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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?"
Maybe it will someday. Right now it's still pretty well plagued with incompatibilities.
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
Vista still has all the games and applications people use, most not available on any version of OS X.
But can you run Final Cut Pro on Windows?
Or even have a comparable program that doesn't make you beat your head on the keyboard? (I'm looking at you Adobe Premiere!)
But in general, most commercial apps don't have a version on OS X.
But to be really fair, if the software is open source and running on a modern version of Linux (as in that it is currently being maintained) you may see it recompiled in X11 for OS X.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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.
Yeah, he basically ignores every technical aspect of the operating systems to choose a few UI and HCI aspects that are more consistent on OS X. Even Apple does this better, with their "Hello, I'm a Mac" commercials. This is a fucking advert, not a review.
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
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.
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
Off topic a little (okay, a lot), but your comment applies to programming languages as well. When I was coding for the MCS6502 on an Apple ][ in 1978 or so, I had every instruction, every variation, every addressing mode in my head. The code just flowed. No need to waste time referring to documentation once I had learned the instruction set ... my fingers never left the keyboard.
Flash forward twenty nine years. Nowadays, programming environments are so complex (I won't use the term "sophisticated", necessarily) that no mere human mind can easily encompass them in their entirety. Yes, there may be a function that does exactly what you want, but odds are you won't remember it's there (if you ever did know) and will just write it yourself anyway. Most developers I know (myself included) settle for a "core library" of features and functions in a particular language, functions that do the majority of what we need. To do otherwise would mean continually searching through programming manuals trying to find some little-used feature which might (or might not!) actually be there and might (or might not!) do what you really want. Not worth the effort: just do it yourself and get it over with.
Language and operating system designers rationalize the insane complexity of their creations by saying, "yes, it's true, no programmer/user will ever use all of what we provide, but the subset of features each programmer/user chooses will be different, so we have to put in the kitchen sink." Now, that is true to a degree, but I think that in many cases they have simply gone too far and productivity has actually suffered as a result. At the very least, a large percentage of their oh-so-valuable features go unused by a large percentage of users.
The reality is that it is usually the marketing departments that demand more and more stuff be added in order to make their claims of "ours is new and improved!" so they can achieve some unquantifiable degree of "market differentiation".
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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".
"As a cross-platform developer"
I assume you realize you represent less than 1% of the computer using public's needs/wants as a cross platform developer (most of them wouldn't even know what that means).
"At the end of the day though, I can do MORE stuff on Windows, and Vista will be no exception."
Like what? You may be right, but usually in a "discussion" thread you have to actually put up examples. My mom used to use Word, a browser and an E-mail app on her old Dell. With a Mac she now plugs in her digital camera to get photos as soon as I told her she didn't have to do a thing outside of plugging in the camera to the machine (no driver installs, no app installs), and she's been playing with iMovie, something she wouldn't have dreamed she could have done so easily on a Windows machine.
So, while you may be right, I think the majority of the computer using public couldn't care less about your statement, and more about what they want to do rather than what they can do. Remember, I may admit you are right (without examples that would be pertinent to the general public I can't argue anything), but for most people, OS X and their bundled apps are going to be far more rewarding, fun, stress free than anything similar on Vista. For games, BootCamp!
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
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.
Vista Ultimate comes with Interix POSIX subsystem, not installed by default but available. This includes ksh and csh, plus gcc. You can download the sources for bash and compile them in this environment and it works fine. Interix also includes basic support for X, but you'd need a third party X server. Cygwin does include one and you could use that. So yes, you can use gcc, bash and X on Vista. You also could on XP and 2000.
Final Cut Pro is making more and more inroads on Avid's territory due to the fact that it is just so much more cost-effective. Avid is a system with machines in racks in a term gear room. Final Cut Pro is a Mac tower with some displays and an editing keyboard. Avid is still used more, I know this, but Final Cut is a very attractive alternative. We use both daily at CNN.
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.
I would also say price has to be considered, OSX probably can do more than Vista, and it's easier to use, but most people dont want to pay that kind of price.
The Gospel according to lolcat
OK, I think you're confusing iMovie (free, or nearly) with FCP ($300 - $1200 or so, depending on discounts). Final Cut is not easy, nor prescriptive. I can edit, colour correct, audio edit, capture, etc. in dozens of ways, depending on workflow and habits. In fact, other than media management and settings (both of which SUCK on FCP), it's pretty much like Avid's functionality--and complexity.
None of what it accomplishes can't be done using other programs. And I feel more in control picking and chosing components. Plus, the existence of 'Final Cut Pro' on the Mac platform crowds out and eliminates the motivation for other people to come in and develop competing products.
Well, one can build a house with a can opener and a rock, but who wants to? FCP is the rage in the industry because it has an excellent balance of usability, reliability, and power, and it scales fairly well, including sliding into many an established workflow, especially now that it handles multiple cameras and better formats. No other programs offer that combination. In a sense, it breaks the rule of "cheap, fast, good: pick two." THATS why it dominates on the Mac, when Premiere and Avid were well entrenched leaders for... well, a decade. They dropped the ball.
I also cannot justify spending the tons of money for a new Macintosh, and all the new software I'd have to buy to get equivalent performance with other tasks.
Well, I guess you aren't billing $80/hr as an editor. Downtime (do you hear me, cinelerra?!) is costly, and in an afternoon of lost business, you've lost any price advantages; at 20 minutes per day of lost productivity, over the course of a year, well, that's just bad math, because at 40 weeks per year, that's $4800 you've sacrificed to the gods of false frugality.
Damn those pesky terrorists
::I didn't realize that UAC dialog boxes were modal and prevented you from using the system.
It is "worse". They are not "modal". They open a compelte separate user interface session.
Is this annoying? yes.
Is this necessary? YES.
Why? OTherwise the stupid spyware could just simulate a mouce click on the modal dialog. MS had to totally isolate it. So they make basically a screenshot, open a new ui session, show the dialog there and the screenshot in the background - but no interaction is possible.
"Experimentation is *the* way that users learn stuff."
True. But it's kids and teens only who do that. If you're any older than that, and a female at that (no offense to all the ladies here, just something I've noticed in real life), you're scared of computers, and absolutely do not experiment, n00b or not. That's why the OS X approach is the best way to go: you can experiment if you want and find new stuff. But you can also be conservative as heck and manage to avoid screwing things up with some advanced features turned on by default (and which a computer-scared user wouldn't find anyway). Geez, doing a right-click and remembering what it does is too much for many Joe and Jane Doe users.
Bullshit. People generally don't want to learn a new way of doing things because it's an investment of time and energy that they don't want to spend. For most people, computers are tools that they have to use for work or that they want to use for entertainment. Having learned how to use one with a specific OS, they don't see the point in learning another way of doing the same thing. No one is scared or brainwashed, they just don't care about the things enough to want to do things differently. Belittling people in that fashion is idiotic.
uh... if the GP is decomping a file and wants to do something else, it is the OS's job to make sure that the other processes get their fair share of CPU time. If the OS instead lets that one process consume the entire CPU, then the OS is badly written.
Sure it does -- on my Macs, I just open Sys Prefs, goto 'Network', and when I pick an interface (like, say, the topmost one with a green 'active' light), then I can see my IP address. And the important thing here (to me) is that I can see my IP even if I'm using DHCP. One thing which always annoys the crap out of me on XP is that the IP dialog (which takes a few clicks & modal dialogs to reach) has the option to either enter the IP or use DHCP, and if you use DHCP, the IP address field is not filled out (un-editably) with the obtained address. In this case, you have to go to the DOS prompt & use 'ipconfig'. Or at least, I've not found anything simpler for that.
-Q
Actually, Mac OS X does this vis a vis Windows in the business space because OS X Server does not require CALs. This is the vast majority of the cost on most business installations. Try costing out Windows print and file services with mail for 100 people and compare it with a Mac OS X server solution. You need to pay money for each Windows CAL, an Exchange CAL and an Outlook CAL to get the full MS experience. Mac OS X requires none of that except if you are using Apple networking services at which point you have to pony up an extra $500 for the "unlimited" server license. That's peanuts. The CAL licenses in the above scenario might be $80 a seat for all three CALs. You can get a lot of OS X education for your admin for $8000.