I do not base my estimate on a sample. Intuitively, it seems plausible to me because the share of Gnu/Linux is around 0.035, and the same goes for Mac; Windows is at 0.9 (these numbers are easy to google for).
Your numbers are for market share, not install share. They don't account for copies of Linux that were not purchased, users with multiple OS's or multiple machines, or users who previously used other OS's and now use a different one. Most of the estimates I've seen put OS X as about 8% of all computers, and an OS X machine in about 11% of households. Linux on the desktop estimates vary widely as the numbers are hard to gather, but 4% seems fairly common as an estimate.
If the OS usage is normally distributed...
Doesn't that seem like a pretty big assumption to you? What logic do you have to support it? Some people will be familiar with many, many OS's while the majority will be familiar with only one. I think your analysis s fatally flawed and built upon unsupported assumptions. I strongly suspect that both most OS X users have never run Linux on the desktop and most current Linux on the desktop users have never run OS X. They are an interesting conjunction of market demographics. Most people in general have never run Linux on the desktop and that probably includes OS X users. Most Linux users, however, that are still using it on the desktop do not seem to have tried OS X though. Of all the people I know who were Linux users and tried OS X (about 100) only one went stopped using OS X for everyday use. Maybe that is an anomaly, but it is an incredibly unlikely one if that is not indicative of the norm. You seem to think maybe my sample is biased because I know a lot of IT people, but outside of IT people, who uses Linux on the desktop? Just based upon the people I know, if one in 100 current Linux on the desktop users has used OS X and if there are 1000 non IT OS X users for every one in IT, then there are still ten times the proportion of OS X users who have used Linux as Linux users who have used OS X. This of course also neglects the fact that there are lots of people who use both.
Without data to back up your assertion, your numbers do not seem indicative of anything. Maybe my observations are wrong. Maybe your assumptions are right. The point is I don't know and neither do you. The scant evidence I presented certainly does not support your suppositions.
The best way is to find a way to have a computer have all three, Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. It would solve all our problems. It would never happen though, it sounds too logical.
Rebooting is a huge pain in the butt. I'm running an OS X laptop right now, with Windows XP and Kubuntu running in VMs on top of OS X. It works pretty well for me.
Uhm, Mac OS X V10.0 was utter crap. The UI was really slow, software-based, and it crashed much more often than a unix-based system should. It wasn't until 10.2.x that it actually started not sucking.
I am not going to blindly claim you are lying of course, but I run Server 2003 Std. as my desktop and after almost three years I've yet to see an application that causes the OS to become unstable.
Isn't it more than a little unusual to run a server edition for your desktop? Using Win2K, XP, and the pre-release Vista I found that large files left open in a number of applications, result in continually degrading performance to the point where the machine becomes unusable. When my choice is wait 5 minutes for focus to change between two windows and type one letter every 10 seconds if I want them to show up, or reboot, I generally choose the latter. Crashes are fairly rare due to these memory leaks, but the OS does not have to crash for me to need to reboot it.
Either way, I've never had to reboot Windows to fix a problem caused by an application. Not since the bad days of Win9x anyway.
When I used InDesign primarily on Windows (2K and XP) I had to reboot every other day to keep the system usable. I also had to restrict which applications I had open at a given time. Leaving an extra Web browser, or XML editor, or PDF viewer sitting idle in the background significantly affected performance, while that was not the case on OS X. On OS X InDesign needed to be restarted every week or so, but at least I did not have to shut down all my SSH sessions, close the dozen apps I usually leave open, bookmark all my open Websites, and reboot the OS. It is he difference between a 2 minute fix once a week and a 10 minute fix every other day.
I couldn't find anything in there that I properly disagree with, other than the rebooting Windows thing - I don't normally have trouble recovering XP from any kind of memory leak, but I've never used InDesign.
If it were just InDesign it would be one thing, but I've noticed this behavior for numerous applications, even MS Word when working with large files. In some way it seems that Windows is deficient in memory re-allocation. If you're using small amounts of memory it probably isn't noticeable, but using a wide variety of applications, just leaving a large file open for a few days will bring the machine to an unusable state. It does not normally crash, but several minute waits to switch focus between applications, is not uncommon. A reboot is the only fix I've found to work.
Also, regarding shutting down things while playing games, the only two programs I've ever had to shut down because they were hampering gameplay were (ironically enough, I suppose) iTunes and Firefox. That's a large part of the reason why I use Winamp and Opera now.
These issues are twofold. First, it is a memory issue. If you have tons of memory or aren't running apps using large amounts, you won't have issues with that aspect of Window's problems. Still, leaving very large documents open in the background will almost certainly degrade game play. Second is input device responsiveness. For some reason Windows has a tendency to prioritize this too low, so some background application will get a CPU share allocation for no real reason and the mouse input will not be registered for a second or two. This is a very well documented issue and one of the reasons graphics people that have used both platforms tend to avoid Windows. In a game it can be annoying. If you're drawing a line on a tablet, it can cause you to lose valuable, possibly irreplaceable work.
Otherwise, I think you and I are on the same page here. My main point was that Windows isn't as bad as some people seem to think.
Agreed. Many people are still complaining about issues that were resolved long ago. People who have not used recent versions of Linux, Windows, and OS X, however, tend to be blind to the weak spots of each. That is one of the reason new mac "switchers" tend to be so vocal. In some cases problems they did not even realize they had been working around for years are solved for them and they tend to get a wee bit excitable and try to explain to others some concepts they just won't get without trying it. They also tend, in their excitement, to overlook new problems unique to OS X.
This, at best, shows that a fair number of GNU/Linux users are familiar with OSX. That is exactly what I have asserted.
But all of these people are also daily OS X users. They use OS X on the desktop (or laptop) to do development work for Linux or NetBSD server applications. To label them as GNU/Linux users instead of OS X users is simply your bias.
If you read carefully, the number I was talking about in my original post was the number of OSX users who have not experienced a free OS.
My own sample set is not necessarily representative, but that would be about 80% of OS X users have run Linux on the desktop in the past. How many OS X users do you know? Have you looked on the Linux and BSD development lists lately? A lot of people are using OS X workstations to do that development work. I think it is unfair to assert that OS X users, in general, have no experience with free OS's, at least any more so that current Linux users have experience with OS X. The numbers seem pretty similar. I can't tell you the number of times some Linux person has challenged me to explain ways OS X is outpacing Linux for a desktop and usually I find they have no clue as to the features they are missing. Several of them who are major contributors to some distro or another have even started projects to clone those features in response to our discussions, while others admitted it would be far too much work to replicate some of the functionality. This is not to say that Linux is not superior in yet other ways, it certainly is, but it is my experience that a lot of Linux people have never used OS X, or not enough to know what they are talking about with regard to it.
Sounds like there is a lot of "overhead", and by overhead I mean fairly useless crap to support eye candy.
Actually, what happened is about 4 years ago someone realized that most of the time fancy graphics processors are sitting idle, so someone decided to offload some of the basic UI functions to it saving CPU use. They also realized they could add "eye candy" that was cool looking and in some cases actually useful, as in providing visual clues to the user about what the OS is doing without any real cost in currently used resources. Not all "eye candy" is useless. Now Windows has caught up in adding this stuff, but it is only available if you have a sufficient video card, in which case it isn't really using much in the way of resources that are normally constrained.
I am a software engineer. I need my PC to run applications, with the machines resources dedicated to my compiles, debug session, code searches, CASE tools, etc. I don't need a search agent running...
I find the realtime indexing and search in OS X quite useful for finding the right file or function call in large builds. It's also nice for finding that preliminary design doc I was e-mailed months ago that was never checked in but which contained more useful info than what is. The fact that I can hit cmd-space-"GRE tunnel redundancy"-enter and have it open a PDF file that might be in my e-mail or in a CVS checkout, or I dropped in a folder somewhere is really useful, to me anyway.
...a little animated doggie...
I haven't seen a doggie anywhere but MS Office, and I think it is gone from there too. Certainly I've not seen it built into Vista. Is there such a thing I missed?
...crazy OS graphics...
So long as it is not using my bottleneck resources, some nice graphics that mentally mark where a Window has minimized to, is useful. Not all the graphics are, but some are. It seems like a net win though.
...monitoring software for unauthorized content playing out of my audio port...
I'm not sure how exactly the DRM monitors output, but I agree in principal...
...or any of the other "features" of Vista...
Well, there are a few nice additions in Vista, including some of the items I listed above. There are also a lot of anti-features designed to benefit MS at my expense. All in all, it seems like about a draw. The expense, especially for running in a VM will keep me using Windows XP for my Windows needs, for the foreseeable future. That doesn't mean all the features are useless, however, and as they say, you shouldn't knock 'em till you try em. I never would have suspected the searching feature on OS X that MS cloned would get used, but it does, every day. It often happens that a new feature does not sound useful until I use it, then I can't imagine living without it.
If all Windows users have to boot their PC daily, can you please explain my Windows box being up for well over a month so far without needing a reboot? While continuously running BOINC, microtorrent, Steam, Hamachi, and about 5-6 other programs in the background?
The truth is somewhere in between, of course. MS does have issues with multitasking, especially sharing memory and disk resources and prioritizing GUI and input devices. It generally does not need to be rebooted every day, but it does have more memory leak issues and needs to be rebooted more often in my experience and it cannot manage as many open, idle applications. I have both OS's running daily and have for a long time. No one I know at any of our LAN parties plays games without shutting down their other, large applications. On OS X, usually this is not an issue and I regularly leave Photoshop, InDesign, etc. open in the background.
As for stability, I can leave InDesign open with a huge file for about a week on OS X and it leaks memory like a sieve. Eventually, the program will become unstable and crash if not shut down and restarted. The OS does not need to be restarted, however, in order to remedy the issue. On Windows, after two days with InDesign open with the same file, Windows becomes completely unusable and restarting the program or killing the relevant threads does not solve the issue. The entire OS needs to be rebooted to get into working condition again. It is one reason I almost never run InDesign on Windows anymore. I've seen similar behavior for other applications as well. Windows is not as stable and that's all there is to it.
I know of no such legal software. It is all illegal.
The lawyer I consulted disagreed with you. Since I had the key on my machine and the software that legally decrypts it, using both of those in a way that it removes the DRM is not breaking encryption for purposes of circumventing DRM, since the encryption is not broken, merely decrypted using the valid key. Even if it were breaking the decryption, possessing and using such software is not illegal, distributing software for that purpose is illegal. It is not illegal to download DeCSS, only to upload it in the US, according to said lawyer.
The only way you can get around it is if you reverse the order: burn to cd then rip the cd. But I'm not even sure that is legal by the usage agreements
Whenever you download a song from iTunes you are (were when I did anyway) reminded to back it up by burning a CD. If their intention was not for you to re-rip that CD, it isn't much of a backup now is it?
There's also the other media like videos which I know of no way to strip DRM.
Some I know how, some I don't, but I don't buy anything I can't legally remove the DRM from. Since I buy very little media with DRM in the first place, this whole part of the discussion is not an issue for me. The digital rights I'm worried about having managed right into the ground are my right to keep using my OS, despite making alterations to the hardware and despite what some software "pirate" somewhere is doing or what MS's system decides about me. Also, the right to not have software arbitrarily deleted at their whim.
Different people have very different opinions about what is important. Some people want a secure Web terminal that also can manage their church group database. Some people want a portable gaming rig. Some people want something to develop a custom extension for the Linux kernel. Claiming that only one criteria matters ignores differing needs. Over the last several articles like this I've been compiling a list of wins for each platform starting with things I thought of and adding in suggestions from other users. The result is, IMO, much more useful than what the BBC gave us:
OS X Wins:
Sane UI choices - OS X does not ignore the last two decades worth of human/computer interaction research. System services - global (nearly) spellchecking, dictionary/thesaurus, and plug-in functionality like grammar checking, language translation, only reference lookups, bibliography formatting, etc. OpenStep application bundles - drag and drop installation and uninstallation of most applications, e-mail or IM working programs without having to save installers, run software off an ipod or thumb drive without having to install (including remembering per-machine preferences), easy binaries for multiple platforms, finding resources in packages is much easier and requires no tools. Security - for a variety of reasons that don't matter to most end users, OS X users have never had to worry about malware or worms and probably will not have to in the foreseeable future. Usable shell environment - bash, tcsh, whatever; the CLI on OS X is very usable and powerful and a first class citizen. We'll see if this comparison changes when Monad is released. Automater - scripting usable by secretaries. This is the easiest tool for some tasks and the only automation/scripting I've seen that some novices can quickly learn and use. Included applications - both CLI tools, GUI utilities, and GUI applications, OS X has more and nicer ones than Windows you include iTunes, iPhoto, Preview, etc., etc. Upgrading hardware - upgrading a mac to a mac is as easy as plugging in a firewire cable clicking a button. This saves a lot of time and effort, amazingly better Ubiquitous zeroconf - automatically and instantly finds printers, local chat, streaming music, file shares, and collaborative documents PDF support - create PDFs from everywhere and viewing is fast, fast, fast compared to Vista. Emulation/ports/virtualization/compatability - it is easier to run Linux and Windows software on OS X and there are more options to do so on OS X, than there are to run Linux and OS X apps on Windows (yeah I know about cygwin and Apple's licensing and the relative number of apps) Easier support of third party devices, plug them in and they just work much more often. No Registration - never worry about entering serial numbers or tracking them or you computer deciding you're a dirty pirate or its going to delete some "unwanted" software to protect you.
Windows Vista Wins:
Application availability - more developers target Windows and eventually a lot of people want to run some niche software that does not work without Windows Not tied to one hardware vendor - If you run Windows you have more hardware choices and likely get a machine that meets your needs more cheaply than a Mac, as a result. Package manager - Windows has a pretty lame software install/uninstall manager, but it is still better than nothing Antivirus/phishing features - OS X and Linux don't have a lot of need, but this is still not a bad precaution Remote desktop features - have clients for more platforms than OS X's comparable feature, and is better than Linux for a few tasks, but worse for others. Wider support for third party devices, everyone makes a Windows driver, not everyone makes an OS X or Linux driver Easier to find unofficial support from random people you know
Linux Wins:
Diversity of Linux Vendors - you can get different flavors for different uses, and competitive prices on support. Customizable - being open source
Nice rant. I, however, stand by my assessment of the OSX user base. I did not call them "clueless noobs", as you have implied; I merely pointed out that most (as few as 0.51) of OSX users have never seriously encountered a free OS.
Well, you can chalk up about 75 people in my office that use OS X to develop software that runs on Linux and NetBSD. I mean, have you been to any conferences lately? Blackhat, Defcon, etc. are full of Mac users, most of whom were using Linux or a BSD as their primary OS a few years ago. I even had a Linux user I was chatting with the other day tell me he was switching to OS X, not for any given feature, but because everyone else has and it makes it easier to get support for some of the more obscure uses of a computer.
Do you really find it controversial that almost every Linux user has worked extensively with either Windows or OSX, but the same cannot be said of most OSX users?
Umm, yes. Reread your question. Is it controversial, that almost all Linux users have used Windows or OS X, but the same cannot be said of OS X users (that most have used OS X)? I'm pretty sure most OS X users have used OS X, sort of by definition. As to whether most OS X users have used some other OS, by the numbers the vast majority of OS X users have used Windows. It is ubiquitous. A fair number have used Linux or some other OS, but that number is a lot more uncertain. Of course most Linux users I know that have not switched to OS X, have never used OS X. I still hear questions from Linux developers that make it quite obvious they have no idea how OS works. One asked the other day if you have to install something like Cygwin to get a usable shell. I think you are way off base with your assertions.
These have about as much to do with "DRM" as Apple's license (and I'm betting in the relatively near future, software) restricting you to only installing OS X on Apple hardware.
Please RTFA before responding. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. The article applied this term to include registration processes and MS's ability to remove arbitrary software. Both of those are digital and both of them are managing my rights. If you don't want to be labeled a troll don't make comments that my terminology is wrong when I'm simply using the terms as they were used in the article we're supposedly discussing.
Apple's _updates_ have accidentally deleted data off machines in the past.
Yeah, there is always the danger that if I install a patch it will break something. If you don't see the difference between me applying a tested patch after waiting to see if it is stable, and Microsoft deleting something without any prior notification or testing or intervention on my part, then you are hopeless.
I can only assume you're referring to Windows Defender, which will only delete files under the same conditions other AV and anti-malware tools will - with the users implicit permission.
This contradicts the article. When you are going to make a claim that contradicts one of the items presented as fact in the article, you have to provide a citation if you want anyone to take you seriously. Assuming you are correct (big assumption) then MS is still reserving the right in their software license to remove software without my permission which means they can change this at any time. That is still a pretty enormous liability.
If you're a pragmatist, neither the DRM, nor "activation" in Vista should bother you in the slightest, since the former is applicable on any platform and the latter won't be noticed by 99% of users.
Who cares about 99% of users. As a pragmatist I care about how it affects me. If I had upgraded a Windows box as much as my old mac media server, I would have had to re-register which is annoying and a pain in the butt. The chances of that server ceasing operation because someone with a serial number generator happens upon the same serial and installs a bunch of pirate copies is zero. The chances with a comparable Windows machine is non-zero. The chances that MS will decide to use Defender to remove some software without informing me in the future is likewise non-zero. These are all real risks and concerns that apply to Vista, but not to OS X.
As such, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that the DRM functions of Vista are more of a liability than OS X, for me, and as such it is not hypocritical for me to be concerned about those in Vista while being unconcerned about DRM in OS X. That of course, was my original point which you seem to have missed as you did not address it at all. Go back and read the article before replying to this please.
First, Microsoft already announced that they are submitting XPS to ISO/ECMA. Adobe's announcement is a reaction to that.
Considering MS's Website say they will license third parties to create software that has read/write functionality with some limitations, I don't see how it could be considered an "open" standard, which is what PDF already is.
Second, XPS has more features than PDF, creates smaller file sizes, and is more easily manipulatable (that is, to make a program that manipulates XPS, you just take any XML parser and add the XPS semantics).
XPS is basically OpenXML plus a directory of resources plus DRM, zipped up and given the XPS extension. It has all the limitations recently published for the OpenXML spec, including not being fully implementable by anyone but MS. As for having more capabilities or smaller file sizes, I seriously doubt it and would like some real citations to prove that, not MS marketing. Have there been any third party tests using recent versions of the PDF spec?
Plus, Adobe reserves that right to sue anyone that uses PDF. They used legal threats to force Microsoft to remove PDF support from Office 2007...
It is exactly this type of FUD that abolishes any credibility you might have had. They threatened MS over the inclusion of PDF and XPS with office. That had nothing to do with the formats and everything to do with antitrust law. You comment is akin to, Adobe threatened legal action after Bill Gates tried to stab someone to death with a shard of a CD-ROM that had the PDF spec on it. Obviously they will use their PDF patents to stop interoperability." It makes you look like complete idiot or an astroturfer. Adobe did not threaten to sue anyone over patents. They threatened to get the court system to go after MS for criminal conduct that happened to include their use of PDF among other formats.
And that was wrt the current ISO PDF standard (PDF 1.4 I think), so simply being an ISO standard doesn't mean that Adobe won't sue anyone that uses it at their whim, for whatever reason they see fit.
There are literally dozens of open and closed source commercial and free implementations of PDF readers and writers and Adobe has never sued any of them, nor would they have grounds to if they so desired.
MS has covenant not to sue anyone that uses XPS (covenant not to sue is standard MS practice for the standards they release to ISO, ECMA, etc).
Yeah, with all the same legal gothchas that appear in all of MS's supposed "open" formats. You need a beating with a clue-stick.
You might be right re: the anti-trust, but Apple has such good press that if there was ever a time to try it - now would be the time. Especially given the fiasco that is the Vista launch.
It might make sense to try it now, but not because of Vista. What Apple needs is for the courts to act effectively and not be bribable. Someone needs to have a political incentive to make sure this happens. Apple not shipping OS X separately, Adobe going to the EU courts for their antitrust issues, and OEMs not shipping Linux pre-installed to stores are all big votes of "no confidence" in our legal system. I'm sure they know better than I the situation. You simply don't gamble a multi-billion dollar company unless you have some real belief this will pan out, otherwise you're liable to end up in jail for defrauding shareholders.
It makes perfect sense for them to do things like limit an iMac to 2 DIMM slots and no video upgrade. But it doesn't make sense to me. I want expansion, I want to be able to upgrade later to a 24" monitor without having to through out my Mac. I don't want an all in one but the Mac Pro is overkill and out of my price range.
This really isn't much different from most all-in-one computers out there. Very few of them are upgradable at all. Take a look at Gateway or Dell's lineup and you'll notice machines with specs designed so that they don't cannibalize higher end sales. You want a machine in a slot Apple doesn't make one. That is one of the problems with tying the OS to the hardware, fewer machine slots mean sometimes you have to upgrade beyond what you need to get enough. I feel for you, but realistically Apple can't make as many machines as all the other vendors combined. It isn't going to happen so this problem will always persist to some degree, even if they do eventually make a machine for the slot you want.
Now in the Enterprise space where Apple barely makes a dent, if they can't give me more options, I would love to see them partner with a high end server provider like Sun or EMC or whoever to create a real set of offerings.
Apple is pretty weak in the enterprise for a laundry list of reasons. They are making money there, but are not seriously competing. On the plus side, they seem pretty interoperable with other vendors. I don't have any problem with what Apple doesn't offer there, since other vendors do.
I kind of like combining the second and third bullet points. Switch to a mac and run Windows 2000 (well I run XP) in a VM on top. It is fast enough on the new hardware to be usable and will only get faster with time (especially now that VMWare and Parallels are racing for graphics card acceleration). This provides compatibility for any Windows software needed and testing and lets you use OS X for everything else. Since Windows is locked down in a VM and can be reloaded from a known good image, security is a non-issue. Better yet, when you upgrade to new hardware, you don't have to worry about re-installing or registering since the VM is completely portable. It works for me.
I wish that were true, but I don't think it is. A Linux version of photoshop would not really steal many customers from Windows. They account for something like 15% of mac users last I heard. Assuming half of all photoshop users are on Windows (a generous assumption from what I've seen) That would make up roughly 1.5% of Windows users. Since a lot of them are using Windows, a lot are probably in environments resistant to change, like Windows only shops with site licenses, or environments with Windows requirements (windows development, exchange houses, Word shops, IE requirements, etc.). Say they took half of that and Microsoft loses.75% of their install base, while Adobe has to port and support their huge mess of a code base. I don't see it as hurting MS that much for the cost.
I see a lot more potential for hurting MS using Dreamweaver and GoLive. Set them up to create standards compliant HTML/CSS/HTML by default and add a really vitriolic "Your Web browser is broken and may be insecure, get Firefox" link for IE users. A whole lot of Web pages come out of those programs and if only 1 in 100 did not change those default settings, you'd see IE market share shredded. Another option would be to customize their apps using Apple's new Cocoa bindings functionality to take full advantage of OS X and advertise their entire product line as "works best on the more advanced OS X." That would be tantamount to declaring war.
You are confusing other components with the core of the system, the motherboard, which like Apple it's the only part that the OS is tied to...
You're just wrong. From MS's site: "Specifically, product activation determines tolerance through a voting mechanism. There are 10 hardware characteristics used in creating the hardware hash. Each characteristic is worth one vote, except the network card which is worth three votes. When thinking of tolerance, it's easiest to think about what has not changed instead of what has changed. When the current hardware hash is compared to the original hardware hash, there must be 7 or more matching points for the two hardware hashes to be considered in tolerance. If the network card is the same, then only 4 additional characteristics must match (because the network card is worth 3, for a total of 7). If the network card is not the same, then a total of 7 characteristics other than the network card must be the same. If the device is a laptop (specifically a dockable device), additional tolerance is allotted and there need be only 4 or more matching points. Therefore, if the device is dockable and the network card is the same, only one other characteristic must be the same for a total vote of 4. If the device is dockable and the network card is not the same, then a total of 4 characteristics other than the network card must be the same."
According to that since I added a NIC(3), swapped the RAM(2), video card(1), hard drives twice (2), and several other components I almost certainly would have had to re-register that same machine had it been running Windows. Your assertion that only the motherboard matters is factually incorrect.
I was speaking from a profit motive, they make very little on the OS so they are much less worried about piracy
No, the OS/hardware bundle is what they make all their money on, or do you think Apple would survive as a Windows reseller? It is their value added proposition.
If Windows Defender didn't delete automatically then people would whine "It doesn't do anything about the software with the default install." Microsoft can't do anything right according to you and the rest of slashdot.
Horseshit. Take a look at my posting history for today. I praised them for doing the right thing just this morning. The problem is they legally grant themselves the right, in the license, to delete software from my machine, with very vague details as to what that software might be. It might be a worm or DeCSS code, or it might be Firefox. That is unacceptable. I'm happy to hear that I can turn that feature off, but I have guarantee that it will remain that way due to the license. For all I know they could make leaving it on prerequisite to getting patches once they get people to migrate.
Apple has full control of the hardware and can simply make the changed with the hardware at the same tune as the OS is changed.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say with this. It is a bit garbled. If you're trying to say Apple will comply with DRM requirements for media playback in hardware, maybe they will. I don't care. That is not a problem I have with Vista either. Why you keep bringing it up, is a mystery to me.
The content protections that you are decrying in Vista will be coming to Mac OS if they want to play HD disc content after the ICT goes into effect.
Let me make this perfectly clear once again. I don't care about DRM'd media files because I won't be buying any I can't strip the DRM from. What concerns me are the Defender and activation requirements and licensing which means I cannot be assured that my computer will continue to work without being shut down or gutted by Microsoft who have included in their licensing the legal means to do just that.
Really? I'm not sure I agree with that. I guess you are saying that Microsoft would bury them but that might be harder than you think giving the potential for anti-trust lawsuits.
Are you kidding? MS has too much money for the laws to apply to them. Notice how they've been forced to un-bundle IE, WMP, XPS,.doc, etc. since they are obvious violations of antitrust law? Notice how they've been forced to open up their secret protocols that tie to their server offerings? The courts have done nothing to stop MS and they outright killed several OS's (see BeOS). I have no doubt Apple might win a lawsuit about 8 years after they completely lost their OS and hardware market, and they'd get a big settlement, and MS would have mode more than that because of the abuse, in that time.
Apple makes their money off of hardware.
In a non-monopolized market, Apple could not afford bundling their hardware and software. They don't have a monopoly. The only way they get away with it now is because all the other options are Windows. If MS's monopoly was broken up and consumers could pick from a marketplace where monopolistic lock-in was broken, they could choose from hardware vendors and choose WindowsA, WindowsB, several Linux distros, and Apple who bundled. Apple would lose quickly. They would stop bundling out of necessity, and the necessity for being bundled would be gone.
The second reason is that by controlling the hardware Apple can provide an OS that only targets a small subset of x86 hardware. This means that it is much easier to create an OS which is stable and consistent versus the Windows situation where a single bad driver can cause system instability.
For Windows the onus of creating drivers is on hardware vendors. In any case, this is by no means insurmountable. More robust driver architectures could and would appear to provide more stability.
The problem for me is that Apple, in controlling their hardware, has created very strict market segments for their computers. They don't want iMac sales to inch in on their Mac Pros, so they limit the RAM slots and any form of upgrading. I need the expansion of a Mac Pro but it's out of my price range and to be honest dual Xeons is over kill for me. Steve won't make a nice mid range expandable desktop Mac any more.
What would you have them do? If they enter the OS market by itself they will die. It is simple market economics, even without abuse. There are too many lock-ins to Windows. Apple would kill a huge chink of their hardware market, lose their reputation for stability, and incur huge costs writing drivers, that MS does not. Having a better OS is not enough when you are against a monopoly because they can create artificial barriers to entry. To risk the entire company on that gamble would be criminal, literally. As a result you are unlikely to ever have as large a choice of hardware for OS X.
Seriously, I think the key is simply to restore the market. MS can't abuse monopoly power they don't have. Split them into at least two companies, both with full rights to the patents and codebase. Forbid them from collusion and let them battle it out for customers. Everyone wins as prices drop, innovation speeds up, and lock-ins evaporate since they drive customers away. Without a monoculture we will be able to choose among many more, better OS's in a healthy competition with one another and all of which have a need for compatibility and portability.
I blame our current situation on MS's criminal behavior, but also upon the corrupt courts that have not stopped that behavior. If our legal system was not for sale, cheap, we wouldn't be in this mess.
I have the feeling MS will push XPS as their standard, and using the monopoly they will try to kill PDF. However PDF will be there for a long time for the simple reason of its current presence.
When Vista is ubiquitous, XPS will have a very large market share. I'm guessing this will be about 5 years time. PDF won't die right away, but unless MS is stopped form their monopoly abuse (by the courts) or their monopoly is taken down, it will almost certainly happen.
It's the same as saying: MS proposes a new format for HTML, non compatible. Will it change the web? No, I don't think so.
I hope you are being ironic, since broken, IE-specific HTML has changed the Web and ancient versions of HTML/CSS/XHTML are the norm instead of something remotely up to date. Now with.net, MS hopes to make sure the future of the Web is MS proprietary and they are the gatekeepers and they will use IE+Windows to make sure Web based programs are severely limited until they manage this lock-in.
This is called an ad hominem attack. Anyone who makes such an attack immediately loses credibility. When I see this I don't think, "oh gee PPGMD must be smarter than me." I think, "look another person who doesn't know how to logically address points and probably makes their decision based upon emotion since they obviously don't understand logic or the rhetorical method."
Actually your computer does become unusable if you change your hardware if the hardware isn't Apple, OS X will not run.
Really? Because I put in hard drives, replaces the optical drive, replaced the RAM, replaced the video card, added a video card, added a TV, tuner, etc. and none of those parts were made by Apple or purchased from Apple. The same goes for CPUs cases, and power supplies according to people I know that replaced them. The only part you might not be able to find is the motherboard. Since most copies of Windows are tied to hardware (legally) as well that means I can buy a machine with an OS tied to it from Apple of from Dell, but if I replace parts on the Apple it works, while if I replace parts on the Dell it might or might not work.
And you mistaken what you are buying from Apple, the hardware is what Apple cares about, they are and always will be a hardware company when it comes to profit margins. And yes the computer does bug you for registration, at least my Mac Book Pro did.
I know exactly what Apple is selling, better than you it seems. Their crown jewels are their OS. Since the OS market is monopolized, they can't sell their OS. Instead they sell hardware, using the OS as incentive. They sell bundles of hardware and software, the same as Dell, but bypassing MS as a component supplier.
As for registration, when you install the OS it asks you to register for support, that is not the same thing as a licensing scheme that can potentially disable your computer if you don't have the right code or if someone else generates your code and starts using it. You can take the same copy of OS X and install it on every mac you can get your hands on and they will all work.
It's not the DRM that could remove the software it's the Windows Defender and a false positive, Adaware can do the exact same thing if it mistakes a wanted program with an unwanted one. Any program can do that, though I find the chance of it happening quite rare unless you are one of those people that likes Weatherbug.
There is no software on my machine legally licensed to remove software from my computer, certainly not without my direct intervention. Now Vista includes such software and can you even turn it off? 'm not going to trust my machine to their decisions.
Not yet there isn't but if Apple wants to support playing full resolution HD content (and I am sure they will want to since they are known for their content production value) they will have to implement the same restrictions as Windows Vista, which are also the same restrictions that all the set top box companies have to comply with.
Actually, several video editing programs on OS X now support the creation of and playback of blueray discs and OS X does not seem to have those same DRM hooks.
You see that's the thing, the only files that will have DRM that most people will see are protected content that they downloaded (either for free or at a cost), and recordings that have the content flag enabled. The same files would have DRM on the Apple computers also.
So? I don't download or use them. This has nothing to do with the platform or the issues I have with Vista, as they were described in TFA, and as I enumerated them.
I am just sick of people throwing senseless crap out, I use a computer, I don't use the OS, it's just the interface.
Senseless? You didn't debunk a single one of my points. All you did was argue that OS X was no better in ways I don't care about and did not mention. The OS is the interface for all my progr
Can you play high definition DRMed content on your mac?
Well, that depends upon the DRM, I suppose. How is this any different than any platform?
No, no, and no.
You only mentioned one thing. Don't you think three replies is excessive, especially when that is not the answer?
Do you ever need to replace hardware on a Mac to the extent that you might break Vista's restrictions?
I don't know since I don't know what will trigger it. I already had to connect to MS's registration site twice for my Vista install, and that was just for software I installed. Does replacing the hard drives, video card, RAM, optical drive, and adding several other cards cause Vista to require re-registration? I did that on one of my macs and never had to register at all, let alone re-register.
This just isn't a fair comparison, as the parent poster said, Macs are by their very nature a limited platform.
I'm not interested in some abstraction. I'm interested in real results for me. The causes are not important. Is there any chance that Apple will delete arbitrary software I install? No. Is their any chance MS will on my Vista install? Yes. How is that an unfair comparison anyway?
They don't have to activate your install or check that the hardware is the same because they know that you must be running it on hardware at least mostly purchased from them.
Sure there is. If I buy an upgrade of OS X, I can illegally install it on a dozen machines then lend it to all my friends who can do the same. No registration of keys are needed for this process. It could cost Apple money as people illegally do this. The added pain to users of dealing with keys and registration that might break, however, is more important to them because their business model is based upon making things easy for their users. MS's obviously is not.
Yes MS are spineless and evil for adding what the movie industry wants, but if you want to ever be able to play this content on your Apple, Apple are going to have to add the exact same restrictions.
The term "DRM" is a little more broad than media content. Did you read the article? Without having anything to do with playing media, your machine may stop functioning at a critical time or may delete your software. Who cares about playing DRM'd music. I strip DRM from any DRM'd files I get anyway and they are very rare.
Vista is only evil in it's extra functionality, so if you don't like it, don't use it.
Do I have a choice about not using that functionality. Can I tell it not to arbitrarily decide to delete software I installed?
I've been using a freely provided copy of Vista for a few weeks now, and I'm happier than I've ever been on a Windows OS
Yeah, I used a free copy for a while too, then went back to WinXP when it stopped working. I'm not confident that it won't stop working at some point in the future, so I'm sticking with XP for now (In a VM under OS X, so I can keep it all safe).
As soon as this new crappy DRM starts being used in high def content...
I don't give a rat's ass about hi-def content. I don't even have a hi-def TV. I do care about MS reserving the legal right and building a technological mechanism to delete arbitrary software from my machine without informing me or giving me the option of stopping it.
He did make a point. He reminded us of one of the freedoms that Apple denies users. You can't upgrade hardware on a mac. Is that clear enough?
Umm, first that had nothing to do with the points I was making. Second, if that were true, maybe, you could argue it as a separate issue although it would be offtopic. I upgrade hardware all the time. My old tower has had everything but the case, motherboard, and chips replaced and that is because I've had no need to upgrade those parts. Sure if you buy a laptop, all in one, or uber-small form factor upgrading might be hard, but that is the case for PC hardware from any vendor. How does this have anything to do with it being a mac?
You don't change hardware on a mac, you throw it away and buy a new one!
The old tower in my living room begs to differ with you. I've swapped out RAM, added NICs, added a second video card, removed the original hard drive and added in three new ones (two at a time), replaced the DVD drive with a DVD burner, and added a TV tuner. I've never had to swap out the motherboard or power supply though, unlike most of my midrange PC towers.
At work I sort of throw them away. Every couple of years work gives me a newer laptop, and I wipe the old one and pass it on to someone else in the company, like an intern:)
So if Microsoft wrote a EULA that said you could only use this copy of Vista with the current computer, had to buy any hardware upgrades through Microsoft, and needed to buy a new copy of Vista with any new computer you bought, you'd be happy?
Umm, they do that already and it isn't about being happy, it is about being ethical and not causing me any issues. I have my copy of Windows (XP) installed in a VM so changing hardware is not a big deal.
How exactly does Microsoft's DRM give you *less* rights than Apple's DRM?!
We're not talking about DRM specifically, but with issues relating to Vista including problems with having to constantly mess with a registration system that may make my computer stop working, problems with backups and restoring the computer without multiple CDs, and problems with software installed that can arbitrarily delete software I installed without my permission. All these problems are unique to Windows. All of them are potential problems for me. None of them are a problem with OS X.
Okay, this whole thing is not too surprising. The patent system is broken and all major companies end up using a shotgun approach to get as many, mostly invalid, patents as possible. They apologized publicly for this instance. That was the right thing to do, and MS did it for a change. Good job MS.
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I do not base my estimate on a sample. Intuitively, it seems plausible to me because the share of Gnu/Linux is around 0.035, and the same goes for Mac; Windows is at 0.9 (these numbers are easy to google for).
Your numbers are for market share, not install share. They don't account for copies of Linux that were not purchased, users with multiple OS's or multiple machines, or users who previously used other OS's and now use a different one. Most of the estimates I've seen put OS X as about 8% of all computers, and an OS X machine in about 11% of households. Linux on the desktop estimates vary widely as the numbers are hard to gather, but 4% seems fairly common as an estimate.
If the OS usage is normally distributed...
Doesn't that seem like a pretty big assumption to you? What logic do you have to support it? Some people will be familiar with many, many OS's while the majority will be familiar with only one. I think your analysis s fatally flawed and built upon unsupported assumptions. I strongly suspect that both most OS X users have never run Linux on the desktop and most current Linux on the desktop users have never run OS X. They are an interesting conjunction of market demographics. Most people in general have never run Linux on the desktop and that probably includes OS X users. Most Linux users, however, that are still using it on the desktop do not seem to have tried OS X though. Of all the people I know who were Linux users and tried OS X (about 100) only one went stopped using OS X for everyday use. Maybe that is an anomaly, but it is an incredibly unlikely one if that is not indicative of the norm. You seem to think maybe my sample is biased because I know a lot of IT people, but outside of IT people, who uses Linux on the desktop? Just based upon the people I know, if one in 100 current Linux on the desktop users has used OS X and if there are 1000 non IT OS X users for every one in IT, then there are still ten times the proportion of OS X users who have used Linux as Linux users who have used OS X. This of course also neglects the fact that there are lots of people who use both.
Without data to back up your assertion, your numbers do not seem indicative of anything. Maybe my observations are wrong. Maybe your assumptions are right. The point is I don't know and neither do you. The scant evidence I presented certainly does not support your suppositions.
The best way is to find a way to have a computer have all three, Linux, Mac OS, and Windows. It would solve all our problems. It would never happen though, it sounds too logical.
Rebooting is a huge pain in the butt. I'm running an OS X laptop right now, with Windows XP and Kubuntu running in VMs on top of OS X. It works pretty well for me.
Uhm, Mac OS X V10.0 was utter crap. The UI was really slow, software-based, and it crashed much more often than a unix-based system should. It wasn't until 10.2.x that it actually started not sucking.
I think that is sort of the point he was making.
I am not going to blindly claim you are lying of course, but I run Server 2003 Std. as my desktop and after almost three years I've yet to see an application that causes the OS to become unstable.
Isn't it more than a little unusual to run a server edition for your desktop? Using Win2K, XP, and the pre-release Vista I found that large files left open in a number of applications, result in continually degrading performance to the point where the machine becomes unusable. When my choice is wait 5 minutes for focus to change between two windows and type one letter every 10 seconds if I want them to show up, or reboot, I generally choose the latter. Crashes are fairly rare due to these memory leaks, but the OS does not have to crash for me to need to reboot it.
Either way, I've never had to reboot Windows to fix a problem caused by an application. Not since the bad days of Win9x anyway.
When I used InDesign primarily on Windows (2K and XP) I had to reboot every other day to keep the system usable. I also had to restrict which applications I had open at a given time. Leaving an extra Web browser, or XML editor, or PDF viewer sitting idle in the background significantly affected performance, while that was not the case on OS X. On OS X InDesign needed to be restarted every week or so, but at least I did not have to shut down all my SSH sessions, close the dozen apps I usually leave open, bookmark all my open Websites, and reboot the OS. It is he difference between a 2 minute fix once a week and a 10 minute fix every other day.
I couldn't find anything in there that I properly disagree with, other than the rebooting Windows thing - I don't normally have trouble recovering XP from any kind of memory leak, but I've never used InDesign.
If it were just InDesign it would be one thing, but I've noticed this behavior for numerous applications, even MS Word when working with large files. In some way it seems that Windows is deficient in memory re-allocation. If you're using small amounts of memory it probably isn't noticeable, but using a wide variety of applications, just leaving a large file open for a few days will bring the machine to an unusable state. It does not normally crash, but several minute waits to switch focus between applications, is not uncommon. A reboot is the only fix I've found to work.
Also, regarding shutting down things while playing games, the only two programs I've ever had to shut down because they were hampering gameplay were (ironically enough, I suppose) iTunes and Firefox. That's a large part of the reason why I use Winamp and Opera now.
These issues are twofold. First, it is a memory issue. If you have tons of memory or aren't running apps using large amounts, you won't have issues with that aspect of Window's problems. Still, leaving very large documents open in the background will almost certainly degrade game play. Second is input device responsiveness. For some reason Windows has a tendency to prioritize this too low, so some background application will get a CPU share allocation for no real reason and the mouse input will not be registered for a second or two. This is a very well documented issue and one of the reasons graphics people that have used both platforms tend to avoid Windows. In a game it can be annoying. If you're drawing a line on a tablet, it can cause you to lose valuable, possibly irreplaceable work.
Otherwise, I think you and I are on the same page here. My main point was that Windows isn't as bad as some people seem to think.
Agreed. Many people are still complaining about issues that were resolved long ago. People who have not used recent versions of Linux, Windows, and OS X, however, tend to be blind to the weak spots of each. That is one of the reason new mac "switchers" tend to be so vocal. In some cases problems they did not even realize they had been working around for years are solved for them and they tend to get a wee bit excitable and try to explain to others some concepts they just won't get without trying it. They also tend, in their excitement, to overlook new problems unique to OS X.
This, at best, shows that a fair number of GNU/Linux users are familiar with OSX. That is exactly what I have asserted.
But all of these people are also daily OS X users. They use OS X on the desktop (or laptop) to do development work for Linux or NetBSD server applications. To label them as GNU/Linux users instead of OS X users is simply your bias.
If you read carefully, the number I was talking about in my original post was the number of OSX users who have not experienced a free OS.
My own sample set is not necessarily representative, but that would be about 80% of OS X users have run Linux on the desktop in the past. How many OS X users do you know? Have you looked on the Linux and BSD development lists lately? A lot of people are using OS X workstations to do that development work. I think it is unfair to assert that OS X users, in general, have no experience with free OS's, at least any more so that current Linux users have experience with OS X. The numbers seem pretty similar. I can't tell you the number of times some Linux person has challenged me to explain ways OS X is outpacing Linux for a desktop and usually I find they have no clue as to the features they are missing. Several of them who are major contributors to some distro or another have even started projects to clone those features in response to our discussions, while others admitted it would be far too much work to replicate some of the functionality. This is not to say that Linux is not superior in yet other ways, it certainly is, but it is my experience that a lot of Linux people have never used OS X, or not enough to know what they are talking about with regard to it.
Sounds like there is a lot of "overhead", and by overhead I mean fairly useless crap to support eye candy.
Actually, what happened is about 4 years ago someone realized that most of the time fancy graphics processors are sitting idle, so someone decided to offload some of the basic UI functions to it saving CPU use. They also realized they could add "eye candy" that was cool looking and in some cases actually useful, as in providing visual clues to the user about what the OS is doing without any real cost in currently used resources. Not all "eye candy" is useless. Now Windows has caught up in adding this stuff, but it is only available if you have a sufficient video card, in which case it isn't really using much in the way of resources that are normally constrained.
I am a software engineer. I need my PC to run applications, with the machines resources dedicated to my compiles, debug session, code searches, CASE tools, etc. I don't need a search agent running...
I find the realtime indexing and search in OS X quite useful for finding the right file or function call in large builds. It's also nice for finding that preliminary design doc I was e-mailed months ago that was never checked in but which contained more useful info than what is. The fact that I can hit cmd-space-"GRE tunnel redundancy"-enter and have it open a PDF file that might be in my e-mail or in a CVS checkout, or I dropped in a folder somewhere is really useful, to me anyway.
I haven't seen a doggie anywhere but MS Office, and I think it is gone from there too. Certainly I've not seen it built into Vista. Is there such a thing I missed?
So long as it is not using my bottleneck resources, some nice graphics that mentally mark where a Window has minimized to, is useful. Not all the graphics are, but some are. It seems like a net win though.
I'm not sure how exactly the DRM monitors output, but I agree in principal...
Well, there are a few nice additions in Vista, including some of the items I listed above. There are also a lot of anti-features designed to benefit MS at my expense. All in all, it seems like about a draw. The expense, especially for running in a VM will keep me using Windows XP for my Windows needs, for the foreseeable future. That doesn't mean all the features are useless, however, and as they say, you shouldn't knock 'em till you try em. I never would have suspected the searching feature on OS X that MS cloned would get used, but it does, every day. It often happens that a new feature does not sound useful until I use it, then I can't imagine living without it.
If all Windows users have to boot their PC daily, can you please explain my Windows box being up for well over a month so far without needing a reboot? While continuously running BOINC, microtorrent, Steam, Hamachi, and about 5-6 other programs in the background?
The truth is somewhere in between, of course. MS does have issues with multitasking, especially sharing memory and disk resources and prioritizing GUI and input devices. It generally does not need to be rebooted every day, but it does have more memory leak issues and needs to be rebooted more often in my experience and it cannot manage as many open, idle applications. I have both OS's running daily and have for a long time. No one I know at any of our LAN parties plays games without shutting down their other, large applications. On OS X, usually this is not an issue and I regularly leave Photoshop, InDesign, etc. open in the background.
As for stability, I can leave InDesign open with a huge file for about a week on OS X and it leaks memory like a sieve. Eventually, the program will become unstable and crash if not shut down and restarted. The OS does not need to be restarted, however, in order to remedy the issue. On Windows, after two days with InDesign open with the same file, Windows becomes completely unusable and restarting the program or killing the relevant threads does not solve the issue. The entire OS needs to be rebooted to get into working condition again. It is one reason I almost never run InDesign on Windows anymore. I've seen similar behavior for other applications as well. Windows is not as stable and that's all there is to it.
I know of no such legal software. It is all illegal.
The lawyer I consulted disagreed with you. Since I had the key on my machine and the software that legally decrypts it, using both of those in a way that it removes the DRM is not breaking encryption for purposes of circumventing DRM, since the encryption is not broken, merely decrypted using the valid key. Even if it were breaking the decryption, possessing and using such software is not illegal, distributing software for that purpose is illegal. It is not illegal to download DeCSS, only to upload it in the US, according to said lawyer.
The only way you can get around it is if you reverse the order: burn to cd then rip the cd. But I'm not even sure that is legal by the usage agreements
Whenever you download a song from iTunes you are (were when I did anyway) reminded to back it up by burning a CD. If their intention was not for you to re-rip that CD, it isn't much of a backup now is it?
There's also the other media like videos which I know of no way to strip DRM.
Some I know how, some I don't, but I don't buy anything I can't legally remove the DRM from. Since I buy very little media with DRM in the first place, this whole part of the discussion is not an issue for me. The digital rights I'm worried about having managed right into the ground are my right to keep using my OS, despite making alterations to the hardware and despite what some software "pirate" somewhere is doing or what MS's system decides about me. Also, the right to not have software arbitrarily deleted at their whim.
Different people have very different opinions about what is important. Some people want a secure Web terminal that also can manage their church group database. Some people want a portable gaming rig. Some people want something to develop a custom extension for the Linux kernel. Claiming that only one criteria matters ignores differing needs. Over the last several articles like this I've been compiling a list of wins for each platform starting with things I thought of and adding in suggestions from other users. The result is, IMO, much more useful than what the BBC gave us:
OS X Wins:
Sane UI choices - OS X does not ignore the last two decades worth of human/computer interaction research.
System services - global (nearly) spellchecking, dictionary/thesaurus, and plug-in functionality like grammar checking, language translation, only reference lookups, bibliography formatting, etc.
OpenStep application bundles - drag and drop installation and uninstallation of most applications, e-mail or IM working programs without having to save installers, run software off an ipod or thumb drive without having to install (including remembering per-machine preferences), easy binaries for multiple platforms, finding resources in packages is much easier and requires no tools.
Security - for a variety of reasons that don't matter to most end users, OS X users have never had to worry about malware or worms and probably will not have to in the foreseeable future.
Usable shell environment - bash, tcsh, whatever; the CLI on OS X is very usable and powerful and a first class citizen. We'll see if this comparison changes when Monad is released.
Automater - scripting usable by secretaries. This is the easiest tool for some tasks and the only automation/scripting I've seen that some novices can quickly learn and use.
Included applications - both CLI tools, GUI utilities, and GUI applications, OS X has more and nicer ones than Windows you include iTunes, iPhoto, Preview, etc., etc.
Upgrading hardware - upgrading a mac to a mac is as easy as plugging in a firewire cable clicking a button. This saves a lot of time and effort, amazingly better
Ubiquitous zeroconf - automatically and instantly finds printers, local chat, streaming music, file shares, and collaborative documents
PDF support - create PDFs from everywhere and viewing is fast, fast, fast compared to Vista.
Emulation/ports/virtualization/compatability - it is easier to run Linux and Windows software on OS X and there are more options to do so on OS X, than there are to run Linux and OS X apps on Windows (yeah I know about cygwin and Apple's licensing and the relative number of apps)
Easier support of third party devices, plug them in and they just work much more often.
No Registration - never worry about entering serial numbers or tracking them or you computer deciding you're a dirty pirate or its going to delete some "unwanted" software to protect you.
Windows Vista Wins:
Application availability - more developers target Windows and eventually a lot of people want to run some niche software that does not work without Windows
Not tied to one hardware vendor - If you run Windows you have more hardware choices and likely get a machine that meets your needs more cheaply than a Mac, as a result.
Package manager - Windows has a pretty lame software install/uninstall manager, but it is still better than nothing
Antivirus/phishing features - OS X and Linux don't have a lot of need, but this is still not a bad precaution
Remote desktop features - have clients for more platforms than OS X's comparable feature, and is better than Linux for a few tasks, but worse for others.
Wider support for third party devices, everyone makes a Windows driver, not everyone makes an OS X or Linux driver
Easier to find unofficial support from random people you know
Linux Wins:
Diversity of Linux Vendors - you can get different flavors for different uses, and competitive prices on support.
Customizable - being open source
Nice rant. I, however, stand by my assessment of the OSX user base. I did not call them "clueless noobs", as you have implied; I merely pointed out that most (as few as 0.51) of OSX users have never seriously encountered a free OS.
Well, you can chalk up about 75 people in my office that use OS X to develop software that runs on Linux and NetBSD. I mean, have you been to any conferences lately? Blackhat, Defcon, etc. are full of Mac users, most of whom were using Linux or a BSD as their primary OS a few years ago. I even had a Linux user I was chatting with the other day tell me he was switching to OS X, not for any given feature, but because everyone else has and it makes it easier to get support for some of the more obscure uses of a computer.
Do you really find it controversial that almost every Linux user has worked extensively with either Windows or OSX, but the same cannot be said of most OSX users?
Umm, yes. Reread your question. Is it controversial, that almost all Linux users have used Windows or OS X, but the same cannot be said of OS X users (that most have used OS X)? I'm pretty sure most OS X users have used OS X, sort of by definition. As to whether most OS X users have used some other OS, by the numbers the vast majority of OS X users have used Windows. It is ubiquitous. A fair number have used Linux or some other OS, but that number is a lot more uncertain. Of course most Linux users I know that have not switched to OS X, have never used OS X. I still hear questions from Linux developers that make it quite obvious they have no idea how OS works. One asked the other day if you have to install something like Cygwin to get a usable shell. I think you are way off base with your assertions.
These have about as much to do with "DRM" as Apple's license (and I'm betting in the relatively near future, software) restricting you to only installing OS X on Apple hardware.
Please RTFA before responding. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. The article applied this term to include registration processes and MS's ability to remove arbitrary software. Both of those are digital and both of them are managing my rights. If you don't want to be labeled a troll don't make comments that my terminology is wrong when I'm simply using the terms as they were used in the article we're supposedly discussing.
Apple's _updates_ have accidentally deleted data off machines in the past.
Yeah, there is always the danger that if I install a patch it will break something. If you don't see the difference between me applying a tested patch after waiting to see if it is stable, and Microsoft deleting something without any prior notification or testing or intervention on my part, then you are hopeless.
I can only assume you're referring to Windows Defender, which will only delete files under the same conditions other AV and anti-malware tools will - with the users implicit permission.
This contradicts the article. When you are going to make a claim that contradicts one of the items presented as fact in the article, you have to provide a citation if you want anyone to take you seriously. Assuming you are correct (big assumption) then MS is still reserving the right in their software license to remove software without my permission which means they can change this at any time. That is still a pretty enormous liability.
If you're a pragmatist, neither the DRM, nor "activation" in Vista should bother you in the slightest, since the former is applicable on any platform and the latter won't be noticed by 99% of users.
Who cares about 99% of users. As a pragmatist I care about how it affects me. If I had upgraded a Windows box as much as my old mac media server, I would have had to re-register which is annoying and a pain in the butt. The chances of that server ceasing operation because someone with a serial number generator happens upon the same serial and installs a bunch of pirate copies is zero. The chances with a comparable Windows machine is non-zero. The chances that MS will decide to use Defender to remove some software without informing me in the future is likewise non-zero. These are all real risks and concerns that apply to Vista, but not to OS X.
As such, it is perfectly reasonable to conclude that the DRM functions of Vista are more of a liability than OS X, for me, and as such it is not hypocritical for me to be concerned about those in Vista while being unconcerned about DRM in OS X. That of course, was my original point which you seem to have missed as you did not address it at all. Go back and read the article before replying to this please.
First, Microsoft already announced that they are submitting XPS to ISO/ECMA. Adobe's announcement is a reaction to that.
Considering MS's Website say they will license third parties to create software that has read/write functionality with some limitations, I don't see how it could be considered an "open" standard, which is what PDF already is.
Second, XPS has more features than PDF, creates smaller file sizes, and is more easily manipulatable (that is, to make a program that manipulates XPS, you just take any XML parser and add the XPS semantics).
XPS is basically OpenXML plus a directory of resources plus DRM, zipped up and given the XPS extension. It has all the limitations recently published for the OpenXML spec, including not being fully implementable by anyone but MS. As for having more capabilities or smaller file sizes, I seriously doubt it and would like some real citations to prove that, not MS marketing. Have there been any third party tests using recent versions of the PDF spec?
Plus, Adobe reserves that right to sue anyone that uses PDF. They used legal threats to force Microsoft to remove PDF support from Office 2007...
It is exactly this type of FUD that abolishes any credibility you might have had. They threatened MS over the inclusion of PDF and XPS with office. That had nothing to do with the formats and everything to do with antitrust law. You comment is akin to, Adobe threatened legal action after Bill Gates tried to stab someone to death with a shard of a CD-ROM that had the PDF spec on it. Obviously they will use their PDF patents to stop interoperability." It makes you look like complete idiot or an astroturfer. Adobe did not threaten to sue anyone over patents. They threatened to get the court system to go after MS for criminal conduct that happened to include their use of PDF among other formats.
And that was wrt the current ISO PDF standard (PDF 1.4 I think), so simply being an ISO standard doesn't mean that Adobe won't sue anyone that uses it at their whim, for whatever reason they see fit.
There are literally dozens of open and closed source commercial and free implementations of PDF readers and writers and Adobe has never sued any of them, nor would they have grounds to if they so desired.
MS has covenant not to sue anyone that uses XPS (covenant not to sue is standard MS practice for the standards they release to ISO, ECMA, etc).
Yeah, with all the same legal gothchas that appear in all of MS's supposed "open" formats. You need a beating with a clue-stick.
You might be right re: the anti-trust, but Apple has such good press that if there was ever a time to try it - now would be the time. Especially given the fiasco that is the Vista launch.
It might make sense to try it now, but not because of Vista. What Apple needs is for the courts to act effectively and not be bribable. Someone needs to have a political incentive to make sure this happens. Apple not shipping OS X separately, Adobe going to the EU courts for their antitrust issues, and OEMs not shipping Linux pre-installed to stores are all big votes of "no confidence" in our legal system. I'm sure they know better than I the situation. You simply don't gamble a multi-billion dollar company unless you have some real belief this will pan out, otherwise you're liable to end up in jail for defrauding shareholders.
It makes perfect sense for them to do things like limit an iMac to 2 DIMM slots and no video upgrade. But it doesn't make sense to me. I want expansion, I want to be able to upgrade later to a 24" monitor without having to through out my Mac. I don't want an all in one but the Mac Pro is overkill and out of my price range.
This really isn't much different from most all-in-one computers out there. Very few of them are upgradable at all. Take a look at Gateway or Dell's lineup and you'll notice machines with specs designed so that they don't cannibalize higher end sales. You want a machine in a slot Apple doesn't make one. That is one of the problems with tying the OS to the hardware, fewer machine slots mean sometimes you have to upgrade beyond what you need to get enough. I feel for you, but realistically Apple can't make as many machines as all the other vendors combined. It isn't going to happen so this problem will always persist to some degree, even if they do eventually make a machine for the slot you want.
Now in the Enterprise space where Apple barely makes a dent, if they can't give me more options, I would love to see them partner with a high end server provider like Sun or EMC or whoever to create a real set of offerings.
Apple is pretty weak in the enterprise for a laundry list of reasons. They are making money there, but are not seriously competing. On the plus side, they seem pretty interoperable with other vendors. I don't have any problem with what Apple doesn't offer there, since other vendors do.
I kind of like combining the second and third bullet points. Switch to a mac and run Windows 2000 (well I run XP) in a VM on top. It is fast enough on the new hardware to be usable and will only get faster with time (especially now that VMWare and Parallels are racing for graphics card acceleration). This provides compatibility for any Windows software needed and testing and lets you use OS X for everything else. Since Windows is locked down in a VM and can be reloaded from a known good image, security is a non-issue. Better yet, when you upgrade to new hardware, you don't have to worry about re-installing or registering since the VM is completely portable. It works for me.
photoshop linux binary
I wish that were true, but I don't think it is. A Linux version of photoshop would not really steal many customers from Windows. They account for something like 15% of mac users last I heard. Assuming half of all photoshop users are on Windows (a generous assumption from what I've seen) That would make up roughly 1.5% of Windows users. Since a lot of them are using Windows, a lot are probably in environments resistant to change, like Windows only shops with site licenses, or environments with Windows requirements (windows development, exchange houses, Word shops, IE requirements, etc.). Say they took half of that and Microsoft loses .75% of their install base, while Adobe has to port and support their huge mess of a code base. I don't see it as hurting MS that much for the cost.
I see a lot more potential for hurting MS using Dreamweaver and GoLive. Set them up to create standards compliant HTML/CSS/HTML by default and add a really vitriolic "Your Web browser is broken and may be insecure, get Firefox" link for IE users. A whole lot of Web pages come out of those programs and if only 1 in 100 did not change those default settings, you'd see IE market share shredded. Another option would be to customize their apps using Apple's new Cocoa bindings functionality to take full advantage of OS X and advertise their entire product line as "works best on the more advanced OS X." That would be tantamount to declaring war.
You are confusing other components with the core of the system, the motherboard, which like Apple it's the only part that the OS is tied to...
You're just wrong. From MS's site: "Specifically, product activation determines tolerance through a voting mechanism. There are 10 hardware characteristics used in creating the hardware hash. Each characteristic is worth one vote, except the network card which is worth three votes. When thinking of tolerance, it's easiest to think about what has not changed instead of what has changed. When the current hardware hash is compared to the original hardware hash, there must be 7 or more matching points for the two hardware hashes to be considered in tolerance. If the network card is the same, then only 4 additional characteristics must match (because the network card is worth 3, for a total of 7). If the network card is not the same, then a total of 7 characteristics other than the network card must be the same. If the device is a laptop (specifically a dockable device), additional tolerance is allotted and there need be only 4 or more matching points. Therefore, if the device is dockable and the network card is the same, only one other characteristic must be the same for a total vote of 4. If the device is dockable and the network card is not the same, then a total of 4 characteristics other than the network card must be the same."
According to that since I added a NIC(3), swapped the RAM(2), video card(1), hard drives twice (2), and several other components I almost certainly would have had to re-register that same machine had it been running Windows. Your assertion that only the motherboard matters is factually incorrect.
I was speaking from a profit motive, they make very little on the OS so they are much less worried about piracy
No, the OS/hardware bundle is what they make all their money on, or do you think Apple would survive as a Windows reseller? It is their value added proposition.
If Windows Defender didn't delete automatically then people would whine "It doesn't do anything about the software with the default install." Microsoft can't do anything right according to you and the rest of slashdot.
Horseshit. Take a look at my posting history for today. I praised them for doing the right thing just this morning. The problem is they legally grant themselves the right, in the license, to delete software from my machine, with very vague details as to what that software might be. It might be a worm or DeCSS code, or it might be Firefox. That is unacceptable. I'm happy to hear that I can turn that feature off, but I have guarantee that it will remain that way due to the license. For all I know they could make leaving it on prerequisite to getting patches once they get people to migrate.
Apple has full control of the hardware and can simply make the changed with the hardware at the same tune as the OS is changed.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say with this. It is a bit garbled. If you're trying to say Apple will comply with DRM requirements for media playback in hardware, maybe they will. I don't care. That is not a problem I have with Vista either. Why you keep bringing it up, is a mystery to me.
The content protections that you are decrying in Vista will be coming to Mac OS if they want to play HD disc content after the ICT goes into effect.
Let me make this perfectly clear once again. I don't care about DRM'd media files because I won't be buying any I can't strip the DRM from. What concerns me are the Defender and activation requirements and licensing which means I cannot be assured that my computer will continue to work without being shut down or gutted by Microsoft who have included in their licensing the legal means to do just that.
Really? I'm not sure I agree with that. I guess you are saying that Microsoft would bury them but that might be harder than you think giving the potential for anti-trust lawsuits.
Are you kidding? MS has too much money for the laws to apply to them. Notice how they've been forced to un-bundle IE, WMP, XPS, .doc, etc. since they are obvious violations of antitrust law? Notice how they've been forced to open up their secret protocols that tie to their server offerings? The courts have done nothing to stop MS and they outright killed several OS's (see BeOS). I have no doubt Apple might win a lawsuit about 8 years after they completely lost their OS and hardware market, and they'd get a big settlement, and MS would have mode more than that because of the abuse, in that time.
Apple makes their money off of hardware.
In a non-monopolized market, Apple could not afford bundling their hardware and software. They don't have a monopoly. The only way they get away with it now is because all the other options are Windows. If MS's monopoly was broken up and consumers could pick from a marketplace where monopolistic lock-in was broken, they could choose from hardware vendors and choose WindowsA, WindowsB, several Linux distros, and Apple who bundled. Apple would lose quickly. They would stop bundling out of necessity, and the necessity for being bundled would be gone.
The second reason is that by controlling the hardware Apple can provide an OS that only targets a small subset of x86 hardware. This means that it is much easier to create an OS which is stable and consistent versus the Windows situation where a single bad driver can cause system instability.
For Windows the onus of creating drivers is on hardware vendors. In any case, this is by no means insurmountable. More robust driver architectures could and would appear to provide more stability.
The problem for me is that Apple, in controlling their hardware, has created very strict market segments for their computers. They don't want iMac sales to inch in on their Mac Pros, so they limit the RAM slots and any form of upgrading. I need the expansion of a Mac Pro but it's out of my price range and to be honest dual Xeons is over kill for me. Steve won't make a nice mid range expandable desktop Mac any more.
What would you have them do? If they enter the OS market by itself they will die. It is simple market economics, even without abuse. There are too many lock-ins to Windows. Apple would kill a huge chink of their hardware market, lose their reputation for stability, and incur huge costs writing drivers, that MS does not. Having a better OS is not enough when you are against a monopoly because they can create artificial barriers to entry. To risk the entire company on that gamble would be criminal, literally. As a result you are unlikely to ever have as large a choice of hardware for OS X.
Seriously, I think the key is simply to restore the market. MS can't abuse monopoly power they don't have. Split them into at least two companies, both with full rights to the patents and codebase. Forbid them from collusion and let them battle it out for customers. Everyone wins as prices drop, innovation speeds up, and lock-ins evaporate since they drive customers away. Without a monoculture we will be able to choose among many more, better OS's in a healthy competition with one another and all of which have a need for compatibility and portability.
I blame our current situation on MS's criminal behavior, but also upon the corrupt courts that have not stopped that behavior. If our legal system was not for sale, cheap, we wouldn't be in this mess.
I have the feeling MS will push XPS as their standard, and using the monopoly they will try to kill PDF. However PDF will be there for a long time for the simple reason of its current presence.
When Vista is ubiquitous, XPS will have a very large market share. I'm guessing this will be about 5 years time. PDF won't die right away, but unless MS is stopped form their monopoly abuse (by the courts) or their monopoly is taken down, it will almost certainly happen.
It's the same as saying: MS proposes a new format for HTML, non compatible. Will it change the web? No, I don't think so.
I hope you are being ironic, since broken, IE-specific HTML has changed the Web and ancient versions of HTML/CSS/XHTML are the norm instead of something remotely up to date. Now with .net, MS hopes to make sure the future of the Web is MS proprietary and they are the gatekeepers and they will use IE+Windows to make sure Web based programs are severely limited until they manage this lock-in.
Another idiot talking out of his rear.
This is called an ad hominem attack. Anyone who makes such an attack immediately loses credibility. When I see this I don't think, "oh gee PPGMD must be smarter than me." I think, "look another person who doesn't know how to logically address points and probably makes their decision based upon emotion since they obviously don't understand logic or the rhetorical method."
Actually your computer does become unusable if you change your hardware if the hardware isn't Apple, OS X will not run.
Really? Because I put in hard drives, replaces the optical drive, replaced the RAM, replaced the video card, added a video card, added a TV, tuner, etc. and none of those parts were made by Apple or purchased from Apple. The same goes for CPUs cases, and power supplies according to people I know that replaced them. The only part you might not be able to find is the motherboard. Since most copies of Windows are tied to hardware (legally) as well that means I can buy a machine with an OS tied to it from Apple of from Dell, but if I replace parts on the Apple it works, while if I replace parts on the Dell it might or might not work.
And you mistaken what you are buying from Apple, the hardware is what Apple cares about, they are and always will be a hardware company when it comes to profit margins. And yes the computer does bug you for registration, at least my Mac Book Pro did.
I know exactly what Apple is selling, better than you it seems. Their crown jewels are their OS. Since the OS market is monopolized, they can't sell their OS. Instead they sell hardware, using the OS as incentive. They sell bundles of hardware and software, the same as Dell, but bypassing MS as a component supplier.
As for registration, when you install the OS it asks you to register for support, that is not the same thing as a licensing scheme that can potentially disable your computer if you don't have the right code or if someone else generates your code and starts using it. You can take the same copy of OS X and install it on every mac you can get your hands on and they will all work.
It's not the DRM that could remove the software it's the Windows Defender and a false positive, Adaware can do the exact same thing if it mistakes a wanted program with an unwanted one. Any program can do that, though I find the chance of it happening quite rare unless you are one of those people that likes Weatherbug.
There is no software on my machine legally licensed to remove software from my computer, certainly not without my direct intervention. Now Vista includes such software and can you even turn it off? 'm not going to trust my machine to their decisions.
Not yet there isn't but if Apple wants to support playing full resolution HD content (and I am sure they will want to since they are known for their content production value) they will have to implement the same restrictions as Windows Vista, which are also the same restrictions that all the set top box companies have to comply with.
Actually, several video editing programs on OS X now support the creation of and playback of blueray discs and OS X does not seem to have those same DRM hooks.
You see that's the thing, the only files that will have DRM that most people will see are protected content that they downloaded (either for free or at a cost), and recordings that have the content flag enabled. The same files would have DRM on the Apple computers also.
So? I don't download or use them. This has nothing to do with the platform or the issues I have with Vista, as they were described in TFA, and as I enumerated them.
I am just sick of people throwing senseless crap out, I use a computer, I don't use the OS, it's just the interface.
Senseless? You didn't debunk a single one of my points. All you did was argue that OS X was no better in ways I don't care about and did not mention. The OS is the interface for all my progr
Can you play high definition DRMed content on your mac?
Well, that depends upon the DRM, I suppose. How is this any different than any platform?
No, no, and no.
You only mentioned one thing. Don't you think three replies is excessive, especially when that is not the answer?
Do you ever need to replace hardware on a Mac to the extent that you might break Vista's restrictions?
I don't know since I don't know what will trigger it. I already had to connect to MS's registration site twice for my Vista install, and that was just for software I installed. Does replacing the hard drives, video card, RAM, optical drive, and adding several other cards cause Vista to require re-registration? I did that on one of my macs and never had to register at all, let alone re-register.
This just isn't a fair comparison, as the parent poster said, Macs are by their very nature a limited platform.
I'm not interested in some abstraction. I'm interested in real results for me. The causes are not important. Is there any chance that Apple will delete arbitrary software I install? No. Is their any chance MS will on my Vista install? Yes. How is that an unfair comparison anyway?
They don't have to activate your install or check that the hardware is the same because they know that you must be running it on hardware at least mostly purchased from them.
Sure there is. If I buy an upgrade of OS X, I can illegally install it on a dozen machines then lend it to all my friends who can do the same. No registration of keys are needed for this process. It could cost Apple money as people illegally do this. The added pain to users of dealing with keys and registration that might break, however, is more important to them because their business model is based upon making things easy for their users. MS's obviously is not.
Yes MS are spineless and evil for adding what the movie industry wants, but if you want to ever be able to play this content on your Apple, Apple are going to have to add the exact same restrictions.
The term "DRM" is a little more broad than media content. Did you read the article? Without having anything to do with playing media, your machine may stop functioning at a critical time or may delete your software. Who cares about playing DRM'd music. I strip DRM from any DRM'd files I get anyway and they are very rare.
Vista is only evil in it's extra functionality, so if you don't like it, don't use it.
Do I have a choice about not using that functionality. Can I tell it not to arbitrarily decide to delete software I installed?
I've been using a freely provided copy of Vista for a few weeks now, and I'm happier than I've ever been on a Windows OS
Yeah, I used a free copy for a while too, then went back to WinXP when it stopped working. I'm not confident that it won't stop working at some point in the future, so I'm sticking with XP for now (In a VM under OS X, so I can keep it all safe).
As soon as this new crappy DRM starts being used in high def content...
I don't give a rat's ass about hi-def content. I don't even have a hi-def TV. I do care about MS reserving the legal right and building a technological mechanism to delete arbitrary software from my machine without informing me or giving me the option of stopping it.
He did make a point. He reminded us of one of the freedoms that Apple denies users. You can't upgrade hardware on a mac. Is that clear enough?
Umm, first that had nothing to do with the points I was making. Second, if that were true, maybe, you could argue it as a separate issue although it would be offtopic. I upgrade hardware all the time. My old tower has had everything but the case, motherboard, and chips replaced and that is because I've had no need to upgrade those parts. Sure if you buy a laptop, all in one, or uber-small form factor upgrading might be hard, but that is the case for PC hardware from any vendor. How does this have anything to do with it being a mac?
You don't change hardware on a mac, you throw it away and buy a new one!
The old tower in my living room begs to differ with you. I've swapped out RAM, added NICs, added a second video card, removed the original hard drive and added in three new ones (two at a time), replaced the DVD drive with a DVD burner, and added a TV tuner. I've never had to swap out the motherboard or power supply though, unlike most of my midrange PC towers.
At work I sort of throw them away. Every couple of years work gives me a newer laptop, and I wipe the old one and pass it on to someone else in the company, like an intern :)
So if Microsoft wrote a EULA that said you could only use this copy of Vista with the current computer, had to buy any hardware upgrades through Microsoft, and needed to buy a new copy of Vista with any new computer you bought, you'd be happy?
Umm, they do that already and it isn't about being happy, it is about being ethical and not causing me any issues. I have my copy of Windows (XP) installed in a VM so changing hardware is not a big deal.
How exactly does Microsoft's DRM give you *less* rights than Apple's DRM?!
We're not talking about DRM specifically, but with issues relating to Vista including problems with having to constantly mess with a registration system that may make my computer stop working, problems with backups and restoring the computer without multiple CDs, and problems with software installed that can arbitrarily delete software I installed without my permission. All these problems are unique to Windows. All of them are potential problems for me. None of them are a problem with OS X.
Okay, this whole thing is not too surprising. The patent system is broken and all major companies end up using a shotgun approach to get as many, mostly invalid, patents as possible. They apologized publicly for this instance. That was the right thing to do, and MS did it for a change. Good job MS.