Were you the one that claimed that windows vista had to keep compatiblity for everything between dos 2.0 and windows xp? If so then you were lying.
No, but that poster was correct - massive amounts of effort are put in on Microsoft's part to retain as much backwards-compatibility (including bug-compatibility). That doesn't mean everything works, it means most things work.
However, you're changing the subject. Versions of Windows earlier than Win98 don't even come close to be "recent".
IE for one.
Indeed. Stunning than a shared OS component would have different versions for different OS revisions. I can't imagine any other platform doing that.
Both.
If it's in-house then it's your developers faults. Since you've yet to even come up with some third-party examples - despite supposedly being quite typical - it's hard to take anything you say seriously.
Even if it broke one application that proves that it's not 100% bug for bug compatible. So once again you have been proven wrong.
No-one said it was 100% bug compatible.
Even if just one application broke that proves that it wasn't 100% bug for bug compatible and you have been proven wrong.
No-one said it was 100% bug compatible.
So you admit that SP2 was not bug for bug compatible. That's a service pack update to the same version of the operating system.
As for the superdrives, they too in my experience seem to go wrong within 12-18months, generally on the burning side. As you say thank God they're cheap now and they're easy to get at.
I believe this has to do with the much weightier (relative to single-purpose devices) laser head arrangement that has the different types of lasers for each standard.
It also has to do with what you use the drive for. Eg: a drive that only ever reads or writes whole discs will last a lot longer than one constantly being used for random accesses.
No? You'd think nobody would bother making SATA flash disks then...
He's not saying there isn't a market for them, he's saying that the people buying SATA flash disks has very different priorities to the people buying consumer SATA drives.
Good point. There's also one great Exposé feature which is often overlooked, and that is drag & drop support. Try this: start dragging a file from e.g. desktop, call Exposé while dragging, locate the target window and hover the file above that window for a moment, and Exposé brings that window forward. Now you can either drop the file there or keep on browsing elsewhere with the help of spring-loaded folders.
In Windows, start your drag & drop, then either Alt-Tab to the destination window, or hover the cursor over the appropriate Taskbar button until the windows raises to the front.
So one of the 4 reasons to upgrade to Vista is because it's more secure, and the fact that Microsoft can't seem to get their security systems to work in reasonable ways is fine, because you can turn off the security altogether?
Except the security systems *do* work in a reasonable way. Everyone I've seen criticising it is either a) too used to just being able to do anything, b) complaining because it's not like OS X/Linux/whatever or c) using unrealistic contrived examples because they have an axe to grind.
What about the people who need security, don't want their system overrun by hackers, spyware, and viruses, but just don't want it to be so annoying as to pop up when you want to delete a shortcut on your desktop?
You won't get a pop up in that situation. You *will* get a popup if you try to delete a shortcut that resides on the "All Users" Desktop, for what should hopefully be obvious reasons.
No, the G5 machines I've used have all had sufficient RAM. I kitted out my mum's iMac with 1.5G and the PowerMacs had 2GB - 4GB.
My Mini I bought to run Windows MCE, not OS X, so I didn't really spend long using it with OS X. But I've got more than enough knowledge and experience to account for memory-starvation-induced-slowness, and it was still slower than that.
On a PowerPC machine, the sweet spot for everyday use with 3-6 apps open at once is around 1.25GB. On an Intel machine, memory requirements are higher. For OS X use without any virtualization, at least 1.5GB is needed; if you want to run Parallels and do anything useful (i.e. at least 512MB on the Windows side) you need 2GB. If, like on your Mini, you have integrated graphics, you pretty much want 2GB no matter what.
IME, the sluggishness of OS X is independent of RAM (past a certain minimum point) - it's just *slow*.
If you have enough memory, the CPU performance of the machine is far less important. A 400MHz PowerMac G4 with the max 2 gigs of RAM doesn't feel snappy (menus draw a little slowly, etc.) but it launches apps quickly, swaps between them quickly, and has no problem with all the eye candy. It would be less frustrating to use than a Core Duo Mini with 512MB RAM, and certainly better than a 600MHz P3 trying to run Aero.
I can't agree. I've found OS X to be sluggish on even high end multiprocessor G5s with multiple gigs of RAM. It's unquestionably bottlenecks, inefficiencies and lack of tuning in the OS itself. Back when OS X first came out, I assumed it was just the anaemic G4 architecture - but when the faster G5s came out and it was *still* slow, I could only conclude it was the software. My next thought was that it was because it was a microkernel running everything in userspace - but like Microsoft Apple have moved most stuff into kernel space anyway, which should eliminate most of that problem.
I haven't used Vista extensively yet, largely due to lack of interest, but the brief play I have had, suggest it won't be as slow as OS X, assuming a machine that's reasonably recent. If that 600Mhz P3 has a suitable video card (and basic Aero-capable cards are dirt cheap) and >=1GB RAM, I'd be willing to be money it would run Vista+Aero better than a Mac of similar vintage (with similar upgrades) will run OS X.
The new gui is just a fraction of what Vista offers and i'm amazed at home many people praise it or deteste it based on that single aspect alone.
Indeed. It's amazing (if not depressing) to see how many tech-oriented people criticise Vista as being "just a skin on XP", yet have no interest in the myriad under-the-hood modifications that have been made.
UAC annoying? Not really, it finally juts alerts you to a change that affects your system as a whole. UAC used to be MUCH more annoying on previous betas but really is a non issue for most people on 5728 or higher because once your running there really isn't much you need to change and being alerted to changes that can impact your system is a good thing.
Not only that, but I'm yet to see a single example of "annoying UAC prompts" that isn't a) perfectly justifiable and b) would (or *should*) happen on other platforms with similar functionality.
Here are some subjective comments from someone who operates two laptops - a ThinkPad running FreeBSD and a PowerBook running OS X - which I hope will answer your questions on the Os X side.
I'd struggle to take anyone seriously who calls OS X "fast" on a G4-based machine...
Sure, you can drag windows around to your heart's content and some of the flashy effects - if they're handled within the video card - rarely slow down too much. But the UI as a whole becomes very sluggish under moderate load, even with beastly hardware, as soon as you try and do anything *usefully* interactive with it.
I quite like using OS X, but I have been very disappointed with its performance, even on relatively fast machines like my mum's G5 iMac, dual-processor G5 PowerMacs and Core Duo Minis (although my Mini is memory constrained with only 512MB). On my 1Ghz/768MB iBook, it's frustratingly slow to use more than one app at a time (and even the one can get chunky).
To put it another way, Apple and Microsoft could very easily produce a modern *-lite version of their respective OSes and sell them to people with older or not maxed out hardware and probably keep a high percentage of the population happy with just that.
I'm not sure if I agree with your measure of "easily" here...
Excluding gamers, developers, and people who work a lot with media (photoshop, video editing, etc), a 500Mhz box running windows 98 with office, outlook, and IE serves the vast majority just fine, but where is the profit in that?(*)
The hypothetical person would be far better served by an NT4 (which will fly on that sort of hardware) or Windows 2000 (which will still be fast), than any version of DOS-based Windows, unless you have specific legacy requirements that demand it.
I am a mac user too and quite honestly except for the new "Ohhs and Ahhs" it does not seem to be much different than XP.
Of course it doesn't *look* very different - even ignoring that the vast bulk of changes are under the hood and not user-visible (just like most of the OS X updates have been), it would be self-defeating to make any dramatic UI changes.
Nonsense. At best software requires win98 or better.
Uh, yeah, my point exactly. See that "remotely modern" part ? >8 year old PCs don't really fall into that category.
Most software I have seen requires XPSP2 or better. Like I said even MS software has different versions for different windows.
For example ?
In that case we are living in a different universe. Where I work every version of windows disrupts our software some way or another.
In-house or third party software ?
SP2 was especially painful.
The list of software SP2 broke wasn't particularly big, relatively speaking. The list of software it broke that wasn't already broken by virtue of being badly written, vanishingly small.
The G5 iMacs do have an excellent internal layout. Open yours up and check.
It's not actually mine, it's my mum's (although I did pay for it, so I suppose it is mine in a way...), and since she lives a long way away, it's hard to just pull it apart at a whim:).
However, this, this and this would suggest it's not as nice as earlier ones - particularly since you have to go in through the front, past the screen, to get at the guts of the newer models.
And I still think they could have used a (replaceable) PCIe-slotted video card without changing the iMac form factor much...
Why? When I go do download some software from MS either it's only available for XP/2000 or it offers different downloads for 98, NT, XP, XP SP2, NT 3.5+, 2000, 2003 etc.
Well that's hardly surprising, since most of the stuff you're going to be downloading off Microsoft is going to be things like TweakUI, patches, drivers, etc. Of *course* stuff that meddles with under-the-hood OS features is going to require OS-specific versions. You'd hardly expect the XP SP2 to install on Windows 98, for example.
It doesn't apply in general, however. Most software just has one version, and that runs on basically any remotely modern version of Windows. Some may have separate versions for DOS and NT-based Windows which, given they're fundamentally complete different OSes, is hardly unreasonable.
Clearly every version of windows is slightly incompatible with other versions. Even service packs break backwards compatibility requiring separate downloads for XP and XP SP2.
I don't think I've ever seen separate downloads for XP vs XP+SP2 without exceptional circumstances. It's certainly not anything that could be implied to be "common".
Service packs rarely break software, and when they do it's usually with a very good reason (eg: apps using undocumented APIs).
I think vista will not be fully backwards compatible with any other MS operating system. Some things will work but I would expect everything to be either completely or partially borked.
Based on history, I would expect the vast majority of common-use software to work transparently out of the box, largely due to massive efforts on Microsoft's part to make Vista "bug compatible" with previous versions of Windows.
You probably think it's bland, white and ugly, too. But you can't deny it's the most elegantly designed PC for sale anywhere.
I think the internals could have been a lot nicer.
For example, I'd be more than happy to sacrifice a bit of size - particularly thickness, which is rarely even seen - to have a machine using a standard , replaceable PCIe video card (even if it was only half-length and/or low profile), a more easily accessible drive sled (like, say, the MacBook) and better ventilation so the damn thing didn't get so hot.
It's a bit surprising (well, apart from the non-upgradeable video), actually, as the majority of Apple machines have excellent internal layout.
(Talking about a G5 iMac w/iSight here, but as I understand it the Intel iMacs are very similar).
Some may deride Apple for the design of the Mac Pro case, but if you open it, you will immediately notice that they REALLY spent some time designing the layout of the interior parts. Heck even the the old Sawtooth generation G3/G4 towers (circa 1999) had that nifty side-handle design where the motherboard sat on a hinged door.
The PowerMacs are certainly nice, but there's no shortage of PC cases - in both full-PC and component guise - that are just as good.
Our Dell Optiplexes, for example, are laid out basically the same as the Macs and just as easy to work in - albeit not quite as pretty (the drive sleds don't have covers, stuff like that).
Ok, so I missed one- but I haven't seen a server with RS232 ports in ages [...]
Unless you're talking about Blade servers, who sells a server that *doesn't* have at least one RS232 port (or equivalent - our Sun x4100s use RJ45 connectors for their serial ports) ?
Actually I would bet that Google servers DON'T have a video card, and that all of them have RJ-45 SOL support (or something like it). The reason being that Google has admitted that they fully embrace the commodity distributed server system. Google will periodically host talks at my university where they explain all this in [too much] detail.
Who sells commodity servers without motherboard-integrated video cards ?
Why doesn't the U.S. completely dismantle all of their nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, if they are going to go on crusades against any other countries that have them?
Because then they would be vulnerable to attack from those that haven't.
I don't think that the U.S. should have nukes. If there were no nuclear weapons, the world would be a safer place.
Highly questionable.
But one cannot avoid seeing the stinking hypocrisy in the U.S. acting like they have some moral authority to decide who in the world is responsible enough have nukes, when there is only one county in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons... twice... on civilians.
I think what kept the USA and the USSR from fighting more openly was mutually assured destruction. I also think Iraq has been invaded and North Korea hasn't been yet is due to North Korea having claimed to posses nuclear weapons and Iraq denying the same.
It's got nothing to do with North Korea's supposed possession of nuclear weapons. It's got to do with:
* A complete and utter lack of anything interesting in North Korea worth fighting over
* All the short range weapons North Korea has aimed at South Korea, in particular Seoul
Although these were a very solid twenty mishaps that almost lead to nuclear war, why are they all tied to the U.S. & Russia?
Because between them and their allies, the world (or at least the modern civilisation/armed-to-the-point-of-world-destructi on part of it) was pretty evenly divided into two sides.
Frankly, the India/Pakistan development of a nuclear arsenol worries me more than what happened historically between the U.S. & Russia.
In what context ? Certainly, if India and Pakistan lob a few nukes at each other a lot of people are going to die, but it's never[0] going to lead to the sort of "back to the stone age" style cataclysm a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia (and their respective allies) would have been.
[0] Well, maybe with the war-crazy loonies currently running America it could conceivably happen, but even today I'd have to say it well and truly falls into the "extremely unlikely" basket.
Re:Too much "innovation", too little scope for cha
on
GUIs Get a Makeover
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The purpose of the Start Menu was to avoid the inevitable look-and-feel lawsuit from Apple. Windows 3.x's Program Manager made it look too much like a Mac. So they crammed it all into one impossible-to-navigate but easy-to-defend-in-court menu.
Why would they do that when they were creating a system *after* Apple (thankfully) lost the "Look and Feel" court case ?
Nobody said anything about waving your arms in front of you 8 hours a day - I'd imagine you'd hold it in your lap like a big book. Go check out a tablet pc, then imagine not having to use a stylus, but being able to use all your fingers to manipulate objects onscreen.
At which point the problem becomes neck fatigue from looking down into your lap all day...
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No, but that poster was correct - massive amounts of effort are put in on Microsoft's part to retain as much backwards-compatibility (including bug-compatibility). That doesn't mean everything works, it means most things work.
However, you're changing the subject. Versions of Windows earlier than Win98 don't even come close to be "recent".
IE for one.
Indeed. Stunning than a shared OS component would have different versions for different OS revisions. I can't imagine any other platform doing that.
Both.
If it's in-house then it's your developers faults. Since you've yet to even come up with some third-party examples - despite supposedly being quite typical - it's hard to take anything you say seriously.
Even if it broke one application that proves that it's not 100% bug for bug compatible. So once again you have been proven wrong.
No-one said it was 100% bug compatible.
Even if just one application broke that proves that it wasn't 100% bug for bug compatible and you have been proven wrong.
No-one said it was 100% bug compatible.
So you admit that SP2 was not bug for bug compatible. That's a service pack update to the same version of the operating system.
No-one said it was 100% bug compatible.
I believe this has to do with the much weightier (relative to single-purpose devices) laser head arrangement that has the different types of lasers for each standard.
It also has to do with what you use the drive for. Eg: a drive that only ever reads or writes whole discs will last a lot longer than one constantly being used for random accesses.
He's not saying there isn't a market for them, he's saying that the people buying SATA flash disks has very different priorities to the people buying consumer SATA drives.
In Windows, start your drag & drop, then either Alt-Tab to the destination window, or hover the cursor over the appropriate Taskbar button until the windows raises to the front.
This behaviour has been present since Windows 95.
Except the security systems *do* work in a reasonable way. Everyone I've seen criticising it is either a) too used to just being able to do anything, b) complaining because it's not like OS X/Linux/whatever or c) using unrealistic contrived examples because they have an axe to grind.
What about the people who need security, don't want their system overrun by hackers, spyware, and viruses, but just don't want it to be so annoying as to pop up when you want to delete a shortcut on your desktop?
You won't get a pop up in that situation. You *will* get a popup if you try to delete a shortcut that resides on the "All Users" Desktop, for what should hopefully be obvious reasons.
No, the G5 machines I've used have all had sufficient RAM. I kitted out my mum's iMac with 1.5G and the PowerMacs had 2GB - 4GB.
My Mini I bought to run Windows MCE, not OS X, so I didn't really spend long using it with OS X. But I've got more than enough knowledge and experience to account for memory-starvation-induced-slowness, and it was still slower than that.
On a PowerPC machine, the sweet spot for everyday use with 3-6 apps open at once is around 1.25GB. On an Intel machine, memory requirements are higher. For OS X use without any virtualization, at least 1.5GB is needed; if you want to run Parallels and do anything useful (i.e. at least 512MB on the Windows side) you need 2GB. If, like on your Mini, you have integrated graphics, you pretty much want 2GB no matter what.
IME, the sluggishness of OS X is independent of RAM (past a certain minimum point) - it's just *slow*.
If you have enough memory, the CPU performance of the machine is far less important. A 400MHz PowerMac G4 with the max 2 gigs of RAM doesn't feel snappy (menus draw a little slowly, etc.) but it launches apps quickly, swaps between them quickly, and has no problem with all the eye candy. It would be less frustrating to use than a Core Duo Mini with 512MB RAM, and certainly better than a 600MHz P3 trying to run Aero.
I can't agree. I've found OS X to be sluggish on even high end multiprocessor G5s with multiple gigs of RAM. It's unquestionably bottlenecks, inefficiencies and lack of tuning in the OS itself. Back when OS X first came out, I assumed it was just the anaemic G4 architecture - but when the faster G5s came out and it was *still* slow, I could only conclude it was the software. My next thought was that it was because it was a microkernel running everything in userspace - but like Microsoft Apple have moved most stuff into kernel space anyway, which should eliminate most of that problem.
I haven't used Vista extensively yet, largely due to lack of interest, but the brief play I have had, suggest it won't be as slow as OS X, assuming a machine that's reasonably recent. If that 600Mhz P3 has a suitable video card (and basic Aero-capable cards are dirt cheap) and >=1GB RAM, I'd be willing to be money it would run Vista+Aero better than a Mac of similar vintage (with similar upgrades) will run OS X.
If you're happy with the performance of OS X on a G3 Mac, you'll be very happy with the performance of XP on a ca. 1999 PC.
No, they're not. Indeed, the UI is is probably the *least* significant change in Vista from XP (more accurately, Windows 2003).
Indeed. It's amazing (if not depressing) to see how many tech-oriented people criticise Vista as being "just a skin on XP", yet have no interest in the myriad under-the-hood modifications that have been made.
UAC annoying? Not really, it finally juts alerts you to a change that affects your system as a whole. UAC used to be MUCH more annoying on previous betas but really is a non issue for most people on 5728 or higher because once your running there really isn't much you need to change and being alerted to changes that can impact your system is a good thing.
Not only that, but I'm yet to see a single example of "annoying UAC prompts" that isn't a) perfectly justifiable and b) would (or *should*) happen on other platforms with similar functionality.
How do you figure that ? It's not like Apple moving to Intel CPUs has made Macs any different from a consumer perspective.
I'd struggle to take anyone seriously who calls OS X "fast" on a G4-based machine...
Sure, you can drag windows around to your heart's content and some of the flashy effects - if they're handled within the video card - rarely slow down too much. But the UI as a whole becomes very sluggish under moderate load, even with beastly hardware, as soon as you try and do anything *usefully* interactive with it.
I quite like using OS X, but I have been very disappointed with its performance, even on relatively fast machines like my mum's G5 iMac, dual-processor G5 PowerMacs and Core Duo Minis (although my Mini is memory constrained with only 512MB). On my 1Ghz/768MB iBook, it's frustratingly slow to use more than one app at a time (and even the one can get chunky).
I'm not sure if I agree with your measure of "easily" here...
Excluding gamers, developers, and people who work a lot with media (photoshop, video editing, etc), a 500Mhz box running windows 98 with office, outlook, and IE serves the vast majority just fine, but where is the profit in that?(*)
The hypothetical person would be far better served by an NT4 (which will fly on that sort of hardware) or Windows 2000 (which will still be fast), than any version of DOS-based Windows, unless you have specific legacy requirements that demand it.
Of course it doesn't *look* very different - even ignoring that the vast bulk of changes are under the hood and not user-visible (just like most of the OS X updates have been), it would be self-defeating to make any dramatic UI changes.
Uh, yeah, my point exactly. See that "remotely modern" part ? >8 year old PCs don't really fall into that category.
Most software I have seen requires XPSP2 or better. Like I said even MS software has different versions for different windows.
For example ?
In that case we are living in a different universe. Where I work every version of windows disrupts our software some way or another.
In-house or third party software ?
SP2 was especially painful.
The list of software SP2 broke wasn't particularly big, relatively speaking. The list of software it broke that wasn't already broken by virtue of being badly written, vanishingly small.
It's not actually mine, it's my mum's (although I did pay for it, so I suppose it is mine in a way...), and since she lives a long way away, it's hard to just pull it apart at a whim :).
However, this, this and this would suggest it's not as nice as earlier ones - particularly since you have to go in through the front, past the screen, to get at the guts of the newer models.
And I still think they could have used a (replaceable) PCIe-slotted video card without changing the iMac form factor much...
Well that's hardly surprising, since most of the stuff you're going to be downloading off Microsoft is going to be things like TweakUI, patches, drivers, etc. Of *course* stuff that meddles with under-the-hood OS features is going to require OS-specific versions. You'd hardly expect the XP SP2 to install on Windows 98, for example.
It doesn't apply in general, however. Most software just has one version, and that runs on basically any remotely modern version of Windows. Some may have separate versions for DOS and NT-based Windows which, given they're fundamentally complete different OSes, is hardly unreasonable.
Clearly every version of windows is slightly incompatible with other versions. Even service packs break backwards compatibility requiring separate downloads for XP and XP SP2.
I don't think I've ever seen separate downloads for XP vs XP+SP2 without exceptional circumstances. It's certainly not anything that could be implied to be "common".
Service packs rarely break software, and when they do it's usually with a very good reason (eg: apps using undocumented APIs).
I think vista will not be fully backwards compatible with any other MS operating system. Some things will work but I would expect everything to be either completely or partially borked.
Based on history, I would expect the vast majority of common-use software to work transparently out of the box, largely due to massive efforts on Microsoft's part to make Vista "bug compatible" with previous versions of Windows.
I think the internals could have been a lot nicer.
For example, I'd be more than happy to sacrifice a bit of size - particularly thickness, which is rarely even seen - to have a machine using a standard , replaceable PCIe video card (even if it was only half-length and/or low profile), a more easily accessible drive sled (like, say, the MacBook) and better ventilation so the damn thing didn't get so hot.
It's a bit surprising (well, apart from the non-upgradeable video), actually, as the majority of Apple machines have excellent internal layout.
(Talking about a G5 iMac w/iSight here, but as I understand it the Intel iMacs are very similar).
The PowerMacs are certainly nice, but there's no shortage of PC cases - in both full-PC and component guise - that are just as good.
Our Dell Optiplexes, for example, are laid out basically the same as the Macs and just as easy to work in - albeit not quite as pretty (the drive sleds don't have covers, stuff like that).
Unless you're talking about Blade servers, who sells a server that *doesn't* have at least one RS232 port (or equivalent - our Sun x4100s use RJ45 connectors for their serial ports) ?
Who sells commodity servers without motherboard-integrated video cards ?
Because then they would be vulnerable to attack from those that haven't.
I don't think that the U.S. should have nukes. If there were no nuclear weapons, the world would be a safer place.
Highly questionable.
But one cannot avoid seeing the stinking hypocrisy in the U.S. acting like they have some moral authority to decide who in the world is responsible enough have nukes, when there is only one county in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons... twice... on civilians.
The world of today is not the world of 1945.
It's got nothing to do with North Korea's supposed possession of nuclear weapons. It's got to do with:
* A complete and utter lack of anything interesting in North Korea worth fighting over
* All the short range weapons North Korea has aimed at South Korea, in particular Seoul
* _China's_ possession of nuclear weapons
* China's possession of _economic_ weapons
Because between them and their allies, the world (or at least the modern civilisation/armed-to-the-point-of-world-destructi on part of it) was pretty evenly divided into two sides.
Frankly, the India/Pakistan development of a nuclear arsenol worries me more than what happened historically between the U.S. & Russia.
In what context ? Certainly, if India and Pakistan lob a few nukes at each other a lot of people are going to die, but it's never[0] going to lead to the sort of "back to the stone age" style cataclysm a nuclear exchange between the US and Russia (and their respective allies) would have been.
[0] Well, maybe with the war-crazy loonies currently running America it could conceivably happen, but even today I'd have to say it well and truly falls into the "extremely unlikely" basket.
Why would they do that when they were creating a system *after* Apple (thankfully) lost the "Look and Feel" court case ?
At which point the problem becomes neck fatigue from looking down into your lap all day...