I'm getting a Macintosh ASAP...

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2. They function better, from what I can determine. For example, a friend of mine says he's had his Mac laptop for five years, and it has not once had a problem that simply restarting didn't fix. This is not true of my Windows.

Perhaps your computer is a piece of shit? No OS can overcome crap hardware.
 
There is a version of OSX for PC's out there. I've seen it on the P2P's. I would post the link but I'm not sure if that would be kosher here. I have seen it on emule.
 
Mostly, I'm fed up with corporations that have become WAY to proud of their products and figure they don't have work on improving them.


How has MS done this? As much as we might say "oh god another service pack AGAIN?" does this not indicate a willingness to improve? Improvements don't need to be cosmetic!

There is a version of OSX for PC's out there. I've seen it on the P2P's. I would post the link but I'm not sure if that would be kosher here. I have seen it on emule.

MacOS emulators for Windows have existed for years. Plus with the advent of Intel into the Apple space...what's to prevent MacOS from running on a PC?
 
I use Windows at the office and a Mac at home so I see the differences all the time. Despite being a veteran IT professional, I am not a geek. I don't regard my computer as a toy or a lab instrument, just an appliance. From that standpoint Windows is not a viable choice.

I treat my Mac like my toaster. Turn it on, enter commands, out pops my perfectly toasted data, turn it off. I never have to deal with lost files, corrupted files, broken links, software that just stares at me without doing what I told it to.

I have an old version of MS Office for Mac which works far more reliably than the one on my PC at work even though it doesn't have as many bells and whistles. It's the only thing on this computer that crashes and pisses me off, mostly Word. I use Safari and have a copy of Mozilla stashed for the rare website that is not Mac-compatible. And I use MacMail; it's a little primitive but it does the job and, again, I'll choose reliability over whizbang features every time.

I don't do RPGs or any real videogaming. The logic and puzzle games I enjoy work just fine.

This is my wife's hand-me-down laptop. In the four years we've both used it it has crashed twice and no permanent damage was done, it just needed a reboot. She has a desktop Mac and finds it as perfect as her Mercedes. An appliance, not a toy or a lab instrument. She is not an I.T. professional, she's a member of the other 99 percent of the human race who lack either the interest, aptitude, or patience to be a software mechanic, and she thought if Windows was the best we could do, the world was better off without computers.

As for viruses, we do have to accept the fact that as Macs become more widespread, the hackers will become interested in hacking us.

Nonetheless, Microsoft is the quintessential American engineering company: "We can't even spell QA." I would not hire Bill Gates to sweep the floors in my computing center. He simply has no concept of reliability being as much a user requirement as functionality. People bitch at Apple because they rewrite their OS from scratch every time, requiring everyone to install new software. They don't understand that software is the one engineering artifact that degrades with maintenance, unlike cars and elevators. If you keep maintaining an old program for several years, eventually it will stop working completely. Windows is an ancient program that has been patched and fixed and the fixes have been patched and the patches have been fixed until nobody can guess how many undiscovered defects it might have until a hacker discovers one.

You get reliable software by throwing it out and building a new version, using all the principles you've learned in the meantime. You don't get reliable software by taking old software and fixing it.

If you want to play with your computer, get a PC. If you want to use it, get a Macintosh.
 
I kinda said that in jest, but actually, it's a good point. The PS3 comes with a version of Linux that you could easily download more free software for. It's got an Ethernet port for Internet connectivity. You can easily get a keyboard and mouse for it and use it as a computer. You can pretty much do anything you want with it that you can do with a normal computer that has Linux installed on it. Not to mention Blu-Ray, HD support, and, of course, games. And the main unit only costs $600 bucks. Nicht so schlecht.
 
How has MS done this? As much as we might say "oh god another service pack AGAIN?" does this not indicate a willingness to improve? Improvements don't need to be cosmetic!

There are many security improvements that Microsoft could have made in the past that they didn't for various reasons. They have been good at keeping their software updated and in making sure that the average user maintains these updates, but they are always way behind the power curve when it comes to new threats and changes in the security world. We are just now getting an updated browser with phishing protection (how long has THAT been a problem) and it took years to get pop-up protection out of IE and even then it doesn't work worth a damn. Users are forced to use third party apps like Firefox and defraggers just to keep their system up.

My biggest beef, as far as "proud", is the outrageous price their software commands. When you can buy a PC for as little as $400 Microsoft expects you to pay half again the total cost of your PC just for an OS. That is the stripped down version! The premium version would cost more than that PC!! Then you look at Linux.... Most distributions range from free to less than $60 with all the support and updates you get from Microsoft. Nobody should have to pay $200 to $400+ for an operating system. That is outrageous and one of the main reasons I finally began moving away from Microsoft and installed linux on my laptop.

By the by, I believe that the release I saw for OSX was not an emulator but a bootable distribution that does NOT run under Windows. I have not tried it so I may be wrong, but that was the impression that I got.

Sorry if this sounds like I am ranting, it wasn't meant to be but upon re-reading it, it does kind of sound that way.
 
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I actually completely agree with you Bubber on the $400 bit...that is a risky marketing move on MS part. The thing is tho...they have corporations in their pockets. Vista will be distributed with new PCs and under open license agreements. It is an assimilation process, and many users will want Vista in their homes after seeing it at the office.

IE is not an OS by the way :)

Fraggle: Just as i said before (basically) any OS will do if you just sit and work on your PC as if it's a glorified typewriter ( jk ;) ). At any rate, all of the rants against Windows; I have never experienced to any great extent that people love to complain about. My office PCs and my house PCs all run for days on end with no error.

Just to give you an idea...my previous job was system administrator. In charge of 100 odd XP and 2000 machines outside of the servers. Currently I'm a network admin, and there are about 300 machines here all XP. In all 400 or so machines in 2 jobs, I have yet to see XP behave as erratically as is complained. I have also yet to see XP be hard to use by anyone. Not even an hour ago, I explained to my IT unlearned dad how to explain to his IT unlearned IT manager how to assign permissions on network shares.

Probably 1% of these PCs have ever "simply crashed". Lost and corrupt files occur on all platforms while on a network and are more often than not, ID-10-T errors. The THREE macs i dealt with (2 G4s and 1 G5) while on the 100 PC network all had file corruption issues, the one with MacOS X had a consistent problem where it eventually (re)corrupted an Outlook PST. My most problematic machines were those 3 Macs. The irony? They were used by the 3 graphics artists.

Compare MacOS to Win98/ME and you'll get no argument from me. 98/ME were crap. However 2000/XP are stable and very viable for use on many end-user PCs.
 
IE is not an OS by the way :)


Correct, it isn't.

It is, however, tightly woven into the windows structure, such that without it, you wouldn't be able to browse files or network shares, read help files, display computer properties etc. etc.

The only part of windows that IS an OS, is the kernel. Everything else is added software that makes "windows" what it is.
 
i switched from winME to winXP and i can tell you that XP is one stable mother.
it's not at all unusual for me to leave my machine on 24/7 for a week or longer and not have to restart.
I experience program crashes but it doesn't affect the OS at all.
winXP comes highly recommended as far as stability goes.
agreed. compared to Win9x or WinME or Mac OS 10.0 or earlier, Windows XP is awesomely stable.


Originally Posted by Enterprise-D
1. Virus and hacking vulnerabilities are not hardware dependant except on a firewall. Further, a lack of vulnerability to viruses only applies to MacOS not the hardware. And this only appears so since virus writers recognize the 2% marketshare of MacOS and ignore it by and large. Saying therefore that you'll install XP or Vista on it negates this advantage.
Market share is a big part of the lack of viruses/spyware. No software can protect the user from themselves - if a black hat can trick you into installing his malware, then it doesn't matter what system you are on.
But at least *nix (including OSX) have 30 years of user security development behind them (unlike Vista's UAC), and don't run the common user as an admin (like XP).


przyk said:
The only thing that would bug me about it is the lack of "out of the box" software development tools and compilers, and the fact that '#' doesn't appear anywhere on the keyboard. That's just one particular iBook (G4) though.
1st, the dev tools do come with the machines, they are just not installed by default. A G4 iBook would have come with three disks - an OS install disk, a second OS disk with additional printer drivers for the super-professional types, and iLife. The dev tools are on disk #2.
second....umm, above the 3 key?

EDIT: I was chatting with a co-worker, and he reminded me that the British Powerbooks and iBooks had different Shift-number key symbols, and the British Pound symbol is over the 3 key. In order to get a #, you had to type Shift-Option-3. (or hit the KeyCaps application)
So you may been correct in your comment afterall :)


alain said:
Athelwulf, I hear you on getting a Mac, but they are sort of expensive. Does anyone know if its possible to use a mac OS on a non mac computer?
it has been done in the past, but it is not supported and drivers are not always available for certain hardware combinations.
There is a Palladium chip on the new Intel macs, but work-arounds have been available for more than a year.

phogistcian said:
My two penneth is that my gf's bro bought a Mac laptop, and it broke just out of warranty. He then went and bought a new one, which broke within two months, so he sent it away for repair, and it came back with the same problem, so he sent it away, and it in the first six months of ownership, it was away for repair for more than three months.
Just so I'm balanced in my replies, Mac low-end laptops have been having issues over the past three years. Comparison studies have shown that these issues are not out of line with industry standards (considering that with the move to intel, Macs are basically PC's on the inside), but that Mac users tend to be more vocal in thier complaints.
That plus Apple's switching of their iBook (and now MacBook) production to the FoxConn plant increased problem occurrences IMO. Things appear to be better with the MacBooks than with the last two generations of iBooks, but are still not as good as early G3 iBooks and before (minus the 5300C fiasco).

We'll have to see how quality issues crop up over the lengthening lifetimes of the intel-macs.

Enterprise-D said:
What's a security nanny?
Google for reviews of Vista's UAC (user-access control) system. they have improved it since the initial Betas, but it's still a hack, and it shows. However, it's a hell of a lot better than XP.


Bubber said:
Don't care for apple because of price mainly. Looks nice and is a stable machine, but the premium you pay is just not worth it.
Macs tend to have a longer shelf-life than Windows machines. IME, my mom replaces machines once every 4-5 years. I average 6-7 years. The cost amortizes.

Bubber said:
I run Ubuntu Linux with no probs at all and have never looked back.
Oh, heh. Ok, Linux wins. :D
I like Ubuntu; had it running on an old Mac Mini, and also on an old throw-together PC. It's a really good system.

Enterprise-D said:
MacOS emulators for Windows have existed for years. Plus with the advent of Intel into the Apple space...what's to prevent MacOS from running on a PC?
The MacOS emulators only go up to OS9, as far as I am aware.
Palladium is the only thing preventing OSX from running on a whitebox PC. I'm not going to link to the available work-arounds either, though, as I'm sure it isn't kosher to do so here.

Enterprise-D said:
However 2000/XP are stable and very viable for use on many end-user PCs.
Agreed. I built my GF a win2000 box last year that we just upgraded to XP (she finally found some stuff for work that required XP). Perfectly acceptable for the amount of time she spends on it.
Same with my Mom. I had built her a Win98 box after her dumpster Win95 box died. recently built her an XP box, and she's happy enough with it. Trying to do home videos on it has been difficult, but it's good enough for the time being.



Now, I work on XP and 2000 all day, because the company I work for builds custom software for major companies and government branches; 95% of which use Windows. However, about 60% of my co-workers have our own Macs on which we perform most of our daily tasks; simply because that .01% increase in ease of use becomes a huge factor when you are working 9 hours days 5 days a week year after year. The same reason why many others in our industry have Linux on thier home machines.

The difference between the available OSs is not as drastic as it once was, but the difference is still there. If I wasn't working so much, I'd go Linux for the cost savings + the *nix backend. However, I'm not into compiling stuff when I', not doing it for work, and since I've been pulled into photography for the family events, Photoshop is a must. For work use, MS Office is also a must.

So *for me*, OSX's minor design advantages over Windows are a major plus, and OS X's binary application availability make it win out over Linux.

Windows does some things very well, others well enough for most needs, and some things horribly. Same with OSX (Finder and RAM caching, I'm looking at you!), but I find that OSX's issues are more often annoying, as opposed to Windows's show-stopping, or restart inducing.

glaucon said:
Currently, my uptime is 84 days plus.
No crashes.
Uptime comparisons should have gone the way of the dodo once we got into the realm of weeks.

In the past three years, I've only restarted my 7 year old G4 tower when I'm traveling for work, and shut it down since I won't be home for more than two days. I had some issues three years ago when a third-party HD controller PCI card died, and things got flaky. Since then; no problems at all. And that includes multiple OS updates, software installs and removals, dev tools installs and removals, HD swaps, and a GPU upgrade.

I've got a 2 month old Dell Latitude Centrino Duo for work that requires a restart roughly once every week and a half, and the OS randomly loses the Ethernet port (it puts the port into low-power mode, and then can't remember how to turn it back on again), which requires the Ethernet Drivers to be re-installed. Some of it's issues are Dell's fault, but most are XP, XP's user access design, or XP's driver memory access design.



to sum up: at least we are moving quickly away from shared .DLL's!!!!!
 
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