Wondering if you should stay Windows or make a switch? Read on to learn about what’s coming up for Microsoft’s Longhorn and Apple’s Tiger.
Tiger vs. Longhorn
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I’m just fine using Windows XP. I have no security/virus issues, its stable, works well, and does everything I need.
i’m quite glad without windows so i’ll stay on linux/ppc && os-x
Yep, ok Anonymous. Someone needs to tell Bill to just use it real name. =P
ok, jokes aside. XP can be very stable for the most part, but sometimes it just goes all wrong. And it can go there pretty quickly with all the different types of viruses and hacks that affect Windows.
I’ll stick with OS X and Linux too. Both secure due to design, not and after thought.
Paper spec isn’t enough, one hand on it is the only way…
Beside Longhorn still doesn’t have its final specification so it’s hard to know what will be in or not (will they dump avalon or another thing after all? Or readd WinFS?)
Kind of strange that everyone like to compare things that they do not have touch themselfe or see
When will Apple start innovating again?
Spotlight:
http://www.nat.org/dashboard/
http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/
Dashboard:
http://www.konfabulator.com/
(many others)
Tiger really doesn’t offer anything new or revolutionary, everything they are doing has been done. What happened to the Apple that liked to innovate?
What is the point of this article? Its nothing but recycled information about both OS’s that can be easily googled or stumbled upon.
Thanks Patrick for cut and pasting.
After looking through the Tiger preview on Apple’s site, I don’t see anything that I can’t due on Linux (admittedly, some of the software is still in beta, such as Beagle). Except one: Automator. http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/automator.html
It looks like a power user’s dream, and is simple enough for anyone to use. Seems pretty innovative to me.
…something I can’t live without in Longhorn! I was terribly afraid that they’d take out the Win2K interface option. That is the killer app for XP, which is entirely unusable with its stock “Make Everything As Hard to Find and Use As Possible” theme.
(I admit it, I’m a Mac guy but I do have to endure XP/Visual Studio every day at the office.)
I’m intending to buy a Mac Mini and have been deliberating on whether to wait for Tiger or not. Seems to me that Tiger mostly enhances high end models, won’t do much for the Mini. Spotlight and Dashboard are not really features I need. Any thoughts?
Why not Tiger vs. Longhorn vs. SUSE 9.3? The SUSE version that is going to be released tomorrow, includes many of the features that are planned to be included in Tiger and Longhorn, among the features, desktop search. Beagle is going to be a part of the standard SUSE GNOME installation.
I’m just fine using RHEL 4. I have no security/virus issues, its stable, works well, and does everything I need.
isnt objective c managed as well? overall, a pretty hypetastic article. the point he tried to make is you can have a buggy longhorn next year, or a mature osx this year with more features.
and please dont compare xp to either longhorn or osx, both are lightyears ahead in terms of technology.
Has value for DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) exclusively:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
And who it to be “Trusted”:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/06/30/ms_security_patch_eula_give…
How come they just don’t spend their time (read: costumers mony) implementing what can be learned from papers such as the following:
http://www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/survivability.htm
you obviously have no idea what you are talking about. dashboard is the innovation from the linux camp (microsoft are thinking of calling it “implicit queries” when they steal it). dashboard is aimed at providing you information before you ask for it, which isnt spotlight OR beagle.
beagle is roughly analogous to google desktop, it is a high level search tool with hooks to keep track of the filesystem. beagle at least is similar to spotlight, but even here you are off. spotlight is quite low level, it is a db filesystem and full api. beagle on the other hand is a search tool. not the same thing. if you wanted to show apple ripping people off, look at seths storage project. people have been talking about db filsystems for close to a decade now, this isnt a new concept.
and last but not least, dashboard and konfabulator are not the same thing. konfabulator is a crime against usability, dashboard widgets will only show up after a trigger, and they will go away when you get back to work. not only that, but konfabulator is a ripoff of samurize, which is a ripoff of desktopx. even if they were the same thing, you would still have quoted the wrong product.
currently, tiger will be the first desktop on the market with a db filesystem, beating out both linux and windows who have far more resources then the mac guys. and yet still people piss all over it. blows my mind…..
It wasn’t only US firms fighting for pentents, it’s many European ones as well such as siemens and nokia. Don’t fool yourself in thinking theu=y’re not involved becuase they are. Besides, software and IT companies should be able to patent some stuff. Look at the list, most of the sucessful IT firms are American, enough said. Don’t be naive into thinking that European companies wouldn’t do the same thing anyhow.
Besides…. they should ban the internet for your entire network ((IP: —.dip0.t-ipconnect.de)). I look at my server logs and everyday I get hundreds of probes, portsscans, FTP/SSH login attempts and virus injection attempts on my honeypots and firewalls coming from your network.
I will always prefer linux. There are some things about Windows that I like, and there are some things about Mac that I like (Expose). But I get the best mixture of both worlds when I use Ubuntu Linux. So me the choice is clear. Linux all the way! (No mater how this EU patents thing shake out)
~Alan
That was totally one sided!!
Longhorn or Longhorn – both will be giant memory and cpu hogs.
I don’t see any fresh groundbreaking innovations coming from these giant madman-leaded companies. In the end the applications are far more important. So you choose your OS by the Apps you need. And that’s it.
It’s just my personal opinion: I’m very bored by MS and Apple’s OS-Development.
err, i meant “Longhorn or Tiger” …
If you want to switch, chances are it’s due to the host of security issues that Microsoft hopes to solve in Longhorn. But thinking about Micrsoft’s dedication to keeping older ‘legacy’ apps compatible with the latest version of the OS, it sounds like the more things change in Redmond, the more they stay the same.
Of course, since the apps I run is the whole reason I’m using Windows in the first place, not having backwards compatability might be a bit of a problem
And since security and stability are not a problem for me now in XP, I don’t suspect they will be a problem in Longhorn either. So if you need to specifically be told not to open email attachments that promise nude pics of J-Lo, then go out and buy a Mac.
Anyway, I glanced through the article and that is the only mention I saw of actual applications. Personally, you can throw all the innovation you want into the OS, but I’d rather go back to Windows 3.1 than to give up some of the Windows-specific apps I’m running. I mean, things like Spotlight are nice and all, but that’s only secondary – like the icing on the cake. It’s like trying to decide on a car based soley on the stereo system that’s in it. Maybe someday, people who run Macs for the ‘elegance’ factor will understand this. Sure, you run iTunes and you think it’s gnarly, that Mac looks purty on your desk, and you could sit and stare at the ‘beautiful’ OSX UI for hours like it was some exotic goldfish in an aquarium, but for me, I’m only interested in what will allow me to get my work done in the quickest, most efficient manner possible.
I just bought a mini mac just to see what all the fuss was about. Takes a bit of getting used to having been used to XP. Probably the wrong place to ask but is it possible to resize a mac window other than using the bottom right corner grab icon in the window?
darius, there are people out there who dislike the cheesy UI of OS-X and who need to get some work done, and that IS NOT using itunes 😛
Itunes is a clumsy and cheesy thing IMHO.
In the end i agree with you 100% -> “I’m only interested in what will allow me to get my work done in the quickest, most efficient manner possible.”
sadly, the majority only wants nice surface, UI, fancy crap and never looks behind the curtain or try to re-arrange some stuff.
Probably the wrong place to ask but is it possible to resize a mac window other than using the bottom right corner grab icon in the window?
Actually, the Mac takes it a step farther in this respect. At the top left hand corner of any window that is resizeable you will see a green button (and if you move your mouse over it, you will see a + sign apear inside it.) This is a smart resizing button. OS X will figure our how to content looks best in that window, and resize the window accordingly. This works very well with webpages. If you click the button again, it will resize the window full screen, or at least vertically.
I am sure most people who here say that the Mac only has the UI going for them, and want to ‘use the computer to actualy get some thing done’ have:
1. Never used a mac loaded with OS X
2. Have never used the Mac for more than a few seconds to poke fun at it’s ‘fruit’ colors.
3. Want to blindly defend their OS.
Almost everyone here that has a Mac, or is about to buy a Mac will tell you that the interface is more than a pretty desktop. After you have used the Mac for a few weeks, you will look at most OS’s and see nothing but clutter.
BTW: as for the Mac only having one button and how silly it is… Just try using a Windows box with that same mouse… I tried the other day… Yeah… the Mac is crap? Whatever.
I have a mac, working with it on a daily basis and think that OS-X is not that great thing apple tries to teach it’s user-base. Nuff said. I’ve experienced OS-X is pretty, not my taste at all though, and needs more clicks to do the same shit than on e.g. OS9.
I have experience with OS9, OS-X, Windoze, Linux, Beos, Amiga, etc.
I dare to say I’ve seen enough OS rise and fall to write down my opinion.
Why do people always think you have a Pecee loaded with winblows if you dare to critisize Apple ?
And that indicates a BAD UI Design!
That’s a real challange… try it… Take a one button mouse from Apple… and try to use it daily. I bet within one day you will enable the ‘keyboard’ mouse and use the number keys to right click. It’s just sad to get some of the basic things done on Windows, you HAVE to be able to right click.
Oh… and if you dont think that is bad UI design, and it doesnt teach software developers bad habbits… try using Deamon Tools with the left mouse button… Try to mount a image file… I dare you.
Sorry… I am a bit off topic… You people just frustrate me.
Lets see..
Re-use my PC that was half the cost of a mac, together with hordes of software and a better video card than a mac has.. and add longhorn .. or
go buy a mac and start hunting for software, all the time wondering why I left the most successfully, widely used range of operating systems in the world..
I’m buying longhorn baby!
.. Probably because bill will personally hunt down pirated copies and I’ll require a fingerprint to log in.
I remember instant search results and queries… on BeOS! XD
Seriously, Tiger looks cool, especially if you’re already a Mac user. If you’re not and you like what you’ve got – GREAT. If not, give OS X or whatever else tickles your fancy a try.
You have no clue.
Dude, we dont have to hunt for Virus Protection… that SOMEHOW is a useless application right now on the Mac.
We dont have to hunt for a Spyware Remover, it’s useless. The only reason why you wont have to hunt for it in Longhorn is because Microsoft will INCLUDE it.
The hunting for Applications over the Mac is a useless argument. Grow up.
BTW: you said it yourself… Windows is the most widely sucessful OS out there… But If you think about it… you also said that your PC was half the price. Think about it.
For me there was really no option about which OS to use. I worked for a dot com company that went under and haven’t been in the web development industry for over two years. I found work in a hospital.
Since I am so poor now I couldn’t afford and expensive, shiny new Macintosh or even the cost of an upgrade to Windows XP so I downloaded Fedora 1 for free. I like Fedora so much and the fact that all the major applications are free seems like a godsend for me. Thank you open source developers for helping the poor!
whilst they did mention there would be underthe hood features in os x that end users wouldn’t notice, its too bad he didn’t explain how use of coreimage and coredata (among other new features) could be used in new applications written for tiger..
likewise, im sure there are features planned for longhorn, but im just not as familiar with its plans.
I, too, look forward to Apple/Windows duels in the future.
I’m hoping MS retains it’s 90%+ marketshare so Windows users can continue to be the ones undersiege as malware becomes more and more sophisticated and security becomes more and more a PITA.
“Tiger really doesn’t offer anything new or revolutionary, everything they are doing has been done. What happened to the Apple that liked to innovate?”
Apple’s Core-technologies? Core_audio?? Core-video??? Do some reading!
Listen up one and all…
There is nothing wrong with a one button mouse – I have worked professionally with one since 1989 without a problem..
Actually I find multi button mice rapidly lead to wrist pain (I am left handed and mouse with the right hand BTW – now this may have something to do with it as righthanders often can’t do diddly with their left hand and lefthanders can usually switch many features to either) and cannot see how using non mouse hand KB mods is so horrid… or is it ‘cos you are all “one hand surfers”…. LOL
Anyway – rock on one/no button mousing.
If you don’t get it then YOUR ALL GAY (that is a deliberate mistale for comic effect BTW, YMMV – actually it is “like I care” use whatever mouse you prefer… I happen to like the Mac/Jobs/Ives ONE BUTTON mouse… (can you tell????)
“One day all this will seem as laughable as the 8bit vs 16bit computers debate…”
See ya all in the future…
Oh yeah my pin has even MORE angels than your’s! Let’s compare and contract when we have two physics OSes in front of us, not just plans.
By the time Longhorn (even in its currently castrated condition) hits the shelves, we’ll probably be looking at another feline than Tiger. Mac OS X Lion anyone?
“After looking through the Tiger preview on Apple’s site, I don’t see anything that I can’t due on Linux”
Apart from getting a reasonably integrated and coherent GUI? 🙂
Almost everyone here that has a Mac, or is about to buy a Mac will tell you that the interface is more than a pretty desktop. After you have used the Mac for a few weeks, you will look at most OS’s and see nothing but clutter.
Almost everyone who is buying a Mac probably didn’t like using a PC for one reason or the other. I have yet to find anyone who was happy with their PC, switched to a Mac, and liked it better. It’s always “Yeah, I was using Windows and it kept crashing/getting infected, so I got a Mac …” That kind of makes their opinion biased, doesn’t it?
Try this experiment – take 50 people who are extremely proficient on their PC and actually know what they’re doing, and give them a Mac for a month. See how many of them switch.
That’s a real challange… try it… Take a one button mouse from Apple… and try to use it daily. I bet within one day you will enable the ‘keyboard’ mouse and use the number keys to right click. It’s just sad to get some of the basic things done on Windows, you HAVE to be able to right click.
IMHO, having readily available access to the right mouse button is a good thing. In fact, my favorite mouse has 5 buttons, and I use the religiously – even have them customized for different apps I use. If you like using only one button, fine .. it’s a personal preference.
Try this experiment – take 50 people who are extremely proficient on their PC and actually know what they’re doing, and give them a Mac for a month. See how many of them switch.
You mean like the guy from Anandtech?
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2232
or David Coursey?
http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/4520-6033_16-4207177.html
Definitely wait until Tiger is released, which is around mid to late June 2005. I would probably wait until August when Apple releases any fixes for the new OS.
I would still just wait until Longhorn is released and go with that instead.
“I have yet to find anyone who was happy with their PC, switched to a Mac, and liked it better.”
The keyword being “happy”. Even in this bastion of MS fans, there’s only a handful that come in here and describe themselves as happy with Windows. Outside of this forum, the bulk of the people use it because it comes with the PC, but most of them are unhappy or ambivalent at best with the security, stability, other issues etc. They use it because it has the best games, or in your case, some unknown mysterious app that a replacement for apparently can’t be found on other platforms.
“take 50 people who are extremely proficient on their PC and actually know what they’re doing”
So Windows has become a geek only OS, only meant for those who “actually know what they’re doing”?
well, if you dont know what your doing you inevitably mess it up horribly, so yeah. nowhere near as bad as linux, but mac is quite hard to break if you are a newb.
This isn’t actually a fair comparison because by the time Longhorn comes out Tiger will be old news. In a few months there will be MacOSX 10.5. The nice thing is that Tiger will be out in a few weeks so maybe we should compare Tiger to XP SP2.
“So if you need to specifically be told not to open email attachments that promise nude pics of J-Lo, then go out and buy a Mac.”
Actually Darius you have it the other way around, Windows users need to be told not to open J-LO! email attachments. Mac users can open any email they want.
your premiss is right. if a user is happy with their OS then they will most likely not switch. but, I will bet that most will add if they so desired.
And, to make a test of an OSs worth by saying “put 50 people who have muscle memory of how to do stuff in windows and see if they like the mac” is just stupid. of course they will not like the mac. If, However, you put 50 people who knew how to use a computer and were knowledgeable of general GUI concepts, then perhaps you would have a fair assessment of which system was nicer.
Spotlight:
http://www.nat.org/dashboard/
http://www.konfabulator.com/
(many others)
You mean… MacOS Desk Accessories, which have about a decade of prior art on Konfabulator? Or perhaps NeXTSTEP dockapps? Either way you trace the conceptual lineage the prior art on these ideas, as well as most modern GUI concepts, comes from Apple.
These are transformations of Apple’s (and Be’s) original innovations, like many other rip offs have done. What really stands out is that Apple has done them better.
Something very important to remember is that most innovations rarely come from the corporate environment but rather academia or hardworking enthusiasts. The corporate environment tends to refine these ideas and present them in different way, or refine these ideas.
That being said I’m looking forward to seeing what both Apple and Microsoft have to offer for their next generation OS’s.
Linux as usual got third billing. He didn’t even mention Linux security and he droned on about Mac security and Windows lack of security.
On longhorn I wonder if it will be anymore secure or if it will just be a new set of problems. I remember the hoop-la around active-x.
By xnetzero
“Try this experiment – take 50 people who are extremely proficient on their PC and actually know what they’re doing, and give them a Mac for a month. See how many of them switch.”
You mean like the guy from Anandtech?
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2232
You know, I actually read this whole thing and at the very end, you just proved my point, because this guy never actually switched! Anyway, he’s far from a power user (anyone who uses Windows Explorer/IE as their default file manager/web browser is automatically disqualified fro that category) – he just liked to run a bunch of crap at the same time. Funny to me that from reading the article, I gather you can spend $3,000 on a Mac and still have it run like ass.
Anyway, I think the guy hit the nail on the head with this statement:
“The OS is excellent, far from perfect, but more so than Windows in my opinion – and all the major applications do run on the platform. But, it’s not having the major ones that you miss; rather, it’s the few little ones that really make it difficult.”
With Linux, the reverse is usually true – all the little apps are there, just the major ones that are often missing. BTW: I don’t know how easy it is to run Linux apps natively in OSX (probably not very easy, since people are always bitching about not having a decent Mac port of OO.o), you might just have yourself a kick-ass OS.
or David Coursey?
http://reviews-zdnet.com.com/4520-6033_16-4207177.html
Sorry, but I don’t have time to read all the articles in this URL. But based on what I read, this guy didn’t completely switch either.
By Vole
“I have yet to find anyone who was happy with their PC, switched to a Mac, and liked it better.”
The keyword being “happy”. Even in this bastion of MS fans, there’s only a handful that come in here and describe themselves as happy with Windows.
Sorry, you’re right. I didn’t mean happy with windows per say, I meant happy with what they can run on Windows and are able to properly ‘tame’ the OS, which means quite a bit of us
“take 50 people who are extremely proficient on their PC and actually know what they’re doing”
So Windows has become a geek only OS, only meant for those who “actually know what they’re doing”?
Not for geeks, but for power users. You take a guy who runs many different kinds of apps on Windows and knows them well and put him on a Mac, he’ll never switch – it just ain’t gonna happpen. Of course, the reverse is probably also true, which means that once you get really good at using one platform, the other one isn’t going to do much for you.
By XMan
“So if you need to specifically be told not to open email attachments that promise nude pics of J-Lo, then go out and buy a Mac.”
Actually Darius you have it the other way around, Windows users need to be told not to open J-LO! email attachments. Mac users can open any email they want.
Yeah, that’s what I meant
If you need that kind of hand-holding, then by all means – head down to your local Apple store immediately and pick yourself up a brand-spanking new app. You’ll be doing the rest of us a big favor since your machine will no longer be used as a spam relay 
3D interface wow. running it with Athlon64 will be nice.
btw> i don’t like the idea buying mini to switch to mac, as if i heard steve saying “ooohhh look at those poor people, just give them something cheap, at least they can pretend to be the rest of us”
On one hand, I really hope that a lot of people go out and buy Macs, as I think they make better computers for the average Joe than x86 and Windows. If enough people switched, a lot of Windows apps that are currently Windows only would probably go cross-platform, and then many of us could get off the dreadful Windows OS.
On the other hand, watching how Apple has handled iPod since it has a commanding lead in that market, I don’t trust them any further than I can throw them. I would really hate to see what they would do if they ruled the desktop roost as like they do portable music devices. You think it’s bad having a software monopoly on x86? Imagine if you had a software and hardware monopoly on the same platform – I would predict an ass fucking on a scale that Microsoft could only dream about. Imagine having to pay $3,000 for a machine and then not having the option of installing any other OS except OSX, and then having product activation embedded into the DRM-enabled hardware. Unlike the x86 world, Apple wouldn’t have to jump through hoops to make this happen, since they practically own the hardware. And if you don’t think they would do this if given that much power, you are truly naive.
I use a two-button mouse on OS X and XP. But I love that Apple forces developers to consider one button mice for OS X applications. The end result is much better. Consider saving an image from a web page to your Desktop. In OS X you drag the image from the page to your Desktop. In XP, the only way to do this is to right-click on the image, select…., then select…., then click… (geez!)
Now, in OS X you can actually drag-and-drop any object from anywhere to anywhere. Examples. Anything into and out of emails. Drag a PDF page from the drawer to anywhere and only the one page (of many) goes for the ride. Anything into and out of the Dock. Anything onto an application in the Dock. I could go on.
Now, the same steps in XP. Click Attach, or click Save Attachments, then click location, then OK. PDF? What’s a PDF? Right-click Start Menu, open in Explorer, browse to application, drag to Start Menu folder (doh! I just had it there in the left pane!).
Anyway, the point being that forcing development of a one-button mouse is win-win for even two-buttoners.
“In OS X you drag the image from the page to your Desktop. In XP, the only way to do this is to right-click on the image, select…., then select…., then click… (geez!)”
Sorry to tell you that’s not correct. I just dragged a picture on a web page into a folder in XP and it copied prefectly.
It also works prefectly with e-mail attachements (just tried it in Outlook). Sorry to say that arguments is completely unfounded.
So, basically darius feeds his geeky nature by putting all these effort (I read his article about securing Windows) to make an OS usable, which is supposed to be an OS for average Joe.
He claims if a user is not capable to do what he does, he’s not meant to use Windows. Sounds like MS failed at what they aimed for.
And ‘asking people who loves Windows if they want to switch’? Why not go ask Bin Laden to switch to Christianity?
I agree that Windows can be (and is) perfectly usable OS if you know how to manage it. And it is not that hard if you have some knowledge about computer. So, if you are capable of that, good for you. Go ahead and use Windows. Personally, I don’t want to go through all those hassle just to make it work. It’s not that I don’t know how to do that, I just don’t want. It’s much like driving a manual transmission car. I know how to drive those, but I don’t want.
I’m just fine using Windows XP. I have no security/virus issues, its stable, works well, and does everything I need.
Oh pulease. My brother bought himself a cutting edge Dell machine, with all the bells and whistles with Windows XP Home. For a the first couple of weeks, I was surprised how well behaved the machine was – no spontaneous lock ups, slow downs or weird behaviour.
Heck, after those two weeks of harmony, even I was tempted to purchase one as a replacement for my ageing eMac. Boy, it was very tempting – then the bad news started to arrive. As my brother installed more games, installed the necessary patches as Microsoft released them via Windows Update, weird things started to happen – the DVDRW/CDRW stopped working – when I installed a blank CD, the cd burning programme claimed it couldn’t use it – it finally did work after rebooting, then the printer suddenly stopped working, then the network went later on – a reboot of course magically fixed all those issues.
After that couple of days of hell, I decided to purchase a 20inch iMac, and everyday I use this machine, I thank god I didn’t get sucked into purchasing the PC – oh, and the reason why I wouldn’t run Linux or any other operating system on the x86 is basically the fact that it lacks applications I want. Until that gets fixed, the only alternative to Windows is MacOS X.
So, basically darius feeds his geeky nature by putting all these effort (I read his article about securing Windows) to make an OS usable, which is supposed to be an OS for average Joe.
Mind you, I didn’t say Windows was an OS for geeks, I said Windows was an OS for power users – there’s a huge difference. Geeks like to dick with their computers and often get caught up in the religious aspect of it all. Power users care mostly about getting work done and will gravitate to whatever OS has the best applications to help them work quickly and efficently, even if the OS itself is rather crappy. I’ve a lot of people lamment Windows as an OS, but swear by the apps. Though Windows doesn’t fit the needs of every power user, it’s probably the best overall in this category.
You will often find geeks playing around endlessly with the OS – geeks running Windows will often have it skinned beyond recognition. Geeks running Linux will do things with the OS that mere mortals will never comprehend. Power users on the other hand tend to be much more ‘application-centric’, with the attitude of “ok, this OS is cool, but what apps can I run on it?” Of course, geeks can also be power users … you will often find these people using one or several OS’s to ‘tinker’ with while booting into their ‘main’ OS to get work done.
Personally, there is a little bit of geek in me, which is why I like to break out Linux and play with it about once a year
He claims if a user is not capable to do what he does, he’s not meant to use Windows. Sounds like MS failed at what they aimed for.
Yes, you are correct. MS has failed miserably. While the OS itself is ‘alright’ in the usability department, it bites the big one when it comes to security. If I hadn’t started off using it in 1993 and didn’t know as much as I know now, I would’ve probably jumped ship after the first virus. But seeing as how I’ve been using it for like 12 years now, it’s very rough around the eduges, but the perks are well worth the hassle it took to learn
I could be of a minority XP user but my install is brilliant and I might be doing something right cause I have 0 crashes, no malware, viruses so on. While Mac OS X is great I am not gonna switch for a while because the hardware is ridiculously slow for a duagl processor machine and Intel, AMD and the gaming industry along with the XP software base is quiet appealing to me. I have a bells and whistles laptop that according to benches I have seen will beat if not equal a top of the line Power Mac. The Mac OS is great and I for one would love to get a Mac but not as it stands right now. I am an Xp user and will wait to see how Longhorn pans out.
am happy with my PC, because its screaming fast! btw I use windows xp. and thinking of buying an alienware for the high-end games. and I also do java enterprise and swing development. I choose longhorn
“Sorry to tell you that’s not correct. I just dragged a picture on a web page into a folder in XP and it copied prefectly.”
Thats a neat little trick. I had no idea that you could do that in XP. As for dragging and dropping in XP, I do it all the time. I didnt do it all that much until I recently went to a dual monitor setup where I could do so and have things a little less clutered.
Why does this keep coming up as a myth? Is it just me?
I had my mother waxing lyrical about how she could drag and drop her file onto her USB key in OSX which you “just can’t do on a PC”.
Of course you can.
Ferchrissake, I can even drag a file from Konqueror into a Kopete chat window and have it start a file transfer – and Linux is meant to be the one without integration!
I bought a powerbook a couple of months ago. I only use x86 at work now.
Anyway the OSX UI is far from perfect. In fact it is inconsistent and slow to work with. For example all windows do not show up in the dock. Only when they are minimized. Expose does not show you all windows just the ones that are not minimised. Collapsing all windows (F11) only allows you to perform one action before all the Windows reappear.
OSX has some nice features, but is a little clumsy if you are used to working with lots of windows open. Windows/KDE/Gnome are faster to work with.
The Mac has other things going for it though.
…linux wins another round of comparisons between windows and macintish.
It just makes sense.
If you have Directory Opus installed on Windows, highlight some text from a web browser or any other window and copy it to the clipboard, then paste it into a Lister (foler) as if it were a file. Dopus will automatically create a text file with the contents of the clipboard inside, same with images. Just 1 out of 1,000,000 reasons to ditch Windows Explorer.
Longhorn on this one:http://www.at-series.de/gaming_amd64_4100.html
When will Apple start innovating again?
Spotlight:
http://www.nat.org/dashboard/
http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/
Beagle was started AFTER Spotlight (spotlight is being
worked on for many years, not when it was announced
publicly, duh!).
Even more, the engine Beagles uses is based on Lucene
(a port of lucene for .Net). Lucene is a search engine
project by D. Cutting. Before starting in Lucene, mr.
Cuttings worked for (you guessed it) Apple, implementing
their VTwin search engine technology, that later become
Spotlight.
So, not only was Beagle started later than Spotlight, but
Beagle is based on the expertise of an ex-Apple employee, also.
You could argue that Beagle is already “out there” whereas Spotlight
is not yet released. But Spotlight will be released real soon now (a
month or two), and it will be READY. On the contrary, Beagle is
out there but it is not yet ready (read their site, memory leaks,
etc). Nowhere it is as feature complete as Spotlight, also.
“http://www.nat.org/dashboard/“ you mention
has nothing to do with Spotlight. It’s a different thing
altogether.
Dashboard:
http://www.konfabulator.com/
(many others)
Erm, Konfabulator is a rip-off of several Windows products.
But even those Windows products, as an idea, are based on
a concept first introduced by Apple on Mac, called “Desktop
Acessories”. That’s 20 years ago.
Tiger really doesn’t offer anything new or revolutionary, everything they are doing has been done.
Not so. Both of your examples where flawed for example.
Moreover, innovation in desktop space != innovation in academic
research space.
In a desktop (as opposed to “academic” not as opposed to server) OS,
innovation is providing features that are not there in other OSs and integrating them. Mac was an innovation as far as the user was concerned, even thought Xerox already had implemented those concept within a
research scope.
What happened to the Apple that liked to innovate?
What happened to people that research before they post inanities?
“linux wins another round of comparisons between windows and macintish.
It just makes sense.”
That’s because most of the people on this site have no clue. They hate windows becuase it’s “cool” and like Linux because it’s somewhat trendy.
I have Lnux and XP machines at my house and use an XP and to a lesser extend Linux at work.
I have just as many crashes on my Fedora computer as I do with my Windows ones. All of which aren’t that many. I get hounded by friends and family a lot because they think since I work in the IT field I like to repair their problems all day. I find that most people have problems with their pc’s for the following reasons:
1. Total ignorance, they just don’t know how to use it.
2. They download stupid crap like weatherbug, along with spyware.
3. They don’t update their virus definitions, then can’t understand why they get infected.
4. They visit questionable sites and get infected with spyware that eat’s their resources.
5. The most evil words in IT, Kazaa and eDonkey. File sharing programs are a haven for virus, trojan and spyware writers. Download a bunch of “music” from Kazaa, get infected, that simple. Since these are usually the same people that don’t update their virus definitions, it’s a double wammy.
The OS has nothing to do with user ignorance. Don’t get me started on OSX. It is a bastardazation of the great BSD operating systems, and worse, talk to a graphics designer some time. Most don’t know crap about their hardware or OS, just how to use photoshop. I have seem some multimedia folks screw up a Mac beyond repair.
Open source zealots need to realx, Linux is great, but not that great. The support sucks (because most forums and support sites are full of trolls just ready to bash any “noob”). I have delt with Micrsoft on several occasions from everything to support to purchasing and they have been nothing less then cordial and pleasant. I’ll pay the money for some decent support if it means I don’t have to get flamed by some pimply faced 17 year old who thinks he’s gods gift to IT when he’s not.
Besides, BSD is better then Linux anyway, JMHO. I find the freebsd mailing lists helpful and BSD support forums top notch. BSD is a lot closer to it’s enterprise cousins (SUN and HP) then Linux. And BSD is a real OS, Linux is not. Better security and auditing of code. It’s more stable and everything is organized. I also hear Linux zealots push security. “Linux is more secure then windows”….peshaw. Windows can be locked down, you just have to have the knowledge to do it. Besides if you really want a secure os, use OpenBSD. Build a firewall gateway out of that, it will be much more secure then Linux.
Both MacOSX and WinXP are outdated and hardly make efficient use of hardware resources. They are still using a WIMP approach thought up 20+ years ago…
Hell, where is Linux going – the same road. I use RISC OS on a 10 year old computer running at 40 mHz and am happy, how’s that for Power User?
Tiger is almost done and Longhorn is vaporware?
I’m unfamiliar with RISC OS, but do you mean to tell me it doesn’t have windows, icons, menus, or pointers?
That leaves you with, uh, a CLI interface. Welcome to one step above punchcards.
Yes, I realize saying “CLI interface” is redundant. My apologies to the grammar nazis.
No, unfortunately RO too is based on WIMP, but in a much more intuitive and direct approach. I am using a version which is almost 2 years old, but still runs adequately on my 10 year old RiscPC which is a testament to its efficiency.
Now why does not working with a WIMP desktop leave one with ‘uh, a CLI interface’? Are you suggesting it is the only other (viable) option in OS management? Why is the CLI interface redundant?
iirc, CLI = “Command Line Interface”, so it’d be saying “interface” twice, thus the redundance.
I’d imagine that any desktop that didn’t use WIMP would only be left with joysticks and keyboards, not the best combo for any GUI.
What other WIMP alternatives are there besides a CLI?
As for RISC OS, I’ve never used it, but according to google images, its something like this: http://www.dasgenie.com/Pages/UIsOSes/RiscOS1.gif
Linux is known for running quite well on 10+ year old hardware, and with some quite efficient GUIs (neither KDE nor Gnome though).
It just doesn’t seem to me like RISC OS stands out any more than the rest of the alternative OSes. Maybe a faster GUI, but I’d hardly call that a measure of efficiency.
why are all these tiger v longhorn discussions popping all around? does anybody realize that apple will release 10.5 around the same time as longhorn. tiger isn’t the os that will compare w/ longhorn, it’ll be lion or whatever cat 10.5 will be named after.
//After that couple of days of hell, I decided to purchase a 20inch iMac, and everyday I use this machine, I thank god I didn’t get sucked into purchasing the PC//
So … because your brother can’t figure out how to properly lockdown/administer an XP box, (not to mention that he bought a POS Dell) therefore all PCs suck?
Gotcha. Solid logic.
You know, I actually read this whole thing and at the very end, you just proved my point, because this guy never actually switched!
Okay– So he didn’t put away his other computers and go soley with the Mac but he states in plain english: “The G5 is a computer that I use on a daily basis.” What part of that is hard to understand? He isn’t forced to use the G5 on a daily basis, he chooses to use the Mac G5 on a daily basis, because–OMG!–he enjoys it.
Its so typical to hear a Mac user talk about Windows start acting weird after two weeks, and so called temptation to buy a PC. Please Macs encounter more problems than the average PC in its life.
Read the February issue of MacWorld and you will understand what I mean. I also have a booklet written by Chris Breen about the amount of issues Macs face. So, the point is stop saying Windows is bad, Macs are just as bad, God I’m frustrated with this.
“btw> i don’t like the idea buying mini to switch to mac, as if i heard steve saying “ooohhh look at those poor people, just give them something cheap, at least they can pretend to be the rest of us” :”)
This is interesting, no? Some feelings of inadequacy, no?
the last mac i owned was a mac classic ii. used it for almost six years without an os reinstall, or mainenance of any kind whatsoever. at the time, my mother was using a performa 580 cd, which was in heavy and pretty much constant use for five years, and if i remember right required a reinstall once. nothing else that could even conceivably be called maintenance.
by contrast, a friend of mine who had windows 95 was formatting and reinstalling on a semi-frequent basis. when i asked why, he said stuff would get borked all the time for no aparent reason, and it would perform alot better after a format. he would also run antivirus, used norton utilities on a frequent basis, and spent an astonishing amount of time “setting up” his computer.
of course, things are different now. osx is quite a bit worse in this regard then its predessors, and windows has almost gotten to an acceptable level. but my personal experience of the mac, compared to my experience of windows is like night and day.
Yeah, I read those Chris Breen articles too.
It was just users asking for tips and help.
Are you implying Windows users NEVER ask for help, or have problems? I’d rather have the problems those people asked about than a corrupted registry.
Btw, for those who didn’t read the articles, most of the questions were things like “How do I spellcheck in French?” or “Why is MS Office substituting a font?”
Not exactly “beyond repair”-type situations. (this was from another person’s posts)
Face it, there will always be a constant battle between the pc and mac. That’s the beauty of this country. Windows, Linux, OS X, without each other, we will probably be stuck in the stone age of UI. It’s economics 101. Competition=more technological advancement. And to those who are complaining about who copied who, Apple ORIGINALLY copied their first OS from XEROX, and then Microsoft from Apple, and then Microsoft from Apple even more.
Windows does not suck, cause if it did, why would it be the most popular OS? Maybe cause of monopolizing laws, the frugal Bill Gates, and since the majority of Universities teach programming on Windows, that’s why there is more on Windows.
I’ve used windows all my life, program with C++, Java, whatever. I build my own computers, windows doesn’t give me too many problems, but I like OS X much more. WINDOWS IS THE ONLY OS IN THE WORLD THAT SLOWS DOWN WHEN YOU INSTALL TOO MUCH SOFTWARE! AND THIS IS SO COMMON PEOPLE THINK IT’S NORMAL.
What do you use your computer for? Business (MS office, spreadsheets), gaming, studio (video editing, sound recording), school (word, chatting), graphic design,… Let’s compare
Business-There are several businesses that use macs, and of course the majority uses Windows, I’d say depends on your business.
Gaming-The PC wins hands down here, and with Longhorn utilizing 64-bit technology, World of Warcraft and Counter-strike will engulf people’s lives. Anyway, there is a slew of other reasons.
Studio-programs that come with OS X like iMovie and Garageband are excellent and puts other programs in the market to shame (except Adobe Premiere). Anyway, all professional video editors use Macs. The video montages you see that are made after 5 minutes in football games, thats on a Mac (Final Cut). Studio recording programs are far superior on the Mac, and that’s why schools like Berklee School of Music in Boston (John Mayer), requires all students to get macs and Protools.
Graphic Design-This is a no brainer (mac, if you have no brain)
Programming- Of course I will express a bias towards Windows, cause I program for it!!! My whole family programs, and when I decided to buy a mac, my dad was on the virge of disowning me.
I love my mac. The OS, in my opinion, is superior to Windows (so far), but not by much. There are a ton of things you can do on a mac, like..
1. use iSight and scan the barcodes of books you own to make a digital library, or use iSight for light-speed video chatting
2. my powerbook has bluetooth built-in, so I use several features with bluetooth, like display a powerpoint presentation and use my bluetooth phone to cycle slides
3. iDvd, burn dvds and make your own menus
4. Thank God MS office is on OS X, and has 100% compatiblity with windows
Bottomline: There will always be a debate, but be thankful that Windows has competition, I don’t want Gates deciding the future of computers.
…