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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.'"
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GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
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.
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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.
"-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'm using 10.3.something on a dual G5 and I had a problem (forget what it even was now) that was fixed by using the disk repair tool to "repair permissions" on the volume. I suspect that is what he is talking about. Apple claims that problems like that come up only seldom but anecdotal evidence out there suggests that is bullshit if you are a power user. Why perms get mangled is beyond me, I don't seem to have that problem on my Linux systems...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, just about no one uses Appletalk anymore. It's still in OSX and I use it on one of the networks I run so an old printer can work. It's very stable but has been superceded by TCP/IP and rendezvous/bonjour. It's such a great trollish comment because it's about 10 years out of date as a criticism. Bit like me saying," Windows BSODs every 5 minutes".
It doesn't (it's up to 15 now I hear. Relax keyboard commandos - I'm joking 8-)
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Judging by the summary (which did nothing to encourage me to RTFA), this article is not for people who want to talk about the product, it's for people who are buying Vista because everyone else is (it must be true; the sales rep told them) and need to justify this choice.
I've only been using Macs for about three years and there are lots of things you could complain about with OS X, Apple hardware, and Apple's corporate policies. Having to enable AppleTalk or restore permissions are silly things to complain about. You only have to do the first if you want your computer to share files to other Macs, and it's one click; I'd prefer that to it running a load of services I may or may not use. Similarly, the second is just not something Mac users need to bother with. There's a button to do it in Disk Utility, but I've never needed to. As far as I can tell, it's just there in case you go a bit chmod-happy in the system folders.
If you want to bitch about OS X, try talking about the VM subsystem for a bit.
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I work in a support department and we're up to 20% of our users on OSX (mostly 10.4 but we have a few 10.2 and 10.3 users still). One of the first things we do on any Mac that comes in for work is repair permissions. It's easy and fast, and about 10% of the time it fixes whatever is wrong. It seems like the Macs with the most broken permissions are those which have had lots of random things installed on them - I don't know what causes the permissions issues but for this reason I suspect it is poorly written installers. Probably about 75% of the Macs we work on get some permissions repaired when we run the repair permissions program - usually its just a few obscure things that get fixed and there is no noticeable change in how the Mac operates.
The fixing permissions is something that you can do in Disk Utility. If you mess up the permissions of system files, it will fix them. Generally, you only have to do this if you do something really stupid involving chmod or chown.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Nope. It's a separate protocol which historically used AppleTalk (ATP) as its transmission protocol. Now it uses TCP.
Back in the day, an AppleTalk installation was a whole software stack which included AppleTalk and all sorts of other things. For instasnce, following the example of AFP circa 1990, we see the following stack, each item using the services published by the item directly below:
- AppleTalk Filing Protocol (AFP)
- AppleTalk Session Protocol (ASP)
- AppleTalk Transaction Protocol (ATP)
- Datagram Delivery Protocol (DDP)
Off to the side of this (above DDP) is Name Binding Protocol (NBP) which is used to look up services by name (this is what ZeroConf/Bonjour is implementing over IP).Since sometime in System 7 or Mac OS 8 (a good ten years, IIRC), AFP has also had another optional equivalent stack available to it:
- Apple Filing Protocol (AFP)
- Data Stream Interface (DSI)
- Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)
- Internet Protocol (IP)
The TCP & IP items there you'll recognise, but DSI is a new one -- it essentially implements a 16-byte header similar to the one used by ASP back in the day, which AFP then uses to indicate whether it's asking for a new connection, closing a connection, whether a packet is a request or a reply, which packet ID it has (or is replying to), the length of thje AFP command following, and any error code returned from the server. The AFP packet format itself is unchanged, except that TCP/IP allows larger packet/datagram sizes than AppleTalk, so the WriteContinue ASP command has been done away with, since the whole lot can be sent via TCP/IP in a single (potentially massive) DSI/AFP packet.In Mac OS X, AppleTalk is there, but usually not enabled by default (go to System Preferences->Network->[Device]->AppleTalk -- you'll see the checkbox is likely unchecked, at least if this is a recent installation rather than an upgrade from c. OS X 10.2). AFP will work over AppleTalk if it has to (talking to old machines that don't do AFP over TCP), although it will always prefer TCP/IP. In point of fact, on Mac OS X it'll likely be using IPv6 for local-area networking, since all OS X machines sort out link-local IPv6 addresses for themselves, and all OS X AFP server process advertise those addresses too.
Also:
Can't go wrong with using SMB for your local network.Yes you can. I've spoken to people at large institutions who have their Macs mounting network home folders. Frequently when those home folders are mounted using SMB, they find that applications such as Microsoft Office can have trouble auto-saving (in some cases, any sort of saving) to those volumes. There are incompatibilities, because Mac apps tend to assume that all the Mac filesystem metadata exists, and is atomically writable along with the file itself (not stored in a separate hidden file elsewhere). Some of these apps then try to be too clever when locking/updating/unlocking files, and run into trouble.
Long story short: If you're using Macs, share using AFP wherever possible. AFP supports everything HFS supports. SMB doesn't. SMB support on the Mac is mostly there to facilititate moving files between Macs & Windows machines. You can use NFS for Linux/Unix if you want, and you can (and should) use AFP for Mac-to-Mac networking. Things will go more smoothly if you do.
-Q
i've normally had windows machines, but over the holidays i added a mac mini to my collection of computers, and i've got to say that the initial set up of the machine was SO much easier than any computer i've ever set up that i was sold from the first minute. i plugged it in, hooked it up to my television, and turned it on, it then proceded to tell me i didn't have any input devices plugged it, and it would look for bluetooth devices. it recognized the bluetooth keyboard and mouse available in its area, and proceded to tell me how to sync the 2 devices. it then recognized my cell phone (which has blue tooth access as well), and synced up to that. It then found all of the wifi networks and asked me if i wanted to set up a connection to any of them. It was the fastest and easiest setup i've ever had with a computer. i'm still getting used to some of the interface differences between OSX and Windows, but i've got to say it is still the easiest computer to use that i've ever had. there is a lot of recognizable consistency in the OSX interface that windows is lacking. It is built for normal people to use and administer, while still allowing more technical users to be do advanced os management (which really helped me get started, b/c i hadn't used a unix box in 5 years, and only have minimal linux/bsd experience). anyways, i've got to say that the ease of use alone was enough for me to decide to use it as my main computer from now on.
Technically, AppleTalk isn't necessary to share files with other Macs, either, unless the Macs are running a really old version of Mac OS. File sharing between Macs has been done through TCP/IP for many years, and discovery has been done through Bonjour since Mac OS X 10.2 (roughly five years ago now). It's never even occurred to me to try to turn off Bonjour.
The VM subsystem is even becoming a hard thing to point a finger at. Prior to 10.3 it sucked incredibly harshly. A denial of service attack was only one stray write away. I don't really have any complaints about 10.4's VM subsystem. I haven't noticed it taking down my Mac yet.
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.
When he says "service" I assumed he was comparing service processes on Windows to similar processes on OS X. Having to administer both systems, I can assure you that OS X doesn't come pre-configured with a bunch of extraneous background processes, such as MS has done with XP. That being said, there are definitely a few processes that could do with some refinement. For me, the Dashboard implementation falls into this category. However, I doubt he would consider the WM for either Windows or OS X to be a service he may not use. Things like RealPlayer, iPod service, Windows Messenger (not MSN Messenger), miscellaneous svchost processes, etc. are what he's talking about. By default, the only one of those OS X has on by default is an equivalent to the iPod service (Apple, are you listening? this is ONLY needed if the USB or Firewire drivers have detected an iPod! Create a SHARED LIBRARY, not a background process!).