impression.
it's freenix!
Yeah, but how many people are going to buy Vista in the shops? Anyone who bought a PC or laptop since October will find it perfectly capable of handling Aero, and all new computers with Vista pre-installed will handle it fine too.
It's a minority who'll buy the boxed version, and if they're anything like us they'll have PC's more than capable of handling Aero. So his argument is a fallacy.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
I'm reading this page in Safari. I came here through an RSS reader. No buttons are active except those which can be used.
The back button is greyed and can't be used.
The forward button is greyed and can't be used.
I can reload the page or add a bookmark to this page; those buttons are active and shown as available to use.
I'm afraid you're not a very good tester.
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
comparing osx with vista has to include also the level of usability for an a liettle bit more experienced user. can you open a terminal with bash in vista? compile and run code for Xorg? or is that oging to come when microsoft figures out how to implement this?
i never tried vista running, but from what i see from all the screenshots all oover the internet is basically: it has a new widget-style, some of the GUI elements are inspired form osx and diverse opensource apps but there is nothing "new" and really unique to vista.
By the end of the year Windows Vista will be on more computers then OS X. OS X may be better on a 1 on 1 camparison but the IT industry favours Windows, thus it will come out on top.
You can't determine whether something is usable by writing a review, you have to observe actual users and what problems they have. And in that regard, I have seen little indication that OS X is significantly better than Windows or Gnome. Just from observing my parents on some of the points discussed in the article, I noticed
* They keep getting confused about which application is active; among other things since the frontmost window may not correspond to the menu bar.
* Wireless configuration causes no end of problems for them: the configuration panel is confusing to them, and the Mac often picks the wrong wireless network even if it could easily figure out what the right one is.
* Having to confirm some System Preferences changes with a password is a feature that makes OS X more secure in a corporate environment, where random people may walk up to your desktop trying to change things; it's a nuisance in a home environment.
* The green button thingy is as unintuitive to them as it is to me.
That's just some off the top of my head; there are many other usability problems in OS X.
Not having tried Vista, I don't know whether OS X is "better than Vista" in terms of its UI, but I don't see that it's a breakthrough in usability and it doesn't seem to be better than XP for real-world users. I suspect something like "Sugar" may be way more usable than either OS X or Windows "for the rest of us".
You should realize that one of the top features of a Mac system is that things work well together -- OS, software, and hardware. This is due to a hell of a lot of QA testing on Apple's part, and I just cannot fault them for it one bit. On the other hand, just releasing a DVD for people to install on whatever frankenbox they've cobbled together (or whatever cost-cutting box Dell sells now for $500) will mean the OS and software will no longer "just work" -- it'll turn into the driver/hardware support nightmare that Windows has enjoyed for quite some time. Given the beast that MSFT has helped create in terms of hardware diversity, there is now simply no way MSFT and/or anyone else can do the level of QA Apple performs -- at least not where the software would be meaningfully improved. I'd rather never see this happen to OS X, and if that means you turn your back on OS X as a result, that'd be just fine here. [shrug]
While I can agree of Windows traditionally being quite attention seeking, this is a poor example as it's often been useful for me to diagnose USB device or driver problems. Is he saying OS X doesn't tell when you that the USB connectivity is working? That seems like a quite big disadvantage here.
Not moreso than in e.g. XP this time around. It's not any more similar now than before. And Vista has now finally separated IE from the shell, so it's surprising to hear this now, of all times. Obviously IE is quite similar in look & feel to the rest of the Windows OS; there's no reason it shouldn't be, as it belongs to the same OS, after all. I'm sure OS X users are happy if their apps use quite similar looks too.
Yes, I agree about this, and it's basically my only beef with Vista and I'm sorry to see that stayed through the betas as it was remarked on before and MS was aware of it. They fixed the maximized window issue where the frame turned black (in order to blend better with the black of underscan areas on CRT's) and deviated from the theme colors. Now it's sort of a mix. This is a good thing, because on XP, you don't see if a window is maximized or not besides from it filling the screen. However, a maximized window on Windows has more different properties than that, such as not being able to be moved across multiple desktops. But unfortunately the active window isn't very visible; it gains an extra shadow effect and colored buttons, but not much more than that.
The UI is also lacking in some consistency, and MS has directly commented on the ShellRevealed blog on that in the past, in an unusually lengthy post, where they acknowledged the problem and gave some circumstances behind this.
Yes, however, just because you don't understand why doesn't imply there's no reason behind it. That's more or less a logical fallacy due to an overly aggressive opinion, and unfortunately the reviewer doesn't see and sitestep this mistake. Anyway, now that he did it, I believe the "My" was removed since it's been called superfluous and has often been brought up as a silly "Microsoft thing" in the past. I'm pretty sure I saw MS comment on this too in the past, although I don't exactly recall what they said about it then, right now.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
My favourite was when I clicked on a folder in the Finder while looking at some semi-important stuff, and OS X decided I wanted to rename the folder. I pressed Escape to cancel, which cleared the name and renamed the folder to have no name. Argh! I couldn't even remember what the folder was called before, as I hadn't deliberately clicked on it.
Disconcerting.
On Vista you simply can't do a lot of the stuff you can on a standard Linux distribution today without installing a lot of extra programs. Which is a pain i a body-part or in your wallet.
And what about the price? It doesn't mean a lot to a Slashtoter who just bought a new graphics card for $4000, but most people actually care about the cost and rather have some nice dinners instead of paying for computers.
Linux might still be harder for a Window-user to use, but it's way easier for me to use than any Windows. I think that Linux will take Window's place as "The stuff that everyone has, always is complaining about, but it turns out that you can't use anything else because there is some program that is only for this system." in 10 years. And Mac... I don't get it and most people will never like it. >;)
IMHO that is a fair ding against Vista. With Vista MS somehow managed to make the gui LESS consistent than it is in XP. I really don't know what the heck they were thinking but it appears they just did a really bad job copying OS X. Many areas that MS changed in Vista were very much change for the sake of change, they don't actually improve efficiency or make things easier for the user. Maybe I'm being too harsh but conversely I've just seen way too many Vista defenders swoon over things like Aero which from any objective viewing currently add very little to the user experience.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Apple's business is not simply "hardware" either -- the value of their product is that the hardware and software work very well together, owing to a known set of hardware configurations PLUS a whole lot of integration and QA testing which they use to feedback into their own software / drivers / hardware design teams. Additionally, since they've switched over the x86 based systems, their "total package" pricing (hardware and pre-included software) will easily beat an equivalent windows-based system as from Dell, Gateway, etc. (Here, it is important to match not only the raw specs of the machines, but the quality level of the hardware bits, the level of integration testing performed, the price of the OS and included tools that come free on a Mac, etc, etc.) By way of pointless anecdote: guy at my workplace went to the local Fry's to buy a top-end system. Said he had a shopping cart loaded w/ components (cast, PSU, mobo, etc., OS, software, blah blah) and, having totalled the cost up, decided a Mac Pro system would save him not only give him slightly better specs while saving him a few hundred dollars up front, but also the few days needed to get things assembled, installed, tweaked, etc.
"Technically speaking" OS X is light years behind Vista, I don't even see how Apple can catch up at this point. This is all just blatant FUD by a mac zealot who misrepresents the Vista side and praises the OS X side of every bit discussed. You plug your mouse in and Windows tells you that you've done so? That doesn't happen. He also conveniently ignores every area where Vista is the clear winner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ws_Vista
"Most people just don't care about things like who has the superior kernel. People care far more about the parts they see and work with, so that is what I'm going to deal with here."
So immediately, this article is already biased to a "who has the best user interface" because people don't care about the rest of the operating system - I highly disagree, and while most people might not directly care, it still matters. Afterall, the most important parts of the OS are Process management, Memory management, Disk and file systems, Networking, Security, User interface, Device drivers - to only focus on one yet claim that OS X is miles ahead because of it seems a little biased. But even then, is it a fair review?
So lets have a look at what this article boils down to, at the start:
> Messages from the operating system: Windows by default gives you feedback when you do things, wheras Mac OS X doesn't have to because "it just works".
Some people like feedback, I plug in a mouse to a windows PC, and it "just works", just like their mac example, yet it tells me it's installed new hardware. I like the feedback, and if I don't, I can disable it. Some people like feedback, some people don't. If I plug in a stranger hardware device, it's nice to know what Windows had the drivers, rather than me needing to install them. Surely this would only be a flaw if the messages were forced upon you, but the fact you can turn them off and gives you the choice suggests to me it's not really a problem with the operating system.
> User Interface: It is difficult to tell which application is active because buttons are still coloured even when the window is not active. Furthermore, Vista is both consistenty yet not consistent at the same time, wheras Mac OS has great consistency.
I found this quite a long shot, I've never had problems telling windows apart because there is colour in a non-active window. I'm typing this in notepad right now, and firefox is behind me with coloured buttons. The window is darker because it's active, the window behind is lighter - people have been used to that, and I haven't heard of people having problems with it in Vista or Pre-vista. If you don't like the UI, you can change it too, to make it easier to tell the difference, or even to go back to windows classic. As for consistency, I've frequently heard people complain about the lack of consistency on Mac OS X, so I found their reference to it amusing. For example, this article on the 'many facces of Apple's OS X applications' here http://www.robservatory.com/archives/2005/05/17/co nsistency-of-design/ - not to mention the fact that different programs often need different interfaces. Internet explorer does not look like Media Player. iTunes does not look like safari - they're different things alltogether. On Windows, most of the time things are fairly consistent, however, on Mac, you can have 3 or more different interfaces showing at the same time ( eg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:TigerDesk.png )
Change and renaming: Some things have changed in Vista, for example "My computer" to "Computer"
I would say change is a natural part of the evolution of an operating system. There were lots of changes from OS 9 to OS X, it takes a bit of getting used to at first, but most is done logically, and I wouldn't say it's a significant disadvantage.
> UAC: It doesn't ask for a password, and it's annoying because it isolates the rest of the operating system when it asks, therefore it's bad and it's different.
Ok, it's different but it's not as flawed as they seem to make out - first, it does require a password unless you have the priviledges to not require a password (contrary to what the article would have you believe) - this is an added convenience in the fact that if you're the system admin, you don't want to constantly be putting in the p
The article was written by an Apple user and supporter (read his Macworld speaker bio). This doesn't make his opinions wrong, and his arguments should still be evaluated objectively... but the OS that he's more comfortable using shouldn't really come as a surprise.
The point the author makes about authentication is that on Vista it's APPROVAL (clicking yes or no), but on OSX it's AUTHENTICATION (having to type your password).
A huge difference, very important.
I've only used Vista for about an hour, but I must have got about 30 popups from the UAC and it annoyed the hell out of me. For Gods sake, even for a hardcore nerd, why the hell is Vista displaying a GUID in the approval dialog?!?!?!?!?!?! What does that mean to ANYONE?!?!
"if i'd known it was harmless, i'd have killed it myself"
The reviewer should have Steve Jobs autograph his kneepads.
Sorry, no coffee yet.
Wake me up when we get there.
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
Just happened to me yesterday, in fact. We were under orders to have a constable's car completed in one day, which included radios, light bars, siren, flashers, etc. Unknown to me, the software that configures the light bars requires .NET. All went well and at 4:00, with an hour left, we needed to configure the light bar.
.NET framework had been removed from the laptop (by who?) and the light bar software would not run, as it required version 1.1.x of .NET. I uninstalled the software and attempted to reinstall it. It doesn't install because .NET still isn't there. In my haste, I downloaded version 2.0 of .net. It took over an hour to install. The software still won't install because it needs version 1.1.x of .net.
.net onto a desktop computer. 1.1.x of .net actually installs really quick, so I was actually able to install the light bar software. But I go to RUN the software, and guess what, it requires 2.x of .net to actually run. Now what kind of idiots made software that requires 1.1.x to install but 2.x to run? It is now about 6:00 and I have to download 2.0 onto the desktop and install it. It goes faster than the laptop, but it was about 6:30 by the time it installs. During this time, I downloaded 1.1.x onto the laptop and install it, so I can install the software onto it.
.NET and the required software up and running. I have to kill the computer, put it on a cart, and roll it out to the vehicle (by this time the laptop is almost functional, but we already had the desktop out by the vehicle).
.NET from hell story that just happened to me.
Short story, the
I'm pissed now, so I download version 1.1.x of
At about 7:00, two hours later, I have a desktop computer with both version of
At about 8:00, three hours later, they were pretty close to having the light bar configured, but I had an emergency phone call and had to leave, so I don't know what time they actually finished the programming.
Now I have run into having to have VB runtimes before to get VB program to run, but the runtimes usually just took a minute to install. Having to install two 20+ Meg programs, that took almost 2 hours to install (older laptop with Win 2000)...by the time it was all over, I was ready to take Bill G. apart with a blowtorch and a pair of pliars.
Anyway, that is my
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
mmmmm.... when I click on a folder name (twice) to get into name-edit mode, then hit Escape, it cancels the edit.
Even if I hit Delete when editing the name and the name is nulled out, then hit Enter or Return or click elsewhere outside the name, it restores it to the previous name. It won't allow me to leave it with no name. Even if I hit the spacebar once to give it the invisible name of [one space] I can visit the Edit menu, choose Undo Rename, and the name I just changed is restored.
Just what version of OSX are you on? Or are you sure you're even ON OSX?
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
OSX is a good OS, but it's not without its problems.
I'll agree with you 100%. Filetyping issues when there are better alternatives and the Finder could be better too.
Apple still hasn't really figured out how to handle a mouse with more than one button despite having it thrust upon them by moving to a BSD foundation.
You are aware that you could automatically use two button mice with contextual menus WITHOUT installing any drivers on Mac OS9 ( I can't remember if it did it for Mac OS8, but then again I wasn't using Mac OS X as my primary choice until 10.2 Jaguar when I ditched my SGI 02 Irix 5.3 and my SGI 320 Windows 2000). NeXTStep also had two button mice, where OSX inherits mostly of its legacy. It appears that there where two camps in Apple. The old Mac OS and the NeXT people. For the most part the NeXT folks had most of their way but in regard to the mouse it simply took an extra several years for a 'compromise' mighty mouse came out.
The new apple mice are fairly nice. They're not those god-awful puck-mice from a couple years back at least.
Microsoft, Logitech and Kennsington still make better mice. The "mighty" mouse is a step in the right direction, but still falls short of what it could be. Can't agree more about the puck mouse. Worst ergonomic mouse I've seen and the usability sucked.
OSX does do some pretty non-standard things itself. For example, try inserting a CD or other removeable media into your mac and then copying the file to your computer. Most people who have ever used a linux box, windows box, or *even* an Amiga for chrissake will drag the file off the CD and onto their hard-drive or desktop. Then they toss the CD because the data is on their machine now. If you do that in OSX and you'll find the link you just made now leads nowhere because OSX *didn't* copy the bloody file, it only linked to it. No other OS I've used does this, and it's bloody counterintuitive. What were they thinking?
Correction. Dragging a file from a CD to the computer should make a copy, doing the same for a media that rewritable like a ZIP or USB thumb drive does this behavior you describe. Its an idiosyncrasy inherited from classic Mac OS and one I don't care for, but know how to work with. As for trying to explain to someone installing a printer with IP printer, I have to tell them in Windows 2000 and XP some genius at Redmond decided that it's a local printer not a network printer. This confuses many people when setting up IP printing on Windows 2000 and XP. My point is there are annoying idiosyncrasy on both sides, but OSX has many strong productive features like pervasive spell checking, dictionary and a thesaurus like in NeXTStep. Live searches like BeOS and many powerful command line tools thanks to its BSD heritage. I believe Leopard 10.5 will have DTrace GUI called X-Ray and ZFS (but not on the boot Volume).
Don't even get me started about the OSX task-bar...
It's called the Dock. In Windows the equivalent is the Task Bar and Quick Launch which for some brilliant reason the latter is hidden by default in XP. The Dock has issues in terms of causing users confusion, several articles have address issues of the Dock
OSX I can tolerate, but the old MacOS was truly wretched. That's why OSX is viewed as such a revolution. Consider that even Windows users had pre-emptive multi-tasking from windows95 on. Microsoft had their revolution about 5 years before Apple did. It's lucky for Apple that Vista isn't another one.
Interesting comparison, but OS/2 1.3 and 2.0 was far ahead of Windows and far more stable until tens years later when Microsoft released Windows 2000 and then XP. Windows suffers from a legacy of being a single user OS than evolved into a multi-user OS. Meaning there are still many things on XP and are allow that are not allowed on a OS that had multi-users thought out from the early days like Unix and BSD. Mac OSX and Linux inherit the discipline of creating a modular and multi-user O
That's not a .NET story, that's an extremely poorly coded light bar control software story.
There are nearly an infinite number of ways to compare complex beasts like operating systems. I'm going to skip low-level issues, like comparing driver architectures.
Ie: we'll ignore all the places Vista is a clear winner, because then we wouldn't be able to say OS X is da shiznit...
Then we get criticism because the reviewer does not understand the interface:
With that in mind, note that, even though the IE window is not front-most, the "back" button looks as though it's active.
That's because it *is* "active" - Windows does not require a window be in the foreground for its widgets to be used.
The non-IE windows are more consistent in appearance, but if you didn't know that the red "x" or close widget in the front-most window shows that it is the active window, it would be somewhat easy for a new user to get confused about which window is the one they're really working in.
Apart from the way it's overlapping all the others, has a different coloured title/border and is the one the the user is interacting with...
Further in, it's ironic that a) they praise the "consistency" of MacOS (given it's been heading steadily downhill since OS X was first released) and b) they criticise "change for the sake of change" (given most of the UI changes in OS X deliver - at best - no usability improvement over MacOS Classic and are textbooks examples of "change for the sake of change" - or, more acurately, "change for the sake of flashy demoes").
This "comparison" boils down to three statements, all dressed up in various ways and repeated a few times:
"It's kinda different to previous versions of Windows"
"Its not like OS X"
"I don't know what I'm doing or why this is happening"
I didn't know the Medium Access Control had so many fans.
Well, among other things, he spends most of a page discussing the difference between authentication, which OS X does, and approval, which Vista does.
Authentication means you actually enter a password to prove you're the person who has rights to modify the machine.
Approval means you just click a "yes, go ahead and do it" button.
The article then discusses the weakness of 'approval' from a security standpoint: i.e.: it doesn't stop J. Random Passerby from hosing your system, it just means he has to push the 'Okay' button to do it.
In practice, this means that if the two of us are sitting side by side, you on a Vista box where only you know the admin password, me on a Mac where only I know the admin password, I can change the settings of your machine while you step away for coffee, but you can't change the settings on my machine while I step away for coffee.
First off, this really isn't Vista v. Mac OS X.. it's a comparison of their user interfaces (the author ignoring everything else about them..) - OK fine, but let's just make that clear from the get-go.. because while Vista has a lot of nice UI improvements, many of the exciting changes (at least, from my perspective) are more "under the hood" (one of them.. a I-can't-believe-they-took-so-long-to-get-this is per-application volume levels).
Now, here's where the article gets a bit nonsensical. It's a comparison of the UIs.. but he turns OFF part of Vista's? OK.. I see we've got an objective comparison coming here..
In all, he makes a few good points about Vista (UAC nagging and "personalization" vs "display" notable), but it's mostly just nitpicking.. and he doesn't criticize MacOS in any way, and doesn't point out any of the deficiencies in the MacOS UI (because it's plainly obvious what action clicking on red, yellow, or green circle has, to someone who hasn't used OSX..)
I am the maverick of Slashdot
I have installed vista corporate on several systems so far, here is my experience. It installs fine, at first I hated the installer and now it is a minor annoyance but it is still not as nice as the OS X installer. I have had it detect all hardware on any system I have installed it on The new security system does not allow a lot of older apps to operate correctly, 2 major ones I have found is Acronis True Image and Maximizer 8. Once the new sudo security is turned off, then they will install. User profiles are a HUGE problem, Vista uses a new profile scheme and is NOT compatible with 2000/XP profiles, forget about easily trying to get people to roam from a terminal server login, XP to a vista machine, this is a huge issue. The new alt-ctrl-del by default on a network is very bad, changing users is a huge head ache. There are a lot more things that I can go into by default, but the point I am trying to make is POLISH. This OS feels like it was rushed, that it just isnt finished and that no real people were consulted on it before it was released. My 2 cents, flame away JW
But by your own logic, a Mac would be better.
A new Mac will run Windows (2000, XP, Vista), Linux or BSD and OSX.
IMHO, this is just a dumb article written by someone who seems to be using MacOSX normally instead of windows.. Something a lot of people tend to forget is that Windows has to account for much more different hardware then Apple ever had to... Also these kind of articles are purely personal tastes...
And the macpro cost is high and the mini is low end and hard to open.
They need a mid-end system that does not have a screen build in.
At risk of being modded down (is there a sarcastic jerk mod?), I can't help but notice the inconsistency in the spellings of "inconsistent" in the past few posts ...
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
How do you enable the Cut option on the desktop? Would be nice to able to Move a file, instead of having to Copy then Delete the original....
With the exception of the video and audio production areas, Apple has pretty much given up on the business sector.
As a home user, if you don't play computer games, and aren't interested in open source, a mac is a very very strong altenative.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
I didn't realize that UAC dialog boxes were modal and prevented you from using the system. What is to stop some application from triggering "authentication" events every second so that it makes your computer unusable? That seems like a terrible design decision that you can't ignore those.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
While trying to look at this from a neutral perspective I have to admit that both, Linux(e.g. with GNOME desktop) and Mac OS give Vista a run for its money. Vista might look good at first but it is quite cumbersome to use and even on a fast machine it runs so slow that everything becomes a drag. By comparison, Mac OS is a real relief and Linux has become extremely easy and pleasant to use which explains why it has lately become that popular and a serious threat to Vista which is far from enjoying the adoption rate they hoped for.
I use about 90% Kubutun and 10% Windows XP, I've spent perhaps a total of 1 hour on OS X, porting a small Java application for a friend, so I am definitely not qualified to talk about OS X.
But after skimming through this article, it seemed like the author's just using a lot of words to say that, he likes Apple's OS X.
From his other articles, obviously he uses OS X a fair bit and is his preference of platform. And all signs of Apple favouritism is there in his writing, albeit wrapped in much nicer language than your typical fan writing. Nevertheless, it comes across.
But this article is almost not worth reading. I mean, he spends most of time talking about the UI experience between the two, which is completely subjective to users, rather than anything that can be compared objectively. So he ends up saying, OS X is superior to Vista, because he likes it better. Pretty much nothing more, just _because_ he's used to it and likes it better, and he's probably been using OS X since its inception, and likes things to stay that way for a long time.
He complains that it takes complicated steps to find the computer's IP address in Vista. Two questions here, 1) do users who care that much about whether the title bar goes transparent on inactive windows really need to know the computer's IP address? 2) I believe you can get it in one step by typing in ipconfig or something like that.
and spouting stuff like "being able to use USB memory sticks as additional RAM"...
WTF... in words of Pauli, this is "not even wrong". why is he even worth reading?
I've run out of steam, so don't actually know how to finish this off properly.
Yes, I agree.
And that's without having seen Vista. But if you scan the list of features they had announced for "Longhorn" and then removed before calling it "Vista", well about everything that would be an actual technological advancement is on that discarded-features list. So whatever is left except some eye candy - the one area where MS has been at least 10 years behind Apple for all of its existence? Trying to beat Apple in looks of the OS is the one thing that a company like MS, driven by marketing freaks and a few remaining techies will never, ever accomplish.
No, "Longhorn" (as originally announced) might have become a state-of-the-art OS. "Vista" isn't.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I spent a few years in uni using latex on pine for documents, lynx for web-browsing and pine for emails. The UI was totally consistent, actually, absolutely fucking the same.
Approval is only if you already have admin rights. Why make people retype their passwords? If you are logged in as standard user it asks for Authentication.
This is just the default btw. It can be set to always ask for authentication or turned off. I've read other people on this thread say it should not be able to be turned off. It's my computer and I like to be able to customize it as I see fit. I own it, it does not own me.
This argument can be seen in a variety of forms. Here are the basics, with all the changes and upgrades Microsoft has made to its windows operating system, no application built to work under windows has ever failed from its initial release. Could you say the same about Apple's OS X? Try supporting legacy code "because you know you don't want to rewrite the damn application" and then we'll talk.
-Dickens
1) If you step away for coffee long enough for them to be able to make changes what's to keep them from just walking off with your system?
2) The Vista behavior is just the default. I can change it to always ask for a password if I want. Can you change your default or does your OS vendor not trust you to do what you think is best?
Don't count on it.
Let's see what happens at Macworld this week. We've already got Open Directory, Active Directory integration, video conferencing, and a variety of other business-friendly features, and we know that iCal Server is coming in 10.5, which is obviously meant to be a replacement for the second most-used feature of Exchange (behind e-mail itself). Some people suspect there may be a full Exchange replacement in the works.
I think it's safe to say that Apple is paying more attention to the business sector than ever.
Web consulting +
The behavior depends on a number of factors, and in many ways UAC is vastly superior to Mac OS in this regard. To dispel some myths and speculation that have been swirling here:
r ary/00d04415-2b2f-422c-b70e-b18ff918c2811033.mspx? mfr=true
1) UAC dialogs can be automatically ignored or suppressed
2) UAC can be configured to require password, even with an administrator account
3) running as a limited user, UAC requires a passwords
4) applications can't snoop the password as its being entered (contrast with MacOS)
To highlight some areas that haven't been addressed:
-- UAC provides virtualization of registry hives to make older applications work well under the new system
-- UAC makes GREAT use of color to highlight potentially untrustoworth applications that have requested credentials
-- UAC behavior can be centrally managed through group policy
There's more too.
There's a ton of good information about it at Microsoft. See, for example, http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsVista/en/lib
For the security-conscious among us, UAC will preovide a great deal of control unavailable on MacOS. For uncle Bob, it will save him from a lot of malware even if he runs as admin all the time.
The comparison in the article is superficial, at best.
I think this is pretty much how it's going to be from now on.
Major innovation will be on Linux and OS X. It will take a month or two for Linux to absorb new OS X features, and OS X will generally absorb some of the good ideas from Linux in the next release of their OS, which seems like it's going to be every couple of years. Linux will always have more features than anything else, and OS X will always be perceived as "easier" in some way.
Windows will always be just slightly behind the last version of OS X. That is, Vista and Leapord come out, and Vista will be almost as good as Tiger, with Leapord completely blowing it away. And I'll take the features I like from both, and implement them in Linux, and still have the features neither will touch, like a real package manager.
In any case, I think it's more compelling to make that kind of comparison. For instance, if we were able to show that Ubuntu Dapper is better than XP, that'd be a very compelling argument, because we could then say "Oh, by the way, we're on Edgy now, but XP can't even begin to compete with that."
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Because it's better implemented in OS X. Wow, what insight you have provided. "It's acceptable because it's better".
Thanks, it's all clear now.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
that was an interesting rebuttal. thanks!
I've always found working in Windows XP to be frustrating and annoying, but never was able to articulate it as well as this author has (even though he was mostly referring to Vista). Of course any version of Windows is frustrating for someone used to Unix just due to its lack of certain features, but I found XP so much more difficult to adjust to than 98 or 2K.
The fact that Windows XP is so incredibly verbose about what is happening is extremely annoying. Constant bubbles popping up from the system tray talking about hardware, updates, firewalls, unused desktop icons (yes, I know it can be disabled), etc. Dialog boxes popping up for everything. I just want the OS to leave me alone and let me work. But UAC in Vista will make this even worse.
As the author mentioned, they also have the habit of renaming and moving commonly used tools, and making them harder to find for someone who really knows what they're looking for. Probably the worst example in XP was the changes to the control panels regarding network settings, workgroup computers, etc. Things that were easy to find in 98/2K became more difficult to find. Apparently Vista moves the "Add and Remove Programs" feature to "Programs and Features", and "Display" to "Personalization". I don't see how that makes the OS more intuitive to use at all, whether it is for a new user, or a power user with prior Windows experience.
Despite having a much different UI than GNOME/KDE/Windows, I found OS X much easier to adapt to. The Unix underneath certainly helped a bit, but the bigger part was how things just worked. There are still a couple annoyances, 'Finder' being the biggest one (the unix command line somewhat mitigates this), but overall OS X is so much better at not getting in the way of the user.
I think that if I could replace Finder with Windows Explorer or Konqueror (which I could probably do actually), I'd have very little to complain about on my OS X desktop. Add Fink and suddenly you've got something similar to Linux. Add Parallels and Boot Camp, or maybe free tools like DarWine and Qemu, if you need Windows applications. OS X has become the ultimate desktop (can run almost anything but Windows games), and Macs the ultimate hardware (can run OS X, Windows XP/Vista, and Linux on the bare hardware). The fact that Mac OS X has gotten faster every release, and Windows has instead eaten gobs more memory every release, is just icing on the cake.
How about a viable Point of Sale system on OS/X or Linux? I've never seen anything that was any good.
Oh, and how about all of my Visual Basic applications? I've written quite a few that we use daily in my business that can't be re-written (too expensive).
A (any) Mac OS was not my first OS, so I can really comment on the single mouse button operation's usefulness. I do occasionally run OSX on my Thinkpad in VMWare and am able to take advantage of all buttons, though.
Um... right. Take a look at Amazon's best-selling software list sometime.
1. Many of the top 25 ship media containing both Windows versions (World of Warcraft, TurboTax, H&R Block Taxcut, Rosetta Stone Spanish)
2. Others are available in separate versions for both OSes (Microsoft Office 2003 for Windows/Office 2004 for Mac, QuickBooks, Quicken). What're you left with that's Windows-only?
3. Some Windows-only apps compete with things that come free on every Mac (Photoshop Elements, Premiere Elements)
4. Some Windows-only apps are largely unnecessary on a Mac (Norton Antivirus, Norton Internet Security Suite)
So out of the top 25, what apps are we left with that are Windows-only?
Microsoft Money, the Pets Expansion Pack for The Sims 2, Age of Empires: Collectors Edition, and Dragon Naturally Speaking.
Yep, the games and apps people use are definitely not available on any version of OS X.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
"OS X will generally absorb some of the good ideas from Linux in the next release of their OS [...] Linux will always have more features than anything else, and OS X will always be perceived as "easier" in some way."
I work with Debian all day, but at home, it's OS X. I tend to disagree with Linux having more features than OS X. Maybe, but if so, Linux does not have the features *I* want. Example: where's Spotlight in Linux? Where's the email app with spotlight-like search? Why does my USB key does not load in Debian while it works flawlessly on OS X (or even XP) (it's probably related to our corporate Debian installation, but it just shows Linux has rough corners). Where's the default Expose-like windows switching? Etc. I prefer the philosophy of linux and it doubtlessly has features other OSes don't. But it's not true that Linux has the perfect mix of features for all users.
Animoog.org
Or you could just press control-F7 to toggle Text Boxes+Lists to All Controls.
Nice slams from both of you.
However, you're both wrong and right. When you get older you learn a few things so here's a nugget I'll pass on.
No matter what how good a job you do someone else will tell you your doing it all wrong. Your best to rely on your own judgment, whatever that might be, and forget other people's opinions. No one who is successful spends a lot of time questioning himself and overreacting to criticism.
I'd rather be doing it *wrong* and earn millions of dollars then be doing it *right* and poor.
My experience anyway, I'm sure someone will tell me I'm wrong. But please read the above and you'll appreciate how much importance I'll give your opinion.
"because you don't know how to actually administrate"
I think the word you're looking for is "administer".
I'm as a big a fan of geek-speak as the next guy. But let's use the right work. "Administrate" sounds painful.
Yep, the games and apps people use are definitely not available on any version of OS X.
You are correct in your facts, even when you just consider games, but I think you are looking at the wrong information. Whether or not the most popular software is needed/available on OS X is not as important as if the average person wants to run software or perform a function which they cannot. There are many applications that don't have a port and while individually they may not have a lot of market share, together they account for a lot of people being stopped from doing something. Also, software piracy/lending plays a big part. A whole lot of people use games and applications they borrowed or copied from someone else, and even if there is a Mac version for sale, that does not mean there is a Mac version accessible to them.
Sorry, but getting in an argument over which OS is better is childish. Its like a carpenter who falls in love with his hammer and by extension starts to hate every other tool in his toolbox. As the old saying goes if the only tool you have is a hammer soon everything starts to look like a nail. Same could be said for OS's. There tools, thats all they are, nothing to love.
Once you make a judgement, that OS whatever is a POS but OS something else is perfect, you've limited yourself as a developer. If I heard a developer say he hates Linux or refers to Windows as Windoze I wouldn't want to hire him, because he needs an attitude adjustment.
I've developed on the Mac, Windows, Linux, a variety of Unix's as well as embedded solutions and when I started them I had a dislike of each and everyone of them, but if you commit yourself to using a tool you'll get used to it. If you can't, well that says more about your abilities and attitude than it does the tool your using.
"At least there are no penguins, devils or puffer-fish on the farm."
And after reading this (under 6. Distribution and Marketing section), you wonder if there is no Pufferfish in OpenBSD. A Porcupinefish maybe?
I don't know about Java, but you can do much of this in .NET:
.NET by design. You can't allocate anything on your own.
1. Enumerate all the subclasses of a given class, or classes that implement a particular interface, including those supplied in plug-ins, at runtime.
** You can, through reflection
2. Call methods by name.
** You can, through reflection
3. Query whether a delegate object implements a given method, allowing for informal protocols.
** You can, through reflection
4. Handle the case where an object tries to call a method on my object that doesn't exist, to allow the simple creation of generic proxy objects.
** That can never happen in C#
5. Add methods to a class, even if it's part of the standard library and I don't have the source code (I can even do this at runtime, although it's messier, and I haven't ever needed to).
** What's wrong with inheritance?
6. Separate the allocation and initialisation of an object into separate methods, to allow different allocation policies to be implemented (e.g. pools for commonly re-cycled objects) transparently to users of the class.
** Not needed in
So tired of this subject. The reason why OSX is not in business
1)OSX still crashes and you can't understand why. Duo Core 2 with 2 gigs of ram? And still?
2)OSX, after you own your Mac for six months, will slow down to a crawl for no reason
3)OSX still freezes for no reason. Nothing is running except the Finder.
4)OSX's network capabilities are still screwy
5)OSX's implementation of bluetooth is not stable
6)Graphics are not as sharp as XP's or Vista's
7)OSX's handling of fonts is absurd, how many font folders are there?
8)Photoshop and Quark run faster and crash less often than on OSX. But wait, this can't be true!
I have a Mac hammer,
I hammer in the morning,
I hammer in the evening - my mouse in my hand,
I hammer without danger,
I hammer without BSOD,
I hammer out the love between my iMac and my iPod,
I think X is grand!
I'm so sorry...
Now if I had a Bell...
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I'm not an expert in operating systems, but Windows XP is just horrible how I/O really affects overall system performance.
For example, do something very I/O intensive (unzipping a 6G file), and then watch how CPU utilization goes through the roof and basically stops the rest of the system. I never got why that happens. It seems to happen much less in Unix based systems.
I've bumped my memory up to 3G in my system and it hasn't helped that issue.
Another pet peeve... if you have a swap file, you lose a chunk of performance. Even if there is no reason to swap. Again, when I added 3G to my system, there no reason for the system to swap. But if you watch what happens with a couple of tools that watch I/O it's swapping. If you look in MS's documentation, they deny that it swaps in this circumstance, but in fact it does. Hopefully they fixed this annoyance.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
I prefer rapid update cycles as it allows a company to respond to user feedback. We can talk about kernel and filesystem features till we are blue in the face but the layman end-user ultimately dictates the usefulness of a software. Apple can respond to user peeves well in a relatively short period of time. Even Ubuntu is superior in that way in that it could evolve to be better that Windows. OsX is consequently more evolved that Vista in that it is structured as much by user feedback and as by developers. I suspect that the Vista UI will have some growing pains that will persist to annoy many for some years.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Oh, wait
> If you're the sort of person who wants to use keyboard shortcuts then you're the sort of person who's able to go to the preferences and activate them.
Are you sure about? How about people who are blind or have mobility problems? And how about touch typist secretaries?
Keyboard shortcuts aren't some "guru feature", their a natural part of a well designed accessible interface.
I'm really surprised by this. I thought Apple learned its lessons years ago when they added "Apple key short cuts" to their menus by default. At least I thought they were on by default (I don't own a Mac, I've just occasionally used one for testing for cross platform support at work).
::Anyone who bought a PC or laptop since October.
Older.
I get a 4.8 rating on my GForce 7600 GS graphics card, and this IS older. THe only computers I have here so far that are not running aero are OLD - old like "Oh, you can still load vista on them". Like PIII with 1tgb ram and a Nvidia MX 400 graphics card with 64 Mb RAM - that thing should be like DIrectX 7 or so. No shaders to my knowledge.
Oh dear. You are the exact kind of nasty Mac fanboy that gives the product a bad name. There really are people who just don't care for the Mac OSX UI and if we don't like it, it isn't because we're too stupid to know if we're using it.
I also have the same problem on OSX, along with a whole host of other disconcerting behaviors that the OSX UI has. I hate how I cannot get my mouse's right button to work consistently on Mac applications. I had the hardest time getting used to how the Mac would just save my work somewhere without first asking me where I might want it. This would leave me in total darkness as to where it was, and forced me to use its search function everytime I wanted to find a file. I found that MADDENING. I usually have no problems remembering where I put my files, and I don't care how damn fast spotlight is, it slows me down to have to us it to find everything.
I see no advantage to the dock in OSX over the start menu in Windows; I find both to be equally annoying in their own way. I hate how the dock takes up real estate on my desktop, and OSX doesn't know to keep desktop icons away from it, so that whenever my mouse moves near it, the dock thinks I want to do something with an icon on it instead. Aaargh. There seems to be NO SPOT where I can put the dock without this happening.
I really dislike the lack of consistency between how all the applications work, so that I'm always playing a guessing game as to how to change a view, or edit, or even to just save something. I find there is also a lack of consistency about how to install software; sometimes I have to drop it in the application directory, and other times I have to drop it on the hard drive icon, and I've even found software where neither of these seem to do the trick.
Really, I just don't like using OSX and most of the software that runs on it. On balance I find that the frustrations I run into when using it are far worse than the frustrations I have with Windows. (I can't speak for Vista, as I work on XP.) However, Mac fanboys who tell me that I'm stupid for preferring WinXP doesn't help to sway me. (And all those "helpful" fanboys who will respond to this by pointing out to me all the secret keyboard commands that I simply have to execute just to take care of my various complaints don't see the irony. Counterintuitive commands like that negate the supposed "ease of use" that is always touted for OSX. So thanks, but no thanks.)
Wrong. Any program that can be installed by copying it to any folder (besides Programs) does not need admin access. This includes small programs like uTorrent and VG emulators.
Wrong, again. In XP, for example (I haven't used Vista), right-click > "Run As
Uh, no. Enter the password as above and you're good to go.
Please, there's plenty of material for which to bash Microsoft. Don't make stuff up.
And mods, don't mod something up because you agree with the opinion; that's what digg is for.
I'm no mac hater: I like macs and I'm probably going to buy one, but I just don't see a "huge" gap between vista and OSX. Microsoft has spent far more time making developer tools and APIs that make it brain dead easy for anyone to program on a computer. That is one of the reasons why windows has so many more apps (especially games, DX is a great library). While OSX might be prettier or have some other shallow advantages, it is not a more advanced operating system. If someone disagrees, please provide EXAMPLES. Just saying "oh yeah, Macs are easier to use because I'm too stupid to read and follow documentation" doesn't cut it. A lot of advanced and flexible pieces of hardware (going beyond just computers: machines and such) are "difficult" to use and might require a little bit more effort to master, but, in the long run, that doesn't make these devices less desirable, on the contrary, it can be an indication that they are more flexible powerful and therefore better.
As for Boot Camp, Apple includes the exact drivers you need to get everything working. So, I imagine the grandparent poster's friend is having a far better experience with Windows XP on a Mac than on a box he built himself. From my experience, it's the compatibility stuff (e.g. drivers) that end up wreaking havoc. Support and stability seem to be at odds.
Also, anyone with a Mac knows where to find Mac wares. Just because you've never looked doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
You should realize that one of the top features of a Mac system is that things work well together
That was one of the top features on Microsoft Works, when I installed it thirteen years ago on a PC running MS-DOS. Nothing new there.
Unfortunately, people don't like living in one 'closed system' on a PC. So they add this and that and suddently it's not all 'working well together' as much.
The idea of a single-vendor solution on a computer is very, very 1972, ya know.
Uh, Photoshop Elements is available for Mac. I have it running right now. And it does hundreds more things than iPhoto can... it's a long stretch to say that it compete with "things that come free on every Mac."
Comment of the year
OSX is retarded. Apple's brick wall between the user and the machine doesn't teach the user anything.
Most people I know in the US have a mac, and most people have NO IDEA how to use it.
OSX does not encourage exploration. Nor is it very customizable.
For example. I understand why apple introduced the interia on the mouse, although I think it's utterly horrible and leads to inaccuracy. Why didn't they also give an option to disable it ?
It's this force feeding of the interface and the strict way of working with it that I hate about macs.
Even down to the apple only software (FinalCut, Logic etc.)
Seems like OSX is just the glossy aftermath of an IBM~esque dream Steve Jobs had.
Actually, dick, I don't. The Mac community is so stingly elitest, it's sick. I'm regretting my decsion in getting an iMac just because of all the assholes I run into like you.
It's more of a Buick to plain-Chevy comparision. Please drop the 'BMW' references. It makes you sound like one of the shills blustering about the 'Harmon-Kardon Audio System' in the iMac.
This discussion sounds a lot like KDE vs. Gnome.
That reply was unnecessarily harsh. The other poster's statement that everybody with a Mac knows... etc., may have been overblown and rather stupid, but your reply just puts you into the same category that he was in. If you don't like the Mac community, then stay away, but I have found in my many years of being a big Mac fan and user that MOST Mac users are quite eager to be helpful, and are more than willing to assist a newbie in finding information and apps they need.
His points about the relative availability of software on the Mac vs. Windows is spot on. I am a desktop support tech, and have been for ten years, before that, I was in purchasing. I can tell you from experience that 75 - 80% of Windows software is crap - you can't say that about software in the Mac community. There, even most of the share or free ware is good stuff. I have never had any problems finding software for my Mac for some task I needed to do, and I use Windows at work just as much as Macs at home.
By the way, what is "stingly"??
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
Even if I hit Delete when editing the name and the name is nulled out, then hit Enter or Return or click elsewhere outside the name, it restores it to the previous name. It won't allow me to leave it with no name.
Well, that leaves us with:
I have to say, though, I'm pretty sure it happened, because when I pressed Escape and I got a (probably fairly important) folder renamed to '' because I pressed Escape, I remember thinking what a stupendously stupid bit of UI that was. I may have typed something - because I wanted to find a name by typing, but it might have overwritten the name - at which point I pressed Escape to cancel the edit. (I no longer have the Mac to try it on.)
Even if I hit the spacebar once to give it the invisible name of [one space] I can visit the Edit menu, choose Undo Rename, and the name I just changed is restored.I don't recall saying that wasn't possible.
Just what version of OSX are you on? Or are you sure you're even ON OSX?Yes, it was OS X. I think it was Jaguar.
I really can't figure out how we at /. can openly bash MS every time they add a new feature to their OS and scream about anti-trust laws while in the very next breath talking about how shiny OS X is looking these days. Maybe it started when Apple announced that they were going to use a Unix kernel. Somehow that sounds nice and open but it really isn't. I'd say that Apple is the sleaziest of companies these days. I guess it's because they don't get caught throwing chairs and have good spin control.
I agree. Apple sells a well integrated system and that is big part of the appeal.
The shallow view is that Apple would benefit by opening up the OS to third party use or a free for all. Though if you look at in depth, it is hard to see how.
Contrary to popular (shallow) misconception, everyone will not run out to buy a copy of OSX and install it on their computer. The vast majority do not reinstall an OS ever. The demographic that do overlaps strongly with the demographic that don't pay for it.
Giving Dell the OS would amount to turning Macs from a premium product to commodity. That is a downward spiral. The end of Apples HW business eventually.
If Apple wanted to grow market share dramatically there is a much better solution than giving the OS to Dell. They can simply make a lower end tower model themselves that would result in huge sales bump. That is a big gap in their lineup and essentially is the meat of the regular PC market. Maybe they are loathe to do this as it would threaten mac pro sales. I don't know, but it is frustrating as this is what it would take to get me into a Mac. But I will probably get yet another PC because this model is missing.
1) Instead of taking the whole box I might just want to change some setting (share a folder, set myself up as an admin user on your box, that kind of thing)
2) I'd say that the default is not very well chosen then. Not sure whether that behaviour can be changed on Mac OS, but I'm not sure whether one should even be able to change that behaviour, either.
I've seen John Welch ("John C. Welch")'s posts to various message boards and blogs, and he's an Apple fanboy to the core. Worships the toilet that Jobs craps in, and loathes all things Microsoft. He trolls Scoble's blog quite often.
To even things out, slashdot should have an article on Thurott's Vista review (which he just recently finished). It has 8 total parts. I noticed that slashdot did pick up the one negative portion of his review weeks ago ("what Vista is missing" or whatever it was called), but has dutifully ignored all the other parts. He's biased too, but no more than Welch (actually, nowhere near as much as Welch).
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Highlight and [cmd]- C to take data from X11 to the apple side.
Hold down [opt] and click to paste from the apple side into X11 (That's the middle-click emulation)
I had this question earlier today, and looked it up.
I can play every PC game by installing WinXP on a Mac, and the many Mac-only shareware games. I can participate in just about any open source project on a Mac, and if i get really excited, I can work on the OS X kernel as well.
Your two qualifiers don't seem that strong to me.
Is this even helpful in a practical sense? I might be wrong, but I figured access speeds are so slow you might as well just store it on the freaking hard drive...
"Progress comes from the intelligent use of experience."
I think you mean "Vista isn't just the fancy GUI", because historically speaking there is no fancy GUI to Windows. Beryl though, now THAT is fancy.
Would that be John Welch, "a Unix/open source administrator at Kansas City Life Insurance and a Mac industry analyst" (http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives /2006/11/is_apple_really.html) and "Mac guru" (http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/columns/appleent /)?
Just asking... is this someone you can trust to be objective in comparing the two platforms?
I think your optimism has a turtle and the hare theme going oin. "Give it a few years" assumes that Apple is going to sit around and do nothing while Microsoft catches up, but we all know that's not the case. In a few years it's very possible that Microsoft will be just as far behind as they are now.
For instance, let's look at the biggest feature of Vista, it's GUI. Windows finally has a 3D GUI that handles RGBA graphics in windows and icons. From the time Apple had this functionality with OS 10.0, the GNU/Linux community has leapfrogged both Mac and Windows with XGL, Beryl, Compiz, and that whole scene. That means that at this time, Microsoft is in last place against adversaries who have either been doing this for years, or have implemented those features above and beyond in a fraction of the timeframe.
Give it a few years and the fun and games won't really be starting, they'll still be lagging behind.
You're bemoaning the impending purchase of a new PC on the lack of a "low-end" model from Apple. (That's just odd to say, btw.) If you think you're serious about it, here's the test: buy a Mac Mini. No need to worry about keyboard/mouse/monitor (as you've clearly got that anyway). That's what sold me. I get tons of stuff done on my Mini and will be getting a full-up iMac model probably 2Q of this year. Granted, I did get the RAM boost for my Mini ... still, mine's the PPC version before they switched over to Intel, so even though the newer model is 2-3X faster, and I've got exceedingly few complaints.
Totally, you never know what Microsoft might release in a Patch Tuesday that might blow the competition out of the water. I'm just worried that the awesome features were in the 4 patches they decided to postpone. :(
And this is generally still true of Office itself, which is one of Microsoft's top revenue source. Except, neither of those products really works as well together as iLife. And here's the point I was making: it isn't just software working well with other software -- its software, hardware, and devices/drivers all working well together. This is a higher level of "working together" than simple OLE calls between a couple semi-related home/office applications.
And otherwise, people outside of slashdot are happy with the thought of their PC as a dumb, if highly finicky and irritating, appliance. They bought "a Dell" (or whatever) and so long as they want support for it, that's every bit as closed to them as a Mac would be.
The gaping hole I see in the lineup is between the Mini and the Pro. The mini doesn't come close to meeting my needs.
I need real HD space. Minimum: room for two 3.5" HDs INSIDE the machine.
I also need a real vid card.
For a little more $$$ (or maybe even less) than a mini you could have a mini tower that would easily fit the bill. Maybe a return of the cube. Actually the mini is made more expensive than it needs to be by using laptop components. Laptop HD cost more money and have smaller capacity, the slimline DVD burner also cost more than a standard full height model.
There is nothing in the Mac HW line that suits my needs.
Mini - Underpowered video and no HD space, PITA to upgrade even the RAM.
iMac - I don't want an all in one.
Pro - insanely overpriced, overkill.
The meet of the market is small towers or equivalent. Something that RAM and HD can easily be upgraded with a real Video Card. A mini tower or a cube or whatever. But something that meets these needs.
Cheers...
They may be able to handle Aero, but given Vista Starter and Home Basic don't include Aero a big chunk of them won't be running it.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
I must admit I really do like the ability in Vista to plug in a flash drive and use it as expanded swap memory for processing/booting the computer. However, beyond that one neat, but likely to be little used, feature Mac OS X wins in every category except
1) Windows has more software, especially in the gaming department.
2) Mac OS X is technically only allowed to be used on a set of proprietary hardware that, for the most part, is upgrade limited.
In other words, Mac OS X itself is superior to Vista in every respect, but only loses out due to software support and a marketing decision by Apple, not because of any failing in OS X itself.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
Drop it on the hard drive icon? That's a new one on me. If it's a .pkg you double-click, if it's a .app you drag it to wherever you like (typically /Applications or ~/Applications).
What application doesn't ask you where you want to save? Not asking is certainly not the norm for Mac applications. IIRC Camino by default doesn't ask, but that's the only one I'm aware of and Firefox on the PC did the same thing by default last time I looked. Hardly the Mac's fault.
Can you provide specific examples?
You sound like I felt about 4 hours after getting my first Mac - it's different so it's stupid. I took the time to get over the hump in the learning curve (inevitable with anything new) and after a couple of days could do everything I needed. Not knowing how to install applications suggests to me you never bothered to get over the hump before forming an opinion.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
4) applications can't snoop the password as its being entered (contrast with MacOS)
Why not? The link you gave doesn't say anything about this, and I notice you don't back up your implied assertion about MacOS either.
So Microsoft Works will configure all the nodes on my distributed wireless network, play music wirelessly through from my HiFi, put the same music through the same interface on my portable music player and let me video conference with my brother without installing a thing? Microsoft Works can do all that through a consistent interface, guarantee it'll all work together and manage any updates for all that hardware and software from one place? Wow, there was me thinking it was tired old lightweight office suite.
Macs on their own are great, but the Mac + AirPort + iPod + iSight + iChat + iLife experience is something nobody else even comes close to offering.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
I buy the gaming argument, the Mac is weaker there (though you can still game - WoW, Sims 2 etc.), but for OSS it's decent enough. It's rare I have to turn to one of my Linux boxen for my fix of wholesome OSS hacking. If you're a fairly casual gamer and fairly casual OSS user the Mac is a perfect platform. Better than Linux for games, better than Windows for geekery.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
Ahh...you've taken something I wrote entirely the wrong way. If it was the wares thing...then maybe you could ask rather than calling me a dick.
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
Because it's better implemented in OS X.
Why ?
He explains the Aero issue (he turned off those features so it would more closely mimic the wider user base), [...]
Which is ridiculous on its face, because a) most new Vista users are going to get it on a new, Aero-capable PC and b) most upgrading users are going to have a video card that's been more than bottom-of-the-barrel for the last 3-5 years (or won't be bothered splahing the US$30 it costs to buy one new).
Aero's video card requirements are not at all unreasonable or excessive. Implying they are - by suggesting most PCs running Vista will not meet them - is blatantly dishonest.
Pro - insanely overpriced, overkill.
The Mac Pro isn't overpriced, it's just expensive. For what you get, the price is quite competitive.
Interestingly, my experience has been the exact opposite. I can do more stuff on my Mac (and more easily) than on Windows.
Cutting movies and creating DVDs (with slideshows and menus and all that good stuff) is still a PITA on Windows. It works perfectly well on a Mac. I hate creating presentations using Office. My presentations made using Keynote are much better - guess what, Mac only. Using Parallels, I can run Mac and Windows applications side by side. Can your Windows PC do that? Can your PC easily scan in your DVD collection using its built-in webcam? Does it have something like MemoryMiner, which allows you to sort your pictures by subject, time or person? Does it come with a free development environment like Xcode? Does it run Java out of the box? Where's your Garage Band? Your Mellel (oh my, I wouldn't want to write a dissertation in Office, I love my Mac just for Mellel alone)?
At the end of the day, I just feel constrained and unhappy whenever I use Windows. I can do much more on my Mac, and I like to do stuff on my Mac.
Adobe brings Premiere back to the Mac.
As long as Apple doesn't unfairly use its advantage of owning the OS FCP runs on, competition is good. If they changed to OS to hurt Premiere, then FCP would be a bad thing. They don't.
Okay, I take it from your ramblings that the Mac does not have an app you need. Which one is it?
What a fascinating approach to computer buying. Reminds me of when I was a kid: When I was mad at my mom, I would refuse to eat the meals she cooked. Obviously, that only hurt me because I ended up being hungry, so I got over that behaviour when I was four or five, I guess.
I couldn't agree more. Recently, I needed a tool to quickly create a Windows icon. I guess I should be able to find something which is free or at least has a functional demo, does not come with spyware and works reasonably well? Maybe I should, but neither Google, nor download.com nor versiontracker.com found anything. After wading through dozens of apps, I ended up with an ugly piece of crap that did what I wanted in a half-assed way and worked for 30 days. Man, never before have I missed my Mac so much.
I have a Mac and a Wii. Perfect computer experience, perfect gaming experience.
Of course, since you probably need to buy a new computer to run Vista anyway, you might as well buy a Mac and run Vista using Boot Camp.
Interestingly, that's exactly what I'm seeing on Windows. Most Windows users have very few non-Microsoft apps on their PCs. Probably Adobe Reader and Yahoo! Messenger or ICQ (but many are switching to stuff like Meebo instead), and that's the extent of their adventures into non-MS land. Windows users are way too scared to install new stuff on their PCs if they aren't forced to.
I've never seen a Mac user who didn't load his disk with all kinds of apps, though. And many of these Mac users even pay for their third-party apps, imagine that.
Thurott's site: winsupersite.com
Welch's site: bynkii.com
Nuff said. Actually, not nuff: I've never seen anyone more mean-spirited towards Mac users and Apple in general than Welch. He's a lot of things (definitely a Mac geek, among less nice things), but most certainly no Apple fanboy.
I think you're making part of this up. Yes, clicking on a name once puts it into edit mode (which is actually equal to a normal selection unless you type something). But you can't "rename the folder to have no name." If the name is empty, it will revert to its last name as soon as you deselect it.
Yeah, Mac OS X behaves differently than Windows. You have to adapt to some changes if you switch. It isn't hard, though. I've seen stupid people do it.
I guess I'm a nasty Mac fanboy for pointing out a few facts, too. I don't know of even one Mac application which doesn't prompt where to save files. What app are you talking about? I have no idea what you're talking about with regards to "change a view, or edit, or even to just save something." Examples of what exactly is confusing you?
It can't be changed on OS X. You authenticate, then you get privileges, then you can use these for a small amount of time and change everything that requires these privileges. These are real privileges, too. Mac OS X doesn't just ask you for the password to see whether it's you, it needs to password to gain the privileges. There are two situations where this whole process starts:
I'm guessing that Windows used to require the password each time, too, but users found it too complicated, so Microsoft changed it to just ask whether something is okay.
In practice, this means that if the two of us are sitting side by side, you on a Vista box where only you know the admin password, me on a Mac where only I know the admin password, I can change the settings of your machine while you step away for coffee, but you can't change the settings on my machine while I step away for coffee
Actually if I was logged in as an administrator I would hit WindowsKey+L to lock the computer before I ever walked away.
However, more importantly, I would probably NOT be running as an administrator, and would be in normal user mode, so each prompt would require a password just like on OSX.
MS seems to trust an administrator in Vista to give them Approval authenication, Apple apparently doesn't think their users should be able to control their own computer and forces a password everytime.
Also there are many aspects to the UAC that go beyond the Approval/Authenication and using the method of access password, etc is comparing the security interface and not the logistics of the security provided by the UAC.
There are a lot more things to what UAC is than just requiring a password to elevate privledges. However, sadly, these concepts are beyond most Mac users, especially the author of the article that sparked this thread.
Reading this article would be like reading an article by the head of the Republican Party on 'Democrat vs Republican Ideology'. There is no way you are going to get an unbiased view, nor are you going to get perspecitve of things the Mac user has NO CONCEPT of because they have so little understanding of OS technologies/theory beyond what they have worked with in OSX.
This is the same type of article that 7 years ago the author would have called OpenBSD a crap OS in comparison to System9 - somethings are just beyond a person's ability to see unless they are forced to experience it.
Microsoft are pushing "Windows Desktop Search" (Office 2007 beta seems to want it.) It offers vastly supperior searching to the old search utility in Windows XP. The last time I used Vista was RC1 and the search tool seemed to be identical. Considering how useless I find MSN Live search I was suprised at how good and how much I like Windows Desktop Search.
The actual article is awfull, the writer is obviously a Mac fan boy and seems to attack Vista for things which I see as improvements or extremely usefull. I like being able to see a network topology of how I'm connected to the net (it has been usefull), I like the new way they classified things, Computer, Games, Programs, Documents, Audio. Telling me that I've plugged in a mouse is a usefull thing and a positive, asking me permission multiple times is also good because stupid users will hopefully read at least one of the messages and stop themselves before they install malware. Windows has many awfull features, it would have been nice to read about those and see how the Mac does things differently.
Naturally this requires that the exe is not using some proprietary compression scheme, and that no relocations have been needed (rebase is your friend).
Anyway, this means that loading something that's been swapped out from disk can require accesses all over the place. Putting that data in a medium with basically zero additional penalty for random access, like a flash drive, can make a lot of sense. This would apply to all swap data, as the access patterns are rather random, but if you want to be able to jack the flash drive out at any moment, you need to have some second backing for the data in case of such an event. Where do we find that? In the real binaries, of course!
Optimizing defragmentation tries to achieve this by putting relevant binaries close together, but you still have to seek within that area, and seek back to some place in the real swap (to load volatile data back). By moving some of those operations over to a device with good random access behavior, you'll even get higher performance out of those operations that are still handled by the HD. All in theory...
Whether or not the most popular software is needed/available on OS X is not as important as if the average person wants to run software or perform a function which they cannot.
All macs sold now are Intel macs, and thus all macs sold now support parallels - if there is an application so crucial to be run, then it's crucial enough to bother buying Parallels and a copy of Windows to run it on the Mac.
But really there is almost no software at this point an "average" user needs to run under Windows where there is not a mac version or equivilent.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Of course I agree I'm posting on /. where M$FT is bad and AAPL is always way ahead except in the security vulnerabilities department.
As many other posters have said with MS's monopoly Vista will end up the #1 OS whether the alternatives are better or not. A large proportion of people are blissfully unaware that alternatives exist and many others would not use another OS regardless. However from my experience of the average Windows/OS X user they do not particularly like change whether it is for the better or not and will bitch about it when stuff that used to work now doesn't, I suspect this will be the case with Vista and to a lesser degree Leopard as well (Linux users generally know their systems better and even if they have problems eg, Dapper to Edgy Ubuntu, they just get on with it).
I am a sys admin and primarily use OS X (I have been using Macs since System 6) but have also used Irix, Red Hat/Fedora and Windows boxes, I am currently playing with Ubuntu at home just to see what it's like. I find there are annoyances with all platforms but find it more difficult to get stuff done in Windows whatever version it is due to the fact it is the OS I am least familar with. People like what they feel comfortable with.
I am not familiar with the TFA's author but he obviously predominantly uses OS X and as such his opinions will not be particularly objective but enjoyed reading the comments (except the coding bits which gave me a headache).
sigpending(2)
Some free Windows-only apps (Picassa 2, Windows Movie Maker 2) compete with things that come free on every Mac (iPhoto, iMovie) but costs $79 to get new versions (iLife bundle).
You're showing your Apple bias. You like to use free examples for the Mac, but you conveniently fail to mention free software for Windows that's superior to Norton's crap (AVG, Kerio, ZoneAlarm, SpyBot)There's lots of great free stuff for Windows that aren't free for Mac in equally good quality: Foobar2000, Media Player Classic, DVD Decrypter, DVD Shrink, VirtualDubMOD, Windows Movie Maker 2, Picassa 2, ImgBurn, QuickPar, 7-zip, IrfanView, Paint.NET
The other poster is right. And if you had Macs from around the same era -- believe me, OS 10.2 is a pain, too. And I'm sure if your corporate install was OS 9, you'd have nothing good to say about Macs.
If you want a Linux that just works, get the latest Ubuntu (edgy) or a reasonably up-to-date Debian ("testing" or "unstable").
And my Linux does work out-of-the-box, with almost everything I want. Yes, I do have to install things like Beagle to get the functionality I miss from OS X. However, on OS X, I had to install a separate app to get virtual desktops/workspaces. Yes, Apple will support that in the next version, but that's just one thing. There really is no good package manager for the Mac.
And by the way, I'd argue against including Beagle in the default install. Maybe make it an option in the install, or have a nice list of things that people might want to install -- but remember, on Tiger, you don't get a choice -- Spotlight is installed, and you get to burn a few extra CPU cycles everytime you change a file to make sure it's indexed. On Linux, I can choose not to install Beagle -- and many would argue that the default Ubuntu install is too bloated as it is.
Now, you do sort of have a point -- it would be nice if every Linux distro, even the ones that are five years old, was enough better than OS X to convince you. But you, being someone who reads up on computers, should realize that this is impossible, and that we are doing about the best we can. You have to meet us halfway.
Oh, and speaking of VLC: On the Mac, it's a Universal Binary that's about a 20 meg download. On Ubuntu, it's about a 1-2 meg download, plus dependencies -- and those dependencies can be shared with other players, like mplayer, xine, or totem. The Mac will never get better at this, as far as I can see, because their philosophy is to bundle everything needed for an application into one ".app" folder -- it's like they're allergic to third-party shared libraries -- meaning it not only wastes download space, it wastes disk space and RAM.
So, just to remind you: I can tweak Linux to do just about everything I'd miss from a Mac. I cannot tweak a Mac to do anywhere close to everything I'd miss from Linux. At the end of the day, out of the box doesn't matter nearly as much to me as the end result.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Perhaps you could tell me why a 20 meg downlad of VLC for the Mac -- 10 megs of which I'll never use -- is better than a 2 meg download on Ubuntu. Or why going to a website, finding a download link, then mounting the downloaded image, dragging the file to Applications, ejecting, and throwing away the image is easier than "apt-get install vlc" or Synaptic.
Linux package management actually handles dependencies -- and has an actual uninstaller. It may leave settings around, but that's it -- whereas some OS X programs, you can drag the app to the trash as much as you want, it'll still be trying to load a menu or some kernel extension, and you have no idea where that is. You can buy software to handle it, but that just strikes me as evil -- install all the software you like, then pay to uninstall?
So tell me again what you don't like about the Linux package managers. Tell me why a self-contained folder is so much simpler and easier to use than a list of software to install and a button that says "go".
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Okay, I'm guessing what happened is that GGGP selected the wrong network once, and Mac OS X now assumes that this is his preferred network. To fix that, go to your Network settings, go to Airport and delete the "wrong" network from the list. If the setting for auto-connection is not set to "preferred networks," change that too.
But really there is almost no software at this point an "average" user needs to run under Windows where there is not a mac version or equivilent.
This is also true, but also missing the point. The average person may not want or need to perform any given function that is unavailable on the Mac, but a lot of them are likely to want to do at least one of them. 2D CAD users, GPS enthusiasts, skydivers looking for altitude calculation tools, realtors looking for online property lookups, gamers who want to play some particular game with friends, etc. are all going to run into some niche software need that is not met. This is mostly just because of market share, but it is a real issue.
Also, anyone with a Mac knows where to find Mac wares. Just because you've never looked doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Really? My mom has a Mac, but I'll bet she doesn't know how to find "warez" or even what that means. People who download cracked copies of software from the internet are not a significant part of the general computer using populace. Most people that borrow, or copy games illegally use copies that are owned by a friend. Most of those friends (statistically speaking) are going to have PC versions.
For most users, that is not a viable option. Sorry, but most users can't install an OS at all, don't know that they can run Windows on a mac, and the cost barrier of one copy of parallels and one copy of Windows is too high.
You would be right about "most" users except that the people who really, really need a Windows applicaton are also going to be able to install Parallels - I have seen it happen a lot, even non technical people do not really have trouble with the concept.
The wider defintion of "most" encompasses a large group of people outside that 10% who do not need Windows. Thus, it does not matter that Parallels is too hard for them - they don't need it.
The question is how many users want to do something and can't because they have a mac and software is unavailable to them,/i>
That is the question and the answer at this point is hardly anyone. CAD users, and a few other speciailzed applications - primarily technical. Anything non-technical is covered for sure, as are most technical areas at this point.
The average person will never need to run a 2D CAD program. The average person will not want to play Half-Life 2. A significant number of people will want to do either the former, latter
As noted, CAD is one of those specialized areas that is not well covered yet (basically just because there is no AutoCAD, there are actually very good CAD applications for the Mac but AutoCAD is more irreplacable than just about any other application).
As far as gamers go, I completely disregard that argument since a gamer can either get a console or go with Bootcamp - gamers are those highly technical people that are installing Windows anyway to boost performance (at least the ones that "must" play HL2 are).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"...because they have so little understanding of OS technologies/theory" ...
Why did you even bother posting this drivel? It's got I AM A HYPOCRITE written all over it, in big, shiny, grade-school letters.
If I did have to write something in the registry it's exactly where I would expect it to be... In the software section under the heading of company name. I dunno. seems quite easy to me.
Would that be the software section under HKEY_CURRENT_USER, or the software section under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE ? :D
I have rarely(once maybe every 6 months) had to use any sort of registry editor. Honestly it doesn't get any easier than that.
Oh come now, that's just a loaded statement. You know what's easier than that? Having a proper freaking search box in the registry editor, which dynamically searches as you type.
Here's an interesting point for you: On OS X you can get just that, by opening a Finder window to Library/Preferences, and typing something (anything) in the spotlight search box on the window. Try it with 'Mail'. Hrmm, what's this, com.apple.mail.plist. You open it up, it opens in the XML plist editor. By cracky, doesn't it look a lot like the registry. Look at all these settings ... what does 'WebKitDefaultFixedFontSize' do, I wonder? Or if you have Macromedia Flash installed ... try 'flash'. Hrmm. 'com.macromedia.flash.7.plist'. Let's try changing the setting for 'NSColorPanelVisiblSwatchRows' ...
You say you've been living with the registry for 10 years. People don't just sit down at a piano and expect to be instant masters, even if they've been playing guitar for a dozen years. Suppose, just for a bit, that your situation is the same, and that the only reason you thought any different was because, most of the time, OS X just did things the right way and you haven't found reason to complain.
IOW return to good ol' way of dealing with security - blame user. First annoy user with bunch of dialogs - and then when s/he turns them off - claim that M$ has nothing to do with it. Yeah, improved security. Greatly.
Bullshit. Vista is Win32 compatible => support keyboard hooks => keyboard can be monitored. Period. (Otherwise things like VNC/pcAnywhere/RemoteDesktop wouldn't have let you input password at all. They use that feature.)
[ And where did you get the notion that Mac OS passwords can be snooped? (Well first of course user's computer needs to infiltrated wit malware, what's not so easy Mac OS). Both NeWS (that's what Mac OS X based on) and X (that's *nix is using) implement secure passing of events for as long I know them. Passwords input isn't only application - almost any user interaction with application can be secured. ]
The functionality is available since NT 3.5. I wonder what you really meant.
As web has shown, that means that rogue applications would start using the "safe" colors to fool users. Not really any kind of advancement.
Funnily enough, for two years I have used Mac in past, never really missed that. Nor do I miss that on Windows. Most of the group policies can be bypassed anyway, so they are good only as efficiency bumper for users to hate Windows even more.
It provides great deal of "Windows-specific" stuff few really care about - outside Windows-only/M$-only shops.
You mean that uncle Bob would be calling his IT friend every time UAC asks him something? Then I believe you. Otherwise he would be clicking "Ok" - just as he did with Windows for last decade.
As long as M$ plays games with security - there will be no way that "uncle Bob" can be safe by himself. Especially running with local admin privileges.
Windows (Vista included) is stupid moronic system which doesn't allow even basic privilege separation. And as long as M$ wouldn't move its fat ass to actually implement proper privilege separation (as it was done eons ago in *nix/BSD/MacOS) - no way applications can be hardened against external attacks. As long as implementing provilege separation in Windows is what it is now - pain in the arse - developers will be very reluctant to actually use it. I programmed that once under Windows - and do not want to even try that again. (Under *nix you need about 10 copy'n'pasted lines of code to implement privilege separation: between main non-privileges process and privileged child process. And you can do all that right from single executable.)
In the end, you need to read less of crap from Redmond and start using different systems. Try to work on Mac or Linux for couple of month to get a feeling - and understand how stuff really works - then you can jump and make claims.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
It is just common sense on Apple's part: any admin would tell you that having any task with excessive privileges poses threat. Mac OS X reuses the concept from Unix world: run with fewest possible privileges and request them if need arises. (Okay, Mac OS runs with tons of excessive privileges - compared to normal Unices.)
I even can't recall any everyday task which requires any special privilege Mac OS would ask user a password for. Installing software globally, modifying system setting - that's common sense to have that privileged. Local software installation (in your home directory) of course requires no password.
At moment, most of the time when Mac OS X would ask user for password, WinNT/2k/XP hangs for several seconds and then throws at you "Access denied" error box. I think former behavior is better. For admin with highest privileges in system to receive "access denied" error is really ridiculous - though that's what Windows does all the time.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I've just bought a Intel C2D and a GeForce 8800GTS for my home gaming rig. I've played around with Vista on PC's before I got this one, waiting for the GPU to be supported under Vista by nVidia, and I've mucked around with Linux as well, it works pretty sweet!
Where can I download this OS/X to install it? It's free isn't it? Free as in speech? Or just beer?
(Yes I have plenty of karma. Flame away. I'm making a point about OS/X being even more closed than Windows.)
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
It is just common sense on Apple's part: any admin would tell you that having any task with excessive privileges poses threat. Mac OS X reuses the concept from Unix world: run with fewest possible privileges and request them if need arises. (Okay, Mac OS runs with tons of excessive privileges - compared to normal Unices.)
Ok, first this was discussing Vista, not XP or previous versions of NT, as the subject was specifically about the UAC in Vista.
Vista even goes a step further than OSX or any *nix, as it REMOVES completely the concept of a root level account. The administrator account no longer is a root equivalent account, as it must ask to elevate privledges when doing 'root' type of administration on the computer, this is what the UAC is all about, and is one of the smartest moves MS has made since Networking and Windows first mixed.
If MS would have forced developers to adhere to NT security rules, we would not have the problems on Windows, however, since most of the software still running on XP, was written either for or with a Win9x mindset that did not have NT security, all the NT security got shuffled aside in WindowsXP, therefore going for compatibility over security. A bad move on MS's part, as a UAC concept should have been incorporated into XP instead of letting applications run unfettered.
Vista does something that OSX and *nix and XP have never done, fully enforce security, but yet allow elevation in a elegant manner even for outdated software that has no concept of Security. It is like the big key holder of the OS that will allow even older unsecure applications to run, but keeps them in a tidy virtualized box (see Registry and Directory Virturalization Security of the UAC).
So Vista has basically killed the concept of a user level account with unfettered root access, and thereby killing any process to have unfettered root level access to the system. People are quick to dismiss Vista and UAC, but considering the AMOUNT of OLD applications it has to deal with that have no concepts of protected areas/security, etc, it is quite impressive that MS was able to not only add this level of user security but ALSO keep the level of compatibility they had with WindowsXP.
You see OSX had this easy, they never incorporated OS9 into OSX, it ran virtualized, so older applications NEVER had to deal with the security of OSX, only the OS9 virtualization did, which got a LOT of acces. Additionally, as you also point out in comparison to most *nixes, Apples 'prompt' for root password is far less secure as it allows portions of the interface (finder for example) to run with higher priveldges than it should under ANY users. Vista on the other hand, forces Explorer to run at the User level and has no magic bypass of security at any time no MATTER what.
MS didn't have to virtualize XP and all previous Win32 applications to get their security to work as Apple did, instead the UAC is very smart and very comprehensive and one of the biggest reasons for the massive delays in Vista's development as it extends throughout the OS, and takes orders from the Security Token system of NT directly and delegates this to all applications and processes, and can prompt or deny or virtualize the application based on what is needed to keep it secure and yet still compatible on the OS.
People should really look into UAC and Vista more before they try to write an article and compare it to OSX's Prompt for Root password, especially when they are writing ONLY based on the Interface they see and not how well the security and compatibility is actually handled.
I have an Intel Mac at work, and after half a year of running OS X and Win XP side by side, I have given up on OS X and now use Win XP under Parallels for most of my professional work. There are two reasons:
1) MS Office works better under XP. I'm working in a corporate setting. I have to book meetings from time to time, and meeting rooms can't be booked in Entourage or Outlook Web Client. Sad but true.
2) Keyboard shortcuts are way better in XP. According to this article,
OS X's keyboard navigation support is generally superior to XP's. IMHO that amounts to propaganda. In XP, I can access most menu items using the Alt button plus two keystrokes. In OS X, it's Ctrl-F2 plus four keystrokes. Also, in dialog boxes, most items can be focused with Alt+[letter]. Real-world example: In Photoshop, changing the saturation is as easy as Ctrl-U and Alt-A in Windows XP. In Mac OS X, there's lot's of tabbing or mouse movement to reach the Saturation item. It's just not productive for me.At Lockheed Martin working on the RSAII project (which has to do with giving the US's two major space ranges updated and modernized software and hardware for launching rockets), a large percentage of our development was done in Python, Ruby, and C++. We also did a lot of prototyping in Scheme, and several DrScheme-based tools became popular.
I have since worked at two startups that were Ruby on Rails projects.
This notion of "real world" is so bogus.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Consider a hypothetical programmer, who tackles the above challenge. Let's say that they solve the problem in 60 lines vs. 6 (a 10x speed increase), but that there is only a 2x speed increase, then it may seem like you spent a very long time writing 6 lines. In reality though, you were just solving the complexity of the problem, which isn't something a language can really alleviate.
People who make this argument usually don't know Haskell, Ocaml, or other alternatives very well. Yes, when you're new to a language it's going to go slower. If you'd clocked as many hours in Ocaml as you had in Java, you'd be pretty fast with that language too.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Who f'n cares?
OS X still remains hardware land locked - only runs on Macs - so forget about it... OS X does not exist.
Millions of PCs have nothing to gain from OS X - it just wont install.
Now if Apple rolls out a simplified OS X (just the basics - iLife is separate) that you can install via a live CD Bootable CD-ROM,
then it will get interesting.
Ubuntu Linux you can pop the CD in a computer,
and use it - not even bother to install it to the Hard Drive - and amazingly - it just works. Use a Memory Stick to save your work, songs, etc.
When you shut down the PC it was like you were never there. Windows Vista can't do that, OS X might if it is streamlined. Linux has now passed commercial software in quality, price, and performance.
IF Apple can make an OS X CD that works like a Ubuntu Live CD - Vista better be worried.
OS X has no problem running on older hardware, as long as a good graphics card is present.
OS X would fly on any 'Ready for Vista' PC.
Tell me when I can download from the Apple Website an official copy of OS X 10.5 live CD to install on an HP media center PC,
and then you can consider it a real choice against Vista.
Otherwise - it is extremely doubtful corporations will even take notice of OS X,
buying all new hardware will make the accounting department bring flaming torches and pitchforks to the IT department,
hungry for blood!
Apple - Making the same missteps as Atari and Commodore.
Too much navel gazing, not enough offense against the market space.
Windows: Work, Gaming
OS X & Lunix: Hobbyist "Toy" OS
Buy a Mac: they are the perfect product for those who want to pay twice as much (at least) to use a platform software companies have essentially abandoned... but it gives you the option to "buy" (wink wink nudge nudge) a copy of Windows and address the major flaw with OS X... namely that it isn't Windows.
Lunix and OS X: always chasing Microsoft's tail lights
Why do we continue to try to compare these 2 operating systems. They both do some of the same things well and a few specific thing better or worse than each other. Thank God there is still competition in this (the OS) arena. I own and develop for Windows and OSX. I like both. Right now I love my Mac Book Pro with XCode because it has all of the cool camera/light sensing stuff and it is interesting to play with prgrammatically. I still like my Windows XP with visual studio cause it allows me to develop stuff quickly and is more compatable with all of my buddies sutff so we can exchange projects and executables easily.
You know what I think when I see a signed driver? It's old, and I better go to the internet to get a newer one.
As someone who once worked in two different QA labs for hardware drivers (different companies) I can tell you that getting that WHQL certification is nothing but a Microsoft cash cow - $10k per submission, payable whether your drivers pass or not.
$10k+ to make sure your users don't get hassled with unnecessary and confusing dialogs. If that's not racketeering, I don't know what is.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Do not know where to start. You seem to be unfamiliar with basic OS architecture. Least with security.
That's physically impossible: the part of OS which grants privileges automatically has the ultimate privilege. IOW we are coming back to good ol' root account. Different color of it - but it is all the same. Unix does it the same way: user info given to specially privileged program (mark to run as root) and it decides to give or not to give request privilege to application about run.
I'm not sure how did your draw the conclusion in first sentence. I said nothing like that. Second sentence is wrong of course - because is based on conclusion in first one.
Mac OS X doesn't reinvent square wheels: impersonation remains impersonation. M$ goes in opposite direction and from what you say with UAC removes impersonation. From your words any account can get any provilege provided user confirms that.
My point is precisely reverse of what you try to describe. What I'm trying to say is that UAC confirmation thing is much weaker compared to password prompt. Lots of confirmations Vista throws at its users (my friends during RC2 piloting complained about that - you can't leave batch overnight installation anymore) would lead only to overall weaker security. For many it wouldn't change a thing. (Recall all the problems such approaches lead with automated jobs: when confirmation pops up in middle of night/lunch - there is nobody around to click "Ok".) Such complications would ultimately lead to people disabling/weakening UAC. On other side, in MacOS/Unix I can just say that particular task would run with some privileges escalated - and that's fine as long as I trust the task in question. Who would you do that with UAC?
As long as M$ wouldn't implement privilege separation and application isolation (e.g. chroot()), no way bells'n'whistles like UAC going to change the picture. And that's my point I try to describe here.
You need to learn how OSs works - and who things like UAC - do integrate with rest of system. Otherwise it is impossible to talk with you. Better half of your parent post is plainly wrong, just because you do not understand completely how account/groups/privileges work - and what role UAC may play/plays here. It is not omnipotent.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Couple of things...
You said it can't be changed. It can. In System Preferences > Security, you can enable/disable: Automatic login, password authentication for changing each secure system preference (i.e. prompt password once to unlock all preferences instead of each individual). However, you can't change the authentication for application installation... and this is a good thing.
The main point of this nested thread was along the lines of why Microsoft makes it the default. Microsoft has a habit of putting convenience first and the worst example of this was in prior iterations of their OS when the default network preferences allowed inbound sessions to all ports... This is a HUGE security no-no, and especially for the average user who doesn't need to enable any kind of inbound sessions to his/her machine. Apple could make authentication horrendously complex but TFA demonstrated that they find a pretty well-organized compromise that makes security administration also rather convenient.
Man, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
buying all new hardware will make the accounting department bring flaming torches and pitchforks to the IT department, hungry for blood!
What the fuck do you think corporations are going to do for Vista, Captain Moron? Roll it out on their aging, already-present machines? No, they're going to migrate to it as they buy all new hardware.
Vista is actually going to HELP Apple, because the powers that be at some companies will think, "If we have to buy new hardware anyway, why not take a look at Macs?" And since Macs can now run Windows with no problems, even if OS X doesn't work out at a given place they can still keep the hardware.
That's true! I never noticed that setting.
Do not know where to start. You seem to be unfamiliar with basic OS architecture. Least with security.
Oh, the irony... I won't even go into this troll comment.
That's physically impossible: the part of OS which grants privileges automatically has the ultimate privilege. IOW we are coming back to good ol' root account. Different color of it - but it is all the same. Unix does it the same way: user info given to specially privileged program (mark to run as root) and it decides to give or not to give request privilege to application about run.
Actually it is NOT impossible, and yet very simple. In Vista you cannot log in as what would be the ROOT level equivalent at all. Even if you open a command shell with administrative privileges, you will STILL NOT BE the TOP LEVEL SECURITY.
In contrast both OSX and *nix you can RUN AS ROOT, in both the shell and command on *nix and the command line on OSX.
You need to read up on the NT security model a bit more before you post again. It would also help if you understood how Vista isolates the NT User security model with a system wide UAC check that happens been the Security Token handler and all processes.
My point is precisely reverse of what you try to describe. What I'm trying to say is that UAC confirmation thing is much weaker compared to password prompt. Lots of confirmations Vista throws at its users (my friends during RC2 piloting complained about that - you can't leave batch overnight installation anymore) would lead only to overall weaker security. For many it wouldn't change a thing.
Again this would assume that a user would be RUNNING AS ADMINISTRATOR... Most users WILL NOT BE RUNNING as administrator and will GET THE PASSWORD PROMPT. Just like any *nix wanting root or OSX. Get it yet?
You need to learn how OSs works - and who things like UAC - do integrate with rest of system. Otherwise it is impossible to talk with you. Better half of your parent post is plainly wrong, just because you do not understand completely how account/groups/privileges work - and what role UAC may play/plays here. It is not omnipotent.
The UAC is just a component in the Vista technology, but it is the moniker that most people see the new Vista security implemented under. Yes there are a lot of aspects to what vista is doing that are actually outside just the UAC, but for generality describing this under the UAC umbrella makes the most sense for people. Even MS themselves DO THIS in their documentation, and I would bet they have a good understanding of how their OS ACTUALLY handles security.
If you can't accept this, then maybe you should email their security engineers and tell them how they also don't understand OS security or Vista's security. Maybe you can 'set them straight' since you think you are the deciding expert here.
It seems you have a deficiency when it comes to understanding security, authentication and how Vista works differently than previous versions of Windows and especially how it operates UNLIKE any *nix.