On some cell phone services (I don't know if T-Mobile is one of these), if Alice is on a call with Bob, gets a call from Carol via call waiting, and accepts it, then two things happen:
The system is unable to properly record Carol's call. It shows up as "unknown" in Alice's phone's call log and may not show as an identified number on her bill.
Alice will be double-billed for the time that she's talking with Carol, because Bob is still sitting there with his call "on hold" in the system. This should - should - stop if Bob hangs up.
Check if this is a possibility. (The CSR should have checked too, but I'm not sure if front-line CSRs would know this.)
I speak as someone with a great deal of experience in all three major operating environments, working in a highly technical environment, and with a highly technical circle of friends. In my experience, people who know better still use Windows for three reasons.
The first is entrenchment, and I don't have anything to say about it that hasn't already been said here.
The second is the availability of games and applications, but both alternative platforms are now far enough along in both realms for this to be much less of a problem than it was even a couple of years ago.
The third reason, and the one I want to talk about is that they don't see an escape. Let's look at the two alternatives.
The Macintosh is not yet taken seriously as a platform. If you've allowed general hacker/power-user/FOSS culture to permeate you at all, then you probably look at a Mac and the first thing you think is "oh, the computer for people who have no idea what they're doing." I still have flashes of that, and I actually use Macintoshes as my personal computers. Until recently, Apple's inability to market on any sort of technical platform has been nearly supernatural, and they're still not exactly brilliant at it.
This is in the process of changing, and changing heavily. MacOS X is quite possibly the most effective desktop operating system ever created (save for Be, and don't get me started on Be's untimely death) for its balance of technological capability and intuitive usability. It is simply too capable to ignore now. There has always been a subgroup of the Clued who liked Macintoshes simply because they didn't like to fight computers; now this subgroup is growing fast due to technical merit.
This shift will take time, however; also, it isn't optimal from the FOSS point of view. It certainly isn't a worst-case scenario, mind--given Darwin, MacOS X is far more free/open than anything in the Macintosh world has ever been, and certainly far more free/open than Windows. Further, Apple at least doesn't seem to believe that every Turing-complete device should have to get a seal of approval from Hollywood. But all that said, MacOS X is far from being FOSS, and some people believe (and make a non-trivial argument) that the good is the enemy of the perfect in this arena.
So why not Linux?
Story time.
We run a split lab--three Windows boxes, three Linux boxes, and any faculty member or student can log into any of them. Our IT department expends some nontrivial effort to make sure that all major platforms are able to access most major services--mail, the file shares, even directory services.
Last week, I was installing a couple of Red Hat 8.0 boxes on our network. Since I don't enjoy putting large Hack right HERE! signs out on the Internet, the first thing I did was to run the GNOME-based Red Hat update agent.
(Let's take care of something before it gets said. I'm perfectly capable of running the command-line based update agent. Further, I'm also perfectly capable of ftp'ing the updates and installing them myself. I've compiled enough kernels that Red Hat's kernel update process doesn't scare me one bit. Capability isn't the point.)
So halfway through the update, the program crashed. I kill -9'd the program and ran it again; it refused to come up. I logged out, logged back in and ran it again; it still refused to come up. Defenestrated, logged in and ran it again; no joy.
I ended up restarting a Linux box (reread that a time or two) to get GNOME, and the update agent, working properly again. (I still ran the updates from the command line, not willing to trust the agent with my time again.) I'm sure that with a bit of head-beating I could have found the leftover processes and killed them instead of rebooting, but that isn't the point. There aren't that many people who could have, and there aren't that many people who would be willing to put up with this.
Linux, as an operating system kernel (and hence as a server of any kind), is far more stable than Windows. The critical triumverate of X, KDE and GNOME, unfortunately, are still significantly less stable and consistent, and hence less usable, than the Win32 GDI. Hence, Linux as a personal desktop OS requires that you not only have the ability to understand your computer thoroughly, but that you have the time and will to fight to get it working and keep it working.
So, to sum it up: people still use Windows because they don't take the Mac seriously and/or don't believe it's open enough to be worth the move; and because Linux still, sadly, just isn't ready unless you have the time to make it a significant hobby in and of itself.
Once again, just my $0.02.
Matt
Re:Musings on CPU and UI Performance
on
Is Mac OS X Slow?
·
· Score: 1
Yes, the 1.25GHz G4 comes out to about the same speed as the 2.53 GHz P4. (95% the same speed if you go by the benchmark, but I wager you'd get at least the 5% back from multiprocessor overhead.) Which is about twice the operations clock for clock, which is what I claimed in the first place.:)
Apple doesn't dare move to commodity hardware; they'd neutralize most of their unique market position, as well as their ability to fully control the operating environment, which is the one technical advantage they have. Fundamentally, Apple is a closed-hardware vendor. The disadvantages of that should be well known to anyone familiar with FOSS (thank you, MITRE). The advantage of it is that the bloody computer can be made more likely to work at a given time under a given configuration.
I don't like the Apple model nearly as well as the model of the PC world, but right now they're executing far better. I've built every desktop that I've used in the past ten years myself, except for the one I'm sitting at right now; I gave up because there is just too much PC hardware in the channel right now that is inexcusably unreliable, and it's very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. The integrated PC vendors--Dell and the like--don't seem to be faring all that much better, given the (admittedly anecdotal) reports I get from friends.
Re:Musings on CPU and UI Performance
on
Is Mac OS X Slow?
·
· Score: 1
Ack. You're right. I got confused about what level the Altivec showed up at.
Thank you.
Musings on CPU and UI Performance
on
Is Mac OS X Slow?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I've got somewhat extensive experience using Windows XP, MacOS X, and Linux. These are my impressions based on a combination of subjective user experience and objective benchmark information I've found through research. I recommend that anyone seriously pondering this issue do their own research, particularly to back up the benchmark comments.
First, let's get my biases out in the open: I am a Macintosh user by (recent, OSX only) preference who's also perfectly comfortable assembling Linux or Windows PCs from bare motherboard and case right on up. I prefer UNIX-based operating systems for their stability and openness, the more stable and open the better, but find Windows inevitably the best practical choice for some situations.
I won't comment on disk and memory performance; others here have handled that ably, and I have no experience with MacOS X in very high load situations.
Processor Performance
This is the one that's subject to the most advocacy; raise your hands if you haven't heard the term "Megahertz Myth". Any hands up? Didn't think so. (Apple advocates aren't the only folks who like it; you'll hear it from AMD lovers, too.)
G3 and G4 processors run at far slower clock rates than P6-class processors. This much is objective. What Mac advocates like to claim is that G3 and G4 processors are much faster, clock for clock, than P6-class processors. The problem in evaluating this claim is that it's both false and true at the same time.
The G3 and G4 are not faster than P6-class processors at typical integer and floating point operations. They're just not. In fact, they tend to run (slightly) slower, clock for clock, in SPECmarks. They're only faster in one specialized world. The catch is, that specialized world is a major one.
Vector and matrix operations are useful in a ton of multimedia applications--most particularly image and video editing, but there are other applications as well. The G3 and G4 have much better vector units than P6-class processors. Not better, much better. This is why Apple always uses Photoshop as their benchmark: a G4 running well-optimized vector math is entirely capable of spanking a P6-class processor running at twice its clock speed or more.
So the answer to this question is that there is no definitive answer. Mac advocates will claim that graphical operations are the slowest things anyway, and so optimizing them will give you the most performance benefit overall. PC advocates will make the generalist argument, and include the (true) fact that an application must be hand-optimized for the G4's vector unit to see these performance gains.
Overall, most people think the G3 and G4 are slower for most purposes, and that the Mac won't have a serious chance at the top of the performance heap again until its next round of processor upgrades, coming next year.
UI Performance
This is the performance most people notice. I'll hit several areas of it, since there are tradeoffs.
First, the good. Aqua's overall responsiveness is probably the best of the three major windowing environments. Any of them can feel like they lose clicks or take forever to process them at times, but it generally feels like it happens less with Aqua than with either Windows or X. (Note that in X it's heavily dependent on what your desktop environment is--but most people like to use either KDE or GNOME, both of which have responsiveness issues.) Aqua also redraws on application switching faster than Windows does, and at about the same speed X does, since it handles open frames in much the same way.
Now, the bad, and it's significant. Aqua is the heaviest of the three major windowing systems; it has more and more complicated screen elements than either X or Windows. It is about as fast as Windows at drawing individual screen elements (both are faster than X under most driver configurations), but overall, it feels the slowest of any of them at general UI drawing tasks. There are also some operations--like scrolling or resizing complex frames--that are just embarassingly slow.
Overall, I like Aqua for its stability and prettiness (fonts look better on Aqua than any other UI, period), but I can see why its overhead irritates many people, especially those who've heavily customized and optimized an X setup.
Slashdot Mirror
- The system is unable to properly record Carol's call. It shows up as "unknown" in Alice's phone's call log and may not show as an identified number on her bill.
- Alice will be double-billed for the time that she's talking with Carol, because Bob is still sitting there with his call "on hold" in the system. This should - should - stop if Bob hangs up.
Check if this is a possibility. (The CSR should have checked too, but I'm not sure if front-line CSRs would know this.)I speak as someone with a great deal of experience in all three major operating environments, working in a highly technical environment, and with a highly technical circle of friends. In my experience, people who know better still use Windows for three reasons.
The first is entrenchment, and I don't have anything to say about it that hasn't already been said here.
The second is the availability of games and applications, but both alternative platforms are now far enough along in both realms for this to be much less of a problem than it was even a couple of years ago.
The third reason, and the one I want to talk about is that they don't see an escape. Let's look at the two alternatives.
The Macintosh is not yet taken seriously as a platform. If you've allowed general hacker/power-user/FOSS culture to permeate you at all, then you probably look at a Mac and the first thing you think is "oh, the computer for people who have no idea what they're doing." I still have flashes of that, and I actually use Macintoshes as my personal computers. Until recently, Apple's inability to market on any sort of technical platform has been nearly supernatural, and they're still not exactly brilliant at it.
This is in the process of changing, and changing heavily. MacOS X is quite possibly the most effective desktop operating system ever created (save for Be, and don't get me started on Be's untimely death) for its balance of technological capability and intuitive usability. It is simply too capable to ignore now. There has always been a subgroup of the Clued who liked Macintoshes simply because they didn't like to fight computers; now this subgroup is growing fast due to technical merit.
This shift will take time, however; also, it isn't optimal from the FOSS point of view. It certainly isn't a worst-case scenario, mind--given Darwin, MacOS X is far more free/open than anything in the Macintosh world has ever been, and certainly far more free/open than Windows. Further, Apple at least doesn't seem to believe that every Turing-complete device should have to get a seal of approval from Hollywood. But all that said, MacOS X is far from being FOSS, and some people believe (and make a non-trivial argument) that the good is the enemy of the perfect in this arena.
So why not Linux?
Story time.
We run a split lab--three Windows boxes, three Linux boxes, and any faculty member or student can log into any of them. Our IT department expends some nontrivial effort to make sure that all major platforms are able to access most major services--mail, the file shares, even directory services.
Last week, I was installing a couple of Red Hat 8.0 boxes on our network. Since I don't enjoy putting large Hack right HERE! signs out on the Internet, the first thing I did was to run the GNOME-based Red Hat update agent.
(Let's take care of something before it gets said. I'm perfectly capable of running the command-line based update agent. Further, I'm also perfectly capable of ftp'ing the updates and installing them myself. I've compiled enough kernels that Red Hat's kernel update process doesn't scare me one bit. Capability isn't the point.)
So halfway through the update, the program crashed. I kill -9'd the program and ran it again; it refused to come up. I logged out, logged back in and ran it again; it still refused to come up. Defenestrated, logged in and ran it again; no joy.
I ended up restarting a Linux box (reread that a time or two) to get GNOME, and the update agent, working properly again. (I still ran the updates from the command line, not willing to trust the agent with my time again.) I'm sure that with a bit of head-beating I could have found the leftover processes and killed them instead of rebooting, but that isn't the point. There aren't that many people who could have, and there aren't that many people who would be willing to put up with this.
Linux, as an operating system kernel (and hence as a server of any kind), is far more stable than Windows. The critical triumverate of X, KDE and GNOME, unfortunately, are still significantly less stable and consistent, and hence less usable, than the Win32 GDI. Hence, Linux as a personal desktop OS requires that you not only have the ability to understand your computer thoroughly, but that you have the time and will to fight to get it working and keep it working.
So, to sum it up: people still use Windows because they don't take the Mac seriously and/or don't believe it's open enough to be worth the move; and because Linux still, sadly, just isn't ready unless you have the time to make it a significant hobby in and of itself.
Once again, just my $0.02.
Matt
Yes, the 1.25GHz G4 comes out to about the same speed as the 2.53 GHz P4. (95% the same speed if you go by the benchmark, but I wager you'd get at least the 5% back from multiprocessor overhead.) Which is about twice the operations clock for clock, which is what I claimed in the first place. :)
Apple doesn't dare move to commodity hardware; they'd neutralize most of their unique market position, as well as their ability to fully control the operating environment, which is the one technical advantage they have. Fundamentally, Apple is a closed-hardware vendor. The disadvantages of that should be well known to anyone familiar with FOSS (thank you, MITRE). The advantage of it is that the bloody computer can be made more likely to work at a given time under a given configuration.
I don't like the Apple model nearly as well as the model of the PC world, but right now they're executing far better. I've built every desktop that I've used in the past ten years myself, except for the one I'm sitting at right now; I gave up because there is just too much PC hardware in the channel right now that is inexcusably unreliable, and it's very difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. The integrated PC vendors--Dell and the like--don't seem to be faring all that much better, given the (admittedly anecdotal) reports I get from friends.
Ack. You're right. I got confused about what level the Altivec showed up at.
Thank you.
I've got somewhat extensive experience using Windows XP, MacOS X, and Linux. These are my impressions based on a combination of subjective user experience and objective benchmark information I've found through research. I recommend that anyone seriously pondering this issue do their own research, particularly to back up the benchmark comments.
First, let's get my biases out in the open: I am a Macintosh user by (recent, OSX only) preference who's also perfectly comfortable assembling Linux or Windows PCs from bare motherboard and case right on up. I prefer UNIX-based operating systems for their stability and openness, the more stable and open the better, but find Windows inevitably the best practical choice for some situations.
I won't comment on disk and memory performance; others here have handled that ably, and I have no experience with MacOS X in very high load situations.
Processor Performance
This is the one that's subject to the most advocacy; raise your hands if you haven't heard the term "Megahertz Myth". Any hands up? Didn't think so. (Apple advocates aren't the only folks who like it; you'll hear it from AMD lovers, too.)
G3 and G4 processors run at far slower clock rates than P6-class processors. This much is objective. What Mac advocates like to claim is that G3 and G4 processors are much faster, clock for clock, than P6-class processors. The problem in evaluating this claim is that it's both false and true at the same time.
The G3 and G4 are not faster than P6-class processors at typical integer and floating point operations. They're just not. In fact, they tend to run (slightly) slower, clock for clock, in SPECmarks. They're only faster in one specialized world. The catch is, that specialized world is a major one.
Vector and matrix operations are useful in a ton of multimedia applications--most particularly image and video editing, but there are other applications as well. The G3 and G4 have much better vector units than P6-class processors. Not better, much better. This is why Apple always uses Photoshop as their benchmark: a G4 running well-optimized vector math is entirely capable of spanking a P6-class processor running at twice its clock speed or more.
So the answer to this question is that there is no definitive answer. Mac advocates will claim that graphical operations are the slowest things anyway, and so optimizing them will give you the most performance benefit overall. PC advocates will make the generalist argument, and include the (true) fact that an application must be hand-optimized for the G4's vector unit to see these performance gains.
Overall, most people think the G3 and G4 are slower for most purposes, and that the Mac won't have a serious chance at the top of the performance heap again until its next round of processor upgrades, coming next year.
UI Performance
This is the performance most people notice. I'll hit several areas of it, since there are tradeoffs.
First, the good. Aqua's overall responsiveness is probably the best of the three major windowing environments. Any of them can feel like they lose clicks or take forever to process them at times, but it generally feels like it happens less with Aqua than with either Windows or X. (Note that in X it's heavily dependent on what your desktop environment is--but most people like to use either KDE or GNOME, both of which have responsiveness issues.) Aqua also redraws on application switching faster than Windows does, and at about the same speed X does, since it handles open frames in much the same way.
Now, the bad, and it's significant. Aqua is the heaviest of the three major windowing systems; it has more and more complicated screen elements than either X or Windows. It is about as fast as Windows at drawing individual screen elements (both are faster than X under most driver configurations), but overall, it feels the slowest of any of them at general UI drawing tasks. There are also some operations--like scrolling or resizing complex frames--that are just embarassingly slow.
Overall, I like Aqua for its stability and prettiness (fonts look better on Aqua than any other UI, period), but I can see why its overhead irritates many people, especially those who've heavily customized and optimized an X setup.
That's my $0.02. Hope it helps.