If Linux can beat Longhorn to the punch with a fully 3D rendered GUI, ala OS X, I will switch 100%
Not to smack the OSX hornet's nest, but...
Linux needs to do far more than get to the OSX level if it wants to hold a candle to the Avalon plans Microsoft is not only putting in Longhorn, but WindowsXP.
The only things OSX is doing that Windows2000 didn't do is the off-screen rendering and having a more extensive vector based drawing capabilities ala Adobe.
Avalon is not only a whole new UI system for the OS and applications, but it is a simple development model that will let 10 year olds create 3D applications that look awesome. Easy programming will be a key part of the Avalon in Microsoft's Windows. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE MICROSOFT IN THIS AREA. You will see awesome 3D applications and true 3D implementation that is functional in simple Visual Basic apps written by novice programmers even. Mark my words. (Letting things like Kylix die on Linux is another mistake everyone here is letting happen and should also be addressed, but is off topic for this post)
Additionally, OSX uses very few GPU hardware accelerated features in the UI and is only a 2D accelerated UI. It is not a 3D UI, you can place cameras, lights, etc in a application like you can with Avalon, they are night and day comparisons at this point.
With that said, it is sad that Microsoft's UI Beta is far more advanced that even what Apple seems to be planning or providing for its users, Apple is supposed to be the Graphics leader, and once again they are still playing catch up.
As to Linux, and the open source world, we need a revamp on a mass scale. A new X11 system that is hardware integrated expanded OpenGL and a whole Multimedia API like Microsoft's DirectX.
Someone above mentioned that things are harder on Linux and Windows, but actually they are right now easier on Windows, as developers, even hard core gaming developers can write to DirectX for all aspects of input, and audio and visual output and not have to deal with specifics of the user's hardware. This is something Apple also needs to implement, but they never have had to since they always control the hardware, but as their hardware expands with different features, it is something Apple needs to consider as well.
Hardware abstraction is a good thing, especially when dealing with high performance hardware like GPUs and Sound Cards that have built in rendering capabilities.
Linux, Open Source in General, and even Apple need to think past just getting by with OpenGL, and have a full consistent API if we are ever going to see a lot of great UI enhancements to these OSes, and offerings of Games that are easier for developers to port and create for the OSes.
Just like the Xbox, half the reason of its success is the ease of development for the games, using a DirectX interface made it super easy for Windows game developers to flip out an Xbox version and vise versa. It also made it easy for developers to take a game for the PS2 or GameCube and drop it into the standard DirectX programming on the XBox and Windows to create games for both platforms.
With DirectX the ports to the XBox and Windows became easy and routine as they only had to learn to port to DirectX, not a mass array of hardware. Which is where we are now, even with OpenGL and the driver situation in the open source world.
Ok, kind of got off on a rant, but we need to encourage the original developer and our open source leaders need to sit down and design a system that if far beyond OpenGL and the standard *nix models that are outdated for pumping mass amounts of audio and visual data to the screen and even across networks.
We also need to slap Apple in the face to get their attention. Them having control of the hardware is GREAT for them and their OS development, but it DOES LITTLE for gaming developers for OSX or for application programmers that want to add real 3D interface elements to their applications.
I rememeber reading once that IE loads into memory at boot. That is, IE is substantially tied in as a portion of the operating system itself. This makes for superb integration with the UI for all system tasks, it also results in blazing fast speed as a browser.
There is truth and myth in this. The IE HTML Rendering engine can be loaded into RAM if any application requests the services, if Explorer is left for HTML browsing setup, then yes it gets loaded withing Explorer.
However, it IE (the Browser) does not load into memory, and it is also work noting that the IE HTML rendering engine loading would not be much different in comparasion to the TrueType and bitmap rending portions of the OS being loaded when an application calls for them.
IE Browser, and the IE HTML Rendering format for Windows are NOT the same thing, even though the IE Browser uses the IT HTML Rendering engine, just as ANY program could.
Could happen, but I don't know why people miss the fact the TAB concept was something Microsoft was doing back in IE3/4.
Each browser window created (and still can) create tab on the taskbar of Windows itself, so flipping between pages in IE is just using the tabs on the Windows Taskbar.
(Remember the Gates demonstrations of using the Win95 Taskbar like flipping channels on the TV).
When I use IE, I have several IE tabs on my taskbar and can flip to them faster than using a MDI concept of Tabs like Opera and FireFox. And this is especially handy when you run with 1600 and higher resolutions and have many browser windows all over your screen when you have the screen realestate.
Microsoft's implementation that is overlooked is actually a better document model as it is the progression from MDI applications to free form application in the UI.
Well, artists got their 17" monitor, anyway you are talking to the wrong person here
Yeah, at 1440x900... Great for geeks watching movies, not very high resolution for Graphic Designers...
And at 17" the pixelization is very very noticeable and annoying.
And sorry for harping on you directly, that wasn't my intent.. My posts tend to be more for the general consensus than just usually directed at a single person in a thread.
Actually I didn't think your 'incredible' specs were worth even mentioning. The only 'spec' that would not have been a standard feature in the PC world would have been the gigabit ethernet. So Apple gets a point there.
And the camera on the sony wasn't a 'feature' it was one of the few things that helped people remember them. If you want a list of 20 features of from PC laptops that you were standard or could get that Apple didn't offer, just ask. Geesh.
I can give you a list of stuff from my 2002 laptop that Apple STILL DOES NOT OFFER. Try a 1600x1200 LCD (Darn nice for us graphic artists - too bad Apple don't cater to them anymore). Shall I go on, or do you get the point?
Quit DEFENDING WHAT THEY ARE SPOON FEEDING YOU AND DEMAND MORE FROM THEM. By reponding to my posts are you doing nothing but proving my point that you are brainwashed/have no idea what Apple has compared to other products/and do not have the guts to stand up to Apple and EXPECT MORE!!!
My rant is get Apple fans to be REAL FANS and not just take what Apple gives them and instead question what Apple is giving them.
Do your test machines that you have running these more recent OS's have AntiVirus protection on them?
Long term test units do, as well as units that are directly involved in beta testing of anti-viral software. Install and wipe system usually don't get it, and most techs don't run real time virus software, as they are monitoring what is coming in and out on the system and nightly or weekly if the are away from the shop, scans are plenty to keep the systems virus free.
Now I will bite... why?
If this is going to turn into so debate over the performance degradation of real-time scanning or something like that, you can skip it. There is a performance hit for some anti-virus real time protection based on the heuristics turned on at the time, however, considering most anti-virus software (like Norton) was running real time virus protection with little to no performance loss on 386 and 486 class systems, the numbers in today's comparisons are not very big at all.
At the time there was no sony vaio, so the powerbook titanium was the smallest laptop around
Actually, no...
Sony has hand cross handheld size laptops since at least 1997. They had built in Camera, full size keyboards, and were full computers that ran about 600 or 700mhz. The are also tons of other lesser name brands that have comparable computers with even more features. Check out Fuijitsu and countless others.
If you think the Apple PowerBook is extraordinary, they you NEED to pay attention to the REST of the world a bit more, then GO BACK TO APPLE AND SAY - "WHY DON'T WE HAVE THESE FEATURES, ESPECIALLY THE ONES GEEKS IN THE NON MAC WORLD HAVE HAD FOR YEARS AND YEARS"
As long as you eat the dog food Apple gives you and you NEVER question it, you will NEVER get the cutting edge or leading technology from Apple. Why do they need to invest in R&D, their marketing department can just simply fool the customer base, as they are CONTINUALLY DOING.
Turn them around and instead of being fooled; get them to give us the BEST TECHNOLOGY THERE IS, PERIOD.
Please wake up Mac users and stop justifying what the 'great' Apple is giving us, and demand true technology leading equipment in EVERY aspect.
There are so many fringe concepts, theories and technologies that they could implement today and they don't because the users don't know any better and are easily conned with the technology Apple keeps giving them.
A budget-class PC laptop of that time might have been about 900 MHz to 1.1 GHz. I wouldn't consider such a laptop anything near useable. They tended to have poor quality sound systems that bottlenecked the processor and atrociously short battery times. The ibook was legendary for its excellent battery performance
Get off what you 'assume', assumption is just intuition for idiots.
We have test 200mhz laptops with 80mb of ram 5gb hard drives, released 1997 all running WindowsXP Professional (yes even the themes turned on) and they benchmark faster than they did when they shipped with Windows 95.
Secondly, they can do full 30fps video as long as it is uncompressed AVI or even WMA 9. QuickTime (MPEG4), MPEG2, and real stutter horribly on video playback unfortunately.
As for battery, don't know, these laptops hold for 3hrs with a single charge, and yes techs are REQUIRED and have no problems using them daily in test scenarios.
Now if you really want to compare laptops to laptops, why don't I show you our 900mhz AMD Compaq laptops, they have JBL sound systems in them, and there isn't a single feature the cannot perform with the exception of running a T&L based video game, as the integrated video doesn't handle it, oh wait, the 900mhz PowerBook video didn't support such features either. (BTW, This is not to say that there are not several 900-1000mhz class laptops that have upper end video features), I am just using what we have in our test labs for comparison.
The 900mhz laptop has a DVD/CDRW, came out late 2000 early 2001 (trying to remember if we got them before holidays or not). They do full software DVD decoding with less than 20% CPU utilization and pretty much do anything fairly fast that we through at them. We even have a beta version of Windows 2003 server running on one with 256mb of RAM. (Yes we are always pushing the limits, but it works as fast as the WindowsXP pro version of the machine sitting next to it.)
Now off my rant... Macs truly are great, and the PowerBooks of the time were great, but that DOES NOT MEAN they were the BEST, WILL ALWAYS BE THE BEST, or you should be complacent listening to Apple tell you what you are getting is the best when it might not be. It is time for us as MAC users to stand up and DEMAND that technology becomes as much a part of what a MAC is as the EASE of USE in the Interface.
The time is now, we need to STOP accepting what they tell us and give us and force them to truly give us the LATEST technological concepts, not just the above average concepts when compared to the PC world. These are Macs, they SHOULD BE BETTER. IT shouldn't even be subjected to a debate they should be so far advanced a debate should not be possible. PERIOD.
Sadly, it just isn't true now, and has not been for many years. OSX has giving the Mac world some credibility backing OS technology, but not Apple needs to take Macs to the next level.
Even if my comment inspires one Mac user to say hey Apple, we want better, then maybe we all can be the symbolic person with the hammer from their 1984 video and WAKE THEM UP this time.
I assume you mean folder view system, not FILE SYSTEM.
I don't think you will find many people, even at Slashdot that will have a lot of bad things to say about XP/NT's File System (NTFS). It is one of the few things Microsoft's team did well.
I don't know if PIII laptops can run iTunes or not, but my six year old Powerbook spins tunes
I Sure hope it can, our test 1997 200mhz Laptops can even run Windows Media Player 10, with full screen video at 30fps. (Quicktime runs ok on it, just video is choppy, I haven't installed Itunes on it) RealPlayer is a dog on it and Mpeg2 is not possible, but Mpeg 1 usually runs without a hitch on it as well.)
Anyway, Itunes or any other 'audio' only software should be able to run on about any level of hardware made in the last 10 years.
Well considering the xbox runs an nt variant with near-directx
You say this like it is a bad thing. If the open source world is every going to be able to overcome Microsoft we need to understand their Strengths and why.
NT is a solid OS and a solid Kernel Technology, it is the Win32 and the Windows Subsystem that people don't like and target for viruses.
NT (pure NT) is a solid strong OS design, Cutler and his team were no fools.
The second thing is DirectX. Everyone seems to keep thinking it is just about video and compares it to OpenGL.
1) DirectX would not have existed if the OpenGL Group that MS was a part would have advanced OpenGL at the time to support lower hardware level access like Microsoft proposed. They refused, and Microsoft came up with DirextX themselves. The OpenGL group did not see 3D in video hardware the way Microsoft did and also wasn't about catering to pushing pixels for games.
2) DirectX cannot be compared to just Open GL because it encompasses all input and multi-media on the computer - further giving developers easy and LOWER level access from everything from the Keyboards, and Joysticks to Sounds Cards and pushing packets over a network for remote game play.
This is why DirectX IS successful, and it is also why, unfortunately, Windows is the main and best Gaming OS platform.
For DirectX to be replaced in open source, we all need to understand it better and WHY it IS successful. We can't just count on OpenGL, we need a full implementation that covers all areas of hardware and gaming like DirectX does. Period.
(Sorry to get off on a rant, cause this post is more to help get open source advocates to open their eyes, rather than be directed at you for making the statement.)
True, but they've had 2005 out as a beta for some time now - he might have meant that. 2005 Express
Ya, 2005 has been in beta for a while now, but because he didn't know how to do a SQL dump and his wording was in reference to 2000 being the last he used, it seemed he wasn't up on the MS SQL available. Besides didn't want others to think 2000 was as ancient as it sounds. It has several major revisions even though it is still called 2000.
The thing is, getting a plain SQL dump out of MS SQL Server isn't possible with version 2000, haven't checked since then though. I'm sure this is a deliberate thing tough...
It can be done, just isn't as obvious as people would like.
Secondly Version 2000 is the latest version of MS SQL Server.
The Geforce2 GO driver from Dell that ships with the Inspiron 8100 (which is WHQL certified) for Windows XP crashes about every 5 minutes. So much for WHQL certs.
Oh, and before you say, "You must suck--mine is fine," it is a known issue according to the Dell Crash detection utility.
Sorry about your problem, who are you mad at Dell or NVidia? Nvidia writes the drivers, Microsoft does not, Dell is the one responsible for following or not following the specifications for the Nvidia GPU.
So which is it? Nvidia writing bad drivers? Dell using a higher speed for the GPU in an environment that cannot disperse the heat?
BTW Did you know you can install the newest NVidia Drivers by just telling it to do a manual install and selecting the Geforce2 (non mobile) to get past the mobile driver problems with the Dell? You can also under clock the GPU on the Dell to get its operating temperature back into operational guildlines.
I hope this helps, and I'm glad your post was NOT trying to blame Microsoft for something they don't have anything to do with.
But the gui component runs on the headless machines still,a total waste... And you have to use the admin tools via a remote gui like rdp or vnc.
The GUI consumes NOTHING, NO CPU, and less than 1mb of RAM. If your server hardware can't handle the extra mb, then maybe you should consider getting a 486 for your server with 32mb of RAM. - GEESH
And yes, you can fully administer ANY windows Server via Telnet and command line tools, you never even have to use a GUI from the client or click a button if you don't want to.
People must be confusing Windows9x with WindowsNT or else they are just talking out their butt and have never really administrated Windows Servers.
Windows is a lot like any *nix variant, you can use Xwindows for remote managmenet if you want on *nix and you can use a GUI interface on WindowsNT if you want. BUT NEITHER of them require you to do so.
Additionally, people are used to XWindows on *nix that does take a chunk of RAM and CPU resources from the server, WINDOWS NT is NOT designed like that. The GUI is nothing more than the video card popping into a graphical and non text mode.
In a headless configuratin, there isn't even a video card on the Windows Server, so the only GUI that gets initialized is the RDP protocol waiting in case a client wants to remote administer the Server using a GUI.
I'm a really shocked. Gates seems to get the whole 'privacy' and Rights Management better than I ever dreamed he does.
I assumed he was a monkey boy for the companies that are out to screw everyone. He isn't, and he knows both sides of the fence better than I would have assumed.
He and Microsoft are in a tight spot, they have to either A) have no mechanism for the companies and artists that want to keep content protected or B) provide a mechanism for them so they will be more likely to allow their stuff to be sold or given to consumers electronically.
I think he is pretty much right. The companies that are digital rights nut balls would NEVER let the music or other digital content be distributed electronically if they didn't have a mechanism to do so.
Microsoft is providing that envelope or method for the nuts to do that if they want, but Microsoft is not play any role in who does this or why they do this.
All he and Microsoft is trying to do is make the Nuts happy by giving them the locks they want, and yet leaving the world open for the non-nuts that don't want to do this.
In the end, users win, because they can get content from the NUTS that would not normally distribute their content electronically and users can also get content from companies that are more liberal about distributing their digital media without the restrictions.
So Microsoft is providing the methods for both types of companies to get digital media to consumers, and it will be up to the consumers to make set the stage for which model they prefer.
In the end, the consumers will be the ones that buy from the NUTS or the non-NUTS, and Microsoft is giving the Windows consumers the power to choose which model works the best in the end.
As for the restrictions and mechanisms for protecting confidential information like patient records, this is also a win for the consumer and the doctors for example, as the doctors can feel confident about moving to complete digital offices and not have to worry about an errant employee trying to copy send or illegally provide information about a patient to an insurance company or other party.
It seems Gates and Microsoft's philosophy is to provide the tools and let the users and the content providers fight it out themselves.
Very smart actually. And I truly thought Gates and Microsoft didn't have a much of a clue about what they were doing with digital rights protection.
That use MS Remote Desktop Protocol. Still, it's a GUI. Not everyone wants that. I am far more productive administering a computer with a CLI than a GUI, for example. Every time your hand moves to the rodent (mouse) and back, you waste time.
Actually you can fully admin a GUIless version oF Windows Server using Telnet, have you ever heard of telnet?
You can also use command line remote tools that flip commands to the server in a command line application running on your client.
GUIs on a SERVER are NOT BAD. THERE ARE EVEN MANY REASONS WHY A GUI ON A SERVER is a good thing for some user environment. Take a clustered media server environment, or using servers for more than just file and printer sharing.
Servers are no longer just File and Printer storage and serving devices, they have evolved into so much more. If you want to dog on a company for offering more on their server, then you have no clue of what servers are capable of today or what they will be doing in the next 5 years.
I have even heard the same arguments of why Servers don't need sound cards, but yet you will find tons of servers today doing audio and video stream processing and require audio and video input devices.
Heck even in my own home, my main server process and records video, pulls in sound and redistributes the content to all the computers and devices in the home as well as to my clients when I am away from home. I can watch TV on my laptop using a 3g Verizon card from my SERVER at my house almost anywhere in the United States.
Oh, and I can also access files and print from the server too.
Basic tools. I've yet to completely admin a Win 2K server from a console. Everything I've seen is based on the MMC console.
While MS may supply some tools, third parties don't. Especially, some in-house VB app.
All command built applications, EVEN VB apps, can directly modify, change or do ANYTHING in Windows with out ever even paintina BUTTON on the screen.
So if your third party vendors are not bright enough to create tools that access the STANDARD interface Microsoft has provided that DOES NOT REQUIRE ANY GUI activity, It is your vendors fault, NOT MICROSOFT.
That is why they are command line applications.
AND YES, there is a tool to do EVERYTHING from the command line, in fact, if you were a Windows administrator.
I'm sure a non graphical mode would use less resources, but usually no one is logged onto a server machine locally, and it just shows a logon screen...nothing too intensive.
Exactly, even with WindowsNT4, with an administrator signed into the Server console, the CPU usage for the GUI was 0, since the GUI was completely IDLE. And the Memory Usage for even having Explorer loaded with someone signed in was about 4.5mb.
With no one logged in to the Server, Memory Usage for the GUI is virtually NIL, and CPU usages is NIL.
Why people don't realize that an IDLE GUI consumes NO resources even after 20 years just freaking amazes me.
I think it is great Apple is trying to get into the lower price market. However after reviewing the mini-Mac and also following the posts here, it does nothing more than confirm my essential problems with the Apple Business Model and product offerings.
1) Close Hardware - Little or no Upgrade abilities 2) You are stuck with what they decide you can have (Mic jack, line in, and several other things most people would find essential) 3) Poor performance. Yes I know that on some tests the G4 at a lower MHz does more than an Intel or AMD at the same MHz, however, even in the world of Macs, the mini specifications are low.
Apple is a company that tries to make money out of glitz rather than providing true solutions. It is time they move past the 'cute' and esthetic innovations and instead start innovating and providing HIGH END features into their products that once made Macs 'high end' systems.
(Don't flag me as an Apple basher; I simply want Apple to produce Macs that are more worth of what the original Mac revolution stood for. Back then, Macs not only offered stuff that was hard to find in the x86 market, but features and tools that didn't even exist. There is NOTHING in a Mac or OSX that you cannot find on a PC, and usually at a better price or even better quality. - This is a sad time for Apple. Only the Fan boys and Girls that don't know any better are going to put this product on a pedestal once again and buy it because it is cute and cool. This is not the Apple that I original fell in love with when Mac actually meant cutting edge graphics and features.)
The only place I can see this product having use is in development labs that need cheap Macs for testing software or testing Web sites.
Again I am truly saddened; I want Apple to be the graphics leader again, the ones that have all the gadgets that push the computing world. Instead they are still playing catch up with cheap x86 systems and Open Source OSes and yes even Microsoft Windows.
Bottom line, there is nothing a Mac can do that a 'often cheaper' x86 PC running Linux or WindowsXP cannot do. In fact most people here can list numerous things you can do a WindowsXP system or a Linux system that you just can't even do on a Mac.
Apple no longer provides us with the innovative and cutting edge features we all once loved the Mac for and fell in love with.
Macs do crash, usually because of bad RAM, either as a freeze or a kernel panic with a screen that says so in several languages. Annoyingly mine has frozen once to date, that was after only 2 years of using OS X. YMMV.
Application crashes are a bit more frequent, the good news being that they don't affect the system. They can be a symptom of running out of free unfragmented hard disc space for OS X to play in.
And this is different from any other modern OS how?
Just because the Mac finally got a quite good OS with OSX, doesn't mean that tons of other OSes have not been around doing THE VERY SAME THING FOR A LONG TIME BEFORE OSX.
You want to stick with XP, go ahead. I hear it's almost as stable as OS X.
I think OSX is a good OS, I never said it wasn't, nor did I say that XP, Linux, Solaris, BSD, or 20 other OSes were any better than OSX. Funny that you would paint me as an XP person. It is a good OS too, but NOT THE BEST IN THE WORLD EITHER.
The difference is I don't blindly stick my head up Apples butt just because they finally are offering their customers something that *nix variants, Open Source OSes, and EVEN Microsoft has been offering its customers for years.
Apple is STILL NEW restrospectivily to having a modern OS, and it is great that they finally do. But I get sick of hearing how it is more secure, crashes less, or when people hype 'cool' features in OSX, when these features have been in other OSes for years.
It also annoys me to see people in the Open Source world bend to Apples will when Apple has done VERY LITTLE for the Open Source market or movement. Apple's bread and butter is a Closed Software GUI on Closed Hardware. Apple only pays credit to the Open Source and BSD underpinnings in OSX when licenses require them to, or they get a shot of publicity or fanfar by snow blowing the open source world.
If Apple flips open the GUI and discloses the source, then I will completely rethink the Apple Open Source connectivity, right now it just isn't as real as people would like to believe.
PS. Why do all the I love this OS or I love that OS zealots almost always respond anonymous?
Maybe you're one of ten people who's HEARD about this. But you know, I've SEEN my Win98 box, and even my WinXP box pull random reboots too, and they happen a lot more often.
I have two Macs in my office alone, are you sure you are barking up the right tree?
$100 for security holes? Dumbass. The upgrades are for extended features and bug fixes. Windows did this as Windows 98, and Windows ME. No new features, just bug fixes (and new bugs). Oh yeah, and no Time Commando.
When Panther was released, there was a mass of buzz because Apple specifically said it would not issue security updates for Jaguar. After about a month of bad press and consumers complaining, Apple retracted this policy requiring users to buy the new version to get the security updates.
However, prior to this, with the release of Jaguar, Apple DID require users to buy the updated OSX in order to get the security fixes that came with Jaguar.
And if you don't believe this, you are either living in a dream world, or have no idea about what Apple does with its users. Do a quick google on the subject.
My company deals with TONS of Apple, *nix, and Windows users, trust me, I have been around this topic a bit to long for your revisionist history.
I've been running OSX for well over a year, and I've never had one of these 'random reboots?' Occasionally, when I let my computer sleep, unplugged for an extended period of time on low battery, when I plug it back in, I have to hold the power down to get it to boot up, presumably because of loss of power to memory. However, I have a windows laptop that does the exact same thing.... it's not a mac-specific problem.
Really, a windows computer does this too? Hmm... Do you even know what standby and hibernate are? Do you even know that a computer cannot run indefinitely without power? Geesh...
And I never said random reboots were predominate on OSX, I said when the OS does crash and the system reboots, there are a lot of Mac users that have no idea that their computer just crashed.
All in all, OS X is by far the most stable operating system there is. The only applications that crash more than once a month or so are IE, Powerpoint, and random beta versions.
And yet you claim above you don't have crashes, which is it, or does my conclusion that Mac users don't get what crashes are hold true?
So far with both things you point out, you are just providing evidence for my rash generalization. And I meant it as a rash generalization, I didn't realize that SlashDot Mac users were going to chime in to prove they know nothing about their computer in depth. - Geesh
Before you pretend you're better than any Mac User, I suggest you do some homework.
I wasn't even claiming I'm better than or don't even like Macs. I however don't put them on a false pedestal above all other OSes or Computers out of my ignorance or love of their ideal. I use OSX, Windows, and several *nixes on a daily basis. Not only for support, personal use, and development.
To even hint that I love any one of these far above the others is absurd, you have no idea who I am or what I stand for, so stop putting words in my mouth.
We can only better the computing world by finding and exploring the best ideals from ALL OS concepts and expanding the best ideas to a fulfilled reality. To state that one is the greatest and ignore the rest is not only ignorant, but does nothing but close your mind and stifle your ability to offer insightful or creative input to the computing world.
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If Linux can beat Longhorn to the punch with a fully 3D rendered GUI, ala OS X, I will switch 100%
Not to smack the OSX hornet's nest, but...
Linux needs to do far more than get to the OSX level if it wants to hold a candle to the Avalon plans Microsoft is not only putting in Longhorn, but WindowsXP.
The only things OSX is doing that Windows2000 didn't do is the off-screen rendering and having a more extensive vector based drawing capabilities ala Adobe.
Avalon is not only a whole new UI system for the OS and applications, but it is a simple development model that will let 10 year olds create 3D applications that look awesome. Easy programming will be a key part of the Avalon in Microsoft's Windows. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE MICROSOFT IN THIS AREA. You will see awesome 3D applications and true 3D implementation that is functional in simple Visual Basic apps written by novice programmers even. Mark my words. (Letting things like Kylix die on Linux is another mistake everyone here is letting happen and should also be addressed, but is off topic for this post)
Additionally, OSX uses very few GPU hardware accelerated features in the UI and is only a 2D accelerated UI. It is not a 3D UI, you can place cameras, lights, etc in a application like you can with Avalon, they are night and day comparisons at this point.
With that said, it is sad that Microsoft's UI Beta is far more advanced that even what Apple seems to be planning or providing for its users, Apple is supposed to be the Graphics leader, and once again they are still playing catch up.
As to Linux, and the open source world, we need a revamp on a mass scale. A new X11 system that is hardware integrated expanded OpenGL and a whole Multimedia API like Microsoft's DirectX.
Someone above mentioned that things are harder on Linux and Windows, but actually they are right now easier on Windows, as developers, even hard core gaming developers can write to DirectX for all aspects of input, and audio and visual output and not have to deal with specifics of the user's hardware. This is something Apple also needs to implement, but they never have had to since they always control the hardware, but as their hardware expands with different features, it is something Apple needs to consider as well.
Hardware abstraction is a good thing, especially when dealing with high performance hardware like GPUs and Sound Cards that have built in rendering capabilities.
Linux, Open Source in General, and even Apple need to think past just getting by with OpenGL, and have a full consistent API if we are ever going to see a lot of great UI enhancements to these OSes, and offerings of Games that are easier for developers to port and create for the OSes.
Just like the Xbox, half the reason of its success is the ease of development for the games, using a DirectX interface made it super easy for Windows game developers to flip out an Xbox version and vise versa. It also made it easy for developers to take a game for the PS2 or GameCube and drop it into the standard DirectX programming on the XBox and Windows to create games for both platforms.
With DirectX the ports to the XBox and Windows became easy and routine as they only had to learn to port to DirectX, not a mass array of hardware. Which is where we are now, even with OpenGL and the driver situation in the open source world.
Ok, kind of got off on a rant, but we need to encourage the original developer and our open source leaders need to sit down and design a system that if far beyond OpenGL and the standard *nix models that are outdated for pumping mass amounts of audio and visual data to the screen and even across networks.
We also need to slap Apple in the face to get their attention. Them having control of the hardware is GREAT for them and their OS development, but it DOES LITTLE for gaming developers for OSX or for application programmers that want to add real 3D interface elements to their applications.
I rememeber reading once that IE loads into memory at boot. That is, IE is substantially tied in as a portion of the operating system itself. This makes for superb integration with the UI for all system tasks, it also results in blazing fast speed as a browser.
There is truth and myth in this. The IE HTML Rendering engine can be loaded into RAM if any application requests the services, if Explorer is left for HTML browsing setup, then yes it gets loaded withing Explorer.
However, it IE (the Browser) does not load into memory, and it is also work noting that the IE HTML rendering engine loading would not be much different in comparasion to the TrueType and bitmap rending portions of the OS being loaded when an application calls for them.
IE Browser, and the IE HTML Rendering format for Windows are NOT the same thing, even though the IE Browser uses the IT HTML Rendering engine, just as ANY program could.
Who wants to bet we'll see 'tabs' in IE7
Could happen, but I don't know why people miss the fact the TAB concept was something Microsoft was doing back in IE3/4.
Each browser window created (and still can) create tab on the taskbar of Windows itself, so flipping between pages in IE is just using the tabs on the Windows Taskbar.
(Remember the Gates demonstrations of using the Win95 Taskbar like flipping channels on the TV).
When I use IE, I have several IE tabs on my taskbar and can flip to them faster than using a MDI concept of Tabs like Opera and FireFox. And this is especially handy when you run with 1600 and higher resolutions and have many browser windows all over your screen when you have the screen realestate.
Microsoft's implementation that is overlooked is actually a better document model as it is the progression from MDI applications to free form application in the UI.
Take care,
TheNetAvenger
Well, artists got their 17" monitor, anyway you are talking to the wrong person here
Yeah, at 1440x900... Great for geeks watching movies, not very high resolution for Graphic Designers...
And at 17" the pixelization is very very noticeable and annoying.
And sorry for harping on you directly, that wasn't my intent.. My posts tend to be more for the general consensus than just usually directed at a single person in a thread.
Actually I didn't think your 'incredible' specs were worth even mentioning. The only 'spec' that would not have been a standard feature in the PC world would have been the gigabit ethernet. So Apple gets a point there.
And the camera on the sony wasn't a 'feature' it was one of the few things that helped people remember them. If you want a list of 20 features of from PC laptops that you were standard or could get that Apple didn't offer, just ask. Geesh.
I can give you a list of stuff from my 2002 laptop that Apple STILL DOES NOT OFFER. Try a 1600x1200 LCD (Darn nice for us graphic artists - too bad Apple don't cater to them anymore). Shall I go on, or do you get the point?
Quit DEFENDING WHAT THEY ARE SPOON FEEDING YOU AND DEMAND MORE FROM THEM. By reponding to my posts are you doing nothing but proving my point that you are brainwashed/have no idea what Apple has compared to other products/and do not have the guts to stand up to Apple and EXPECT MORE!!!
My rant is get Apple fans to be REAL FANS and not just take what Apple gives them and instead question what Apple is giving them.
Do your test machines that you have running these more recent OS's have AntiVirus protection on them?
Long term test units do, as well as units that are directly involved in beta testing of anti-viral software. Install and wipe system usually don't get it, and most techs don't run real time virus software, as they are monitoring what is coming in and out on the system and nightly or weekly if the are away from the shop, scans are plenty to keep the systems virus free.
Now I will bite... why?
If this is going to turn into so debate over the performance degradation of real-time scanning or something like that, you can skip it. There is a performance hit for some anti-virus real time protection based on the heuristics turned on at the time, however, considering most anti-virus software (like Norton) was running real time virus protection with little to no performance loss on 386 and 486 class systems, the numbers in today's comparisons are not very big at all.
At the time there was no sony vaio, so the powerbook titanium was the smallest laptop around
Actually, no...
Sony has hand cross handheld size laptops since at least 1997. They had built in Camera, full size keyboards, and were full computers that ran about 600 or 700mhz. The are also tons of other lesser name brands that have comparable computers with even more features. Check out Fuijitsu and countless others.
If you think the Apple PowerBook is extraordinary, they you NEED to pay attention to the REST of the world a bit more, then GO BACK TO APPLE AND SAY - "WHY DON'T WE HAVE THESE FEATURES, ESPECIALLY THE ONES GEEKS IN THE NON MAC WORLD HAVE HAD FOR YEARS AND YEARS"
As long as you eat the dog food Apple gives you and you NEVER question it, you will NEVER get the cutting edge or leading technology from Apple. Why do they need to invest in R&D, their marketing department can just simply fool the customer base, as they are CONTINUALLY DOING.
Turn them around and instead of being fooled; get them to give us the BEST TECHNOLOGY THERE IS, PERIOD.
Please wake up Mac users and stop justifying what the 'great' Apple is giving us, and demand true technology leading equipment in EVERY aspect.
There are so many fringe concepts, theories and technologies that they could implement today and they don't because the users don't know any better and are easily conned with the technology Apple keeps giving them.
A budget-class PC laptop of that time might have been about 900 MHz to 1.1 GHz. I wouldn't consider such a laptop anything near useable. They tended to have poor quality sound systems that bottlenecked the processor and atrociously short battery times. The ibook was legendary for its excellent battery performance
Get off what you 'assume', assumption is just intuition for idiots.
We have test 200mhz laptops with 80mb of ram 5gb hard drives, released 1997 all running WindowsXP Professional (yes even the themes turned on) and they benchmark faster than they did when they shipped with Windows 95.
Secondly, they can do full 30fps video as long as it is uncompressed AVI or even WMA 9. QuickTime (MPEG4), MPEG2, and real stutter horribly on video playback unfortunately.
As for battery, don't know, these laptops hold for 3hrs with a single charge, and yes techs are REQUIRED and have no problems using them daily in test scenarios.
Now if you really want to compare laptops to laptops, why don't I show you our 900mhz AMD Compaq laptops, they have JBL sound systems in them, and there isn't a single feature the cannot perform with the exception of running a T&L based video game, as the integrated video doesn't handle it, oh wait, the 900mhz PowerBook video didn't support such features either. (BTW, This is not to say that there are not several 900-1000mhz class laptops that have upper end video features), I am just using what we have in our test labs for comparison.
The 900mhz laptop has a DVD/CDRW, came out late 2000 early 2001 (trying to remember if we got them before holidays or not). They do full software DVD decoding with less than 20% CPU utilization and pretty much do anything fairly fast that we through at them. We even have a beta version of Windows 2003 server running on one with 256mb of RAM. (Yes we are always pushing the limits, but it works as fast as the WindowsXP pro version of the machine sitting next to it.)
Now off my rant... Macs truly are great, and the PowerBooks of the time were great, but that DOES NOT MEAN they were the BEST, WILL ALWAYS BE THE BEST, or you should be complacent listening to Apple tell you what you are getting is the best when it might not be. It is time for us as MAC users to stand up and DEMAND that technology becomes as much a part of what a MAC is as the EASE of USE in the Interface.
The time is now, we need to STOP accepting what they tell us and give us and force them to truly give us the LATEST technological concepts, not just the above average concepts when compared to the PC world. These are Macs, they SHOULD BE BETTER. IT shouldn't even be subjected to a debate they should be so far advanced a debate should not be possible. PERIOD.
Sadly, it just isn't true now, and has not been for many years. OSX has giving the Mac world some credibility backing OS technology, but not Apple needs to take Macs to the next level.
Even if my comment inspires one Mac user to say hey Apple, we want better, then maybe we all can be the symbolic person with the hammer from their 1984 video and WAKE THEM UP this time.
and STILL has no decent file system?
I assume you mean folder view system, not FILE SYSTEM.
I don't think you will find many people, even at Slashdot that will have a lot of bad things to say about XP/NT's File System (NTFS). It is one of the few things Microsoft's team did well.
I don't know if PIII laptops can run iTunes or not, but my six year old Powerbook spins tunes
I Sure hope it can, our test 1997 200mhz Laptops can even run Windows Media Player 10, with full screen video at 30fps. (Quicktime runs ok on it, just video is choppy, I haven't installed Itunes on it) RealPlayer is a dog on it and Mpeg2 is not possible, but Mpeg 1 usually runs without a hitch on it as well.)
Anyway, Itunes or any other 'audio' only software should be able to run on about any level of hardware made in the last 10 years.
Well considering the xbox runs an nt variant with near-directx
You say this like it is a bad thing. If the open source world is every going to be able to overcome Microsoft we need to understand their Strengths and why.
NT is a solid OS and a solid Kernel Technology, it is the Win32 and the Windows Subsystem that people don't like and target for viruses.
NT (pure NT) is a solid strong OS design, Cutler and his team were no fools.
The second thing is DirectX. Everyone seems to keep thinking it is just about video and compares it to OpenGL.
1) DirectX would not have existed if the OpenGL Group that MS was a part would have advanced OpenGL at the time to support lower hardware level access like Microsoft proposed. They refused, and Microsoft came up with DirextX themselves. The OpenGL group did not see 3D in video hardware the way Microsoft did and also wasn't about catering to pushing pixels for games.
2) DirectX cannot be compared to just Open GL because it encompasses all input and multi-media on the computer - further giving developers easy and LOWER level access from everything from the Keyboards, and Joysticks to Sounds Cards and pushing packets over a network for remote game play.
This is why DirectX IS successful, and it is also why, unfortunately, Windows is the main and best Gaming OS platform.
For DirectX to be replaced in open source, we all need to understand it better and WHY it IS successful. We can't just count on OpenGL, we need a full implementation that covers all areas of hardware and gaming like DirectX does. Period.
(Sorry to get off on a rant, cause this post is more to help get open source advocates to open their eyes, rather than be directed at you for making the statement.)
True, but they've had 2005 out as a beta for some time now - he might have meant that. 2005 Express
Ya, 2005 has been in beta for a while now, but because he didn't know how to do a SQL dump and his wording was in reference to 2000 being the last he used, it seemed he wasn't up on the MS SQL available. Besides didn't want others to think 2000 was as ancient as it sounds. It has several major revisions even though it is still called 2000.
Take Care.
The thing is, getting a plain SQL dump out of MS SQL Server isn't possible with version 2000, haven't checked since then though. I'm sure this is a deliberate thing tough...
It can be done, just isn't as obvious as people would like.
Secondly Version 2000 is the latest version of MS SQL Server.
The Geforce2 GO driver from Dell that ships with the Inspiron 8100 (which is WHQL certified) for Windows XP crashes about every 5 minutes. So much for WHQL certs.
Oh, and before you say, "You must suck--mine is fine," it is a known issue according to the Dell Crash detection utility.
Sorry about your problem, who are you mad at Dell or NVidia? Nvidia writes the drivers, Microsoft does not, Dell is the one responsible for following or not following the specifications for the Nvidia GPU.
So which is it? Nvidia writing bad drivers? Dell using a higher speed for the GPU in an environment that cannot disperse the heat?
BTW Did you know you can install the newest NVidia Drivers by just telling it to do a manual install and selecting the Geforce2 (non mobile) to get past the mobile driver problems with the Dell? You can also under clock the GPU on the Dell to get its operating temperature back into operational guildlines.
I hope this helps, and I'm glad your post was NOT trying to blame Microsoft for something they don't have anything to do with.
But the gui component runs on the headless machines still,a total waste... And you have to use the admin tools via a remote gui like rdp or vnc.
The GUI consumes NOTHING, NO CPU, and less than 1mb of RAM. If your server hardware can't handle the extra mb, then maybe you should consider getting a 486 for your server with 32mb of RAM. - GEESH
And yes, you can fully administer ANY windows Server via Telnet and command line tools, you never even have to use a GUI from the client or click a button if you don't want to.
People must be confusing Windows9x with WindowsNT or else they are just talking out their butt and have never really administrated Windows Servers.
Windows is a lot like any *nix variant, you can use Xwindows for remote managmenet if you want on *nix and you can use a GUI interface on WindowsNT if you want. BUT NEITHER of them require you to do so.
Additionally, people are used to XWindows on *nix that does take a chunk of RAM and CPU resources from the server, WINDOWS NT is NOT designed like that. The GUI is nothing more than the video card popping into a graphical and non text mode.
In a headless configuratin, there isn't even a video card on the Windows Server, so the only GUI that gets initialized is the RDP protocol waiting in case a client wants to remote administer the Server using a GUI.
I'm a really shocked. Gates seems to get the whole 'privacy' and Rights Management better than I ever dreamed he does.
I assumed he was a monkey boy for the companies that are out to screw everyone. He isn't, and he knows both sides of the fence better than I would have assumed.
He and Microsoft are in a tight spot, they have to either A) have no mechanism for the companies and artists that want to keep content protected or B) provide a mechanism for them so they will be more likely to allow their stuff to be sold or given to consumers electronically.
I think he is pretty much right. The companies that are digital rights nut balls would NEVER let the music or other digital content be distributed electronically if they didn't have a mechanism to do so.
Microsoft is providing that envelope or method for the nuts to do that if they want, but Microsoft is not play any role in who does this or why they do this.
All he and Microsoft is trying to do is make the Nuts happy by giving them the locks they want, and yet leaving the world open for the non-nuts that don't want to do this.
In the end, users win, because they can get content from the NUTS that would not normally distribute their content electronically and users can also get content from companies that are more liberal about distributing their digital media without the restrictions.
So Microsoft is providing the methods for both types of companies to get digital media to consumers, and it will be up to the consumers to make set the stage for which model they prefer.
In the end, the consumers will be the ones that buy from the NUTS or the non-NUTS, and Microsoft is giving the Windows consumers the power to choose which model works the best in the end.
As for the restrictions and mechanisms for protecting confidential information like patient records, this is also a win for the consumer and the doctors for example, as the doctors can feel confident about moving to complete digital offices and not have to worry about an errant employee trying to copy send or illegally provide information about a patient to an insurance company or other party.
It seems Gates and Microsoft's philosophy is to provide the tools and let the users and the content providers fight it out themselves.
Very smart actually. And I truly thought Gates and Microsoft didn't have a much of a clue about what they were doing with digital rights protection.
Gates you get a +1 from me today.
That use MS Remote Desktop Protocol. Still, it's a GUI. Not everyone wants that. I am far more productive administering a computer with a CLI than a GUI, for example. Every time your hand moves to the rodent (mouse) and back, you waste time.
Actually you can fully admin a GUIless version oF Windows Server using Telnet, have you ever heard of telnet?
You can also use command line remote tools that flip commands to the server in a command line application running on your client.
GUIs on a SERVER are NOT BAD. THERE ARE EVEN MANY REASONS WHY A GUI ON A SERVER is a good thing for some user environment. Take a clustered media server environment, or using servers for more than just file and printer sharing.
Servers are no longer just File and Printer storage and serving devices, they have evolved into so much more. If you want to dog on a company for offering more on their server, then you have no clue of what servers are capable of today or what they will be doing in the next 5 years.
I have even heard the same arguments of why Servers don't need sound cards, but yet you will find tons of servers today doing audio and video stream processing and require audio and video input devices.
Heck even in my own home, my main server process and records video, pulls in sound and redistributes the content to all the computers and devices in the home as well as to my clients when I am away from home. I can watch TV on my laptop using a 3g Verizon card from my SERVER at my house almost anywhere in the United States.
Oh, and I can also access files and print from the server too.
GEESH.
Except when you had people who would set the server's screen saver to a 3D cycle-hog, without any 3D accelleration in the video card.
Very true, even the Beziers screen saver on NT3.51 and NT4 on a 486 would starve CPU cycles.
But again, if you have someone that clueless administrating a server, chances are, they should be doing something else, like finding a new job. lol
Basic tools. I've yet to completely admin a Win 2K server from a console. Everything I've seen is based on the MMC console.
While MS may supply some tools, third parties don't. Especially, some in-house VB app.
All command built applications, EVEN VB apps, can directly modify, change or do ANYTHING in Windows with out ever even paintina BUTTON on the screen.
So if your third party vendors are not bright enough to create tools that access the STANDARD interface Microsoft has provided that DOES NOT REQUIRE ANY GUI activity, It is your vendors fault, NOT MICROSOFT.
That is why they are command line applications.
AND YES, there is a tool to do EVERYTHING from the command line, in fact, if you were a Windows administrator.
I'm sure a non graphical mode would use less resources, but usually no one is logged onto a server machine locally, and it just shows a logon screen...nothing too intensive.
Exactly, even with WindowsNT4, with an administrator signed into the Server console, the CPU usage for the GUI was 0, since the GUI was completely IDLE. And the Memory Usage for even having Explorer loaded with someone signed in was about 4.5mb.
With no one logged in to the Server, Memory Usage for the GUI is virtually NIL, and CPU usages is NIL.
Why people don't realize that an IDLE GUI consumes NO resources even after 20 years just freaking amazes me.
Thank you for bringing this point up.
All the admin tools are GUI based. A text mode won't change that.
This was true 9 years ago, have you even heard of Win2K or WinXP or Win2003 Server?
Microsoft even sells headless Windows system, does everyone here live in a cave?
I think it is great Apple is trying to get into the lower price market. However after reviewing the mini-Mac and also following the posts here, it does nothing more than confirm my essential problems with the Apple Business Model and product offerings.
1) Close Hardware - Little or no Upgrade abilities
2) You are stuck with what they decide you can have (Mic jack, line in, and several other things most people would find essential)
3) Poor performance. Yes I know that on some tests the G4 at a lower MHz does more than an Intel or AMD at the same MHz, however, even in the world of Macs, the mini specifications are low.
Apple is a company that tries to make money out of glitz rather than providing true solutions. It is time they move past the 'cute' and esthetic innovations and instead start innovating and providing HIGH END features into their products that once made Macs 'high end' systems.
(Don't flag me as an Apple basher; I simply want Apple to produce Macs that are more worth of what the original Mac revolution stood for. Back then, Macs not only offered stuff that was hard to find in the x86 market, but features and tools that didn't even exist. There is NOTHING in a Mac or OSX that you cannot find on a PC, and usually at a better price or even better quality. - This is a sad time for Apple. Only the Fan boys and Girls that don't know any better are going to put this product on a pedestal once again and buy it because it is cute and cool. This is not the Apple that I original fell in love with when Mac actually meant cutting edge graphics and features.)
The only place I can see this product having use is in development labs that need cheap Macs for testing software or testing Web sites.
Again I am truly saddened; I want Apple to be the graphics leader again, the ones that have all the gadgets that push the computing world. Instead they are still playing catch up with cheap x86 systems and Open Source OSes and yes even Microsoft Windows.
Bottom line, there is nothing a Mac can do that a 'often cheaper' x86 PC running Linux or WindowsXP cannot do. In fact most people here can list numerous things you can do a WindowsXP system or a Linux system that you just can't even do on a Mac.
Apple no longer provides us with the innovative and cutting edge features we all once loved the Mac for and fell in love with.
Sad...
Macs do crash, usually because of bad RAM, either as a freeze or a kernel panic with a screen that says so in several languages. Annoyingly mine has frozen once to date, that was after only 2 years of using OS X. YMMV.
Application crashes are a bit more frequent, the good news being that they don't affect the system. They can be a symptom of running out of free unfragmented hard disc space for OS X to play in.
And this is different from any other modern OS how?
Just because the Mac finally got a quite good OS with OSX, doesn't mean that tons of other OSes have not been around doing THE VERY SAME THING FOR A LONG TIME BEFORE OSX.
You want to stick with XP, go ahead. I hear it's almost as stable as OS X.
I think OSX is a good OS, I never said it wasn't, nor did I say that XP, Linux, Solaris, BSD, or 20 other OSes were any better than OSX. Funny that you would paint me as an XP person. It is a good OS too, but NOT THE BEST IN THE WORLD EITHER.
The difference is I don't blindly stick my head up Apples butt just because they finally are offering their customers something that *nix variants, Open Source OSes, and EVEN Microsoft has been offering its customers for years.
Apple is STILL NEW restrospectivily to having a modern OS, and it is great that they finally do. But I get sick of hearing how it is more secure, crashes less, or when people hype 'cool' features in OSX, when these features have been in other OSes for years.
It also annoys me to see people in the Open Source world bend to Apples will when Apple has done VERY LITTLE for the Open Source market or movement. Apple's bread and butter is a Closed Software GUI on Closed Hardware. Apple only pays credit to the Open Source and BSD underpinnings in OSX when licenses require them to, or they get a shot of publicity or fanfar by snow blowing the open source world.
If Apple flips open the GUI and discloses the source, then I will completely rethink the Apple Open Source connectivity, right now it just isn't as real as people would like to believe.
PS. Why do all the I love this OS or I love that OS zealots almost always respond anonymous?
Maybe you're one of ten people who's HEARD about this. But you know, I've SEEN my Win98 box, and even my WinXP box pull random reboots too, and they happen a lot more often.
I have two Macs in my office alone, are you sure you are barking up the right tree?
-Assumption is the intuition of fools.
$100 for security holes? Dumbass. The upgrades are for extended features and bug fixes. Windows did this as Windows 98, and Windows ME. No new features, just bug fixes (and new bugs). Oh yeah, and no Time Commando.
When Panther was released, there was a mass of buzz because Apple specifically said it would not issue security updates for Jaguar. After about a month of bad press and consumers complaining, Apple retracted this policy requiring users to buy the new version to get the security updates.
However, prior to this, with the release of Jaguar, Apple DID require users to buy the updated OSX in order to get the security fixes that came with Jaguar.
And if you don't believe this, you are either living in a dream world, or have no idea about what Apple does with its users. Do a quick google on the subject.
My company deals with TONS of Apple, *nix, and Windows users, trust me, I have been around this topic a bit to long for your revisionist history.
I've been running OSX for well over a year, and I've never had one of these 'random reboots?' Occasionally, when I let my computer sleep, unplugged for an extended period of time on low battery, when I plug it back in, I have to hold the power down to get it to boot up, presumably because of loss of power to memory. However, I have a windows laptop that does the exact same thing.... it's not a mac-specific problem.
Really, a windows computer does this too? Hmm... Do you even know what standby and hibernate are? Do you even know that a computer cannot run indefinitely without power? Geesh...
And I never said random reboots were predominate on OSX, I said when the OS does crash and the system reboots, there are a lot of Mac users that have no idea that their computer just crashed.
All in all, OS X is by far the most stable operating system there is. The only applications that crash more than once a month or so are IE, Powerpoint, and random beta versions.
And yet you claim above you don't have crashes, which is it, or does my conclusion that Mac users don't get what crashes are hold true?
So far with both things you point out, you are just providing evidence for my rash generalization. And I meant it as a rash generalization, I didn't realize that SlashDot Mac users were going to chime in to prove they know nothing about their computer in depth. - Geesh
Before you pretend you're better than any Mac User, I suggest you do some homework.
I wasn't even claiming I'm better than or don't even like Macs. I however don't put them on a false pedestal above all other OSes or Computers out of my ignorance or love of their ideal. I use OSX, Windows, and several *nixes on a daily basis. Not only for support, personal use, and development.
To even hint that I love any one of these far above the others is absurd, you have no idea who I am or what I stand for, so stop putting words in my mouth.
We can only better the computing world by finding and exploring the best ideals from ALL OS concepts and expanding the best ideas to a fulfilled reality. To state that one is the greatest and ignore the rest is not only ignorant, but does nothing but close your mind and stifle your ability to offer insightful or creative input to the computing world.