I went on and wrote a review about MacOSX 10.0.4 a month ago, but it was never finished as I had to fly to France for my own wedding. I came back and MacOSX 10.1 had been released. I scrapped completely the old text, as 10.1 brings some more speed and new features to the system, and restarted writting the review from scratch.A month ago I used a friend’s iMac 500 Mhz G3 with its RAM upgraded to 256 MB. It came with MacOSX 10.0.4 pre-installed. For the current review I used another friend’s iBook (latest model) upgraded to 384 MB of RAM and with MacOSX 10.1 installed. This series of MacOS usage during the past month was the second one in my life. The first time was back in 1998 when I used to work for a graphics design Studio and all the computers in the office were some extremely slow Macs (only myself and my boss had PCs in the whole company). My opinion back then was that either the OS was pretty bad or the hardware was just too slow. Or both.
I left MacOS in its own fate, until 2 months ago where I installed the BasiliskII emulator, running MacOS 8.1 for 68k under Windows. Funny that it ran faster under emulation in my 533 Mhz Celeron than in its original machine. And then two of my housemates bought an iMac and an iBook respectively. And I discovered MacOSX.
MacOSX is a (supposedly) modern 32-bit OS, based on the 15 year old BSD4.4 and Mach kernel, with a new, object-oriented GUI on top. Sounds familiar? Yes, NeXTSTEP was exactly the same. Not surprising, as Apple has purchased NeXT in 1996 and Apple’s today’s CEO is Steve Jobs who created NeXT too as well as Apple. While MacOSX is Posix compliant, its GUI API uses Objective-C and/or Java. There are these who say that Objective-C is superior to C++ and these who say that is not as flexible and advanced as C++. Well, there is always Java too. I just hoped that the developer tools would included in one of the CDs that come with the machine instead of searching all over Apple’s web site to find a free downloadable version.
MacOSX looks good (I said “looks good”, not “feels good”). The graphics UI designers at Apple have done a good job, but at places feels “too much”. Transparency where it is not needed making text sometimes unreadable, too much of a gradient in the scrollbars etc. All in all, it looks very good though and the GUI is consistent, but not without its problems. First off, I can’t say that I like the classic Mac menu bar on the top. It prevents multitasking from doing its job as it supposed to do it and it does not necesarrily make the system easier to use, as it probably made sense back in 1984 when the first Mac was introduced. Then, I still can’t figure out how to move files from the Desktop to ~/ using the Finder (the MacOSX file manager). Believe me, the context menus do not always work. I don’t know if it is a bug that I hit or me being unable to figure out “the easiest OS to use in the globe”, but it just didn’t always work for me. The other problem I have with the GUI, while it is a fact that it is looking good and consistent, it does not offer any revolutionary new concepts.
The OS is a unix underneath, so if you are familiar with Linux or BSD, you are going to love the ability to have a powerful shell in combination with a GUI that makes sense as opposed to the inconsistent XFree and its accompanying offerings. Setting up Apache, SSH, mySQL is even easier than other traditional unices, as you can find packages that can get installed through the MacOS .bin.hqx method rather than manually using the command line. There were a number of reports recently about security holes in the OS itself, but Apple has been releasing patches frequently since March, which was the original OSX release date. The integration between the BSD unix and the GUI has been done cleverly, older MacOS users will not even notice that they run on top of a unix environment.
The OS comes with several applications, like iTunes, office software, IE5.1, QuickTime and a DVD player (which plays exceptionally fast and without glitches I should add) among others. MacOSX also comes with a copy of MacOS 9.2 which, when called, it runs as a runtime environment on the background of OSX and provides compatibility with older MacOS apps that they have not being carbonized yet (not using the new API yet that is), like Photoshop and Quark 4 for example.
There are already a large number of native applications for MacOSX found on VersionTracker today and this number is increasing every day.
The biggest problem is that the system is big and slow. Yes, the 10.1 update made the system faster, but not fast. My previous review for OSX, based on an older and slower version was pretty much a grave for OSX’s speed. Things have changed to the better, but not a whole lot. WindowsXP still feels faster in common usage (closing down IE or openning the Trash directory for example). Resizing Finder in column mode is now… possible, but still with lots of lag in the response. When comparing this performance to the BeOS, which can resize or do everything needed while the system is already under the pressure of lots of CPU usage, MacOSX makes me laugh. If this is the “next generation OS” that Apple was talking about for years, I am not very imperessed, at least speed-wise. At places the OS seems that it lacks even proper multitasking. I am dissapointed by the general response time of the OS.
Also, the price for purchasing a Mac that can run this OS a bit fast (and make sure you fill it with extra memory if you want to have some luck with it) is too high. Apple hardware was always expensive, but if Apple really wants to gain more users off the PC platform (and these people will mostly be *nix geeks who seek a better gui than XFree), the price for the hardware should be dropped to something more realistic (have you seen how much Apple charges for an extra 128 MB DIMM?)
I was ready to buy an iMac for me some months ago, but I have now reconsider that doesn’t make much sense to spend $1,300 USD for something so underpowered (600 Mhz G3 – and please don’t give me the “megahertz myth”, which is pretty valid, but not so much in Apple’s case) and for an OS that except of a slick GUI does not bring anything new in the OS and technology scene, but just a life boat for Apple as a company in the whole. Nothing like a filesystem like XFS or BFS, not a good software manager like QNX’s, or the advanced (and easy to use) networking features that WindowsXP brings.
MacOSX lacks not the killer application, but a set of killer features.
Still though, MacOSX is in my opinion, the only OS that can compete head to head with Microsoft’s OS offerings one day. But this day, is not today.
Overall: 7.5/10
It’s plainly obvious to me that the author of the article has never used Windows XP. To call Windows XP a comparatively fast(er) Operating System is a joke. The only time Microsoft got it right was in NT 3.51 in which the OS ran at a reasonable speed and the machine did not require as many reboots. Every Microsoft OS after NT 3.51 was bloated and slow. I won’t even go into non-NT type Microsoft operating systems. The GUI in NT 3.51 however suffered from absolute ugliness!
It’s also obvious to me the author has very little experience in using a Unix operating system. Most, if not all Unix operating systems have GUIs that feel VERY non-responsive to the user. I’m guessing you never even touched Solaris or HP UX. The fact that it feels slow is the price you pay sometimes in running alot of background “services.” But these “services” can be diabled. If you were to run ANY Microsoft OS with all services turned on, the perceived performance is also pretty lousy. The GUI responsiveness also suffers in the same fashion and even more so on Windows!
Case in point…drag a window around in a Windows OS and observe the way a shadow of that window trails the actual window while the operating system is threading! Compared to that, the MacOS or Unix is a godsend.
By the way… if you choose to continue authoring such articles in the English language, as a professional, you should either find yourself a better editor or take a few courses in writing effectively in English. Your grammar is absolutely atrocious.
You might want to try OSX (version 10.1) again.
Ninetysix
Microcrap XP wins in the piss-me-off arena. The idea of exposing sockets the way XP does on a non-multi-user OS has got to be the single biggest design flaw of the last 10 years. I bet authors of programs like code-red are teeming with excitement for the mass release of this OS.
HAH!
1. XP is a multiuser OS
2. OS X includes raw sockets!!!
fool.
Cool, this is the first time (i think) a post has gotten over 100 replies! Congrats!
Firstly, congrats on the wedding. I got married last month and I know how hectic it can be.
Niceties over, on with the flames!
Let’s do this strict and by the numbers. The first disappointment is when you criticise the classic Mac OS running under emulation. The fastest Apple machine with a 68K processor ran at 40 Mhz and you are surprised that it runs faster under emulation on a 533Mhz machine? 8.1 was when they started to optimise for PPC and let’s face it, 68K was a long time ago.
Next. UNIX was 32 bit before Mac OS which was 32 bit before Windows so cut with the “(supposedly) 32 bit” remark. What are you trying to do there?
Next. BSD4.4 is not 15 years old. Check. Your. Facts. The fact you are writing for OSNews might have given the readers the impression that you knew what you were talking about.
Next. POSIX. While Mac OS X may be compliant with Posix, it wrong to say that it is posix-compliant. Apple declined to get it tested. It’s not as important as it sounds – Windows NT is POSIX compliant for all the good it does.
Next. Developer Tools. They came with my iBook.
Next. Moving files from Desktop to ~/. Okay it’s easy and I’ve read the comments and frankly, as I’ve been using Mac OS X for over a year now I’m doubting your words here. “Still can’t figure it out” is different to “It’s a bug” which is what you claim in some of the comments. I think it is as you say “you are unable to work out..” rather than a bug with the OS. I’m being serious here rather than sarcastic.
Next. Mac OS X is slow. I’m not going to fight on this one except to say that the multitasking really does make up for it. Mac OS X is designed for todays machines whereas BeOS (which you are hung up on – being a BeOS User Group Coordinator) was designed for running on 66 Mhz PPC machines. More on this later.
Next. Lay off the RAM prices. Anyone can install RAM in these machines without jumping thru hoops and Apple deliberately sells the machines with the minimum amount of RAM so that you can choose to buy ultra-cheap RAM from the vendor-du-jour. Apple charges extra because let’s face it – you need the help and must be willing to pay for it if you need to buy from Apple.
Next. Megahertz Myth. Valid or non-valid? Valid but not so much when talking about Apple? Get real. I’ll assume for a moment that you actually have a background in chip design or computer architecture. What – precisely – disqualifies the G3 and G4 chips from this? Or is it just your own dislike of Apple?
Next. You’d like to see XFS or BFS? Darwin has a completely extensible file system structure which can adopt just about any file system format. You want a software manager like QNX? What the heck for? Advanced Networking in Windows XP? Evidence or some sort of justication of this would be nice.
I’m more disappointed in you as a reviewer than with the review. I know you have unresolved issues with Be (and BeOS) not being supported by Apple. I think that constitutes unreasonable bias and Mac OS X must surely sting now that Be is dead.
>or the advanced (and easy to use) networking features that WindowsXP brings
could I get a list of such “Features” and a desciption of why each is significant?
Perhaps you don’t consider an OS that puts unix on the desktop and has an advanced compositing engine built into the graphics system to be impressive, but I do. Perhaps you don’t consider an OS whose whole preference system from the core OS on up is based on XML to be impressive, but I do. Perhaps you don’t consider an OS with an advanced RAD development environment built into it to be impressive, but I as a programmer, I do. Perhaps you don’t consider an OS whose interface attempts to get rid of desktop clutter to be impressive but I do…You must not given you prefer the extremely cluttered XP UI. Perhaps you don’t consider an OS that has a very well integrated and optimized Java system on it to be impressive, but I do. Perhaps you don’t appreciate an OS built on open standards such as xml, apache, java, ssh, etc to be impressive, but I do. Perhaps you are not impressed by an OS that has a 1 ms audio latency in its MIDI system, but I am.
Perhaps you are impressed with the concept of having to re-register your copy of Windows after the 3rd re-install. Perhaps you are also impressed with an OS that is trying to destroy the MP3 music standard. Perhaps you are also impressed with an OS that is going to make your computer a target for every teenager who knows what “.NET” and “VB” mean. Perhaps you are impressed with an oS whose security can be compared to swiss cheese? MacOS X a few holes, but it is a new OS while XP is the 6th version of the WinNT codebase…what is its excuse? Perhaps you are impressed with an OS that puts an unsecure networking API on NT that will allow hackers to easily distribute code that will be able to spoof internet packets and allow for DDOS attacks. Is that one of those “advanced and easy to use networking features”?
You compare the speeds of the UIs on OS X and XP, but the UI on OS X is slow because it is compositing a ton of graphics and anti-aliasing text. That is a a ton of computational work. It is impressive that OS X does it as well as it does. XP is about the same and does no where near the work. Why is that?
Let’s talk about software management. You, a WINDOWS user, want to talk about the software management on someone else’s OS? Windows is well known for its DLL hell. MacOS X fixes DLL hell with a bundle system that inherantly handles multiple versions of shared libraries. Apps automatically use the most recent, yet compatible version of the library. Applications are single objects that can be installed and uninstalled with a simple drag and drop. The whole OS is seperated into domains to keep Apple software and 3rd party software seperate. What more do you want for software management?
As for file systems, a journalling file system would be interesting, but an OS that doesn’t crash often makes it less useful. Also, Apple operating systems don’t trash files when they do crash. Windows certainly will. Perhaps a journaling file system is more appropriate for a server environment, but OS X is targetted for the desktop.
I find your review to be overly critical. You ignore the key features of OS X architecturally and fail to realise its signifance.
Hmmm… Nothing new in OS X? Just a pretty version of next? Nope, new version of the Mach kernel for starters. IOKit which is the best offering to write powerful, clean, and stable device drivers I’ve seen for any os. Windows XP and linux included. A very clever library organization, which, while it makes “just recompile and run” for some unix apps impossible, it cleans the computer up significantly. Don’t think this matters much? ever ls /usr/lib a linux box? Ouch, lots of libraries, lots of symlinks to keep the versions correct. Ouch, sucks to upgrade. Or even keep track of the different versions headers. Frameworks solve all of this. Headers and libraries are separated out into sub directories of the framework making upgrading easy and backwards compatibility better. There are a lot of other nifty new ideas incorporated by Apple into OS X. They just aren’t immediately obvious. And yes, I do mean NEW not as in “Not new but never packaged like this”. Yep, still too slow on G3’s. On my G4 it’s much faster than windows xp. And yes, my computer is lower in mhz than my friends windows xp box. Not to say the kernel needs some work. there are some big issues that aren’t resolved yet. but, I can’t find an os that is as elegant yet offers the same amount of power as os x. Anywhere. Period.
This was the worst review i have ever read. You need some english lessons.
Some of these comments are way too personal and uncalled for.
I found Eugenia’s article interesting… and very baised… she probably over did it with the criticism, though. Her point is that kernal and filesystem could be “more modern” is kinda silly when you think about it. OSX isn’t the kernal or the filesystem. its the GUI.
I read the review and find it impossible to categories it as a review. The article offer nothing to support what he means by big and slow… is the heavy graphic interface means big? or what does it mean by slow?
There’s no technical data but instead the article spend time to tell us he used to work for a design studio and only he and his boss use PC, and all the Mac in the studio is slow… what kind of review is that? It didn’t even mention what kind of Mac the studio is using and what system are running on it.
My experience is in a total contrary. I don’t know my experience can apply to all, but as I get my hands on the 10.0, I install it on my G3/400 B/W, I already told people the system is fast enough for regular use. Now I upgrade it to 10.1, it’s in excellent shape. Not to mention my G4 Dual 533, it screams! The heavy Quartz use of the system do not make anything slow ata ll, it’s very fast, I mean very very fast. For example, file copying, I can finish a 19MB file copy from one drive to another less than a second. That almost fool me becasue I thought the copy process didn’t take place until I found the copy fle already in the location I intended to… that’s FAST!
Please, if you really serious to talk about a system, give us technical data to back it up, or this only a insignificant opinion to bash a good OS.
You can call anybody who disagree with your view a Mac fanatic, but at the end of the day, you know you did a lousy job to critize the OS in a fair manner.
I despise windoze as much as the next guy (e.g. virus, worm, autorun, impossible to administrate, easy to violate), but that dosen’t make osx any better of an operating system. I think that a main point of Eugenia’s article is that aqua/quartz is an oppressive gui that inhibits productivity. And the points she makes are valid, especially concerning the stupid title bar at the top. It precludes “focus follows mouse” behavior intrinsic to unix guis. Why do I have to waste my energy clicking on a window to make it active? That’s not “easy to use”, that’s “annoying”. And three button copy/paste is lost with this design too. In unix, it is highlight/click/click. With the oppressive aqua it is highlight/command-c/click/click again (remember the first click just got the window to the front)/command-v. “I said looks good, not feels good” is extremely relevent in examples like this. Even under 10.1 aqua is amazingly slow, and I run an 867 G4. Has anyone ever tried yellowdog linux on a G3? Blazing, intuitive, feature packed gui, free. OSX has its advantages, namely that major programs will eventually be ported to it native (photoshop, m$ office, etc). Maybe someday, someone will write some code to take advantage of the altivec. I’m sure they didn’t do that in aqua. So apple should stick with the unix core and strip away much the cumbersome bloatware they put on top of it.
To answer the question about copying files, the best way to do it is with the “cp” command as apple has not yet figured out a way to make aqua permissions coincide with unix file permissions. But then again, who needs unix when you can have genies popping from bottles?
For a while speed wasn’t everything. Interfaces were fast enough. This was until OSX and for those expecting to be as productive on OSX as they were in OS9 or even Windows98 .. forget it. The sluggish speed of OSX is appalling and until this is fixed I can’t serious recommend it to anyone. While programmers may be able to forgive the software immaturity by weighing up the new architecture most will, from a users perspective, find it a difficult system to use easily eclipsed by WindowsME/2000/XP or Linux+KDE.
Eugenia, I noticed over a hundred comments here and it looks like a lot of people are pissed at you for giving OSX the realistic review it deserves. I’m glad that I’m not the only one that things OSX is more hype than value. I think you were much kinder to it in your review than I ever would have been.
If all you were doing was expressing your opinion, and then you say you aren’t willing to change your opinion, why bother expressing it?
To communicate on a website and offer a review is to solicit feedback. If you don’t like feedback, keep your opinions to yourself.
Otherwise, shut up, listen, learn, change and adapt. Only fools choose not to change their opinions in the face of feedback that answers the criticisms they offered.
quote: “To answer the question about copying files, the best way to do it is with the “cp” command as apple has not yet figured out a way to make aqua permissions coincide with unix file permissions. But then again, who needs unix when you can have genies popping from bottles?”
umm… OSX uses unix file permissions… most copy problems ppl report in OSX are due to those unix file permissions. using cp won’t help. It would be nice if it allowed you to change a files group, though…
Seems like the author of this article knows little about Macs, OS X and Unix — and is just looking for an excuse to base Apple.
I find some of the comments congratulating GUIs like KDE or Windows unbelievable.
1. The globally available top menu bar in the Mac OS is actually better AND more intuitive. Other GUIs have multiple menus for every window, however, in order to access those functions you basically have to switch to that window and make it active anyway! After this process, the user will select a menu item which may or may not be consistent with other menus. ALL GUIs suffer from forcing the user to work serially. NO GUI allows the user to work in parallel, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself you can. How is that different from making a window active and selecting a global menu? It isn’t.
2. KDE or CDE and other’s like it are NOT nor will ever be user friendly GUIs. Although I agree with the point that unix select-pasting is better in these environments, it is not lost in the MacOS. Buy a 3 button mouse!
Though I disagree with some of your technical points, I am utterly disgusted with your use of the English language. You should take some classes in English grammar and spelling. Your inability to express yourself as an educated individual negates everything you say.
i have to agree that this reviewer is hopelessly stuck in a windows world, not to mention not terribly well-informed about the subject he’s writing about. don’t bash bsd unix because it’s old – it’s still far superior to anything microsoft has come up with. why not spend some time talking about how osx has protected memory so that when apps crash the whole OS doesn’t? isn’t that a killer feature? i certainly think so..
if you want to read real reviews head over to ars-technica.com and read john siracusa’s previous reviews on osx. they’re long but very balanced and insightful: the best i’ve ever read. he hasn’t reviewed osx 10.1 yet but i certainly hope he will. the guy really knows his stuff. this is his most recent article:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q3/metadata/metadata-1.html
Although Eugenia’s contribution was a fair enough review of using the Aqua Finder component of the GUI by and for someone not very familiar with it, there was nothing in particular on the GUI, much less OS 10.1. Basically the review ‘reveals’ that Apple has been pretty successful at not being very innovative (their goal) at the GUI level so as not to upset their user base and build acceptance, retaining much of the older Mac experience while moving to a multi-user environment. This in itself demanded a lot of innovation in appearing not to innovate. But it is fair enough to say that the actual workings of the GUI are not very innovative other than noting that virtually all the behaviours of Aqua are configurable by the user … transparancy, animations, menu behaviours, anti-aliasing of text. Drawing on the screen is not very fast, as all imaging is done in PDF via the Quartz engine (which is very fast on a G4 due to the Altivec processor, but somewhat sluggish on the G3 found in the iMac and iBook). Quartz has a lot of advantages in a pre-press environment, and indeed any environment where we want programmers to be able to produce complex effects without much investment of time. But it will lack the snappy performance of systems which just blit bits to the screen. The file copying/moving behavior reported is just normal for Mac GUI (not the OS!), as is the single menu bar (which makes sense if you are used to programs that control more than one window).
This is where a review of the OS might have started. Apple accomplished their integration of old with old by building both the old Mac OS GUI and the Unix OS around a set of internal frameworks and databases. OS services contain enough information to identify themselves and to supply a simple UI, or can be requested by application (say a ‘spell-checker’) which then accesses the service functions and uses the results. Almost everything above the BSD layer is presented as a framework, including add-ons such as Java and Quicktime. AppleScript ties everything together, Mac applications to Unix applications, providing avenues for single computer scripting of most complex tasks, and providing a platform for distributing processes across a cluster of computers. Perhaps most importantly, OS 10 is as much a starting point for Apple, as XP is an ending point for Microsoft – Apple is introducing their technology at a point where Microsoft has finally finsihed theirs – and still without matching Apple in terms of plain dollars and cents productivity on a task by task basis – even using their own software.
But then, I’m not writing a review, so I should stop there… The point is, if you review the OS and are trying to sound like you know something (and it sounds as if Eugenia might), review the OS, not just the GUI. And even there Eugenia was mostly reviewing a single element of the GUI, the ‘Finder’, known to be the weakest point of the new system. I agree this is a problem (some people have even taken to using the Classic Finder out of frustration), and I expect to have a better Finder by the end of the year. But the Finder is not the OS, it is but a part of a shell. A review should tell you where something leads, as well as where it lags.
i have no problem with your opinion (although i don’t believe it to be an entirely well formed one), it’s just that if you’re going to write, learn to first, or at least read over what you’ve written. it felt like marking homework, KWIM?
Good review. Having been a user of the Intel platform before the Wintel platform was even concieved, I can tell you that OS X is light years more usable and stable than anything in the Windows camp (including NT, 2000 etc.)
Many of the issues you bring up in your review are exactly the same ones I heard about with Windows 3.0, then 3.1, then 3.1.1 and then Win95 many years back.
My only point is that its a hell of a system, give it the same amount of process improvement time as any of the Windows platforms have had and then lets see where things stand.
Tom
>>Jace I, for one, agree with the review
Eugenia, I noticed over a hundred comments here and it looks like a lot of people are pissed at you for giving OSX the realistic review it deserves. I’m glad that I’m not the only one that things OSX is more hype than value. I think you were much kinder to it in your review than I ever would have been.
The problem is: this is not a realistic review.
A realistic review should be balance and well inform. If anybody can say what ever they want base on their own point of view, habit, or personal likes and dislikes, then you can’t blame people’s harsh remarks as “just express their own opinion. And if you call people’s oppositions just a pissed off response, you missed out a great lesson.
If you read carefully the responses, there’s lots of them have very solid information to back up their arguements. And that deserves a hard look into it.
I don’t think you’re a Apple hater. The fact that if your comments are solid and eloquent, this should be a very good discussion on the topic.
It’s flaw by default when you offer a review from a “user” point of view but do not address what and how you constitute your opinions.
My expeience of OS X as a “user” is very pleasant. I have no speed issues, I take time to get use to it, understand it, and I only found it doing a very good job for me. Of course there’s glitches, but nothing major aty all.
It’s great that you guys/gals doing this site for fun, but then this is part of the fun: you wrote a good article, you have serious discussions from both sides; you wrote a lousy article, you got plaintiff and defendents firing at each other.
But what kind of fun you choose probably decide what quality your web site represent.
Re: Impy,
<p>While I agree with the general idea that one can’t use two interfaces at once I don’t understand only having the drop-down menus at the top – while icons and other interface components remain within the window. Surely, shouldn’t it put all the interface widgets along the top?
<p>My initial guess was that it’s to do with the interface idea that you should be able to throw your mouse at the screen edge and hit something and so rows of buttons wouldn’t have any benefit. But that didn’t make sense as there’s no reason why it has to be on multiple lines at all. Unused space could be used for other icons too – yet the drop-down menu gets preference – why?
<p>To me it seems bizarre that Apple arbitrarily chose drop-down menus over icons or other interface elements when they didn’t have to give preference to any of them.
In response to Don Cox:
“The correct way to support full multitasking (a new thing on the Mac)
is to have each program running on its own public screen. Only little
utilities should ever run on the Finder screen, and probably not even
them.”
I definitely agree that multiple workspaces are a great idea, but I’m not yet convinced that new users could correctly grasp the concept. That, and relegating every application to its own screen would make inter-application collaboration a lot more difficult. Definitely something to consider, though! Thanks for the post.
I’m running 10.1 on a Dual Processor 533 G4. Is it the fastest machine in Apple’s lineup? No. It is almost a year old now. I see none of the slowdowns others have complained about, in fact – classic boots for me in less than 30 seconds.
Platform bias aside, the major thing which struck a chord with me in this “review”, was the consistent grammatical errors Eugenia graced us with. No unbiased reviewer would be taken seriously when referring to “me and my boss”, so why should we even deign to worry about this one?
Sure, if you are on a sub-500Mhz G3, you won’t get as enjoyable an OS X experience as you would on a faster machine. However I’m plenty happy on my less-than-top-end machine, and I can only imagine how much laughter this review has given the Quicksilver owners.
Before parting, i’d like to pick on the BasliskII comment. “faster under emulation in my 533 Mhz Celeron than in its original machine” At this point 8.1 is pretty close to 8 years old. If it could run on my G4 (requires 9.1 or newer), I’m pretty sure it would out-pace that Celeron. When I ran 8.1, I did so on a 93 Mhz machine (6300) and the last machine I ran 8.1 on was a 300Mhz G3. If we’re going to set the “way-back” machine, shall I emulate windows 3.1 on my Mac then laugh as Virtual PC under OS X runs it faster than on the 200 Mhz 486 (“its original machine”)? Such comments only stick out like the grammatical errors – clearly showing the learning impairment this reviewer suffers from.
–El B
I agree that Macintosh’s global menubar is way superior to Windows and KDE alikes.
The idea of parant and child menu bar in Windows is a major flaw in GUI design. This force the user contantly adjust their menu bar command locations from program to program (if the user use multiple windows and let them be visible), and that slow down the user ALOT.
If the user choose to have a “constant” location to use the menu commands, the only way to do it is to expand the application window to the fulllest as to cover the whole screen. But then the single applcation already take over your computer screen, switching to other application make the user re-adjust the prograsm once again… that’s a big flaw.
And that’s why Mac OS’s global menubar is so superior. You can have multple windows from multiple applications all visible, the global menubar change contents but not locations so you still going to the simular places to execute your commands, the adjustment is minimal, therefore the user can speed up with less mistakes. And also because of the flexiblity and usefulness of global menubar, multiple windows and multiple applications will be use in a cooperative manner: that means I’ll drag a Quicktime movie from the web browser straight into a MS Word document without any hesitations.
When you start realize how much more productive the Mac GUI enable you, you’ll start to realsze why Windows’ GUI is so slow.
The purpose of a globally available menuing system is simple.
1. users can access a menu to an active application ALL the time.
Pretend you are using MS Windows. Drag the title bar of the active application all the way to the left, right or all the way down so it is nearly out of view. How do you access the menu now? Guess you can’t…without exit/re-opening that application.
2. forces programmers to write consistent interfaces to things which indisputably control the application to avoid situations like item #1
3. non-menu items are essentially “shortcuts” to other objects and these items do not have to be consistently applied to the GUI. it should be up to the user to decide how to access his/her frequently accessed items… icons, the dock, menu buttons. Although these things may appear to me arbitrarily thought out concoctions, they are not. Buttons, icons and the dock do not control the entire system, but are rather customizable, alternative means for frequent access. since it is the user who frequently accesses these items, the user should customize them as they please.
4. the menu should not allow such liberal customization policies since the user may lock himself out of what may be the last or only way of interfacing with an application. Picture this…you are using MS Word in MS Windows. The menu system in Word is gone! And since we’re both knowledgeable people, I will assume you know that this can happen. Do a mail merge, bring up a drawing toolbar, record a macro…none of which can be accomplished without the menu! Thus, since the menu is such an important thing, it should be fixed, locked, and not as customizable.
5. it makes no difference whether a menuing system is globally applied or application-centric, (previous post)but it may as well be consistent.
Eugenia,
While I disagree with most of what you said in your article, I’m not going to go into that because I think enough people have already stated those reasons in logically constructed arguments (as well as in flames, unfortunately). I do think, however, “review” is somewhat of a misnomer in regards to your article. The article contains very little objective material, and, as you stated in one of your posts, it is YOUR opinion. A review is something that people base their purchasing decisions on, and as such, one should be detailed and, as much as is possible, objective. It also pains me to see such a misleading article published on a site titled OSNews.com, which carries a certain amount of authority, particularly to such a one as would mistake your article for a professional review. Please take these things into consideration the next time you are wondering what to title the next opinion you decide to publish.
-Ben
P.S. As far not being English and hence not speaking it well, I would suggest using whatever language you are most comfortable with to publish your articles and leaving it up to others to translate as they wish. I, for one, had difficulty understanding what you were trying to say at many points in the article.
There seems to be a lot of FUD floating around on this post. Here are some (actually supportable) disadvantages of OS-X.
1) To put it nicely, Mach has some issues. For example, the VM is rather antiquated. It is the grandfather of the VM in FreeBSD, and in Open/NetBSD, it is has been replaced entirely by UVM. As such, it lacks many of the improvements that have been added to these VMs. Read Matt Dillon’s paper “Elements of the FreeBSD VM subsystem” to find out more. Also, Charles D. Cranor’s UVM thesis is a good read, find it on http://www.citeseer.nj.nec.com
2) OS-X (and NeXTStep before it) has a brain-dead implementation of the microkernel model. It puts a monolithic BSD server on top of the Mach microkernel. This combines the performance disadvantages of a microkernel with the stability disadvantages of a monolithic kernel. Also, much of the BSD code is based on FreeBSD 3.2, and as such lacks many of the improvements from the 4.x series. OS-X took a long time (and a lot of reworking) to get here anyway, so I don’t see the logic in using the old NeXTStep kernel model. Since OpenStep is portable, it would have been much easier to base OS-X on FreeBSD. Not only would this free Apple from having to maintain Darwin, but it would result in a much better product overall.
3) The GUI is based on the wrong model. These days, everyone has tons of 3D horsepower sitting unused in their computers while they’re using their desktop. It would make tons of sense to base an imaging model on top of OpenGL (which is what Enlightenment 0.17 on Linux is doing) because that would combine the imaging power of Postscript with the performance of hardware accelerated graphics. Currently, much of the cool parts of the Aqua GUI must be done in software, since modern graphics card’s 2D paths accelerate blitting and simple line drawing rather than complex alpha-blended graphics.
4) The filesystem is barfalicious. HFS+ (which is a minor extension of the nearly two decade old HFS) is absolutely unsuited for a modern, multitasking environment. The centralization of metadata forces access to the filesystem to be serialized, and the structure just wasn’t design for performance. Plus, modern filesystems have taken some of HFS’s original ideas (resource forks) to whole new levels (multiple arbitrary file streams or attributes) and add many of their own (ACLs, guarenteed I/O, etc). Of course, one could use UFS, but that’s really isn’t supported by Apple (doesn’t mesh well with the Mac-ness of OS-X) and even then UFS on OS-X doesn’t support soft updates (which is very important from a performance/reliability standpoint). BTW, OS-X is now officially the only major OS to lack a journeling (FreeBSD’s softupdates aren’t journeling, but serve the same purpose) filesystem.
Now for the good points:
1) The OS has a lot of cool paradigms. The imaging model, while slow, is suburb. The Objective-C API is natural for object oriented development, and component-based design is much more natural in objc than in C++.
2) Its easy to use. (snicker)
3) It has a lot of support from the developer community.
4) Some things, like the XML configuration, are really cool and desperately need to be implemented in the free UNIX’s.
Are you a terrorist Hashem? just kidding…
1. HFS+ is there to maintain compatibility with legacy macs. ’nuff said
2. The comment about combining a monolithic server over a microkernel is completely invalid. It does not make the kernel worse off. The linux kernel is a monolithic kernel combined with a monolithic server. I guess it’s even worse off!
3. The GUI model is based on current technology, not the decades old Postscript model which in of itself had many shortcomings.
too tired to type any more…ughhh
C’mon folks, let’s put this all in perspective. We’ve been waiting for a modern operating system for our proprietary Macintosh hardware platform since codenames like Pink, Taligent, and Rhapsody were coming out of Cupertino. Fact is it’s been a long, long road to X. And over the course of time we have been staring at Type 11 errors and extension conflicts MS has been making slow and steady progress from an archaic text-based MSDOS environment, to a fast, stable, and (even if not “lickable”) generally acceptable GUI in XP/2000 that 90% of the world finds “good enough” for everyday use.
So personally i find Eugenia’s efforts to maintain an objective and critical perspective on what (by this time in Apple’s life) *has* to deliver on all fronts. And while my long-time love for the innovation that Apple brings to the industry continually informs me that this is the only company in the industry capable of breaking the otherwise absurd lack of polish and attention to detail perpetuated in the technology sector, i must also admit that my expectations for OS X are still higher than what 10.1 delivers.
Examples:
1. Traditional GUI-designer arguments aside, the MacOS STILL lacks an intuitive manner of application management and switching. The Windows taskbar (as bland as it may be) provides a clear, unobstrusive, and (at this point in the game) defacto standard for application management, launching, and switching. OS X answer (the Dock) still fails to tell me in a glance which actual application is currently active. Why? As a Mac user i’ve been trained to look in the menubar, as a traditional Windows user i would expect the lack of any active windows to indicate that no applications are active. Which approach is “right” is ultimately irrelevant. If Apple’s about “doubling marketshare” it needs (at some point) to take sufficient clues from the competition to build upon and improve what is the heart and soul of the Apple entering the new millenium.
2. Speed is still insufficient for a modern OS. 10.1 makes things the way they *should* have been with the 1.0 release. Wonderful. But after a week of constant usage i’m not caught anxiously awaiting version 10.2 so that i can resize a basic web browser window at a speed that matches the 4 year old Pentium II/60 running Windows98 on 32MB RAM in my office. This is basic stuff. Why are we even needing to measure app launches in “bounces” or window resizes at all? This has been before and remains today a non-issue on the Wintel side.
3. Stability is still an issue even given an (allegedly) rock-solid *nix foundation. Why do i find this OS stalling indefinitely when the need to force-quit a misbehaving process emerges? Why is any process (particularly the Finder) still capable of maxing out my CPU cyles and halting the system with that god-awful spinning rainbow pointer? Is this to be the “Type 11” of the “NeXt generation?” With a BSD foundation i expect to have an OS whose up-time i measure in months, not days.
4. Classic environment runs slower than the original even under a fully modern, multitasking, bare-bones OS on top-notch hardware. The real kicker being that we find support for the vast majority of hardware devices completely inaccessible from the Classic layer. How do we justify the long-stated superiority of the “Classic” MacOS GUI, device management, and versatility when Apple has done everything to indicate to us that such features and functionality is now “obsolete” with X? More importantly, how do you explain to the average, newbie Mac-user, technology-layperson the drastic change in UI and functionality that occurs when switching between the Aqua and Classic layers? Microsoft is claiming XP runs legacy games and apps *faster* in XP than under 9X/2k. When was the last time we saw a Jobsian “bakeoff” with Photoshop under Classic beating out Photoshop on the XP side? When was the last time you booted into X to play Q3A under Classic b/c it was faster than running under 9?
I think it’s quite clear that anybody willing to take a critical look at X (Eugenia included) is doing more a service in maintaining the high standards of excellence we hold Apple to than beating a dead horse or expressing an existing personal Wintel bias.
Just my $.02.
Speed
I can’t believe someone could post a more uninformed scathing review.
Can one appreciate the majesty of museum by a 30 minute walk by the outside of the building?
One must be more objective and certainly much more informed to write a review.
I really support everyone that has given your article a scathing review. The reason for this is a ounce of misinformation like this ‘review’ takes a tonne of undoing. People will read this and develop a misunderstanding themselves. I really do appreciete anyone that can justify why not to use a mac or mac os. Currently that number is very small.
I think Rayiner Hashem response was more the tone of how a review should be written. This person obvoiusly has a considerable more experience and awareness than Eugenia. Admittedly Rayiner’s not fully across some issues but this is certainly a more informed commentary than Eugenia, toilet paper notes…
Eugenia,
i read your review and then saw the posts that followed (up to 133 as i type this).
i find it extremely interesting (and hilariously funny) that just because you gave an honest opinion you are automatically labelled as “an uninformed biased Windows user”. hehehe. how funny!.
It’s quite obvious that the posters on here don’t know of your vast OS experience and i guess it would probably surprise the Mac-Masses that you are a programmer as well.
keep up the good work. some of the posts on here made laugh out loud.
aaaaah ignorance is bliss!
cheers
peter
ps BeOS is not dead (yet)
While OS X is not perfect, I do believe that as time goes buy, there will be changes made to it for the better. There is some fluff in the interface but I’m
looking forward to having a much more stable OS and one that multitasks much better.
I also don’t want to have to pay rent to use my OS.
The article is a bunch of crap. I’m never reading an article again from this web site.
It is writing….not writting.
some of us writing criticisms are also programmers and “experienced” users too
1) If HFS+ is there for compatibility, then there should be a new (or ported) filesystem for general use (like Windows 2000 and NTFS and FAT). The easiest thing for Apple to do would be to add resource forks to UFS and push that as the default filesystem on OS-X. If they had used FreeBSD as a base, they would have gotten a good filesystem essentially for free.
2) Rethink the monolithic/microkernel thing, I think you missed it. The advantage of a microkernel is that bugs in higher-level OS code (for example, networking code) will not crash the system, just the server they are running in. The disadvantage is that communicating with OS services in another process is slower than communicating with a kernel that is mapped into the process address space. The opposite is true for a macrokernel. System calls are fast, but bugs in the kernel can crash the machine. OS X’s design takes the worst part of both designs. System calls are slowed by (the rather poor) Mach IPC, and stability isn’t increased because a bug (for example) in the network code of the monolithic BSD server will bring the whole thing down, not just the network part. A crash of the BSD server is just as bad as a crash of the kernel, since the system is useless both ways. Now I’m not saying that a microkernel can’t be fast or a macrokernel can’t be stable. I’m just saying that both designs carry some inherent advantages and disadvantages, and the mix of microkernel and monolithic server in OS X just merges two sets of disadvantages.
3) True, but software rendering is as slow as ever. There are two problems with Quartz. First, the imaging model is much more complex, and thus requires more power to run. Second, the imaging model is quite high-level, and thus can’t be efficiently accelerated by standard 2D hardware. If Apple had chosen a different model (such as implementing Quartz on top of the OpenGL 3D pipeline*) they could have gotten a complex imaging model AND a fast hardware accelerated graphics system.
PS *> Let me clarify this. OpenGL is a graphics API, not just 2D or 3D. One can certainly use OpenGL to accelerate 2D rendering. Take, for example, translucent menus. One could go ahead and implement it in software (like Quartz and Windows 2000) and use the CPU to alpha-blend the menu. Or, one could implement the menu as a two triangles (facing head-on) in OpenGL, and use the blazing fast 3D hardware to do the alpha blending. A whole lot of stuff in PostScript, including Bezier paths, rotation, scaling, color correct, etc, are accelerated by OpenGL, which makes it a natural low level API for something like Quartz.
>>Eugenia,
i read your review and then saw the posts that followed (up to 133 as i type this).
i find it extremely interesting (and hilariously funny) that just because you gave an honest opinion you are automatically labelled as “an uninformed biased Windows user”. hehehe. how funny!.
It’s quite obvious that the posters on here don’t know of your vast OS experience and i guess it would probably surprise the Mac-Masses that you are a programmer as well.
keep up the good work. some of the posts on here made laugh out loud.
aaaaah ignorance is bliss!
cheers
peter
ps BeOS is not dead (yet) <<
Peter, are you a friend to the author or something? Just to show some support ?
I think you lost the objectivity on what this article talk about.
The article has serious problem in addressing issues. It’s not because she gave an honest opinion and automatically labelled as “an uninformed biased Windows user”, it’s what she didn’t show anything in the article to validate what she commenting on.
You can keep saying people are Machead, fanatics, whatever… but fact is fact… as some people point out, the article in Ars Technica is extremely harsh to OS X, but it’s very inform and we understand why the author see the OS that way. And no matter how you try to stereotype Macusers by their response in the article, Mac users are those who critize OS X the most in the last year, some even extremely harsh. They want to have a OS that not only successful commercially but also a excellenct OS they would like to use in the coming years.
Take your shoulder rubbing somewhere else, Peter. There’s no difference to me whether the author is a programmer or not, even she’s a OS developer, this review doesn’t show any relevence to her qualification.
If I were the author, I’ll take the words and write a better one. She should know the review is not a good job. It really lacking everything a review should have. You got to know, we the viewers are not suppose to trust you ‘re “informed”, you had to show us. and you had to do that by good information and good analysis so as to convey your opinion clearly.
There’s no excuses especially you put your opinions out there as an author.
Flame an ignorant fool? Nah, that’s way too easy.
As far as some lame-o peecee user reviewing Mac OS X goes, the expression “Pearls before swine” comes to mind.
Your ignorance is bested only by your bias, and you have succeeded in showing them both off to best advantage.
Lame on!
Let’s be honest here. Mac OS X is a great OS that is still in developmental stages. Yes it lacks alot but it is a beautiful and extremely stable OS. I have not had to restart my Mac once since I have installed it because of software crashing or incompatibility. I have also used Windows XP. Windows XP looks pretty but doesn’t have the stability that OS X does. I have used both Windows and Macintosh for as long as they have both existed and have never found Windows to be a worth opponent of Mac OS.
Let’s face it, Windows is a cheap copy of Mac OS. I oppose any company that has to copy another company’s design to succeed and it is clear that Windows (even XP) has done just that.
I highly disagree with the statement about a menu bar going against multitasking. On the contrary. As people have more and more windows open on their screen, keeping track of which one is “in front” can be confusing. The Menu bar offers a very convenient frame of reference in this regard. One can always look at the menu bar to determine what program is “in front.” On a windows machine, this is not always possible. Granted, clicking on an inactive window will make it active, but if they window already IS active, you’ve suddenly selected something you didn’t want to. And if it isn’t active and you thought it was, your first click will simply bring it “to the front.”
Next, a vast majority of those who work with human interface guidelines agree that a “universal” menu bar at the top of the screen is far superior to a menu bar below the title bar of a window, as in MS Windows. The reason for this is muscle memory, and accuracy in pointing. With the menu bar at the top of the screen, you need only “aim” left and right, because aiming up and down is taken care of for you… you KNOW the menu bar is at the top, so you can just zip the cursor up to the top of the screen. Aiming for the menu bars in Windows is much more difficult.
Many of the other points were very subjective (although giving props to Win XP networking over the networking in OS X is very inaccurate, IMHO… since I use both OS X and win 2000 on a daily basis). However, the menu bar issue is simply illogical. I mean, for crying out loud, one of windows 95’s biggest improvement for users of win 3.1 was to “steal” mac’s menu bar, change it a little, and put it on the bottom of the screen.
Ok, i’ll admit it, I have been using Mac for the last 13 years so I’m more than use to the Mac way. But I have also use a Unix variant, use Windows, tried BeOS and seen QNX. As much as I would have like to have an OS as responsive as QNX or BeOS, OS X does’nt come close and I don’t think that it will ever be as fast on my iMac (400 mhz) as BeOS use to be on my PowerWave.
But at least in the last two month since I installed OS X, I did’nt crash once! Maybe Windows XP is good, I almost like the feel of it, but I’m a mac user and I like how the Mac work, I dont really want to change. If I’m willing to endure the worst system (as some people believe) than let me be!
I only have two comments on the … FACTS:
“Funny that it ran faster under emulation in my 533 Mhz Celeron than in its original machine” If you mean that it run faster on a celeron than a 68040 computer, well I hope it does the last Mac with a 68040 came out in December 1992. Dont tell me it is faster than on a G3, no emulation software currently on the market runs PowerPC code.
” First off, I can’t say that I like the classic Mac menu bar on the top. It prevents multitasking from doing its job as it supposed to do it and it does not necesarrily make the system easier to use” Again thatÆs your take on it, I always though that a menu and tool palette should’nt be stuck with a document window, you use a software to work on many different documents but in Windows a document is a software… for my part it’s not better than what Mac does.
I like my Mac, I will stay with it as long as nothing come close to my mind.
[quote]Care to elaborate exactly, *line by line*, which are the articles points you do not agree? Because I believe you are the biased one, not me [/quote]
Are you in high school or something? If I had handed an essay like that in to my profs I would have gotten an F. Since you ask I’ll correct it for you.
A month ago I used a friend’s iMac 500 Mhz G3 with its RAM upgraded to 256 MB. It came with MacOSX 10.0.4 pre-installed. For the current review I used another friend’s iBook (latest model) upgraded to 384 MB of RAM and with MacOSX 10.1 installed. This series of MacOS usage during the past month was the second one in my life.
So you obviosly know a lot about macs then
The first time was back in 1998 when I used to work for a graphics design Studio and all the computers in the office were some extremely slow Macs (only myself and my boss had PCs in the whole company). My opinion back then was that either the OS was pretty bad or the hardware was just too slow. Or both.
I left MacOS in its own fate, until 2 months ago where I installed the BasiliskII emulator, running MacOS 8.1 for 68k under Windows. Funny that it ran faster under emulation in my 533 Mhz Celeron than in its original machine.
uh hu..right….just as funny as how my mac can emulate Windows 3.1 faster than the machine it came on. This isn’t something I’d brag about to promote the mac.
And then two of my housemates bought an iMac and an iBook respectively. And I discovered MacOSX.
Ahhh… Now I see what makes you an expert
MacOSX is a (supposedly) modern 32-bit OS, based on the 15 year old BSD4.4 and Mach kernel, with a new, object-oriented GUI on top. Sounds familiar? Yes, NeXTSTEP was exactly the same. Not surprising, as Apple has purchased NeXT in 1996 and Apple’s today’s CEO is Steve Jobs who created NeXT too as well as Apple.
This paragraph has nothing to do with the rest of the piece. Sorry I know it was an attemp to slam Apple by making it seem like OS X is a rip off, but this statement doesn’t demonstrate or address the OS’s efficiency at all. It does not matter were it came from. Why don’t you talk about MS and how it didn’t creat most of its software by itself either such as Power Point, Windows multitasking, Explorer, Excell, Word and numerous other things. Because it doesn’t matter? After all it was all purchased fare and square from other companies about 15 years ago. Guess that makes it 15 year old software.
I just hoped that the developer tools would included in one of the CDs that come with the machine instead of searching all over Apple’s web site to find a free downloadable version.
I have trouble understanding this sentence so I can’t tare it apart. Maybe you should try using MS Word’s 3rd grade grammer check.
The other problem I have with the GUI, while it is a fact that it is looking good and consistent, it does not offer any revolutionary new concepts.
Its not supposed to be “revolutionary” it’s supposed to be easy to understand like the old one…who wants to learn something completely new?
First off, I can’t say that I like the classic Mac menu bar on the top
Thats nice, I don’t like that windows doesn’t have a menu bar at the top. You know what else I don’t like? That slow and childish way Win menus animate into existence. But I’m not going to cry about it or use it to bash an OS. It may be your “opinion” but most articles should be based on actual facts more than your personal taste if it is to actually help people decide upon a computer.
It prevents multitasking from doing its job as it supposed to do it and it does not necesarrily make the system easier to use, as it probably made sense back in 1984 when the first Mac was introduced.
How exactly does it prevent multitasking?
The OS comes with several applications, like iTunes, office software, IE5.1, QuickTime and a DVD player (which plays exceptionally fast and without glitches I should add) among others. MacOSX also comes with a copy of MacOS 9.2 which, when called, it runs as a runtime environment on the background of OSX and provides compatibility with older MacOS apps that they have not being carbonized yet (not using the new API yet that is), like Photoshop and Quark 4 for example. There are already a large number of native applications for MacOSX found on VersionTracker today and this number is increasing every day.
(have you seen how much Apple charges for an extra 128 MB DIMM?)
so don’t buy a dimm from Apple
I was ready to buy an iMac for me some months ago, but I have now reconsider that doesn’t make much sense to spend $1,300 USD for something so underpowered (600 Mhz G3 – and please don’t give me the “megahertz myth”, which is pretty valid, but not so much in Apple’s case) and for an OS that except of a slick GUI does not bring anything new in the OS and technology scene, but just a life boat for Apple as a company in the whole.
My..What a poorly constructed run on sentence. BTW it may not bring anything new but at least most of the things PC users complained about before were fixed. Remember its still very new. Just can’t please people.
Nothing like a filesystem like XFS or BFS, not a good software manager like QNX’s, or the advanced (and easy to use) networking features that WindowsXP brings.
This is the funniest part of all. So are you saying we should get switch to a XFS, BFS filesytem? Or get QNX just for the software manager? Or have Windows just for the networking features? You just put one OS up against several others and compared them as a whole instead of each one at a time. Does this mean XP has a filesystem like XFS or BFS and a manages software like QNX? I also find it funny that most people can’t figure out how to set up this easy Windows network you speak of yet almost any mac user can do it without any knowledge of his / her mac platform. But I shouldn’t mention that because thats kind of on the verge of a stupid opinion
I keep seeing comments about the expense of buying a mac compared to a PC. I own and use both Mac and Pc systems so don’t label me as a mac “fanatic”. Here is my comment though: Take a survey of all the PC users you know who have been computer users for a reasonable period of time, say 5 years. Total up how much money they have spent over those 5 years on OS upgrades, hardware upgrades, tech support calls, hardware repairs, and antivirus software. Also factor in how many times they have replaced their system entirely to get back up to current standards. Do the same survey with a group of Mac users, and I think you might be surprised about which system is more expensive.
I can comment on this from personal experience with digital video editing. I have spent many hundreds of dollars on hardware, memory, and OS upgrades attempting to get suitable results on a PC editing video. I recently bought a somewhat less than state of the art 400 mhz Imac DV (open box special from Circuit City). I fired it up, plugged in my Sony camera, ran Imovie and the thing worked flawlessly right out of the box. We’re talking FREE software here folks, pre installed and ready to run on the system.
Usually I love arcticles that bash Apple and their products because they do have lots of faults. Being a mac user, when people bash their products it forces Apple to do a better job fixing them for customers like me.
But This is just a joke and will only make Apple executives and even PC users laugh.
By the way what kind of a board doesn’t support UBB in this day and age?
Using OpenGL for a PDF-based model is just bullshit.
First: Maybe OpenGL could speed things up with hardware acceleration – but: the current installed hardware base mostly just has no suitable 3D acceleration (iMacs). So adding another layer won’t do anything good to performance.
Second: why shouldn’t be there a Quartz hardware accelerator? Under Mach a Quartz-CPU could be full citizen within the SMP stuff… just another good reason to stay on Mach 🙂
Third: OpenGL does nothing know about typography etc. . So this will result just in using OpenGL hardware acceleration for blitting. And TYPOGRAPHY is OUTSTANDING on MacOS X. Even ATM can’t match. And I bet everything Apple will do a real “ClearType” – and this will work – thanks to a PDF based system – perfectly for everything – not just text on white background…
A word about the filesystem: HFS+ is fine for 99% of the users.
Before I abuse a filesystem as a database I will opt for a real one.
One last thought about the kernel discussions: Mach is a perfect foundation for Cocoa. Just compare WebObjects on NT and MacOS X. And anyway: the most important thing is that runs stable – any speed difference under 20% isn’t noticeable anyway.
You really have to spend more time with an operating system to write a reasonable review. Borrowing someone’s machine for a little while doesn’t cut it. Someone like Walter Mossberg carries infinitely more weight than someone like you because, as one reads his reviews, one can tell they have been carefully considered and he knows the operating system he writes about. (Plus, his English is clear. See below.) Also to say networking in XP environment is easier would be more valuable if you offered some substance to go with the comment. I really have not had problems networking my Macs.
You have to work on your syntax. What does “I left MacOS in its own fate.” mean? Did its fate depend on you up to some point? I think not. Finally, a journalist should probably do a spell check.
eboy “take your shoulder rubbing somewhere else” ?? i can rub shoulders with whoever i want and wherever i want. last i heard australia was still a free and democratic country
…am i friend of Eugenia? well i wouldn’t say “friend” as we have never met…we have traded a few emails and ICQ messages over the years…mainly about BeOS.
if you actually read my post i never said that i agreed with the article. how can i? i’ve never used OSX and no i am not Windows biased either (i still run MacOS 8.x on an old PPC). i was merely commenting about how SOME people assumed she was a biased windows user. nothing else.
impy, yes i’m sure the readers of this are also OS “aware” and programmers. you missed my point which i explained above: i was merely intrigued about how quickly she was labelled that’s it.
peter
Menu Bar prevents multitasking? Oh come on. That’s such a weak argument.
Just like someone had said earlier, the point of a consumer level OS is to be exactly that, consumer level. Just look at the easy advantages a regular user has with Mac over Windoze, such as burning CD’s, DVD’s, editing home movies and so on, all with easy plug and play, especially under Mac 10.1, which has many drivers pre-installed. When I show Windoze users how easy it is to capture home videos or burn a CD from the finder, they just can’t believe it. Especially since very few PC’s come with FireWire, which Apple invented by the way, as well as the mouse, the GUI, you know, those little things…
All the arguments Eugenia has made against OS X I find to be totally irrelevant to 99% of computer users. BeOS? BSD? That’s Klingon to most everyone.
And this speed thing I keep hearing about OS X is just plain stupid. I use a PowerBook G3 500/512RAMN, and it’s plenty fast.
And lastly, just look at the damn thing!!! It’s just undeniably beautiful!!! Quit knitpicking!!!
P.S.- Have fun paying a fee for upgrading EVERY one of those beige boxes.
Although my email address betrays my leanings, the only comment I think lacks validity is the remark about the menu at the top somehow preventing multitasking…
Having the menu bar at the top of the screen is completely unrelated to multitasking (just as which window is on top has no bearing on multitasking). On the positive side it’s much easier to “hit” the menu bar on the top, and it provides a cue as to which program is currently on top. As a user of several OSes, I find it very disconcerting under menus-in-windows OSes to reach for a menu in the wrong window — and I see even dedicated Windows heads falling for it.
As it has been much noted, there are those who are heavily supporting Apple, those that are afficianados of WinTel, the gaggle of geeks into BSD, and the blithering idiots who insist that “xxx SUCKS!”
Eulogy, or whatever the hell your name is, shame on you for writing an article which you knew would be inflamatory. You got 100 responses. Congratulations.
Cheers to those who brought up good subjects and relevant technical info. You know who you are. I learned a great many things and intend to delve further into nix on legacy Macs. One of the many benefits of OS X is that I can install FreeBSD or NetBSD on my old Quadras and run XWindow shells from them on my OS X box.
Those of you using Windows, there is a concept that you need to accept:
CHANGE.
Take a good gander at the world around you. What kind of computer do you use for work? What kind of computer is used to ring sales at the market? What kind of computer do they use to keep your records at the bank? WinTel. The List goes on. The drudgery, the monotony, the carrying of this shameful, paper-shuffling hell that we call “modern living,” the sinking stentch of forced and expensive software upgrades, the myriad variations on a single, sub-par OS whose entire gamut of peers offered greater stability, general usefulness, higher potential… you name it. Windows propagated because it was a cheap way for businesses to make people get more work done. Early on, work sometimes involved 3DGraphics. A few years later, we get to play 3D games at home.
What computers do they use to make the television shows you plotz in front of with your Inspirion? What computers do they use to edit, enhance, and film Star Wars on? What computers are responsible for recording the most innovative music, film, books, etc. being produced, from Kid 606 to radiohead to countless DJs and artists and animators and 3D modelers? What computers do they use to base Windows off of?
THERE IS NO SHAME IN ADMITTING YOU WERE WRONG. People have this hangup about computers … because they’re expensive no one wants to think they didn’t pick the right one. That’s why people get so upset about it – the money greed behind it, the investment of time it takes to learn a platform and its quirks (AND THEY ALL HAVE THEM)… no one wants to think “gee, maybe i wasted it all.” And that’s okay to feel. But feel it all you like and act on it when you’re alone, buster, cuz there are too many people, too little food, and not enough time for this piddly garbage.
Oh yes, and what computers are used to propogate the system that is slowly enslaving the entire world into a wired up working-class consumer hell? WinTel.
The Mac just may save our planet.
Nootch!
thedbp
OSX is a totally new OS. It was released just 6 mons ago. I don’t think it’s
fair to compare to Win XP which has gone thru many years or code revision as
NT and 2000. If you have to compare, compare osx to nt 3.5 or 4.0. OSX is
slow but is much more stable than NT. Bad apps don’t crash/hang OSX but do
crash NT. My NT constantly needs reboot but rarely OSX needs to. Give OSX
more time to mature, it’ll be better.
Hey, I used to be a Wintel user and think Mac sucks.
But now…….. my next computer would probably be G4 dual running OSX.
I’m really disgusted to see people like you wrote article like this ! You don’t like Mac OS and that’s all ! I’m running it on iMac 350 and it’s fast very fast ! Much than your still so unstable XP ! I saw a beautiful demo at store of XP and the system crashed 3 times during the show … funny 🙂 ! I use OS X for a long time now (I’m beta tester) and the system has never crashed ! Only Internet Explorer don’t stop to crash (I can’t remember who made it 🙂 !). The GUI is great, I really see no problems with transparencies and ABSOLUTELY no problems with windows or colums resizing !!! And I repeat I’m on an iMac 350 !!! Application can be the only “prob” for the moment but for the end of the year a lot of important apps sould come. And finally, you say that Macs are more expensive than PCs … I thought so before ! But can you have the same things than an iMac at 1299$ offers ??? G3/600, 40Gig HD, CD-RW, a very good screen, a not so bad graphic card (most of low-end PCs does include real graphic card at all), 256 Mo RAM, USB, Firewire, useful software(Appleworks, iTunes, iMovie…) and operating systems !!!! Really … and there is nothing more to say about the incredible price of new iBooks ! Please, return on your crashy, still so horrible (the new XP green and blue GUI is sooooo tasteful 🙂 !), and ABSOLUTELY not new OS. Really : founded on the “old” NT and 2000, still same presentation, still same applications ! So let Mac users in the future … by the way … 5 % in computer world use Macintosh and only 5% in the world have an IQ superior to 120 … coincidence ??? So, C U you soon … and good luck with XP 😉 !
Bleah…
No.
BeOS die hards MUST HATE MacOS X. Shouldn’t it be BeOS?
I have to admit: as a Mac user I was really impressed when I first saw a BeOS demo running on a BeBox. Damned fast.
But: at this time, there was no printing, no ColorSync, etc. . Why should Apple bought Be instead of NeXT? The only reason was speed within multimedia stuff. Nothing else.
Be honest: BeOS is just a better copy of NeXTStep. But BeOS users have to face the truth: C++ class libraries will never, never be as usefull as a Objective-C one. Even Microsoft understood: C# is Objective-C with Java-style enhancements (anyway: .NET smells like NeXTStep but can’t live up to the original).
And: why should Apple – whose costumers base is strong within the PrePress industry – should buy an operation system which doesn’t implement something like Display Postscript? If Eugenia is a programmer, she should know that one of the most messy things to implement is printing. A no brainer in NeXTStep.
History as proven that Be had no concept for marketing its BeOS: raw speed just doesn’t matter because people will just buy faster machines.
BeOS freaks – face it: Gasse screwed BeOS!
First: giving up its own Hardware was dead wrong. With its speed and Geek-ports it was the ultimate I-can-connect-everything-to-my-computer box.
Second: giving the OS for free away, hoping that people would use it for things they could do also within the OS they have installed (MacOS or Windows) was dead wrong. They should have put something like LabView classes onto it and sold thousands of copies to engineers! These guys would have paid a premium for it and “compability” is a non issue within an inhouse world anyway…
What about the future of BeOS?
What future? There are two possible scenarios: Palm bought Be only to get the engineers (unlikely), or they will do something like Apple with MacOS X: PalmOS will run in its own environment within BeOS.
But: who buys a Palm device? Only consumers. And there is not so much profit as within the corperate IT world: these guys will buy those PDAs which will show their database stuff wireless. And because there is no JAVA PDA yet, they will buy PocketPCs. Any day Palm doesn’t show up with a real Java/wireless PDA their chances decline – and once .NET is out and sold to the dumb IT managers, who will change their Microsoft-Server/Microsoft-Client strategy?
To get back to the beginning: before a BeOS user could write a fair review of MacOS X, they first have to “forgive” Apple not buying Be.
I support a mixed PC and Mac network and think that there are several issues in the article that are unfair to OS X.
Networking: No other OS has SMB, AppleTalk and NFS out of the box and in such an easy to use style. WinXP is poor in comparison. I’ve tried them both so my opinion is informed on this.
File Structure: Why do Apple need to develop an new FS just because it’s a new OS? UFS is a proven sturdy base better by far than FAT or NTFS or even Apple’s own HFS, along with this compatibitly with the legacy HFS+ format as well as PC format drives put’s OS X well ahead.
Aqua: I know it feels in your face but wait until you see the poorly implemented rip-offthat XP will give, you can tone down the look just by using a simple wallpaper picture and by switching the highlights to graphite instead of aqua.
As for applications, I can now run MySQL PHP4 with Apache on an OS thats secure usable and intuitive, the dream of UNIX for years.
Microsoft have got a long way to go to make an OS as likeable as OS X.
I would agree there are areas that need improvement but in a years further development will perfect this OS.
My controversial comment? If Apple are not going to release server standard hardware port just the server version of OS X to Intel….
If you dislike OS X.1 so much why test it? Just buy a Compaq, Dell or whatever and install that ‘great’ monopoly OS but leave the Mac OS community alone!!! I like honest concrete opinions like MacKiDo for example just drilling a OS in the ground doesn’t add much value! If you’re serious concidering using Mac OS X then send you feedback at http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/ with the things you dislike!
And please don’t talk about processors anymore, considering you don’t know sh#t about it…
You obviously are a illegale user cause the Developer Tools are included if BUY Mac OS X!!! The CD is named: ….Developer Tools Whoa!!! You can download them at http://connect.apple.com/ with your so fast Windows FP Browser.
All right, rather than a flame post I thought I would write a OSX review from a end user perspective.
First, a little background. I am a long time mac user. I spend my days on computers for work and fun, I am a computer-curiosity enabled guy but I have no knowledge of CS. I will not go into kernels, BSD vs linux, etc. I will try to describe the impact of OSX on my computing habits, the features I like/miss/dont like.
What I expect from a computer is reliability, elegance, productivity, efficiency, performance, in that order. Actually all those are the facets of the same thing, if any of these qualities is not present it will break the others.
I investigated OSX since the dp4. To me, the discovery of OSX was a little revolution. I discovered unix, the cli, scripting languages, the opensource libraries, support, and a vast bounty of unix applications that I could compile. The learning is still painfull ;-), but it paid off handsomely and as a result changed the way I work. I discovered that I could automate a lot of tedious tasks. I discovered that I was able to gather some of these software lego pieces and build tools that serve my needs far more elegantly than any off-the shelf software would have. I stopped being a “computer victim”, and started taking charge of my needs. As a psychological attitude, it is a big (and thrilling) switch. Overall, I have now the illusion that I am now in control, my computer knowledge has made huge steps, and my atitude toward automation and productivity has totally changed. In the end the OS is only good for what It allows the end user to do. That is what 10 did for me :-).
Most of the mac-addicted, including me, would probably have been plainly too scared to install a linux or freebsd system. Sure, BeOS transformed my mac 7500 in a hot rod during a week or two, a few years ago, but there was no apps! (are there any those days ?). The existence of OSX, that hides its unix goodness under a “mac-like” gooey and will offer mainstream apps is a blessing that will allow the mac “braves” to learn as much as they want on a familiar platform, while the mac “wimps” will be preserved from a heart attack and continue to do what they have been doing everyday.
Here are a few details, the list is patchy but attempts to cover a little bit of everything the end user will experience.
Quartz
On my duals g4-450, the gooey is nice and snappy. Granted, it is not the snappiest thing I have seen on a computer screen, but the speed is totally acceptable for productive usage. On my imac g3/333, it is at the limit of acceptable, but it might already be a “vintage” machine. 🙂
The thing I love in Quartz is the wyswyg. That is hard to beat, what is on my screen is IT. For anyone in serious graphics, it is a godsend.
The thing I regret is the system overhead. I sometime wish that I could switch a pref to use a stripped-down, snappier version of Quartz.
Aqua/finder
well, after one year of use, I am still confused by the interface. To me it is not yet as natural and easy as in 9. It is not as elegant, a pinch too much sugar and colors for me. I suppose I need to unlearn years of habits. The dock still does not feel comfy and efficient, I keep switching its prefs on and off, and I still wander once in a while to switch from one app to the other. I miss the good old window collapse from 9, the desktop drawers, the spring folders. I also wish more of the unix features could be accessed through integrated GUI control panels.
The inspector feature of the finder in column view is very usefull. If only could stay in place for a minute. 🙂
Overall, the gui in 10 still feels like a work in progress. Let’s not forget that the polish of 9 is the result of many years of devellopement and shareware/freeware integration.
Applications
Well, apart from imovie/itunes/idvd the mainstream apps are slow to come, but most of them will be here soon™. Eplorer 5.1 and omniweb run nicely.
Maya and Animo entering the mac platform is a sign of a better tomorow for the mac platform. Looking forward installing flame/inferno on quad ppc boxes in a couple years. 🙂
Painter, Illustrator, cinema 4d have already been ported. Some web design apps too but since prefer simpletext for html coding, I dont know wich :-). Office will soon be there, we are still waiting for After effect, Combustion, Final Cut Pro and Xpress. I am hoping in that the future devellopers will have the great idea to hook their apps to the cli. ::grins:: .
Devices
OSX recognized my printer, a firewire drive, a firewire cd burner without the need to install any drivers. Perfect plug and play. I painlessly installed the firewire drivers for a wacom tablet and an atto scuzzy board. So far, great.
Networking
It took about 5 seconds to have my freshly OSX box hooked up with my lan and access the internet. In six clicks via the sharing control panel, I can open/close apache, ftp, ssh, appletalk. I also use a HX server for fun and Xvnc to control the gui apps of my home box from work, and vice-versa. I mount my volumes from work at home and vice-versa with a keystroke, using appletalk over ip. It connects fine to OS9 systems. If I had to connect to something exotic (like a windows box 🙂 I could probably install samba without major hassles. That seems good enough for me. 🙂
Performance – Darwin
Well, I will not say anything definitive since I do not run other nix oses to compare with. I ran today a script that sorted 14.000 pictures by size, selected 750 of them by predefinite parameters, made simple computations with their meta-data, fed the whole thing to a database and finally built a 127 pages, 15 megs pdf document. I think it took less than 10 seconds. (apache/php/mysql/pdflib).That is fast enough for me :-).
Performance – Hardware
This is off-topic, but I could not resist answering the Mhz myth line (sorry Eugenia :-).
Please visit the benchmarks on the lightwave 3d website:
http://www.lightwave3d.com/product/7b/images/Windows_v2.jpg
http://www.lightwave3d.com/product/7b/images/Mac_v2.jpg
Where you can see a dual g4/ 533 in OS10.0.4 vs a 1.5 ghz P4 (unspecified OS) at work. Overall, both systems are on par and each wins 3 tests out of 6. The pentium with a much faster bus should have smoked the g4. That is what the Mhz myth is about. A long pipeline full of bubbles. 🙂
Conclusion
From a end-user point of view, MacOS X has much to improve, but it is already extremely usable, lovable, feature packed and productive. It will most probably have a big impact on many old-school mac user’s relationship to computing. I can also see in my crystal ball many unix heads lured by a great devellopement and server platform with a gui fancier than x-windows :-).
A fondamental quality of OSX is (in my feeble understanding and analysis) the layered structure of OSX, and the openeness of OSX, or rather, Darwin. It might let one think that the low-level system can be reworked and enriched by the programming community, wich is a nice escape from the previous devellopement model of OS9. I am now following with great interest the devellopement of the free/net/open BSDs, because some of their inovations and improvements might eventually merge into Darwin and make OSX better.
Most of these Mac fanatics are the same as the Linux/Slashdot crowd. I was seriously considering picking up a G4 but not any more. “mine” puts up a rant about how BeOS users hate Macs – I hate to break it to you, but even Scot Hacker, the author of the “BeOS Bible” moved over to Mac OSX and suggested BeOS users should. And no one knocked him for his decision.
Too many of you people should pull your head out of your nether-regions and consider the fact that no one OS is perfect. Including Mac OSX. Including WinXP. Including BeOS. So if someone has some critiques of it, consider it and look to make it better.
Oh, and one other thing about this thread that kills me. So many of you are saying that Macs aren’t over-priced because you can get them for $700-$800 (iMacs). But then you’ll often say that OSX isn’t slow when you run it on a G4 with plenty of memory. Well that certainly moves it out of the $700-$800 range now, doesn’t it? In your attempts to ‘enlighten’ people many of you are making fools of yourselves.
Stop putting the “jerk” into the knee-jerk reaction, folks. You’re loosing potential community members by your own actions.
“classic boots for me in less than 30 seconds. ”
“OSX is a totally new OS. It was released just 6 mons ago”
Umm… okay. I guess I had the facts wrong, i thought it was based on BSD4.4 and Mach WHICH ARE 15 YEARS OLD. So really, comparing windows XP to OS X isn’t fair because XP is newer….
“BeOS die hards MUST HATE MacOS X.”
Not really. I don’t hate MacOS X.
“What computers are responsible for recording the most innovative music, film, books, etc. being produced, from Kid 606 to radiohead to countless DJs and artists and animators and 3D modelers?”
Yeah, they made ground breaking new 3D movies like Shrek and Final Fantasy on a Mac. Not. Geez.
This is the style of review that I would have said when trying/discovering a new Os. It points exactly what does not “feels” to be at the right place, or not behave like “it should”. But all that depends on your background. I’m still eager to try OS/X but only because it’s based on a *nix engine.
But don’t get me wrong! I won’t switch to OS/X because of the reasons mentions about XFree, or else. No. I’m a Linux advocate now because I think I have found The Light since I was mainly a DOS/Windows user earlier (to do development) and I did try on Mac machines back then… but the experience was too painfull. And most people using *nix won’t switch either because they are mostly developpers/sys admin/researcher and have the best OS to do their kind of work. They are no ordinary users that just need a mouse to “point and click”. They need more control, freedom, reliability, speed and power. And I, like them, need that too.
Mac has always been a neat toy. But it’s still a toy…
…considering that she is a BeOS fanatic, one should not be surprised at her review. Then again she is the one running a celeron box at home and watching Star Trek…
OS X is still new even to the people who LOVE the Mac. Like the change from Win 3.1 to Win95 there is a lot of getting use to all the changes.
How can you expect to 1) get used to a Mac when you have rarely used one and 2) get used to OS X when you haven’t used a Mac?
If you had spent a lot of time using a Mac in general, more of your arguments would be validated. You simply negated yourself by reviewing something you don’t understand. It would be very much like reviewing a Japanese language game when you don’t speak Japanese
Big Al makes a good point about all this fanaticism… ‘no one OS is perfect’.
In fact, I would go so far as to say this debate is pointless between people who already know what they want to use. If you want to advocate for your OS, do so in the real world where people actually value your input instead of flaming you.
I think that the article is fairly biased from the get-go however, as it cites XPs advanced networking capabilities but makes no mention of OS X’s NetInfo system, which I don’t fully understand, but seems to offer a lot of new capabilities.
I’m not against Microsoft on principle. I used Win95 & 98 for years as my main OS. Compared to Mac OS 9, you actually had VERY similar capabilities between the two. When OS X came out I figured it was time to go back and try Macs again. I was pleasantly surprised at how perfect OS X is in situations where you need Unix utilties as well as traditional consumer programs. In my case I happen to need a box where I can run Apache, PHP, MySQL alongside Photoshop, Dreamweaver, BBEdit and Infini-D. Yes OS 10.1 is still a LONG way from a mature OS, but even with it’s shortcomings it makes me a solid 20% more productive than OS 9, Win2000, or anything else.
Of course, if you need to play all the latest games, or get the fastest performance for your dollar, or run PC-specific enterprise software, then by all means the Mac will only piss you off. Buy what you need, and leave the rest of us alone.
I realize the author of this article will with the greatest of prejudice, discount any point of view contrary to his own – particularly when such a comment is coming from a mac user. As such, I’ll save my comments on any number of mistakes that were made in the article, from networking to overall speed to the mach kernal. Just remember this – OSX is byenlarge a consumer OS, and there isn’t another OS – including (or especially XP) which can approach its connectivity, usability and GUI advancements. Your comments are misleading to the average consumer to whom OSX has everything one might need and more – for a lower cost, without subscription fees. Your inflamatory writing doesn’t open a fair dialogue, and that’s why so many mac users have submitted their views in this forum.
In regards to networking, check this out. This is what real consumers are interested in.
http://www.extremetech.com/article/
0,3396,s%253D1034%2526a%253D16144,00.asp
I’m sorry, but these 2 operating systems are truly poor comparisons to each other. The each have some remarkably strong points, and they both have grim bad points.
If you want a more accurate comparison, compare OS X to *any* of the commercial *NIXes. It wins, and that is why the Microsoft world should be uncomfortable.
Windows XP is still basically Windows NT, and is still a desktop operating system trying to be a robust operating system. Every generation is approaching more and more UNIX-like functionality and stability, but it’s like trying to reinvent the underpinnings while not breaking the fragile user interface and user experience.
Mac OS X is a *NIX. Right out of the box it has the foundations of a good commercial grade UNIX. Capable of going head to head against the like of AIX, or Solaris, it is the only UNIX that brings almost complete Apple conformity of a User Experience from the guys that got it right first(other than shorting us a few mouse buttons!), but also brings with it the hallmarks of a truly usable UNIX environment that doesn’t require the user to learn the arcane art forms of GREP, SED, or AWK (and others) and doesn’t require the intricate management of matching your libraries to your binaries. There is nothing like the joys of DLL hell on Windows or the mismatched libraries of the Unix world (installed GnuCash lately?). OS X holds some promise to alleviate, if not necessarily eliminate these issues.
At the same time, you do pay a price for the elegance and visual brilliance of the OS. Display PostScript (Quartz) is still pricey in performance. Todays video cards are all about fast screen redraws, frames per second gaming rates. This means that all the vector work being done is not being compensated at the hardware level like the average Windows user is accustomed too. At the same time, the X-Windows crowd is seeing similar issues in X, buy a Sun with Solaris, where the card and X drivers are designed for X, and it looks good. The performance in the XFree world is a little less so.
So in all fairness, if you want to compare this beast to it’s closest sibling in terms of lineage, get a Sun Blade 100 and compare it to Slowlaris. Comparing it to XP is more than a tad unfair. It doesn’t help that today, XP has a huge advantage, but it also has one huge negative.
Product Activation is evil. How evil? After 10 years of developing for a myriad of systems, from OS/2 to Mac to BeOS to Amigas, I’m moving my personal efforts to OS X. It’s not for it’s stellar performance, it’s because like XP, it’s good enough, but unlike XP, it’s got the underpinnings to be both a world class server *and* a world class desktop. Unlike BeOS, and Linux, it also has a company behind it with the cash reserves to survive a downturn in the economy.
Andy
I am an avid Mac fan. However with the Mac OS (as with everything else) I am commited to HEARING what other say and digesting their opinions before laying on the whoopass. I am disturbed by the behavior (and spelling and grammar) of some of the posters. (At least Eugenia has an excuse—English is probably her fourth language, while some of the posters here probably never bothered to learn their first and only language). I find it hard to take their comments seriously. The Mac OS doesn’t exist in a vacuum, there are many other points of view to be discussed. Eugenia appears to be heavily involved in many OSes besides M$ Windoze. (BeOS is one of my favorites). Get yer heads out of your arses uninformed mac people. I don’t say not to love Macs, but love them enough to make intelligent comments and reactions to articles like this. Flaming just wastes this readers time.
and head over to OSOpinion.
http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/14106.html
Ninetysix
Wow, before I posted a review about an OS, I’d learn how to use it first…
http://www.radioframboise.ch/antenne/emission_zerodeconduite.asp
Most of these Mac fanatics are the same as the Linux/Slashdot crowd. I was seriously considering picking up a G4 but not any more. “mine” puts up a rant about how BeOS users hate Macs – I hate to break it to you, but even Scot Hacker, the author of the “BeOS Bible” moved over to Mac OSX and suggested BeOS users should. And no one knocked him for his decision.
Too many of you people should pull your head out of your nether-regions and consider the fact that no one OS is perfect. Including Mac OSX. Including WinXP. Including BeOS. So if someone has some critiques of it, consider it and look to make it better.
Oh, and one other thing about this thread that kills me. So many of you are saying that Macs aren’t over-priced because you can get them for $700-$800 (iMacs). But then you’ll often say that OSX isn’t slow when you run it on a G4 with plenty of memory. Well that certainly moves it out of the $700-$800 range now, doesn’t it? In your attempts to ‘enlighten’ people many of you are making fools of yourselves.
Stop putting the “jerk” into the knee-jerk reaction, folks. You’re loosing potential community members by your own actions.
AL,
with all respect, your reaction doesn’t show any different with the people you called “Mac fanatics”. Your decision to choose an OS base on emotion and no rational facts come in place.
I never like people take everything religiously, and I also hate people who think I’m a fanatic “just” because of my choice of OS. I choose Mac therefore I’m a fanatic? Do you see the hyprocrisy?
I like BeOS since it’s infancy. It’s a fast elegant OS I haven’t seen for many years. But I don’t think you can call it perfect, right? I’m sorry to see it go, as I heard that it’s bought by SONY to use it as their appliance OS. Let’s see can SONY make this nice OS in good use.
I think BeOS have great potentials, but it really fail to market it. correctly. Or may be businesswise, the company working on it and try to sell it for over a decade but fail. I don’t know who to blame, but it never really reach to the hands of the majority.
And I think if you really look at the responses here, there’s lots of responses that make valid points. Many of the “Mac fanatics” know there’s no OS is perfect, even OS X they try to uphold as a better OS. As I said in another post, we, the “macfanatics” are the most vocal to criticize OS X on all fronts in the last year since it start the public beta, MANY of them are even harsher than they criticize the article publish here.
If that kind of acts do not get you a fair picture what Mac users are really like, than you might already buy in the media stereotyping of Mac users: Mac users are “religiously” “believe in” ‘Apple” and they’re “loyalist”, they resist everything not come out from “Apple”, and they’re “fanatics” who can’t stand criticism.
This is quite a topic because Mac OS only sustain a small margin in today’s desktop computers. And many stereotyping also take place in consumers buying behaviour, the sales people in PC departments will bad month Mac deliberately even the customer want to buy a Mac. I don’t know how you see these sort of things? This is the price we pay for being a minority OS.
But again, if you haven’t realize, Macintosh is the only platform left today still willing to fight for a quality computer life. this is no religion here, the fact that Apple can survive is not because of the “loyal fans” exsist, there’s true that there’s millions of people still using Mac, but there’s many many of them still using a ancient version of Macintoshes and OS. The company is not making any money from them and the marketshare wasn’t growing. They really better off give in and sell the company or something so not longer need to take the craps they’re taking today.
I have no reason to believe Apple as a company do everything out of good will, but it’s not important as long as they keep making they product better. Apple’s survival is on they innovations. If they stop, they’re toast.
And also, one thing I need to correct on your post, a $799 iMac running 500mhz is very adequate to run OS X. You do not have suffering at all I can tell you this by experience. I even have OS X running on a 266mhz /96MB RAM iMac. It’s totally below the spec, but it runs ok. My G3 400 runs OS X beautifully, so don’t try to split hair with the words peple said. OS X running on G4 is extremely fast in my case, as I said I can copy a 19MB file in least than a second. You don’t have that on a G3 but the speed different do not cost you feel slow, just normal.
I still wish you can carefully read the article and the responses. These are not mere “knee-jerk” reactions, the article is really lousy. I don’t really mind people anti-Apple. anti-Mac or whatever, but at least you put out a good reasoning for that so we can understand why the author see it that way so as to agree or disagree on the opinion. This article is like a slam to the OS without taking any responsibility.
If you put off by the resonses, I’m sorry about that. But still, when computer is tool in many aspects, I don’t see why a purchase decision should base on what kind of people using this platform as a factor. Just like if you choose a Wintel PC because you feel that you belong to that type of people you associate with, what’ll happen if you realise the terroist are using the same Wintel PC as you do? There’s no rationale for that, agree?
fuck this cunt…
By the way, I’m sorry for my typo and bad English in my posts, because English is not my first language too. But I hope I can communicate well enough.
Don’t argue things you don’t understand.
First: Maybe OpenGL could speed things up with hardware acceleration – but: the current installed hardware base mostly just has no suitable 3D acceleration (iMacs). So adding another layer won’t do anything good to performance.
>>>>>
The iMac has an ATI Rage Pro class chip. Such a chip is perfectly fast enough to accelerate a desktop. Also, almost every card available now has decent 3D performance. Remember, a desktop isn’t a lot of work. The polygon count is in the hundreds, rather than the millions 3D cards are used to.
Second: why shouldn’t be there a Quartz hardware accelerator? Under Mach a Quartz-CPU could be full citizen within the SMP stuff… just another good reason to stay on Mach 🙂
>>>>>>
True, you could run Quartz on a dedicated CPU. But there are two problems. First, a $300 CPU can’t compare to a $50 GeForce2/MX in terms of rendering speed. Second, most people don’t have dual CPUs, but most people DO have OpenGL capable graphics hardware.
Third: OpenGL does nothing know about typography etc. . So this will result just in using OpenGL hardware acceleration for blitting. And TYPOGRAPHY is OUTSTANDING on MacOS X. Even ATM can’t match. And I bet everything Apple will do a real “ClearType” – and this will work – thanks to a PDF based system – perfectly for everything – not just text on white background…
>>>>>>
OpenGL can do typography perfectly. Do you even know how truetype works? Currently, the TrueType shapes are decomposed into line segments and curves by the TT engine (such as Freetype), and drawn using the OS’s standard drawing routines. One can easily use OpenGL for the low-level rendering, and the one gets special effects and rotation/scaling essentially for free. In fact, libraries that combine Freetype and OpenGL already exist on the Internet. As for ClearType, PDF won’t really help. Remember, PDF is a high-level display technology, not a low-level rendering technology.
A word about the filesystem: HFS+ is fine for 99% of the users.
Before I abuse a filesystem as a database I will opt for a real one.
>>>>>>>>
What about all the media stuff Macs are good at? If Apple is going to market high end dual proc media machines, it damn well have a powerful filesystem to back up the hardware.
One last thought about the kernel discussions: Mach is a perfect foundation for Cocoa. Just compare WebObjects on NT and MacOS X. And anyway: the most important thing is that runs stable – any speed difference under 20% isn’t noticeable anyway.
>>>>>>
OS X isn’t actually that stable compared to REAL *NIXs. Aqua has a lot to do with it, but Mach isn’t any more stable than FreeBSD or Linux. Also, what does Mach have to do with WebObjects (a high level API)? The Mach/BSD paradigm exposes exactly the same kernel level API as any other UNIX. WebObjects would run just as well on any other *NIX kernel.
“Nothing like a filesystem like XFS or BFS, not a good software manager like QNX’s, or the advanced (and easy to use) networking features that WindowsXP brings.”
Please get your facts straight:
The Windows networking ‘features’ you refer to in your article is code taken DIRECTLY from BSD. Alomst copied and pasted.
Typical woman.
Perhaps you didn’t get what I was trying to say in my post…
There are Mac fanatics, there are Linux fanatics, there are Windows fanatics, and yes, there are BeOS fanatics. Note that I never said every Mac fanatic was being a jerk – I was careful to say Most of these Mac fanatics are the same as the Linux/Slashdot crowd. Most, not all. There’s nothing wrong with being fanatic about an OS, as long as you don’t let it blind you straight into the path of ignorance.
If you read a lot of these replies from a lot of the Mac fanatics, you’ll see that they keep refering to Eugenia as “he”. You’ll also see a lot of posts from others correcting this false assumption. Eugenia replied to many criticisms people leveled, including correcting them on the whole gender issue, yet I still see a bunch of posts refering to Eugenia as a “he”. That tells me one thing: many of these posts are written by people reacting to the article and not failing to follow up by reading the posts that follow. That’s ignorance. That’s part of what I was adressing.
You state: Your decision to choose an OS base on emotion and no rational facts come in place. How do you know that? How do you even know what OS I’m currently using? I could be using Linux, Windows or BeOS. All you know about me from my post is that I was thinking of trying Mac OS. Once again, this is a reactionary response, albeit one that was handled with respect. I appreciate that.
And as to the iMac statement, read through the posts. There are several instances where a Mac user will say something to the effect of, “the interface is slow but it isn’t bad on a G4”. That just bugged me because I don’t want to personally sink a ton of cash into a system for testing purposes.
You stated:
If that kind of acts do not get you a fair picture what Mac users are really like, than you might already buy in the media stereotyping of Mac users: Mac users are “religiously” “believe in” ‘Apple” and they’re “loyalist”, they resist everything not come out from “Apple”, and they’re “fanatics” who can’t stand criticism.
You can justify all you want, argue all you want, but from my point of view many (not all, mind you) of these posts look pretty ridiculous to me. And it does paint the Mac community in a bad light. This is not based on “media stereotyping” – I judge on what I see in public, and what I have in front of me tells me that many (once again, not all) Mac loyalists react in an ignorant and hostile manner. There’s no arguing here – this is my point of view and the way I perceived things.
But still, when computer is tool in many aspects, I don’t see why a purchase decision should base on what kind of people using this platform as a factor. Just like if you choose a Wintel PC because you feel that you belong to that type of people you associate with, what’ll happen if you realise the terroist are using the same Wintel PC as you do? There’s no rationale for that, agree?
Ummm… correct. But if I need help I don’t want to turn to many of these people. If I found something wrong with the OS, or had a suggestion for improvement, I don’t want to be shot down because I don’t tow the company line. That’s why I like the BeOS community (I’m a BeOS user btw, not Wintel). We’ll readily admit there are many parts of the OS that sucks rubber plant – we do what we can to fix it and turn to other OS’s when we can’t. Plain and simple. I can say the stupidest things with those people and they don’t make me feel like a bozo. So that’s why I feel the community for an OS is important.
All the things I stated were my impressions from these posts. You can’t really argue that – my impression is my impression. What I was hoping people would realize is that they were putting off at least one person to their operating system/hardware.
That is all I have to say on the matter, I guess. I hope you understand better what I was trying to say.
..that I’ve been reading have been extremely positive. Even from PC centric sources. And all this over a totally new OS that isn’t even a year old yet.
I too have to question the objectivity of this reviewer.
U think (as I understand) that MS Winodws is better than Mac OS X.
Thats OK by me… I have never used Mac OS X.
But I have used Windows. (all from 3.1 to 2000)
And I must say it sux!
But that’s my opinion.
Where I not folow is that u give MacOSX 7.5/10.
Humm.. U must think that Windows is the best OS that ever going to be maid.
Me my self use Linux 2.4.9.
And I’m as happy as I’m (propobly) will be….
>>Big Al
>>There are Mac fanatics, there are Linux fanatics, there are Windows fanatics, and yes, there are BeOS fanatics. Note that I never said every Mac fanatic was being a jerk – I was careful to say Most of these Mac fanatics are the same as the Linux/Slashdot crowd. Most, not all. There’s nothing wrong with being fanatic about an OS, as long as you don’t let it blind you straight into the path of ignorance. <<
Understand.
>>If you read a lot of these replies from a lot of the Mac fanatics, you’ll see that they keep refering to Eugenia as “he”. You’ll also see a lot of posts from others correcting this false assumption. Eugenia replied to many criticisms people leveled, including correcting them on the whole gender issue, yet I still see a bunch of posts refering to Eugenia as a “he”. That tells me one thing: many of these posts are written by people reacting to the article and not failing to follow up by reading the posts that follow. That’s ignorance. That’s part of what I was adressing. <<
Yes, but you don’t really need to read through all the 150 posts to post your opinion, right? I think it’s alright for people who post straightly from what they read from the article without went throughotyher people have been discussing, the reaction should take it as it is. No need for continuity from the board.
>>You state: Your decision to choose an OS base on emotion and no rational facts come in place. How do you know that? How do you even know what OS I’m currently using? I could be using Linux, Windows or BeOS. All you know about me from my post is that I was thinking of trying Mac OS. Once again, this is a reactionary response, albeit one that was handled with respect. I appreciate that.
<<
Sure I don’t know that, and I don’t retend I know. What I said was base on what you said. I think you said you no longer want to try Mac OS because of the people’s responses here, right? That speaks to me your interest in OS X is not about the OS but something else. May be I misread your post. then you still want to try because even you don’t like the people’s responses here?
>>And as to the iMac statement, read through the posts. There are several instances where a Mac user will say something to the effect of, “the interface is slow but it isn’t bad on a G4”. That just bugged me because I don’t want to personally sink a ton of cash into a system for testing purposes. <<
Yes, I know. But as you see, it’s also several instances (including myself) people post satisfying experiences with less powerful machine, even slower than the $799 iMac, right?
>>You stated:
If that kind of acts do not get you a fair picture what Mac users are really like, than you might already buy in the media stereotyping of Mac users: Mac users are “religiously” “believe in” ‘Apple” and they’re “loyalist”, they resist everything not come out from “Apple”, and they’re “fanatics” who can’t stand criticism.
You can justify all you want, argue all you want, but from my point of view many (not all, mind you) of these posts look pretty ridiculous to me. And it does paint the Mac community in a bad light. This is not based on “media stereotyping” – I judge on what I see in public, and what I have in front of me tells me that many (once again, not all) Mac loyalists react in an ignorant and hostile manner. There’s no arguing here – this is my point of view and the way I perceived things. <<
I don’t think I’m trying to justify anything here. But as you said, there’s all kind of “fanatics” here, whereever you go you see these kind of things, you can’t avoid it. I certainly trust your judgement. But I guess if you see your judgement is fair, you should be able to distinguish the people who responses in the board with intelligent and try hard to put facts in front of arguments. If you generalized the impressions here while an article took no responsiblity to what it publish, I have nothing to say. But I can also see posts as ridulous as these in any public board when the article critize an OS like Windows, Linux… I would never believe all the people (or even majority of them) will act as fanatic as these posters.
I see when you say many, you mean it’s the majority. But I guess you should be more fair to the true majority who don’t even want to get into this.
But still, when computer is tool in many aspects, I don’t see why a purchase decision should base on what kind of people using this platform as a factor. Just like if you choose a Wintel PC because you feel that you belong to that type of people you associate with, what’ll happen if you realise the terroist are using the same Wintel PC as you do? There’s no rationale for that, agree?
>> Ummm… correct. But if I need help I don’t want to turn to many of these people. If I found something wrong with the OS, or had a suggestion for improvement, I don’t want to be shot down because I don’t tow the company line. That’s why I like the BeOS community (I’m a BeOS user btw, not Wintel). We’ll readily admit there are many parts of the OS that sucks rubber plant – we do what we can to fix it and turn to other OS’s when we can’t. Plain and simple. I can say the stupidest things with those people and they don’t make me feel like a bozo. So that’s why I feel the community for an OS is important. <<
I agree. Yet again I don’t see myself having the problem with my community when I carefully choose. As I get help from many of Mac users who’s extremely helpful to my computer needs. they don’t laugh at my English and even trying to help me out to locate a stupid screw I missed from my PowerBook.
Am I trying to defend the platform of my choice? Yes. But it’s not without my own experience with it. I’m already ready to choose a better one if I can have one.
I was very interested in BeOS when it published. I even pay for it, I buy a computer just to try it out, hoping for a good OS can imporove my computer life, but then it won’t take off at all. It’s a big disapointment to me.
>>All the things I stated were my impressions from these posts. You can’t really argue that – my impression is my impression. What I was hoping people would realize is that they were putting off at least one person to their operating system/hardware. <<
That’s right, your impression is your impression. I don’t want to argue on it. But I do want you to see a bigger picture. Just think why do I spending my time to post this message here? If my effort can give you a better idea about what things really is, I’ll hope people also understand in a broder sense, we’re not oblige to anything, we’re free to choose whatever we want. Because till the end, words are just words if it don’t move things forward or improve anything, We got noise everywhere, and this is what happen when everybody have the right to speak. And that’s why I disagree with the article. You know, everybody have their right to say or publish, but why do we want or need to read about it if it’s only a personal opinion and not ready to take responsibility to what it said?
>> That is all I have to say on the matter, I guess. I hope you understand better what I was trying to say. <<
Yes. And I hope you understand mine.
…for the intellectual discussion. I appreciate it and it gives reason for me to rethink my position.
As an FYI, I was thinking about going the MacOS route for several reasons. They all relate to what I use my home PC for:
– Web development (including graphics, mySQL and PHP)
– Music recording, mixing and producing
– Video tricks
I do almost all of this in BeOS now, but there’s a few things missing. From what I’ve seen MacOS looks like it will soon be a good platform for all of these things. I’ll continue to follow it.
Again, thanks for the discussion.
“Well I tried OS X for 3 minutes and I didn’t like it!” “It is based on 15 year old unix that Apple stole so it can’t be good!” “In spite of the fact it is based on unix Apple some how managed to destroy multitasking”
Well I paraphrase Eugenia but I think I got it right. So an OS you have no experience with feels wrong to you? Whatever. The head of Apple’s software development *invented* the mach kernel. It hasn’t stood still. Unices of 15 years ago did not have 1ms latencies (which kicks your precious realtime BeOS’s latencies BTW). I really won’t comment on the third point because I blame the user not the machine if somehow Eugenia can make OS X *not* multitask. Given her fumblings I think I will give the OS the benefit of the doubt on that point.
Congrats Eugenia on the new site since BeOS was flushed. You have managed to get interviews with some heavy-weights without asking penetrating questions or following up those that you did (example: Headline “Linus tells his feelings on FreeBSD!!!!” Linus:” I don’t really follow FreeBSD.”) Very like BeNews. Now you have managed to add your uneducated opinion to the site with this article getting people riled up because of the stupidity of it….again….just like BeNews. You will be mocked now on a much larger scale. I hope that is what you wanted. No? Then I guess it is only a matter of time before you resign from this site as well in a hissy-fit or in a sad attempt to gain attention. Please take a course in journalism and have someone proof-read your English at the very least if you want to be considered a serious news site.
Thank you for putting up with these craps too. 🙂
First, don’t hate me (others guys)! I do like Windows, Mac OSX, Linux and BSD’s.
Second, you must learn more about Xfree (it isn’t a GUI, please go to http://www.xfree86.org and put some light on your brain).
Third, I repeat this to many people, don’t expect a lot of changes in computer graphic user interface, it’s a kind of technology that is becoming mature (like car with brake and steering wheel) and, of course, make all GUI more or less alike.
And the last but not least, isn’t what YOU “feel” that matter if you don’t use fair parameters or if you don’t know enough about.
Given the similarity of a lot of the attacks here (they dismiss the article and then attack the writing ni a very similar form) could it be that someone is organising them?
The truth hurts sometimes but c’est la vie.
I think Apple was so anxious to get out of the cooperative tasking world (with a get out of jail free card from BSD) they forgot about modern improvements in operating systems.
The UI looks cute but over all MaOS X 10.1 simply sucks! Apps or no apps the OS sucks!
Windows XP has finaly really beaten the MacOS, feature wise, speed wise and usability wise.
I guess NeXT was not meant to make it on the desktop after all.
ciao
yc
Well I hate to say it, but Eugenia’s review was very poor and immature! This can be expected by alot of those from the Be Community that come from the Windows side of things. I can admit that the original release of Mac OS X (thru 10.0.4) was not ready for the masses, including myself… I found myself reverting back to Mac OS 9 frequently because of some minor flaws and the slowness that the Classic Mac is quite immune to. I was almost going to totally return to OS 9 and forget this whole X thing, but decided to wait until 10.1 reared its ugly head! I can say it was well worth the wait. My friend which brought back from the US the free update CD asked me if it was worth it, and the first thing I could think of to tell him was that it was like going from a Model T Ford to a Ferrari (take your pick on the specific model). I am so pleased with the much needed update, that I don’t know when I will return to the otherside of my hardrive to boot to Mac OS 9.2.1! Apple has outdone themselves once again. I will soon be purchasing a Ti-Book G4 to use for work so I can finally get away from the crappy Wintel machines we have in my office, I am not sure what fuels Eugenia’s machine, but the MegaHertz Myth is surely a true statement comparing the crap we have at work and my Mac at home. I currently run a iMac G3 400Mhz and use a Compaq DeskPro with an Intel Pentium II 400 at work and there is no comparison (its almost embarrasing), luckily I only have to use these machines from time to time since my job requires my attention mostly around Sun Microsystems hardware and software to do what we have to do in our line or work!
I’m not saying that Windows PC users should switch over, it is all with personal wants and needs. I left the Windows World 3 years ago and I have never regreted the move since, Apple has all the tools I need and for those people who don’t want to spend a couple extra hundred bucks on a Mac should reconsider, by the time you go out and get the same software (unless you are a pirate) that Apple already delivers with its Macs, then that couple hundred bucks might have been well worth it… you do the math!!!
Mac users, on the whole, are a sensitive lot, and very loyal. They’re reactionary by nature. The majority, I would say, also tend to think the world is out to get them, and that ‘others’ haven’t yet ‘seen the light’.
Who can blame Eugenia for this (imho, entirely fair) review after playing with the ultra-responsive BeOS as well as many other alternatives on the OS scene?
I daresay Eugenia is at a disadvantage in getting her arguments across because English appears to be her non-native language. She may well know others (more than me, perhaps) but whoever gave her this assignment and then placed it on the net without editing it does a disservice to her, her opinions and her readers. For example, her comment on the “megahertz myth” is completely ambiguous.
“My previous review for OSX, based on an older and slower version was pretty much a grave for OSX’s speed.”
“There are these who say that Objective-C is superior to C++ and these who say that is not as flexible and advanced as C++.”
Please get your facts straight:
The Windows networking ‘features’ you refer to in your article is code taken DIRECTLY from BSD. Alomst copied and pasted.
Typical woman.
So she got it wrong… big deal. You can take that sexist little atittude of yours and stick it, though.
I dare anyone to objectively argue otherwise! Don’t even try the UI crap anymore!
MacOS X can’t compete in terms of applications.
MacOS X’s UI is not really more usable than Win2k or XP (IMHO).
MacOS X is much slower on comparable hardware than Win2k or XP.
Windows 2000 and/or XP is a much richer OS in terms of:
– Plug and Play with many more supported hardware.
– 2000/XP drivers exist for everything ever built.
– Windows has scaled from Pocket PC to multi proc clustered servers.
– Windows has more easily configurable network features.
– Windows Media and Real are more popular than Quicktime
– Windows run very well on inexpensive hardware < $500.
– Windows Servers are very feature rich and easy to configure.
Frankly I think Eugena was much too kind to the Mac OS’ progress over time.
Most Mac fanatics will never admit that Apple has blown it even if they know it.
OS X like most Unix OSes will not be a big winner on the desktop.
Apple had better build new modern underpinnings or be ready to lose big time.
Linux is free, Solaris is free for Intel up to 8 processors, BSD is free. They all beat the Apple server, the Apple OS X desktop is slow and Mac OS 8 is out dated and although the Apple UI is cute, it is NOT really revolutionnary anymore.
So someone please tell me what the hell do I need OS X for?
Mac fanatics often claim that Windows users bash the Mac without trying it. I think Mac fanatics need to really try out Windows 2000 or XP to really find out what the Mac OSes are missing.
ciao
yc
I don’t think I should reply to yc.
All I want to say here is people like yc intentionally provoke flames. And I think yc may be able to understand the mind of Bin Laden and the terrorists.
If anyone here ever made it over to the BeOS community forums, you’d have seen a lot of “interesting” posts from YC. Let’s just say that his last post was by far the most intelligent thing I’ve ever seen him write.
…although I do think he makes one excellent point: after reading these forums, it’s abundantly clear that many of the Mac faithful haven’t even bothered trying Windows 2000/XP before they bash them. I run a G4 400 (10.1) next to a Celeron 566@850 with XP and I can definitely say that XP runs faster. At least, in terms of interface responsiveness and things like that. It really doesn’t take that much to see the spinning wheel in the Finder, or just compare the load times for Windows’ calculator vs. OS X’s. Now, I fully understand why the speed issues are occurring, and in the long run I think Mac users will be better off having Quartz and whatnot, but to claim that XP is slower is ignorant at best and dishonest at worst (especially when you factor out the QuickSilver dual 800 and consider the machines that most people actually own. XP runs great on a 700, which is almost free these days).
Another thing is stability. No, Windows 2000/XP aren’t perfect, but they have to support a *lot* more hardware than the Mac OS does, which is the tradeoff for being able to get hardware cheap. And even though I overclock, my uptimes are fantastic. I can’t see how people (who aren’t in denial) get the idea that they crash all the time. We’re no longer in the Win3.1 days, folks.
As for networking, Windows 2k/XP does have a few user-level advantages. XP supports 1394 networking; does OS X? I honestly don’t know. Also, 2k/XP has much more complete and speedy Samba support (10.1 lets you access shares, but not share anything, and the only way to access them is to use smb://server/share as a URL; not exactly as intuitive as double-clicking on “Network Neighborhood”). Furthermore, XP lets you share any folder by right-clicking on it; OS X only lets you share drives. Not to mention that with OS X you have to mount a network volume first if you want to use it and can’t have it auto-reconnect at login. In addition, with 2k/XP, you can easily map a network share to a drive letter for easy access.
Anyway, OS X is a phenomenal system and these points don’t make it a bad system by any means. I just wish people would be honest about the competition. We’re not in the days of “crashes constantly, bad interface, DLL hell, and bad driver support.” Windows 2k/XP is rather stable, supports almost all hardware (XP even has intelligent driver-rollback if something goes wrong), and has a pretty good interface–a lot of people still prefer the Mac, but it’s no longer “one’s good and the alternative is awful.” If you really want OS X to be the best product out there, you can’t deceive yourself about the alternatives, because other customers won’t.
Why review something that you will never use? I wonder what your reasoning was for reviewing OSX? It sounds that what you would use a computer for would best be done with a beige box using NT. Also, keep in mind that ‘Killer features’ are SUBJECTIVE. The response that one gets from the OS may be miniscule to one user, but important to another. I think that there was some lengthy study of how humans use computers before this OSX was sold. Some peoples reactions to it are just reactions to change. I worked on the old OS for years as a graphic/web designer and think that ‘protected memory’ alone is worth the $129 for OS10.1. The fact that pre-emptive multitasking allows me to listen to a cd on my computer while applying filters in Photoshop without the cd track skipping is icing on the cake. It seems like there is a lot of mud slinging going on here, but I think the comments are ridiculous when someone gets mad about some miniscule networking ability. This is not what Macs are intended for. To quote Jobs: ‘they are the computer for the people’, meaning to have in homes and have a great user experience. For people to create things: music, film, prose. That is why they are not ‘rack-mountable’. The product was not tested long enough for an accurate review or submitted to its intended use. Take a look at Office X and compare it to a version for windows. Mac users are a different breed and appreciate that it is ‘designed’ and looks hot. Build a web site on a Mac or start a magazine and you’ll realize that it the improvements in OSX are important.
I started off reading the first 50 comments but I got bored hearing the same thing over again so I’m just going to post my comment anyway.
The review was in my opinion, pretty good! – A bit critical, but then all good reviews should be
MacOS X users and BeOS users are very much alike aren’t they? BeOS users will not stand for a bad review of BeOS, and MacOS users will not stand for a “bad” review of MacOS.
People keep going on about being “biassed”, well consider this:
MacOSX reviewed by Mac User – the review will focus on how OS X has improved from OS 9, or has gotten worse
MacOSX reviewed by Windows User – the review will focus on how changing from a Windows machine to a Mac machine is not the easiest thing in the world
MacOSX reviewed by BeOS User – the review will focus on how MacOS X does indeed “lag” – and is not as responsive.
How can you write an unbiassed review? You have to have something to compare to. If you don’t then that would make whatever you are reviewing the best thing in the world. Eugenia is a BeOS / Windows user therefore the type of OS she likes would be similar to BeOS, and can you really “like” Windows
– I like BeOS most of all, but MacOS X also seems to be a very nice operating system to me.
So maybe we could get some better comments than “this is so biassed”, “you don’t know what you’re talking about” etc. If there is a certain part you disagree with then please enlighten us. A few people have done this but the majority are just pointless, worthless, and generally “stupid” comments.
> Don’t argue things you don’t understand.
Do you?
> True, you could run Quartz on a dedicated CPU. But there are two problems.
> First, a $300 CPU can’t compare to a $50 GeForce2/MX in terms of rendering
> speed. Second, most people don’t have dual CPUs, but most people DO have
> OpenGL capable graphics hardware.
I’ve written “Quartz-CPU” not dedicated G3. Why not throw some hardwired logic onto Quartz? Why shoudln’t this compete to GeForce/OpenGL?
> OpenGL can do typography perfectly. Do you even know how truetype works?
Sure it can draw fonts. But is the result equal to Quartz?
> libraries that combine Freetype and OpenGL already exist on the Internet. As
> for ClearType, PDF won’t really help. Remember, PDF is a high-level display
> technology, not a low-level rendering technology.
I remember that PDF is a device indepented technology. This is why PDF will help a lot for “ClearType” thing. They just need some calculations for rendering sub-pixels.
A word about the filesystem: HFS+ is fine for 99% of the users.
Before I abuse a filesystem as a database I will opt for a real one.
>>>>>>>>
What about all the media stuff Macs are good at? If Apple is going to market high end dual proc media machines, it damn well have a powerful filesystem to back up the hardware.
> Mach have to do with WebObjects (a high level API)? The Mach/BSD paradigm
Maybe because of the Objective-C underlying messaging and threading?
> exposes exactly the same kernel level API as any other UNIX. WebObjects would
> run just as well on any other *NIX kernel.
I can speek of WO 4.5 on MacOS X and NT 4 . You can’t develop WO 4.5 apps on Solaris or HP/UX.
> Most of these Mac fanatics are the same as the Linux/Slashdot crowd. I was
> seriously considering picking up a G4 but not any more. “mine” puts up a rant
> about how BeOS users hate Macs – I hate to break it to you, but even Scot
> Hacker, the author of the “BeOS Bible” moved over to Mac OSX and suggested
> BeOS users should. And no one knocked him for his decision.
Maybe you I couldn’t express my concerns about eugenias bias towards BeOS right. Don’t you think that some BeOS users hoped that Apple would buy Be and give BeOS a much bigger audience?
This is fine, and I know how hard it is to see your beloved platform – even while technically superior – is dying (TI 99/4A) .
I also wrote, that Be tried to compete in a very difficult market instead of finding it’s niche and going on from there. I even think, that BeOS, especially in combination with its BeBox, is the BEST suited OS for engineers. Near realtime display etc. is where C++ and the BeOS display threading is more powerful than Objective-C / Aqua.
Also, I apologize if you’ve have the feeling that I’ve “put up a rant how BeOS users hate Macs”. I just wrote 2 sentences – all other statements are an analysis about the past and the future of BeOS. You may have noticed, that I hope that Palm could do something useful with BeOS soon – which is using it as a fast Java platform – to compete within the PDA segment against Windows CE. Sure, this is also because this would give WebObjects JavaClient technology a better chance within companies.
most current BeOS users bought BeOS for Intel a long time after Apple decided not to go with Be. I only heard about BeOS in a magazine with a small headline something like “BeOS comes to Intel” and so i bought R3 in April 1998.
I never even knew about the Apple decision until i started researching BeOS after a few months of using it. So no, most of us don’t hate Apple or OS X. I’d love to get a G4 but i can’t justify it. I have a very old PPC which runs MacOS 8.1 and i have 4 PCs – 2 run Mandrake Linux, 1 is all BeOS (check http://beos.loved.com/ ) and the other i multi-boot with BeOS, QNX, PC Solaris and Windows 2000. Unfortunately that PC is in bits as W2K fried the motherboard. supposedly an MS patch fixed this and i know of a couple of people running an Abit BP6 where this also happened.
such is life. i am going to upgrade that one to an Abit BP6 and run dual PIII 1GHz.
I really hope OS X succeeds because i hate the way Microsoft is going with its new licensing policy and as i am someone who often swaps hardware from PC to PC for testing or demos the XP licensing is gonna kill that. I won’t be using any MS release after Windows 2000. I have decided that Linux and BeOS can do everything i need right now and if anything i will probably try OS/2 again for the first time since OS/2 Warp came out many many moons ago. Unless Apple offers something for x86 of course 🙂
cheers
peter