“It?s been a while since we had a discussion about Windows & Mac users hasn?t it? Ok well I guess it hasn?t as every Mac or Windows news site under the sun seems to be running some sort of ?Mine is better than yours? argument each day. I guess the question still remains, which one is best? Or is there even a ?best OS? out there?” Read Byron Hinson’s editorial. Update: Second part, here.
Editorial: Windows or OS X?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I gave up after the first paragraph because the grammar is so bad my head was about to explode. Give this guy some punctuation. This is not being nit-picky, I could not read it.
In the beginning, the guy makes some pretense at objectivity. Then, he totally devolves into “Windows blows, Mac OS rules, if you think otherwise, you suck!!!!”
Come on, it’s a user interface. Everyone has different opinions about these things. I think I like XP (though I don’t use it) in many ways better than OSX.
From the site:
“Another difference a lot of people will notice is that a Mac has a distinct lack of system tools such as defragmenter etc, there is a reason a Mac lacks these, unlike a Windows system – it doesn’t need them.”
As soon as I read that I know he is not 100% objective. All filesystems will get fragmentated at some point. However with Windows you get a simple defragger for free.
People just ought to own up to it. OS X and the iApps are nicer right now than the windows offering.
It’s not PC owners fault. It’s MS’s fault. They have spent all your money chasing around anything that they thought would/might/could challenge their desktop monopoly, whether it was netscape, AOL, java, the playstation. Meanwhile apple focused on improving the thing paying their bills, the mac.
Swap Partition
Windows does get fragmented faster, becuase it doesn’t have a swap partition which all UNIXs (like OS X) have.
Speed
The argument that Macs are too slow is ridiculous. For one thing, a Mac is really twice as fast as a PC with the same processor speed because it is a RISC processor. Also for video and 3d modeling which you need speed for runs much better on a UNIX which can handle number crunching much better. With the Altivec optimizations and running optimized software, the high end Macs perform equally well as the high end PCs. Final Cut Pro on a Mac outperfroms Adobe Premiere on a PC.
Programs Availability
I switched from a PC to a Mac and I found everything I needed even low cost high quality design programs for flash, DTP, and drawing as well as even non violent games and bible software. It also comes with free integrated programming ebvironment. I spent much less and got much better programs on the Mac. The one thing I haven’t found is a low cost WYSIWYG html editor for the Mac – I mean in the 150 usd or lower range. I also can run Abiword much better than on Windows.
E gad, you aren’t kidding. He seriously needs an editor.
It’s a bit trollish. A lot of arguments are subjective and some aren’t all that correct.
As for defragmenting. Windows NT initially didn’t come with one either. Stating somewhere that the NTFS format makes a defragmenter not necessary. Although there are defragmenters around for it anyway. So I wouldn’t put too much faith in that argument.
Mac’s crash rarely? Depends on what you do on them. Similarly with the Windows. For web browseing, word pro, spread sheet and simple biz apps, neither should crash ever. It’s when you get into specialty apps like video editing and connecting to devices that things start to get dicey. It won’t matter which platform you’re on. I remember a “bitch.mpg” going around not too long ago which was a parody on those I switch commercials of apples about a guy who does video editing. That was funny.
Translucent terminals sound nice but talk about eye strain when working with them. I don’t count this as a bonus but then it’s a feature.
Screen/Window grab built in? He’s never used Shift+Print Screen?
Tabbed browsing. There are other browsers for windows. Exploder isn’t the only one.
Regular OS updates… Windows has actually too many!
Anyway. It’s an article. Don’t take it overly seriously I think.
“The argument that Macs are too slow is ridiculous….”
Macs have some very fast machines…
HOWEVER, let’s say you go out and buy a new 2.4 GHZ DELL machine. The bill runs you about 800.00 including 17″ monitor. Its really fast, but you decide you want a mac of comparable speed instead. To do this you would have to spend about $3000.00. And thats without a monitor! So bottom line, yes you can get a speedy mac….but you could get 3 PC’s that are just as fast for the price.
This is why I buy dells for my company not macs, even though i wish we could be running osx…it just doesnt make any logical sense to use macs.
I’m sorry I must of missed the part where he actually went into ANY depth what-so-ever about Windows. It was just a page and a half of “Mac is great”.
I mean no dis-respect to Eugenia who has always put relevant news AFAIK, on this site but this article really was a waste of space.
As for appleforevers comment “It’s not PC owners fault. It’s MS fault…” – I fail to see your logic as Apple removed any chance of competition in their market by making it a breach of contract to run their OS on any hardware other than their own, putting an end to the Mac clones.
Sigh. A RISC processor doesn’t automagically make a computer “faster than the fastest pentium II!” In fact, clasically, RISC wasn’t designed to be efficient. They were designed to be very simple, so they could scale to higher clock speeds! Beyond that, all x86 chips are RISC-like on the inside, so the comparison is still useless.
Look, it’s not that hard. The performance of a processor is linear both in IPC (instructions per clock tick) and in clock rate. Double the clock rate, and (theoretically) you double the performance. Double the IPC and (theoretically) you also double the performance. However, doubling IPC is *very* hard. Current G4s don’t even theoretically double the IPC over a P4. It just takes a quick look at the pipeline configuration and the instruction latencies to figure that out. Take into account the fact that the G4 is severely handicapped by a slow bus (about 1/3 the speed of P4’s bus) and the reality is that the G4 is at best 30-50% faster at a given clock rate. In benchmarks that are memory-bandwidth bound, the G4 may even be slower at the same clock speed.
The MHz myth campaign has lead to a whole bunch of people who believe that PPC’s are magically twice as fast at the same clock speed. Maybe we should start a “IPC myth” campaign.
Sorry to say it guys in my opinion OS X blows and Windows blows, Linux is what I use and it will be my desktop forever. Everything works for me. I love it, have no problems with it and its a diehard system. Ignore Stupid OS Zealots like the author and Appleforever. Use what you like and to hell with everyone who cannot respect that 🙂 I know several people who love Windows I know all Mac users are fanatical about Mac OS X. Its called choice.
I have noticed this. It doesn’t seem to happen on other platforms to nearly the same degree. Most people who use windows want something cheap they can read their email with and browse the web on, play the odd game with, and maybe write a document or two in. That is what 90% of the population use a computer for, and the difference between Macs and Windows in this regard is unnoticable. Different user interface in an objectively small way, but nothing big.
So why do the Mac Fanatics rant on so? I think it is something to do with branding. its the same symptoms that are manifested in teenagers talking about their “Air Jordans” or Nikes or Reeboks or whatever being better than any other type of shoe. Very silly, of course: a shoe is a shoe, and for these simple commodoties there isn’t much to choose from between them. But no, Nikes are infinitely superior according to the teenager.
Apple is a brand name, that is the only thing that differentiates it. People who are seduced by irrelevant issues like this will find the Macintosh a good platform, and yes, they will tend to become flaming zombies that put one in mind of Amiga owners circa 1990-93, constantly having to self-justify their choice by convincing themselves and boring everybody else with constant nonsense about how using a Mac for simple web browsing, emailing, and word processing is somehow nirvana compared to using a wintel machine to do the same, when in fact, it is exactly the same but the colours are different.
I think the Macintosh looks interesting, but, eh, one OS is pretty much the same as another these days, the vast majority of people realistically only need thin client machines that can do some basic stuff and perhaps a games console too. The minority who need to use a “thick client” machine, such as developers, video editors, and so on and so forth, may find such choices more significant, but even then the differences are not so great. Perhaps Apple has better tools for these sorts of users in some regions, but more likely worse in many others for the simple reason that many, many specialist apps that “thick client” users would need are windows-only because the “thick client” desktop market is much smaller, and the mac market tinier again, so why bother porting your special architecture-design app or nuclear power station visualisation app (or whatever).
Myself, I’m a developer and I’ll stick with Slackware. The Mac looks nice, but not my cup of tea, and its fanatical, weird, ranting users really put me off. Yuk!
I am getting tired of these.
{ People just ought to own up to it. OS X and the iApps are nicer right now than the windows offering. }
See , I start to respect ya and you say something stupid and zealotrous, I dont find what you said to be true. I find it to be trolling and trying to start a flame war.
{ It’s not PC owners fault. It’s MS’s fault. They have spent all your money chasing around anything that they thought would/might/could challenge their desktop monopoly, whether it was netscape, AOL, java, the playstation. Meanwhile apple focused on improving the thing paying their bills, the mac. }
Zealotrous again and if you knew anything besides Brother Steve’s speeches and propaganda you might be worth talking to. But hey go ahead and keep buying your overpriced slow, back door computers. Brother Steve needs a new jet.
Alistair, one thing that’s often forgotton is that apple owns the mac platform, M$ only makes on part of the PC platform.
BMW can do pretty much whatever it wants with it’s cars because it owns BMW cars. If it wants to make and use it’s own navigation software, so be it.
If, trying to extend the (perhaps bad) analogy, an owner of a GPS satellite network makes BMW and all other cars manuf. use only their new software if they want access to the Satellites, well that’s illegal.
Apple got rid of clones because it owns the mac market and can pretty much do whatever it wants with it – thankfully it has mainly focused on making the products better.
M$ on the other hand has focused not all, but a lot of it’s attention on defeating other OS manuf. or manuf. of anything that might threaten their monopoly. Maybe while doing this they haven’t quite made their products as good as they could/should have, given their assets. Maybe if M$ hadn’t done this and NeXT/BeOS made inroads into the desktop OS market, M$ would have had to really compete.
With the cash and people they have, windows should consistently blow everything else out of the market – and yet OS X arguably has the edge right now.
Swap Partition…
Maybe, but the disk will EVENTUALLY get defragmented under OSX, then what? Ideally, the OS would automatically defragment when not busy and there would be an app for manually tweaking the settings (for advanced users).
Speed…
This is an oversimplification of the speed issue. Saying that a PowerPC is “really twice as fast as a PC with the same processor speed because it is a RISC processor” is simply wrong. First, RISC and CISC are design philosophies. There isn’t a simple line between the two. Both PowerPC and x86 are in a range between the original Alphas at the RISC end and VAX at the CISC end. Alphas rock at FP. The P4 is great at memory streaming (video/audio encoding & decoding) applications. Second, different processors are better at different things. This is made even more complex by the addition of SIMD instructions (Altivec, MMX, SSE, SSE2, 3DNow, etc…) which can provide huge benefits in some applications but none in other. The current Mac architecture is somewhat outdated. FSB bandwidth is a larger problem right now than processor speed (100Mhz SDR vs. 100-200Mhz QDR *Intel* or 100-200Mhz DDR *AMD*). This should be addressed when/if Apple switches to the 960, but until then, Macs will be somewhat underpowered compared to Intel/AMD machines. (I’d suggest a little more skepticism when reading Steve Jobs’ propaganda)
Program Availability…
I agree that software availability for home applications for the Mac is acceptable. Games are a little sparse/late, though this doesn’t matter to a lot of people.
That said, I love Macs. It has nothing to do with the processor. OSX (and the original Mac OS for that matter) just has a more elegant look and feel to me. Whenever I see one of those G4s at CompUSA with the 24″ LCD screen, I go over and play with it. They are beautiful. Unfortunately, I work on Windows, play games on my PC, and can’t really afford a Mac. The current Mac doesn’t make sense for me. My PC is probably a little more “work” for me than a Mac, but it gets the job done (and is actually quite stable). Ho-hum, I hope Linux for the desktop continues to improve.
turgeon: HOWEVER, let’s say you go out and buy a new 2.4 GHZ DELL machine. The bill runs you about 800.00 including 17″ monitor.
Where have you been shopping? A 2.53GHz Dell P4 w 256MB of DDR333 RAM and a 7200RPM 60GB hard drive and an 18″ LCD should cost that much.
I suppose the point is moot…
I’ve experience crashes far more frequently in OS X than I do in Windows XP. I still get the “Beach Ball of Death” from time to time (i.e. where the system goes completely unresponsive except for the spinning beach ball which you can move around the screen) Originally I thought this was due solely to the prebinding bug but apparently it is not.
When it comes down to it, Windows NT and its ilk are over a decade mature, and OS X simply is not. OS X, on the other hand, has the advantage of throwing out the old OS and starting over, so things like drag ‘n’ drop and multilanguage support work flawlessly, unlike any other operating system.
However, the internals of XNU desperately need an overhaul. Hopefully Apple will introduce a sane ABI for 64-bit binaries on Panther, and that will lead to further performance improvements (10-12%) for all 64-bit applications.
HOWEVER, let’s say you go out and buy a new 2.4 GHZ DELL machine. The bill runs you about 800.00 including 17″ monitor. Its really fast, but you decide you want a mac of comparable speed instead. To do this you would have to spend about $3000.00. And thats without a monitor! So bottom line, yes you can get a speedy mac….but you could get 3 PC’s that are just as fast for the price.
Well, the real truth behind this fact is that with PC’s you can get just about every single combination of parts imaginable. With a Mac you can only get the combination of parts that Apple wants to sell. So if you want the fastest processor from Apple you’re stuck with the DVD burner, huge HD and RAM, etc… And of course, all that costs extra money. But it’s not as if the $800 Dell machine is comparable to the $3000 Mac in anything other than processor speed.
So, to use your example, those 3 speedy PC’s will have less combined RAM and HD space than the 1 speedy Mac. They won’t be able to burn DVDs. Their video cards will be inferior. And they won’t have gigabit ethernet or firewire.
So, even in the absence of an actual price difference, fewer options will sometimes leave you buying more than you need. And that means spending more than a “comparable” PC.
I think one of the reasons Mac users (and even Linux users to some extent) are so fanatical is because they are the minority. It can be annoying, but i think it’s a natural reaction to be defensive and even agressive when you are in a minority position.
I think a big part has also got to do with the fact that many innovations/technologies/ideas come to the mac platform first (quite often mac creations), and then 3/4 years later when M$ implements (steal is such a harsh word) the same thing, they seemingly get all the attention/credit/cash/etc…
I think.
I like my mac, I use my PC. That is what it comes down to. I was never “happy” with my PCs, but I am with my ibook. I honestly don’t understand it fully myself. I think it is just the software does not get in my way in the most common tasks I do on my mac, so it is easier to get things done. I have a 5hr battery life (14″ ibook, should be “6 hours”), I have Office, I have cli tools, I have easy networking. That is all I wanted, and I got it.
Linux distros are getting close, but the WMs are just not there yet if you want full featured. However lightweight ones are pretty cool.
And frankly the way MS has been trampling on what I am allowed to do, or what software I am allowed to run, I can no longer personally justify running their OS on my pc.
I must agree with some of the first posts…..this article is EXTREMELY badly written.
“So, to use your example, those 3 speedy PC’s will have less combined RAM and HD space than the 1 speedy Mac. They won’t be able to burn DVDs. Their video cards will be inferior. And they won’t have gigabit ethernet or firewire.”
Thats a good point, however, I run a graphics dept and those 3 speedy pc’s dont need to burn dvds and I have no need for firewire. The video cards are not inferior, they all come with top of the line NVidia cards, which are the best if you are familiar with the diff brands. All i need these machines to do is run apps like photoshop, illustrator, dreamweaver, flash, etc. And they do this, at lightning speed. Macs would too, but as I said for triple the price…
I’ve seen way too many of these articles over the years. And the “former Windows users” are the worst. Kinda like when someone gets religion & tells everyone, “I’m goin’ to heaven & you ain’t!”
bah.. again, as its been said by many others zillions of times, i happily use both (plus linux, on both hardware platforms even), i like windows for the wide selection of available games, i like macs because they rock (something as simple as watching a DVD is somehow better on macs, dont ask me why). i use windows for stuff macs suck at, i use macs for stuff windows sucks at, and i use linux for web dev work because i find neither windows nor macOS X particulary fast or efficient at (yes OS X is BSD, but its been partly reworked by Apple). i fail to see the relevance of such articles after -years- of flame war between very few mindless twats who had nothing better to do; if this guy is putting this topic back on the table only because it’s been a while since anybody mentioned it, i suggest he finds something a bit more worthwhile to talk about, as if the world lacks interesting topics.
The video cards are not inferior, they all come with top of the line NVidia cards, which are the best if you are familiar with the diff brands.
I am familiar with them. And I do know that the ATI 9000 that comes on the Mac is superior to the GeForce 4MX that comes on a Dell at that price. However, for $70 you can upgrade the Dell to an ATI 9000 so it’s not too bad.
And right now I think the top of the line is the ATI 9700. I have a GeForce 4Ti, though, and that’s pretty good too.
Well, the real truth behind this fact is that with PC’s you can get just about every single combination of parts imaginable. With a Mac you can only get the combination of parts that Apple wants to sell.
From a company who’s slogan was “Think Different” and in general really tries to listen to its customers and userbase, I find it odd that they don’t offer more flexibility in terms of system configurations.
I don’t mind that they killed off the clones, I don’t mind that I can’t buy individual parts and assemble the system myself, but I would like more options and more customizability. The argument that the cheaper Dell comes with inferior accesories and the only thing it has over a Mac is processor speed, that’s very true and I agree. But keep in mind that that’s what some people want. Tech professionals know exactly the kind of system they need for their tasks so they spec out a system with more strength in those areas and cut corners to reduce spending. Creative professionals just go with the best of everything because it’s in their budget and that’s fine, it seems like Apple is more oriented that way – evident in the way they sell their systems and the online system configurator. At some point they should really stop and look at what other people, the non-creative and design professionals, ask for.
“Screen/Window grab built in? He’s never used Shift+Print Screen?”
An you need an app to paste it into.
On a Mac, you can set screen capture to select full screen, a window or menu, or a marquee-selected area and it will automatically create a .jpg in a default location. Much better than: shift + Print Screen, Open App, Paste, Save image.
Nobody else caught this yet, so I will. OS X does NOT have a swap partition. It uses a swap file just like Windows (sometimes more then one).
The reason defragmentation programs don’t come with the mac is the differences in the file systems. Fragmentation simply does not affect system performance to as great an extent in HFS+ as it does with FAT32 or even NTFS. Not saying its better then NTFS or FAT32, just that fragmentation is not as great a problem for it.
Also, the way the file system and applications work contributes to this as well. Applications are generally static. Their files sit in the same place and don’t change, and therefore don’t become fragmented as easily. All the changes are kept in the preferences files, of which there are only a few compared to the rest of the system. This way the applications can still load pretty fast, and the preferences can too, because they are usually very small files and only need one or a few sectors anyway.
Apple freaks keep making claims of all sorts. Having worked more than I care to recall on OS 9 I cannot mention user friendliness and mac on the same day. It is slow, it crashes, you must tell it manually how much memory an application uses, it cannot handle fonts without help, you have to restart constantly because the memory handling is nonexistent.
OS X comes from the same company, that says it all for me. Use what you like but for me Apple is a non-starter. I’ll take any version of Windows any day. Only since I have used macs at work have I started to really appreciate Windows.
Our steve jobs can whoop bill gates ass anytime!
Yes that was stupid.. It might even be as stupid as the article, and as stupid as most of the comments that are to come..
His bullet point summary at the end contained many features I don’t use, or could do just as easily on Windows, and I’ve been using Mac OS since before Windows 3.1 was even out.
That said, one of his arguments is insightful. He is getting “stick”, er, people are arguing with him for his biased, unresearched, undefended praise of Mac OS X. When he was doing the same for Windows no one argued with him.
Flame people who make shoddy arguements (or use bad gramar) because of that, not because they are not on your side. This guy is shallow. Who cares what side he is on.
You asked why all apple users are seemingly fanatics. Well, I think the place to begin is your definition of a fanatic. Apparently, it’s anyone who disagrees with your position that “one OS is pretty much the same as another these days.” Of course many mac users think the mac is better. Why would anyone choose the mac if they did not think it was better (at least for some things and some users)? There would be no reason to buy the mac otherwise. If it’s all equivalent and just some “personal choice”, why pay more for the same thing? Why deal with not being able use certain online banking sites, run some of the more specialized software, etc.
So you can quite easily see there’s no point to buying a mac unless you are quite sure it’s better. Then, on forums such as this one, you will say it’s better and people like you who disagree will say, there goes another fanatic.
I’m not trying to be nasty here. I’m just explaining what I think explains the phenomena you asked about.
I use Windows for gaming. It is so far ahead of either platform in performing that task that the choice to run Windows for games is essentially a no-brainer. I used to use XP 100%, but tired of using it. There was nothing in particular that pushed me away from the platform full-time. It’s a stable, fast operating system. But, it’s perhaps a little too bland and utilitarian for my tastes.
I use OS X for 95% of desktop use. I love the OS. I hated MacOS <=9 for several of the reasons mentioned in this thread – crash-prone, rather ugly, a different user paradigm with seldom benefits alongside it. But OS X is an entirely different beast. I prefer the iApps over the Windows equivalents. I like the look of the operating system. I despise the Finder. I love the infrastructure of the OS – the fact that spell checking is system wide, as is speech recognition and a whole slew of other services. I like the bluetooth support. Until you’ve used OS X (10.2 with Quartz Extreme as a minimum), you really don’t know what you’re missing. It’s not all about eye candy (which, where it exists, does actually serve a purpose).
As far as Linux goes, I use that as my home server and PVR. Nothing on the Windows or Mac platform comes close to the PVR functionality it has. And for the cost, the server tools are amazing. What I hate about Linux is that beyond the CLI, consistency is lacking. I don’t want to have to learn keyboard shortcuts for my text editor that are completely mutually exclusive of those for the rest of the system. I don’t like how different programs have different widgets and different menuing systems.
The simple fact of the matter is that no operating system is perfect. An audio engineer would notice that Linux (until ALSA is standard) has terrible audio latencies. Windows has really good audio latency. And OS X has great audio latency. A gamer would notice that Linux has a rather poor selection of games, OS X has only a slightly better selection, while Windows is just where it’s at.
OS fanboys are like two year olds who have been given a toy hammer. Unlike the master craftsman, they haven’t seen the need for more than a single tool to perform all their tasks. So they go around hammering away looking tremendously stupid. Use the tool that works first. If there are multiple tools for the job, use the one that you work best with. Enough said.
Ok I, an x86’er, will begin spewing my opinion now:
1) That article sucked, bad grammer/spelling + rehashed arguments + complete lack of objectivity = complete drivel… HEY, maybe the people at activewin stopped listening to him because hes brain washed…
2) PPC arch. is superior to the x86 arch… Its a newer architecture, if they didn’t improve on older designs that would be pure stupidity. Anyone who looks at it will probably draw the same conclusions… BUT, that is not to say that PPC outperforms x86 because of that fact. A lower MHz rating does matter especially when the competition is running at twice your speed. It doesn’t make that much of a difference if you can add a, b, c vs. only add a, b when in the same amount of time you could do add a,b add a, c and then some… IPC and MHz are subjective measurements…
3) OSX is superior achitechturally IMO to windows, but this is mostly thanks to the hard work of the freebsd team. An elegant solution to OS problems is better than hacking backwards compatibility with previous OS’s… I know that OSx has OS9 compatibility, but this is a layer for applications only, what happens under that layer doesn’t need to be like what was in OS9… While Windows is mired in backwards compatibility issues to the detriment of security and stability… Thats why win2k3 dumps most backwards compatibility and therefore can’t run ~1/2 of the NT software… Uh right… So New Technology is fundamentally flawed huh? Never saw that coming…
me: { People just ought to own up to it. OS X and the iApps are nicer right now than the windows offering. }
dohnert: See , I start to respect ya and you say something stupid and zealotrous, I dont find what you said to be true. I find it to be trolling and trying to start a flame war.
Dohnert, we just disagree. I am not trolling. I am just stating what I think is true. I also think it’s obviously true and weird how people get so worked up defending windows. Christ, even you don’t use windows (why is that?) and you’re mad that I said OS X and iApps are nicer than windows. If windows is so great, why not use it? I like Linux a ton by the way, so I think you have made a good choice. Linux just isn’t ready for my mom yet. Also, it’s just not cutting edge on the applications side (maybe the plumbing/guts are top notch and better than OS X)
me: { It’s not PC owners fault. It’s MS’s fault. They have spent all your money chasing around anything that they thought would/might/could challenge their desktop monopoly, whether it was netscape, AOL, java, the playstation. Meanwhile apple focused on improving the thing paying their bills, the mac. }
dohnert: Zealotrous again and if you knew anything besides Brother Steve’s speeches and propaganda you might be worth talking to. But hey go ahead and keep buying your overpriced slow, back door computers. Brother Steve needs a new jet.
me: Why is criticism automatically zealotry? The world didn’t really need MS to take billions from an overpriced OS and office package and then reinvent things that somebody else had already invented. The funny thing is most of these perceived threats to windows weren’t very real – was a browser really going to take over an OS and become the OS? Was a dialup internet access/web portal such a great paradigm that AOL was really going to subvert windows?
I’m just saying they’d be better off cleaning up those ungodly control panels where you have to dig 10 levels down to find the setting you want, and getting things so that you don’t need those dumb as nails Wizards to do everything for you.
It isn’t fair to judge OSX from your experiences with MacOS9. Your problems with MacOS 9 were due to its primitive underpinnings which should have been replaced about 4 years before it was (due to Apple screwing up with Copeland). Remember that in addition to WinNT, Win2K, and WinXP, Microsoft also brought you DOS, Windows 3.1, and Windows 95/98/98SE/ME (ME should never have existed!). All of the non-NT based Windows OSes were unstable garbage.
“Having worked more than I care to recall on OS 9 I cannot mention user friendliness and mac on the same day. It is slow, it crashes, you must tell it manually how much memory an application uses, it cannot handle fonts without help, you have to restart constantly because the memory handling is nonexistent.
OS X comes from the same company, that says it all for me.”
Using this exact same logic, we could also say: “Windows 3.1 was definitively not user friendly, was slow, crashed a lot, had trouble handling fonts, and you had to restart constantly because the memory handling was nonexistent. Windows XP comes from the same company, that says it all for me.”
(And that’s not even touching the surface of Windows 3.1’s _real_ problems.)
Perhaps you should try something out before judging it.
Cheers!
tych0
Apart from the audio latency comments, you basically prove that it is really all about the apps and not about the quality of the OS. That’s pretty obvious I know, but if you only play windows Games then people are only ever going to make Games for Windows. That of course would leave us with the nightmare situation that we basically have today where Windows owns the Desktop and MS is using the enormous profits the prevalence of the fat client – server model to spread and dominate other markets.
That would be pretty terrible because then we would have innovation like MS offers in the browser market right now. There is little doubt that Mozilla is far better than IE, but everyone uses IE so they have no need to improve things apart from add technology they need to dominate other areas.
OSX doesn’t run on my hardware. Case closed, end of story.
If you take a person like me who has been running Windows long enough to know how to make it secure, rock solid and ‘just works’, the only real difference between a Mac and a PC is the price, and OSX.
And frankly, I’ve ‘test driven’ OSX at Frys and I see nothing from a usability/productivity standpoint that makes it stand out over Windows. Sure, maybe it’s Unix underneath, but it’s dumbed down like Lindows and runs like Java (as in slower than snot on a doorknob), so it’s really irrelavent – The Dock feels clumsy as well.
People say you gotta spend time with OSX to fully appreciate it. Fine – let me rent a Mac for about 2 weeks and we’ll see how it goes. But if not, I’m not going to pay $1,000+ for a test drive. For now, it’s really hard to spend that much money for an OS I’m not that impressed with only to run the same apps (Reason, Cubase, etc) that I’m already running on the PC.
PS – I’ll take a Winamp/Nero combo over iTunes any day
you said: “OS fanboys are like two year olds who have been given a toy hammer. Unlike the master craftsman, they haven’t seen the need for more than a single tool to perform all their tasks. So they go around hammering away looking tremendously stupid. Use the tool that works first. If there are multiple tools for the job, use the one that you work best with. Enough said.”
Yes you should use the best tool for the job. As far as picking which OS to use for a particular task today, that is the right way to look at it.
But there is also a place for talking about which OS is designed the best. In other words, if you were to build an OS from scratch, which would you look to as the “model,” the top, the best? Why should we talk about this? Because it helps move development on all OS’s forward. If OS X is recognized as the best for valid reasons, MS will undoubtly seek to emulate it. Linux will too. Everything gets better when the best is recognized as just the best and emulated, and yes, even improved upon. Discussions of what is best focuses efforts at progress.
Frankly, the “childishness” I see out there is the inability of som people to engage in these types of discussions. Grownups just look at the facts and call them as they are. And if it means acknowledging that your PC isn’t the best at something, then you do it. You don’t stick your head in the sand and pretend otherwise to make yourself somehow feel better.
I’m a PC user who made the mistake of switching to a Mac who finally switched back a week ago. Not needing a defragmenter in OS X is a humongous lie. I faced a problem when trying to install an OS X-compatible scanner. Whenever I tried to install the software, it would quit mid-install and never properly work. I tried new drivers and always faced the same problem. Once I defragmented the drive, it suddenly worked.
I faced lots of problems with loading programs too since OS X has an idiotic permissions system in place. You can do regular things with your computer and then your program will not respond to the double-click anymore. Gotta run Disk Utility and fix them permissions.
Sending attachments with Mail.app was a pain as well. As great as the program is (albeit extremely slow), I had to warn everybody I ever sent attachments to that there will be two attachments and that one of them won’t work. It was a humongous nuisance.
Macs don’t crash. I can’t tell how many times I was forced to reinstall OS X because the Finder kept bouncing for no reason and without cease. Word constantly crashed in the OS as well giving me a very informative message of ‘Your Application has crashed unexpectedly’ … No shit Sherlock, tell me why.
Anyways, OS X is not worth it. It feels good to be running the PC. You mostly notice the snappy fast interface, but the most enjoyable is how when you’re browsing and something is offered up for download, it’ll work on your PC. On your Mac, just about everything is not compatible.
All computers have problems, so citing a few with OS X doesn’t prove much. For the most part, you seem to have had a problem with the “compatibility issue” — attachments to windows users, etc. Word crashing is the same story. Lots of primiarly PC developers can’t make a good mac product if their life counted on it, but it’s all part of the fact that the world revolves around windows, not the mac.
But none of that has anything to do with the technical merits of OS X. It’s just the dominance of windows and it’s incompatibilty with others.
said, “The deciding factor for me is … OSX doesn’t run on my hardware. Case closed, end of story.”
In other words, no matter how good OS X and the iApps are, you would still go with windows. For example, if the apple product kept getting even better in the next two years, problems kept being eliminated – but meanwhile windows on the desktop is stuck dead in a rut for at least the next two years — you would still go with windows.
Because of the lack of open hardware on the mac.
Well, do you think that has anything to do with your view that you “see nothing from a usability/productivity standpoint that makes it stand out over Windows.”?
Because this is what I’m talking about – people’s love of open hardware seems to screw up the ability to see and think clearly about what’s really better on a useability standpoint.
Hey, I’m not saying you are making a wrong choice. If you’re a windows wizard then the inferior aspects of windows are less of a problem, or no problem at all. Then the mac advantage – superior ease of use – is outweighed by the negative of closed hardware. but let’s get things straight, the mac is easier to use and is far, far better designed than windows on that score. It’s just that’s not a big advantage to you
Eugenia, why do post garbage like this and then don’t even participate? Do you simply like to sit and watch people argue or do you have to meet a post quota?
I haven’t read the article but I wanted to comment on the comments. As a Mac user I cannot tell you how funny it is to me to hear all of you PC defenders getting so up in arms. If the Mac is so bad then why do you find it necessary to remotely give some sort of opinion about it? What you fail to understand is that Apple is not in competition with PCs, because they are not even in the same league. It is true that some Mac users may act elitist… because we are elite. Every day we live in a 5% world and have to put up with the rest of you. The PC is what it is today thanks to Apple. Everything that is of any consequence on your PC is thanks to Apple. Intel makes processors, and that is great. Microsoft makes an OS, and that is great too. But only Apple makes an end to end solution that has the user in mind. Although 90% of people use PCs I have never seen one that interested me. The Mac does what I need, all more elegantly and more reliably than any PC. People are so uptight and defensive about computers because they are using CRAPPY computers. Buy a Mac, stop your bitching, and start getting some knowledge about what you are talking about so that you can make a valid argument… not just spewing ignorance and making PCs users look like the group-think snobs that you are trying to label Mac users as.
I like OS X, becuase of technical reasons, not because I care about style. I actually would prefer that OS X to look like fluxbox. I use OS X, because I was ready to start on a new project and I care about data integrity as well as memory management. I felt too much fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Windows.
I have used DOS, Mac System 6, 7, UNIX, Windows 95, Linux Mandrake, Windows 98, Windows ME all for 2 years each. I actually switched back from Linux to windows because of application support. The Mac was only better when Apple brought out OS X.
OS X is UNIX which I love, and open source which I believe in, it is a good value in software and hardware – complete package and I just don’t want other people to have the problems I have had with Windows always crashing (and OS 9 and below).
I ironically had very little problems with ME crashing although it couldn’t manage memory at all and my DVD player didn’t work all the time on me. It was holding me back in terms of promoting Linux which I will be running on my laptop that nows runs ME and which I did not use at all since I got my eMac.
Two areas in the future which I feel will will hurt Apple:
1) WinFS (Longhorn) – This is going to be a major step forward for OS’s. Be tried to do it but had to scale it back from the Microsoft vision. Can Apple do something to compete here? I don’t know, I guess File System speed is the most important thing to Apple….
2) Smart display / Digital Hub work being done by Microsoft. Apple needs to get on this train ASAP!!
I hadn’t used it before a few months ago and then I spent a few hours on a new iMac one weekend. The next weekend I went home and used my mum’s new XP machine.
I was several times more impressed with OSX due to its usability and eyecandy.
I can’t believe anyone but a zealot would prefer XP to OSX frankly.
Disclaimer -> (I’m not entirely unbiased as I have been a long time 9x user before I moved to Linux, but still my first impressions hold, if I have the money my next comp will be a Mac)
Smart display / Digital Hub work being done by Microsoft. Apple needs to get on this train ASAP!!
Uhh, in what ways is Microsoft advancing the “digital hub” concept that Apple isn’t? They both have comparable tools, it’s just the Apple ones are better. All of the iApps fill this role, and iMovie is significantly better than Windows Movie Maker, etc.
I’ve used MacOS X and WindowsXP for about equal amounts of time. I think I prefer MacOS X a little more, but I also don’t really like being locked into Apple’s platform, good a chip as the G4 is.
Eyecandy is a bonus in my book, but the guy (as he admits) throws far too much emphasis on it. He also has the annoying habit of downplaying problems with MacOS X while downplaying the advantages of WindowsXP. It was when this started happening that the article went totally to hell.
We all have biases. There’s no getting around that. Even if you took a guy who had never used a computer before, the very order he tested things in would affect results. We are creatures of habit, and habits are easily made.
The secret to doing a good review is to leave those biases behind and try to evaluate in a scientific fashion. The author didn’t even bother to do this, and no surprise, the article sucked.
I would appreciate it if Eugenia would actually put down some guidelines to article writers in the future to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Some sort of quality control, you know? I know this particular comparison was not done on this site, but I’ve definitely seen OSNews contributors be guilty of this, too.
-Erwos
However if Beos would of survived Beos would probably be my main os again then Linux and Osx and last xp. Sigh I wish Beos was still around
I am lately concerned with font rendering in the various modern operating systems. I have used windowsXP, Mac OS X, and Xfree86 using XFT2 (KDE and Gnome). From using and viewing screenshots of all these font rendering environments I have come to the conclusion that XFT2 has the best Anti-Aliasing and font rendering system. OS X on LCD’s has an extremetly fuzzy look which is discouraging after a long period. Their isn’t too much to say about windows. I find XFT2 to be very well implemented, configurable, and very usable. The only thing lacking are fonts for X, although the new bitstream fonts are okay, and more are being developed. So basically I think once again an opensource project has proven it’s superiority to other development structures.
{ I like my mac, I use my PC. That is what it comes down to. I was never “happy” with my PCs, but I am with my ibook. I honestly don’t understand it fully myself. I think it is just the software does not get in my way in the most common tasks I do on my mac, so it is easier to get things done. I have a 5hr battery life (14″ ibook, should be “6 hours”), I have Office, I have cli tools, I have easy networking. That is all I wanted, and I got it. }
I remember hearing that same response in a Apple Switch ads. I find it extremely funny that some Mac users cannot come up with anything original to say. By the way on my Sony Laptop with SuSE Linux 8.2 Professional I have the same exact amount of battery life.
{ I’ve seen way too many of these articles over the years. And the “former Windows users” are the worst. Kinda like when someone gets religion & tells everyone, “I’m goin’ to heaven & you ain’t!” }
Thats because they buy into the old Apple propaganda and they get ” converted ” I used Mac OS X the only thing different is that I know how to think for myself and I dont buy into a bunch of hype, several things I hated with OS X that taught me how to appreciate Linux. For me hardware is a non issue, Apple hardware is inferior, always has been always will be and I dont care if they release a 10 ghz processor it is still inferior. The only thing I do like is the design of the G4 cases. In fact I gutted one and rigged it to use a PC motherboard with a Pentium chip and I still use it as my main machine. I covered the Apple Symbol with a Penguin LOL. The only thing Apple has ever released that was even worth close to the money they charge is the iPod
Personally I would rather use BSD or linux over either of the mentioned proprietary operating systems, but if I had to choose I would probably actually go with windowsXP. I find the mac OS user interface to be completely counter-intuitive. I have no use for the various i-apps that come with OS X. Sure OS X has fink that lets me run any opensource apps, but honestly what’s the point? With XP at least I don’t have to deal with Mac OS X gui, which is the most detestable computing experience I have ever had.
This article was very poorly written.
And, no two ways about it, flamebait.
Shame on OSNews for posting anything of this low quality. You can do better and should.
Smart display / Digital Hub work being done by Microsoft. Apple needs to get on this train ASAP!!
Uhh, in what ways is Microsoft advancing the “digital hub” concept that Apple isn’t? They both have comparable tools, it’s just the Apple ones are better. All of the iApps fill this role, and iMovie is significantly better than Windows Movie Maker, etc.
Windows XP Media Center Edition (TV Station, concurrent session technology – see http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-1000461.html).
It would be great if Apple could be the backbone of your personal digital hub in your home, but it looks like Microsoft is leading the research into this area.
Working with Win2k & XP for four months now, most of the time – excahnge server at work forced me into it – the idea that MS has reched parity with the Mac is simply foolish.
While MS is now useable it lags far behind OSX in terms of performance stability and interface. Not that there are not things Win2k and XP do better than the Mac but overall it is inconsistant and SLOW! The more you use it the slower it gets????
“but you could get 3 PC’s that are just as fast for the price.”
This is the kind of stuf that peaple beleve and say all the time but it’s just not true. Go to Apples web site and look at the prices and look at what’s included. By the time you add all the extras the price is virtually the same. I guess you could get a cheep Celeron but we were talking about comparable systems. You could also go out and build a PC yourself for cheep but your time is worth something too. On one site they had a speed comparison between a dual G4 and a single 3gig Dell. In most of the tests they ran the PC won. When they ran multiple tests at the same time the Mac won. I guess the point is that PC’s have their uses that they are good at and Macs have their arias that they are good at. It all comes down to what you like to use best. Price is no longer that big a factor.
Why argue? I started out as Apple-only many years ago. But, as time went on, I became too interested in other OSes to not use them. Now, I can’t imagine using only one OS. There is wonderful diversity. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. None are perfect. Enjoy them – try it, you’ll like it!
I’m surprised the article got posted in so many places, you were right it was kind of flamebait, more so in trying to get a good discussion going by pointing out that it doens’t actually matter what OS you use as long as you are happy with it. Sorry about all of the writing errors though, and thats purely my fault as I wrote the article directly into our news engine without bothering to check it as it was just to fill up content on a new site that won’t launch for a few weeks.
As a seasoned and very satisfied OSX user, I tend to agree with Alistar and similar commentary, which point out to Eugenia that this article really didn´t earn the honours of appearing on this site.
I avidly read OSNEWS to get industry wide OS news and updates, not just on Mac OS X but on all platforms. In particular, I expect OSNEWS to deliver balanced and precise platform news. This article, however, was clearly biased and therefore simply didn´t earn the right to be published on a site which claims to provide readers with good solid news about all OS developments. There are enough gumball Mac sites out there to cover this kind of “steve-o” rap, and that´s where it belonged in the first place.
Sorry Eugenia, but this was not a good selection.
turgeon: HOWEVER, let’s say you go out and buy a new 2.4 GHZ DELL machine. The bill runs you about 800.00 including 17″ monitor.
Where have you been shopping? A 2.53GHz Dell P4 w 256MB of DDR333 RAM and a 7200RPM 60GB hard drive and an 18″ LCD should cost that much.
Actually, that machine costs $1577. About twice as much as you say.
BTW, you can get a similarly configured Dell and eMac for $758 and $849 respectively. The only difference is a 800 mhz G4 compared to a 2ghz Celeron. Realistically, you’ll need to add $60 to the price of the Dell to upgrade the monitor because the default one is horrible (esp. with the crappy integrated Intel video).
“Using this exact same logic, we could also say: ‘Windows 3.1 was defini-tively not user friendly, was slow, crashed a lot, had trouble handling fonts, and you had to restart constantly because the memory handling was non-existent. Windows XP comes from the same company, that says it all for me.’ Perhaps you should try something out before judging it. ”
You are right, of course. The point is however that mac enthusiast where saying the same things about OS9 as they say about OSX now. “User friendly, fast, neat, stable, …” Now they admit that OS9 was appallingly bad, but claim OSX is just great. OS9 is comparable to W3.1, just as you say, even W95 is better by a mile. W98 by the way is not a bad OS at all, al-beit a bit dated by now.
Many of us still have to use OS9 at work because OSX does not yet sup-port our software or hardware. I will be glad when it is upgraded but I would be happier with a switch to W2000.
Linux!
# It’s gorgeous
So is blue mist
# Translucent terminal windows
GNOME terminal can do this.
# System wide spell checking
OO.org, Evolution, EMACS… you name it
# An excellent e-mail program and spam filter built in
Mozilla Mail does this
# Screen/Window grab program built-in
In GNOME2, Actions->Screenshot
# Working voice recognition and spoken voice interface
Emacspeak… not sure how good it is though
# Tabbed browsing with Safari
Mozilla does this
# Regular OS Updates and improvements
Distro dependent, but most are reliable (RedHat, Debian, Suse, Slackware to mention a few)
# Easy installs of programs
apt-get install program_name
These arguements are really silly. If you like something you like it. I enjoy being part of the Mac culture. Macs have personality. The little details are so important. For instance, when the Mac machine sleeps, it almost snorzes. The light flashes in a way that reminds you of a person in heavy sleep. I also like the innovation that comes out of Apple. Look at the iPod, the ITunes music download site, and on and on.How about all the great free software that comes with a Mac these days? I also work on the Windows platform and XP is a big improvement in many ways. But the ease of use still goes to Apple. With a Mac, you pop a disc in and it appears on the desktop. Simple, easy, and just flat out cool. Windows is a good OS and Windows machines can be cheaper, but I’m willing to pay a little more just as I would for a car, clothing, stero, whatever, if it’s something I really like.
Why bother comparing 2 different OS’s that run on 2 differrent platforms?If MacOS would run on an Intel box or Windoze would run on a Mac,then it would be worthwhile.But most people can’t afford to/refuse to buy an expensive 2nd computer just to try out a different OS
Not trolling here, but if OSnews.com wants to keep any sort of reputation, Eugenia should have a much closer look at the articles before they’re posted. Poorly written articles, reviews and the like have become a disturbing trend lately. I mean, come on, the site’s home page shouldn’t be akin to a message board where any Tom, Dick or Harry can crap out their opinions.
Linux ROOLZ!!!
No, XP.
No, Win2K is the only choice.
Buy a Mac, and see what a real OS is like.
I use the command line for everything, all you need is the command line, GUI’s suck.
I use KDE, it’s the best.
No, GNOME – it’s truly free, it’s GPL.
I hate the GPL, use a BSD license.
BSD rulez!!!
Debian rulez!!!
Mandrake sucks! Real men compile from source.
There’s no decent GUI config for Linux.
Yes there is, YAST, Linuxconf, Webmin…
Use the command line, GUI’s suck.
I love Windows XP.
Ha, you’re a looser. Linux beats XP.
I miss BeOS ;-(
When will it end?
“I mean no dis-respect to Eugenia who has always put relevant news AFAIK, on this site but this article really was a waste of space.”
For those of us who have not yet had a good look at OS X, the screen grabs were interesting.
The Dock would be better if it could occupy half the screen instead of just a strip at the bottom. As it is, there is room for only twenty icons, apparently.
Jon W. Barto wrote:
“The PC is what it is today thanks to Apple. Everything that is of any consequence on your PC is thanks to Apple.”
Simply not true. When PC and Macs were in their infancy, PCs gained wider adoption because they were cheap and in plentiful supply. Multiple vendors drove down costs and expanded the market considerably. The PC was certainly less polished than a Mac, but this was hardly surprising given the ad-hoc way PC components developed. The fact is that Apple has benefited from PC developments too: low-cost PC components find their way into Macs and Apple users gain from it. The fact is that the PC reached a price point that enabled countless businesses to invest in one (long before Microsoft became the behemoth it is today). We can thank the PC for making computing more affordable for all – not the Mac!
>>a Mac is really twice as fast as a PC with the same processor speed because it is a RISC processor.<<
I thought a RISC processor did less instructions per cycle. In fact, I thought RISC stood for “Reduced Instruction Set” or something.
No?
OS X comes from the same company, that says it all for me. Use what you like but for me Apple is a non-starter. I’ll take any version of Windows any day. Only since I have used macs at work have I started to really appreciate Windows.
Bzzzt. Try again. OS X comes more from NeXT and Job’s influence than from anyone who was working on OS 9 at Apple. There are many OS X users, like myself, who would never have considered buying a Mac circa OS 9. They are completely different animals.
It would be akin to saying that I would never buy a Mercedes because I bought a Chrysler 5 years ago and it sucked.
Of course, when you start your post with the word “freaks” I guess I shouldn’t have expected rationale ideas.
The Dock would be better if it could occupy half the screen instead of just a strip at the bottom. As it is, there is room for only twenty icons, apparently.
The dock is fully scalable. You set the default icon size to whatever you want. Plus, when too many icons are added the dock shrinks anyway. There is also a feature called “magnification” that magnifies the icon (and it’s neighbors a little less) that your cursor is hovering over.
But, really, if you want dozens of programs available in the dock you should either use one of the dock replacements available or (as I do) place a folder in the dock that has shortcuts to my favorite programs that I use less frequently. Right-clicking on this folder pops up a menu of the files in that folder. I have a folder for games and one for apps.
Benjamin Huot wrote:
>Swap Partition
>Windows does get fragmented faster,
>becuase it doesn’t have a swap partition which all UNIXs (like OS X) have.
I run Windows ME, Windows XP and Windows 2000 Server.
They all have swap partitions I set up.
Paritioning is how you get less fragmented.
Mac OX X does not have a swap partition, other then the boot/root, unless you spefify it,
just like Windows. ( Windows 3.1 also had a swap setting…)
>Speed
>The argument that Macs are too slow is ridiculous.
How are you measuring speed?
The GUI needs integer math. PCs are better at that.
My Mac IIfx out performs all my other workstations, in booting, and GUI performance. Faster Menus…etc..etc..
and that is System 6.0.8!
>For one thing, a Mac is really twice as fast as a PC with the same processor speed because it is a RISC processor.
So…. like 1.4Ghz performs like a 2.8Ghz? well PCs are at 3.0Ghz, and quad processors are “off the shelf” parts.
Macintosh Quad Processors? Heelloo? Are you Lisening or babeling.
I can even get a 8 way processor….Never on a Mac.
>Also for video
Adobe Claims that Video is faster on the PC. Also with Quad Processors…
Forget it. You still dont get it…
>and 3d modeling which you need speed for runs much better on a
>UNIX which can handle number crunching much better.
They run better on machines with dedicated 3D hardware. Like a PC with a better graphics card,
and a faster Processor/Video Connection.
For any type of serious rendering work, Its PCs or Suns, now that SGI is loosing market share to them.
Macintosh is not in this picture.
>With the Altivec optimizations and running optimized software,
>the high end Macs perform equally well as the high end PCs.
Quad Processors. Can you spell that?
>Final Cut Pro on a Mac outperfroms Adobe Premiere on a PC.
Not a fair comparasion. There are video apps that out perform Premiere on a PC.
>Programs Availability
>I switched from a PC to a Mac and I found everything
>I needed even low cost high quality design programs for flash, DTP, and
>drawing as well as even non violent games and bible software.
>It also comes with free integrated programming ebvironment.
What bible softeware comes with a free IDE?
>I spent much less and got much better programs on the Mac.
>The one thing I haven’t found is a low cost WYSIWYG html editor for the Mac – I mean in the 150 usd or lower range.
CLARIS HOME PAGE. Do your homework. Ask other people. Get a clue.
>I also can run Abiword much better than on Windows.
One applicaion does not fit all.
Before you comment you should do a lot more research.
P.s. Linux Rulez. If it doesnt, then I HAVE the source code to modify it. ( Darwin is not the GUI )
Just what OS news needs…another brief, poorly written article that only scratches the surface. It’s all a tedious argument anyway, what OS you choose to use. I suppose it’s because nothing really new has happened in OS-land lately. Hell, we haven’t even had a major linux release for weeks.
Seriously though, I would rather see nothing new posted than see this garbage. The grammar was atrocious, and all the guy’s quoatation marks came out as question marks. Forget proofreading, THIS GUY DIDN’T EVEN LOOK AT HIS ARTICLE ONCE!
>The argument that Macs are too slow is ridiculous.
>For one thing, a Mac is really twice as fast as a
>PC with the same processor speed because it is a
>RISC processor.
What? The newest Intel processors are RISC (even though Intel would never admit to that classification). I suppose next you’ll say that 64-bit processors are twice as fast as 32-bit?
The arguments never cease. I have an opinion like everyone else, my opinion is I always prefer my mac, but I own both. I have to use a PC for developing apps for clients and for playing games. But I choose the Mac when ever I can, which is about 90% of the time.
It used to be the case (before OS X) that I prefered to program for windows. Windows puts you closer to the hardware generally, which is why Macs are successful with more non technical people. Mac’s are more intuitive and easier to operate. OS X changed things rather dramatically. Suddenly the Mac is not only the best choice for the not-so-technical but also for the super technical. It used to be that if you were super-technical you gravitated to Linux if you were not very technical you had to go with a Mac but the majority went for windows in the middle. Sure it was a little complicated, but not as bad as linux it was closer to the mac (that did used to be cost prohibitive. OS X seems to offer more across the spectrum.
Windows does still have advantages, but they are not by virtue of it’s design, but it’s marketing (and market share). The only reason Apple is not dominating the market was they waited till their market share declined to 5% to start lowering prices to make the machine more attainable.
Which is better, well it always comes back to this – if you want to see what the PC of tomorrow looks like, look at the Mac today. Win 3.x compred favorably to the Lisa, Win98/Me/2000/XP compare favorably to Mac OS 7.5-9.2 and Longhorn is going to compare favorably with OS X. Look at the feature list so far – 90% of it is what is already in OS X.
Is the Mac better? It is opinion – many Mac users prefer OS 9 to OS X. But microsoft must think so – they are trying to catch it. For better or worse the future is OS X whether you use it or a “look-alike” it will drive the market.
XP has come a long way. But it is not even in the same balpark as my Macs. XP goes as long as a week without needing to be rest – My home mac only needs to be restarted when rare operating updates require it. In two years on two Macs, I have had one OS crash between them. On two XP machines, I on average have 1 crash a week. Older Windows were at least every other day, so it is getting better.
As far as Defraging goes, you are right all systems could occasionally benefit from a defrag, but windows is the only OS I know of that requires it to stay running. A good OS can minimize the impact of fragmentation on performance, so that it is not generally required. I write emmbedded OS’s We have an OS that has been running in some cases since 1992, and we have never even written a defrag program, and on only about 5 cases have we wished we did – that is 100,000 customers over a 10 year period – no defrags.
My two year old mac has never been defraged, but each of my PCs have been formatted at least twice because the file systems have become coroupt. Will I ever need a defrag program – probably not – I will probably upgrade well before I feel a need to do so.
By the way, OS X places the swap file on the main partition by default, so no advantage there. You can reformat with a swap partition, but I do not know anyone that has.
Only Forrest Gump would try to argue that a Mac is better than any other decent OS. Sure it looks pretty… but one mouse button???
{ Only Forrest Gump would try to argue that a Mac is better than any other decent OS. Sure it looks pretty… but one mouse button??? }
You can use two or three button mice with Macs, the one button argument is obsolete.
“Also for video and 3d modeling which you need speed for runs much better on a UNIX which can handle number crunching much better. With the Altivec optimizations and running optimized software, the high end Macs perform equally well as the high end PCs. “
What? You’ve got to be kidding me. There is no way that the top of the line (3,799.00) power mac compares with a 3,800 PC. For 3,800 you can get a dual athlon 1600+ with 4 gigs of memory. And a lot of harddrive space.
The macs have, IMOP, lost there edge on the video market. PCs are much more cost effective, even if they have an inferior operating system. Same thing goes for 3d modeling.
“Final Cut Pro on a Mac outperfroms Adobe Premiere on a PC.”
As some has already pointed out, that is not a fair statment.
Final Cut Pro is only avalible for the Mac and it is desgined for the PowerPC processors. And Premiere isn’t the fastest windows video editing program anyways. Try comparing Priemere on a mac to premier on a similarly priced PC.
I use both and I’m on a pc running XP right now, but I have to conclude that I do LIKE OS X much better. I work a lot with video and my Mac runs quicktime a lot more smoother and I the way the doc is laid out and making instant pdf’s of webpages and articles on OS X is pretty cool. If you haven’t tried OS X, try it before you speak about it.
Forrest Gump would think that if he was real, but for now you are thinking it. Just go buy a better mouse like any other pc or mac user does for thier system Forrest.
“I do LIKE OS X much better.”
So do I. It’s just the hardware that I don’t really like.
“I work a lot with video and my Mac runs quicktime a lot more smoother”
Well, yeah. Apple makes quick time remember. Of course it runs better on their OS nad hardware.
“If you haven’t tried OS X, try it before you speak about it.”
I agree with you there, people should try an OS before they make any judgements about it.
“So, to use your example, those 3 speedy PC’s will have less combined RAM and HD space than the 1 speedy Mac. They won’t be able to burn DVDs. Their video cards will be inferior. And they won’t have gigabit ethernet or firewire.”
walterbyrd wrote:
>>>>>
>>a Mac is really twice as fast as a PC with the same processor speed because it is a RISC processor.<<
I thought a RISC processor did less instructions per cycle. In fact, I thought RISC stood for “Reduced Instruction Set” or something.
No?
<<<<<
Not less instructions per cycle. RISC can process multiple instructions per cycle just as a CISC chip. The different comes down to the fact that RISC (Reduced Instruction Set) has less instructions to play with than a CISC (Complete Instruction Set). As a result a RISC core could/should have less circuits or be simpler than a CISC as it doesn’t have to define all options or instructions.
As an example, probably a poor one, say on a hypothetical RISC and CISC chip we have an ADD operation. The RISC version of ADD can only add two registers while the CISC can ADD two registers, a register with a location in main memory or two main memory locations. For the RISC to accomplish the addition with main memory locations it will have to fetch them first to put them into registers and then add them.
Or another example, also possibly a poor one. The CISC has a MOVE and a MOVE_CHUNK. MOVE just moves one byte while MOVE_CHUNK moves a bunch. The RISC chip may only have MOVE_CHUNK and no MOVE so the MOVE will have to be converted to a MOVE_CHUNK call.
At any rate, I hope you get the idea. RISC is not too different than CISC except that it may have to do some translating. The benefit is that the chip logic code is much smaller and maybe easier to optimize.
“Well, the real truth behind this fact is that with PC’s you can get just about every single combination of parts imaginable. With a Mac you can only get the combination of parts that Apple wants to sell. So if you want the fastest processor from Apple you’re stuck with the DVD burner, huge HD and RAM, etc… And of course, all that costs extra money. But it’s not as if the $800 Dell machine is comparable to the $3000 Mac in anything other than processor speed.”
Maybe not but if you did want to compare like for like systems (or as close as you can get between Mac and PC) You will find that a PC is still much cheaper. If all you wanted was comparable real speed and features you could have a custom build PC with all the speed and features of the $3000+ Mac for under $1200 and if you wanted equal build quality, speed and features then you could still build a PC for under $1450.
Maybe not but if you did want to compare like for like systems (or as close as you can get between Mac and PC) You will find that a PC is still much cheaper. If all you wanted was comparable real speed and features you could have a custom build PC with all the speed and features of the $3000+ Mac for under $1200 and if you wanted equal build quality, speed and features then you could still build a PC for under $1450.
So do it. Everytime I see someone pull this out of the hat they can’t deliver. Now, for “comparable features” it means you have to buy from a major manufacturer with real support (so no home-built machines).
Configure an Apple that costs over $3000 and a comparable computer from a major manufacturer for under $1450 and post the complete specs and prices here. Remember, equal quality and features.
It’s time to put up or shut up.
OS X is maybe the best operating system that is available for public, great look and feel, and great unix usability and inherent flexibility.
If I were Steve Jobs (or Salma Hayek) I would have relaxed the coupling between the OS and the apple machines, the operating system can really shake MS’s domination in about 2-3 years.
Apple’s profits from software would then by far cover their hardware losses.
> Linux!
> # System wide spell checking
> OO.org, Evolution, EMACS… you name it
I suppose I should have said inherent spell checking as opposed to system wide. Native OS X applications have _inherent_ access to really great services like spell-checking and voice recognition. A programmer need not program his own spell checking functionality nor include a spell checking library. They need only use the OS X framework in the same way that programmers have been using native GUI toolkits. For instance, GNOME application programmers do not need to reinvent the wheel and program a button class or library so they can get buttons in their programs. They just build off the GTK toolkit. Similarly, OS X programmers can build off the great Object Oriented framework that Apple had relatively little to do with – NeXT was the one who did all the gruntwork here while Apple got the glory when they brought NeXT and Steve Jobs back into the fold. In fact, in programming for OS X one will find many references to NeXT step in the naming of classes and methods. But I digress. I’m a programmer by trade, so part of my admiration of OS X has to do with the great framework, which, IMHO is orders of magnitude more elegant and functional than Microsoft, KDE, or GNOME frameworks.
> I suppose I should have said inherent spell checking as
> opposed to system wide. Native OS X applications have
> _inherent_ access to really great services like
> spell-checking and voice recognition. A programmer need
> not program his own spell checking functionality nor
> include a spell checking library. They need only use the
> OS X framework in the same way that programmers have been
> using native GUI toolkits. For instance, GNOME application
> programmers do not need to reinvent the wheel and program
> a button class or library so they can get buttons in their
> programs. They just build off the GTK toolkit. Similarly,
> OS X programmers can build off the great Object Oriented
> framework that Apple had relatively little to do with –
> NeXT was the one who did all the gruntwork here while
> Apple got the glory when they brought NeXT and Steve Jobs
> back into the fold. In fact, in programming for OS X one
> will find many references to NeXT step in the naming of
> classes and methods. But I digress. I’m a programmer by
> trade, so part of my admiration of OS X has to do with the
> great framework, which, IMHO is orders of magnitude more
> elegant and functional than Microsoft, KDE, or GNOME
> frameworks.
I’m a programmer by trade also, I’ve been writing C/C++ code for 5 years and I have no intention of learning objective c. The argument “you’ll prefer it once you’ve used it for a while” just doesn’t hold ground for me. I need REAL integration into the OSX framework. By this I don’t just mean access to API calls, but the ability to integrate with existing code without having to use objc. This isn’t possible AFAIK. Forgive me if my look into the macs was shallow.
C is _THE_ language of unix. Why apple decided to neglect it like this and add yet another abstraction to darwin (Obj) when they have already done much of this in the past (OS X shell, finder. etc).
Out curiosity I’ve “built” – professional systems from Apple and Dell for the same price that is what you get:
Apple
Power Mac G4 Dual 1.42GHz w/2MB L3 per proc.
. 2.0GB DDR333 SDRAM (PC2700) – 4 DIMMs <- customer cheating as actual bus speed is not equal to RAM
. 120GB Ultra ATA drive
. Optical 1 – Apple SuperDrive
. Optical 2 – None
. ATI Radeon 9700 Pro w/128MB DDR
. Apple Studio Display (17″ flat panel)
. 56K internal modem
. Bluetooth Module
. Apple Pro Keyboard – U.S. English
. Mac OS – U.S. English
Subtotal $4,498.00
PC Desktop
Pentium 4 Processor at 3GHz with 800MHz front side bus
128MB DDR ATI RADEON 9800 Pro Graphics Card with TV-Out and DVI
Sound Blaster Audigy^(TM)2 premium sound
200GB Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive
4x DVD+RW/+R Drive w/CD-RW
Dell Gigabit Ethernet
18.1 in 1800FP Dell Ultrasharp^(TM) Digital Flat Panel Display
1394 Controller Card
$3,928
for comparison for the same price as Power Mac G4 Dual 1.42GHz you can get PC workstation (verey limited though)
2x Intel Xeon Processor, 2.40GHz, 512K Cache
2GB,DDR266 SDRAM Memory,ECC (4 DIMMS)
Dell UltraSharp^(TM) 1702FP 17 inch Flat Panel Monitor (17.0 inch vis)
nVidia, Quadro4 900XGL, 128MB, VGA/DVI
(3Dlabs Wildcat4 7110,256MB,Dual VGA/DVI [ Add $1,251.00])
2x 120GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive with DataBurst Cache^(TM)
4X DVD+RW/+R AND 48XCDROM, DVD Decode/Sonic SE (for Professional Authoring)
1394 Controller Card
4,503.1.00
so PC dektop is cheaper but not as much but you are getting DVD recorder and CDRW plus bigger HD plus famous Gigabit ethernet plus ATI 9800 Pro (new engine particulary good for rendering but not as much game speed gain) and bigger monitor (flat panel)
for the same price as apple you can get real workstation, best memory (you know what ECC memory is I hope), plus nVIDIA Quadro4 900XGL (not available for OS X)
and 2x 120GB ready for RAID
2x Xeons are more powerfull than two G4’s
and again you can add 3Dlabs Wildcat4 not available in Apple’s offering.
If you look at the quality of hardware, Apple never had ECC memory nor professional video cards or hot swappable ethernet or HD. There is more about hardware not available in Apple’s world (this i s a reason why PIXAR is using PC/linux) of course but the question was “Windows or OS X?”. If one is really, really honest one must admit that OS X stability is on par with W2k or linux, not better nor worse. If one trash OS once a week/month then one have no idea how to use specific OS …and only idiot is proud of it. Personally I dont see how transparent windows would increase my productivity while working with oracle. (Besides alpha blending was available in w2k if one know how to hack registry).
My desktop does not have icons I dont need them but this is very subjective. So I think that it is useless to argument that OS X desktop is better or KDE or Luna (? the one from WinXP).
Speed? Well Mathematica is slow on Mac, oracle is ridiculous (I know that this is developers edition only) on OS X and to make it workable it is more than only processor speed.
So in case of desktop, all boils down to personal, subjective preferences.
Software? as above plus availability
Hardware? Apple need few years to become serious competitor on the workstation/server market
You can integrate your current C++ with OS X’s framework though you have to use Objective C++. It’s really not a big deal and when I say that I’m not just being an apologist because I happen to like it. Any C++ code someone has made with portability in mind will integrate nicely with OS X, as it should with Windows, Linux, etc. Whereas Objective C is useful on its own, Objective C++ pretty much has one sole purpose of bridging C++ to Objective C. In fact, C and C++ are not the only languages with native framework support. There’s even a Java Cocoa interface. So, Java, C and C++ code can all work nicely with the Cocoa framework.
Well, of course PC’s are cheaper. Any reasonable Mac owner will admit to that (emphasis on “reasonable”) at least as far as desktops go (laptops are another story).
I bought a Mac last fall. It cost around $2400. I could have gotten an equivalent PC from Dell for around $1700-1800.
But there are a bunch of Windows lusers running around saying stuff like “Macs cost twice as much” or worse. That’s just nutty.
Of course, Mac owners are hoping this will change when the 970 is released. But, for now, that’s just a pipe dream.