I'm hoping that you don't mean to imply that Windows actually handles dual displays on a laptop gracefully... because it doesn't. I've had a Windows/Linux laptop for several years, but a few years ago I traded it in for a PowerBook, and haven't looked back since.
While yes, Windows configuration of dual displays is much better than Linux, that's not saying much. Rather, it's something similar to comparing that weed-grown car with a tree through it in a junk yard to the totalled, but slightly newer one that just showed up. Both CAN be made to run again and be useful as a car, but it's a matter of how much work you have to put into it, and if you have to worry about the chassis breaking apart in the middle of the highway. OS X is something like the shiny new sports car just waiting to be pushed to it's limits.
As I've said, I've dealt with all incarnations of this over the years, but my more recent experience with OS X is just amazing. Sure, Windows doesn't have the issues of Linux of not having to restart the GUI to change modes and such, but it's not much more than that. Many, many times I've "lost" windows that were on a secondary display that was summarily removed when the computer was undocked, because it doesn't reposition them. In fact, I just took it as a matter of practice that this is something that you just have to deal with when using multiple displays on a laptop; it's just part of life to have to reposition all of the windows to the display you want to keep before disconnecting the secondary one. Then I used OS X. Not only does it reposition the windows on to the active displays that remain, but it actually remembers the resolutions, display layouts, and primary/secondary (which displays have the title bar and dock) on a PER DISPLAY level. Plug in a display, it will enable it, make an educated guess at the resolution it should be at, and make it usable. If you want to change something, it's 2 clicks away. You get it all set how you want, and unhook it, come back later and plug it in, and everything is right back how you had it, and you don't have to change a damn thing.
In other words, don't praise Windows blindly. While yes, there are some things that work, it's still a hodgepodge of utter bullshit to make things actually function, it's just a matter that you KNOW where the bullshit is in Windows, but have to run around with your nose up in Linux to find the bullshit you need.
Granted, as you say, there are still a lot of people who use the same account on Windows, even XP. However, my experience has been that the "encouraging" of people to use fast user switching (most people think of it as a way to set the colors or desktop to whatever they want, rather than it being more secure) has been working. People, on average, ARE using seperate accounts on Windows XP machines, which is good.
But there is one major issue (read flaw) with this design. Problem is, most people don't muck around with creating accounts after their computer is set up, or setting permissions, or anything. Most people just follow the wizard that comes up when they first bought the computer, that asks you what users you want to set up, requiring you to create at least one, and allowing for I think up to 6 or 7. This is where the problem lies, because for all the good that a seperate user accounts does, it is blown completely out of the water with the simple fact that every user account created in the installer is an administrator level account. This means that, while Peggy Sue won't generally be able to browse into dad's documents and thrash them easily, the virus/malware/spyware that she installed CAN.
The only way to create a non-admin account is with the users control panel, and by setting them as a "Limited" account type (which IS the default here, I believe).
This is garbage, and is a major reason why OS X fares so much better in and of itself, even if everything else were equal. When creating accounts with the first-run wizard, it is always clear what level access users have to the system, and you are even encouraged strongly to only create one administrative-level account on your system, with that account even being limited until they enter their password for any administrative tasks.
Granted, as you say, there are still a lot of people who use the same account on Windows, even XP. However, my experience has been that the "encouraging" of people to use fast user switching (most people think of it as a way to set the colors or desktop to whatever they want, rather than it being more secure) has been working. People, on average, ARE using seperate accounts on Windows XP machines, which is good.
But there is one major issue (read flaw) with this design. Problem is, most people don't muck around with creating accounts after their computer is set up, or setting permissions, or anything. Most people just follow the wizard that comes up when they first bought the computer, that asks you what users you want to set up, requiring you to create at least one, and allowing for I think up to 6 or 7. This is where the problem lies, because for all the good that a seperate user accounts does, it is blown completely out of the water with the simple fact that every user account created in the installer is an administrator level account. This means that, while Peggy Sue won't generally be able to browse into dad's documents and thrash them easily, the virus/malware/spyware that she installed CAN.
The only way to create a non-admin account is with the users control panel, and by setting them as a "Limited" account type (which IS the default here, I believe).
This is garbage, and is a major reason why OS X fares so much better in and of itself, even if everything else were equal. When creating accounts with the first-run wizard, it is always clear what level access users have to the system, and you are even encouraged strongly to only create one administrative-level account on your system, with that account even being limited until they enter their password for any administrative tasks.
Well, by default, I think that ~/Applications is completely empty on a mac. I can't remember, because it's just been so long since I've not had one that I've forgotten (this goes back to the whole "backing up the whole home folder" concept... if I did a clean install, I just dragged my home folder to an external disk, then reinstalled, then copied it back, preferences, apps and all).
I think by default there is only/Applications, which, when you click the hard drive is right there. Be prepared to type a password when copying files into here though. You can create an Applications folder in your home if you want, and it will take the standard "Applications" folder icon.
Oh, and you've apparently not used a mac, because there is no typing a path to get to it... you browse via the GUI. The only way to type a path is to choose "Go --> Go to Folder" from the finder. I only used ~/ because it's tiring to type/Home/username, and most people here know that that's what ~/ means.
I would say that *most* people, specifically those that are new mac users, are going to just use the one Applications folder,/Applications.
Why do I say this? Well, in the last year my family has gone from all Windows users to all Mac users. I switched about 3 years ago, and about a year and a half ago my older brother switched, who is the only other computer adept person in the family. Everyone else switched because when they were looking to buy a new computer, my brother and I worked out an agreement that we told them that they can buy whatever they want, but if it's not a mac the only support they will get from either of us is "I told you so". That was enought that they switched. And guess what? Neither of us have to support them but maybe one incident every couple months, which is usually easily solved.
Just last week I was visiting some of them at my dad's house, and my stepmom was telling me that her friend at work was looking for a new computer and asked her what she thought. She told her "buy a mac". This is at a home health shop that is windows only, and the person's never touched a mac before. And from a person that until 5 months ago, had never touched a mac.
Switching to macs from Windows isn't that hard, because most of the time people are un-training themselves. Like the idea of right-clicking on an image in a browser to save it. On a mac, just click it and drag it wherever you want. Want it in a document? Drag it there, it won't complain. No "saving" necessary.
I do recommend, though, to anyone switching to buy "The Missing Manual for OS X" by David Pogue. Excellent book, and simple enough for novices. Especially the "Where'd it go?" in the back.
The other poster is spot on. After you download an app, like FF or most others, you download a.dmg, which is a disk image (which is very much an archive format). After you've downloaded it, you should drag the FF app from the disk image to somewhere on the hard drive (generally/Applications or ~/Applications, which is fo you non unix people out there/home/username/Applications). To put an icon in the dock, either drag it from the furthest right while it's running to where you might want it, or drag it from the folder to where you want it in the dock.
Again, while that sounds complex, it's still a helluva lot easier than going through the windows installer crap, and once you realize what you're doing, it's simple. The fact of the matter is, it gives you more flexibility to use the computer how YOU want to use it. Example: I am the sole user of my powerbook, so pretty much everything that I install, I like to keep in my ~/Applications folder rather than/Applications. While this seems like it would be opposite what most people would want, since I have apps in more than one place, it makes backing up everything a lot easier since I can just back up my home folder, and it will bring all my apps with me. The whole idea of "oh, you're reinstalling? You have to reinstall all of your apps then" is a Windows idea. On OS X, since there is no registry, you can just copy the apps over, and they run. The only exceptions are those that require background services or a bunch of fonts or such (example: Adobe Photoshop).
The reason stores/companies do this is not to "trick" the customer, but because it would cost them *lot* more money to do this, not because of the refunds, but in lawyer/consultant fees to verify that tax laws and rates hadn't changed since the person originally bought the product. If they just give you a rebate to spend at their store, you've already paid the taxes on whatever you'll buy, so they don't have to do any of that.
That's part of the Windows problem. On windows, everything pretty much assumes that it will be installed in \Program Files\. I agree, users should be able to install user-specific programs (and in the Windows model, most of the time even a user specific program is put in Program Files). Regardless, there are still issues with the registry, and what should go where.
The OS X model (UNIX) is much better, in that programs are generally drag and drop, and can be run from anywhere. For example, on my personal machines, I have a/Applications as well as a/Users/username/Applications. All of my user-specific (mostly everything, since my machines are only me using them), I put in my Apps folder in my home.
The primary issue is with the setup utility that does the user creation on first boot. It asks you to create a password for the Administrator user (Pro only?), and then FORCES you to create at least one user to login as, and sets this user to auto login if you only create 1 user. However, EVERY user that you create using the first run setup is created as part of the administrators group. Why? because of the inherent brokenness of XP, where a lot of apps will not function when you aren't an administrator, and that you cannot install programs unless you are a power user or administrator. Most people would think the system is broken if they can't just install programs.
Most of the time, what Apple is complaining about, is when people take and copy one of their products' USER INTERFACES, not necessarily the concept. Apple is (and is rightly so) outrageously protective over their products looking like one of their products, and they don't want someone to put out a product that confuses people. Specifically, like this one. I think if I took iTunes, and shit out a black UI that my ass could design, it would be Songbird verbatim.
Specifically, if you RTFA, you will see this:
Screenshots posted on the company's Web site show a software application clearly modeled closely after iTunes' browsing style. The parallels drew instant ridicule from Apple loyalists, who pointed out that Apple had in fact patented software with three "panes" for browsing through a media collection.
Which points back to Apple wanting to go after a particular look and feel, meticulously and labourously defending it down to patents and lawsuits. This is where people misunderstand what IP really matters to Apple most, and think that it's the underlying technologies in something, which Apple may or may not have (and in most cases did not) designed, but rather the ease of use and concept is the real innovation. Designing a media player isn't too hard, as is shown be how long they've been around and how many there are. Designing something that makes you want to use it, and making it outrageously easy to use, is what Apple is really after. And this is what Songbird is copying. They "say" they are copying the concept, and making it an open source music store alternative, but really they copied the UI to the tee, except for the color of the skin and some un-professional icons and buttons.
The real solution to autorun, is similar to how Apple has done it in OS X, or how many Linux distros do it, which is to open a folder displaying the contents of the disk, and not open an application that could be an installer. In the case of MacOS (at least from 7 on through X, I haven't used MacOS since before 7.6.1), a folder can actually be assigned a "view", where icons show up where you want them, and in X, you can have a background in the window (in 9 and below, companies got around the not able to have a background limitation by just positioning icons just so so that they created an image of whatever they wanted. Very ingenious in my opinion).
I agree, autorun is a bad way to do things. The proper way is to have a good service that detects a disk, and performs a user-assigned task, such as open a media player, image app, cd burning app, or otherwise. Allowing a company to open any old program that is on the disk you just inserted, especially with the lax default permissions in windows (XP still creates all users during setup by default as admins with no passwords).
The issue here is, sure back in it's day iMovie and Final Cut, as well as Photoshop and all ran on it, it was still slow relative to today's machines. With a more RAM than it previously had, it can run an old version of iMovie or Photoshop just as well as it did before. And people that were seriously using these machines for video editing or Photoshop had upgraded the ram on these things to 512MB+ when they were using them for this anyhow, so that's mostly a non-issue. 64MB of RAM has always sucked for video editing, and complex Photoshop tasks. RAM is just cheap now, and people compare the speed to current hardware and go "wow, that's slow" when in reality it is just as fast as it ever was, people are just not as patient because they know that there's faster machines out there.
And for the difference between the "DV" and non-DV machines, the DV ones came with a 13GB hard drive instead of 10GB, 64MB RAM instead of 32MB, external video out on the back (mirror only), and FireWire ports. The original iMacs didn't have Firewire, so this was the real improvement. By the end of the life though, all iMacs came with Firewire, so the DV improvements were more memory and a slight processor bump, and the video out functionality.
I have (currently) OS X 10.4.3 installed on a 400MHz iMac G3 (original graphite DV model). The actual specs are 400MHz/1GB RAM/7200RPM disk (120GB, for no reason at all). It runs Tiger just fine, and it's actually faster with Tiger than it was with Panther. Sure, it's not always quite as smooth as OS9, but it does it all in stride, and does a lot more than OS9 would allow me to do on it.
OS X has some neat tricks for older machines, including disabling the 3D effects when the machine can't handle it (this one definitely can't, it's an 8MB ATI Rage Pro). There's no interaction required to disable them, it just doesnt do it. Sure, it doesn't look as good as on my powerbook or my roommate's Dual 2.5GHz G5, but it does just fine for email, browsing, and streaming iTunes music to our Airport Express.
OS X could be made to run just fine on whatever machines they throw at it, I think.
Sorry to continue off topic, but I have to say something here.
None of the "footage most people have never seen" on that site is conclusive, at best. The "missiles" they claim to have on footage are barely a pixel on their footage, and hardly even resolve. And, for the WTC, the structure did not collapse from the bottom, but from where the planes hit. "Missiles" to destroy the building would have been useless.
Any scrambled military craft were scrambled to shoot down any more such commercial planes.
The WTC collapsed because it was a steel structure superheated by the plane fuel igniting. The "double tremors" of the building people reported were likely caused by 1, the plane hitting the building, then the second by the fuel igniting and exploding. Those events wouldn't have happened simultaneously.
The problem I see it as making it opt-in only, is that there are probably a lot of publishers out there that have gone under, or even better, the books of copyright has expired (the article said there was a good portion, perhaps up to 60%, of the books they are indexing that are out of copyright). If there is nobody to opt a book in, because they are either all dead, or no one now holds the copyright of, what to do then?
The program banks on the majority of books being indexed, and if the books cannot be indexed because of the (smaller) portion of books copyright holders requiring them to make it opt-in only, it is pretty useless.
It can't be that difficult for a copyright holder (publisher) to be able to pull up a list of all their books, to say they do not want them indexed. Or even better, just tell them that they cannot index any of the publisher's books (they have to determine it when filling out the electronic card catalog anyhow).
You're exactly right. The iPod uses an internal database for the song and file structure (the files are really just hidden if you use disk mode on a mac, but apparently are visible in windows). The reason for this is so that when you are browsing the songs from the browse mode on the iPod, it doesn't have to index the files every time, instead it just grabs a quick list from the database that the computer generated. This provides a much smoother, and faster user experience on the iPod.
If you've ever used a Rio or other device that merely drops files on, browse around and notice how much slower the listings show up. This is because it is grabbing a file list every time you change menus.
That's per hour. You forget there are 34 lawyers at $2000/hr. That comes out to be about $576,000, still quite a bit shy of $5M/day, but still quite a bit more than your $65K.
The primary difference, however, is that with the same exploit (or rather, one that performs say, the same function in quicktime) on a mac you will get *user* level access. To only one user account. On a Windows machine, you will most of the time have *administrator* level access.
However, it's not a "true" firewall. The first version of OS X to come with a firewall was panther, aka 10.3. OS X just does not run any unnecessary services like file sharing, printer sharing, web, ssh, or whatever; HOWEVER, it provides an incredibly easy method to turn these services on, along with the firewall.
I concur on this one. I work for an IT consulting firm, and just yesterday I was reinstalling windows on a home desktop machine of one of our larger clients (we kind of do this stuff on the side to keep them happy), and it took me over 3 hours to get it going right. This is a newer Dell system (less than 6 months old). Discounting the first 30 minutes aside where I was backing up the documents using a linux rescue CD that supports NTFS (I know WTF I'm doing, so I just boot in CLI and smbmount another machine's share, and do the copy by hand... it was 95% transfer time), it still took 2 and a half hours to just install windows, install SP2 (her install disk was SP1), have it get all the updates, install office (did this while downloading updates, actually), and install AV software.
Also, what was I greeted with when the computer turned on first boot after the install? 640x480 resolution at 256 colors, since it didn't have video drivers. And what about the rest of the hardware? No sound card, no NIC, no modem. Luckily, she was a good egg, and kept all of her driver disks and such, but I can honestly say, if this were her, my parents, or even my older brother or sister, they would *not* have been able to get through this setup. And for windows updates, sure it may be relatively easy, but I had to reboot the machine at least 10 times between initial install and having a working, and up to date, system.
Compare this to a current mac, such as my sister's new eMac, where she took it out of the box, set it up, and called me after it was working to tell me how much she liked it, and how she thought it was so much better than windows (she had never used a mac before, and has been using windows for about 8-9 years now). It took her a single restart to get all the needed updates installed and working. And same goes for my fedora box, which requires a restart only when the kernel is updated.
The problem that I have with this analogy, is that while Microsoft's so-called "guidelines" state that you should not run as admin, when joe-blow user buys a winXP machine, and it asks you what users to create, EVERY SINGLE DAMNED USER THE INSTALLER CREATES IS ADMIN!
They may not be named "Administrator" but that doesn't make a dick's worth of a difference when it's adware and spyware and other shit we're talking about.
The correct analogy would be that the car comes, the dealer takes the cap off while talking to you, sticks it in the glovebox, and hands you a book that has in fine print somewhere in it's few hundred pages a sentance that reads "for best operation of car, replace radiator cap before using"
As someone else replied, that means they were non-functional. Pretty useless in a home setup.
While I am a mac user (only for the last year though), I am a windows admin by trade. Why did you not state in your article that while the mac *was* getting attacked almost as much as windows, it was much more secure in that nothing broke through? You stated that "if they had been written to exploit OS X, they would have been successful". Find me something that will exploit samba successfully that can grant root (install) access on a mac, and I will agree with you. However, even with SMBd getting attacked, and even if there were an exploit that could take it over, it still would be unable to get admin access to make the mac a zombie, because of the secure nature of OS X.
You said yourself "it was fun watching all the windows attacks fail on OSX", which merely means that it was getting attacked so much BECAUSE the exploits thought it was windows. This is not a reason that OS X should be ranked "less secure". The real winner in your survey is OSX here, not SP2.
But still, there are gross inconsistencies with the data on there when compared to reality. For example, my university, The University of Tennessee at Knoxville, has the following:
Is there a Wireless Network? (No)
Well if our "nomad" network is not wireless, I don't know what is. And it's been around for about 7 years, starting out as a pre-802.11 network and then upgraded to 802.11b, and just this year upgraded to 802.11g.
Does the school provide web pages? (No)
Every student (rather, every person who has a valid NetID) can sign up for a free page and unix access. You just fill out a simple form and they send you the account info.
Does the school stream audio or video of any courses? (No)
We have a distance education program that streams audio out from a shitton of courses, including one of the classes I'm taking right now. I know this because it's annoying when something screws up and my professor has to take care of that rather than teaching me. And my freshman year they were streaming video online of my engineering fundamentals course, and storing it so we could review lectures later.
Is a computer ethics policy in place for the school? (No)
Do students have access to Usenet newsgroups? (No)
Well, according to this, we've had usenet access since at least 1995, but I would venture a guess that we had it earlier, since our first network access was a government partnership with Oak Ridge National Labs.
Does the school provide multimedia equipment? (No)
Well, what about this? Or if they're thinking of in classrooms, almost every classroom has a projector and Smartboard (thing you can write on), and many have sound systems. In classrooms.
Does the school offer courses in emerging technologies? (No)
What the hell. You know, I think that that Internet2 Link we have, and all the related CS courses, including a project for a new file system structure for network storage is just for fun.
Does the school stream its campus radio or TV stations? (No) Uhmmmm.... Try here. Damn these people either suck or we suck at reporting.
And I know for a fact we have more than 1000 computers that are provided by the university for students to use. We have almost that many in the library *alone*.
When it comes to laptops, I'm very seriously considering an Apple next. But they better put two buttons on those touchpads first...
You know, you can set the mouse (with some non-Apple software) to left-click when you tap, and right click when you use the button. Or use an external mouse. Or just realize that it just isn't that damn hard (and I've found it to be faster, IMHO, since i switched about a year ago) to just hold ctrl with your left finger, that is generally already on/near the keyboard when you need a context menu (read right click) on something.
That's the difference; on a mac, there is no bios (per se). The settings like that CAN be adjusted with software, software that adjusts the openfirmware settings. And it doesn't require a reboot to happen.
Apple does NOT support running any laptop with the screen closed, because they can very easily (and do) overheat when the screen is close. Especially if you stick that nice toasty laptop into a sleeve in a bag... that's just asking for the thing to overheat. There are utilities out there that let you turn the sleep when the lid closes off, but as I said, if you change that, then the machine is immediately out of warranty from Apple.
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I'm hoping that you don't mean to imply that Windows actually handles dual displays on a laptop gracefully... because it doesn't. I've had a Windows/Linux laptop for several years, but a few years ago I traded it in for a PowerBook, and haven't looked back since.
While yes, Windows configuration of dual displays is much better than Linux, that's not saying much. Rather, it's something similar to comparing that weed-grown car with a tree through it in a junk yard to the totalled, but slightly newer one that just showed up. Both CAN be made to run again and be useful as a car, but it's a matter of how much work you have to put into it, and if you have to worry about the chassis breaking apart in the middle of the highway. OS X is something like the shiny new sports car just waiting to be pushed to it's limits.
As I've said, I've dealt with all incarnations of this over the years, but my more recent experience with OS X is just amazing. Sure, Windows doesn't have the issues of Linux of not having to restart the GUI to change modes and such, but it's not much more than that. Many, many times I've "lost" windows that were on a secondary display that was summarily removed when the computer was undocked, because it doesn't reposition them. In fact, I just took it as a matter of practice that this is something that you just have to deal with when using multiple displays on a laptop; it's just part of life to have to reposition all of the windows to the display you want to keep before disconnecting the secondary one. Then I used OS X. Not only does it reposition the windows on to the active displays that remain, but it actually remembers the resolutions, display layouts, and primary/secondary (which displays have the title bar and dock) on a PER DISPLAY level. Plug in a display, it will enable it, make an educated guess at the resolution it should be at, and make it usable. If you want to change something, it's 2 clicks away. You get it all set how you want, and unhook it, come back later and plug it in, and everything is right back how you had it, and you don't have to change a damn thing.
In other words, don't praise Windows blindly. While yes, there are some things that work, it's still a hodgepodge of utter bullshit to make things actually function, it's just a matter that you KNOW where the bullshit is in Windows, but have to run around with your nose up in Linux to find the bullshit you need.
But there is one major issue (read flaw) with this design. Problem is, most people don't muck around with creating accounts after their computer is set up, or setting permissions, or anything. Most people just follow the wizard that comes up when they first bought the computer, that asks you what users you want to set up, requiring you to create at least one, and allowing for I think up to 6 or 7. This is where the problem lies, because for all the good that a seperate user accounts does, it is blown completely out of the water with the simple fact that every user account created in the installer is an administrator level account. This means that, while Peggy Sue won't generally be able to browse into dad's documents and thrash them easily, the virus/malware/spyware that she installed CAN.
The only way to create a non-admin account is with the users control panel, and by setting them as a "Limited" account type (which IS the default here, I believe).
This is garbage, and is a major reason why OS X fares so much better in and of itself, even if everything else were equal. When creating accounts with the first-run wizard, it is always clear what level access users have to the system, and you are even encouraged strongly to only create one administrative-level account on your system, with that account even being limited until they enter their password for any administrative tasks.
But there is one major issue (read flaw) with this design. Problem is, most people don't muck around with creating accounts after their computer is set up, or setting permissions, or anything. Most people just follow the wizard that comes up when they first bought the computer, that asks you what users you want to set up, requiring you to create at least one, and allowing for I think up to 6 or 7. This is where the problem lies, because for all the good that a seperate user accounts does, it is blown completely out of the water with the simple fact that every user account created in the installer is an administrator level account. This means that, while Peggy Sue won't generally be able to browse into dad's documents and thrash them easily, the virus/malware/spyware that she installed CAN.
The only way to create a non-admin account is with the users control panel, and by setting them as a "Limited" account type (which IS the default here, I believe).
This is garbage, and is a major reason why OS X fares so much better in and of itself, even if everything else were equal. When creating accounts with the first-run wizard, it is always clear what level access users have to the system, and you are even encouraged strongly to only create one administrative-level account on your system, with that account even being limited until they enter their password for any administrative tasks.
Well, by default, I think that ~/Applications is completely empty on a mac. I can't remember, because it's just been so long since I've not had one that I've forgotten (this goes back to the whole "backing up the whole home folder" concept... if I did a clean install, I just dragged my home folder to an external disk, then reinstalled, then copied it back, preferences, apps and all).
/Applications, which, when you click the hard drive is right there. Be prepared to type a password when copying files into here though. You can create an Applications folder in your home if you want, and it will take the standard "Applications" folder icon.
/Home/username, and most people here know that that's what ~/ means.
/Applications.
I think by default there is only
Oh, and you've apparently not used a mac, because there is no typing a path to get to it... you browse via the GUI. The only way to type a path is to choose "Go --> Go to Folder" from the finder. I only used ~/ because it's tiring to type
I would say that *most* people, specifically those that are new mac users, are going to just use the one Applications folder,
Why do I say this? Well, in the last year my family has gone from all Windows users to all Mac users. I switched about 3 years ago, and about a year and a half ago my older brother switched, who is the only other computer adept person in the family. Everyone else switched because when they were looking to buy a new computer, my brother and I worked out an agreement that we told them that they can buy whatever they want, but if it's not a mac the only support they will get from either of us is "I told you so". That was enought that they switched. And guess what? Neither of us have to support them but maybe one incident every couple months, which is usually easily solved.
Just last week I was visiting some of them at my dad's house, and my stepmom was telling me that her friend at work was looking for a new computer and asked her what she thought. She told her "buy a mac". This is at a home health shop that is windows only, and the person's never touched a mac before. And from a person that until 5 months ago, had never touched a mac.
Switching to macs from Windows isn't that hard, because most of the time people are un-training themselves. Like the idea of right-clicking on an image in a browser to save it. On a mac, just click it and drag it wherever you want. Want it in a document? Drag it there, it won't complain. No "saving" necessary.
I do recommend, though, to anyone switching to buy "The Missing Manual for OS X" by David Pogue. Excellent book, and simple enough for novices. Especially the "Where'd it go?" in the back.
The other poster is spot on. After you download an app, like FF or most others, you download a .dmg, which is a disk image (which is very much an archive format). After you've downloaded it, you should drag the FF app from the disk image to somewhere on the hard drive (generally /Applications or ~/Applications, which is fo you non unix people out there /home/username/Applications). To put an icon in the dock, either drag it from the furthest right while it's running to where you might want it, or drag it from the folder to where you want it in the dock.
/Applications. While this seems like it would be opposite what most people would want, since I have apps in more than one place, it makes backing up everything a lot easier since I can just back up my home folder, and it will bring all my apps with me. The whole idea of "oh, you're reinstalling? You have to reinstall all of your apps then" is a Windows idea. On OS X, since there is no registry, you can just copy the apps over, and they run. The only exceptions are those that require background services or a bunch of fonts or such (example: Adobe Photoshop).
Again, while that sounds complex, it's still a helluva lot easier than going through the windows installer crap, and once you realize what you're doing, it's simple. The fact of the matter is, it gives you more flexibility to use the computer how YOU want to use it. Example: I am the sole user of my powerbook, so pretty much everything that I install, I like to keep in my ~/Applications folder rather than
The reason stores/companies do this is not to "trick" the customer, but because it would cost them *lot* more money to do this, not because of the refunds, but in lawyer/consultant fees to verify that tax laws and rates hadn't changed since the person originally bought the product. If they just give you a rebate to spend at their store, you've already paid the taxes on whatever you'll buy, so they don't have to do any of that.
That's part of the Windows problem. On windows, everything pretty much assumes that it will be installed in \Program Files\. I agree, users should be able to install user-specific programs (and in the Windows model, most of the time even a user specific program is put in Program Files). Regardless, there are still issues with the registry, and what should go where.
/Applications as well as a /Users/username/Applications. All of my user-specific (mostly everything, since my machines are only me using them), I put in my Apps folder in my home.
The OS X model (UNIX) is much better, in that programs are generally drag and drop, and can be run from anywhere. For example, on my personal machines, I have a
The primary issue is with the setup utility that does the user creation on first boot. It asks you to create a password for the Administrator user (Pro only?), and then FORCES you to create at least one user to login as, and sets this user to auto login if you only create 1 user. However, EVERY user that you create using the first run setup is created as part of the administrators group. Why? because of the inherent brokenness of XP, where a lot of apps will not function when you aren't an administrator, and that you cannot install programs unless you are a power user or administrator. Most people would think the system is broken if they can't just install programs.
Specifically, if you RTFA, you will see this:
Which points back to Apple wanting to go after a particular look and feel, meticulously and labourously defending it down to patents and lawsuits. This is where people misunderstand what IP really matters to Apple most, and think that it's the underlying technologies in something, which Apple may or may not have (and in most cases did not) designed, but rather the ease of use and concept is the real innovation. Designing a media player isn't too hard, as is shown be how long they've been around and how many there are. Designing something that makes you want to use it, and making it outrageously easy to use, is what Apple is really after. And this is what Songbird is copying. They "say" they are copying the concept, and making it an open source music store alternative, but really they copied the UI to the tee, except for the color of the skin and some un-professional icons and buttons.
I say, let the lawsuits begin, and go Apple.
The real solution to autorun, is similar to how Apple has done it in OS X, or how many Linux distros do it, which is to open a folder displaying the contents of the disk, and not open an application that could be an installer. In the case of MacOS (at least from 7 on through X, I haven't used MacOS since before 7.6.1), a folder can actually be assigned a "view", where icons show up where you want them, and in X, you can have a background in the window (in 9 and below, companies got around the not able to have a background limitation by just positioning icons just so so that they created an image of whatever they wanted. Very ingenious in my opinion).
I agree, autorun is a bad way to do things. The proper way is to have a good service that detects a disk, and performs a user-assigned task, such as open a media player, image app, cd burning app, or otherwise. Allowing a company to open any old program that is on the disk you just inserted, especially with the lax default permissions in windows (XP still creates all users during setup by default as admins with no passwords).
The issue here is, sure back in it's day iMovie and Final Cut, as well as Photoshop and all ran on it, it was still slow relative to today's machines. With a more RAM than it previously had, it can run an old version of iMovie or Photoshop just as well as it did before. And people that were seriously using these machines for video editing or Photoshop had upgraded the ram on these things to 512MB+ when they were using them for this anyhow, so that's mostly a non-issue. 64MB of RAM has always sucked for video editing, and complex Photoshop tasks. RAM is just cheap now, and people compare the speed to current hardware and go "wow, that's slow" when in reality it is just as fast as it ever was, people are just not as patient because they know that there's faster machines out there.
And for the difference between the "DV" and non-DV machines, the DV ones came with a 13GB hard drive instead of 10GB, 64MB RAM instead of 32MB, external video out on the back (mirror only), and FireWire ports. The original iMacs didn't have Firewire, so this was the real improvement. By the end of the life though, all iMacs came with Firewire, so the DV improvements were more memory and a slight processor bump, and the video out functionality.
I still digress on this.
I have (currently) OS X 10.4.3 installed on a 400MHz iMac G3 (original graphite DV model). The actual specs are 400MHz/1GB RAM/7200RPM disk (120GB, for no reason at all). It runs Tiger just fine, and it's actually faster with Tiger than it was with Panther. Sure, it's not always quite as smooth as OS9, but it does it all in stride, and does a lot more than OS9 would allow me to do on it.
OS X has some neat tricks for older machines, including disabling the 3D effects when the machine can't handle it (this one definitely can't, it's an 8MB ATI Rage Pro). There's no interaction required to disable them, it just doesnt do it. Sure, it doesn't look as good as on my powerbook or my roommate's Dual 2.5GHz G5, but it does just fine for email, browsing, and streaming iTunes music to our Airport Express.
OS X could be made to run just fine on whatever machines they throw at it, I think.
Sorry to continue off topic, but I have to say something here.
None of the "footage most people have never seen" on that site is conclusive, at best. The "missiles" they claim to have on footage are barely a pixel on their footage, and hardly even resolve. And, for the WTC, the structure did not collapse from the bottom, but from where the planes hit. "Missiles" to destroy the building would have been useless.
Any scrambled military craft were scrambled to shoot down any more such commercial planes.
The WTC collapsed because it was a steel structure superheated by the plane fuel igniting. The "double tremors" of the building people reported were likely caused by 1, the plane hitting the building, then the second by the fuel igniting and exploding. Those events wouldn't have happened simultaneously.
The problem I see it as making it opt-in only, is that there are probably a lot of publishers out there that have gone under, or even better, the books of copyright has expired (the article said there was a good portion, perhaps up to 60%, of the books they are indexing that are out of copyright). If there is nobody to opt a book in, because they are either all dead, or no one now holds the copyright of, what to do then?
The program banks on the majority of books being indexed, and if the books cannot be indexed because of the (smaller) portion of books copyright holders requiring them to make it opt-in only, it is pretty useless.
It can't be that difficult for a copyright holder (publisher) to be able to pull up a list of all their books, to say they do not want them indexed. Or even better, just tell them that they cannot index any of the publisher's books (they have to determine it when filling out the electronic card catalog anyhow).
Is that too hard?
You're exactly right. The iPod uses an internal database for the song and file structure (the files are really just hidden if you use disk mode on a mac, but apparently are visible in windows). The reason for this is so that when you are browsing the songs from the browse mode on the iPod, it doesn't have to index the files every time, instead it just grabs a quick list from the database that the computer generated. This provides a much smoother, and faster user experience on the iPod.
If you've ever used a Rio or other device that merely drops files on, browse around and notice how much slower the listings show up. This is because it is grabbing a file list every time you change menus.
That's per hour. You forget there are 34 lawyers at $2000/hr. That comes out to be about $576,000, still quite a bit shy of $5M/day, but still quite a bit more than your $65K.
The primary difference, however, is that with the same exploit (or rather, one that performs say, the same function in quicktime) on a mac you will get *user* level access. To only one user account. On a Windows machine, you will most of the time have *administrator* level access.
The surprise is that this was an *out of the box* install of jaguar. Unpatched. Which means it hasn't had any updates for 2 and a half years. Amazing.
However, it's not a "true" firewall. The first version of OS X to come with a firewall was panther, aka 10.3. OS X just does not run any unnecessary services like file sharing, printer sharing, web, ssh, or whatever; HOWEVER, it provides an incredibly easy method to turn these services on, along with the firewall.
Also, what was I greeted with when the computer turned on first boot after the install? 640x480 resolution at 256 colors, since it didn't have video drivers. And what about the rest of the hardware? No sound card, no NIC, no modem. Luckily, she was a good egg, and kept all of her driver disks and such, but I can honestly say, if this were her, my parents, or even my older brother or sister, they would *not* have been able to get through this setup. And for windows updates, sure it may be relatively easy, but I had to reboot the machine at least 10 times between initial install and having a working, and up to date, system.
Compare this to a current mac, such as my sister's new eMac, where she took it out of the box, set it up, and called me after it was working to tell me how much she liked it, and how she thought it was so much better than windows (she had never used a mac before, and has been using windows for about 8-9 years now). It took her a single restart to get all the needed updates installed and working. And same goes for my fedora box, which requires a restart only when the kernel is updated.
They may not be named "Administrator" but that doesn't make a dick's worth of a difference when it's adware and spyware and other shit we're talking about.
The correct analogy would be that the car comes, the dealer takes the cap off while talking to you, sticks it in the glovebox, and hands you a book that has in fine print somewhere in it's few hundred pages a sentance that reads "for best operation of car, replace radiator cap before using"
While I am a mac user (only for the last year though), I am a windows admin by trade. Why did you not state in your article that while the mac *was* getting attacked almost as much as windows, it was much more secure in that nothing broke through? You stated that "if they had been written to exploit OS X, they would have been successful". Find me something that will exploit samba successfully that can grant root (install) access on a mac, and I will agree with you. However, even with SMBd getting attacked, and even if there were an exploit that could take it over, it still would be unable to get admin access to make the mac a zombie, because of the secure nature of OS X.
You said yourself "it was fun watching all the windows attacks fail on OSX", which merely means that it was getting attacked so much BECAUSE the exploits thought it was windows. This is not a reason that OS X should be ranked "less secure". The real winner in your survey is OSX here, not SP2.
Is there a Wireless Network? (No)
Well if our "nomad" network is not wireless, I don't know what is. And it's been around for about 7 years, starting out as a pre-802.11 network and then upgraded to 802.11b, and just this year upgraded to 802.11g.
Does the school provide web pages? (No)
Every student (rather, every person who has a valid NetID) can sign up for a free page and unix access. You just fill out a simple form and they send you the account info.
Does the school stream audio or video of any courses? (No)
We have a distance education program that streams audio out from a shitton of courses, including one of the classes I'm taking right now. I know this because it's annoying when something screws up and my professor has to take care of that rather than teaching me. And my freshman year they were streaming video online of my engineering fundamentals course, and storing it so we could review lectures later.
Is a computer ethics policy in place for the school? (No)
Then what is this?
Do students have access to Usenet newsgroups? (No)
Well, according to this, we've had usenet access since at least 1995, but I would venture a guess that we had it earlier, since our first network access was a government partnership with Oak Ridge National Labs.
Does the school provide multimedia equipment? (No)
Well, what about this? Or if they're thinking of in classrooms, almost every classroom has a projector and Smartboard (thing you can write on), and many have sound systems. In classrooms.
Does the school offer courses in emerging technologies? (No)
What the hell. You know, I think that that Internet2 Link we have, and all the related CS courses, including a project for a new file system structure for network storage is just for fun.
Does the school stream its campus radio or TV stations? (No)
Uhmmmm.... Try here. Damn these people either suck or we suck at reporting.
And I know for a fact we have more than 1000 computers that are provided by the university for students to use. We have almost that many in the library *alone*.
You know, you can set the mouse (with some non-Apple software) to left-click when you tap, and right click when you use the button. Or use an external mouse. Or just realize that it just isn't that damn hard (and I've found it to be faster, IMHO, since i switched about a year ago) to just hold ctrl with your left finger, that is generally already on/near the keyboard when you need a context menu (read right click) on something.
Apple does NOT support running any laptop with the screen closed, because they can very easily (and do) overheat when the screen is close. Especially if you stick that nice toasty laptop into a sleeve in a bag... that's just asking for the thing to overheat. There are utilities out there that let you turn the sleep when the lid closes off, but as I said, if you change that, then the machine is immediately out of warranty from Apple.