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HardOCP Spends 30 Days With MacOSX
boyko.at.netqos writes "Hardocp.com has published "30 days with MacOSX" — with the same author from "30 days with Linux" and "30 days with Vista" doing the evaluation. Ultimately he likes the stability and security but other concerns keep him from recommending it. From the article: 'The hardware lock-in and lack of quality freeware makes owning and maintaining a Macintosh an expensive endeavor ... Mac OS X has some amazing capabilities, but you spend a lot of money. Indeed, it seems the preferred method for solving Mac computer problems is to buy your way out of it. Slow computer? Buy a new one. Want to convert a file? Buy a utility. Want to do simple tasks? Buy a commercial program. Peripherals don't work? Buy replacements.'"
"While AbiWord and NeoOffice are both available through X11, neither had the full functionality that we needed, not to mention that we had a hell of a time getting them to work at all."
If I'm not mistaken, NeoOffice is a native Mac app that is as easy to install as any other, and integrates just fine with the OS. Is the author think of openoffice.org?
Not just preferred, but official.
Let me tell you all (again) the story of my Blue and White G3, Revision 1.
This particular hardware has a CMD IDE chip. Apple screwed up implementing it. Various people claim that it is a problem with the chip, but the identical chip is used in oodles of other hardware (including early UltraSparc workstations) and it works fine there. So Apple blew it. What did they blow? If you use UDMA transfer modes with it, most devices will experience data corruption. The problem occurs most when the CPU is heavily loaded (if you have one of these systems, a bit of testing will bear this out) but it can happen any time. And it's easy to load the CPU (even if just for a moment, which is long enough) when it's a ~300MHz G3.
Apple published a TIL (TechInfo Library) document on the subject. Their solution? Either purchase an add-in IDE host adapter, which for the mac at the time cost something like five times as much as for the PC, or purchase software like FWB Toolkit to disable UDMA transfer modes on the disk. That's right; Apple's solution is to spend money to make your computer slower. No logic board replacements were proffered.
That isn't the worst of it, though! When Apple rolled the TIL into their new Knowledge Base (KB) the article was deleted. I used to have the TIL document # noted down and actually searched for that, and could not find it. The information on this problem is available on lowendmac.com, by the way... The point here is that Apple not only treated their customers like shit by selling them flawed hardware, then knowing and admitting they were flawed, and suggesting a ridiculous solution (spend more money) but they then later attempted to bury the evidence of the incident by eliminating the best reference to it on the web.
If this is the kind of company you want to patronize, that's your business. But Apple has never been shy about making users spend money, even when it's Apple's fuckup that you're working around.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah, the freeware point was the one that seemed to me to be the most ridiculous. I've found the average quality of free- and donation-ware on mac os x is *much* higher than on windows, and very often, the first tool I download for a job does it very well. On windows (assuming I have a task for which I have not yet found a good freeware tool) finding the right tool can involve trying dozens of different solutions before I find one that works as advertised.
And one further point - the *only* machine that it's a pain to install RAM in is the mini - every other machine (Apple TV excluded) is a piece of cake.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
My girlfriend uses Windows, which I also use at work. I've got OS X 10.4 at home on an aging PPC mac mini. Frequently I'm asked "can I do that on my machine", and my response is... you have to buy a program. Everything on my mac, I got for free (except little snitch), and there's _lots_ of quality freeware and shareware out there. And then there's fink.
Indeed, it seems the preferred method for solving Mac computer problems is to buy your way out of it. Slow computer? Buy a new one. Want to convert a file? Buy a utility. Want to do simple tasks? Buy a commercial program. Peripherals don't work? Buy replacements.
I couldn't agree less.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
SecretRabbit: Not sure he's heard of MacPorts:... nor Fink... nor version tracker.
SecretRabbit, not only have I heard of MacPorts and Fink, but each one of them gets a seperate page in a 13 page, 14,000 word article.
I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
Yeah, and ultimately you end up running the X server a lot, which is a bit of a memory hog on top of the already memory hoggy OSX. Worse, stuff like printing and even copy and paste can be hit and miss depending on what toolkit the application originally used and how well it was ported. Even more annoying is how some free applications suddenly become not-free when they are ported, often becoming crippleware.
I read the internet for the articles.
I did find mountains of free, open source software. It's just that the free software that I did find for the most common tasks - word processing and graphics editing, were buggy and too unstable to be used - even compared to their counterparts on other OSes. There is some good quality freeware out there, like Transmission and Colloquy, and I mention them - but BitTorrent and IRC aren't what I need to get my work done.
I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
Check out Smultron.
Yeah, and ultimately you end up running the X server a lot, which is a bit of a memory hog on top of the already memory hoggy OSX.
I use osx, x11, xp (parallels), firefox, thunderbird, itunes, etc all day long on 1GB w/ a 2GHz MB. The last time I saw the pin-wheel was during bootup sometime last week.
BUT.. if we want to complain, Linux and Windows is always still there for the taking. I, personally, just think it is nice to have so many tools available in such a newbie OS without needing a credit card. Mind you, this is getting outside the realm of what the OP was driving home:
The guys over at HardOCP are just being the idiots they can't help but be. Whatever opinion is 'cool' in the gaming community, at any given moment, will be what they blindly repeat and get all opinionated over, and instantly dislike anything that doesn't "fit" with the "scene".
Things the author missed that were so painfully stupid are all over the article. Just like the whole deal with Windows having ready access to openoffice. If these chaps knew anything about this free software they need and support, then they should know there's a branch named Neo Office which works just dandy with OSX. Just like how the author could not find a "wordpad-like" program.. TextEdit anyone? It's Wordpad on steroids, and it's built into the operating system. Don't get me started on the simple things missed, like Dashboard and Spotlight. Spotlight should have been the first thing he clicked on when unable to find things.
Don't trust these articles for anything, really. The only reason Linux didn't get a complete thumbs down is due to it being "cool" in the "scene" (note above), ever since Carmack did some fps dev under Linux back in the day. So, regardless of how little he understood, how much trouble things were to get done, Linux had to have a good review or else he would not fit in with his gamer buddies. That's the impression I get when OSX gets knocked for having some of the exact same tools, with same level of knowledge needed to make them work in either OS.
Yeah, that's an annoying conclusion. I almost never upgrade any of my computers anymore aside from RAM and hard drives, something that's pretty easy to do on Macs and most laptops (PC or Mac). My home PC, which I use to play games mainly, is running some older ASUS board with an Athlon 2400+ (as in the K7 core). I bumped it up to a gig of RAM and put in a GeForce 7600GS a couple months ago, but that's hardly some monster update.
To make the machine modern (PCIe, SATA, etc.) the whole machine has got to get replaced. The case is about the only thing I could keep. With all the CPU socket changes, a motherboard rarely survives more than one or two MINOR upgrades anymore.
In a Mac I can upgrade easily: CPU, video card, RAM, hard drive and optical drives. Oh yeah, and on the laptops at least, the wireless is really easy to upgrade as well.
So what if I can't upgrade the motherboard? Even in the PC world with a new socket coming out all the time, it's just about the same. This argument was much more valid a few years ago. Upgrading was also a much different realm when everything was on a PCI card. But now? My motherboard costs $60 - $120 (even more sometimes) and has everything but video and if I'm not a gamer... everything on it! New motherboard practically = new machine.
And when my machine gets slow? For everything but gaming and video (neither of which are things I do a lot of) how fast does your machine even need to be any more? The ONLY reason I'm not still using my G4 PowerBook is virtualization. That's it. Having quick access to IE6 and IE7 on my work machine is just too convenient to pass up. But, really, that's all.
All in all, the article was weak. Never trust a gaming centric site to give a decent review to anything but Windows based machines with the latest in "penis grade" hardware (like $500 video cards). For those of us who do work on your computers, many understand the relative strengths of Windows, Linux, OS X and whatever else appeals to our needs. Not everyone needs a $2,500 and a video card that requires its own power supply.
I think that - although biassed and with some suspect statements (NeoOffice requires X11 and is impossible to install? WTF??) there is a grain of truth in what he says. OSX is not the worlds greatest platform if your main requirment is GUI-based Open Source.
I certainly share the impression that there is less native free (beer) ware than Windows - and that although most of the FOSS stalwarts have been ported they do often rely on X11. This is rather second-best, Since the Unique Selling Point of OSX over Linux/FreeBSD is its GUI, many of the advantages of which disappear under X11, this does rather defeat the object. There's quite a lot of reasonably priced shareware though, and I get the impression that things are stepping up a bit post-Intel.
So, basically, if you want a totally free ride, use Linux or FreeBSD - its no great revelation that OSX is aimed mainly at people who are either going to use iLife + (maybe) Office or shell out $$$HOW MUCH!? for professional creativity gear.
I've been using OSX for web development (targetting Linux servers) using Eclipse, PHP PostgreSQL and its largely great - proper unix filesystem (unlike Windows - what's ths point of living if you don't have symlinks?) better/more responsive GUI than Gnome/KDE, easy testing on Firefox & Safari & fire up parallels for testing on (multiple versions) of IE. However - I've had a few issues with the PostgreSQL/MySQL GUI tools not being up to snuff on the Mac.
PS - last time I looked there were multiple sources for Apple-compatible RAM - which isn't so much non-standard as not-the-cheapest (e.g. SODIMS instead of regular sticks). Crucial and Kingston will even arrange - for far less than Apple's price - for the traditional seventeen virgins to journey to the summit of Mount Fuji laden with gold and crushed lotus blossums and obtain from the ancient and venerable hermit therein the rare and valuable FB-DIMM chips coveted by the Mac Pro.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The thing is, if you are upgrading your motherboard and your video card and your processor and maybe buying new ram (or even new hard drives to match your mother boards new built in controller) at what point are you pretty much just replacing the whole system. Sure its nice to keep that DVD burner around but how much are you really saving? And if you were on a Mac Pro you could buy a new one that didn't have the high end optical drive, or the largest hard drive available, and just put your old ones in your new computer.
Sure, its not the same, you cant build your own mac and Im not going to claim that you can, but I think the difference here is not as great as the article makes it out to be. And for the vast majority of users its practically no difference at all.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Look, I'm usually the type to be accused of being a Mac fanboy more often than a critic, but the reviewer is right about this. You can argue all you want that upgradeability isn't, or shouldn't be, important, but this guy's writing for HardOCP, and we all know perfectly well that this guy and most of his audience are probably among those who upgrade and swap components all the time. Clearly upgradablity is important to him. And he gives a great example of where this IS important right in his review- the Mac Mini comes with an unconscionably low amount of RAM for OSX, and it's a huge PITA to upgrade compared to nearly any similarly priced PC. Yes, the Mini is little and cute and built like a laptop, which would make it hard to give it 4 easily acessible RAM slots like many similarly priced PC's have, but the fact that it's a relative PITA to upgrade stands, regardless of there being good reasons behind it.
Yes, the Mac Pro towers are some of the most gorgeous, easily upgradeable computers available anywhere- he admits this, but they start at $2,500. What this guy's asking for is what Apple used to sell from the release of the Beige G3 tower in 1998 until the release of the G5 tower in June 2003- an easily user-upgradeable machine for something around $1000.
Some of us like computers and mess around with them and, as he said, like to pop in new components to relieve bottle necks with some frequency, rather than always replacing the whole thing at one go. I had one of those G3 towers, and I bought it as a 266 mhz G3 with 32 MB RAM and a 4 GB HD, and I sold it 6 years later as a 533 Mhz G4 with 768 MB memory and over 100GB of HD space. Along the way it stepped up from a CD-ROM to a CR-R, it gained USB 2 and firewire ports through a PCI-card, and it went from single monitor support to much faster 3 monitor support with a Radeon 7000 PCI card. That machine cost about $1,000 new, maybe $1,200. Now, while the price of PC's has fallen dramatically since 1998, the price of the cheapest upgradable Mac has doubled. I still think the Mac Pros are a great deal- if you price something similar at Dell, you'll pay $1,000+ more. But regardless of whether they're a good price for what you get, they cost an arm and a leg. Minis, and more particularly iMacs, are great machines, but they offer extremely limited ability to upgrade compared to PC competitors. Apple has abandoned the market segment for people who like the flexible tower form factor but don't want to pay an arm and a leg, a segment that's very well catered to by nearly every other PC manufacturer.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?