I noticed the same on my mac. With a set of eight CPU graph meters in the menu bar, they're almost always evenly pitched anywhere from idle to 100%, with a few notable exceptions like second life, some photoshop filters, and firefox of all things.
When booted into Win, more often than not I have two cores pegged high, and the others idle. Getting even use out of all cores is the exception, not the rule.
This is pretty much completely down to the application mix. Windows has no trouble whatsoever scheduling processes and threads to max out 8 (or 16, or whatever) CPUs, but if the applications are only coded to have, say, 1 or 2 "processing" threads, then there's nothing the OS can do to change that.
It doesn't sound easily backwards compatible (but I might be wrong there), and there's a certain simplicity to 'reserve one core for the OS, application developers can manage the rest of them themselves' sort of model like consoles.
Those curious about what life would be like with application developers managing system resources, should try firing up an old copy of Windows 3.1 or MacOS and running 10 or so applications at the same time.
I can only assume TFA is an atrociously bad summary of what he's actually proposing, because it sounds way to boneheaded for someone in that position to be seriously suggesting.
With Expose I can select a document icon from the desktop and drag it to an email as an attachment all while never removing my finger from the mouse button.
I could do this via the Taskbar in Windows *95*. Or just use Alt+TAB if you didn't want to leave in ridiculously arbitrary limitations on interaction.
I can quickly see all my open documents without having to play the maximize-minimize game or Alt-Tab musical chairs.
How can you tell anything meaningful about your "open documents" when their windows are shrunk to 1/10th their usual size ? Or is "all your documents" something like 2 or 3 ? Why do you need to see all your open documents at once anyway ?
You must be thinking of Vista's imitated version of this feature which I do agree is flashy with little function, as you cannot see the full contents of the windows before you switch tasks.
Flip-3D is nothing at all like Expose (and no-one rational tries to say it is), other than also being a bit of flashy eye candy that adds little additional functionality.
As I understand it, the Brits realized that people simply slow down near a speed camera, so they started photographing your licence plate between two points, and calculating your speed based on the difference in the two time stamps and a known distance.
The "yellow vultures" (average speed cameras) are typically limited to roadwork zones in the UK (or at least they were as of ~6 months ago), though they're also on a few regular motorways in the North. They're not common in this "general purpose" role, however.
The vast, vast majority of speed cameras in the UK are either mobile vans or fixed roadside devices (though the boxes are painted bright yellow to make them easy to spot - one thing you can't criticise the English on is their sense of sportsmanship).
Getting back to the point, there's plenty of vehicle-contained speed cameras here in Scottsdale and Phoenix, though I must admit my travels within the US have been fairly limited thus far, so I've no idea how common they are in other areas (I don't recall seeing any in Hawaii).
Applied to child porn - if the sumbitch likes little children instead of women, remove his genes from the gene pool.
Think about it - it there really IS anything to the idea of evolution, which genes do we wish to select for?
I have little problem with executing a lot of deviants.
From a biological perspective, there's nothing remotely "deviant" about finding sexually mature individuals attractive (eg: homosexuality would be far more "deviant" behaviour by that measure). Pretty much everyone is (biologically) sexually mature before they hit the legal age of consent.
Disclaimer: after a single day of research, you can never go back to your current state of innocence. There IS a lot of just plain sick shit to be seen, if you have the stomach for it. If you've ever researched the holocaust, then you have an idea what I mean.
I don't need to be "educated", I've seen more than enough "sick shit".
My point was you observe that there *is* a fundamental difference between "a video of two sixteen year olds" vs "Daddy doing his 11 year old daughter", then immediately recommend the guy is lynched purely because he may have been looking, without knowing anything about what he was looking at. What if it was the former ? Does watching a video of a couple of consenting, sexually mature individuals who just happen to be younger than some arbitrary age warrant being "cut, then tied down over a fire ant hill" ?
As an Australian this doesn't make sense to me. If a cop here told me to get in my car I would assume I was good to go, which doesn't appear to be the case here.
Indeed. Standard procedure back in Oz when pulled over is to get out of the car (unless it would be unsafe to do so) and wait. Typically, until you get out of the car, the Police won't even open their door (they're worried you'll do a runner).
Note to Australians in the US: when you are pulled over by the police, STAY IN YOUR CAR WITH YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF THE WHEEL. If you have to reach into the glovebox (eg: for registration papers), clearly communicate to the officer you are going to do this before you do it. Getting out like you would at home can lead to results ranging from confusing (the cop telling you to get back in) to terrifying (yelling, guns drawn, etc).
It ranges from distasteful, to disgusting - not all of it is equal. Except, of course, in the eyes of the law. A video of two sixteen year olds is as likely to land you in prison, as a video of "Daddy doing his 11 year old daughter".
As for Canada's ruling - I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. Caching is not pessession - but, if the guy was viewing CP and getting off on it, he's guilty, IMHO. Deviant bastid needs to be cut, then tied down over a fire ant hill.
So, wait... Not all of it is equal, or anyone looking at it should be "cut, then tied down over a fire ant hill" ?
XP was actually a big upgrade over 2000. WIN7's improvements are not as obvious to average user.
Uh, what ? XP was basically a few kernel and GUI tweaks over Windows 2000. Windows XP to Vista (and then 7) is probably the single biggest update in the lifetime of Windows NT (with NT 3.51 -> 4.0 and 4.0 -> Windows 2000 following closely behind). 2000 to XP is probably one of the least significant.
Having just come up for air battling windows' various shells, scripts, and services combinations, I can tell you unequivocally that all of Microsoft's work on shells is still far far far below anything possible with even the first Linux kernel. In short, shells are horribly broken in windows, and they always will be, since it was done intentionally. (For the short version, try piping in a service, or elevating your process)
Yes, if you are trying to use Windows like you would UNIX, it won't work very well. That's because it isn't meant to work that way.
Because under windows, a token must have all the permissions it can ever use already available and they're merely masked under the "least privileges" rule. All other OSes that I'm aware of use a token with no extra privileges which then need to be raised with credentials. This is why MS has had such major issues in the security realm. It's a fundamental flaw in their architecture, and they've been unable to fix it.
Perhaps you can explain in more detail, what you mean and why it is a problem ?
What exactly is it that you've been doing happily since 1996?
Like the post I responded said: "[...] use in a desktop environment and can keep in running 24/7 for as long as I want. Months on end even.".
Perhaps you've been happy about tricking Windows into doing what you really wanted it to do? I know a guy who likes that process, while I consider it a waste of precious time that I can never get back.
I've never felt the need to "trick" Windows into doing anything.
To each his own, I guess...
I can come up with anecdotes about awful experiences and weird behaviour on any platform you care to name. What was your point again, exactly ?
YOu might "equate" them, but functionally they are quite different UI elements.
Expose is an entirely different animal and the primary reason that Vista and Win7 now use similar 'preview' functions.
The window previews offer little additional functional utility, in either OS X _or_ Windows.
NTFS sucks for fragmentation. Given a choice between a more modern FS from any Unix/Linux variant, I'd choose the Linux/Unix variants any time. Stating NTFS is comparable to even HPFS is ridiculous. Those arguments fall apart after a few months of regular usage.
HFS+ is basically a hacked up HFS, a filesystem that dates from 1985 and was designed for floppy-disk only Macs. It's Apple's equivalent to vFAT[32] from Windows 9x.
NTFS is vastly superior to HPFS (hardly surprising, as it was built to replace it). HPFS doesn't even support basic (today) features like file permissions and journaling. It has ridiculously small maximums like 2GB files and 2TB filesystems. Fragmentation is an irrelevant issue for anything except corner cases, where other FSes typically suffer just as much.
Multi-user support - It was tacked on in Windows, and due to their legacy support, [...]
It was not. Windows NT was multiuser from its initial _design_ phase, before even the first lines of code were written. In no way is it "tacked on", and from a technical perspective it is more pervasively multiuser than OS X and other traditional UNIXes (no concept of a superuser, for example).
Although Windows now fully 'supports' a true multi-user environment, it's a grab bag more often than not. Most software vendors have converted to utilizing user directories for program data, but they still, all to often, require admin access to install, dropping DLL's into the system directory, writing to non-user registry keys, and making a general mess of things. On a Mac, I can back up the user directory, and the app directory, and be confident that almost every app will run without issue just by restoring it on any target machine. The majority of programs can be installed without any admin rights (and no, turning off UAC doesn't count). Can you say the same for Windows? They have still continually failed to enforce proper user spaces for installation and day to day operations and the OS suffers for it. Programs putting pieces into system folders, requiring access to non-user registry keys, and general disarray.
All of these are 100%, completely and utterly, without exception, the fault of application developers.
There's also Microsoft's Services for UNIX. Not to mention OS X's commandline is different enough from most UNIXes as to leave the average UNIX user frustrated.
I think not having IE6, the only browser that commonly infected people just by visiting websites, is quite relevant to anyone.
Safari didn't even exist in 2000, if you want to tie it down to what 2000 shipped with.
Having used Expose a far bit, I find it far easier to use than the taskbar or Alt+Tab. Being able to see a window's contents makes it far easier to find a specific window. That's why Windows Vista/7 have taskbar window previews now. Now imagine if you could see them all at once, instead of just one at a time. That's Expose.
I've used Expose extensively, I know exactly how it works. If you have lots of windows open (like I do) it's basically worthless because the previews are too small and/or too similar. If you only have a few windows open, then Taskbar button labels are more than adequate. It's ultimately a flashy workaround for how awful it is trying to use the Dock to switch between arbitrary windows.
Hmm, perhaps "journaled" wasn't the right word. How's about "fragmentation-resistant"? I'm sure HFS+ has something over NTFS.
It doesn't.
Well, Windows isn't exactly resource-light, either.
Windows 2000 is, if you want to use that comparison.
I've had OS X work quite well on far slower computers than the ones you describe, so I guess it's a "YMMV" thing.
If you're happy with OS X's performance on some given generation of Mac, then you have no grounds to complain about Windows 7's (or even Vista's) performance on equivalent generation PC hardware (even more so if you're equalising purchase prices).
"Certain configurations" i.e. "the default configuration, and every single configuration out there", especially since lots of Windows software would refuse to run outside of Administrator mode.
The default configuration for any Windows PC joined to a Domain (probably the majority of them out there) is for the user to NOT be an Administrator.
Not to mention that my entire point is that the system would practically force you into this insecure configuration.
It's not the system, it's the apps. Further, the "insecurity" of this configuration in the context of a desktop PC is grossly exaggerated.
It's possible, but it's extremely difficult to set up, and nowhere near as easy as Boot Camp.
Once you're into dual-booting (on a PC, at least) you're already into the realms of users where "how easy" is pretty much irrelevant.
I won't say I don't believe you, but this is the first time I've heard anyone say that Windows is superior to a Unixlike, so I'd like to hear more about the subject.
I suggest you start with the Ars Technica reviews of OS X, then move onto things like "Inside Windows NT" and the developer resources available from both Apple and Microsoft. It's not something that can be distilled down to soundbites.
The simple fact is that OS X's development is proceeding at basically the same pace as Windows, just with different priorities. However, Windows had a ~7 year head start and is, therefore, in some areas still more advanced.
Exchange support, Full Media Centre, Encryption, Unix support, Domain Joining, etc. I'm not seeing many features for Windows Ultimate that aren't in OS X 'normal edition'...
OS X doesn't come with a "full media centre" as far as I know. Or has Front Row acquired DVR capabilities in the last 6 months ?
Full, non-OEM copies to start, and upgrades after that.
There is no such thing as a "full, non-OEM" version of OS X. You have to run it on a Mac, and you can't buy a Mac without it. Similarly, every copy you see on the shelves is an upgrade, and requires an existing OS X license (by virtue of requiring a Mac).
A bash command line (and Unixlike filesystem structure)
Matter of taste. Powershell is available if you want it.
a web browser that's actually standards-compliant (and was the first to pass Acid2)
Is irrelevant to anyone that isn't a WWW nerd.
Exposé,
Flashy eyecandy (that's really just an improved tile/untile) of little practical value over the Taskbar and Alt+TAB. I was wowed by Expose when it first arrived, but after using it for a while decided it was little more than another example of form over function.
a journaled filesystem
Windows NT had that way back in 1993. Not to mention other neat features that have arrived since like per-file compression and encryption, and transactional operations.
built-in support for reading and saving PDFs, built-in support for playing DVDs,
Congrats, you got a couple.
and lower system requirements
Not in any meaningful sense. OS X is slow on anything less than a multicore CPU with 2GB RAM and a dog on anything less than a G5 with 1GB - and that's the _current_ versions (for each architecture, respectively), which are faster than their predecessors. OS X is _not_ a platform you want to be using as an example of good performance and low system requirements. People sneer at Vista because you couldn't run it on a bottom of the barrel $500 PC (though $200 on a decent video card and more RAM was all it took to remedy that) back in 2007, but it took several *years* after OS X was released before you could buy _any_ system that ran it remotely well.
Windows didn't get the ability to rearrange taskbar icons until Windows 7 (8 years after OS X).
This is only marginally more significant than the 48x48 icons below. The Dock is not a Taskbar, and is atrociously bad at pretending to be one (hence the reason they tried working around its flaws with Expose).
Windows didn't get built-in indexed search until Windows Vista (4 years after OS X).
Windows 2000 had the search indexing service (albeit not enabled by default).
Windows didn't get IPv6 support until Windows Vista (4 years after OS X).
XP had IPv6 support (though it needed to be explicitly enabled). As did Windows Server 2003.
Windows ran everything as root by default until Windows Vista (6 years after OS X).
A configuration semantic (and one applicable only to certain configurations, at that) is not a "feature". Windows NT was multiuser from day 1, back in 1993.
Windows didn't get icons larger than 48x48 until Windows Vista (6 years after OS X).
Wow, that's some serious scratching. Ok, you can have that one, too.
Examples of features introduced since 10.4 that Windows still doesn't have include multiple desktops, and a bootloader that supports operating systems from more than one vendor.
Multiple desktops I'll also give, though I've never found them particularly useful (and I get the distinct impression they're something of a red-headed stepchild in OS X). You can boot multiple OSes from the Windows bootloader.
I'll admit the earlier versions of Mac OS X were somewhat flawed, but "worse than Windows 2000" is a pretty serious accusation, and one that requires evidence.
For pretty much anything low level (scheduling, multithreading, locking, memory management, etc), OS X has been playing catchup. Even today, it doesn't have anything equivalent to ReadyBoost or SuperFetch.
I feel compelled to point out that OS X being roughly on par with Windows 2000 in the 10.5 timeframe is to be expected. There's only so fast development can proceed, and OS X would have had about as much development time from its baseline (NeXTSTEP) by then as Windows 2000 had from its (NT 3.1). OS X and Windows development is basically proceeding at the same pace (OS X is probably a bit quicker, though it damn well should be given its smaller scope, and Apple's much smaller
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For that matter when a copy or move fails in Explorer, why can't I simply resume it once I've fixed whatever the problem is.
You can as of Vista.
I noticed the same on my mac. With a set of eight CPU graph meters in the menu bar, they're almost always evenly pitched anywhere from idle to 100%, with a few notable exceptions like second life, some photoshop filters, and firefox of all things.
When booted into Win, more often than not I have two cores pegged high, and the others idle. Getting even use out of all cores is the exception, not the rule.
This is pretty much completely down to the application mix. Windows has no trouble whatsoever scheduling processes and threads to max out 8 (or 16, or whatever) CPUs, but if the applications are only coded to have, say, 1 or 2 "processing" threads, then there's nothing the OS can do to change that.
It doesn't sound easily backwards compatible (but I might be wrong there), and there's a certain simplicity to 'reserve one core for the OS, application developers can manage the rest of them themselves' sort of model like consoles.
Those curious about what life would be like with application developers managing system resources, should try firing up an old copy of Windows 3.1 or MacOS and running 10 or so applications at the same time.
I can only assume TFA is an atrociously bad summary of what he's actually proposing, because it sounds way to boneheaded for someone in that position to be seriously suggesting.
The real irony here is, that you even NEED a 3rd party application to make your machine secure.
You don't. You may choose to use a third party tool to help prevent you shooting yourself in the foot.
There are any number of other computing devices that don't get viruses and are not abacuses. Linux is just one of these.
Can you name a single, unique, technical aspect of Linux that prevents viruses or other forms of malicious code ?
Sounds really nice to you?
Sounds like paranoia to me.
With Expose I can select a document icon from the desktop and drag it to an email as an attachment all while never removing my finger from the mouse button.
I could do this via the Taskbar in Windows *95*. Or just use Alt+TAB if you didn't want to leave in ridiculously arbitrary limitations on interaction.
I can quickly see all my open documents without having to play the maximize-minimize game or Alt-Tab musical chairs.
How can you tell anything meaningful about your "open documents" when their windows are shrunk to 1/10th their usual size ? Or is "all your documents" something like 2 or 3 ? Why do you need to see all your open documents at once anyway ?
You must be thinking of Vista's imitated version of this feature which I do agree is flashy with little function, as you cannot see the full contents of the windows before you switch tasks.
Flip-3D is nothing at all like Expose (and no-one rational tries to say it is), other than also being a bit of flashy eye candy that adds little additional functionality.
As I understand it, the Brits realized that people simply slow down near a speed camera, so they started photographing your licence plate between two points, and calculating your speed based on the difference in the two time stamps and a known distance.
The "yellow vultures" (average speed cameras) are typically limited to roadwork zones in the UK (or at least they were as of ~6 months ago), though they're also on a few regular motorways in the North. They're not common in this "general purpose" role, however.
The vast, vast majority of speed cameras in the UK are either mobile vans or fixed roadside devices (though the boxes are painted bright yellow to make them easy to spot - one thing you can't criticise the English on is their sense of sportsmanship).
Getting back to the point, there's plenty of vehicle-contained speed cameras here in Scottsdale and Phoenix, though I must admit my travels within the US have been fairly limited thus far, so I've no idea how common they are in other areas (I don't recall seeing any in Hawaii).
Do they measure your average speed between the two cars over long distances, and then mail you a ticket?
I assume that, like most other speed cameras around the world, they measure your speed with RADAR or LIDAR and then mail you a ticket if you're over.
Applied to child porn - if the sumbitch likes little children instead of women, remove his genes from the gene pool.
Think about it - it there really IS anything to the idea of evolution, which genes do we wish to select for?
I have little problem with executing a lot of deviants.
From a biological perspective, there's nothing remotely "deviant" about finding sexually mature individuals attractive (eg: homosexuality would be far more "deviant" behaviour by that measure). Pretty much everyone is (biologically) sexually mature before they hit the legal age of consent.
Disclaimer: after a single day of research, you can never go back to your current state of innocence. There IS a lot of just plain sick shit to be seen, if you have the stomach for it. If you've ever researched the holocaust, then you have an idea what I mean.
I don't need to be "educated", I've seen more than enough "sick shit".
My point was you observe that there *is* a fundamental difference between "a video of two sixteen year olds" vs "Daddy doing his 11 year old daughter", then immediately recommend the guy is lynched purely because he may have been looking, without knowing anything about what he was looking at. What if it was the former ? Does watching a video of a couple of consenting, sexually mature individuals who just happen to be younger than some arbitrary age warrant being "cut, then tied down over a fire ant hill" ?
They calmed down when I explained we don't have speed cameras on our highways here in the US, but still didn't completely believe me.
I see plenty of speed camera vehicles parked on the side of the highways here in AZ. Though at least they're easy to spot.
As an Australian this doesn't make sense to me. If a cop here told me to get in my car I would assume I was good to go, which doesn't appear to be the case here.
Indeed. Standard procedure back in Oz when pulled over is to get out of the car (unless it would be unsafe to do so) and wait. Typically, until you get out of the car, the Police won't even open their door (they're worried you'll do a runner).
Note to Australians in the US: when you are pulled over by the police, STAY IN YOUR CAR WITH YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF THE WHEEL. If you have to reach into the glovebox (eg: for registration papers), clearly communicate to the officer you are going to do this before you do it. Getting out like you would at home can lead to results ranging from confusing (the cop telling you to get back in) to terrifying (yelling, guns drawn, etc).
So much effort goes into collecting fake gold and going on quests to kill monsters that are nothing but a collection of 1's and 0's.
You're talking about day traders, right ?
It ranges from distasteful, to disgusting - not all of it is equal. Except, of course, in the eyes of the law. A video of two sixteen year olds is as likely to land you in prison, as a video of "Daddy doing his 11 year old daughter".
As for Canada's ruling - I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. Caching is not pessession - but, if the guy was viewing CP and getting off on it, he's guilty, IMHO. Deviant bastid needs to be cut, then tied down over a fire ant hill.
So, wait... Not all of it is equal, or anyone looking at it should be "cut, then tied down over a fire ant hill" ?
I just don't know what to think.
Obviously.
XP was actually a big upgrade over 2000. WIN7's improvements are not as obvious to average user.
Uh, what ? XP was basically a few kernel and GUI tweaks over Windows 2000. Windows XP to Vista (and then 7) is probably the single biggest update in the lifetime of Windows NT (with NT 3.51 -> 4.0 and 4.0 -> Windows 2000 following closely behind). 2000 to XP is probably one of the least significant.
What does Windows cost? $300?
Nothing. It comes free with your computer just like OS X does with a Mac.
Having just come up for air battling windows' various shells, scripts, and services combinations, I can tell you unequivocally that all of Microsoft's work on shells is still far far far below anything possible with even the first Linux kernel. In short, shells are horribly broken in windows, and they always will be, since it was done intentionally. (For the short version, try piping in a service, or elevating your process)
Yes, if you are trying to use Windows like you would UNIX, it won't work very well. That's because it isn't meant to work that way.
Because under windows, a token must have all the permissions it can ever use already available and they're merely masked under the "least privileges" rule. All other OSes that I'm aware of use a token with no extra privileges which then need to be raised with credentials. This is why MS has had such major issues in the security realm. It's a fundamental flaw in their architecture, and they've been unable to fix it.
Perhaps you can explain in more detail, what you mean and why it is a problem ?
What exactly is it that you've been doing happily since 1996?
Like the post I responded said: "[...] use in a desktop environment and can keep in running 24/7 for as long as I want. Months on end even.".
Perhaps you've been happy about tricking Windows into doing what you really wanted it to do? I know a guy who likes that process, while I consider it a waste of precious time that I can never get back.
I've never felt the need to "trick" Windows into doing anything.
To each his own, I guess...
I can come up with anecdotes about awful experiences and weird behaviour on any platform you care to name. What was your point again, exactly ?
I equate the task bar to the doc in OS X.
YOu might "equate" them, but functionally they are quite different UI elements.
Expose is an entirely different animal and the primary reason that Vista and Win7 now use similar 'preview' functions.
The window previews offer little additional functional utility, in either OS X _or_ Windows.
NTFS sucks for fragmentation. Given a choice between a more modern FS from any Unix/Linux variant, I'd choose the Linux/Unix variants any time. Stating NTFS is comparable to even HPFS is ridiculous. Those arguments fall apart after a few months of regular usage.
HFS+ is basically a hacked up HFS, a filesystem that dates from 1985 and was designed for floppy-disk only Macs. It's Apple's equivalent to vFAT[32] from Windows 9x.
NTFS is vastly superior to HPFS (hardly surprising, as it was built to replace it). HPFS doesn't even support basic (today) features like file permissions and journaling. It has ridiculously small maximums like 2GB files and 2TB filesystems. Fragmentation is an irrelevant issue for anything except corner cases, where other FSes typically suffer just as much.
Multi-user support - It was tacked on in Windows, and due to their legacy support, [...]
It was not. Windows NT was multiuser from its initial _design_ phase, before even the first lines of code were written. In no way is it "tacked on", and from a technical perspective it is more pervasively multiuser than OS X and other traditional UNIXes (no concept of a superuser, for example).
Although Windows now fully 'supports' a true multi-user environment, it's a grab bag more often than not. Most software vendors have converted to utilizing user directories for program data, but they still, all to often, require admin access to install, dropping DLL's into the system directory, writing to non-user registry keys, and making a general mess of things. On a Mac, I can back up the user directory, and the app directory, and be confident that almost every app will run without issue just by restoring it on any target machine. The majority of programs can be installed without any admin rights (and no, turning off UAC doesn't count). Can you say the same for Windows? They have still continually failed to enforce proper user spaces for installation and day to day operations and the OS suffers for it. Programs putting pieces into system folders, requiring access to non-user registry keys, and general disarray.
All of these are 100%, completely and utterly, without exception, the fault of application developers.
PowerShell is/was not available in Windows 2000.
There's also Microsoft's Services for UNIX. Not to mention OS X's commandline is different enough from most UNIXes as to leave the average UNIX user frustrated.
I think not having IE6, the only browser that commonly infected people just by visiting websites, is quite relevant to anyone.
Safari didn't even exist in 2000, if you want to tie it down to what 2000 shipped with.
Having used Expose a far bit, I find it far easier to use than the taskbar or Alt+Tab. Being able to see a window's contents makes it far easier to find a specific window. That's why Windows Vista/7 have taskbar window previews now. Now imagine if you could see them all at once, instead of just one at a time. That's Expose.
I've used Expose extensively, I know exactly how it works. If you have lots of windows open (like I do) it's basically worthless because the previews are too small and/or too similar. If you only have a few windows open, then Taskbar button labels are more than adequate. It's ultimately a flashy workaround for how awful it is trying to use the Dock to switch between arbitrary windows.
Hmm, perhaps "journaled" wasn't the right word. How's about "fragmentation-resistant"? I'm sure HFS+ has something over NTFS.
It doesn't.
Well, Windows isn't exactly resource-light, either.
Windows 2000 is, if you want to use that comparison.
I've had OS X work quite well on far slower computers than the ones you describe, so I guess it's a "YMMV" thing.
If you're happy with OS X's performance on some given generation of Mac, then you have no grounds to complain about Windows 7's (or even Vista's) performance on equivalent generation PC hardware (even more so if you're equalising purchase prices).
"Certain configurations" i.e. "the default configuration, and every single configuration out there", especially since lots of Windows software would refuse to run outside of Administrator mode.
The default configuration for any Windows PC joined to a Domain (probably the majority of them out there) is for the user to NOT be an Administrator.
Not to mention that my entire point is that the system would practically force you into this insecure configuration.
It's not the system, it's the apps. Further, the "insecurity" of this configuration in the context of a desktop PC is grossly exaggerated.
It's possible, but it's extremely difficult to set up, and nowhere near as easy as Boot Camp.
Once you're into dual-booting (on a PC, at least) you're already into the realms of users where "how easy" is pretty much irrelevant.
I won't say I don't believe you, but this is the first time I've heard anyone say that Windows is superior to a Unixlike, so I'd like to hear more about the subject.
I suggest you start with the Ars Technica reviews of OS X, then move onto things like "Inside Windows NT" and the developer resources available from both Apple and Microsoft. It's not something that can be distilled down to soundbites.
The simple fact is that OS X's development is proceeding at basically the same pace as Windows, just with different priorities. However, Windows had a ~7 year head start and is, therefore, in some areas still more advanced.
Exchange support, Full Media Centre, Encryption, Unix support, Domain Joining, etc. I'm not seeing many features for Windows Ultimate that aren't in OS X 'normal edition'...
OS X doesn't come with a "full media centre" as far as I know. Or has Front Row acquired DVR capabilities in the last 6 months ?
Full, non-OEM copies to start, and upgrades after that.
There is no such thing as a "full, non-OEM" version of OS X. You have to run it on a Mac, and you can't buy a Mac without it. Similarly, every copy you see on the shelves is an upgrade, and requires an existing OS X license (by virtue of requiring a Mac).
A bash command line (and Unixlike filesystem structure)
Matter of taste. Powershell is available if you want it.
a web browser that's actually standards-compliant (and was the first to pass Acid2)
Is irrelevant to anyone that isn't a WWW nerd.
Exposé,
Flashy eyecandy (that's really just an improved tile/untile) of little practical value over the Taskbar and Alt+TAB. I was wowed by Expose when it first arrived, but after using it for a while decided it was little more than another example of form over function.
a journaled filesystem
Windows NT had that way back in 1993. Not to mention other neat features that have arrived since like per-file compression and encryption, and transactional operations.
built-in support for reading and saving PDFs, built-in support for playing DVDs,
Congrats, you got a couple.
and lower system requirements
Not in any meaningful sense. OS X is slow on anything less than a multicore CPU with 2GB RAM and a dog on anything less than a G5 with 1GB - and that's the _current_ versions (for each architecture, respectively), which are faster than their predecessors. OS X is _not_ a platform you want to be using as an example of good performance and low system requirements. People sneer at Vista because you couldn't run it on a bottom of the barrel $500 PC (though $200 on a decent video card and more RAM was all it took to remedy that) back in 2007, but it took several *years* after OS X was released before you could buy _any_ system that ran it remotely well.
Windows didn't get the ability to rearrange taskbar icons until Windows 7 (8 years after OS X).
This is only marginally more significant than the 48x48 icons below. The Dock is not a Taskbar, and is atrociously bad at pretending to be one (hence the reason they tried working around its flaws with Expose).
Windows didn't get built-in indexed search until Windows Vista (4 years after OS X).
Windows 2000 had the search indexing service (albeit not enabled by default).
Windows didn't get IPv6 support until Windows Vista (4 years after OS X).
XP had IPv6 support (though it needed to be explicitly enabled). As did Windows Server 2003.
Windows ran everything as root by default until Windows Vista (6 years after OS X).
A configuration semantic (and one applicable only to certain configurations, at that) is not a "feature". Windows NT was multiuser from day 1, back in 1993.
Windows didn't get icons larger than 48x48 until Windows Vista (6 years after OS X).
Wow, that's some serious scratching. Ok, you can have that one, too.
Examples of features introduced since 10.4 that Windows still doesn't have include multiple desktops, and a bootloader that supports operating systems from more than one vendor.
Multiple desktops I'll also give, though I've never found them particularly useful (and I get the distinct impression they're something of a red-headed stepchild in OS X). You can boot multiple OSes from the Windows bootloader.
I'll admit the earlier versions of Mac OS X were somewhat flawed, but "worse than Windows 2000" is a pretty serious accusation, and one that requires evidence.
For pretty much anything low level (scheduling, multithreading, locking, memory management, etc), OS X has been playing catchup. Even today, it doesn't have anything equivalent to ReadyBoost or SuperFetch.
I feel compelled to point out that OS X being roughly on par with Windows 2000 in the 10.5 timeframe is to be expected. There's only so fast development can proceed, and OS X would have had about as much development time from its baseline (NeXTSTEP) by then as Windows 2000 had from its (NT 3.1). OS X and Windows development is basically proceeding at the same pace (OS X is probably a bit quicker, though it damn well should be given its smaller scope, and Apple's much smaller
Agreed. First version of Windows that I can use in a desktop environment and can keep in running 24/7 for as long as I want. Months on end even.
Wow. What kind of crap hardware and/or software are you using ? I've been doing this happily since NT 4.0, in 1996.