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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.'"
it's a flamewar brewin, i tell you what.
Sure, the Mac fanboi attitude is to buy stuff, but remember, OSX is a BSD, and a lot of the same stuff Linux has can easily be ported to OSX and probably has been.
... though that's not for the faint of heart even if it is as simple as ./configure && make && sudo make install
If not - you can always try to do things the "source" way
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Want FOSS install fink, and apt-get install whatever.
I RTFA.
I shouldn't have bothered. To save everyone else the time here's a summary:
1. Hate Apple, Apple hardware, and hate the Mac OS X.
2. Review it.
3. Result: Hate Apple, Apple hardware, and hate the Mac OS X.
I have to admit that I didn't expect much, really, when I read in Slashdot's article summary that there's a "lack of quality freeware" for Mac OS X... the author definitely doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
Must be a slow news day.
--Richard
it seems the preferred method for solving Mac computer problems is to buy your way out of it. Slow computer? Buy a new one.
Which other operating system can I use that doesn't require me to buy a new computer when this one feels too slow? If it's a lack of RAM that's slowing things down, then I'm just as likely to be able to chuck more memory into a Mac or a PC. If it's the hard drive, then again, I can put a whizzier one in regardless of whether it's a Mac or a PC.
"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?
On one hand it limits the available options and raises prices because of a lack of competition, but on the other hand it makes the product more stable in a sense of no mystery products/drivers that could break something else on the system. The review seemed fair in what I got out of it.
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.'"
Well Duh. I'd much rather buy my way out of the situations he names than spend my time scrounging around for semi-adequate "free" solutions a la linux, or borked spyware crap a la windows. Maybe his time is free, but mine isn't.
There is not a single bit of actual information in that article. It's pure, unsubstantiated opinion, and in many cases it's simply wrong. Why do you post crap like that?
I love my new iMac, but I have a one year old Canon laser printer/scanner/copier that won't work with it. One year old, not 10-20.
I have never had a problem with a lack of freeware for the Mac. There are a couple pieces of shareware I have paid for because I like the software and want to support the developer, but that was never a matter of functionality. The only other piece of software I have paid for is Apple Remote Desktop, and that could be replaced by VNC, ssh, and shell scripting if necessary. He mentions that he can't find any DVD shrinking software. He must have not looked very hard, as I know Mac the Ripper is just one of many free programs that do just that.
Yes, you do have to pay for MS Office and Photoshop, but no shit. You have to pay for these on Windows as well. He states that the free options like Abiword lack all the features necessary, but that's going to be true of any Office or PS knockoff. So not only do you have the option to buy Office and PS (just like on Windows, and unavailable for Linux), but you have a number of free alternatives, most of which aren't any harder to install on OS X than on Linux.
All told, the author is either ignorant of or biased against Macs. He complains about the Mac Mini lacking a more powerful graphics card and more RAM, but he fails to point out that it's a $600 entry level machine. He also complains about OS X not running on non-Apple hardware. That's a business argument for another day (and one that he would have a hard time winning), but it shouldn't be relevant to a technical review.
Wow. The description is not at all like my experence with OS X. However is frighteningly describing my usual Windows experence.
Saying OS-X has no freeware is both wrong directly (there is plenty of good freeware for OS X) and indirectly (Alot of open source unix apps compile directly, have premade binaries, or have ports going)
Using fink one even has the full apt functionality from debian and debian based systems.
Although things have been changing slightly in the past couple years, freeware for windows is harder to find, and before then almost impossible. Everyone was on the bandwagon of crappy worthless shareware apps, and worse, apps labeled as freeware but require a serial to unlock, by definition shareware.
I'd say only recently has windows even come close to a freeware pool like the OSS crowd has enjoyed, and continue to enjoy under OS X.
No freeware, maybe. But one of the things I really like about OSX is the amount of high quality, reasonably priced useful mini apps there are for it. Things like TextMate (or TextWrangler, which is free!) and Transmit are worth the money. There is a lot of "freeware" for the PC, but a lot of it would be better termed "crapware".
While Apple computers are more expensive up front, you do get quite a bit of bundled software, and a good, standards compliant, OS. I feel the software more than makes up for the extra cost.
Once you've paid for your Mac, you now have the world's most flexible computer. It'll run MacOS, Linux and Windows. With VM software you can run it all at once, with few compromises.
That means you can run freeware for all three operating systems, so the Mac actually has more free software available than any other computer. Many Linux programs build flawlessly under MacOS for instance.
Good stuff!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I guess they haven't heard of Freemacware.
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
I'll admit you can't beat Linux for the shear range of freeware available, but the Mac has its own share of freeware, donation ware and cheap solutions. There are certainly solutions that you have to pay for and if they are worth it you will contribute to the development, by paying a few dollars, but if they aren't worth it then they are left to die and you quickly search out an alternative. What ever you have to say about buying software, at least you aren't promised free software only to pay out of your teeth, or the privacy of your computer, which I see happen too often on the MS-Windows side.
MacPorts and Fink provide access to a large range of open source solutions, but they are clearly aimed at the IT savy. As for replacing hardware when it is no longer good enough, well this is not different to replacing your video player when it no longer does the job. If you have a non-compact computer then you can upgrade it all you like, but a compact computer such as a portable will always have limited upgradability, and the target audience really doesn't seem to mind. What makes a good computer depends on who you are and what you are doing with it, but the greater public once something that just works, and does not want to play around with the innards of their system unless they are forced to.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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.
Come now, we all know that if Windows came bundled with what Apple machines come with, there would be more antitrust lawsuits. Whatever your opinion of their respective companies, the comparison isn't fair when Windows is legally restricted from bundline more.
I am now Windows free for 3 years, loving OSX.
I am sadly disappointed in the support that apple has given the open source community. there are a LOT of free applications that do work well on mac osx, but apple does not seem to care. there is almost no official support for integrating open source applications. dports, fink, etc. - none of them really work well. you walk into an apple store and they say "if you are typing into a shell, we don't want to (read:can't) talk to you," literally. selecting and promoting open source software would be a way for apple to take a commanding lead in the os market, but they don't.
apple should have a marketing campaign like: "set yourself free" or something like that and let people choose them as a real windows alternative.
As a musician who uses Macs almost exclusively (disclaimer: I use other platforms for other stuff, not a rabid Macboy), I've constantly over the years been both rewarded and punished by the platform. He gets it right when he complains about the hardware upgrade schedule. It's only been recently that I've found a nice balance between my OS, hardware, and all the intensive stuff that my software needs to do, without having to upgrade one of those three things in a six month period.
Where he gets it wrong though is about the freeware. I've found a wealth of freeware and tinkering advice for getting more into/out of your Mac--I'm always amazed at how much is actually out there, considering the relatively small user base. And that doesn't even count projects like Fink, if you want to do real tinkering. So he's right and he's wrong, but it seems he entered the argument with his mind made up, and that's the real mistake.
u-bend
As someone who switched over to OSX for work reasons late last year, I agree.
:)
I'm not very big on the "THIS OS RULEZ!" way of thinking, but after using wmaker and xp all these years, the logical interface of darwin really helps with productivity. Since I was being a butt about them supplying my laptop needs, I, of course, did not factor in any additional software costs over the $1299ish basic macbook price.
Shortly after the macbook arrived, I had the same impression that I'd have to go get a whole new suite of apps for big money. Then after some reading, I installed dev tools from the DVD, followed a quick guide to get x11 starting on boot and it was pretty much done. Apt has 90% of the software I need. Can't beat that, except with 91%!
So here I am, six months later and still have not spent a dime on my mac's software. I use firefox to browse, thuderbird for email, neo office for my spreadsheets and documents, gimp for photo editing, and the rest is pretty much the stuff that comes pre-installed from the factory: iPhoto, photo booth, iTunes, etc.
I know you didn't mention this, but it's something I do see a lot -- even years after it was deemed untrue: Lots of folks consider macs useful only in creative positions. It's actually 'better' than Windows for engineering/support in my opinion, only because of the apt access to openssh client/server, and the ability to run X apps from remote hosts straight out of the box (and cleaner than cygwin).
On a completely different topic, the folks over at HardOCP don't really seem to be "power users" or whatever "hard hittin`" term they use to goose up their reader's egos about how much they are on the "inside" of the PC scene. It really seems to amount to a bunch of gamers who really like to talk about very small numbers differences compared between two games on opposing video cards, and not really the more complete, user who is years beyond the enthusiasm of new game titles, and more into using systems as tools. Not as badges of epeen.
Ever try the Gimp Print Drivers?
-nick
So you're telling me that an author from HardOCP, an overclocking website, considered the task of adding memory to a computer to be too daunting to bother with? Come on. It tells you how to add memory to the computer in the manual.
Wtf? If my external drive ceased to work, and it did so on anything I plugged it into across multiple other OSs, I would blame the drive, not the OS. This guy is grasping for reasons to blame OS X for stuff and for ways to give it a bad review. Typical FUD: my drive died, while using OS X, so Im cautious about using any drives with it cause it obviously kills drives!! heh. His other complaints are just as laughable, blaming OS X for making people buy hardware? Name the last Windows version that did not require a Major upgrade in hardware over the previous just to run? Name an OS that wont go faster without buying more ram or faster processors? It like saying "my car wont accelerate any faster unless I replace the engine with a bigger one, so I must be a crappy driver." And the comment on lack of quality free software, how many quality free aps can you get for windows? Almost anything from the Linux/Open Source/*nix world will compile on OS X, there's even this project called Mac Ports that makes bringing normal FOSS stuff into the native OS X environment easier. Gimp is a prime example. If you look around, there is plenty. This guy is just spewing FUD, looking to complain about everything, riding the thought that to get better viewer ship for his articles he has to be negative, just like the major TV news is these days.
Blah
Tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
The main 'faults with OS X' the reviewer finds are:
The MacMini only has 512Mb ram (because I configured it wrong)
The MacMini has Wifi and bluetooth with I don't need instead of more ram (because I configured it wrong)
The MacMini isn't expandable (I bought the wrong machine)
Which product was he supposed to be reviewing?
Why does the MacMini suddenly turn into a MacBook when he tries to return it?
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Macs are just like any high end car like a BMW or Mercedes, they look nice, have a few fetures that kick ass, and is a status symbol, but are the company that makes it is pretty much bending you over on the price. Windows is like a Ford or a Cheavy, not the best looking or most powerfull cars, but they get the job done for 90% of people that use them, of course everyone bitches that they breakdown way to much. Linux is like a street racing car, a million diffrent flavors, and yea you may have pimped it out with twin turbos, and converted ever bolt to metric, but that still isn't right for everyone. So fanboys quit argueing about it already because your just spinning your tires and just enjoy what you use instead.
One won't get far using a Macintosh from day-to-day without a word processor, for example, and the effective choices are limited to the iWork and Microsoft Office suites. Only the latter has features that professionals find themselves using with regularity (like edit tracking).
So we all need edit tracking?! How many of us really need the feature-creep of Office 2007? There are some, and there are some who really are doing DTP with a word processor, but the vast majority of people do not. Most of us would be well suited with TextEdit.
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.
AbiWord works like a charm and does not use X11, nor, IIRC, does NeoOffice. What functionality does this author 'need' that exists in Word for Mac but not AbiWord or NeoOffice? The Microsoft logo?
From time to time, there are small, niche apps that cost you - like the DVD shrinking software or the WMV converter - which have a freeware equivalent on both Windows XP and Linux.
How about HandBrake? While I've always been annoyed at the 30 dollar QuickTime fee, the same libraries for conversion, etc, are freely available on Mac so many free alternatives exist. Which WMV convertor for Linux are we talking about? If VLC, it also exists on Mac.
Not everyone needs BlueTooth and WiFi - and I would have rather had a computer I could use.
What is this doing in the article?
Dual-booting on a Mac brings the Mac platform an ability to play the games that were once the sole province of Windows. This should have been a net bonus for Mac but the limited and underpowered graphics solutions coupled with the inability to upgrade them negate that advantage.
So he tested on a Mac Mini and found that it couldn't play games well since they didn't cram an 8800 into the fat sandwich case. Great. Now, try the brand new MacBook Pro's video card or the iMac or the Mac Pro and see how that goes. And, the Mac Pro is upgradeable.
Furthermore, though people complain about DRM in Vista, the DRM of an Apple computer puts it to shame. There is no technical reason why Mac OS X can't run on other hardware, and even where technical compatibility is a problem, no one is asking that Apple have any sort of support for third-party hardware. Third-party drivers can take care of that, but we want to be able to have a user-friendly, stable OS to use on any hardware that we want without Apple actively preventing it.
Vista and OSX DRM issues are quite different. Apple has an understandable rationale for not wanting OS X to run on any hardware. If you don't agree with it, it is not at all impossible to subvert as a quick peek at Pirate Bay will show.
It is also expensive. The OS is sadly chained to the anchor that is Apple hardware, and I am less enthusiastic about that. It means that to use Mac OS X, you need to spend at least $600 on a new computer, and more for a computer that actually runs well. It also means that unless you go for the absolutely top-of-the-line Mac Pro line, you will need to replace your entire system when it starts to become outdated, rather than gradually solving bottlenecks by upgrading components.
600 dollars. Tragic, isn't it? If that is a problem, buy a used Mac. One of the effects of Macs being excellent, consistent 'package' computers is that they are very loved in the resale market, both for buyers and sellers. If only they would let me but this 600 dollar graphics card in the Mac Mini though...
Furthermore, the lack of freeware requires either resorting to illegal activity or resorting to paying out the nose for commercial software. Don't get me wrong, comme
Hax-fu?
And how, exactly, is this different from the situation in the PC world?
"Many ill-fated customers who upgraded have yet to get their PCs back to perfect working order" it says here and in many other places. Vista broke quite a few hardware drivers. And if your device is more than a few years old, the MBAs who decide these things are likely to decide against spending development money just to please loyal customers, so in most cases the simplest option is... to buy your way out of it.
Conversely, there are many things Mac OS X can do that Windows can't do unless you locate commercial products or shareware. I just found out yesterday, for example, that, unlike Mac OS X, Windows XP has no built-in way to check the S.M.A.R.T. status of a hard drive. And, of course, as far as I know there's no way to create a PDF file on a Windows machine without installing extra software.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
* HP 1020 printer -- This is a bargain basement printing solution that HP made reliant on Windows in order to keep it under $100. It clearly states on the product page that is Windows only. Yet he somehow blames Apple and MacOS X for not supporting it. HP chose to make the product this way and he chose to buy it.
* Canon CanoScan LIDE 30 -- Another bargain basement device; it's worth all of $25 now from various camera shops and is listed as being compatible with "MacOS X 10.1 and higher". This means it's been around since 2001 and that Canon did not upgrade the drivers on an obsolete, low-end product. And somehow this is, again, Apple's fault instead of the manufacturer's or the buyer's.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
I just bought a Mac to replace my dead XP box. This is my second trip to the land of mac, having lived there from the 512 to System 7.6. Now that most of the outside world compatablity issues are moot, I can't see buying another XP, or Vista, while in it's first incarnation. I've been too beat up by Microsoft to buy anything new. The best MS system I ever saw was Win 98 on an "educational system", after XP came out... Yes, the Mac is more expensive. So is BMW. So is Rolex. The construction quality of the iMac is better than most of the boxes I saw in stores. It was up and running in my application in a whopping 20 minutes, 10 of which were due to a disconnected DSL line. No, the Mac is not perfect. I was defacto sysadmin on the old Mac systems, so I don't suffer from total fanboy-itis. I'm not a programmer, but can normally figure things out. Going from System 7 to Win 3.1 was a major buzzkill, but now, the look and feel are close....but OSX is what XP wants to be when it grows up. If you have heavy use by non computer savvy folks (read:family for which you are tech support), the OSX means less tech support, fewer things to be picked up while looking for IM icons, and less time fighting with a computer while said family member stares at you to "make it work". I respect unix folks, but don't have the time to take it on. I am, like the 99% of the world, depending on store bought, so I have two choices. OSX is better, overall (not perfect) for someone who really does not care to resolve driver conflicts, port issues, malware, worms, and such.
Also, just b/c something is /mentioned/ does NOT mean that it was given a chance, nor was it properly researched, nor..
Why don't you just admit that you didn't read the article? He specifically discusses Macports, and goes into excruciating detail about his attempts to use Fink, which he concluded was just too hard to use (matching my own experience exactly). He also goes into great detail about the shortcomings of X11 applications run on OS X.
Find free books.
I use: Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows (2k3,xp,vista) on a daily basis. Each has their strong points.
The biggest Mac Gotcha is that their "Real" Warranty (Applecare) is an optional add-on. This is to keep the prices competitive. Dell does the same thing. However it's not really optional because if your logic board dies on the 368th day after you bought it, you're out a whole lot of money to get it replaced.
That's really it. That's the one big drawback to Macs at this point.
Macs can actually run MORE software than a comparable Windows machine because they can run anything a standard PC can run (in a VM like Parallels or VM Fusion, via WINE, Crossover Office, Boot Camp) plus any specialized Mac Apps that you desire (Logic Pro Audio and Final Cut Studio HD come to mind).
In terms of free software, most everything "just compiles" If you don't want to compile, use Fink for "Debian Style" package management. Installing Support for X is actually very easy. You go back to your OS CD and do an optional install of just X windows. No conf files, no fiddling. It "just works", with multiple video cards, multiple monitors, with whatever.
Macs are generally fast, reliable and come with the only Unix desktop implementation that my mother can use without asking me for help. I'd say that's an accomplishment. Shockingly, they're not for everyone. Just like Linux isn't, just like Windows isn't.
Use what makes you productive and creative. Use what you like and what makes you happy. Over the life of a computer, a few hundred dollars spent or saved is probably a whole lot less important than the experience you have when you use it on a day to day basis.
Why are they shit? They do work, and that's what I expect them to do. I don't care if the drivers are complete crap. As long as they work! I mean, that's what really matters right? When things "just work". I could say the same about Linux and OS X. I mean, those OS suck. If I have a windows computer, I just plug whatever I bought, and have it working (I rarely need to use the drivers). IF Linux OR OS X don't support them, that means they're just pieces of crap. The world would be a better place if they just went away.
(It is a joke. Laugh).
Seriously, why do people complain and blame Windows when those things don't work, but they blame the device/manufacturer/whatever when it doesn't work on OS X or Linux? I'd say it's not fair.
The DRM module in OSX does one thing and one thing only - it keeps you from running OS X on non-Apple computers. It's no different from the CD-Key you need to install Windows, and FAR less of an imposition than activation, "Windows Genuine Advantage", Secure Audio/Video Path, DRI, signed drivers, and everything else that Windows imposes on you.
Having to buy Apple hardware to run OS X seems to be about 90% of the author's complaints, and it's a valid one, but the fact that on *some* Macs (and not all) this uses a DRM chip to enforce the lock-in doesn't mean that this is DRM, any more than using a Power PC rather than an intel chip was DRM in the previous generation. The only actual DRM in OS X as shipped is the barely-honor-system-quality encryption that iTunes uses... and that is hopefully on the way out...
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.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Wow did these morons even try to get beyond their preconceived beliefs? Three years ago I was a Windows devotee when I was given a Powerbook and I never opened my Toshiba laptop again. Sure there's some software out there I can't run with out Windows but I wasn't running it on the laptop anyways. The dedicated stuff like Milestone Enterprise, software for my pcr1000 (needs a real serial port) and some utilities all ran from a dedicated XP box. Today with a MacBook Pro they all run on the mac using Parallels. As for X11 and Open Office come on I walked my 65 year Father (who breaks O/S's be entering the same room) through loading the Apple dvd, installing X11, downloading OpenOffice and running the program. Take them off my list of test sites.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I'm definitely not a Mac 'fanboy' but the review seems undoubtedly slanted against Mac. He also claims:
"Virtually unusable" with 512MB RAM? I have one of the first Mac Minis with only a meagre 256MB RAM, and I use it all the time for many kinds of tasks and actually pretty seldom run into any performance problems. Yet with horrendously over-dramatized hyperbole he states Apple has "blood on its hands" for releasing a machine with "only" 512MB RAM?
Either he is a serious power-user with intensive day-to-day tasks (in which case his criticism has no relevance for the man on the street), or he is outright lying.
He also criticizes that its X support is not great. But Windows comes with all of absolutely no X support!? He also points out that if you want to do serious photo-editing you need to pay for Photoshop - gee, I didn't know the Windows version of Photoshop was free. And there is GIMP for Mac so he can't complain that its because Photoshop is the only option or something.
Either the reviewer is trolling for ad-views for his website, or he is a corporate shill for MS, or he is biased and using different sets of standards to evaluate the Mac vs. (one can only presume) Windows.
It is true though that when your mac is old and slow you have to buy a new one. Not like a PC. if your PC is slow you either wave your magic wand over it to make it faster or better yet you install the new Windows OS and its like your hardware is brand new.
I guess his complaint is about upgrading your computer. Of course I use a laptop most of the time so I hardly notice the lack of upgrading. But I thought the new Intel macs had upgradeable CPUs (didn't someone upgrade one to an 8 core before apple released one?) and you can upgrade the ram and the hard drive. I admit I know nothing about upgrading video cards on the mac these days (laptop again) so that might be an issue.
I don't get it. Sure maybe the mac is a little less upgradeable than the PC, but very few people replace their motherboards these days, its easier to just buy a new machine. This sounds like hyperbole to me.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
my ass. There is plenty of high quality freeware/shareware available for Mac OS X. HardOCP either doesn't know where to look or ignored what's out there. Check out Apple's download section or macupdate. Shoot, just do a Google search for OS X Freeware.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
The guy is an idiot. Why would you need to buy special software to open linux files? Come on, you can run almost any linux or unix application or utility that exists on OSX - so how can he say you have to buy commercial software for nearly everything and there's almost no freeware stuff for OSX? There's all the linux and solaris stuff plus all the OSX stuff. Certainly more than on Windows.
Not only that, but it has all the functionality of a linux or unix box. That's why you'll find that the laptop of choice for a lot of non-windows/non-mac developers is OSX. People who think that it's some locked-down fisher-price toy don't have any idea what the hell they're talking about. It's like saying that because you don't know how to how to perform surgery, a scalpel is a stupid, useless tool.
I see...
I like my GUIs like I like my women: small, light, and fast!
I like my OS like I like my women: low maintenance, easily customizable, and an appropriate reaction to the three finger salute.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I spend a fair amount of time at the HardOCP forums when I'm looking for PC info. It is one of the most virulently anti mac websites I've encountered in the last ten years. It is rare for any post concerning the mac to receive anything other than a tidal wave of antimac troll posts.
There are plenty of intelligent people over there, but when it comes to the Mac they behave like a bunch of fucking baboons, and this "review" should be taken with a very large grain of salt.
The majority of the time if you're interested in doing a CPU upgrade you're wanting/needing to upgrade your MB as well as there's a new chipset out, or a new interface to another component (think IDE->SATA, PCI->AGP->PCIE, SDRAM->DDR->DDR2->DDR3, etc, etc), and if you're wanting to keep your upgrade path open, you'll need to support the new standards. I didn't guess right with PCIE, thought it'd take longer to become the de-facto standard, and I've gotten myself stuck with an expensive upgrade as my mb only supports agp and I'm on my video card part of my upgrade cycle.
:P (and we're not as few as you think! There's a whole segment of mbs made and marketed directly for/at us!)
For the first time in years I've gotten myself in the situation I'd be in every couple of years if I went the mac hardware route... where to get a significant performance boost I'll need to buy what amounts to a new computer instead of simply a minor upgrade of the video card, or the mb/proc, or whatever. In 10 years of this, I never wound up upgrading the proc without upgrading the motherboard. It just isn't cost effective, by the time you're back to that part of your cycle, there's new tech out that you're going to want to have support for for future upgrades (or a new socket requires you to upgrade if you're going to upgrade your proc)
With a mac, you've got maybe one cost-effective, meaningful upgrade before you really need to upgrade the mb because there's new tech out that it doesn't support.
Also... look at his target audience. Who reads HardOCP?
"very few people replace their motherboards these days"
Those people
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 log in this morning and it's yet another piece of rubbish review about an OS written by a hack that turns into a revision of an OS holy war.
I have a question to the person who wrote the article:
Q: If every review that you do is merely comparing itself to your experience with Windows XP and 2000, then exactly how can you claim to be objective?
Basically your reviews are this:
- Take a new computer.
- Cram on all the Windows applications you can find(Office and such)
- Look around for exact copies of the same windows programs you are used to and complain when there are no 100% identical replacements.
- Complain that your outdated email client doesn't work right.(Who uses only Outlook these days, anyways? Email is email is email to 99% of home users, afterall. Your inability to adjust to a non-proprietary email format is your own fault.
- Proclaim each OS other than XP to be flawed and not as good.
My point is that, this, like so many other reviews, is basically a "how well does this emulate Windows?" diatribe. Yet, if you really understood computing in a larger sense, you would see that all OSs offer advantages and disadvantages over the others. Each one is a unique experience that cannot be judged based upon how well you can try to cram it into the Windows cookie-cutter mold. As it is, I'm getting tired of seeing you blather on and on about how poor a job it does. You want to run Windows apps in on a Mac? Dual boot or run an emulator and there you go. Problem solved - all of your stuff runs like you want it.
Case in point: I can think of a dozen or more things that you can easily do on a Mac, even a pre OSX model, that would be extremely difficult to do on a Windows box. The same holds true with Ubuntu/Linux/etc. Shoot, try copying 20,000 tiny files in Windows to a server and back. Now try it with Linux. Or for an easier example, open a window in Windows with 20,000 items in it. Now do the same in Linux.
Could you please write a review next time from a neutral standpoint and actually compare specific generic tasks that show the strengths and weaknesses of each OS. One that doesn't use Windows as the control/litmus test?
Well, this is because all-in-one devices are almost universally shit.
I concur. This is why I advocate, at a bare minimum, one wife for cooking & cleaning, one for intellectual discourse, one for sex, and one for bearing children. Those all in one models just don't cut it.
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.
You say this:
Finally gave up and sold the printer to a windows-only relative.
But earlier you said:
I love my new iMac, but I have a one year old Canon laser printer/scanner/copier that won't work with it. One year old, not 10-20.
So which is it? Is the fact the Canon printer works only with Windows a problem with the printer or a problem with the Mac?
Of course, we could go on with this all day...
I like my women like I like my monitors: thin and fast [easy] to turn on.
I like my women like I like my mice: ergonomic and easy to hold.
I like my women like I like my peripherals: plug and play.
I like my women like I like my keyboards: touch sensitive.
Women can jump in here any time...
Stupid sexy Flanders.
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
Women can jump in here any time...
You must be new here...
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?
The Mac Pro is the only Mac currently built for any serious upgrades or expansion. If you click that link, you'll find that the case is anything but compact, and is quite probably the best case ever for upgrades.
I used to do the same thing, but then the cycle just got too fast. Upgrading the video card meant either picking a lower end card to support older technology, or buying a new mother board to support the new graphics card. Buying new RAM didn't see any boost until you bought a new motherboard, and recently, the purcahse of a new processor has dictated the purchase of a new motherboard as when you're going to spend a hundred or so anyway, you might as well be upgrading. Modular is nice if you want to stay where you are (and even then, only for so long) but if you want to upgrade, everything is relying on everything else, so it doesn't matter. The hard drives are the only things in my years of upgrading that I can say I've kept around long enough to be worth the frustration of the upgrade path, but even then, if I had to get new ones as part of a whole machine purchase, I could put together a nice big array of all the old disks.
Here's what happend to me. My home built athlon machine died. Processor or motherboard, I'm not quite sure which, but it was one of them. I could buy a new processor to test it out, but then I'm out the cost of the processor if it doesn't work. So I went to buy a new motherboard, figuring I would grab one with some expansion room so that if I needed a new processor, I could up it just a little. Turns out, there aren't many boards like mine anymore, at least not at the shops. Sure I could buy it online, but I need this today. Of the options, none appeal to me, not for the money and because the few ones that are worth the money are unuseable for me because they only have PCI E and not AGP. In the end, I settled for an upgrade to both the CPU and the motherboard, but as I didn't want to upgrade my RAM at this time, I was limited a bit even in that selection and I still need a PCI E graphics card. When I'm all said and done with this, I'll have put about $400-$500 into this computer, and even then, I won't have a great machine, just one that I can say is better than what I had before.
By contrast, my father just had his old mac tower die (processors). He found used tower that was a generation after his, swapped out the various expansion cards and harddrive. Same general idea as my repair about $500 for a computer that's better than what he had before, but no where near top of the line. In the end, in my experience, it's about the same, PC or Mac. If you want top of the line, you'll pay thousands, no matter if you upgrade or buy outright. If you want to move up a little, you'll pay a couple hundred, no matter if you upgrade or buy it outright. If you want to stay with the exact machine you have, that's the only place I've seen upgrading do any reall good.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Complaining that the mac mini is not upgradeable enough for a power user is like complaining that a geo metro is unsuitable for towing a boat.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Obviously you haven't spent any time with the better quality free/open source PC apps out there. Also, just because you pay for something that doesn't automatically make it better.
I won't buy another HP nor Epson printer, the HP color AIO we had decided the ink cartridge was too old, and then when replaced for ~$50 (large cart. from costco), there was an error on LCD indicating (according to google searches) that a weak gear had broken and the printer was useless. The multiple epsons we had would gum up unless used constantly.
I did some research and ended up with a Brother AIO. The printing seems to work fairly well, but the scanning software is crap. It will often claim to be unable to contact the device while the configuration software can access it just fine. I'd cross Brother off my list, but I discovered that if I put a flash memory card in the printer, I can scan to the card and then access the card via FTP from my mac. That's good enough for me.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
- http://coolosxapps.net/
- http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/
- http://osx.iusethis.com/
- http://osx.hyperjeff.net/Apps/cats.php
- http://www.macosxapps.com/
All of the above sites list a multitude of software ranging from commercial, to as-free-as-can-be. I wouldn't expect anyone to find every single program they need within 30 days, as 14 years later, I'm still discovering fantastic Mac apps. Take what you read with a grain of salt. Just because one person doesn't see something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.It isn't a matter of thickness of skin. It's a matter of the author, pretending to be a journalist, coming off as performing an honest and unbiased reviewer of the strengths and weaknesses of the platform. He is misrepresenting himself.
Why can't you admit that he only gave a pathetic attempt at making MacPorts work?
He concludes that "11 functionality is poor and the learning curve is very steep." which is rather a joke. If he would have expended time enough for just a couple emails to MacPorts mailing list (this IS an OSS project after all), then his experience would have been a hell of a lot better.
I mean seriously, he's on IRC checking things out, but can't send an email to MacPorts?!?! He's able to tell "it looked like the problem was with user permissions" but apparently can't figure out when he does a "port search all" he should add in a "|more"?!?!
Quite frankly, reading what he did and didn't do at various points in his experience, IMO his "experience" was more about self-sabotage than giving things an honest try.
RTFA and learn some English.
... "the other choice was NeoOffice, an OpenOffice.org fork for Macintosh, and running OpenOffice.org through an X11 environment."
... running NeoOffice OR running OpenOffice.org through an X11 server.
He said, and I quote
He basically highlights 2 choices
I actually found TFA to be spot on.
No freeware for OS X? Look around in here and you'll see most everything you need - without spyware:
http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/
Most of the stuff on
You've obviously never done this. I upgraded the hard drive and RAM as soon as I bought my MacBook, and it took less than five minutes. You have to:
1. Remove the battery, turning a lock with a coin (I guess you can't do this if you spent your last cent on your new laptop)
2. Unscrew three little screws (they stay attached to the metal piece that holds in the RAM and hard drive) and remove L-shaped cover
3. Pull two levers to release memory
4. Insert new memory
5. pull tab to remove hard drive
6. Remove caddy and place on new hard drive
7. Replace hard drive
8. Replace metal piece
9. Replace battery
It used to be a pain in the dick, as I learned when I tried to salvage parts from a dead iBook, and then I didn't even care if I broke something. The new notebooks are impeccably designed, though.
I run mostly freeware, I will concede that sometimes its not easy to find on the first page of a google et al search but if you set up a newsletter on macupdate or versiontracker, and various mac user websites (iusethis.com) you can find nearly any kind of program you might need. Or gasp, compile open source code in Xcode. Finding freeware for the Mac or windows is just like looking for something good in the Linux repositories you have to look around, sometimes for more than thirty days or camp out on an IRC channel. IMHO I dont think this guy took much time searching for the software he wanted.
First:
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"We'd start testing on Apple's lowest-end computer, a $600 Mac Mini. We wanted to see if a low-end computer could handle the Mac OS X operating system. We would then move to a higher-end $1500 MacBook."
Both are the bottom of the barrel for performance in their respective classes of machine. One in the desktop category, the other in the laptop category. He didn't even hit "mid-grade" in the performance curve of the overall Apple hardware lineup (presumably because he couldn't afford them), but complaints about performance in the article must fall on deaf reader's ears who understand that Apple has ALWAYS under-powered their lower-priced machines.
Second:
"Additionally, each program does not terminate when you close all its windows. To do so, one has to either choose to quit the application from the menu bar, or right click on the icon in the dock to quit it. This is a boon when you want to keep an application resident in memory because you know you'll use it frequently, and a bane when you close out the windows and forget to close the application."
A skill learned by most regular Mac users is keyboard shortcuts. (Truthfully, by any user of any OS... if they're smart.) A simple Apple-Tab (analogous to ALT-TAB in Windows and in virtually the exact same keyboard location, not much "learning" to do there) and Apple-Q to Quit the application selected, and it's gone in two keystroke sequences.
Just like Windows... ALT-TAB, ALT-F4.
Plus, the OS will swap out anything that's not truly running/doing anything... any modern OS will -- it's not sitting in active RAM making your machine sluggish, unless you left the application DOING something...
Third:
"Yes, there is right clicking in Mac OS X - there has been for some time - and Apple even sells two button mice now. If you're on a notebook without a mouse, holding Ctrl while clicking the trackpad works as well. Right clicking in the dock brings up a list of commands, which include quitting an application. Holding down the alt button while doing so brings up an alternate list of commands - including a "force quit" option for misbehaving applications."
He also never read the manual or looked at the online help -- all Mac laptops today ship with touchpads that understand multiple finger-presses. Drop two fingers on the pad, and hit the single mouse button, instant "right-click" functionality. (Working on my wife's older iBook which doesn't have this functionality or my work IBM/Lenovo laptop that also doesn't have it drives me crazy now...)
Fourth:
"Though the Mac Mini does not have a DVD burner, there was an option to save it as a disc image (an
You can buy Mac Mini's with DVD burners, or add external ones. No brainer. Apple's consistent use of "Combo Drive" for CD burning drives, and "SuperDrive" for DVD burners, is a bit obtuse, I'll admit. Clicking and reading the specs on the two choices for Mini's makes the option abundantly clear for anyone REALLY shopping for a Mac.
Fifth:
"Had Apple sold a computer configuration that was easily upgradeable at a lower price point than the quad-core Mac Pro line, I probably would have made the decision to go with it for my evaluation."
He completely disregarded the iMac, probably on aesthetic, not technical merits. Then complains that there's no "mid-range" machine he could have purchased.
Summary:
He didn't do a very good job for a professional reviewer... but we're all used to that from tech writers these days.
+++OK ATH