OSNews:

Looking past the hype

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 20:48:00 GMT

Looking past the hype you see all sorts of options. The most surprising thing if your willing to use multiple OS's is that if one goes down to a virus, the rest will keep chugging along.

By using multiple machines with various OS's you are always on. When my roommates win XP machines come down with another virus, I still connect. It annoys him when he asks if there is a probelm in the network and I don't notice anything but a bit a lag.

Linux isn't for everyone(yet) Mac OSX is more expensive though you get more for your dollar. Windows is cheap and it shows but does have it's uses as well.

Umm

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 20:48:00 GMT

One size never fits all. Still wish I had a Mac though ;-)

Where's the beef?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 20:52:00 GMT

While I too share your enthusiam for OS X, I use it as my full time OS at both work and home... your article seems like a rah rah piece which simply says, "I like OS X, other OSes can't compete..."

Sure, you're entitled to your opinion but it seems a bit out of syyc with what an editorial should be... something with meat?

I find myself asking, "Is this just Eugenia's way of saying, "Look, I publish pro Mac content... see! Told You so!"

Blah ! --- Old Mac problem again.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 20:53:00 GMT

The Mac is not for everyone.

I agree, with a G5 (just a Pentium 4 1.6 GHz equivalent) at such an high price Mac OS X is really only for a few of us.

Still wish I had a Mac though ;-)

games

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 20:55:00 GMT

i heard sega is porting puyo puyo fever to OSX, any other console games comming?

yawn...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:00:00 GMT

the articles topic said it all for me, the rest of it was just another zealot not willing to think outside the box that jobs have defined as fit for all.

Re: yawn...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:05:00 GMT

The above comment is just as flame laden as the other two that were posted... but because it is a jab at Mac users... a certain editor that shall remain nameless wont mod it down.

well...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:09:00 GMT

...but you must agree, yawn, that it is a pretty nice idea. Hybrid between *NIX and Windows-like Interface (disregarding that Apple got it first - second after Xerox).

still the best

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:27:00 GMT

yes. osx rules, though i still miss a decent ms office, office x sucks a little bit. its slow though it is compatible. which is the most important.
Other things i still miss in osx is:

maximise button
msn 6
media player 9 that truly works and supports wmp9 codec

thats all, for the rest everything is actually there
there are plenty of games, like battlefield, quake3, unreal 2003/2004

Mac vs Wintel vs Lintel

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:32:00 GMT

I agree that Macs are wonderful platforms. Only one issue - cost. When they can start competing on price points, then I will seriously start looking at time. For me, right now Lintel is the way to go - (accually Linux on AMD - but close enuf, eh?).

Huh?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:32:00 GMT

I like the Mac, but some things just leave me scratching my head. For example, Mac OS X is bloatware. A basic install of Panther will take about 1 GB and doesn't give you much to play with (not even the iTools or BSD subsystem, depending upon where your interests lie).

And while the hardware will just work, you are paying Apple a premium to do so. Once you leave the realm of hardware just working, users will still scratch their head while they are searching for the start button (people tend to be more interested in familiarity than usability). Once you get into the realm of Unix applications, there is really no benefit to Mac OS X: X11 and several other major Unix programs are easier to install, a few great tools are installed by default, and the Terminal is very nice, *but* the package manager and compiling applications (if need be) is the same old drill.

Oh, and I think people make too much of a fuss over how hard Linux is to use. I managed to get mkisofs and cdrecord to work on the first crack under OpenBSD on my G4 -- I prefer the command line and had no hardware to troubleshoot, which is great. (Why would I abandon Panther then install Gtk+ or Qt stuff?) If you want a fancy GUI, and I'm sure it is just as easy. I tried the same thing a few years back and it took forever to setup the hardware properly (adding IDE-SCSI support and such). The moral of the story: a lot of people judge an OS based upon their experience with it years ago. Things change and problems fade away.

Office X compatibility

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:35:00 GMT

>office x sucks a little bit. its slow though it is compatible.

Yeah, it's quite slow, although I'm not too sure about the compatibility. I did some Word documents on a Win2k workstation using Office 2000. Tried opening them up using Office X and the graphs (which were pasted into the original) came out like a negative photo!

Curiously, they opened fine and dandy in OpenOffice.org...

Give up on cost!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:44:00 GMT

I constantly hear people pointing to a Mac and saying oh how expensive it is. They are correct, but they are pointing in all the wrong places.

To begin with, you are paying a premium for a Mac because you are getting decent quality hardware and a boatload of bundled applications (and those applications are of fairly good quality for their target market).

The real problem is choice: you cannot buy a low end model without a built in monitor and all of the bundled software. Similarly, you won't find a mom-and-pop shop which builds machines with the cheapest components they can find. So it is not that you are buying an over priced product, you simply don't have the option to buy the lowest price bundle that someone can put together.

Re: Mac vs Wintel vs Lintel

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:50:00 GMT

"I agree that Macs are wonderful platforms. Only one issue - cost. When they can start competing on price points, then I will seriously start looking at time."

Wow, I'm surprised that you haven't been corrected thus far. Apple's prices are in no way out of sync. As a matter of fact, in many instances they offer systems that are much less expensive than the competition.

I think what you're getting at is that with buying a PC, you can buy less and therefore pay less, but that of course does not make a PC less expensive but rather... more *configurable*.

problem in the title

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:51:00 GMT

If anyone wants to run OSX, s/he must buy a PowerPC box. OTOH, I can run Win XP on x86 box or a Mac via the soft of Virtual PC (M$). And the last, Linux distro can be run on almost each kind of machines. OSX might be the best system for PowerPC boxes,however, it could be ranked in the x86 world.

HALT the Mac PROPAGANDA !

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 21:54:00 GMT

Why people do have to lie to convince other guys to switch to Mac if it's that good ?

I'm not a sheep... As long as people will say everywhere "switch to mac ! mac is better ! mac is more userfriendly !" I just won't switch. If someday I have the choice to try and choose, I'll do that. A lot of people complained about the Microsoft propaganda: but why are they now doing the same with Mac ?

Now please stop that stupid campain... Just got enough.

HALT the Mac PROPAGANDA !

Premium hardware? What a joke.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:10:00 GMT

OK. Give me a Mac that has hardware that is as inexpensive as my "crappy" ASUS motherboard and Lian-Li Case and I'll gladly "settle" on "non premium" hardware.

The only thing premium about Mac hardware is the price.

The thing I find Interesting....

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:11:00 GMT

The thing I notice, is how many people complaining and saying how bad OS X is.... have you actually tried it? And used it for more than a month?

Because using OS X for 5mins, or for a week is not sufficient time to get used to it....

And if you have used it for around a month, you have already relised how good it is.

Then there is everyone complaing how the software isn't enough....
You go ahead to either Versiontracker or MacUpdate or something like that, and you search for the programs you would use on Windows, I pretty much Guarantee that you will find a alternative program that will do the same for the mac, and usually a free alternative.

So if you say it sucks, or it doesn't work as well, I beg to differ, I'm in the IT and manage networks..... I would not trade my Mac for the world, I would refuse to go back to a XP Laptop. Never

RE: HALT the Mac PROPAGANDA !

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:15:00 GMT

As long as people will say everywhere "switch to mac ! mac is better ! mac is more userfriendly !" I just won't switch.

Ok, fine.

[sarcasm]
Mac's suck. They crash all the time. You'll be lucky to get 1/2 day of uptime. They are super expensive and really hard to use, especially when setting up the internet.
[/sarcasm]

Do you prefer the lie over the reality? Now will you go buy one?

If you won't go by word of mouth, what will you go by?

mac??? so so

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:18:00 GMT

a friend of mine is always saying "the mac is the best. . . buy one mac. . . the mac is the fastest computer. . . mac os x is the most stable OS. . . etc"
he works with al dual g4 with 2gb of ram, lots of HD, etc (property her employer). . . when i asked: "if you must spend YOUR money, not your boss money to have a mac. . will you really do it???". . . plain answer=NO

RE: HALT the Mac PROPAGANDA !

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:18:00 GMT

"If someday I have the choice to try and choose, I'll do that."

well... where do ya live? Redmond? If do, go to Bill's house, he's got one.

Seriously, go out to a store that sells Macs, tell the sales nimrod to leave you alone and check one out... or, if you have a friend that has a Mac... it ain't that awful, sheep don't use macs, goats do... BTW there's a lot more zealots of Windows & Linux here that pooh-pooh the Mac, not the ones who use multiple OSs I've noticed just the ignorant ones.

BTW: Don't do what I say... do what I do... FOOK'EM ALL.

Does it run emacs?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:21:00 GMT

;)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:22:00 GMT

" Does it run emacs?"

Yes.

Re: HALT the Mac PROPAGANDA !

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:25:00 GMT

"mac is better ! mac is more userfriendly !"

Well, if you can't accept the truth then there's not much that can be done for you. Oh well.

/me ducks

Walmart and Dell sell pre-installed Linux boxes.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:28:00 GMT

If you want one, you can get them from them!

Another thing is that distros that come with KDE 3.2 are really easy to use! I suggest that people who think Linux is hard to use (it isn't) to try a distro that comes with it, such as Mandrake 10.

As I said in a previous article, my 52 year old mother uses Linux, and she finds it a lot easier than Windows!

Premium hardware

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:32:00 GMT

It would be worth pointing out when you buy a PC (I'm not talking about people who build their own here I mean general consumers), I notice this especially with laptops, you'll get advertised a ATi Radeon 9700 with 64MB graphics RAM. Which sounds great, but when you look into it, you find the card isn't actually an ATi card and the graphics RAM is shared.

Matt

OSX is not so hackable.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:33:00 GMT

"and the eminent hackability of the *NIX platforms"

But OSX ISN'T hackable to the extent of an open source unix-based os. Just try customizing the GUI like you could with X Windows. This is my main complaint about osx -- however wonderful it may be for non-power users it comes severely short in the GUI customizability department.

Cheap iMacs

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:39:00 GMT

http://www.macofalltrades.com/dept.asp?dept%5Fid=3

This is less than what they'd fetch on eBay.

I guarantee you that 10.3 will run quite snappily on a G3/500 (I run it acceptably fast on a 350/320ram) and the prices on the 700 are a steal.

Kwitcher bellyaching, buttercups.

---

And in the meantime a hearty "drop dead and rot" to Windows XP, the lameass "goatway" E series here at work, and Dreamweaver 4.

Not only has Dreamweaver crashed on me 2 times today as I tried to update my site resouces, XP locked up each time Dreamweaver crashed, and after reboot #3 Dreamweaver won't even launch any more.

I've never had anything like this happen at home. The only time I've gotten KPs or corrupted programs/data on OS X is due to sudden and massive hardware failure.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:40:00 GMT

"Just try customizing the GUI like you could with X Windows. This is my main complaint about osx"

Most of that stuff can be done in OS X with the right apps (DragThing comes to mind), plus a few unique things.

Re: Mac hardware

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:49:00 GMT

The only thing premium about Mac hardware is the price.

Exactly. When I get a new PC, the life expectancy of the box is about 5-6 years with no upgrades. I buy top-quality parts and still pay about half as much as I would a similarly equipped Mac.
As for OSX, I simply do not understand the draw. Maybe it's a personal preference, but I've always hated the Mac interface. Some people say you just have to get used to it - personally, I"d rather have my balls crushed by a wooden mallot.

Macs laptops way overpriced

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:52:00 GMT

A specific example, I need a laptop with a high resolution screen, preferably 1600x1200, otherwise 1400x1050. This is important for photo editing (anything higer than 1.3MP), and viewing documents (you can display 2 entire A4 pages at once). At Apple, the thing that comes closest is the 17" model with a 1440x900 screen, which costs more than ?3500. At Dell, I can get an Inspiron 510m with a 1400x1050 screen for ?1250, or an Inspiron 8600c with a 1920x1200 (!) screen for ?1400. Ok, they're not directly comparable machines. The things is, with PCs you have a lot more options. If you need a hi-res screen, Apples only option is the 17".

Ok, now let's try to get some closer matches:
Apple 15" PB
15" 1280x854 screen, 1ghz G4, 60GB HDD, CDRW/DVD, 256MB ram, 64MB Radeon 9600, Bluetooth, 802.11g, FW800, 10/100/1000 LAN.
Total costs: ?2500.
Dell I8600c
15" 1680x1050 screen, 1.4ghz Pentium-M, 60GB HDD, CDRW/DVD, 256MB ram, 128MB Radeon 9600, Bluetooth, 802.11g, FW400, 10/100 LAN.
Total costs: ?1600.
The hardware difference is just faster FW and LAN, but the premium is a whopping ?900. And if you downgrade the screen and video to a 64MB GeForce on the Dell, the difference will be over ?1100! The PB comes with more software, but I'm not going to pay that for a bunch if iApps anyway. Think of it this way, for the price of one 15" PB, you can almost buy an Inspiron 8600 AND a complete iBook.

Ok, so the PB is the premium option, the iBook is much better value? Here we go.
Apple iBook 933
14" 1024x768 screen, 933 mhz G4, 40GB HDD, CDRW/DVD, 256MB ram, 32MB Radeon 9200, 802.11g, FW400, 10/100 LAN.
Total costs: ?1570
Dell Inspiron 510m
15" 1024x768 screen, 1.4 ghz Pentium-M, 60GB HDD, CDRW/DVD, 256MB ram, integrated Intel graphics, 802.11g, FW400, 10/100 LAN.
Total costs: ?1130, the only thing worse than the Apple is the integrated graphics. But if you do 2D work you're fine, and you can upgrade to a 1400x1050 screen for only ?60. If you really want to play 3D games on your laptop:
Dell Inspiron 5150
15" 1024x768 screen, 2.6 ghz P4-M, 60GB HDD, CDRW/DVD, 512MB ram, 32MB GeForce 5200, 802.11g, FW400, 10/100 LAN.
Total costs: ?1130. Again, you can upgrade the screen for ?60.

My conclusion, Apple laptops are overpriced in both the high-end and the low-end categories. And I didn't even bother to check other PC laptop manufacturers than Dell.

Just try customizing the GUI like you could with X Windows ...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 22:54:00 GMT

Yes, you are limited in what customizations you can do to Aqua, but guess what, JBM ...

You can run X 11 under OS X and you can tweak those X Windows any freakin'way you like. You can run KDE, Gnome, Windowmaker, or any desktop environment that's been "finked" and it's totally tweakable.

In fact, I hear tell that if you're a real command line wizard you can set the system to open X 11 as it boots and you'll never have to see Aqua again. See, Apple actually bundles its rather bulletproof X 11 with 10.3. It's an easy install. Put disk #3 in and click continue instead of stopping with disk #2.

Personally, I flip between the two windowing systems on a regular basis.

So don't tell me you can't tweak OS X. It's more tweakable than Linux because you have TWO different windowing systems to play with.

RE: Macs laptops way overpriced

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:12:00 GMT

All prices are in Euros including VAT straight from the Apple and Dell store in the Netherlands. For some reason the Euro sign shows up as a question mark, although they previewed fine.

A Case of Overstatement

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:21:00 GMT

This is an article without substance. The author identified himself as a "traditional Mac Zealot," and then proceeded to look down his nose at the great unwashed who use other operating systems. I am very happy he considers Windows workable. Still, I have yet to see it slowed down much by feature bloat, something I have seen with OS/X. Version 10.3 is significantly faster, but even then, a G4 feels slow to me.

As for Linux, it has its ideologues, but Torvalds himself is remarkably free of it. Linux has evolved, as a result into choices of distribution and emphases appropriate to the task.

A few other comments. Windows does well in a business environment with sysadmins who know what they are doing. With Windows it is possible to standardize on e-mail software and browsers that do not result is "crippled systems and other bizarre behavior." While a firewall is built into Linux, in Windows they are widely available, AND they regulate what can send out data down to the individual dll. The author has seemingly failed to do any of these things on his in-laws' system.

On Linux, I have never "hit the command line" to get a sound card working, ever. The one place the Mac has the lead is on wireless networking, but I expect Linux to catch up within the year.

OS X

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:29:00 GMT

I have three Macs - a G5 with a 19" CRT, a G3 500 PowerBook and a G3 450 console. All run OS X, the latter two also have YDL installed. I use W2K on a Dell at work. There is simply no comparison in stability, ease of use, intuitive interface, availablity of quality software, ease of maintenance and long term value.

Sure, windows machines can be cheaper, but you get what you pay for. If price is the only factor, the go intel. Otherwise, check out a Mac.

@Anonymous, Macs overpriced

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:29:00 GMT

Well, you are right for sure. But you haven't mentioned the weight. Macs are at least half a kilo (a pound) lighter then the corresponding Dell machines. If you go down in waight you go up in price quite drastically. When I got my PB12" I bought it because it was cheaper than IBM's, Sony's, Dell's, FSiemens etc. in that weight category. I wanted just a machine to install linux on. Later OSX grew apon me...

the mac is nice but

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:31:00 GMT

i do like the mac. i have had a powerbokk 500mhz wich was realy nice until someone sat on it . the i bougth a g4 1ghz
powermac and a cheap pc lapop. i noticed that when i wanted to do schoolwork on the mac i often booted up linux to write esays and code and stuff. i never relly liked ms offfice .

so i sold the powermac and bougth a dual mp rig for linux instead witch gives a tad more peformance .

but if i get a new laptop it will absolutly be an apple i just love those machines. osx is nice and all but i seldom use osx applications and ifeel that *nix applicaions are nicer in linux. hmms pherhaps i should say gnu applications.

EDA/Embedded Systems

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:35:00 GMT

I develop for FPGAs for fun, as well as doing development for embedded processors. I've long thought that mac would be worth a try, but without viable alternatives for these things, a mac is pretty worthless to me. Any suggestions? Virtual PC won't cut the mustard because even on my Athlon XP 2500 Xilinx Webpack takes a minute or two to compile a 100 line (verilog) design.

Also, parallel/serial ports are needed for most of these purposes. How could I deal with that?

darius

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:35:00 GMT

Thanks bud!
After I read your comment, I cancelled my G5 order.

Hmmmm....

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:41:00 GMT

For example, Mac OS X is bloatware.

People should be banned from forums for using silly generic terms such as: bloat, fud and troll.

To begin with, you are paying a premium for a Mac because you are getting decent quality hardware

Like the Powerbook case that looses its paint? Or the faulty logic boards on iBooks? Maybe you mean the new crappy interconnect on the mini iPods that breaks after a month of use?

@peter

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:50:00 GMT

On Linux, I have never "hit the command line" to get a sound card working, ever.

Reaaaaaly! you must be new to linux then...

Now try using said soundcard for MIDI playback or full duplex recording. Any luck?

RE: @Anonymous, Macs overpriced

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:50:00 GMT

It funny that you mention the weight of the 12" PB. At 4.6 pounds, it is about the heaviest 12" screen laptop you can find. You should check the new IBM X40 starting at $1500, it's 2.7 pounds. Ok it doesn't have an optical drive, but even with the external drive bay attached it's just 4.0 pounds. And you can get lighter and smaller USB optical drives if you don't want the IBM bay.

I never understood why people would want an optical drive in a ultra-portable. USB flash memory/hard disk or a cross-over lan cable is much more convenient for quick file transfers, and if you want to watch movies you can rip them to the hard disk at home. But if you really must have an optical drive built in, you can always get something like a Fujitsu P-series. Remember when Apple dropped the floppy and all those Mac users claimed that they never used floppies anyway? Well I haven't used a cd/dvd in my laptop for a year. So here another option lacking in Apples line-up: an ultra-portable laptop without optical drive. You know, like the ancient Duos.

OSX, "glosses" over it's UI problems

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:54:00 GMT

I used to secretly like OSX a lot. I used to yearn for it's sleek,drop-shadowed,pin-striped,brushed metal UI. Lately i've been using Jaguar a lot for Photoshop and Illustrator work. You know, the "creative" things that macs are supposed to shine at. At the same time i was taking my work home on a photoshopped windows machine.

The machines are about the same age and the x86 machine was probably about $500 cheaper than the silver G4. I noticed a few things.

#1: the Mac UI isn't as solid as it looks. There are a lot of little things that over time start to give OSX the "held together with scotch tape" feeling that Gnome and KDE suffer from. Except the scotch tape is a lot sexier. An example is error messages. When a message pops up it's not bound to the erroneous window. Therefore, you may close the program that had a problem, and the error window is still there doing nothing!

#2: the windows version of many "creative" apps (flash,illustrator,photoshop,dreamweaver) is cleaner. In OSX there's a constant feeling that you're never really using the whole screen. The dock is always at the bottom waiting for the mouse to go down there and wake it up. And all the tool boxes are sort of floating around, not really "joined" to the main window you're working in. In windows you never have tools just floating around on an empty desktop because there's a backdrop to the application, so you always know what you're working with. This is especially bad (in OSX) in Photoshop and Illustrator. The tools look exactly the same. The only way to casually tell the difference is the artwork above the main toolbox and even that is similar.

#3: Mac's do NOT make up for their "premium" price by providing "premium" hardware. Macs haven't been in a position to compete with the x86 world in 3 years. The G5's are decent machines, and can probably best most P4s, but their laptops can't get CLOSE to similarly priced x86 laptops. I won't start talking about AMD Opteron CPUs because everyone here hopefully knows about them.

Even if OSX was ported to x86, I'm starting to think i still wouldn't use it. I've come to really respect windows' usability in the last few months and began to really hate OSX's. Linux isn't quite in a position to compete, but OSS developers know their weaknesses fairly well and i think we'll see a linux desktop that is solidly better than XP by the time Longhorn comes out. After that it'll be a battle again. Perhaps skyOS will be a true contender by then as well. One thing's for sure: The better linux and windows get on x86 hardware, the less important OSX becomes, especially on PPC hardware.

@anonymous

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:56:00 GMT

I never understood why people would want an optical drive in a ultra-portable. USB flash memory/hard disk or a cross-over lan cable is much more convenient for quick file transfers, and if you want to watch movies you can rip them to the hard disk at home.

I don't want to bloody rip movies to my HD to watch them!!!!

Duh!

@deleted

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:02:00 GMT

To begin with, you are paying a premium for a Mac because you are getting decent quality hardware and a boatload of bundled applications (and those applications are of fairly good quality for their target market).
The only "high-quality" bit of (non-laptop) Apple hardware is the case, and maybe the motherboard. Everything else is off-the-shelf OEM stuff, the same as what you buy on Pricewatch. There is a definite price margin on Apple hardware. The G4 lines are worth half what Apple charges for them. The G5 line is actually priced good for what you get, but only because the Opteron platform is still relatively low-volume and expensive. Once Intel's 64-bit x86 chip starts shipping in volume, Apple will have to lower prices or again be stuck in the premium price category.

I swear...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:03:00 GMT

articles like this bring out the Platform trolls like crazy.

why argue with these people? they lie, they contort the truth, and the make sweeping generalizations.

I must be addicted to my physiological reaction toward people who make comments like that because I keep reading to see if some one makes comments like those I classified above.

and no...I am not a Mac zealot.

yep

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:03:00 GMT

" A basic install of Panther will take about 1 GB "

Yep. But so does an install of WindowsXP.

" And all the tool boxes are sort of floating around, not really "joined" to the main window you're working in "

That's really a matter of personal prefrence. I like the way OSX does it. On windows it seems to me like Photoshop is taking up too much space. It's just a matter of what works best for the user.

OS X

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:09:00 GMT

Once an OS does what you need it to do, it's personal preference. I prefer OS X, but like many things about Windows.

Oh, and there is no such word as "virii". This is faux Latin hypercorrectness. Latin words ending in -us form the plural in -i if they're second declension nouns. However, "virus" is not. It is a fourth declension mass noun, and has no distinct plural. Its English plural is simply "viruses".

RE: Walmart and Dell sell pre-installed Linux boxes

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:11:00 GMT

Dell? I'd like to see it. Show me a stock Dimension running Linux.

There are two reasons Dell gets Windows XP for less than any OEM: volume and exclusivity. And it's because of that deal that Dell will be the very last company to sell Linux desktops as home PCs, if it ever does. Because Dell will have to fork over another $20/machine to Microsoft if it ever does, and will lose one if it's main advantages over other OEMs.

HP has quietly started selling business desktops with Mandrake and Suse, but *nobody* out there is selling home PCs running Linux. Walk into any chain store like Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Walmart etc. and you sure won't find one. OK, Walmart.com has sketchy whitebox machines, but that's a tad different ... Joe Sixpack isn't going to buy a computer brand he's never heard of with an OS he's never heard of without at least trying it first!

I got a Dell 400SC server to use as a workstation. Sure, it came with RedHat 9 ... but just the CD, not installed.

And to get the onboard sound working, I had to download ALSA driver source code from Dell's website and compile it. Dell provided an installer shell script and buildmodule routine so the driver is recompiled automatically whenever I upgrade my kernel (of course I have to know to always install the kernel source) ... which I think is pretty neat, more than I expected from Dell. But that's not the sort of crap a newbie is going work through!

@Kady Mae

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:12:00 GMT

G3/500? for $400??? Are you *insane*??? $430 will buy you a 2.6GHz Dell with a 17" monitor. Yeah, you can say "you get what you pay for" all you want, but I've got an XDS D300 that's been chugging since 1998. Right now, its been in my basement, which has been renovated for the last several months, working fine despite ingesting huge amounts of dust. I've got three Dell desktops in my room, and while the software is constantly a problem (typical spyware/virus-infested XP machines...) the hardware runs just great. Of course, since the only difference between a Dell and an Apple is the motherboard and the case (and since Dell uses modified Intel motherboards and custom-engineered cases), similar reliabilities are to be expected!

Oh, and I use OS X 10.2.8 on a G4 800MHz all the time. Its not too painful, but its definitely on the slow side. I'd shudder to think what OS X is like on a G3!

the editor seems to have regrets on the instant gratification powerbook

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:15:00 GMT

There is simply no reason to have these crazy foaming at the mouth pro-Mac advert-news articles.

They cheapen the overall OSNews experience. There is nothing objective, nothing interesting, very little if any factual information in these zealotry editorials.

And they get published because the OSNews editor can't get over the fact that she blew a lot of money on pile of shit hardware that runs an OS that all the major software companies are abandoning.

If you believe the hype -- from any company, but especially Apple -- you will get burned.

Buying any sort of Mac hardware is a rip off, plain and simple. It doesn't take long for a power user to realize there is nothing of substance on the Mac. A gaggle of iApps does not make a platform.

The path of zen is to admit your mistake and turn back. The path of rationalization and corruption is to try and make your mistake look like something else other than a mistake.

RE: OSX, "glosses" over it's UI problems

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:22:00 GMT

"#1: the Mac UI isn't as solid as it looks. There are a lot of little things that over time start to give OSX the "held together with scotch tape" feeling that Gnome and KDE suffer from. Except the scotch tape is a lot sexier. An example is error messages. When a message pops up it's not bound to the erroneous window. Therefore, you may close the program that had a problem, and the error window is still there doing nothing!"

Seriously, what are you talking about? There's absolutely NO WAY that you quit an app in OS X and it left dialog boxes sitting around. It's simply not possible. The only dialog that has anything to do with other apps that may be a left over error message is "The application WHATEVER has unexpectedly quit." You must be confused

Second, Apple is actually making dialog boxes more usbale via "sheets" which are those little dialog boxes that are CONNECTED to the window they're associated with.

Also, your comments on the use of floating palletes, many people prefer this to the Windows style and it's actually been one of the major praises of Office v.X (which also uses floatng palletes) versus windows versions of Office.

osx and opensource

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:24:00 GMT

I love open-source and I wished osx was totally open source.
But.. I would never even consider getting kde or gnome *cough* on my g4.
I hope some day there will be a totally free and open environment that can compete but that is not going to happen for a long time.
OsX is simply the best os distro at current time.

Why is it that the open source community IS capable of making excellent software, but LACKS vision?
Look around, and most you see is clones or look alikes. WHY is there no such project with a visionary approach as Next did years ago, or as Microsoft is doing now (as well as apple.. a bit), and especially Sun.
I think, maybe oss is too much built around the programmers, while those companies are build around loads of other kinds of people in addition.
Design is especially important as wel as marketing. And you cannot create an identity of an os by coppying it after an exsisting os. Not that you cannot copy at all, but pleez get the start button and the systray and the look alike open panels and the filebrowser-internetbrowser integration things out! (Same goes for osx copies or neXt copies)

well, cu

RE:�the editor seems to have regrets on the instant gratification powerbook

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:31:00 GMT

"Buying any sort of Mac hardware is a rip off, plain and simple. It doesn't take long for a power user to realize there is nothing of substance on the Mac. A gaggle of iApps does not make a platform. "

Well you obviously ar not a power user, OR you have not really studied the OS and the Hardware. Please take another look around, 'cause there is some interesting stuff going on. It's definately more then some gathered lgpl software, and the hardware ir not that bad either.

RE: JH

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:35:00 GMT

RE: Rayiner Hashem

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:41:00 GMT

G3/500? for $400??? Are you *insane*??? $430 will buy you a 2.6GHz Dell with a 17" monitor. Yeah, you can say "you get what you pay for" all you want, but I've got an XDS D300 that's been chugging since 1998.

Unfortunately the Dells priced at 400-500 dollars are unusable. They come with 128 MB of RAM which is just not going to cut it with WinXP. I find so many people who want to buy a 500 dollar computer but don't realize that it's just a marketing gimick. WinXP sucks unless you have at least 512MB of RAM. I know some people will argue with me but XP is dog slow otherwise. If you want a usable desktop you are going to spend at least $750 on it (for a total package), and even then you are only going to get a celeron and a crappy integrated graphics card.

RE: doctor zen

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:42:00 GMT

just a few questions for you, but i know you won't respond anyways.

1) have you ever used mac os x exclusively for any period of time
2) are you a pc gamer
3) do you build your own machines a lot (including the ugly ones with the windows and neon lights)
4) are you a UNIX user in the slightest bit (i.e. actually installed linux once or twice by yourself)
5) do you have a college degree, or are you even out of high school yet
6) what do you do professionally (if anything). is it computer related, such as programming, or is it general computer-user?

you're more than likely a troll who's never used os x, or barely used it. even if you have you don't know what linux is. chances are you wouldn't let go of windows because you actually think it's a superior OS. you probably play counter-strike constantly because of what little you have in the professional or educational depts. since you so blindly believe that it's SUCH a waste of money/time you clearly build your own machines out of the cheapest deals on pricewatch and think nothing should ever cost more than that. i'm just trying to get more info on you. i should do a psychoanalysis of you trolls. so interesting how someone can defend a vastly inferior operating system like windows.

RE: Linux is too hard

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:44:00 GMT

Linux is now so easy to use and install I use Mepis and Lindows and Xandros and they are all easier than Windows for average user stuff... what with 10 minute installs and up and running for no configuration... I would love a Mac but cant afford it...
mepis cost me zero dollars and has everything I need and is so easy to use and I am a windows XP user till a few months ago... now if we could get OSX on an intel structured machine... if it is based on Unix why hasnt someone tried to port it...

Re: Abraxas

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:55:00 GMT

> Unfortunately the Dells priced at 400-500 dollars are unusable. They come with 128 MB of RAM which is just not going to cut it with WinXP.

Ummm use Win2K? Runs fine on my Dell 400SC, crippled Celeron and all. Fedora (GNOME, KDE) runs even better.

Although I had to buy a Radeon 9200SE just to play Max Payne 2, it's still < 400 bucks.

@Abraxas

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:55:00 GMT

Who buys RAM from the manufacturer? I always get the absolute minimum RAM configuration, because manufacturers uniformly overcharge for RAM. Another 256MB of RAM (Kingston) is $50, shipped. As for being too hard for people --- c'mon, my *dad* installs his own RAM! And if you can't, you can get your local 12-year-old geek-in-training to do it for the price of an ice-cream.

I'm a switcher

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:58:00 GMT

I'm a switcher ...... from Win 2k to Mac OS X to Windows XP. XP really is quite a nice system.

Reread the article...PLEASE

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 01:07:00 GMT

I have read it several times. The author has simply offered the suggestion that if you are not satisfied with your current operating and are thinking about what your alternatives are then one should at least consider a Macintosh.

He made it clear that he was not bashing Windows or *nix and even agreed that users could be satisified with whatever OS they are currently using. Note: his comment was for those who might be considering a change.

So, please, let's stop the incessant bickering on things like cost, etc. Nothing is proven by the rantings on any side of the arguments. They are old and very tiresome. HOW ABOUT SOME INTELLIGENT discussions.

re:re:Linux is too hard

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 01:10:00 GMT

Because people would cludder it with cheap crap like Asound and Amptron drivers. And no one on the Windows side would purchase it, they would just rip it off like it was just some piece of crap software. Most linux people (who generally love MacOS X) believe that everything should be free, and would not pay for it even if it came with a free bar of gold and car washes for a year.

.02

forget windows

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 01:22:00 GMT

I think Apple should port more of their software to Linux as well as OS X and Irix, like they do with Shake. Forget windows on the high end app's.

upgrade

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 01:24:00 GMT

"Thanks bud!
After I read your comment, I cancelled my G5 order."

I will take your order then, I'm just about to upgrade soon!

Sounds like me a bit

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 01:38:00 GMT

I switched from Windows to Linux as a desktop OS when I lost a hard drive back in 2001. It was x-mas time or so. I went hard core red hat linux 7.1 or so with Ximian Desktop. At the time Evolution was new and the best way I knew to get it was Ximian's Desktop.

I used this for maybe six months. I even bought Loki games and such so I could play some games on my new linux machine.

I don't remember exactly what caused it, but there were things that just 'didn't work right' and it was starting to drive me nuts. I'm not too demanding of a user I just wanted email, web surfing, games, and the occasionaly photography related thing.

So I bought the wife an iMac in July 2002. The idea being she reads her email & surfs the web, maybe uses print shop. I could play with iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto and the like and make movies and stuff of the kid.

I bought a PowerBook G4 550MHz on eBay, then a 12" Powerbook in March 2003 and have not looked back. I actually sold my last desktop PC last month. I'd unplugged myself from the online games of DAOC and Star Wars completely and now use my Powerbook exclusively.

The thing I hate about Mac OS is limited now to one thing. Financial Software. Microsoft Money rocked. Quicken on Mac OS X is a big steaming pile of shit. And I swear they go out of their way to make it *not* work with the banking OFX standards. I don't get it. It can't be that hard, but they sure make it that way.

So I do my checkbook/finances on my work provided laptop on Windows. It bites that I can't do this the way I want.

128MB is still unacceptable

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 01:42:00 GMT

Ummm use Win2K? Runs fine on my Dell 400SC, crippled Celeron and all. Fedora (GNOME, KDE) runs even better.

Does the average consumer have a copy of Win2000 laying around? I don't think so. Those machines come with WinXP and they are not suitable to run XP.

Who buys RAM from the manufacturer? I always get the absolute minimum RAM configuration, because manufacturers uniformly overcharge for RAM. Another 256MB of RAM (Kingston) is $50, shipped. As for being too hard for people --- c'mon, my *dad* installs his own RAM! And if you can't, you can get your local 12-year-old geek-in-training to do it for the price of an ice-cream.

I'm sorry to inform you but most people don't want to open the case of their computer to do anything. It's easy as hell to install memory and pci cards but you would be amazed at how many people will gladly pay a tech $30 rather than install it themself. There are a lot of people who don't know anyone that can install memory for them. I deal with these people on a daily basis at work.

The most techinically oriented people are not going to buy those shitty PCs anyway. We build our own or when I need a crappy PC I buy a used one. The people that buy them are people who know nothing about computers and see what they think is a good deal.

Re: Anonymous (IP: 209.161.229.---)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 01:56:00 GMT

Re: Anonymous (IP: ---.org)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 02:03:00 GMT

Wow, I'm surprised that you haven't been corrected thus far. Apple's prices are in no way out of sync.

The cheapest Mac (eMac) costs AU$1350 new.
A bottom end Dell (Dimension 2400) costs about AU$900 new.

A 50% price difference is significant.

As a matter of fact, in many instances they offer systems that are much less expensive than the competition.

Many ? No. Some, perhaps, in certain circumstances.

I think what you're getting at is that with buying a PC, you can buy less and therefore pay less, but that of course does not make a PC less expensive but rather... more *configurable*.

Or you can buy as much (or even more) and pay less.

PCs are cheaper *and* more configurable.

Money Money Money

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 02:05:00 GMT

Is it all about the money then? You get what you're paying for.. And since PC's are cheap enough (or not as expensive as MAC's) then PC buyers should compromise with the fact that the quality is poorer than a MAC..

No wonder why a more expensive piece of hardware performs better..

Re: Kady Mae (IP: ---.lv-llb.nevada.edu)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 02:13:00 GMT

I guarantee you that 10.3 will run quite snappily on a G3/500 (I run it acceptably fast on a 350/320ram) and the prices on the 700 are a steal.

You have a *very* strange idea of "snappy".

About a year ago I ditched a PB 667 (w/1Gb RAM), mainly because it was intolerably slow and frustrating to use (much as I liked OS X). The Latitude D600 (w/512Mb) running XP I replaced it with not long afterwards was, in terms of UI responsiveness and "snappiness" at least twice as fast, if not more.

I recently borrowed a friend's PB800 to give 10.4 a month-long test run to see if the responsiveness had improved (which it has - markedly - but is still chunky in places). Because of that, I am contemplating buying an iBook when they are next updated. I think a 1Ghz G4, 512Mb RAM and the next version of OS X might nearly make it as snappy as my XP machine at work (A 1Ghz P3).

However, no G3 and most G4s will not run OS X "snappily". Hell, a dual 2Ghz G5 *still* can't resize windows smoothly. If you are satisfied with the performance of a 350Mhz or even 500Mhz G3 running OS X, then a ca. US$100 Pentium 3 will run XP "blazingly fast" in comparison.

Mac is this, mac is that......Mac is often harder than wintel or lintel

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 02:19:00 GMT

I'm the guy whoi is able to install linux on almost everything and to get it fully working (I did it on a lot of pc, on some crappy ultra sparc 1, on an atari falcon, on imac, on powermac and last but not least on a old, old powerbook wth not enough ram to get the installer running) but the hardest thing I ever did with a computer was to setup a mac os 10.2 box with a win 2k one on a network and make the mac share its printer or even worse access to the shared printer on the pc....

1° the mac has the usb adsl connection and it shares it with the pc trhoug ethernet (it tooks forever to get it work before I dig a lot and found this wonderfull apps called IpShareNetX)
2° for the printer it didn't even show the access smb printer.... You know what ? you have to press option while selectionning the add printer entry in the menu of the print manager just to see another "advanced" entry into this menu... you beleive you'll be able to browse network and to just add the printer (as in the good old mac classic way), no, you have to enter a crypto url with the proper adress ip to get it work.......
and nothing........

the best os which used magic key not even documented ????

it doesn't even connect...
after a couple of hours, you'll find some tips in the gimp print telling you that you have to edit by hand /etc/smb.conf to add the proper entry for printer... of course, you're supposed to be some wizard to figure out what are those option means (I'm a lamers, I used for years gnomba to edit mine in linux or linuxconf or webmin or whatever)......
the nightmare is not over because you have to add by hand some symbolics links between /usr/libexec/cups/backend and smbclient....
and then it's not over because mac os X is too clever for you, it doesn't provide all the pdf2ps needed when you want to communicate whith the foregn printer......
I could go on forever on this topics but even when you want to access shared folder from the pc you have to manually connect to server.. ok, one times it's not grave... BUT
this crappy things will add some garbage at the end of the name the next time you reboot so obviously it would not connect automatically.....

and don't try to share your drives via samba without a 3rd party apps.... it doesn't even start to work........

even in the official mac support forum they link you to the gimp-print faq to do that...

I've been able to get it work but it took forever and even now, it's more easy to move the printer each time my gf want to print....

Mac os X is cute, mac os X is easy, yeah, yeah.... even my mandrake 8.0 is more user friendly to make advanced stuf work....

so I assume, Eric Raymond was wrong, setting a network printer is harder in mac than in lintel.. I swear.

the only, only five star for mac os X is their 3rd party software, whatever you said it's great to run flash mx, illustrator, photoshop, ms office while you're on a X session connected to your linux box.......

Worst thread ever

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 02:20:00 GMT

The Horror!
All of these non factual ignorant posts have been posted here before ad nauseum, and probably by the same folks!

Mac is LINUX without the headache

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 02:27:00 GMT

With OS X you get the best of both worlds with the headache of neither. Mac OS X has the commercial apps that most users want (MS Office, Adobe Suite, etc) without the eternal security issues of Windows. Mac OS X has most of the non-cost advantages of LINUX without the setup/configuration issues and the need to rely on applications that are, feature-wise, 50-75% of their commercial counterparts.

Add to that:
1) X11 client allowing tons of Unix and other open source apps to run on the desktop.
2) The DarWine project promises the ability to run Windows x86 software on the Mac without Windows emulation.
3) Unix Terminal without emulation.
4) Cool technologies like Rendezvous, that is doing for networking what Plug & Play has done for devices.
5) Native PDF, which for the average user is a godsend.

You get the idea

The reason why Macs are so good...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 02:30:00 GMT

...is because choice is so limited. Just imagine if a linux company was to set up and make its own distro that would only work on a small, controlled subset of hardware. Everything would "just work".

IMHO, companies like Apple and Sun know exactly what they're doing. In order to make things easier for the user, you have to limit his/her choices. This is why GUI is easier to use than CL. The GUI drastically limits what the user can input into an application.

RE: Mac laptops way overrpriced

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 02:38:00 GMT

Not only are the top of the line mac notebooks way overpriced, but way underpowered. A 1.3ghz G4 is top of the line mac notebook? give me a break. I was willing to give Apple a chance when doing research for my new notebook, but when comparing what you get and the price to what someone like www.pctorque.com gives you it was a no-brainer to go with x86. Now granted, I'm not talking about an ultra-portable. Pentium-M will give you more bang for the buck in that regards anyway. I'm talking about a desktop replacement machine which is becoming a hot market. Apple just doesn't have anything in the same league as x86 until they get G5s in their notebooks. And of course it'll still be way more expensive.

The more things change ...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 02:49:00 GMT

This whole discussion has proved (yet again) that some people prefer Macs, some prefer Windows, the majority don't know and/or don't care (but use Windows because it's ubiquitous), and few are likely to ever change their opinion.

RE: Mac is LINUX without the headache

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 03:22:00 GMT

I very much agree with the statement that Mac is Linux without the headache. I use Linux since 1996, so I would assume I know the system. I also used Mac OS 7-9 which I did not like very much. I recently got a new Mac box with OS X and I find it extremely nice. It combines the worlds of Windows with good applications and a nice interface and of Linux with its excellent development support (which is my profession).
I can do anything I want on the Mac. Programming in various languages, run most Linux apps in X11, have access to the powerful Linux commandline development tools, run native Cocoa apps, do word processing with Office X and OpenOffice and play some games. The integration of Java into OS X blows me away. Java, which is certainly not desktop-ready on Win32, indeed would be a top-notch choice on OS X.

I would not give an OS X to the average non-IT employee because they are often reluctant to any changes, but for people in the IT business I personally consider OS X a very interesting system. The only which requires me to boot Windows occasionally is to run code through a Win32 compiler to get some app ready to be shipped to the customers, as that's what the majority of the common world is using. By the way, what's the deal with VirtualPC on G5... Vaporware?

RE: OSX, "glosses" over it's UI problems

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 03:29:00 GMT

quote: "In windows you never have tools just floating around on an empty desktop because there's a backdrop to the application, so you always know what you're working with. This is especially bad (in OSX) in Photoshop and Illustrator. The tools look exactly the same. The only way to casually tell the difference is the artwork above the main toolbox and even that is similar."

If you work them in Windows you work them on a Mac, it's the same exact piece of software, with the same exact pictograms, the same exact placement, the same exact toolboxes... even Photoshop and Illustrator have similar interfaces to make things easier to someone who understands one but never touched the other.

I have both platforms and to me it is the same crap.
Personally I prefer a Mac and OS X (Panther) just because of its simple and minimalistic behaviour, I relate to that. And generally I like having things done without wasting time with OS bureaucracy.

Sometimes when I'm on the road I have to carry my lame old HP (a P3 500) w/256MB mem... yeah it is painfully slow, and painfully heavy (Just can't wait to get a replacement for that), but I still need to have things done and I can't excuse myself saying "You know, my laptop is sh*t and I don't dig Photoshop on windows" .. Imagine me getting a headbutt after that comment.

But when working essentially with 2D/vector design programs it just goes down to taste, aesthetics and what you're willing to spend. It's completely irrelevant where you work with those two apps as long as you know HOW to work with them.

re: Premium hardware? What a joke.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 03:32:00 GMT

>>>OK. Give me a Mac that has hardware that is as inexpensive as my "crappy" ASUS motherboard and Lian-Li Case and I'll gladly "settle" on "non premium" hardware. The only thing premium about Mac hardware is the price.

lian li?

lol rotflmao. dude, if you consider a lian li case tight, you might need glasses. sure it's aluminum, but it looks like a giant block head. Can that thing get any more square?

I'll take a piece of garbage dell case any day over lian li.

lol.

no thanks. i'll stick with my antec no frills case...it works just fine for my dually opteron rig.

now the G5 case...that _is_ a work of art, AND functional.

and the aluminum powerbooks? you can't really find a better looking notebook. (though i won't buy one till they go G5, cause they are too slow)

just admit it, you are a 11 year old lanboy wannabe.

probably pretty funny to see some 4'9" tall kid lugging his 200pound lian li to lan parties.

(typing this from a dell mobile precision m60, dual booting xp and slack)

re: Mac is LINUX without the headache

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 03:43:00 GMT

I totally agree, IME Linux requires constant work and effort to use. When running Linux I was spending several hours each night playing with config files and reading FAQs and HowTos. Even after 3 or 4 months I was still struggling to get everything working smoothly. Graphics problems, sound problems, problems running needed Windows software using WINE, problems with USB storage devices and particularly network problems. For me Linux has been nothing but a source of hassle and frustration, it wasted more of my time in a few months than Windows has in the last 10 years.

I never got filesharing using Samba working properly between the Linux system and the other machines on my network. Even though I spent weeks working on it and the network itself was working fine. I could see the samba shares from Windows but accessing them was too slow to be usable. OTOH setting up the whole windows network with file and internet connection sharing only took a few minutes. It was so easy I almost couldn't believe it was working perfectly with so little time and effort spent. Adding a Mac OS system to the network was totally trivial too.

If you can get a Linux geek to setup and administer the system for you, or you enjoy spending all your free time playing with an OS, then Linux may be fine for you. But for me a system that just works without all that hassle is worth a bit of extra money.

Mac OS X and Windows XP are both amazingly easy to use and well designed OSes IMO. Which is the better OS just comes down to your personal preferences and needs.

RE:spaceboy29

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 04:02:00 GMT

"I think Apple should port more of their software to Linux as well as OS X and Irix, like they do with Shake. Forget windows on the high end app's. "

Shake was available for Windows until Apple bought it.

There are quite a few very high-end applications that have no counterpart on the Macintosh and never have.

@JK

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 04:04:00 GMT

Sorry to hear that your experience was troublesome, but do understand that its certainly not the only way things could happen. We dual-boot Windows and Linux at work (RedHat 9), and the machines Just Work (TM). Install went flawlessly, the (vanilla) hardware was detected, and RedHat's GUI tools made it easy to set up filesharing.

In general, I'd put it this way: someone who has had an equal amount of experience using Linux and Windows will find that the easy stuff in both is easy. The intermediate stuff is usually more complex in Linux, and more straightforward in Windows. The hard stuff is tractable in Linux, and impossible in Windows. Examples:

- Basic setup actions are easily done via YaST or redhat's control panel. Both are between Windows Control Center and Windows Management Console is power and ease-of-use.

- Intermediate stuff like setting up Wine is less straightforward. Windows tends to have GUIs for everything, like intermediate stuff in Linux is often relegated to text files. Of course, its usually not as bad as it looks at first. Take setting up wine for example: an experienced Linux user would know to use winesetup instead of mucking with ./wine/config. This is a matter of experience. Windows users are used to installing a program, and diving into the GUI to see what gadget does what they want. Linux users are used to Googling for a few minutes to determine the best plan of attack before trying to solve a problem. Often, this will yield various tools that make the problem much easier to solve.

- Linux makes hard things (getting misbehaving hardware to work) possible, while Windows makes it impossible. To this day, I've got 2 Windows machines that just refuse to play nicely with my wireless network. One has a connection that cuts in and out, while another works only if you uninstall and reinstall the network bridge driver after each reboot. In Linux, hard things are usually more complex off the bat. For example, setting up that network bridge would require messing with netfilter, as opposed to Windows where its a two-click affair. However, when netfilter failed, it would leave behind tons of debug info and log output, and a Google search would lead you quickly to possible solutions. In Windows, you'd get no usable debug output, and since the failure is in a closed-source, vendor-specific driver, you won't find any problem solution info online.

RE:Mac is LINUX without the headache

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 04:08:00 GMT

"2) The DarWine project promises the ability to run Windows x86 software on the Mac without Windows emulation. "

Can't be done without emulation. DarWine is using the QEMU x86 emulator.

"Unix Terminal without emulation."

Pretty much any platform has this available.

@Anonymous

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 04:08:00 GMT

just admit it, you are a 11 year old lanboy wannabe.
You're the one who used "rotflmao" and "lol" and no capital letters in you're post, and he's the 11-year-old lanboy wannabe?

RE:Andreas

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 04:09:00 GMT

"Is it all about the money then? You get what you're paying for.. And since PC's are cheap enough (or not as expensive as MAC's) then PC buyers should compromise with the fact that the quality is poorer than a MAC.."

Which, of course, isn't true.

"No wonder why a more expensive piece of hardware performs better.."

Probably because it doesn't.

The Mac OS Hardware Paradox

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 04:13:00 GMT

I agree that Mac OSX is a very compelling option. However, its marriage to the PowerPC platform prevents it from ever capturing enough marketshare to truly compete with Windows. Ease of use is its strongest selling point among non-Windows operating systems. However, for the most part, the people who would find this the most compelling lack the technical expertise to have enough confidence to purchase an alternative hardware platform.

As a very technical person, I'm happy enough with opensource. I have fluxbox for when I want something minimal and I have Gnome2 when I want something user friendly.

In my opinion, a full port of MacOS X to x86 (not just Darwin) would be the only real competitor to Windows on your everyday Desktop, but we all know that will never happen. Therefore, I think the only hope for any real marketshare growth for MacOS is through laptops. Since laptops aren't quite as prone to commodity hardware, PPC doesn't have the same price or configurability disadvantages. However, by the time any marketshare can be found through this route, the usability of open source environments will have advanced far enough for MacOS to lose most of its advantage.

So, the way I see it, MacOS's market positioning just doesn't appeal to enough users to carve out much more of a niche than it has now.

Re: Single Window apps

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 04:29:00 GMT

In windows you never have tools just floating around on an empty desktop because there's a backdrop to the application, so you always know what you're working with.

Oh give me a break. Why do I need a backdrop window for an *app*. I already have a desktop. Do I need yet another useless window construct adding to the clutter on the screen?

RE:Single Window apps

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 04:32:00 GMT

"Oh give me a break. Why do I need a backdrop window for an *app*. I already have a desktop. Do I need yet another useless window construct adding to the clutter on the screen?"

Like he said - it's a good way to know what application a toolbar is attached to.

jcs- pretty much sick and tired of your f..in posts

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 05:50:00 GMT

dude, I'm tired of your negative posts here.
pretty much you and the hashish dude post here all negative about Apple.

you know , in the real world, mac's are not as bad as you want to keep posting to try and change minds.

I have a suggestion, get a life, dude.
and also windows id=s good , linix is good, they are all good.

Go outside, meet a girl, drink a beer, and let the hatred go.

Doctor Zen Hits the Bullseye ...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 07:15:00 GMT

Check out the comment (moderated down) from doctor zen - he speaks the truth.

@foljis

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 07:18:00 GMT

Reaaaaaly! you must be new to linux then...

Now try using said soundcard for MIDI playback or full duplex recording. Any luck?

On my laptop with an Intel 810 chipset, I never bothered. If the movies play, I'm happy. On a desktop with a Turtle Beach card, duplex playback and MIDI was easy with ALSA. My distribution (Libranet) installed it with the click of a button.

As for my length of Linux use, no I don't go back to Slackware one. I started trying to install Linux three years ago, and switched over about a year ago. So you are right, recent Linux is far easier to configure than older versions.

My own needs include the usual Internet stuff, personal finance and word processing, but also amateur photography. I need to be able to drive negative and slide scanners. I need to process Canon RAW digital camera files. Vuescan drives all my scanners, and is available on multiple platforms. The rest was available via Debian's APT.

macs ..... easy

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 07:25:00 GMT

i have been using linux since i was 12 in the days of Red hate 4.0 back when they still had that ugly tophat for the logo. I have played with mandrake, suse, and now im kicking it with Gentoo. I love my ability to mold my OS to what i see fit. But when the Titanium powerbooks came out and i need a portable computer i was like hmm looks nice. When OS X came out i was like FOOOK YA. I have all the power of the main ingrediants of free BSD, the ease off use off Windows, and the support from both the Thrid party compaines like Adobe (i love my photoshop), and Macromedia, and also the Support of the open source community (Video lan Client , nuff said). For all and all i only get crashes on my powerbook when i know im doing something i should be doing and only then only the application will crash not the system (and giving me the black and white text kernal panic of doom i only had those in 10.0 beta) all in all i love My Mac OS X . I miss Theme Changer (before that ugly ass unisanities gui kits) that was the most robust and very simple way of making themes to change the look of the OS but give it time youll see even more Adoption by apple into the themeing structure for personalisation off the OS. Not to mention if i dont want to run aqua i can always type >Console at the login screen and go right to the good ol CLI then type Start X and get into either Gnome or KDE or Blackbox so im happy with that too.

ANyway to get to the end of this rant OS X is just i think the perfect blend of Closed and Open Source software. all i need now is the ability to set up jails like in FreeBSD, and i will be plenty happy

oh and last but not least

Final Cut Pro 4 and Shake 3, Protools, and Garageband

Nuff Said

Technical software???

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 07:40:00 GMT

I think I read that there aren't enought high-end or technical pieces of software for the Mac. I'm an engineer - not a computer guy - a mechanical engineer, but I'll briefly go through my experience. Two years ago I bought a Dell 8200 with XP pre-loaded. I later installed gentoo, but now, I run libranet (debian - commerical) and it is very stable.

One year ago, I purchased a G3 Mac iBook only because I wanted a lightweight laptop which used *NIX and had a stable GUI. OS X worked fine on the G3. Last month, my iBook was stolen. Fortunetly, I had a script which rsync'd my documents with my Dell every night. That evening - I knew that I had to get a new Mac G4. My reasons why are:

1) I can run Matlab, Mathematica, Maple, Excel, OpenOffice, Scilab, Octave, Gnuplot, etc... all of these run very smoothly.

2) If I need to write code, it is the easiest thing in the world to use kwrite (or even XCode!) to code in gcc or g77. XP makes it very difficult for me to write my own code. Why doesn't XP promote work by having something free like XCode???

3) Scripting - some of my numerical codes are written for mainframes. It is very simple to write an sh script to move files around - write necessary directories and config files, etc, automatically.

4) Emacs...

5) PDF's! I write most of my documents in LaTeX. Of course, I can easily make a PDF with TeX, but I can "print to PDF" from any program in OS X. Also, many technical papers are still in PostScript. Do you know how difficult it is to find a good ghostscript for Windows?

6) The best part about OS X is that it combines the functionality of Linux with the ease and power of a nice GUI. Yes, I do run KDE 3.2 on my Dell - but I also run it on my Mac. My Mac has never crashed on me - but when I ran XP on my Dell, this occurred often when some of my calculations took up to many resources. Furthermore, while most technical pieces of software come in Linux variants as well as OS X, they play "nicer" in OS X than they do in Linux.

7) Hardware - does anyone know how difficult it was to install gentoo on my Dell when I had a state-of-the-art ATI video card??? OpenGL was non-existant for a month while I played with drivers.

The only thing I miss about OS X is text highlighting copy and middle button paste... Can't win them all I guess.

Anyway - For my needs, I won't buy another Intel machine again.
-Jon

The bottom line

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 07:47:00 GMT

The bottom line is that Apple hardware is no better than anything you would get on most commodity x86 hardware. Everybody knows it, but for some odd reason some Mac people keep on trying to perpetuate this myth. The only reason I can think of is because they feel a little guilty for overpaying for hardware. They should just admit that Apple hardware is overpriced but they are willing to pay a premium on it for the pleasure of running OSX.

So many people want OSX on x86, but until Jobs is gone from Apple, it's just not going to happen. Jobs has had a hardware fetish from day 1 and this is unlikely to change - especially now that the powerpc supply problems seem to be gone for the moment.

That's why Apple will always be a niche market, which is fine, except for when it's market share gets to a point where software developers just don't think it's worth the effort - which is already starting to happen. Then Apple could face real trouble, because it's unlikely that Apple will be able to write all their own software.

@jon

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 07:57:00 GMT

7) Hardware - does anyone know how difficult it was to install gentoo on my Dell when I had a state-of-the-art ATI video card??? OpenGL was non-existant for a month while I played with drivers.

Installing the ati drivers should be as easy as "emerge ati-drivers". If that doesn't work you just download them from ati and run a script to build and install for your particular kernel. The harder part is getting the XFree86config-4 file setup properly. For my Sager notebook, I just popped knoppix in, got a reasonable config file and then merged that with the configuration utility that ATI supplies.

RE: Hardware

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 08:08:00 GMT

I apologize: I mistyped. I had an NVidia GeForce 4 Go card - not ATI. At the time, NVidia had very preliminary versions of the Linux drivers. It wasn't until about 4-5 months after I had the computer, that they finally had an OpenGL driver which worked well with my system. I must have installed 4 different driver versions...

One of their later versions actually had decreased OpenGL performance than a previous driver. Anyway, all I was trying to say is that all of my Mac hardware inherently works with my software. It's just nice.

I agree about the XF4 config file. It was very difficult to get a dual-monitor view with my NVidia card in my config. That's another great part about Mac's - i don't have to work with XFree86config-4!!!
-Jon

i'd get a mac but...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 09:36:00 GMT

I'm a big gamer. I don't really agree with the article when it stated that if one was big into games, they'd consider a console anyway. I have console systems and a PC for gaming, and I find that each platform has a unique gameplay experience to offer.

So I'd gladly switch to mac, but all I need are the games. Sure a lot of the newer major games are getting ported to mac, but the PC game market is really so much larger than it is on a mac. It's more of an afterthought than anything, so until that changes, I'll be chugging away on a PC -- though I love the idea of OSX.

re: i'd get a mac but...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 10:02:00 GMT

So I'd gladly switch to mac, but all I need are the games. Sure a lot of the newer major games are getting ported to mac, but the PC game market is really so much larger than it is on a mac. It's more of an afterthought than anything, so until that changes, I'll be chugging away on a PC -- though I love the idea of OSX.

Switching doesn't mean you have to throw out your pc. I primarily use Mac OS X, but also still use Windows (for an occasional game) and Linux (for bringing crappy old computers back to life :-))

If you ever want to buy a notebook, buy an ibook or powerbook. Notebooks aren't suited to gamers anyway, but make an ideal work-machine.

Re: Compatability

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 10:11:00 GMT

"Yeah, it's quite slow, although I'm not too sure about the compatibility. I did some Word documents on a Win2k workstation using Office 2000. Tried opening them up using Office X and the graphs (which were pasted into the original) came out like a negative photo!"

Things like that can happen within Windows. I have known a Word doc crash the computer right back to rebooting, when opened in a different copy of Word on Win2k.

These are problems with Microsoft software, not with OS X.

RE: OSX, "glosses" over it's UI problems (by Mike )

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 11:13:00 GMT

I just bought a Powerbook 17" in addition to my Thinkpad T40p (1.6GHz PentiumM 768MB 5400RPM HD 14" 1400x1050 ATI FGL9000/64) and Thinkpad A31 (P4 1.6GHz 512MB 4200RPM HD 15" 1400x1050 ATI M7500/32). The Mac's only problem seems to be game performance, and I'm not sure why. The video card is better (ATI M9600/64), maybe it's the bus.

Everything else is as fast or faster than the 2 Thinkpads. Things are in most cases also easier (really). For example, my MX900 Bluetooth mouse doesn't need reconnecting every time I bring the machine from sleep, on my T40p WXPP I need to reconnect it each time!

Anyway, I just got the Powerboook so I'm not an authority just yet, but I am starting to really like MacOSX and Aqua, and it's only been 4 days!

Please don't discount another platform, whatever platform, until you've really tried it and compared it to equivalently-dated technology. I've tried them all, and they all have their faults (1 mouse button? fixing dependencies?)

Anyway...

next non-mac dumbass to use the word "switch"

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 11:20:00 GMT

get's it in the chops.

'switching' is for non-techies.

no self respecting geek who visits osnews.com would switch.

we just "add".

here, running, pentium 4, athlon, opteron, ppc g3, ppc g4, 12" alum powerbook, decstation 500 (dec alpha), pentium-m(centrino), pentium 2....

running a variety of operating systems, os9, os x, xp, slackware, freebsd, dos, mandrake, and yellowdog.

stop the idiocy. are you a tech enthusiasts expanding your skills? or are you a whining fanboy of a single niche?

Re: The Bottom Line

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 11:41:00 GMT

Then Apple could face real trouble, because it's unlikely that Apple will be able to write all their own software.

Why not? Isn't that what Microsoft does? They write the OS, the word processor, the databases, the spreadsheet, the presentation program, the email client and server, the development systems, the project manager, the web browser, the web page creation app, the charting application, the media player, the games, etc, etc, etc.

That pretty much leaves scraps and vertical apps for everyone else.

A typical Wintel drone's thinking:

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 12:01:00 GMT

"I don't care if my OS is full of holes and crashes 12 times a day as long as I can change my desktop theme."

1. Windows 2.Linux 3. ...........MAC OS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 12:21:00 GMT

MAC OS is dead ! LiNUX RuleZ !!!

Stick with Windows

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 12:46:00 GMT

Because you are not smart enough, and too cheap to own a Mac.

I love you clowns, who spout Mac is crap.
Here's an oldie but a goodie about a group of Mac Zealots.
Tell us how stupid these people are.

"For our [Mars] landing site work, we always get the highest-end desktop Mac we can find......."

http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/32837.html

"Oh yeah, I forgot, no games!"
( Bill Gates Loves You )

MacOs and/or Linux

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 12:56:00 GMT

I own both a Mac (powerbook g4) and a Linux PC and the only thing the Mac does better is hardware integration and commercial video and sound applications, and that's why I chose it for the laptop rather than doing the Linux on Windows dance on a Intel laptop. That wouldn't have happened if I had been able to by a Debian or Mandrake loaded laptop in Europe, with the standard support and guarantee agreements, or at least, an osless laptop with "Linux ready" hardware.

Linux is a much better candidate for one size fits all (although it's still not the case, it's getting there) : a few names illustrate it : Mandrake (personal desktop), Montavista (embedded), RedHat(enterprise), Agnula (sound processing), Xandros (corporate desktop), clusterKnoppix (clustering). These are just examples of how linux can be cut to size. But more importantly, anyone with the right skills can do it. MacOS can be cut to size but only by Apple.

RE:comic book guy

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:03:00 GMT

"dude, I'm tired of your negative posts here.
pretty much you and the hashish dude post here all negative about Apple."

Actually, my posts aren't so much negative about Apple, but disagreeing with posts that are negative about the other platforms.

"you know , in the real world, mac's are not as bad as you want to keep posting to try and change minds."

I'm not trying to change minds.

Re: next non-mac dumbass to use the word "switch"

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:22:00 GMT

'switching' is for non-techies.

no self respecting geek who visits osnews.com would switch.

we just "add".

here, running, pentium 4, athlon, opteron, ppc g3, ppc g4, 12" alum powerbook, decstation 500 (dec alpha), pentium-m(centrino), pentium 2....

running a variety of operating systems, os9, os x, xp, slackware, freebsd, dos, mandrake, and yellowdog.

stop the idiocy. are you a tech enthusiasts expanding your skills? or are you a whining fanboy of a single niche?

Farken A. well said.

RE: Pricepoint

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 13:48:00 GMT

"I agree that Macs are wonderful platforms. Only one issue - cost. When they can start competing on price points, then I will seriously start looking at time. For me, right now Lintel is the way to go - (accually Linux on AMD - but close enuf, eh?)."

Apple computers are cheaper than pc's, at least in the US they are. I know this because I have tried many times to convince myself that going back to windows would be cheaper. And dollars to doughnuts, Macs are always a LOT cheaper, as much as 1/3 the cost of an equivalent pc system.
if you dont believe me, compare for yourself.
32 bit PC
pc mb integrated snd $125
3.4 ghz p4 $976
256mb video card $90-$600 avg $345
gigabit ehternet $45
sound $25
dvd burner $200
250 gb hd $200
500 watt pwr supply avg price $285
case $50
keyboard and optical mouse $150
microsoft windows xp pro $299.99
microsoft office pro 2003 $499.99
grand total without monitor $3200.98

64 bit Apple system with office
power mac G5 $1799.00
Office X for mac os X $399.99
grand total without monitor $2198.99

Apple is MUCH MUCH less expensive, the numbers are proof. and its true for laptops as well, when I bought my 14 inch iBook 2 years ago I paid a full $1000 less with a 3 year waranty then Dell was charging for an inferior inspiron system with no extended coverage.

Apple machines are not more expensive, this is just another bad myth.

SOURCES: www.pricewatch.com, www.compusa.com, www.apple.com

This is bad!

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 14:32:00 GMT

I shouldnt post this, but I cannot resist.

Here we are getting excited about whatever os is the best.
Isn't osNews about a bit of facination for each os?

I mean, I like the mac. But I do not deminish any other os (except win, sorry)
Instead I look at osNews every now and then to check out what kind of facinating new os has come into excistance!

I know some arguments for and against each os I've tried, and even not tried. They change when you get to know an os a bit more.
Most of the arguments here are about trivial things based upon habits and familiarity. That's not the way to compare osses!

What I'm trying to say is, please stop arguing.
Start to enjoy our shared interest.

-mack

RE: Re: The Bottom Line

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 14:43:00 GMT

"...the web page creation app..."

Are you kidding me? Microsoft doesn't have a fucking clue how to make a decent web page creation app.

RE: Premium hardware? What a joke

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:23:00 GMT

The joke is on you my friend, I have owned many PC systems and have replaced many ASUS mother boards (among others). However, I have owned 4 Macs. They are all still running. I have rplaced one flyback transformer in my old Mac II monitor. The 1988 model Mac 2 still runs fine today. I do not use it, but ocasionally sit people down infront of it and show them Word, I also run word on a 1.6 GHz PC - they performa at comparable levels (other than saving, the old HD in the Mac is slow). It is impresive to see that a 16 MHz computer compare favorably with a 18 year newer and 1000 times "faster" computer.

In the past 15 years I have maintained a PC for development (and games) - The only saving grace for the cheap hardware is that ever-poorer software makes the hardware obsolete before it breaks more than 50% of the time.

My new mac's are still in use, I upgraded only because I can afford nicer models than I could earlier - relplacing my iBook with a PowerBook. My 3.5 year old descktop is till in use - the iBook is being used by a friend. The only Mac I purchased that is not used daily is the old Mac II and it took almost 7+ years before needing to be replaced.

How many PC's run unmodified for 7 years? How about 4? I would be surprised if the majority of PC users get 2 years out of a system. By seven years, the only original equipment is the case ...

The bottom line is Mac's are cheaper in the long run. If you compare Apples to apples, they are cheaper out of the box. But generally you do not buy a new monitor with each new PC, nor do you buy a new copy of Windows to run on it (though in most cases you should legally).

Start throwing in productivity and the Mac really stands out. The real joke is that people continue to shell out money for hardware that is marginal and an OS that is a pure crap, spend hours, days or weeks in wasted time and consider it cheaper when they save $150.

Go to an apple store and look at the quality of construction on the Macs, it is head and shoulders above the PC. When you add in style - Apple really starts to shine. Ask your wife which computer she prefers - 10 to 1 the mac styling alone would be worth the extra $ (eMac excepted off course - but many like it, just not me)

The plural of virus is not virii.

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:24:00 GMT

It's viruses. See http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/plural-of-virus.ht...

I was intrigued by the poster about his price comparison...

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:34:00 GMT

to see if it really was a myth. But this is what I came up with to match the specs of the $1799 G5 in PC parts. Did a quick job of it since I need to go out, but I did it all from Newegg.com which is my favored store:

Nvidia FX 5200 Ultra $87
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-150-05...)

Allied 500W Power Supply $59
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=17-154-01...)

Corsair 256MB DDR333 $54
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-145-40...)

Seagate 80GB SATA HArd Drive $84
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-148-01...)

Pioneer 8x DVD-Burner $125
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=27-129-13...)

Logitech MX500 Optical Mouse USB $41
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=26-104-12...)

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ $224
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-42...)

MSI K8T800 Chipset Motherboard $97
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-130-44...)

D-Link Copper Gigabit PCI Ethernet Adapter $24
(http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=33-127-13...)

Case $50
Sound $50
Keyboard $30
microsoft windows xp pro $299.99
microsoft office pro 2003 $499.99

Total $1,727.98

So I'm still led to believe that building a similar system on PC is cheaper. I'm also not sure why the original poster chose components that are much higher end on the PC compared to the $1,799 G5. Things like the 250GB harddrive when the G5 only offers 80GB.

@Sang

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:39:00 GMT

Are you loony? The systems you priced-out aren't the slightest bit comparable. And you forgot to take into account the price of Office X for the Mac! Much more comparable:

Dell Dimension 8300
3.0GHz P4
256MB RAM
GeForceFX 5200
80GB HDD
DVD + RW Drive
FireWire, GigE, crappy speakers
Office 2003 Basic Edition
No monitor
1y warrenty
Various media apps
-----------------
$1515

PowerMac G5
1.6GHz G5
256MB RAM
GeForceFX 5200
80GB HDD
SuperDrive
Firewire, GigE, crappy speakers
Office X. Standard Edition
No monitor
1y warrenty
iApps
---------------
$2198

Price difference? About $700. For that price difference, you can upgrade the Dell to a 3.2GHz P4, 1GB of RAM, 250GB of HDD, a Radeon 9800 Pro, an Audigy 2, a set of 5.1 surround-sound speakers, and still have $80 left over. Doing the same upgrades for the Mac (minus the Audigy 2) puts you at $3317. Price difference? About $1100. For that price difference, you can ugprade the Dell to a 3.4GHz P4, Radeon 9800 XT, 2GB of RAM, and a 400GB RAID-1 array. The Mac? Well, the Mac doesn't go that high. Just the 2GB of RAM and a 250GB RAID-1 array puts you at $4000. At that point, you have to switch the Dell to a Precision workstation, and stick a Quadro in there

RE: RE: Pricepoint

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:41:00 GMT

> 3.4 ghz p4 $976

Get an opteron, man! They're cheaper than the p4 you present.

@kuyars

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:45:00 GMT

The price difference is even bigger than you note. The OP didn't include Office X. for Mac into his pricing, but included the PC version.

Re: Single Window apps

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 16:00:00 GMT

The issue of parent-child windows is one of the main philosophical differences between the Mac and Windows GUI. If you feel the need for parent-child windows, stick with Windows.
Apple believes a single menubar in a consistent place (i.e. along the top of the screen) is the more intuitive option. Plus under Apple's model you can make an application active by simply clicking on any of its windows (rather than hunting for it in the Taskbar).
If the windows of other applications are distracting you, you can always "hide others" with shift-command-H.
More on Mac-Windows GUI differences here:
http://developer.apple.com/ue/switch/windows.html

@ rayiner

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 16:07:00 GMT

why did you include the basic edition of Office in the dell? is it the same price as the standard in a mac? Standard Office for OS X is $399. Basic office for windows is 169.

and if you included it only because it came with the computer, then I think you should not be adding standard office to the mac.

re:�Re: Single Window apps

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 16:09:00 GMT

the poster is referring to MDIs.

the desktop in os x is an MDI. and the floating pallets of an app disappear when the app is not in focus which means you always know what floating pallet belongs to what app.

obviously, the poster has never used OS X or he would not have made such a statement.

Macs, YESSSSSSSS

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 16:13:00 GMT

I use Macs, and have used OS X for two plus years now. I laugh reading about them crashing, because it's a lie. OS X is the most stable OS I've ever used. I also have a PIII Dual 2.4 running XP in my office, and I use that machine maybe twice a week when customers bring me forms created on PC only software. Both OSs are extremely stable, but again, I maintain 13 work stations and one server running OS 10.3.3. I spend maybe two hours a week doing system admin duties. We have a whole section of 60 people doing XP sys-admin duties and they're NEVER caught up. Gotta laugh.

Macs are twice the price... right

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 16:51:00 GMT

New Emac prices.

$994.00!

eMac G4 1.25Ghz

New! Will be in stock by Monday, April 19th. Place your order now!

256mb PC2700 DDR SDRAM

80GB HD

Superdrive

56k Modem

10/100BaseT Ethernet

3 USB 2.0 ports

2 Firewire 400 ports

OS 10.3.3 (Panther)

Free Epson photo printer.

no sale tax outside of CA

There is also a system starting at $699 plus free printer.
I don't think you could walk out of Walmart with a complete system for less.

oops

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:00:00 GMT

http://www.macmall.com/macmall/families/emac/

Mac OSX Unix

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:07:00 GMT

I Dont think anyone who buys a mac buys it for its Unixness...I do evrything i need to in Nix and i would not buy a mac for that reason...they are good machenes but for the Unix someone is better of with some nice new AMD...and one more thing...Mac hardware is nice but VERY overated...just my 2 cents.

excellent point

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:22:00 GMT

'switching' is for non-techies.

no self respecting geek who visits osnews.com would switch.

we just "add".

You make an excellent point. Most technical people end up using a bunch of OS's

Heh

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:38:00 GMT

@Artist: The equivilent Dell machine is a much faster 2.66Ghz P4 for $826. That's not including the $100 mail-in-rebate, which I'd put towards getting a decent graphics card. And note, that this isn' even a bundle offer --- if you can find a special bundle deal like the eMac you list, you can probably get it even cheaper.

@Debman: Well, Office Basic is probably too little, and Office Pro is probably too much. Even if you include Office Pro, however, that's still close to a $500 price difference.

Blah Blah Blah

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:52:00 GMT

Who cares what your running as an OS!

I want the biggest monitor in the world! Much more important than speed or operating system :-)

I currently use a Mac.

re: heh

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 18:16:00 GMT

now a days, processors speed is meaningless when you get over 1 GHz.

I write programs, edit home video, organize and fix my family photos, write papers, make graphs, do presentations all from my iBook which runs at 800 MHz. the OS is smooth as butter and nothing takes a long time to render, compile, etc. and when I am compiling or rendering, I can get work done with out hiccups in the system.

I still use my PC, but not as much since it is a desktop system (I have not used my desktop for much except storage since I got my first laptop 2 years ago...an HP pavilion)

so, I really don't care much about the CPU anymore.... it is irrelevant for most tasks that 95% of the people want to complete. sure it matters when you are doing serious work in engineering, 3d rendering, and other processor intensive work, but even then, a G5 is perfectly fine since most of the work is vector processing and the G5s vector unit is more than adequate for the task (of course, you go tot he system that has the apps for the task as well)

so, I say to all, stop starring at your belly buttons.

The real bottomline

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 19:11:00 GMT

The real bottomline is that some things are actually better than others despite having the same parts.

For example a Mercedes and a Hyundai will both get you to any destination you want. They both use the same roads, gas, and most of the same parts but in the end the Mercedes is a better car.

Ever look at the fit and finish of a Dell and a low end eMac? Everything on the eMac is tight and flush. Is the Dell faster? Sure but the low end and high end Dell all have crappy construction. Open a new Dell Dimensions up once and it will never close up the same again. The case rattles and squeaks all over the place. Any tech that has worked on these can tell you this. the Celeron systems aren't even worth buying, but the low end eMacs run MacOSX just fine.

Apparently this is a big deal for PC users to say how bad Macs are yet have no idea how they work whereas most Mac users are familiar with both platforms and actually have a clue WHY Macs and MacOSX is good or not.

@Maximus

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 19:29:00 GMT

That's a ridiculous comparision. The Mercedes and the Hyundai do not use the same parts. A Mercedes uses lightweight aluminum rods, expensive, well-engineered transmission components, and real wood in the dash. The Hyundai uses heavy steel rods, cheap transmission components, and plastic in the dash. The two are just not comparable. On the other hand, Apples and PCs use the exact same off-the-shelf parts from the exact same manufacturers. A western digital 80GB hard drive is the same whether its in a PC or a Mac!

And I've got 3 Dell cases in my room, and I can say that they are very well-engineered. Easy to access, decent-looking, and very, very quiet. As spiffy-looking as a G5's? Heck no. But I'm buying a computer, not an art-piece. It sits under my desk and gets kicked a lot. I don't care what it looks like.

@Maximus

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 19:30:00 GMT

Btw: I'm typing this from an iMac G4. I use both platforms on a regular basis, so I'm not just making claims out of thin air.

Defending apple hardware

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 20:39:00 GMT

The price comparisons for the laptops are crap. Dells are basic 1.8" thick plastic with lots of stickers. Powerbooks are clean, aluminum, include ambient light sensors with auto-adjusting screens & backlit keyboards- Take a look at the screen hinge. You wont find anything even remotely as nice on an x86 laptop. In that 1" inclosure is a FULL system-DVD burner, gigabit ethernet, bluetooth built in, 802.11g wireless, USB 2.0, Firewire 400( 6 pin), Firewire 800, PC card slot, v90 modem, audio in/out, s-video & dvi out(mirroring and screen spanning), and wireless antenna built into the monitor. + Extreme attention to details like the tactile feel of the keyboard, symmetry, glowing power plug to show good connection and charging/full charge.

So you are all comparing apples to oran... x86 PCs

And the 1.6GHz G5 isn't a good deal for a reason. Apple wants you to spend more to get the high end machine. Compare a Dual 2GHz G5 with a Dual top of the line opteron, and comparisons become more debatable. This is neglecting the fact that it is beautifully designed and engineered compared to a throw-it-together your self and pray you're not dyslexic machine. Plus Apple is expected to announce big upgrades to probably dual 2.6GHz very soon). You can't get a Radeon 9800XT on Mac, but you could get a 9800 on it a year ago when it was first announced on all platforms. And you'll be able to get an x800 pro (ATi's new chipset to come out soon) when the G5's are upgraded. You just have to time your purchases in the Mac camp.

Apple can continue to shrink in market share and still grow a larger user base(The market as a whole is growing fast). If they do this, they will not lose developers, because it will still be profitable to stick a team together to develop for the platform. Over 10 million OS X users, Just as many OS 9 getting ready to upgrade, and a constant feed of switchers. Free, powerful, and easy developer tools. Does this sound like doom to you? Macs may stay niche, but there's nothing wrong with that if they continue to improve cross-platform compatibility and continue to innovate.

That being said, Windows will not lose to the Mac, ever. Part of being a monopoly is the ability to control the market, and thats what Microsoft does. I haven't used Linux (YET, but it will), so i can't comment too much on it. However, i will say that Linux does have the potential to beat Windows due to the fact that you can get it for free. Microsoft can't undercut free, but they can buy the media to make the masses believe total cost of ownership is high (and they already have), fund licensing disputes against Linux vendors (already have), and make as many proprietary technologies as possible to create the lock-in effect (ditto). Thats life. Go Linux!

pricepoint

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 20:45:00 GMT

I did include office x in the price, look again. and your right, the systems i compared werent comparable because the p4 only has a 32 bit word size vs the 64 word size of the g5. also that 250 gig hard drive has a 4096 byte sector size under windows xp vs 512 byte sectors under osx on an 80 gig drive. there is nothing comparable about these machines and as for the dude who mentioned using an opteron, I already have a heating system in my house, I am not in the market for a space heater at this time, but when I am I will certainly give AMD a look.

Re; Mac OSX Unix

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 21:28:00 GMT

I Dont think anyone who buys a mac buys it for its Unixness..

I did. Finally there was a Unix system with an integrated GUI - not the add-on afterthought KDE and Gnome represent (though they both are doing an extremely good job for that).

powerchip

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 21:31:00 GMT

Don't underestimate the force called IBM. Better get used to these goodies, the consolemarket finally gonna push them to more GHZ aswell make them cheaper.
Go work at Burgerking afterhours and in a short while you also can enjoy the magic of these wonderful machines.

Ever worked on AIX pseries?

Ligit question

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 22:23:00 GMT

If linux is linux because of its kernel, why is OS X considered a UNIX if it uses the MACH kernel?

@Sang

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 00:08:00 GMT

Do you have the slightest clue what you're talking about? 32-bit vs 64-bit makes zero difference in performance (well, small integer percentage point difference). Its important because of the increased addressable RAM. Thus, 32-bit vs 64-bit has nothing to do with G5 vs P4. The G5 is faster clock for clock, but a mainstream 3.0GHz P4 should keep up easily with a 1.6GHz G5. And a GB is a GB, and all modern hard drives have a sector size of 512 bytes. Comparing a 80GB to a 250GB harddrive is just plain innane.

PS> Oops, you're right about the Office OS X. But so did I, so the $700 price difference stands.

�re:@Sang

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 04:09:00 GMT

a 64 bit word can hold more control information, so you can utilize more opcodes, address more registers, use 3 address instructions, etc.

basically, not only does 64 bits allow more address space (almost never 2^64 on a RISC machine due to the control word structure) but it allows for more information to be placed in a control word, which, when optimized, could make your code work faster because it could reduce the number of instructions that you must pass through the pipeline.

did i write this?

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 11:48:00 GMT

wow!

as i read this, i thought to myself this is me!
i run windows at work, and had run it at home...
...til i bought a g4 on ebay.

it was my first mac experience in nearly 15 years,
and the best computing decision i have ever made.

i am sick of updating/maintining/securing win boxes at work.
i certainly wasn't about to do the same at home.

i bounced around a few linux distros, still running several... at one point i was running win/linux/osx on a 4-port kvm. i really love linux, and play w/ it constantly. but like the author, i needed a simpler solution. (i.e. get on, get work done, get out).

today, i run osx as my primary box at home. i unplugged the win and lin boxes, removed the kvm, and couldn't be happier.
to supplement my win cravings, i installed virtual pc running xp. i encapsulated it w/o network connectivity, so it lives its life out in a bubble in osx solely to run autocad. i have yet to install lin in v-pc; in the meantime, i always have the terminal for my lin/unix/bsd cravings. regarding gaming, aspyr [etal] have come up w/ some great ports. i have no issues w/ my gaming on the mac. however, again like the author, if i was that hard-core about gaming, then i'd buy a console...

osx provides me stability, power, speed, and security (everyone) deserves. perhaps at a cost, but believe me, you get what you pay for. though not a g5, the quality of my g4 box and its componentry is superior to anything i have seen.

apple just announced a price drop on the emacs, 1.25 g for $799. if you are looking into a new box or have ever been mac-curious, i say run and buy one.

thx for a great article,

jeff

@rayiner and others (anti mac crowd)

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 14:02:00 GMT

you jokers are tiresome.

think i'm a mac zealot? you would be wrong, you won't find a single mac in my apartment currently. perhaps i'll get a powerbook when they go G5, perhaps not.

anyway, as an mcse, rhce & small business owner, if I ran across you in my day to day business, I can guarantee you that your never ending crusade to prove to the mac people that "you are right"..would severely hurt any respect I might have had for you.

i mean, give it a rest.

It's just a tool. Do you really think if I found myself in need of a video editing workstation, or just a secretary computer that would be somewhat more resistant to the usual XP garbage (viruses, trojans, spyware) THAT I WOULD GIVE A SHIT ABOUT $500-$700 over the life of a computer?

please.

If I need 3000 cheap as shit computers, sure I'd probably go Dell.

But if I need 10 workstations for a research lab, the extra $5000 isn't shit to a $30,000 budget. That extra $5000 will save $20,000 to hire a microsoft monkey to apply patches and hit the restart button when things go wrong.

You people are stupid beyond belief. Are you guys mature adults with responsibilities?

I find that impossible to believe.

Anyway, I'd be very interested to meet some of you...perhaps I'll bring along some friends, CCIEs, PHDs, research fellows, oncologists, physicists etc.

and we'll have a good long laugh at your idiocy.

-a fan of dell, newegg.com, apple, slackware, windows xp, redhat, yellowdog, powernotebooks.com, freebsd, OS X, and OS 9.

@rayiner

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 14:31:00 GMT

Rayiner said: "Do you have the slightest clue what you're talking about? 32-bit vs 64-bit makes zero difference in performance"

again...Rayiner shows his supreme intellect. Dude, what kind of fool are you? I'm about to buy a dual Opteron system precisely because it's faster then a P4 in 64bit operation.

blah blah blah, spout some false, or narrow scoped psuedo technical garbage.

THE FACT IS, THE OPTERON IS FASTER IN 64BIT MODE against itself (in 32bit mode) and a P4.

so just give it a rest. In fact, I'd have to suspect that you are paid by OSNews just to be a nuisance, and create these extremely long pointless threads.

64bit makes a difference. only retards and rayiner thinks 64bit makes no difference.

http://pari.math.u-bordeaux.fr/archives/pari-dev-0401/msg00015.html

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1884&p=17

RE:@rayiner

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 00:35:00 GMT

"THE FACT IS, THE OPTERON IS FASTER IN 64BIT MODE against itself (in 32bit mode) and a P4. "

If you knew anything about the Opteron, you'd realize why that is - and it has nothing to do with being a 64-bit chip and everything to do with exposing more registers in extended mode. It doesn't indicate anything for other architectures. In fact, for some tasks (and all else being equal) a 64-bit chip can be slower.

OS X Panther

donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 04:37:00 GMT

As far as getting work done goes, Expose is incredibly helpful.