Slashdot Mirror
Mac OS X Versus Windows Vista, The Rematch
An anonymous reader writes "InformationWeek follows up its widely read review where Mac OS X beat out Windows Vista in a head-to-head comparison, with a reader debate on which is really the superior operating system. From the article: 'Mac users love venting about Windows... Any company that calls their techs "geniuses" thrive in forums like this. They think they are "cool" and "hip," they don't care about the fact that they have to reset the permissions and turn on Appletalk every five minutes. Windows Vista all the way. If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X? Last time I checked, Windows wasn't just a business operating system. Tons upon tons of people use it and like it.'"
some effort if they just submitted:
"MS/Apple flamewar. Begin."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
All in one page for those of us who hate ad-spammy articles.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Who the hell uses Appletalk any more?
Is this for printer or something?
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
InformationWeek follows up its widely read review where Mac OS X beat out Windows Vista in a head-to-head comparison
If I remember correctly, that "comparison" was mostly based on the author's personal preferences. That's more of an editorial.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Do people still use Appletalk?
I have two Macs at home and I can not remember using it.
Hah, use it? Yes. Like it? Nooooo. Tolerate it like a drunk uncle grabbing your ass at a wedding. Windows sucks ass.
But it's where the games are. First of Linux or Apple OS to get all the games Windows gets, and I'd change in a heartbeat.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
Tandy DeskMate 3.69 kicks all ass! ;)
Snoozer.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
I've long hated and resented Microsoft for what they've done to the competitive tech market and how they've done it.
That said, the arguments about which OS is better seem specious. I've used XP for years now, and find it to be overall quite excellent. I suspect (and based on what I've read so far) Vista will be very good too. That doesn't change how I feel about Microsoft... they're basically an asswipe company with an "I don't have to care, I'm Microsoft" attitude.
I recently purchased my first OS X machine. I find it excellent too, but never having had used it before I did have to make adjustments. I still find many things about it quirky.
I sometimes wish the argument would be more open... the debate about which is the finer OS mostly splits semantic hairs. The underlying "allegiance" and loyalties about which is the better company seems to be more what this is all about.
Microsoft trampled the marketplace, so much so it eventually had a DOJ judgement against it and subsequent consent decree. The damage done to innovation (in my opinion) and continuing to be done is irreparable. (Why in the world would technology continue to have to fight the idiocy and unmanageability of logical drives these days -- I know, there's a way not to, but Microsoft in a competitive market would have had to fix this long ago.)
Apple misstepped early and seemingly never cared. They focused on the education market, and never offered price competitive products. If you were a Mac loyalist, you paid the premium. But I believe that pride by Apple cut them off from an even larger audience and potentially a competitive slice of the PC market. Today they seem to be looking more closely at that -- you still pay a premium for Apple, but it isn't as harsh as before.
Bottom line, both companies have faults. But comparing OS X and Vista is almost a silly game. Both OSes are very good. I can argue one and I can argue the other. The more interesting discussion is what Microsoft's and Apple's roles are in contributing to the overall landscape of computing. I know where I stand on that one.
(For the record, when it comes time to get some real work done, I go running for the nearest Unix terminal, be it Solaris, HP-UX, Linux... doesn't matter, that's the OS and environment I find put together in the smartest way.)
I seem to recall a lawsuit regarding Microsoft's predatory practices by making it financially difficult for vendors to sell any operations system other than Dos and Windows - then there's the code stealing (Doublespace), the intential breaking (DR DOS), and other practices that, over time, have helped to lead to not just Microsoft's and Windows domination, but also the discouragement of any other operating systems from gaining hold.
I thought there was a whole court case about this, Microsoft being found guilty or something. But since there was no punishment, I must be wrong.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
Heh, 15 year old programs are fine? Vista doesn't run Rise of Nations, which is distributed by Microsoft. :P That game is only a few years old.
Games for Windows... bleh.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
Seriously this is not "news for nerds". This is straight up TROLLING. There is no information here only opinion.
Stop the security/virus fiasco that plagued Windows a few years ago. XP SP2 got a good way along that path, but Vista is pretty much there now having used it for the past few months. A couple years ago almost every single person I worked with or knew who ran Windows was dealing was repeated and very severe virus problems and almost every single one of them was starting to lean towards picking up a Mac in disgust. All that talk is pretty much over now. Yes there are a couple people I know who picked up a Mac after dumping Windows, but for most people I know XP SP2 and Vista work well and are reasonably secure.
OS X does have an elegance about it that Windows people do admire, but that is not enough to get them to outright dump Windows. So in that sense Vista accomplished exactly what it needed to do for Microsoft.
Now, there are four states of being in the Apple, or Mac OS X, society: Cool, Groovy, Hip, and Square. The square is seldom if ever cool. He is not "with it," that is, he doesn't know "what's happening." But if he manages to figure it out, he moves up a notch to "hip."
And if he can bring himself to approve of what is happening, he becomes "groovy." After that, with much luck and perseverance, he can rise to the rank of "cool." A "cool guy"...
If you would like to cut down on the trolls then quit submitting shit for articles like this one.
PS - Mac rules! Vista drools!
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
today is spelling optional day.
If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X?
Because when they get a computer it has windows on it. There first computer is usually really cheap so it has windows on it. When they need more all their software is for windows so they get a windows PC. Windows will always have more market share then OS X Because OS X Requires you to get a Mac. Even if 20 years ago Macs are like Macs now and PCs were like PCs then, and prices were the same. DOS Will still win because people felt more comfortable with choices.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That's another way of saying "sanctionned flamewar", right ?
I guess there's a market for that kind of thing.
:wq
If organic meals comprising all food groups, rich in fiber, vitamins and proteins are so much better, than why are more people eating at McDonald's?
Same deal.
You can't take the sky from me...
If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X?
If Hitler sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with him than with Asoka?
"Tons upon tons of people use it and like it." So this means that Rolling Rock is THE premium beer ?
"Tons upon tons of people use it and like it."
The first part we are all aware of. The second part... on what basis did that come from? I can't think of a single person who "likes" Windows. They simply use Windows because they don't have a whole lot of choice: it's either all they know how to use, or the only OS that plays their games, or the only OS that runs on, etc.
You might even be able to convince me that people like Windows [i]more than[/i] alternatives, like OS X and Linux. I could easily see that. OS X has some really dumb design flaws and Linux is still a pain in the ass to use as soon as you want to run non-standard software (not even Debian packages *everything*, people). In a lot of ways, Windows is easier and it's quicker to get certain things done.
However, I still don't buy that there is a great number of people who "like Windows" entirely on its own merits. They might like it better than nothing, or better than alternatives, but that's isn't the same as liking Windows. It's like saying that I like having a broken arm because it's better than having no arm or having a frost-bitten arm.
Seriously, how many people are being "sold" a piece of software which is really only supposed to be the interface between your hardware and your applicaitons, and judging it based on a zillion other criteria?
/. in term of productivity loss - sure it's fun, but when you get down to it, it's really just a waste of time.
I don't do any "work" in the OS. It doesn't make me money. It doesn't (shouldn't) add anything. It is - and I'm going to get pedantic here - an Operating System. Can we just get over the whole OS as an application thing? Okay, I suppose in the era of GUIs, it's a windows manager, too. We, the "consumers" have apparently been duped in to thinking that the system that runs the basic computer system should also get us coffee and a handy when we're in the mood.
I read part of the article, and it's talking about constency and feel, and pretty gui widgets. I'm less and less impressed with how efficient these things might make us, to the point that I think much of the OS is actually getting in the way of getting work done. Heck, it's almost as bad has having
Who knows, maybe I'm a slackware guy after all. Or maybe I'd do better with OS-X. But in reality, the programs I run happen to run on x86 architure and rely on Windows componenets, so there isn't much choice. I'd just like to get back to the basics. For a windowed environment, I guess that's NT3.5(1). Man, I just feel old today.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I haven't read the article...but I'm hoping that the pro microsoft camp has better individuals at its desposal then the one quoted in the topic summary. What was that? A little bit of fud mixed with an irrelevant point (is appletalk even used anymore? And doesn't vista now require you to click through a ton of permissions crap to do anything as well?) followed by the "Its good because its more popular" arguement? I mean, I don't like Microsoft much but there's plenty of valid advantages that windows have...but that guy just falls back on the old personal attacks and half truths.
Look, I use it - have had every version of Windows and DOS since the first one - except for WindowsME.
...
But like it? That's going way too far.
Put up with it - much more accurate description
That said, though, in the end the only reason I still have a WinXP machine is so I can play Sims 2 on it. Seriously.
Everything else I have works on Linux or my Mac Mini with OS X.
And looking at WinVista requirements - I was finally enjoying paying $500 for a high speed 11b/g laptop - I don't want to shell out another $2000 to buy a computer that should be a commodity like a TV that sells for $300 to $500, just so I can run what appears to be mostly graphics upgrades to look pretty that would be far cheaper on a Mac. So, given they've jacked the OS price for Win Vista to double, unless some killer app comes out - I'm taking my Open Office and my Opera and my Firefox and migrating off of Windows forever when they kill WinXP support.
I'm sure I'm not alone in this decision.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Flame flame flame flame....flame flame burn blame flame. In my opinion, flame MS flame flame flame OS X...flame blame burn. Furthermore, burn flame flame flame flame fire Linux. But BSD flame zealot fanboy flame flame flame. Occasionally I like to offtopic flame blah blah. I think that about sums it up..... I just saved myself 3 paragraphs of typing with the same result.
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
Is it just me, or does anyone else see this statement as just a little ironic?
hmmm... few comments... It is easy to hate Microsoft (which I kinda do), but you have to ask the question: would Apple have done it any differently? Isn't that what the Ipod is all about? I don't hear it pointed out often, but OS/X development is far easier than Vista development... How many different Mac computers are there? How many different configurations are there? AFAIK, you buy a Mac, you buy a complete package that comes from Apple, the same company that develops the OS. For Microsoft to develop Vista, it has to work on an almost infinite number of different configurations... even from the same vendor. Same reason Palm was generally pretty solid - they developed the platform, the OS, and all the standard apps. For this same reason, Linux is great but really makes things difficult for itself... it is wonderful to have choice (I use two different flavours of Linux), but this means a massive duplication of work. A standardized platform is much easier to distribute for than an immensely variable one. Presumably there was only one Windows XP kernel (maybe a few more), which in the same span there are many different Linux kernels, requiring different binary drivers...
"-Reliability: Windows
-User interface: Windows
Cost: Windows (MacOS has to be updated every year"
What? Come on now I know you need to lie to make Windows look better, but come on you have more blatant lies then Tony Snow. Mac OS has much better reliability then Windows everybody knows that. Windows Vista is just as bad as XP I have been using Vista at work for a month now and it crashes all the time. Also, that last part. What the Hell are you talking about? Mac Os $129 Windows "199 to $399. Its every two years by the way. I wish you people would get you facts straight before you come out on forums.
I get a kick out of the article's quoted example. To me, popularity has always been irrelevant, and instead the trustworthyness and utility of the OS renders its popularity meaningless. Again, this is only IMHO. But as an analogy, which is the better car: the 1995 Chevy Cavalier or a contemporary BMW? By this guy's argument, the Cavalier is superior because it is far more popular. And you know, from the standpoint of the software market and what decisions the market as a whole will likely make, Vista probably is "better" in that it will meet more people's needs. But I've always found this argument extremely simpleminded in any other context than market-speak. And let's face it: there are other contexts than the market. Sometimes it doesn't seem that way, because technical arguments about this subject almost always descend down the market/popularity track. Many people can't resist.
Anyway, that's only one problem I have with this debate. The other is the false dichotomy. Why aren't free desktops in the article? Are there any US citzens here who like neither the Democrats nor the Republicans? Or ice cream flavors that are neither chocolate nor vanilla? Or operating systems besides OS X and Windows?
Amen to that. Your comment was looking more and more like the Democratic platform in 2004 until this point: "We're not the Republicans" except in this case, "We're not Microsoft". I don't jump on OSX because I hate Windows, because we have more than two choices.
Personally I think both operating systems are junk. OSX craps on me more often but Windows tends to crap harder. Sure I have to cold-cycle the mac every so often because nothing else works. OTOH OSX has never eaten my video driver and started bluescreening mysteriously, forcing me to boot in safe mode, remove the driver, reboot in safe mode, reinstall the driver, and reboot again.
Linux is therefore the best choice, I think, provided you are a nerd. After upgrading Ubuntu from Dapper to Edgy I lost SMP. Get SMP going, lose nvidia driver. I finally had to install the driver manually, which is not a big deal to me but might be to someone else and frankly it pissed me off, too.
I think soon I'm going to build a pissed off desktop machine for home use, and then I'll just buy a macbook (not pro) for everything else. At least it has a graphics card supported by open source drivers, and it can run any OS I care to run on it on top of that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
From the article;
In a similar example, I wasn't sure why Word 2007's "Office Menu" button was throbbing bright orange in a new blank document, but it really wanted my attention.
Do I really need throbbing buttons? Perhaps it is best not to turn on a Vista PC while suffering from a hangover.
I lost my sig...
Until I stopped eating it for about a year, and started consuming healthier foods. Now I can't even bear the smell or image of Mac-Donald's, much less the taste of it.
Wow, a non-article written by non-authors.
If these are the most intelligent comments that Information Week could dig up, maybe they should have thought twice about publishing them in an article.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Microsoft was at the right place at the right time originally, that is why its OS is so dominant these days. Upgrades are usually taken because they are the path of least resistance.
Saying it is better because of its marketshare is just a logical fallacy based on popularity. It is like debating religion and saying one is right or wrong based on its "marketshare."
For me, simply, Microsoft is the inferior OS to BSD, Linux Distros, and Mac OS X simply because it is a security nightmare in so many ways - and I have to spend my time working, not running antispyware, anti-adware, or fixing other things about the OS (registry). I also find Microsoft asks me to push the "OK" button too often for crap, or nags me about updates (every 5 minutes after I initially say "no") when I just want the OS to shut up and stay out of the way. That is my metric, some people have different metrics (games, certain apps) and that makes Microsoft suitable to them.
(BTW, saying that an OS has certain exclusive apps does not make that OS inherently superior as 3rd party apps, by definition, aren't inherent to the OS. It is a reality we all have to live with, but I think it is disingenuine to say that the OS is innately superior because of this, rather than simply acknowledging that it might be more suitable because of said apps.)
(Why in the world would technology continue to have to fight the idiocy and unmanageability of logical drives these days -- I know, there's a way not to, but Microsoft in a competitive market would have had to fix this long ago.)
I know that you admitted that there's a way to not have to deal with logical drives, but it's much more than that. Microsoft fully fixed the logical drives mess back with Windows 2000. That's 7 years ago. The only reason that they are still around today is because (for some stupid reason) people like them. Seriously, they like them. We just finally managed to get enough management support behind us to get rid of them at my company, and now users are complaining that they're gone. There's no way in hell that I'll be bringing them back, but the point is that people like them, they miss them when they're gone, and they don't like adapting to the change.
So I think that it's extremely disingenuous to blame Microsoft for that particular problem, since they provided a much better alternative years ago. And it would be extremely difficult to fault them for not outright removing the support for logical drives when so many of their customers still want to use them. Not to mention a fair number of legacy applications that still want them.
"Mac OS has much better reliability then Windows everybody knows that."
You know, in the face of such superior logic, no pro-Windows argument can stand.
Or did you mean that because there are McDonalds restaurants everywhere...people go in there to eat rather than go to a grocery store?
Hmmm..
Blar.
Your claim is that Microsoft could not have gained a monopoly if they didnt use predatory tactics when they were a monopoly?
.. A PC with Windows XP over 1 GB of RAM is just as good/resposive as a Mac (which btw, would cost the same or more). Most of the complaints about Windows come from users who download spyware and have cheap PCs. Users often are tricked into going through whatever hoops to install the spyware. It's plain silly to sit there and tell me that I am choosing Windows because they're a monopoly. It works just as well FOR ME. I dont have crashes. IE7 works very well. Visual Studio is awesome .. there's no client app I can think of that I can't develop in it. Windows is popular because people dont want to be forced to buy both the computer and the OS from the same company. They like to mix and match, choose their own components.
Anyway, I use both Macs and PC
If the separate PC component vendors didnt exist you can bet that motherboards, graphics cards etc. would permanently suck.
Doesn't mean that it's better than being healthy...
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I own a Mac and a PC. The mac is better. If you want to know why and you don't want to take my word for it, then buy one.
Tons upon tons of people use [Windows] and like it.
Huh? In my experience, almost all Windows users hate it. They use it because they have no idea that there's a choice. They didn't buy "windows", they bought "a computer", and that mysterious thing called "Windows" came with it. From the name, they understand that "Windows" is the thing that draws the windows on the screen. All computers do that, so they all have "Windows", right? Even those who have heard of Apple tend to think that Macs run Windows, because you can look at the screen and see the windows.
An important reason for all this is that Microsoft has an advertising budget larger than the budgets of all their competitors combined. This simple situation is all you need to understand MS's market dominance. (Though their ability to lock out competitors via their contracts with retailers also helps.)
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Launch every sig.
"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
There was also a time when the vast majority of people thougth that the world was flat...that didn't work out so well, either.
Is anyone else here thinking they don't give a shit too?
I mean, this whole thing pretty much boils down to "which one do you prefer?" - how scientific is that?!
Give me a real debate ffs; better default security, faster networking, better f/s, better app-support, better memory management....anything! Anything but "which one's better?"!
Christ, it's Friday night, everyone's going out and I'm on slashdot. Good evening everyone, the beers are calling.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Is that what we are calling duplicate articles nowadays? I guess next week's article is New Horizons-Jupiter: The Rematch:)
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Obligatory YouTube video (possibly NSFW if your co-workers can't handle foul language).
http://outcampaign.org/
... how come so many more people, billions infact, are non Nobel Laureates, eh?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
"-Cost: Windows (MacOS has to be updated every year)"
This is just about the ignorant and asinine statement made in these forums in a long, long time.
It runs fine for me. (I have the Gold edition.)
Run it in app compatibility mode if you a video or audio driver issue.
I can tell you that they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. I find myself using my Mac far more often than Windows or Linux simply because all I ever do is surf the web, read email, and admin my Linux machine remotely. It's simply a no-hassle operating system that seems to 'just work'. Also, I have been doing a lot of scripting lately and I do a lot of prototyping using Ruby, Perl and PHP on that platform and when I'm happy with the prototypes I simply move them to my Linux machine.
Windows strength is in the numbers, ton of software is available and the OS is designed well enough to get your job done effectively. The Windows IDEs are pretty nice if you are into that kind of thing and has tons of games, which I find myself playing a lot less of now that I have my Xbox 360. Maintaining a Windows machine is not the headache that some people make it out to be (it's much less of a headache than Linux where I can spend too many hours working on stupid configuration problems that could be done in minutes on a Windows or seconds on an OS X machine).
Linux is nice for really hard core stuff. Running databases, web servers, and doing development work, especially scripting. It offers a ton of features and services that are either not found on the other platforms or if they are, you gotta pay big $$. The downside is that it is kind of nightmare for configuration. It seems like a lot of core services change frequently and you gotta keep on top of how to use and/or configure them (of course these things are also is dependent on the distro). Also, the GUI's really need some work. They are much better looking than they were 5 years ago, but the 'feel', consistency, and usability aspects are still not quite there, at least compared to Windows and OS X. However, that being said, Linux is still my 2nd platform of choice...
...the popularity = quality correlation fallacy?
500 million people a year catch malaria. Wow! Sounds like the thing to do!
Boy is that reviewer up to date!
Having recently purchased a Mac (Mini), comparing OSX to XP, I have to opine that OSX has a ways yet to go. It "feels" immature, lacking a few seemingly minor features that subjectively make a big difference to me.
My biggest peeve is the display. OSX uses a font-smoothing technology that to me makes the text look fuzzy. I've argued with people on IRC channels over it, and I must admit that it's technically superior and produces a better match with what's eventually going to come out of the printer, but the fact is if I'm reading text off the monitor 8-12 hours per day I want it to be less fuzzy, accurate or not.
Other peeves? Integrating energy saving w/ the screen saver, for instance; if I've configured the Finder to disable the screen saver when I stick the mouse in one corner of the screen, I don't want the system to turn off the monitor or go into sleep mode, either. Another minor screen saver peeve is that once it trips, no matter how quickly I get back to the machine, I have to unlock it with my password. XP gives me a few seconds before locking up the machine.
Something else I don't like is the inability to easily see how many windows are open for each app. Yes, I know about the F9/F10/F11 tricks, but it'd be nice to have a few ticks next to the icon for running apps rather than a single tick showing it's running.
Further, I know Apple has released the Darwin OS as open-source while maintaining OSX separately. I think it'd be better if Apple opened the kernel for OSX and merged with with Darwin, and kept their proprietary fun and games confined to Aqua. It'd mean better hardware flexibility (remember the Nvidia driver bug?).
Isn't it Hip To Be Square?
--
"I have also mastered pomposity, even if I do say so myself." -Kryten
"If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X? Last time I checked, Windows wasn't just a business operating system. Tons upon tons of people use it and like it."
You sure sound like a fool that actually bought win95 in 96, and actually thought it really was great. Did you miss out on owning an Amiga or Apple as a kid or some thing? Your just plain foolish if you can not see past marketing, and buying into the world worst computer effort of all time. After all you said it "familiar", and that does not say much when I look out my window and see. Far to many people do not ask enough questions and just blindly except the stupid things others come up with, M$ being Queen of BS for a long time.
I am sorry, I bought into such easy flame bait, but anyone with a brain knows what sucks and what doesn't. Like does this guy even own a computer?
The immature mind measures.
Windows: Just another piece of shovelware.
-jX
Don't you just love politics? It's like a comedy of errors.
I work on OSX every day, I develop software for both OSX and Windows, and reliability-wise, OSX is not that much better than Windows. It's not the uncrashable behemoth that Mac fanboys would like to pretend it is, though I do find that as a general non-scientific statement it crashes less than Windows. This is due to a lot of factors, not the least of which is the fact that your hardware configs are limited, so driver conflicts that bring Windows to its knees simply do not have an opportunity to manifest itself on a Mac.
On the other hand, the user doesn't care *why* their machine doesn't work, just that it doesn't. Reliability-wise I would say OSX wins, but only by a slim margin.
Agreed on the UI though, Windows' UI has always been obfuscated to me, and I find OSX much more intuitive. I've convinced many people to switch to Mac, and other than the 2-week "OMG I CANT TO ANYTHING!" break-in period, all now prefer OSX to Windows.
Also agreed on cost. Windows costs an ass-load. OSX costs $100 every couple years. All in all I see the whole cost argument as pretty moot: nobody says you have to buy Vista and/or Leopard. Tiger/XP runs just fine, why is cost a factor in the OS wars at all?
-Reliability: Linux
-User interface: Mac OS/Linux
-Cost: Linux - free
Linux wins.
That's funny. Windows is and always was first and foremost a home-video-game environment. Win3.1 and Win95 won over the alternatives (Mac, Unix) *BECAUSE* it gave game writers access to the hardware unhampered by security concerns.
Office workers then took this desktop/gaming platform into their office because they already knew it - not because it was at all suited to business work.
All the serious computing tasks always were and most still are run on real business OS's (Unixes, various IBM OS's, formerly various DEC OS's, and now Linux).
it's called no choice due to monopolistic policies. if i raised you in a box your whole life you'd think that was normal and good.
Why would ANYONE using OSX subject themselves to using appletalk?
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
What if there's a nuclear war, and all you have to eat is prepackaged crap because of the nuclear winter? Your body is going to be like, Oooh, no! I can't eat this, yeck! BLAAARF! And you will die because you have not properly trained your body to consume crap. Consider your once a month McDonald's kind of like a dietary innoculation.
Laugh if you like, but I had a friend in San Francisco, crazy (mostly) vegan bike messenger, who actually ate McDonald's once a month for this reason. Looked about to puke the whole time, but he always dutifully finished his Big Mac.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Both Vista and MacOS suck for 1 reason. They are not free, so as long as people use it they are just consumers. And if they claim they develop on those platforms they are just employees of the companies that own the OS.
fully fixed the logical drives mess back with Windows 2000.
Yes, they did... but no, the did not. I run Windows XP at work and got a (Core 2 Duo) laptop which came with a whopping 8Gig hard disk. Yeah, I was surprised too, so I fired up "Computer Management" to find out that a good 100++Gig were not partitioned. (I have admin access, I must admit) I thought: Okay, let's use this "mounting" thingy I am used from at home. So, I mounted "C:\Documents And Settings\%USERNAMEATWORK%\My Documents" on the partition I just created. That worked (with some pain, but okay...)....
I have this thing in everyday usage now.... However, if I want to delete a file, it doesn't want to! It says the file is in use, but I know for sure it isn't. Proof? I mount the same volume as Z:, and then I navigate to Z:\ and delete it there it works!
So, yes, you can mount stuff in directories... but it's fucking buggy like hell.
Let's end this circus real quick:
I have Windows XP.
I have OS X.
I have Solaris.
XP is for games; my PC bucket becomes a toy that's unusable for anything else (virus killer is generating way more I/O than XP Pro can handle), but games run decently because I have an Nvidia GT6800 in it.
OS X: fast, light -- and rotten behind that pretty Aqua look and fancy GUIs. Perfectly usable as a desktop system -- so long one is using it to surf the web or write OpenOffice docs. But don't one dare actually *integrate* it into a network -- some traditional UNIX ASCII files are binary Apple crap in the brave new OS X world. IPSec is a pain in the ass that never worked right. Firewall is that BSD pf crap (ipf is forever!)
Solaris: now that's a lean, mean, I/O shredding, multimedia-capable, reliable, gratis number crunching machine. It turns the above described and aforementioned PC bucket into a fast, capable desktop and would also make a good server, if I were ever dumb enough to use a desktop-class system as one.
Bonus: I can now run Solaris on new intel Macs. Oops, I think I must've just wiped that OS X disk for a "100% Solaris disk". Yeeep, look at Solaris flying on that that brand new Mac!
I use both a Mac and Windows at work. They're fairly equivalent to me, since I spend most of my day SSH'd into a linux box using vim. A black terminal window is a black terminal window. :)
Slow day at the InformationWeek news desk? Seriously... is there some shortage of real events in the world worth discussing that space needed to be occupied on a news website discussing the myriad misinformed opinions of John Q. Public on two operating systems that haven't modified in any radical way the fundamental structure of the user interface in 20 years.
What I find hilarious is that the news media are missing the larger implication of iPhone. While they're now falling all over themselves in post-orgasmic feature-flogging (iPhone lacks this, iPhone lacks that)... they've entirely missed the bigger picture. iPhone and the Synaptics capacitance sensor technology it uses are, in my opinion, a testbed leading up to a much larger revolution that Jobs has completely obfuscated from view with his overindulgent intro at MacWorld.
While the press are transfixed on that, Jobs and Co. are very likely hard at work adapting the technologies in the iPhone to computing itself... to completely redefine the user interface as a three-dimensional space within which to work, manipulate data and objects, and navigate three-dimensionally using both hands.
If the media want to report something worthwhile, how about doing some homework on multitouch sensing surfaces and what the implications are for the traditional "desktop" GUI even just five years down the road?
I think a great spoof commercial would be for the mac guy to come out "Well it's time for an upgrade..."*Shoots himself in the head* and a new mac guy comes walking out.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
What. Evar. I'm running OS X and Vista Enterprise (in Parallels). Vista is okay, I think it's an improvement. But it's still no OS X. When they get rid of the registry in Windows, then I'll be impressed.
Bwahahahah!!
Same here. Of course, the terminal I usually go running for is called Terminal. :-) (I.e., most of my Unix work these days is on OS X.)
I'm pasting this one from the trolling thread
I've been running Vista on a MacBook for about five months. I have to support both systems for my job.
I like Vista a lot, and I think it is better than Mac OS X. Personally, I think Mac OS X is less stable but simpler. Windows doesn't have font issues, changing permissions on the fly, and disk errors every so often. With Vista's heightened security, you can't argue that [point] anymore.
The only thing I hear from Mac people is the computers look nicer. Personally, I don't care how nice they look. (Nice, have you seen the Acer Ferrari??) Mac OS is simpler, but to me it looks like a little kid's toy with the icons. You can run all the creative applications just as well on a PC. I once had a user tell me how bad iTunes looks on a PC. They look exactly alike. They think their system is sooo cool and hip, and then they have to bring it to the Genius Bar in the Apple Store.
Vista really looks like you want to do business with it. Yes, they did steal a few things from Mac OS X, but it still doesn't look as silly. I have nothing against Apple -- that iPhone is awesome and I have an iPod. The computer battle belongs to Windows hands down, though. If you want to just surf the Internet, buy a Mac. But if you want to do that and a whole lot more, more efficiently, stick with Windows.
Jeesh, where do you start with that. BSD is a toy? Disk errors (he implies this is the fault of the OS?) Font issues? Great stuff . . .
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Cost is a factor because no one likes paying for a new OS every few years. :P
I do agree with your assessment though, OS X seems a bit more stable. But only a little bit. I would say that I have found that crash bugs are more consistent on Windows, you can do the same thing over and over again with the same results. For OS X, it seems, to me anyways, that the crash is usually.. WTF? Even repeating what you were doing at the time of the crash can't replicate the crash.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
As an AAPL shareholder, I've done QUITE well over the last 5 years, more than enough to make me happy. As a Mac user, I hope the premium stays. Why?
For one, it deters users who are just cheap from buying one. Often these cheap users who go for the $2.99 Dells are novices as well, and I'd just assume have them keep screwing up their computers with spyware to proliferate the Windows sucks Mantra.
Two, I don't want OS X to become much more popular. In its current stage and marketshare, there is plenty of development for it and great all around apps. Face it, if Apple was as large as MS OS X would start to suffer.
Third, I don't need it to get bigger so that it can have games. Hell I used to be a huge PC gamer, but gave up about 2-3 years ago because I just can't afford to keep up with the $600 graphics (and now physics) cards. You think if OS X had the latest games that it would be any different? A $300 Xbox every 4-5 years is much cheaper than a graphics card.
Let's keep the flamewar alive. IMO, it slows down the spread of OS X. MS Fanboys please spread all the FUD about OS X that you'd like, so I can keep it my little secret.
"Last time I checked, Windows wasn't just a business operating system. Tons upon tons of people use it and like it.'"
;)
Yes, but when was the last time your manager asked what kind of machine you want on your desktop? Let me guess, NEVER. You got Wintel, and that's all they can support, which is odd since the amount of extra support that Wintel boxes need to survive is heinous. I only play Unix at work, so I find it comical the trouble the lower paid Windows flunkys have to go through to keep their boxes going; monthly patching, constant running of the never-ending virus checking. Days and sometimes weeks lost to fighting a nasty virus. I patch my Solaris/AIX/Linux/HP-UX boxen maybe twice a year, if we really really want to. Seems like a giant waste of time, money and effort to keep a marginal OS running in the enterprise. At home? I have a W2K box (which needs to be rebooted whenever I try and switch a network port, great job M$) which I recently upgraded to a bootleg XP, which mostly sits idle now since it's kind of underpowered for games and I've switched to using the Mac's Citrix client for remote work access. So, I pull out the XP disk and just run Solaris 10 x86, which is far more useful.
Tons of people go with Windows on because; 1) it's cheap and so is the hardware, 2) they're afraid of not being compatible with their "work applications" like word and excel, plus most company's VPN/remote access requires the employee run a Windows box, 3) games, and 4) compatibility with their warez buddies - "Bob" uses XP, so I must too so I can get free copies of his games and pr0n.
Personally, I'm biased towards the Mac OS, since I get to have a choice at home, I don't get a choice at work, I just get whatever the IT department buys for us, and guess what, they don't know anything other than Wintel. Period. This is changing though. People who actually get to use Macs, PCs and Unix desktop and server machines on a daily basis can tell you, hands down the Mac OS has the better desktop. It's elegant, streamlined to respond quickly and does not bother me with ridiculous minor flaws that slow down my work flow and other ill behaviour. It's not that I don't give Windows a fair shake, otherwise I would have never installed it at home, or would complain much louder about my clunky work machine. I just get more done in the Mac desktop as it seems to respond better, or perhaps I'm trained to respond to it?
The future looks much better for choices though, the threat of a Linux desktop in the workplace and the onslaught of FOSS in the enterprise is finally starting to get traction with some of the more enlightened IT managers out there, with the help of people (like me) who can manage a piece of software that does not come out of a box. And aren't afraid to deploy FOSS into production without the hand-holding and expensive support from an oversized warez vendor.
Why companies continue to "pay the man" for solutions that any bright developer or admin can whip up with some cheap hardware and a well designed FOSS applications is beyond me.
Don't get me started on the value of a well engineered sendmail/pop/imap setup over Exchange...
Your mileage may vary. Check your local listings for times and availability.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
a) I got tired explaining that practically no Windows software works on my system, but I'll apt-get something that resembles the original application
b) I got tired of problems with drivers and codecs because some idiot decided that proprietary things are evil
c) Windows has Visual Studio 2005, which is probably the best IDE out there. Okay, Netbeans offers similar functionality (sometimes better, sometimes worse). And besides, I'm a software developer and I won't be allowed to write software that will run on 1% of all PCs and that 1% would probably complain that my software should be free.
d) Macs are expensive, and I won't buy a new computer just because it has another OS. It's not 1980 anymore.
"Adding a second disc drive to my Mac Pro took less than five minutes, including shutdown, opening the case, drive installation, rebooting, disk formatting and creating a file system, and adding the new disk volumes. That was simply amazing... they're setting a new standard for serviceability." -- -- Robert J. "Bob" Burke, from the article
That is impressive. Indeed, I don't believe it (more correctly, I could believe it, but I am shocked).
Yes, I am a "square" user. I put files on a RAID5 server, based on Redhat 9. To add a new drive, I need to shutdown, and I give several days notice. I open the case (seconds) install the drive (seconds) and then bring up the box (a couple of minutes). I then surface scan (a couple of hours). I then reboot the box again, (if this was a replacement drive) and inform users that the file system will running at reduced capacity for a day.
If its a new drive, I rebuild the RAID array after surface scanning is complete -- and I have already informed users that the array will not be available for a day.
Si, it takes at least 2 hours, with reduced functionality for a day, or just over a day.
(sarcasm on) This Mac stuff is impressive! (sarcasm off). Seriously, I get people spouting "Bob" style facts (it works for me!), and trying to convince me that I should give up ___ (fill in the blank) and move to that new-fangled good technology. Happens a lot, actually. Fortunately, they also like to have "the latest and greatest" which tends to avoid longer term issues.
Vista vs. OS X? Neither, right now. See me again in a couple of years, when I am upgrading some infrastructure, and we'll talk.
Bob
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I switched to Mac in '00 and haven't looked back. In fact, the machine I purchased then, a dual-processor Power Mac G4, is still running great and is my primary machine at home.
Windows is rapidly catching up to OS X feature-wise, I'll admit. But each time I go home to visit family I end up fixing at least four Windows machines, despite the fact that I loaded them all up with AVG, Spybot, AdAware, and whatnot on my previous visit. A couple of years ago my sister told me that she needed a laptop for college. I told her I'd buy her one under one condition -- it had to be a Mac, since I didn't want to support Windows over the phone. Initially she was a bit reluctant, but quickly warmed to OS X and hasn't had one problem with her iBook.
I work at a university and my department has about 60 Macs ranging from iMac G3s to dual G5s to Core Duo Mac Minis. Most of them are used by students and they are not locked down at all aside from the OS X administrative password. I have zero problems with spyware, viruses, unauthorized programs or anything like that. All I do is run Software Update a few times a semester and they pretty much take care of themselves.
In home entertainment news...
...because more people use them
Standard televisions are superior to HDTVs, because more people use it
In automotive news...
Gasoline is superior to Diesel and Electric, because more people use it*
In scientific news...
Imperial measurements are superior to Metric, because more people use it*
In Technology news...
MS Paint is the superior graphics editor...
IE6 is the superior web browser...
notepad is the superior text editor...
I now invite all slashdotters to post their own satirical "news" based on appeals to popularity, the only true way to gauge quality.
(* May be isolated to the USA, but I'm guessing the submitter is also isolated to the USA, so the satire still works).
http://www.mhall119.com
And they have modded you flamebait. Congratulations.
Why has Windows beat out Mac over the years? One word: Games
:)
Now before you discount what I'm saying just hear me out. Unix was arguably the first real operating system. Why was it created? To play Space War. Not so it could do enterprisy things like databasing and spreadsheets, but to play a game. Over the years people drop huge wads of cash on new hardware not so they can do better word processing, but so they can play the latest game.
Apple didn't embrace the gamers the way Microsoft did. People bought computers at home for playing with, and as a trickle-down effect wanted the same machine at work as the did at home. Oh sure all the big money is in the enterprise with big iron and lots of expensive licensing, but it's been games that drew people into computers in the first place and it's games that keep them there.
What do I think Apple should do? Buy or partner with Nintendo and start hooking the Mac to a game platform. Until I can go to my local Staples and buy the latest cool title for my Mac, it ain't gonna unseat Windows, no matter how much better it is.
By the way, I'm a Mac user. I'm also not a gamer
Ruby on Rails Screencast
They are both for morons as this thread clearly shows.
If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X?
For the one /. reader left who still hasn't seen Triumph Of the Nerds, here's the story: IBM, a big name brand, released a personal computer. Although not the first (the Apple II, amongst other PCs, beat them to the market), people trusted their brand name, and it became popular. IBM didn't have the time to write their own operating system, so they paid Microsoft a small amount of money to make one for them. Microsoft, in turn, bought QuDOS, which was in turn a clone of CP/M. IBM's first choice was to get CP/M, but the company that made it, Intergalactic Digital Research, refused to sign their non-disclosure agreement.
That's why IBM PCs used to use DOS. Then the clones came - 100% IBM compatible compatible PCs that were slightly cheaper. Microsoft charged all of these companies per single copy of DOS, and got very rich very quickly. Consumers could run IBM compatible programs for slightly less money, and Microsoft made a huge profit.
Then Apple bought the rights to the GUI from Xerox. They released the Apple Mac as a result. This made some people revert back to Apple in 1984 when the Mac was released. Microsoft had to keep up, so they made a similar GUI for DOS, which was called Windows. As almost everyone uses IBM compatible PCs (to the extent that incompatible ones are seldom even called PCs any more), almost everyone wants to use Microsoft Windows. Even those who don't want to use it still need to be compatible with it in order to share files with everyone else. Many people don't even realise they have a choice, and think all computers are IBM compatible PCs running Windows.
This state of affairs has pretty much continued to this day. Everyone uses Windows because everyone else uses it, but historically, they used to use DOS because Bill Gates wasn't stupid enough to refuse to sign IBM's non-disclosure agreement. It has nothing to do with which operating system is easiest to use (probably OS X), most stable or secure (probably a Unix variant), or philosophically least evil (probably GNU, whenever it's finished).
-Reliability: Windows
Are you shitting me? I have NEVER YET seen a Kernel Panic in Mac OS X. Yet I have seen Windows 2000 "STOP Error" once or twice, and even more times with Windows XP. And of course, WinDOwS 3.11/95/98/ME would bluescreen at the drop of a hat.
Hell, I have even seen Linux do a reset on X.Org due to a bad crash with the application Audacity! Actually I've never seen Linux do a true Kernel Panic that wasn't directly linked up to trying to use it on really funky hardware. Since Apple makes fairly sane hardware (fairly, they've pulled some boners occasionally) the record still stands.
-User interface: Windows
Sweet Jesus no. Windows UI, XP and later, is ugly and sucky and makes me want to replace it with KDE. Yes, you can turn off the "Themes" service and get something that is somewhat like the "Classic" Windows 2000 interface. But it's only SOMEWHAT like it. It's just different enough to make me want to punch someone at times.
The Mac OS X interface had a bit of a learning curve in that I hate GNOME and GNOME and Mac OS X remind me of each other. But once I got used to it I don't mind it terribly. In fact, stuff like "Expose" and widgets actually come in handy on a Mac that has the cojones to do it right. I got that revelation when I started running on my MacBook with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM.
-Cost: Windows (MacOS has to be updated every year)
My older Macs have settled in with Panther and they are fine staying with it. Panther is going to get security updates for quite sometime to come. My MacBook is purring with the Tiger (or would that be Chuffing?) and is hungry for the upcoming Leopard release which will be 64 bit native and make my MacBook fly.
A Mac OS X "point release" is more like a version upgrade, since every version is 10.x.x and Roman Numeral X is the trademark for the OS. You have to pay to upgrade from Windows98 to Windows 2000 to Windows XP to Windows Vista. That's what the difference between Cheetah (10.0), Puma(10.1), Jag-wire (10.2), Panther(10.3) and Tiger(10.4) have been like. Cheetah and Puma are like Windows 95 and Windows 98 -- barely usable. Jag-wire was like Windows NT4. Panther is the first fully-drinkable vintage of X, sort of the 2K of the bunch. However, unlike Windows, Apple just keeps right on improving X rather than adding cruft like MS does with Windows. Think of Tiger and Leopard as what would have happened if MS had continued on the path of 2K, but made it leaner and meaner and more security conscious and faster with every release.
-Compatibility: Windows (15 years old programs still work fine)
Yes, but do those old DOS programs run WELL, or are they crashing you? Are they forcing you to run as administrator to make them work? Did you know that Windows XP runs those old programs in a buggy emulation mode? Did you know that emulators that will allow you to run ancient Mac OS 9 and below programs exist? Please.
-Open architecture: Windows (Millions of applications are available)
Ain't nothing more open than FreeBSD. Except for Linux. And Mac OS X is basically FreeBSD (well, actually Darwin/FreeBSD) under the hood now. If you add in the X11 layer you can run any F/OSS xNIX proggie you like with a recompile. And now with MacIntel you don't even have to recompile. And the big kick in the teeth with MacIntel too is that you can run Windows on top of it, using Parallels, which takes advantage of Intel Vanderpool hardware VT to make it as fast as running Mac OS X. Most Windows apps now run happily this way. And those that don't (Games) can be rebooted with Boot Camp into Windows XP SP2. Which kind of defeats the purpose of this next thing you mention...
-Vulnerability: MacOS (more viruses on Windows)
You can't do the kind of spectacularly evil, easily caught malware on Mac OS X that you can do on Windows. Why? Be
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I haven't had to adjust my AppleTalk settings since - oh I dunno - 1997. Gee, this guy's really in tune w/ Mac OS X.
I know im not the only one.
:)
But i have 4 machines on my desk here at work.
OSX Mac Mini (with remote desktop to admin the Xserve)
Gentoo Box - Running Various monitoring tools
Windows XP machine - running desktop shit
Amiga 3000, just to freak people out
Again, OSX is nice but when shit fucks up.. it fucks up
royally.. I have seen posts about the permissions issue
which tends to crop up with running OS9 ontop of OSX
because OS9 needs to be ran as Administrator and
folder permissions get weird when you try to implement
some kinda security on a multi user OSX box..
With XP minor things happen, its a nightmare when it
comes to locking down where as OSX is much easier to lock
down.
What it boils down to, and the quicker people learn this
is, a OS is a tool to get a job done, the more diversified
you become, learning the ins and outs of each operating
system the better off you are, and in the long run makes
you very needed. thats actually how i got my current job.
the fact i knew how to install maintain many different
operating systems..
Any company that calls their techs "geniuses" thrive in forums like this. They think they are "cool" and "hip," they don't care about the fact that they have to reset the permissions and turn on Appletalk every five minutes.
Since having switched to OS X and Linux (from Linux and Windows) as my desktop OSes six years ago, the thing that I've found the most amusing about my new life on the other side of the fence has been the multitude of comments like the above that I'm now noticing.
Starting with the "cool and hip" stereotype, I have to wonder why people make such a big deal of this. If I had to hazard a guess, it's that it really comes from discontent with the historical crappiness of the asthetic aspects of most PC manufacturers' industrial design. I'm pretty sure it doesn't come from Apple users themselves, most the ones I know (myself included) are pretty geeky - which makes sense, given that geeks, being more confident with computers, would naturally be more comfortable with switching platforms, and I'm sure that at this point a strong majority of Mac users are converts who switched over after Apple finally canned that accursed classic Mac OS. It certainly doesn't come from Apple users' chatter; almost the entirety of pro-Apple and anti-Microsoft comments that come from Mac users are made on technical grounds.
As for fixing permissions and restarting AppleTalk, well, I'll grant that they might have last used an old version of OS X where disk permissions did have to be repaired fairly often, but AppleTalk???? I didn't know there was anyone who even remembers AppleTalk anymore, let alone actually uses it. While we're at it, let's criticize Thinkpads based on the crappiness of token ring networking.
It's much of the reason why I stay out of the Mac vs. PC debates for the most part. What's the point of talking to someone who's surrounded by such a strong reality distortion field (yeah, I said it) that they think they're an expert on the merits of OS X when really they haven't spent more than an hour of their lives using it, and at the same time assume I don't know a damn thing about computers because I'm a Mac user, when really I'm a software engineer and spent a hefty amount of time programming native apps on both platforms.
I wish some of these folks would come back down to earth and admit that the only real reason they don't like Macs very much is that there isn't a version of Half-Life 2 for OS X.
All UIs bow before the might that is Quicksilver. (OS X only.)
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
You're the one who lives in a world of fan-boys, dude. I use Windows for my desktop, but I get most of my work done in a simple SSH terminal to a linux server. I've got Cygwin/X installed when I want to run a GUI app from my linux server on my windows box. The main reason I stick with Windows is because of the number of applications for it, and interoperability with the people I do business with. I honestly have no clue why anybody would use OSX. I'm waiting for OSX to become the beast it set out to be, and Steve Jobs is a friggin genius and I have no doubt he will ultimately succeed, but his business tactics say nothing about the strength of OSX as an operating system. He has successfully built a community of OSX zealots and they will carry his OS to success. But I'm waiting for the day to come when OSX becomes a useful tool to me. Right now it is nothing more than an over-hyped, glorified linux distro. Honestly, I think I'd rather use fedora than OSX. Why not just use Linux, if that's what you like so much about OSX? Is anybody really in love with AQUA? I find the OSX aqua interface to be a piece of trash, like the windows interface but more sparkly and whiz-bang. The only thing that appeals to me about OSX is that it's built on top of BSD. Another thing; Apple has yet to release a mac convertible tablet. Has nobody realized how useful the tablet pc's are? I do some rapid, rapid prototyping using a stylus drawing right over my web browser, in conferences and meetings. Apple has no way to do that, and for the price of a powerbook you could get an IBM lenovo X60, oh sure you don't get the magnetic wire or the light-up keypad, but you know what? I've never had a problem with normal DC plugs, and I don't need to look at the keyboard to type! And you know what else? I have a friend who bought a microsoft Zune and showed it to me. That thing is nice! For the same price you get a bigger screen, wifi, more interoperability, but you don't get the little rotaty/swirly/spinny patented interface on thee ipod. You know what? I decided that interface sucks. I'd rather just use the clicky circle interface the Zune has. I'm tired of this Apple zealotry going on without anybody getting called on it. There is nothing all that special about OSX.
I getting bored of the comparison between Windows Vista and MAC OSX. It is like comparing a Ford Focus to a BMW MINI; Yes they do the same job, but in different ways. What I do know is that I'm not going to upgrade my Windows XP laptop to Vista for fun, in fact I'm not upgrading it at all!
Wake me up when somebody actually finds a really fun use for Windows Vista that is over and above MAC OSX and Windows XP, apart from using restore discs for clay pigeon shooting!
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
This happened just last week.
My company has a policy where by all purchase orders must be submitted using a form in Outlook. Forms are the one thing my Mac can't do because Microsoft dosen't want Macs to have Outlook. (Run OS 9 to get Outlook? Get real, I haven't run "classic" Mac OS in over 6 years. It's not even installed on any of my Macs.)
So I fire up my PC. Outlook is hosed. No problem, just uninstall and reinstall from the company file server. Connect to the VPN, go out to the file server and AUTHENTICATION DENIED.
WTF? Try several times, on the phone with company tech support. They check my permissions in the domain, still can't get in. Finally I say, "Hang on, let me try something."
I close the VPN tunnel on the PC. Connect to the VPN on my Mac. Go straight to the file server and login without a problem using the same domain credentials. Download the Outlook installer and then map a drive letter on my PC to my Mac to get the software to my PC.
Ironic isn't it? Windows would not authenticate with a Windows file server in a Windows Active Directory Domain. But my Mac just waltzed right in and got what I needed.
I don't hate Microsoft because of Windows. I hate Microsoft because they made mediocre software the standard.
"The avalanch has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote." -Kosh
ummm, in the system tools, disk, there is "fix permissions" button to tray adn repair the piss poor job Darwin does of handling permissons when a user adds a new program.
perhaps you need more practice using OS X
It's not the uncrashable behemoth that Mac fanboys would like to pretend it is, though I do find that as a general non-scientific statement it crashes less than Windows.
I've got two questions...
1. Why does OSX crash? They have the hardware lock-in down, so why crashes? Because...
2. I've never seen Windows XP crash, but the *only* time I've seen Windows 2000 crash was because of bad hardware drivers (which will be fixed with "trusted" drivers in Vista). Why is Windows XP crashing for you?
" they don't care about the fact that they have to reset the permissions and turn on Appletalk every five minutes"
If someone is doing this, they dont know how to use a computer.
Seems to me they published this simply to bump up the ol' hit count.
and apple done not have a good desktop that is not a AIO.
The mini has a POS gma 950 that a x16 video card can beat by x10 while running at x1 speed and it uses system ram. It uses laptop parts as well.
The macpro costs are to high and FB-dimms are over kill for the desktop.
Apple needs a real desktop that uses desktop hardware. The i-macs use laptop parts as well.
Actually, it is Linux, because most of the linux stuff copies more of the Mac than it does windows.
Lots of people run the Sub7 Trojan too.
Maybe they're smarter than those that don't, which is quite possible given that they're all running Windows.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
1. Why does OSX crash? They have the hardware lock-in down, so why crashes? Because...
All complex systems have bugs, some more serious than others. I would be surprised if OSX didn't crash. I've only experienced one complete lockup before, so it's not as if this is a common occurrence.
2. I've never seen Windows XP crash, but the *only* time I've seen Windows 2000 crash was because of bad hardware drivers (which will be fixed with "trusted" drivers in Vista). Why is Windows XP crashing for you?
Most Windows crashes I've seen are due to bad software or bad drivers. I especially despise it when laptop vendors insist on using their own branded display drivers and refuse to let you install ref drivers from NVidia/ATI. My Toshiba has some really shite drivers that has forced XP to bluescreen at least twice in the last couple months.
Just because everyone is using it doesn't make it the best. Recall the VHS vs. BetaMax war? Why did society go with VHS despite Beta being a better technology?
Some very early versions of OS X often had problems with permissions getting screwed up, usually by software installing itself improperly. It's quick and easy to repair permissions, so many people routinely repair permissions whenever there's any sort of a problem. However, actual problems with permissions have been rare for quite some time. I can't remember when I last saw anything fixed by a permissions repair.
When will this debate go the way of ISA and NuBus? It's almost as old, and just as pointless...
The Slashdot quote does not capture the flavor of the article, MacOS wins every comparison. I'm using a G4 Powerbook, the last time I restarted it was July 2006. I open it, it connects, when done, I close it and it stops. Without fail.
I use Nikon Capture NX and Photoshop 7 regularly, Firefox, NeoOffice (better than MS Office), edit web pages, and use my Archos GMini MP3 player.
The best observation is WinXP requires constant attention and updating, and fucking with antivirus stuff. I don't even see Tiger, it's disappeared.
I'm a fundraiser for a tiny nonprofit, a side job is keeping one WinXP and a dozen Win98 and one DOS computer running. I keep telling them Mac is the way to go to save money.
My golden hammer is better than YOUR golden hammer at pounding in screws.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X?
Maybe he should have asked "If Windows is so great, then why do they have to completely redesign it for each new release?" But to respond to his sophomoric question I would propose an answer along the lines of "Just because many people are familiar with something doesn't mean that thing is good. Child pornography, AIDS, taxes, prostate exams, etc. would be just a few of the things that many people are familiar with that most would probably categorize as not being good."
I use a mac but i totaly agree with this song.
0 283477734/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=251473068
Every os sucks
-Reliability: Windows Oh really? My last Mac crash was, um. I'll have to get back to you, I can't actually remember one. My last windows crash? Yesterday. So our experience differs. (you do _have_ experience with Mac, I assume?)
-User interface: Windows If you're finding it difficult to do something in MacOSX, it's quite likely that you are trying do do something in an un-needed complicated way.
-Cost: Windows (MacOS has to be updated every year) It does? This is news to me. Sure, you _can_ upgrade it every year or so when new version of the OS comes out, but nobody is forcing you to. Old versions still get support, patches, and all that. Nothing mandatory about upgrades. And unlike windows, OS upgrades tend to make the system run _faster_, rather than slower.
-Compatibility: Windows (15 years old programs still work fine) Couple thoughts there... 1: Who cares? Are you telling me that you've got some mission critical software from 15 years ago, that nobody has ever improved and released for a modern OS? And, 2: How is that good? How much effort do you want your OS vendor to put into supporting old crap for people too lazy to upgrade every decade or so? At a certain point, backwards compatibility costs forward development. And, it could be argued that much of the problem with Windows is that they want to pretend to have backwards compatibility, so they keep horrible design flaws in place throughout versions. (and yet, today's MS Office can't read files made in MS Office 15 years ago...you have to find a windows-98'ish box to do an interim translation).
-Open architecture: Windows (Millions of applications are available) Nothing much more open than Unix...certainly not Windows with it's hidden APIs and closed source. And I have _yet_ to find a need I haven't been able to find an app for. Can I run Microsoft Flight Simulator? No. But there's 2 or 3 Mac ones that are at least as good. There's more beers out there than Bud and Miller too, you know?
-Vulnerability: MacOS (more viruses on Windows)
-Bugs: Tie Cite please? On what basis are you making this incredible claim? And are you counting bug counts, or weighting them somehow to compare them for severity, impact, security risk, and so on?
TOTAL: Windows wins.
Windows Vista is expected to have big market share than MacOS in just the next few months.
That's great. So tell us all what your actual experience is with Mac please. Because it seems that you are speaking out of ignorance and assumptions.
Whoever modded my comments as such can go suck a giant flaming cock.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
-Reliability - I ran my G4 DPP 1 gig MDD running OSX 10.2 - 3 for over 4 years 24/7 without a reboot, save updates or upgrades with no kernel crashes, memory issues, etc. Before that, I ran an iMac 400 AV for 5 yrs under the same conditions (started with OS 8, I think, upgraded to 9 then OS X) with similar results. The only times I had kernel crashes were under 10.1. Those are long gone. I now run my G4 in my bedroom, and since it was called the Windtunnel for good reason, I turn it off at nite now.
I work for a Federal Agency, and we need the machines (IBM ThinkCenters running XP Pro) left on at nite for push updates. We tell the users to reboot before going home. Why? Stability reasons. Even XP eventually has memory issues if left running for too long, and a regular reboot keeps thing running smooth.
So much for reliability.
User Interface: Personal preference. I know as many folks that have a personal preference for Windows as for Macs. They like it cause they are comfortable with it. However, ALL the people I know that have switched actually do prefer the Mac. But it is still a personal preference thing.
Cost - $129 OS X - $199 - $399 Vista. Mac OS X gets updated to a new version every 18 months or so. It's not Apple's fault that Microsoft can't update theirs more often than 7 years apart.
Apple only charges for the major point versions. There are 9 or 10 updates to each of those before a new point version is released for sale. XP is on, what? SP TWO? In how many years?
Compatability - Mac OS - I have numerous files from the late 80's and early 90's created under old versions of MacWrite and Excel. I could open the MacWrite files using the original program as late as 4 yrs ago, using my old iMac, running Classic and system 9. That computer can still open them. The Excel files can open on my new Intel MacBook using NeoOffice.
Actually, that category is a stupid one to use to compare the two - both systems have a mixed record in using old programs or opening old files. Neither wins here.
Open architecture - this is also stupid. Microsoft is famous for having a closed system, failing to adhere to open standards, taking such standards and altering them and releasing them as Microsoft standards and forcing them on the industry using their monopoly power. Apple is also closed, but OS X adheres to open standards such as TCP/IP, Java, etc., much better than Microsoft. It is widely known in networking circles that Windows doesn't even adhere properly to the ubiquitous TCP/IP standards. Apple wins here, too. (open architecture has nothing to do with the number of apps available. I can buy an app for OS X for any purpose I need.)
Vulnerabilities: You are right, Apple wins.
Bugs - Stupid here, too. It isn't just a tie, but all software has bugs. Some are vulnerabilities, some cause instability, some cause crashes. Narrow it down to make any sense at all.
Total: Apple is winning. Apple's sales are growing at three times the rate of any other PC manufacturer in the market. It is the only one with a growing market share. In the last year, 50% of all Mac sales at all venues, were new Mac users, that had never bought a Mac before. That means they were either new to the computer market, or switchers from other systems.
I don't think Vista's market share will grow as fast as you think.
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
Religious:
This is a religious debate. But, to misquote Cap'n Spock, "Windows mavens proceed from false assumptions" . The MacEvangelist's goal is not "world domination", it's converting only a handful of Windows users to Mac. When that happens, The Angels in One Infinite Loop rejoice. I have managed to convert a few, and they have thanked me for it.
Technical:
I long for the day when what we now call "OS" is merely a "skin" on the operations of the system. But that could really only happen if the machine itself were using a chipset that could run both. For example, if MacOS could run on Intel... umm... err... wait a minute...
The users who know Windows very well can get any program they need to do for free, they know what they need and what will do it. There is TONS of free software for Windows. It's easy to use, and it's cheap, what's the problem? If Windows crashes on you all the time then you've screwed up, either installed software that's crap or something else. Someone mentioned Vista, I've been using it at work for a month now, and it hasn't crashed once. The hardware for windows is cheap too, I can buy a used computer for 150 bucks that will run windows 2k and all the software I need. What would a $150 mac do? Nothing.
Even for /. this is starting to get just a little bit annoying. The fanboys on either side really just need to pull their collective heads out of their asses and go back to doing whatever it is when they're not instinctual bashing another OS.
/. doesn't need much of an excuse to flog Microsoft^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HM$ (gotta think about my karma here).
Mac his it's benefits (none of which apply to myself, but that's not the point), Vista has it's benefits (does that count as a troll now?). So how many more times do we have see stories comparing Vista to the Mac and debating over which is better? But then again,
Anywho, you may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
Windows, Mac, Linux...they all suck. BeOS all the way!!!
The reason I don't care about the "fact" that I have to "reset my permissions and turn on Appletalk every five minutes" is because I don't have to - your "fact" is not a fact. The only people I know of that have to ever mess with AppleTalk are those using Mac OS X as a server where there are many Mac OS 9 users. (The last time I tried resetting permissions for a disk as a diagnostic measure was about 16 months ago, but it's not something that needs doing frequently as any sort of maintenance. The AppleTalk point is just weird.)
This is about as relevant to the ordinary day-to-day Mac OS X user as complaining about 8+3 file names are to Windows Vista users. Mac OS X is far from perfect, but so's Vista.
It's about time someone turned up the flame in here!
Well since we can't mod articles (yet), I'll answer the troll:
- Appletalk???? What are you, living in the age of System 7?
- Repairing Permissions? Maybe in 10.1. I don't even remember the last time I did that.
Ok, that's done, now off toAfter upgrading Ubuntu from Dapper to Edgy I lost SMP. Get SMP going, lose nvidia driver. I finally had to install the driver manually, which is not a big deal to me but might be to someone else and frankly it pissed me off, too.
This has kind of categorised the two experiences I had trying to use Ubuntu.
First time I couldn't even install it - it kept reading the first HD as having bad sectors and not letting me get past a certain point. I went back and installed Windows over it and it installed fine, no bad sectors detected. That was a good while ago though, I don't really remember the specifics. It frustrated me though and I ended up giving up for a while.
I tried again recently, when I got a Live CD via BitTorrent. Booted the OS from it and it was almost unusable. It didn't detect my PS/2 keyboard which I found incredibly odd. There were graphical glitches and such all over the place which I put down to having an ATI card (I've heard they're not particularly Linux-friendly). Sound obviously wasn't working and it took me a while to work out where everything was. I couldn't even access my hard-drives or any of the data on them, despite one of them (a partition of my 240Gb storage drive) being FAT32 which I thought was compatible. I'll give them credit for having my network card working 'out of the box' so to speak, but the rest of it was, from my perspective, shambolic. Call me lazy but the whole thing just put me off, especially after all the good press from Slashdot and other places Ubuntu receives for being user friendly. I went in expecting that and just didn't get it.
I'm sure I could have fixed it with time if I'd put my mind to it, and I'm sure it's not a big deal to most of the lads here but then, they always say that you should use what works for you, and Windows just works for me. I'm currently on my 25th day of uptime with no problems, and I've been gaming, torrenting and browsing every single one of those days. I'm not going to switch easily.
Linux, for me, has a long way to come before it meets my needs.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
If you're finding it difficult to do something in MacOSX, it's quite likely that you are trying do do something in an un-needed complicated way.
OK, then how do I uncomplicatedly maximize an open window is OS X, the way I maximize them in Windows?
The road to hell is paved with Cat 5 cable.
I play games on windows, and use it at work because I am not given a choice. I prefer any of the *nix over it any day of the week. I don't need my PC to ask me "Are you sure" every time I tell it to do something. I hate that it just does stuff without being told too. Windows is like a 15 year old kid. It knows everything about everything, and does what it damn well pleases. Some day it might grow up. I doubt I'll live to see that day.
srsly
when this article is tagged "flamebait" and "troll" simultaneously.
The argument about Windows being more popular because so many more people use it is poorly thought out.
Windows is required by home users who need to do business with the US government, since many of those sites require not just IE, but features unique to Windows. Many businesses similarly force customers to use IE and Windows.
Also, employees of businesses that use Windows and its applications cannot always use open source alternatives. Open Office is extremely good, but I have repeatedly run into incompatibilities that forced me back to using MS Office for work related things.
I also have attended college and they require the use of IE (online components of Blackboard don't display correctly under Firefox) and require MS Word for papers because of problems Open Office documents saved in MS Word format created in grading of papers.
Many colleges won't support Mac OS X, and many sites require the latest versions of IE, something Microsoft hasn't (to my knowledge) provided for Mac OS X. Now that V7 of IE is out, MS doesn't even make IE available for some Windows users. This isn't wholly unjustified, but it is important to note that Firefox is available on more platforms and has a significant user base on Windows based machines.
I have never been a Mac user, even though I have great respect for the design of Mac OS X. I have used Windows 2000 and Windows XP (and all previous MS operating systems clear back to DOS and Xenix). I have seen and used Vista (though I am largely unimpressed). Windows 2000 and Windows XP are reasonably good - certainly as good as Microsoft has created (once patched through their respective latest patches).
Considering that the availability of Windows is widespread on many brands of IBM compatible machines while Mac OS X has been available only on Apple Mac machines, it is ridiculous to say that Windows is better because of the number of users. This is like saying AT&T is better because more people in a given area use AT&T when in reality it is the primary local service provider for that area. Make your product ubiquitous and people will buy it. Make a product somewhat exclusive and only a few people will seek it out and buy it.
Even now, Mac OS X faces challenges to becoming as mainstream as Windows because Microsoft has gone to great lengths to make things incompatible. Even now, they seek to replace Acrobat, further reducing compatibility. However, it should also be noted that many of Apple's best software are not yet available for Windows. Now that Apple has changed hardware platforms, some of these apps might be ported, however I doubt it will be Apple's priority to do so.
Each platform has unique flaws and strengths. However, debating the superiority of an operating system based upon the quantity of users is faulty logic.
http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/repair_permissio ns
o ns_voodoo
http://daringfireball.net/2006/04/repair_permissi
http://www.unsanity.org/archives/000410.php
Why do Mac users not listen to these guys?
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Perhaps it is that my household is about a week away from being 100% Microsoft Free! It is amazing, but for all the press that Windows gets as being superior, my wife's computer (Windows) Is the only one out of the one server, three desktops, three laptops that I have had to do any maintainance on... Otherwise known as four hours wasted out of my life.
Sure I will admit like the original author states that lots of people like Windows, and think it is great, the bee's knees and the best thing since sliced bread. Then again lots of people like smoking even though it is killing them and those who are around them (In Windows case the LAN/WAN). But us Mac users are wasting our breath trying to tell them this, after all, ever try to get a friend to seriously quit smoking?
As far as the whole Bill Gates = Borg rumors? Well as far as I am concerned, both Apple and Microsoft have their respective heads shoved up their rectum so far that air has to be piped in through their navel.
Both companies are manipulative, domineering / controlling and taking away user rights left and right in the name of making an extra buck. Not to mention both are way too much in bed with the RIAA/MPAA for comfort. Of course it winds up that it is both Mac and Windows users who get screwed by this, though Microsoft currently leads in the screwage. But I digress, the bottom line is that both companies have crafted their policies to reduce the rights of users, and maximize profit at the user's expense.
Take for example when Apple released Tiger (OS 10.4 for you Windows users). They placed an artificial stipulation that only systems with Bluetooth could install this beast. This way it would force those holdouts with their modified and improved G3s to buy (guess what) another Mac if they wanted to upgrade. Personally, I think that the whole move to Intel was a mass screw of the G4 - G5 users as they will be obsolete in a few years and will need to buy a new Mac. Anyway, back to Tiger. Well for those of us who decided to do a little modification and re-burning of CDs found out, Tiger will work just fine on Lombard and Wallstreet G3s. Artificial and planned obsolescence is the one of the names of Apple's game. Though maybe now they can just make their products so they will automatically break in 3 years and 2 weeks... that should take them out of Apple's warranty and still keep people coming back.
The mainstay of Apple is their secretiveness, and Gestapo tactics to maintain their clandestine products in development (and the Oompah-Loompahs (Borrowed from Disney) who make them. Can we say "civil and legal rights? never heard of them, unless you are talking about Apple's rights of course." If Apple does not tell you what is coming, or when it is due out, then you cannot plan your purchases and will buy products which can become obsolete in a week reducing our warehouse stock. It is logical in Applethink I guess.
How many people bought their brand new G5s only to find out that Apple has really moved to Intel this time? Anyone want to place a bet which OS X will be for Intel only? My bet is on 10.6, maybe 10.7. Anyone else besides me remember when Macs used to hold their value for years after purchase? Now it seems that Macs are becoming outdated before their warranty runs out. My personal pet is a Macbook Pro, one of the 2GHz Core Duos and before my warranty ran out Apple released the Core 2 Duos with dual layer DVD burning etc... etc... Now I am seeing the resell price for my notebook down about $600.00 (sigh). Now I am going to buy my wife an Intel iMac with DL DVD and all that... of course in a little while they will have 802.11n and faster processors as well as Blue-Ray or HDDVD capabilities but I am going to buy her one anyway.
Ok, off my soapbox for the moment. Lets just say that Mac is a plastic company that is no more about puppies, rainbows, a green Earth, happy families and world peace t
I have used Macs plenty and I just don't like them. I like to build my own machines, I'm into games, I like the choice of hardware and I prefer the Windows interface. Linux is my second OS. To me its the only real alternative because they both offer what the other doesn't. Linux is free, customizable, fast and it gives my old hardware something to do. My biggest peve about this debate is that people are so arrogant about their preferences that they assume that the only possible reason that someone would use a different OS from them is that they are ignorant or have never been exposed to anything else.
I just installed QuickBooks Pro on XP SP2. Turns out some recent Microsoft patch had changed all the permissions in the 'all users' directory, where Intuit loves to install, and my administrator password wasn't enough to authorize installation.
;-/
Took downloading a 'change file owner/permissions' utility script from Intuit to install.
Like above poster, I also had to run the 'disk repair tool' once or twice on a 10.3.9 system.
I think the two OS's may not be different on this issue. Obscure, not rare enough. At least the Apple OS included the utility..
So much for facts.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
www.laptopvideo2go.com or www.omegadrivers.net
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Each OS has it's pros and cons, each has it's demographic, and each has it's own way of implementing things. Now I would really like to see Windows become a POSIX based OS, but I just don't see that happening. People who like one or the other are entitled to their opinions, but can somebody please stop the flame wars? It's getting old. There is no "perfect" OS, and there is no "right" or "wrong" here. Move along people.
All the mac fanboys are busy trashing vista and how long have they used Vista? Have they even booted up a machine with Vista or are they just quoting the usually line about microsoft. I've used the mac for more than 5 minutes ... and find the UI unintuitive ... can't say anything about vista until I try it.
This has to be one of the lamest trolls ever. How did this get to the front page?
Which is exactly why any self-respecting salon makes sure to use only Linux Haircare V05. Inferior products can leave your hair dry, unmanageable, and even mangled in the worst cases. Some people claim it's the hardware vendor's fault when perms get caught in a drive and mangled, but then why have we never heard about any such problems with Linux? Because Linux is the best for your hair! Some varieties even come with a money-back guarantee!
"Linux -- for no more mangled perms!"
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Damn straight! Quicksilver is awesome!
Number of applications written for the O/S that work without third-party apps: Windows
That's the reason why Windows is so prevalent today, it is self-fulfilling. People use it because just about every application they want will run on it, and those applications are written for Windows because so many people use it. It is extremely hard to break this cycle and Apple is making good strides by writing a lot of really good first-party applications but i'd like to see more third-party applications support for OS X. Parallels and Boot Camp don't count as you are just falling back to Windows again to use apps (and Microsoft still gets your money if you use Parallels / Boot camp as you are supposed to buy a copy of Windows to use them!).
Also, working in IT every day at a University with a mixed environment, I will say that we have almost as many Macintosh support issues as we do Windows, just different sorts. With Windows it is usually something like "My Outlook isn't working right" or "I have Sobig virus" and with the Mac it is usually something along the lines of "Entourage doesnt work right" or "My mouse is behaving funny". The Entourage issue is of course not Apple's fault, that is us still using a crappy old version of Exchange server that Entourage doesnt like (and our over reliance on a domain-based network which OS X still doesnt like to play 100% nice with).
I really love Macs but I also have to use PCs/Consoles for my gaming because I don't feel like emulating or rebooting into Windows on my Macbook Pro to play something (other than WoW).
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson
If they ever catch up, you might be in for a big disappointment.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
Isn't it funny? People get all defensive about MS-Windows to the point of name-calling. Think they might be compensating for an under-developed platform?
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Last time I checked, Windows wasn't just a business operating system. Tons upon tons of people use it and like it.'
"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups"
No TiVo and no caffeine make me something something...
My first thought was "Well, only those who have experience with both operating systems are entitled to have an opinion; millions of people who have never run anything but Windows XP or Vista are not qualified to compare to something they don't know."
g e1/ )
Then I said, "OK, so -how do you- compare operating systems for end-user machines?"
And I think this is the valid question. End-user OS need to be evaluated along a whole series of considerations, some of which could be quantitative, and others such as consistency of the user experience, are probably more qualitative.
But I now admit to my bias: I very much prefer OS X for a couple of reasons ('power user' of OS X vice 'normal user' of Win XP):
(1) quality of the overall user experience (mentioned in the MIT "Technology Review" article, http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/17992/pa
(2) reliability (but still not quite 100%)
(3) security/anti-virus etc
(4) support for -2- paradigms: Apple Mac GUI, and traditional Unix shell. About once a week I pop into the shell and do something that would be painful, annoying or even impossible to do from the GUI. I've installed the old Cygwin stuff on WinNT, but it's definitely NOT the same as having a real Unix kernel and shell.
But I've never programmed in either environment (all my development work was done on traditional Unix, but I'm Very Grateful for the new Aquamacs port of Emacs to OS X), nor have I done any performance assessment of either OS. So I hereby disqualify myself from having a -fully valid- opinion on this topic.
Your Mileage May Vary, but at least there's a reasonable way to measure that mileage. When it comes to OS evaluation, can anyone point to credible asssessment methodologies? (Who was it that said "If you can't measure it, it's not science." Lord Kelvin?)
dave
From the summary: "If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X? Last time I checked, Windows wasn't just a business operating system. Tons upon tons of people use it and like it.'"
Because once uppon a time Microsoft made a nice deal with IBM? And because from the point they became a monopoly (they got personal computing, a virgin market, on it's birth) they have been intimidating everybody else in the market? (OEMs to name one)
It's not April 1st. How did this "article" get past the editors?
It's a really stupid argument. It's like claiming Britney Spears is a better musician because her albums sell more than Mozart concert recordings do.
"Sufferin' succotash."
I grew up on windows and its very familiar. Its like a brother I criticize, but still think back and enjoy the good times.
On the other hand, My OSX system reminds me of all the things I liked about Linux, combined with some of the things I liked about Windows, plus some things that I didn't know I would like until I saw them in OSX.
Windows Vista doesn't suck, however its very Orwellian in design. I don't want all the spying crap they added. So I am happy with Windows XP. I like games though, and Microsoft has decided to screw its XP users by releasing DirectX 10 only on XP. Not that there is any technical reason for that- I was a beta tester for the DirectX 10 SDK on none other than XP. So I, like many, am angry with Microsoft and since its been such a bumpy ride over the years, I'm ready for something fresh like OSX. Game developers take note- OSX is becoming more viable due to Microsoft's actions with Vista.
The general comments seem to be that we hate Microsoft because it's a closed system. On the otherhand we love Apple because everything works so well together. Apple has a real advantage having locked users into the hardware. They can develop for a very narrow selection of hardware and have minimized the support costs. The comments above about the stuff that MS users are force to use... can be countered with the stuff that isn't available for Mac users.
There is a very narrow range of hardware choices...for desktops you have the low-end iMacs and minis (limited memory, limited choice of drives) and nothing until you hit the high-end. MacPros- wide choice of drives and memory options, but very pricy.
The windows world gives a much wider range of hardware--without the lock in.
Also the choice of software for the mac is relatively limited...there is usually just one option (or maybe two) in each major category. For example, there is one home finance program, one tax program...and if you are looking for special interest programs, in many cases there are none available for the mac. If all you want to do on your computer is email and web surf either platform is fine.... if your needs are more specialized there generally are more choice for the PC.
What categories of programs are Mac only? I think in the creative area (Adobe, Photoshop, Quark) they are all cross-platform. Mac does have a unique high-end movie editor (but apple had to write it as no commercial company saw a big enough market in a mac only (yes, Adobe is returning to cross-platform for their version).
i agree on reliability and cost, linux wins.
...then Apple came in and BAM....Aqua.
but user interface? KDE and Gnome is even more complicated than Windows. It's exactly "designed by techies for techies." and the fact you have to perform nearly all the advance configuration via a console is not "user-friendly" either.
for linux to succeed on the desktop market (and i mean home users, not the desktops of programmers), they need to get a group of real art and design graduates to come fix the GUI.
and it's funny...people keep thinking Unix will always be console-bound because no one can design a decent GUI (and let's not discuss the horrendous CDE)
"If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X?"
Hot darn tamale!!!!
If Britney Spears' singing sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than
with Sarah Vaughn's?
If Kia cars are so crappy, how come more people are familiar with them than, say, Bentleys.
Etc., blah blah blah.
noticed an upsurge of what seems to be microsoft
shills touting vista over other operating systems?
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
At least Apple is innovative. Microsoft is (and has been from the start)...
Hey they have a browser we need a browser... hey they have a search engine we need a search engine.... hey they have online maps we need online maps... hey they have chat we need chat... hey they have an mp3 player we need an mp3 player... hey they have an online music store we need an online music store... hey they have web based email service we need web based email service... hey they have widgets we need gadgets... hey they have malware/spyware/virus protection software but we make it necessary. I guess they did innovate something.
Apple didn't buy any sort of rights to anything from anyone.
Really? According to Wikipedia's Xerox PARC page:
It seems like it's still debated though, and it's not like I was there or anything, so I'll have to take other people's word for it.
I have to respectfully disagree. I also work on OS X every day. Reliability-wise, my OS X machine has crashed one time in 2 years. That cannot be said for ANY of the Windows machines I have used (they seem to do well if they crash 1 time in 1 week). It may be because there are fewer driver conflicts. But I'd rather get my main (crashable) hardware from Apple and not have driver conflicts and let the rest of the devices be USB and/or FireWire since they don't seem to have any problems. I don't think it is merely a slight win by OS X.
Also, my linux box that I'm typing this on hasn't crashed either. It is a PC with the same hardware problems Windows would have-so if the reason Windows is buggy is that it has more hardware to support, shouldn't my linux box be crashing as well?
I'm not a complete fanboy. I think Vista looks pretty neat. I use Linux every day. I hated Mac OS 9 and earlier. Even Jaguar didn't really look good to me, but I have to say I love Tiger, and it's not because I'm only loyal to Apple. It has the right mixture of ease of use, elegance, and power.
One more thing (an anecdote): A guy I met who recently switched from Windows to OS X said to me: "At first I didn't like OS X. Then I stopped trying to think of it as another Windows and I started thinking about where things would be located in the OS if they were put in the *right* place. After that, everything made sense."
I can't wait until the first Mac Virus hits... I want to see how cool Mac OS X is then.
I'll just let that one stand on its own...
Windows XP was cheaper than OS-X by a long shot.
XP Home cost around $100 back in 2001. That's it since then. Whereas OS-X is $100 every two years just to get the service packs.
I always find this claim to be funny.
it would also filter about 90% of the stupid ones.
Blocking Zonk articles is like a lameness filter for the main page
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
OS X is not a flawless system. Such a beast doesn't exist. Windows certainly isn't flawless either.
Windows is known and used by millions of people because it runs on PCs and because of the MS monopoly. This prevalence has nothing to do with its superiority or lack thereof. It runs on an 'open' platform. Macs are closed. There are benefits to both. People prefer to buy open systems because of the illusion that they have more freedom, but they all run Windows anyway (very few run Linux), so does it really matter that it's 'open?'
The 'reset' of permissions referred to is, I believe a reference to repairing permissions, which can be done through Disk Tools. Some installers mess with file permissions that they shouldn't. It's much less of a problem than it was in the early days of OS X.
AppleTalk? Does anything support that anymore other than the OS?
Window's pitfalls are its instability, registry issues, driver problems and lack of consistent UI. Let's not forget that deal breaking DRM in Vista where you have to have a DRM monitor to play DRM media!!!! You will have to buy a new monitor! And of course, the call home BS.
OS X's pitfalls are poor speed, lack of market monopoly to provide esoteric applications, poor technology for games
Window's strengths are: everything runs on it, it's where the games are, there's stacks of them at every business, you can get a crappy one cheap
OS X's strengths are: unix, some great apps, consistent UI, superior video and audio, easy and flexible networking.
There is certainly more that can be added to both systems in both categories.
Have you seen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx9FgLr9oTk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQkSObRtw0o
OS/2, baby. "A better DOS than DOS. A better Windows than Windows."
Click here to avoid the five pages version and graphics.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
There are some things that seriously annoy me about OSX. Finder is pretty poor compared to something like Konqueror, and I can deal with the MS filesystem browser paradigm easier than Finder as well. I have Konqueror loaded on my Macs anyway just because I'm easily annoyed with Finder.
The ease with which you can change or add hotkey combinations for certain functions is also an issue with me. I'd like to have been able to map "L" to lock my machine, you need to be either very intimate with the mac, or find software to do it (there are several packages, that's not the point. All I want to do is add that key combo, I don't want any of the other functionality of that software).
I've not really gotten into more power-user type stuff yet, I've had Mac laptops for a while, but used them mainly for "day to day" browsing, IM, Term Serv. Now I have a Mac as my desktop machine at home, and it's definitely throwing some curves coming from SuSE + KDE, but I'm trying to hold off on dual-booting and give it a fair shot.
The fact is, people probably like OSX because there is less opportunity for the user to get confused with a zillion menu options, all the control panels are sparsely laid out with information that's easy to access. The problem is that very often it's not the information a power user would want to see. But it's a clean, uniform, tidy environment that makes it very easy to see what's going on with your machine. Add Dashboard, Dock (love it or hate it), and it's just a little more workable than Windows on a lot of levels.
I like music
Or did you mean that because there are McDonalds restaurants everywhere...people go in there to eat rather than go to a grocery store?
Hmmm..
Of course, your username *is* FatSean.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Back in the 90's I was told by an Apple insider to learn MkLinux because that is the way the Mac OS is going. He also said that if MS is successful in killing Apple, everyone was going over to Linux.
/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.
When OSX hit the market I was ready and waiting for a chance to play around with the UNIX tools. I use Links, Scribus, GIMP, Pico, and Inkscape quite often. Those were the Linux apps I used the most. If you like playing in the UNIX/Linux world, OSX has a window into it right there in the
I am not a gamer, I am not a bean counter so Windows is not essential to me. I chose the OS with the most appealing interface and the company that seemed to be friendly to the creative arts. Mac OS just seems to demand less of me than Windows. The interface seemed more appealing to the eye. MS still hasn't learned to be subtle. Their look is cartoonish and angular. They really need someone with an artist's eye to design the look and feel of the interface.
That's what it comes down to: what suits you best.
photosMy Photostream
"If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X?"
But then, if there are soooo many OS X fanboys, they must be on to something!
Sorry, couldn't resist.
"Thank god they we're wrong"
-kristoffer kolumbus
I usually run repair permissions after installing a software update from Apple. They seem to do a very good job with their updates, but the utility often does find one or two things to fix.
This is strictly in the "preventative maintenance" camp though. I can't remember facing a performance problem that was solved by repairing permissions.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
OS X Wins:
Windows Vista Wins:
Those are the things I can think of off the top of my head. Does anyone have anything to add. Please don't bother unless you've used both OS's recently.
"No one on Slashdot is female. Anyone claiming to be female is lying."
I know that is a joke and all, however--
I am not as old as most of the old timers here, but I recall using a unix shell and a local freenet to get email (none, really. My friends didn't do the computer thing) and to browse through usenet (download porn). Back then, your assertion was certainly true. Even when AOL and Compuserve and such made internet access relatively easy for everyone, there was a truism "Everyone in AOL chatrooms is gay at least once" because there were no women on the net and guys had to pretend.
Even now, while there is an unacceptably high risk that the cute elf you are flirting with in WoW is actually male*, there is still a slight but non-zero chance that there actually are females posting or IRCing or playing (male or female) avatars.
* as an aside, I had been playing WoW since release (and the stress test) and I made a NE female as a joke, she was going to be a table dancing lesbian, just like all the other guys out there who made NE females. Unfortunately, I became attached to her because it was really fun to play a druid, but before long I had to abandon her because after the lesbian table dancing fad wore off, people would try to interact with her in really creepy ways. I would inform people that I'm really a guy because it creeped me out so much. For that reason, I suggest actual females play male avatars, to avoid the creepiness. Of course people GIVE things to female avatars, so if you are into that and don't mind creepiness...
As another aside, Farkettes may benefit from page hits on their profiles, I don't know. But I don't see what the advantage is of a slashdotter being female, so perhaps the ones that state or imply it really are so. On the other hand, they guys who state or imply they are married or have a girlfriend are probably lying.
Why do I expound at length on a trivial point? Because I'm at work and I'm bored. So bored. What better reason?
More music, fewer hits
We run Apple File Protocol over IP (originally part of AppleTalk) rather than using SMB.
I HAVE run into permissions problems several times. I'm not entirely sure what causes this. I have seen some software installs cause the problem. Even so, it isn't a big deal but can throw you for a loop the first time you experience it.
OSX has some of it's own quirks just as WinXP does. If you have to admin OSX boxes you will learn to deal with them. I think Windows only IT departments sometimes have a "fear of Mac" because they aren't willing to learn the details.
I guess I had it easier coming from both a design background using and troubleshooting OS 6-9 and also a UNIX/Linux background which means I'm very comfortable with bash and the nuts and bolts underpinnings of OSX.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
To be honest, I don't care very much about the operating system. Ultimately, I can switch between OSX and Windows without any problems or confusion, and pretty much everything I need to do, I can do on either. Whether it's the same for you, of course, depends on what you're using the computer for.
However, from an IT standpoint, I would much rather support OSX. I know, this runs contrary to what most of you might think, but there are a couple simple things that make me favor it so much.
Really, I've been administering Windows networks for years, and after administering a Mac network for a year and a half, I find it ridiculous how many headaches Windows still presents. After all these years, and with Vista requiring activation even in the corporate licensing, it's only gotten harder. Maybe there are issues across extremely large domains that are easier to manage with Windows, but I haven't run into those yet. But for a small/medium network, given the choice, OSX is much easier to admin.
Okay, let's use this "mounting" thingy I am used from at home. So, I mounted "C:\Documents And Settings\%USERNAMEATWORK%\My Documents" on the partition I just created. That worked (with some pain, but okay...)....
I've got no idea what you're talking about, as the "mount" command isn't present in Windows. I'm also not sure why you would want to "mount" a directory from your 8 GB C: drive to your 100 GB secondary partition.
I disagree. Take the Apple MacBook. Basic specification for the cheapest model is:
In the UK, this will cost you £749 including VAT and shipping.
Now go to Dell's website and spec up a similar Inspiron. Looking at the 640M (which is the closest I could find, screen-size wise), getting everything else as near identical as possible (same CPU, same RAM, same disk, same CD/DVD drive, with bluetooth), you're looking at £813.37 including VAT and shipping.
Considering the Dell has a larger screen, I reckon they're as near as dammit identical price-wise.
Comparing the base-model Dell to the base-model Apple is like comparing a base model Ford to a base model BMW - and makes about as much sense.
If you want to bitch about OS X, try talking about the VM subsystem for a bit.
Are you actually calling for SUBSTANTIVE DEBATE?!?!
That's crazy talk!
Burn him! Burn him for a witch!!!!
(Also, in all seriousness, I would love to know why OSX's VM is of questionable quality.)
+++ATH0
Mac are expensive. People don't want feel like a loser, so they will defend Mac whenever they have invested in it.
Linux: it's free, but you have to invest a lot of time to get used to it. It seems the most logical that in the end every one will go for Linux. It just needs some time for more and more people to get the courage to start with Linux. Because why should anyone pay for an OS if there is a free alternative?
Finally Windows. Well, you won't see many people defending Windows. It's the basic. It takes no decision to use Windows. There is no point in defending it, because there is nothing to lose in terms of defending a decision. Oh, maybe there is. I love to keep old machines usable. There are just a handful of interesting programs that do not support Win98. In fact I recently upgraded my 6-7 years old Win98 machine to self-built new machine with Windows XP x64. Only to find out that many things don't have 64-bits drivers. Camera's, minidisk. Solution: run Win98 in VMWare player. It all works now. O yeah, and I will be running a Linux version too in VMWare player. To get used to it. Because I don't like that MS basically does not trust me, and makes me confirm every time that I don't have an illegal copy running. So next machine (in 5 or 8 or 10 years) will be just Linux.
But I would never use a Mac. It is soooo snobbish. There is no way I want to be part of that snobbish Mac-defenders group. I wished they would shut up and consider Mac for what it is: an overpriced BSD clone, that is just used to brag about.
My roommates just introduced me to Rise of Nations a couple days ago, and it runs fine on Vista RC2. If it didn't work when you tried it, as someone else said, it's probably a driver issue - I can't speak for ATi, but nVidia has been releasing driver updates pretty frequently.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
the only reason people still use windows machines is because they are priced more competively. Face it, once Macs are priced right inline with windows machines.....everyone will switch. it's just a matter of time
a) You have excellent taste in beer.
b) Do you just generally object to monolithic kernels? What about Linux's modular monolithic kernel approach?
+++ATH0
It isn't.
+++ATH0
On the left we have an OS that locks you into vendor specific overpriced hardware (but uses a standard CPU and a Unix style code base these days), won't run most commercial games, and is sold by the most arrogant company in the world to elitist tossers.
On the right we have an OS that imitates just as much as it innovates, still doesn't have a stable or reliable file manager and still requires a restart way too often, and likes to cripple you with DRM if you try to use it's features.
Geez. Which to back? Which to be loyal to?
This is 2007. They're both SHITE.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I'm getting so very sick of this crap. Look, people, mono-cultures are scary, especially in the computing world. The world will not get better by everyone switching over to a single OS, no matter how good. Say it with me: "diversity is good".
I happen to like OS X, and I happen to love Linux. I don't revile Windows, and I don't think OS X or Linux are perfect by any means. Windows is a good fit for a lot of people; for some, not so much. Same deal with OS X and Linux.
Here's a thought: stop advocating so damned zealously! You want to advocate OS X? Great! Do it without telling everyone that you think Vista sucks. A choice of OS should reflect what you want to do with a computer, and how well the metaphors used by the OS designer fit the way you think.
My mom used Windows for years, and liked it well enough. Her employer moved her to OS X, and after some initial "this is different" frustration, she said "hey, this works exactly as I'd expect it to!" Conversely, a young friend of mine grew up on Macs, including OS X, and after getting a job where he used Windows, decided to switch. He gave the same reason "this works more like I think."
And that differential is good. The fan-zealots' major mistake is that they thing everyone works like they do, so clearly everyone should like the OS they like, and it's simply not true.
</rant>
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Right on about "AppleTalk" and "Permissions" -- if I hadn't been a user of System 6 way back when I'd never had known what the troll, er, writer, was complaining about.
Reminds me of a good friend and knowledgeable programmer/consultant/CTO/startup-founder who recently pooh-poohed Macs saying, "Any OS that can't handle a Zip archive needs to be thrown away." After showing him the built-in support for all kinds of archive types he admitted his terrible experience with Macs occurred in the late 90s and he hasn't touched them since. So, I spent a little time to explain how OS X really was a completely different experience than OS9, or anything else that the Mac used to run. His bad experience with pre-OSX crap (and that's what it is) kept him from even considering Macs today.
So, when people condemn Macs with vigor I ask them the "Ford Question" -- have you driven a Mac, LATELY?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
...and thats the only reason I am using it. I like to play games, and the *only* platform the games I like to play are available on is MS Windows in some variety. MS knows this, they have been working diligently to ensure that developing games for Windows is as easy as it can be (DirectX, XNA or whatever its called), and as long as they have that chokehold on the gaming industry, many people will end up running Windows even if they would prefer to run something else.
Yes, I could buy a top end Mac, and dual boot it with XP when I want to play - or I can continue to use my current hardware, save a bundle of money and just suffer with Windows.
I really wish more developers would choose to support the Mac or Linux, so that I would have an option, but they don't see it worth the cost of porting (and MS has ensured its not worth the cost by getting them to rely on their proprietary DirectX). Until then my only apparent option for MMORPGS (the games I play) is World of Warcraft, which quite frankly sucks. I really wish the Justice Department in the US had specified that libraries for interoperability like DirectX *must* be made publically available by Microsoft as part of the "slap-on-the-wrist" settlement that MS Bribery no doubt bought them. Instead, they have continued to secure their monopoly at least in this very important area.
The option of playing on a console doesn't appeal to me - and the games I want are not available there in any case. Emulation on Linux is apparently functional but spotty from all I have read, and I don't care to pay the Cedega tax on top of paying a monthly fee for the game.
To be honest, I think if you could break MSes control over gaming it would go a long way towards breaking their monopoly. Theres been plenty of work done on addressing the business side of the house with Open Offce etc, but gaming has been more or less ignored with the exception of Cedega.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
That said, the arguments about which OS is better seem specious.
I disagree and I'm actually rather sad at the response to this type of article. Arguing the relative merits of Apple and Microsoft in ways that don't actually address their end products, is what is pointless. Discussing the actual relative merits of the two OS's feature by feature, task by task has value. The problem is so few people have used both OS's that almost no one here knows what the missing features and abilities of both OS's are. Almost all the reviews you see online are from either a Mac user, who tries out Vista for a few hours, or a Windows guy, who tries OS X for a few hours. They almost never actually address the actual differences and there certainly are a number of them.
Since everyone's needs and preferences and workflows are different you can't say one is better or worse, but you certainly can give potential users the information they need to see what functions are present and missing on each system and which tasks each performs better at, in general. I was busy working when this article was posted, but near the bottom of the comments you can find one from me that lists the features/advantages I could think of off the top of my head. If you've used both Vista and OS X, why not take a look and add your own two cents. This discussion could actually be a useful and informative one, rather than a pissing contest.
The window maximize button means every application remembers TWO window sizes. OS X apps only remember one window size which means you have to resize the window twice as often to react to changes in the size of data you are working with.
...)
(having just skipped from OS 4.2 straight to OS X 10.4
...how about an actual "delete" key. Not a "backspace" key named "delete" that macs seem to prefer. I hate not having a true delete key. Maybe that's why they don't like having the eject key on the keyboard, it replaced the delete. Otherwise, aside from spending many inconvenient hours at the Apple store getting my macbook replaced 4 times and the lack of a true delete key, I love this thing and glad I switched.
I'm the only who is tired about this debate? If you are a true profesionnal you will use the right tool for the job, period. Your job is to know precisly when a system should be used and when an alternative should be studied. Most of you look like teenagers in need of a holy war.
It could have been made worse had the author borrowed her audio trax and included a can of carbon monoxide to enjoy while reading.
I'm really impressed that with Mac OS-X it only takes six mouse clix to learn my IP address while with Vista, after six clix, I am standing in a room with a door above me, a troll to the right, and a load of elephant crap on the path before me. Must have something to do with actual human interaction with the UI? Excuse me while I puke.
Me, I can't stand not having a Maximize button on Macs that behaves as it does under Windows (i.e., maximizing the current window to take up the entire screen, even if the info displayed doesn't require it.)
That's one of the nitpicks I have about Macs, the only way to really maximize a window is to grab and drag the lower right corner while the upper left corner is in the upper left of the monitor. Well, I shouldn't really say that's the only way, but I don't know if there is any other way to maximize a window.
FalconShould there be a Law?
While I'm not a big windows fan, windows is actually designed with central management in mind, that gets to ridiculously granular control of user's desktop experience.
OSX, it's a painful tack-on. You can't lock a desktop down particularly much (and I don't want to hear about 'with mac's you don't have to, users can't do bad things to themself,' you haven't met my users (grade school kids and worse, their teachers)). Everything is half centrally controlled, half hands on each machine.
I've moved on from that job, supporting PCs and Macs in a school district, so maybe opendirectory and Apple's management tools have grown, but somehow I doubt it.
CIA Industries - Running the world for fun and profit
You know you're really using a Mac to good effect when you're moving stuff effortlessly from window to window, app to app, and treating windows like children of parent applications.
Using Windows I don't have a problem dragging and dropping an item from one local to another, either to move or to copy it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Utterly stupid. You jumped on counting all those 10.x.y updates as updates, but pretended that XP's similar updates (clue, all those things released every month) don't exist.
Again, stupid, and displaying an amazing misunderstanding of elementary math. Pop quiz: If my share of the marketplace PC wise is 30%, how many times more difficult is it for me to maintain the same "growth rate" of a manufacturer who has 3% of the market? It's reasonably straightforward thing to calculate.
National Instruments LabView product has been supported on the Mac platform since 1986. The current version runs just fine under OS-X.
There are hundreds of other DA products for the Mac. Everythng from industrial process control to electro-physiological interface products.
* Except for the gaming console, which is the only thing I'll continue buying from MS. Apple still hasn't seen fit to care enough about me to make a gaming console.
* I don't like Safari either, now that you mention it. It's not cross-platform compatible, and I can't tinker with it enough to make it suit my needs.
* And that phone everyone just can't stop carrying on about will never handle e-mail as well as my BlackBerry because $teve doesn't really want anyone not under his immediate control to develop software for it. If he'd take a page from Bill G's playbook and buy RIM, I'll be first in line to buy one though.
* Apple thinks I should be more creative, but much of the time I'm confoundingly lazy and unproductive. I spend too much time watching TV, with my Tivo. Another need, unmet by Apple.
Microsoft has offerings in every one of those categories, but most of them suck. Apple makes some things I like, so I buy things from them: iTunes; iPhoto; the best wireless networking around; the most durable notebooks I've ever owned; a filesystem that makes sense to me -- even though they borrowed most of that from *nix; etc. I don't buy their stuff because they're inherently "good" or because they care for me, no am I under the (mistaken) impression that they are or do.
I love Apple in the only way it feels love. With Money. Of course, that will change if something better comes along.
Apple sucks less than Microsoft, but that doesn't mean they're not asswipes too. Does that illustrate my point better?
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X?
This is the same for linux and here it goes.
~1985 or so. My first contact with a pc, played some stupid game on it, it was a 8088 running what I believe was dos
1986->1990 mainly used amiga and atari systems and they were great, but then came the almighty pc
1990 learned programming basic on schools 8086/8088 and guess what, under dos
1991 around this time the computers at school changed to using 80386s, and guess what, dos.
1993 started electrical program school and we had 486 computers, and guess what, they were running.. dos and windows (3...)
1994-95 at the end of school we had some pentuim machines and running windows95 on a lot of them if I remember correctly and we learned a lot if microsoft apps, like word, excel and visual basic. I even got grades for it!
Guess what you used at home? dos and windows? You bet. And it was mainly because you didn't know better. I had an uncle running an mac of some kind with some wierd b/w display you wouldn't touch with a 5ft pole around 1990 or something. You had the atari, that was cooler.
The only reason I tried out linux about 5 years ago and still sticks to it is because I got fed up being a pirate and wanted to try doing stuff legally. Now I pay for every software I need to pay for but none of my bucks go to Bill that's for sure.
But this post wasn't about me. It's about choice. If you get surrounded by windows machines your whole life, no doubt you wanna run windows at home too 'cause you're familiar with it. I suppose this is why my mother wont let me install linux although all she does is surfing the web and downloading photographs.
School computer administrators, install some linux machines too which people can mess around with, for the simple reason of fun and education.
In XP (and perhaps Vista) BSODs are happily rare.
The very first tyme I used XP it froze. I first used XP on a brand new Dell on the first day of a class I was taking in college. I went into class, sat down, and pushed the power button. After a few minutes it hadn't finished booting and the display was frozen, so I had to push and hold the power button before I was able to get it to bootup. That really soured me on XP. Then I found out MS was requiring Activation to use XP. Forget that! Despite the fact I'm been using Windows almost exclusively since Win95, MS has driven me away. My next computer I plan on getting is a Macbook Pro.
Finder DOES suck, I pray that 10.5 fixes it, but waiting for 5 revision to fix something that people have been bitching about is bad.
Yeap, it sucks to wait for fixes, and people have been complaining about Windows problems for years. There have been complaints about the poor security of Windows since Win95 if not before. And about BSODs. The only Windows version I've used I didn't get a BSOD from is NT4. However because my NT4 box has a DEC Alpha CPU I haven't used it much, maybe if I used it more I might of gotten a BSOD.
My universal OS Troll comment is "Use what works", I think every OS has some serious problems,
That's about the size of it. A user, or potential user, shouldn't pick a computer for the OS. Instead they need to consider what they want to do, use a computer for. Once they've done that then they need to pick the apps they want to use, then choose the computer and OS the apps run on. Some may say this contradicts what I said before about switching from Windows to Macs, but there isn't any app I need that only has a version for Windows and not one for Macs that I know of.
FalconShould there be a Law?
That's just about right. Two tons, at an average weight of 160 lbs comes out to 25 people. I'd venture to say that there are probably just about 25 people who use AND like Windows.
It isn't!? Thanks for ruining my day. ;)
Daniel
It's not called "mounting", you silly. It's the equivalent. You set a directory where a drive has to be acessed. I used the Unix term for it. I'm sorry, I do not know the Windows term.
I want to mount my secondary partition so that no application thinks I'm on D:, so that noone can say that I have a "nonstandard" installation when I put something on D:. You never worked in a Corporate Environment, do you?
It works all fine, just, well deleting fucks up....
Tons upon tons of people use it and like it.
Everyone I know, outside of my family, uses Windows. Not a single one likes Windows. Each one has their own reasons for using it, but not a single one of them describes the experience as enjoyable.
I've just installed WinXP and Ubuntu on a Dell latitude D420, dual boot.
Guess which OS "just worked" and which one required hours of tedious debugging?
Most of the problems with XP were actually Dell's fault, though, I have to admit. Their driver installation process is godawful. Note I'm reasonably expert in Windows - in fact I have more WinXP experience than Ubuntu experience!
I didn't have the option of installing MacOS, so it's "ease of use" comes in dead last on my hardware.
Listen, I like much about the Mac and hate MicroSoft. I myself use Linux. Last time I looked it was still against the whim of the Almighty Jobs(who is not that nice of a person, just look at the way he treated Woz) to install the x86 OSX on a non-Apple piece of hardware, say what you want about openDarwin but Apple has not been that supportive of the project. So, how much would it cost me to get OSX on my Dual-Core Opteron? not possible legally.
Well, actully, tons upon tons of people are forced to use it at their place of work and they actually don't like it very much at all.
The only sane time to want to eject a CD is to take it out and put it into a case or some other device, in which case you have to reach to the drive in any case; while I won't go so far as to say the button being on the keyboard is "clearly inferior", there's no real advantage to having it anywhere else.
OTOH, there should be a power-on switch on the keyboard. There is no reason for me to have to reach for my case to power the computer on. IIRC, Mac's do this right, though its been a long time since I've actually touched a Mac despite the fact that I prefer them in the abstract to Windows boxes, and I may be misremembering.
In all the noise about Vista, it doesn't run today's Windows app's as fast or as compatibly as XP.
According to Tom's Hardware, DirectX 9 and below will run the GPU at 90 to 95% of XP, even though someday DirectX 10 will be faster; if I was a serious gamer, no Vista until, oh, maybe 2008.
"I work for a Federal Agency, and we need the machines (IBM ThinkCenters running XP Pro) left on at nite for push updates. We tell the users to reboot before going home. Why? Stability reasons. Even XP eventually has memory issues if left running for too long, and a regular reboot keeps thing running smooth."
Because your users are idiots? I never turn this machine off. Never. I play video games, code in Visual Studio, run iTunes (which just so happens to be the worst program on this system when it comes to crashing and bugs). Never gets rebooted. I run Ubuntu through Virtual PC. Nope. No reboots. Its been running solid for a week now. Why only a week? I moved my machine to my college dorm. I plan on keeping it on hooked up to this UPS all semester.
I'm f#$king magic!
It's completely different, but also delicious.
Guinness is a stout, whereas Duvel is more ale-y. It's very flavorful and malty.
Is there anything Wikipedia can't do?
+++ATH0
Windows is around and will be for quite some time. I've talked to most (if not all) of my friends about their thoughts, and one of two things has happened. Either A: they said they don't like Windows but it's all they know, or B: Are now running some flavor of *nix.
I'll not touch Vista with a 10ft pole, but I can say it does appear to be a (albeit small) step in the right direction. MOST of the changes do seem to be nothing more than a rather attractive makeup to cover the face of Microsoft beneath. It may be a rewrite, but it's still Windows. And unlike the Linux, BSD and Mac communities, crusading Windows zealots seem to be few and far between.
Ask a starving person if they'd prefer bread or steak, they'll probably say steak. That doesn't mean there's anything inherently wrong with bread, but odds are pretty good that, if given the alternative of steak, many people will pick the steak. But raising cattle takes more effort than baking bread. And right now someone's baking a whole lot of bread.
And if you caught my steak -> GNU and my bread -> M$ Windows analogy on as many levels as there are, you probably need to get out more.
I always liked macs...
:)
until I discovered software
and nope, just don't like the dock thing.
I noticed and suffered long lines of people waiting for the next free PC while there are plenty of Mac's and Unix machines available, especially toward the end of a semester
It was the opposite at the college I started at. We didn't have any *nix computers, but we did have Macs and PCs, first with DOS then Windows. For classes, it depended on what the subject was as to what computer/OS was used. The art classes used Macs while the computer and info tech classes used DOS or Windows. As for the student computer labs, we had both DOS/Windows and Macs. Most of the people used the Macs. You could walk into a lab and most if not all Macs were being used but hardly any PCs were. This aggravated me because my programming classes used PCs but all my other classes used Macs, I'd really rather have programmed on Macs as well instead of just used them.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Windows might have died years ago if Apple had made an operating system for the PC. The fact is that no matter how awful you think Microsoft's business practices are, Apple is the company that demands that you own their hardware if you want to use their operating system. If Microsoft did that, they would be broken up in a week.
What many don't know or realize, is that while Microsoft was previously a software business, Apple has been and still is a hardware and a software company. Apple did license MacOS for awhile but they found out that by licensing it to OEMs their hardware sales suffered. Apple lost more from the loss of hardware sales than they made from licensing MacOS. When Apple brought Steve Jobs back, seeing as how bad licensing MacOS was to the bottum line he stopped it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Every one of your "points" only serves to illustrate that you ought to have stuck to PCs. Why would you buy a Mac and then refuse to take advantage of its unique strengths because they're "not cross-platform compatible"? So you ditch Safari, with all the niceties that come from its being so tightly integrated with OS X, and use, what, Firefox instead?
The fact that you're not only satisfied by, but actually prefer the least common denominator speaks volumes about your personality. Indeed, you said it best yourself: you're an uncreative, lazy, and unproductive pimple-riddled gamer dweeb. Leave our platform, please; go back to beige. Why pretend you're something you're not?
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
Well, technically you don't have to ask. 98% of people who use both OSes use Windows at work because that's what their employer dictates and they use Mac OSX at home because they have a choice...
-- Douglas AdamsAm I doing something wrong? It seems fine to me.
Guys, someone may have said this before, and as I haven't read _all_ the posts, I'm sorry if this is redundant.
Slashdot, I'm an AC who reads most of the articles within a day of their being posted. I would just like to submit that the OS X vs Windows Vista articles are getting TEDIOUS and do not accomplish anything. Is any Slashdot reader going to switch their primary OS based on these articles? Are these articles telling us anything we do not know? I doubt it.
OS articles should be confined to interesting/dangerous vulnerabilities, version updates and possibly, if you're going to stretch it to the limit, hilarious error messages. This is just my $0.02.
"...and turn on Appletalk every five minutes."
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Is there anyone out there who has turned on Appletalk in the last five years let alone last five minutes?
0 1 - just my two bits
Well, Windows has a huge driver problem that Apple basically doesn't have. Mac has much more limited hardware it needs to run on. Right there from that standpoint, it's easier to keep OSX consistent. I like the look and feel of OSX better than XP too. Vista is better than XP, but not as nice as OSX. So....Having said all that. I can get many of the benefits of Unix and lots of other software, I can get the look and feel of OSX on my PC and I can do it for a fraction of those two adversarial OSes. I just installed Xandros 4 Professional and SuperKaramba. I love my computer again. It looks like a Mac and it cost me very little. Everything works great too. If only there was a Linux version of Quicktime. I just installed Flash 9. Rudy
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Pros:
- Tabbed browsing. Some versions can make the Tab titles match your current prompt. (Latest CVS seems to break this?)
- Looks gorgeous. Transparency, nice design, yadda yadda.
- Fastest OSX terminal I've seen.
- Nice activity monitoring: activity in a tab turns title purple, then red when it stops.
- Can integrate with Growl for notifications.
Cons:Overall, though, it's very close to being as good as Konsole or whatever they call the Gnome equivalent now. And it's way-the-hell better than Terminal.app.
I'm extremely suspect of this blurb as the AppleTalk quote isn't from the article.
That's a quote from reader comments made by someone who is so far out of touch with OS X it isn't even funny.
Is this really how stupid Window-Fanboyism has gotten that the complaints are over OS X services that aren't even turned on out of the box? I've got two Macs running OS X and I didn't even know they were still capable of using AppleTalk until I started poking around in System Preferences to see how to turn the service on. Sure, it works and it's easy to set up zones but why anyone would use AppleTalk to try to talk between Macs and peripherals these days is beyond me.
Bonjour makes discovery extremely easy and the negotiation happens automagically.
And this reset permissions crap? I'm lost. Really. I have no clue what that guy is talking about. The only time I ever reset permissions on anything was when I wanted to move some GarageBand Loops to a place the system owned without adding them to GB through drag-and-drop. The only reason I had to take ownership of the directory was because I wasn't using sudo from the terminal.
The submission is pure flamebait. Slashdot moderators need to go back to moderator school.
Yes, but the cheapest MacBook is $1100 (in the US). You can get plenty of PC notebooks for less, and for many people the cheaper PC notebook is all they need and are willing to pay for.
Wow. I thought it might be fun to read some comments. But having read through most of them, my faith in the intelligence level of the human race has dropped sharply.
However, until I can build a computer and load OS X on it myself, it isn't even an option for me. I haven't spent money on an OEM system since last century and don't plan on doing it again anytime this one either. I kind of thought Slashdot was that way, but I guess nerds aren't as smart as they used to be. If you are on Slashdot and get spyware or other malware on your system you should be banned. No, everybody should use OS X because it is invulnerable to everything.
I guess in the "real world" an average Windows installation gets 70 viruses per day, so if it lasts more than 2 consecutive hours it is probably having network problems. Also apparently there is only one person in the world that doesn't despise Windows and it is probably some compulsive liar because there is no way in this world a person could like something as horrible as it. I have had to reboot 42 times just typing this post and had to re-image my PC 3 times. There were 958,394,995 Windows Critical Updates to install and that was just today. They don't even fix anything, just waste space on my hard drive.
Sure, I am a computer technician at a company with 1,500 computers which all run Windows, and we have so few problems that we fight over work requests, but it's just because their computers are so slow and crash before they can get to the web site to submit a request. I guess the phones aren't working either since we don't get any calls to the help desk. If we all ran Macs with OS X my life would finally be perfect.
(Score:-1, Flamebait) perhaps?
The ONE Mac OS X feature I can't live without now is Expose. I have it set to show all windows if I move my mouse to the corner. It happens now that when I use a WindowsXP machine, I usually find myself instinctively bumping my mouse to the corner, thinking I'll swiftly be able to get to the window I need.
I also really appreciate how easy it is to type certain characters on a Mac like umlauts and accents over letters. And Terminal.app... I love having a bash shell as part of the actual system, and being able to then use scp or ssh or wget or whatever. I don't really like Cygwin on Windows, and I can't install Windows Services for Unix because I made my WindowsXP install on my Mac Mini a FAT32 install and not NTFS... so that I can fully access my Windows files when I'm booted into Mac OS X. (Again, blame Microsoft for their proprietary NTFS support missing on Mac OS X, not Apple.)
I actually remapped the Win-key on my keyboard to be another Ctrl key, since I'm used to using it for copy/paste and jumping to the address bar or opening a new tab in Firefox, etc...
Yep, same here. I actually ended up with a dual Pentium motherboard (vanilla, not Pentium Pro or Pentium II) and put together a router with BeOS. Funny thing was, you had to have two different kinds of network cards to do that since it couldn't distinguish between two of the same network cards. I spent a lot of time running IRC, email, etc from BeOS. It was fun and it got me into Linux too.
I miss it. And man, I've still never seen anything boot that fast. (Mind you, the lack of a multiuser environment was kind of a drag.) *wipes away a tear* Ahhh... the good old days.
Those who moderated this 'Troll', please tell us how to maximize windows easily in Mac OS X. I don't know how to do it and it's driving me crazy. Well, that and the lack of decent keyboard navigation -- very inconvenient on a laptop.
The majority of these same people either don't know there are alternatives, or aren't in a position to change. They don't 'like' it, they just put up with it.
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
MacOS X may be superior, but the difference between Windows XP and MacOS X is not that great, and certainly not so big as in the days of Windows 3.1/MacOS 7. With Windows XP, one can do many tasks with very little problems.
As for Vista, I do not know why I have to have them. XP with SP2, Firefox and Thunderbird, Antivirus and Firewall works extremely well. Shiny icons and transparencies will not make me reformat my hard disk.
As soon as I saw the comment about Appletalk I laughed. Tell ya what, you can use Appletalk to diss current Mac systems and I'll use IPX to dump on windows....
I thought that was a little unfair myself, as it was an honest question. I got much better responses to the maximize question in a different spot in this thread; see responses to my post at:
o ld=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=17685064
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=217812&thresh
The road to hell is paved with Cat 5 cable.
Just because MS has a big user base doesn't mean that all those users are lovin' it; most just don't know any better. Because of MS marketing, some of which is illegal, Microsoft owns a huge market share; it doesn't make them the best. Apple has insisted on being a hardware/software company and limiting peripheral support do provide super support for a limited range of hardware. MS is heavily targeted by crackers and hacker because it is the most prevalent OS. But _all OSes have vulnerabilities and they all could do better at writing more secure code and fixing bugs. Basically, the Macs "just work", but software and hardware support are limited. MS Windows has broader hardware and software support, but is more vulnerable to exploits and is more difficult to fix when broken. Linux and other OS choices have their own problems. In general, all are improving, but bug-fixing always takes a back seat to feature bloat. Always. Every OS has its strengths and weaknesses. You're supposed to pick the one that gets _your_ job best done for you. If every OS would only adopt standard interoperability protocols and quit trying to lock in customers through the back door, they would all be better off and so would we. All this BS about DRM is a backdoor for platform lock-in. If DRM is is financially crucial to the creative people behind it, there are people smart enough people to develop a scheme that is platform agnostic and the DRM mechanism itself would be freely available; you would need only pay a fair price for what you use under the restrictions of current copyright laws (which means that you can make copies for personal use). And our techno-ignorant elected officials need to stay out of DRM and let the free market decide; they just need to make sure we _have_ a free market, man up and honor their oath of office, not their promise to whichever scumbag bought the election for them. I just wish that all these people would put their time and efforts towards stopping SPAM, the biggest time waster and IT cost sinkhole in existence, instead of wasting time and money on restrictive DRM controls that people smarter than they can circumvent with ease. Do some good for a change and fix their freakin' buggy OSes and software. The "next big thing" in computing should be "stuff that really works". And while I'm at it, let's have the press (including Slashdot) stop supporting these "Windows vs. Mac" hallmarks of lazy journalism. Report the facts; don't manufacture the news; don't be advertising whores; locate your balls and use them. My apologies for the rant. Mod me down if you want, but you know I'm right.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Thanks. Unfortunately you didn't get an answer; you got the usual "the Mac way is how it's supposed to work, what you want to do is wrong, here's what you should do instead" excuse. There's simply no reason why there can't be a setting somewhere for that behaviour. A window manager should be able to override application-specific window settings. I use an Apple laptop every day and "maximize it manually" just isn't an acceptable answer when all you have is a trackpad.
The majority did not believe the earth was flat. That was an idea of the papal church in Europe, at a given time. Galileo got so much attention not because he believed the earth was round, but because he contradicted the church. More about this on Wikipedia
If you actually read what I wrote, you'd see that I tend to choose gadgets that are the best fit for their intended purpose. Why I'm trying to explain any of this to some dipshit fanboy is beyond my ability to comprehend. You'll buy whatever Steve tells you to whether it makes sense or not.
Now go make an iPhoto book for your Mom, since your obviously so creative and a better steward of your free time.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
People are dumb... just like all you Slashdoters... get your dick out of your hand and your other hand out of the bag of chips you are eating and get some sun you losers.
"If Windows sucks soooo much, how come more people are familiar with it than Mac OS X? Last time I checked, Windows wasn't just a business operating system. Tons upon tons of people use it and like it.'"
Can you say "Monopoly"?
I knew you could.
This is why I HATE microsoft and love apple: Apple does not, by default, spam you with useless crap.
Microsoft not only annoys you non-stop, it makes the possibility to stop it a freaking hack! It's a GUI feature with a non-GUI interface, fer cryin' out loud! These folks are either incompetent, insane, or evil. Most likely the latter two.
You can't take the sky from me...
The general comments seem to be that we hate Microsoft because it's a closed system.
Umm, I don't see that as the character of the comments. Are you sure this isn't a strawman? I dislike MS because their criminal behavior has set the industry back a decade and personally inconvenienced me. As for it being "closed" Windows is not closed so much as intentionally designed to not interoperate with others and to make things hard for MS's customers when they want to do anything that doesn't result in MS getting more of their money.
On the otherhand we love Apple because everything works so well together.
Nah, screw that. I like Apple's products because they give me the functions I need, instead of assuming I will buy from them anyway and aiming at features that benefit them.
They can develop for a very narrow selection of hardware and have minimized the support costs.
This comment is actually wrong. Apple works very hard and spends money to get support from third parties. MS is a monopoly, so third parties all do whatever it takes to make sure they work with MS, even if that means paying MS to help them. MS doesn't spend money on this, they make money.
There is a very narrow range of hardware choices...
This is entirely true. Apple only makes a small selection of hardware and have coupled their hardware and software. This is a classic way to survive in a monopolized market. You build a separate vertical chain incorporating what would be a competitor to the monopoly. If not for MS's unethical practices in maintaining their monopoly, however, Apple would be driven to decouple the OS and hardware by the free market. So this disadvantage to Apple products is the result of MS's criminal behavior. That doesn't make it any less annoying, but it does lead a lot of us to dislike MS more, rather than Apple.
Also the choice of software for the mac is relatively limited...there is usually just one option (or maybe two) in each major category. For example, there is one home finance program, one tax program...
Umm, one in each major category? Not really, no. Taxes: turbotax, quicken, checkmark, and taxcut are all available.
This is true, there are a lot of niche applications where Windows has the only available software, or at least better software. There are enough of these so that a lot of people will eventually run into this.
What categories of programs are Mac only?
Well, there are certainly some areas. Publishing, biochemistry, linguistics, physics research, some computer security, pair programming, etc. For other areas software is available on both Mac and PC (like video editing) but the mac software is a whole lot better and really dominates the field.
Mac does have a unique high-end movie editor (but apple had to write it as no commercial company saw a big enough market in a mac only (yes, Adobe is returning to cross-platform for their version).
Don't you think it more than a little contradictory to write that the market for Mac video editing software was "not big enough" and then mention that Adobe is trying to get into that market? The truth is, Apple released a much better product than what was currently available and blew Adobe and to some degree Avid out of the water. They captured the lion's share of the video editing market with a better, cheaper product and people are still abandoning Adobe and Windows to move to that solution, which is why Adobe is releasing a mac version to try to win some of the switchers back with cross-platform availability. Adobe cancelled their competitor for a time claiming they could not compete and hoping to pressure Apple, not because there was not a profitable market.
Obviously a person should look at their own needs before picking a platform or, like me, run OS X on my laptop and Windows and Linux in VMs on top of it for specific applications.
I want to mount my secondary partition so that no application thinks I'm on D:, so that noone can say that I have a "nonstandard" installation when I put something on D:. You never worked in a Corporate Environment, do you?
That explains the problem. The way that you described it you indicated that you wanted to "mount" the contents of your "C:\documents and settings" folder to your D: drive, not the other way around.
And yes, I have worked in many corporate environments, ranging from small 300-person companies to Fortune 50 organizations with 100,000+ users. But your condescension is unwarranted considering that the cause of the misunderstanding was your failure to clearly communicate what you were trying to do, not my lack of experience.
Their's another kind?
dk
I will not say who I work for but we have a presence in North America, England, Europe, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore with hundreds of desktops spread throughout to company.
For most companies, a single vendor for hardware would be nothing new.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
There is freeware for imaging on Windows as well. All the tools you need are actually included on your install disk for XP (or 2k3) but unless you have an msdn subscription you'll have to use something like BartPE to create the bootable diagnostic CD for you. I prefer BartPE anyway, and used in conjunction with DriveImage XL you have a completely free solution to image, repair & administrate any Windows XP or 2003 machine. DriveImage XL can even backup & restore files that are in use I believe. I would expect Vista support to come eventually as well for both tools. I still use Acronis sometimes in situations where I don't need as robust a solution (ie, something quick & easy) but I highly recommend the above tools to anyone who needs them. For slipstreaming custom install scripts & configurations for Windows Xp (going beyond just updates & service pack rollups) you've got a nice little tool called NLite. Also the makers of DriveImage XL have GetDataBack which is a wonderful little tool (the NTFS version is expecially successful at recovering from accidental formats etc), although non-free. I suspect every major OS with a decent userbase & enough developers has plenty of comparable tools. Your familiarity with the tools is probably just proportional to your familiarity with your OS's.
Those "updates" that come out every month aren't system updates in the same sense at all. They are mostly SECURITY updates. Apple's point updates are known to contain new functions at times, not necessarily just bug fixes. Apples 'updates' are really system updates, not 'security updates' such as Microsoft issues. Don't make me laugh!
You display an amazing amount of selective blindness. Apple is the only PC manufacturer that is gaining market share. They are the only one that is showing a sales growth rate three times that of other sellers. I don't have to CALCULATE anything, I just read the sales figures, which you obviously ignore.
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
In some case, yeah, they are, when it comes to PCs. Our users are professionals in other areas of expertise, not geeks. It is our responsibility to keep their PCs in running order. We find that if we don't have them reboot periodically (every nite isn't REALLY required, but it is easier to have them do it that way than to tell them to keep track of it any other way) many machines have stability issues.
Our environment isn't yours. We use different apps, and a wide variety of them, too. You are obviously aware of how to keep your PC stable and running. Congratulations. You are in the top 2% of Windows users. Pat yourself on the back. My users are not. I and the other techs have to coddle them, stroke their egos, and sometimes lie to them to keep them happy. We also have over 10,000 of them, where you only have one.
And I run iTunes on my PC at work, too. Have done so since Apple released it for Windows on win2k. No crashes, no freezes, no problems. Maybe you should check with your local Apple store for expert advice.
"Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash." Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Robert A. Heinlein
I remember that when backpacking through India, particularly in the South of the country, there were so many flies. Every time we sat down to eat, usually in an outside restaurant, [Southern India is very hot in summer], one hand would be used for food, another for constantly sweeping away the flies. We came up with a saying, that I believe fits today's window's users very well: "Eat Shit -- 4,000,000 flies can not be wrong!"
For what it's worth, and to counter the weirdo that attacked you, I found all your points to be quite reasonable.
;)
Something that's been annoying the hell out of me lately is the trend to label anyone who says "I prefer OS X to Windows" as a fanboy or fanatic. I think your attitude is typical of most Mac users, especially those who recently purchased their first Mac. We buy Macs because we think Apple makes a better computer -- not because of some undefined cultish allegiance. Same with networking products, as you mentioned. They are simply more reliable and easier to use and I'm happy to pay a small premium for the higher quality.
Anyway, as a long-time Mac user and purchaser of many Apple products, I wholeheartedly welcome you to "my" platform
I have to respectfully disagree. I also work on OS X every day. Reliability-wise, my OS X machine has crashed one time in 2 years. That cannot be said for ANY of the Windows machines I have used (they seem to do well if they crash 1 time in 1 week).
And I work with Windows everyday, and it's never crashed, in several years. I guess anecdotes don't make evidence.
WTF is Apple Talk?
I've been an OS X user since 2001 and I have never used Apple Talk to do a thing.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
This brought out another critical fact why Microsoft won the PC market: PC hardware + Microsoft software cost significantly less than Unix workstations/servers and Mac's at the time.
The college bookstore where I went sold both Macs and PCs, from different OEMs. There were Compaqs, which were generally expensive compared to other PC OEMs, IBMs, and Zenith PCs. However with the educatonal discount Apple had back then Macs were cheaper, there was a 50% educatonal discount. Which was much better than the discount Apple has now for education, it's barely 10%.
But you're right, Apple priced Macs out of the reach of most first tyme buyers. The one good thing was that they lasted longer than PCs did back then. Myself, I bought a used Mac in 1992, it was made in 1988, and it lasted until the floppy drive died in 2000. This was the first, and only, hardware problem I had with it and I didn't have any software problems. Unfortunately it wasn't upgradable. It's a different story with PCs. I've bought 5 PCs, four brand new and another that was factory rebuilt. Of them, on two both the motherboard and hdd had to be replaced within the first year. On these two, and another one, I had to reinstall Windows a number of tymes. One ran Win 95, another Win 98 which was upgraded to Win 98 SE, an the one I'm usng now has ME. The only Windows PC I have not had either hardware or OS trouble with is the second PC I got, however it's CPU is a DEC Alpha running NT4. And because it's an Alpha I haven't been able to install much software on it so I haven't used it much, and not all at in three or four years. The one PC I didn't mention I got a few months ago with Linux preinstalled. I haven't used it much yet, other than for storage as it has a 750GB hdd, so I can't really say how well it is.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Whenever Apple fanboys whine at me about how the iPod must be great because it's so popular, I point out that Windows is more popular than MacOS... so just because something is popular doesn't mean it doesn't suck.
But whatever can you point to for people who actually like Windows? Daytime Soaps? George W. Bush? McDonalds? Adult Swim?
No, I'm familiar with tools for Windows, Linux, and OSX. In fact, I'm probably most familiar with Windows, but having seen how things work on the other operating systems, I suddenly realized how unnecessarily difficult and complicated it is to do simple imaging with Windows.
In these other operating systems, you don't even really need special imaging software if you know your way around the command prompt. You can basically copy all the files from one disk to another, even if the source disk is running the OS your copying live while you're copying. Once the copying is done, you mark the drive as bootable, and you're pretty much done. With OSX, you can take that image to a different computer with completely different hardware, and the image will have absolutely no problem running on that other hardware without dealing with any drivers. No tweaking needed, no activation work-arounds. Even if you bother making image files, the image files are standard disk-image files that are readable by OSX without any special software.
Believe me, it's not an issue of "familiarity"-- I've been supporting Windows professionally since WFW 3.11, I've never owned/supported Macintoshes until OSX 10.2, and I only started using Linux around 3 years ago. However, when I started dealing with OSX, there were multiple instances of me figuring something out and thinking, "Wait, it's really that easy? I don't have to do all sorts of other crap, just to get a simple working solution? Holy crap, it is-- it's really that easy. Now wait, if it can be that easy, why the hell is it such a PITA on Windows?"
Still doesn't fix the deleting-bug, does it?
I might also want to point out that not everyone is a native-english speaker.