No OS is perfect, but by combining the ease of use that Windows users expect, and the eminent hackability of the *NIX platforms, OS X makes a great case for a one-size-fits-all solution.Full disclosure: I am a traditional Mac Zealot. I have been using the Mac since 1988, and I haven’t really looked back. However, I have spent considerable time using other machines, and in true OSNews Geek fashion, I have spent equally considerable time playing with other operating systems. Like many, I toil daily on the Windows platform, but I come home to my Mac for real fun, and to get real work done.
Windows is popular in the business world because it works. In the mid-’90s, it offered a shiny GUI that CIOs understood, and hosted all the business apps that allowed their worker bees to get the job done. Slick marketing and an accessible development platform sealed the deal. Today, if you enter any workplace, chances are you’ll find Windows PCs sitting on every desktop…including my own. Once the penetration levels were complete at work, it began at home, and now you find Windows mindshare is at least as great as its market share.
But just because you can do anything with Windows, doesn’t mean it’s the best overall computing experience. The cracks are appearing in the Microsoft monopoly’s facade: increasing feature bloat, lagging performance on ever-faster hardware, security nightmares thanks to ever-more-interoperable software.
For the average Windows user on a broadband connection, it’s a bad, bad world. I’m sure many of you have had the experience of supporting family and friends through constant pop-ups, crippled systems and other bizarre behaviour. In fact, I’m already set up to visit my in-laws this weekend for yet another “cleaning session”.
The facts are becoming too huge to ignore: Windows has become a liability. Not for everyone, surely, but for the majority of the average, non-technical crowd, it’s become a weight they don’t even know they’re carrying.
Some people are looking elsewhere. For the Intel crowd, there’s Linux, a gorgeous, ideologically-pure OS with every capability that Windows has…except for usability. Look, I’m right there with the Penguin crowd, desperately wanting a super-slick Linux desktop, but it’s just not there, folks. For those without a qualified Geek nearby, Linux is simply an unattainable fantasy, something certainly hyped to a great extent, but nothing they’ll be able to manage on their own. (One caveat to this point: I would love to try out a PC that has Linux pre-installed. I wonder what kind of out-of-the-box experience I’d get with that.)
We’ve all heard stories of people who have turned away from Windows to check out Linux, but most of the time, they become frustrated and head back to the safety of the Start menu. Despite Windows’ shortcomings, when you boot into it, things just work for the most part, and you don’t have to hit the command line to get that damned sound card to work.
At present, I see only one viable alternative to Windows, and that’s the Mac. It stands toe-to-toe with Windows on a usability level, and while the masses of OSNews readers will quibble about this feature or that feature, the fact is, you can reliably interchange one computer for the other, and you don’t need a degree in Nerdology to make it happen.
The groupthink on computing states that the Mac is an “artsy” platform, suitable mostly for graphic and publishing work. I deny that: the Mac is suitable for anything you care to compute (Save games. But if you’re hardcore into games enough that a PC is your way to go, you should be looking into a console anyway). The Mac has its own fair share of applications for business and home use; you just have to know where to find them. Apple’s own Product Guide is a terrific place to start.
Furthermore, Mac OS X is built on a UNIX foundation, and thus enjoys the benefits of open source development: rock-solid stability even on older hardware, and a host of applications available. For Linux users who are seeking the power of their original platform, but are sick of dealing with compile errors and dependency problems, OS X is the best of both worlds.
For the Windows user looking for a fresh start, OS X is a compelling option. The chief burdens on Windows today — virii, security breaches and overwhelming choices — are defeated by the Mac’s simplicity. Its small market share means it has yet to be the target of a virus writer; it comes out of the box way more secure than Windows; plus, the smaller development community produces titles that are of consistently higher quality, and available for much less (including free) than their Windows counterparts. Check MacUpdate for the best in Mac shareware and freeware.
The Mac is not for everyone. But for those who are not dependant on the Windows platform, and looking for a change, the Mac presents a wonderful option. You owe it to yourself to look past the hype, and try it out.
About the author:
Aaron Vegh is a newsletter editor and freelance publisher based near Toronto, Canada. His machines include a RedHat 9 server, Gentoo laptop and his beloved G4.
Looking past the hype you see all sorts of options. The most surprising thing if your willing to use multiple OS’s is that if one goes down to a virus, the rest will keep chugging along.
By using multiple machines with various OS’s you are always on. When my roommates win XP machines come down with another virus, I still connect. It annoys him when he asks if there is a probelm in the network and I don’t notice anything but a bit a lag.
Linux isn’t for everyone(yet) Mac OSX is more expensive though you get more for your dollar. Windows is cheap and it shows but does have it’s uses as well.
One size never fits all. Still wish I had a Mac though 😉
i heard sega is porting puyo puyo fever to OSX, any other console games comming?
…but you must agree, yawn, that it is a pretty nice idea. Hybrid between *NIX and Windows-like Interface (disregarding that Apple got it first – second after Xerox).
yes. osx rules, though i still miss a decent ms office, office x sucks a little bit. its slow though it is compatible. which is the most important.
Other things i still miss in osx is:
maximise button
msn 6
media player 9 that truly works and supports wmp9 codec
thats all, for the rest everything is actually there
there are plenty of games, like battlefield, quake3, unreal 2003/2004
I agree that Macs are wonderful platforms. Only one issue – cost. When they can start competing on price points, then I will seriously start looking at time. For me, right now Lintel is the way to go – (accually Linux on AMD – but close enuf, eh?).
I like the Mac, but some things just leave me scratching my head. For example, Mac OS X is bloatware. A basic install of Panther will take about 1 GB and doesn’t give you much to play with (not even the iTools or BSD subsystem, depending upon where your interests lie).
And while the hardware will just work, you are paying Apple a premium to do so. Once you leave the realm of hardware just working, users will still scratch their head while they are searching for the start button (people tend to be more interested in familiarity than usability). Once you get into the realm of Unix applications, there is really no benefit to Mac OS X: X11 and several other major Unix programs are easier to install, a few great tools are installed by default, and the Terminal is very nice, *but* the package manager and compiling applications (if need be) is the same old drill.
Oh, and I think people make too much of a fuss over how hard Linux is to use. I managed to get mkisofs and cdrecord to work on the first crack under OpenBSD on my G4 — I prefer the command line and had no hardware to troubleshoot, which is great. (Why would I abandon Panther then install Gtk+ or Qt stuff?) If you want a fancy GUI, and I’m sure it is just as easy. I tried the same thing a few years back and it took forever to setup the hardware properly (adding IDE-SCSI support and such). The moral of the story: a lot of people judge an OS based upon their experience with it years ago. Things change and problems fade away.
>office x sucks a little bit. its slow though it is compatible.
Yeah, it’s quite slow, although I’m not too sure about the compatibility. I did some Word documents on a Win2k workstation using Office 2000. Tried opening them up using Office X and the graphs (which were pasted into the original) came out like a negative photo!
Curiously, they opened fine and dandy in OpenOffice.org…
I constantly hear people pointing to a Mac and saying oh how expensive it is. They are correct, but they are pointing in all the wrong places.
To begin with, you are paying a premium for a Mac because you are getting decent quality hardware and a boatload of bundled applications (and those applications are of fairly good quality for their target market).
The real problem is choice: you cannot buy a low end model without a built in monitor and all of the bundled software. Similarly, you won’t find a mom-and-pop shop which builds machines with the cheapest components they can find. So it is not that you are buying an over priced product, you simply don’t have the option to buy the lowest price bundle that someone can put together.
“I agree that Macs are wonderful platforms. Only one issue – cost. When they can start competing on price points, then I will seriously start looking at time.”
Wow, I’m surprised that you haven’t been corrected thus far. Apple’s prices are in no way out of sync. As a matter of fact, in many instances they offer systems that are much less expensive than the competition.
I think what you’re getting at is that with buying a PC, you can buy less and therefore pay less, but that of course does not make a PC less expensive but rather… more *configurable*.
If anyone wants to run OSX, s/he must buy a PowerPC box. OTOH, I can run Win XP on x86 box or a Mac via the soft of Virtual PC (M$). And the last, Linux distro can be run on almost each kind of machines. OSX might be the best system for PowerPC boxes,however, it could be ranked in the x86 world.
OK. Give me a Mac that has hardware that is as inexpensive as my “crappy” ASUS motherboard and Lian-Li Case and I’ll gladly “settle” on “non premium” hardware.
The only thing premium about Mac hardware is the price.
The thing I notice, is how many people complaining and saying how bad OS X is…. have you actually tried it? And used it for more than a month?
Because using OS X for 5mins, or for a week is not sufficient time to get used to it….
And if you have used it for around a month, you have already relised how good it is.
Then there is everyone complaing how the software isn’t enough….
You go ahead to either Versiontracker or MacUpdate or something like that, and you search for the programs you would use on Windows, I pretty much Guarantee that you will find a alternative program that will do the same for the mac, and usually a free alternative.
So if you say it sucks, or it doesn’t work as well, I beg to differ, I’m in the IT and manage networks….. I would not trade my Mac for the world, I would refuse to go back to a XP Laptop. Never
As long as people will say everywhere “switch to mac ! mac is better ! mac is more userfriendly !” I just won’t switch.
Ok, fine.
[sarcasm]
Mac’s suck. They crash all the time. You’ll be lucky to get 1/2 day of uptime. They are super expensive and really hard to use, especially when setting up the internet.
[/sarcasm]
Do you prefer the lie over the reality? Now will you go buy one?
If you won’t go by word of mouth, what will you go by?
a friend of mine is always saying “the mac is the best. . . buy one mac. . . the mac is the fastest computer. . . mac os x is the most stable OS. . . etc”
he works with al dual g4 with 2gb of ram, lots of HD, etc (property her employer). . . when i asked: “if you must spend YOUR money, not your boss money to have a mac. . will you really do it???”. . . plain answer=NO
“If someday I have the choice to try and choose, I’ll do that.”
well… where do ya live? Redmond? If do, go to Bill’s house, he’s got one.
Seriously, go out to a store that sells Macs, tell the sales nimrod to leave you alone and check one out… or, if you have a friend that has a Mac… it ain’t that awful, sheep don’t use macs, goats do… BTW there’s a lot more zealots of Windows & Linux here that pooh-pooh the Mac, not the ones who use multiple OSs I’ve noticed just the ignorant ones.
BTW: Don’t do what I say… do what I do… FOOK’EM ALL.
😉
” Does it run emacs?”
Yes.
“mac is better ! mac is more userfriendly !”
Well, if you can’t accept the truth then there’s not much that can be done for you. Oh well.
/me ducks
If you want one, you can get them from them!
Another thing is that distros that come with KDE 3.2 are really easy to use! I suggest that people who think Linux is hard to use (it isn’t) to try a distro that comes with it, such as Mandrake 10.
As I said in a previous article, my 52 year old mother uses Linux, and she finds it a lot easier than Windows!
It would be worth pointing out when you buy a PC (I’m not talking about people who build their own here I mean general consumers), I notice this especially with laptops, you’ll get advertised a ATi Radeon 9700 with 64MB graphics RAM. Which sounds great, but when you look into it, you find the card isn’t actually an ATi card and the graphics RAM is shared.
Matt
“and the eminent hackability of the *NIX platforms”
But OSX ISN’T hackable to the extent of an open source unix-based os. Just try customizing the GUI like you could with X Windows. This is my main complaint about osx — however wonderful it may be for non-power users it comes severely short in the GUI customizability department.
http://www.macofalltrades.com/dept.asp?dept%5Fid=3
This is less than what they’d fetch on eBay.
I guarantee you that 10.3 will run quite snappily on a G3/500 (I run it acceptably fast on a 350/320ram) and the prices on the 700 are a steal.
Kwitcher bellyaching, buttercups.
—
And in the meantime a hearty “drop dead and rot” to Windows XP, the lameass “goatway” E series here at work, and Dreamweaver 4.
Not only has Dreamweaver crashed on me 2 times today as I tried to update my site resouces, XP locked up each time Dreamweaver crashed, and after reboot #3 Dreamweaver won’t even launch any more.
I’ve never had anything like this happen at home. The only time I’ve gotten KPs or corrupted programs/data on OS X is due to sudden and massive hardware failure.
“Just try customizing the GUI like you could with X Windows. This is my main complaint about osx”
Most of that stuff can be done in OS X with the right apps (DragThing comes to mind), plus a few unique things.
The only thing premium about Mac hardware is the price.
Exactly. When I get a new PC, the life expectancy of the box is about 5-6 years with no upgrades. I buy top-quality parts and still pay about half as much as I would a similarly equipped Mac.
As for OSX, I simply do not understand the draw. Maybe it’s a personal preference, but I’ve always hated the Mac interface. Some people say you just have to get used to it – personally, I”d rather have my balls crushed by a wooden mallot.
A specific example, I need a laptop with a high resolution screen, preferably 1600×1200, otherwise 1400×1050. This is important for photo editing (anything higer than 1.3MP), and viewing documents (you can display 2 entire A4 pages at once). At Apple, the thing that comes closest is the 17″ model with a 1440×900 screen, which costs more than ?3500. At Dell, I can get an Inspiron 510m with a 1400×1050 screen for ?1250, or an Inspiron 8600c with a 1920×1200 (!) screen for ?1400. Ok, they’re not directly comparable machines. The things is, with PCs you have a lot more options. If you need a hi-res screen, Apples only option is the 17″.
Ok, now let’s try to get some closer matches:
Apple 15″ PB
15″ 1280×854 screen, 1ghz G4, 60GB HDD, CDRW/DVD, 256MB ram, 64MB Radeon 9600, Bluetooth, 802.11g, FW800, 10/100/1000 LAN.
Total costs: ?2500.
Dell I8600c
15″ 1680×1050 screen, 1.4ghz Pentium-M, 60GB HDD, CDRW/DVD, 256MB ram, 128MB Radeon 9600, Bluetooth, 802.11g, FW400, 10/100 LAN.
Total costs: ?1600.
The hardware difference is just faster FW and LAN, but the premium is a whopping ?900. And if you downgrade the screen and video to a 64MB GeForce on the Dell, the difference will be over ?1100! The PB comes with more software, but I’m not going to pay that for a bunch if iApps anyway. Think of it this way, for the price of one 15″ PB, you can almost buy an Inspiron 8600 AND a complete iBook.
Ok, so the PB is the premium option, the iBook is much better value? Here we go.
Apple iBook 933
14″ 1024×768 screen, 933 mhz G4, 40GB HDD, CDRW/DVD, 256MB ram, 32MB Radeon 9200, 802.11g, FW400, 10/100 LAN.
Total costs: ?1570
Dell Inspiron 510m
15″ 1024×768 screen, 1.4 ghz Pentium-M, 60GB HDD, CDRW/DVD, 256MB ram, integrated Intel graphics, 802.11g, FW400, 10/100 LAN.
Total costs: ?1130, the only thing worse than the Apple is the integrated graphics. But if you do 2D work you’re fine, and you can upgrade to a 1400×1050 screen for only ?60. If you really want to play 3D games on your laptop:
Dell Inspiron 5150
15″ 1024×768 screen, 2.6 ghz P4-M, 60GB HDD, CDRW/DVD, 512MB ram, 32MB GeForce 5200, 802.11g, FW400, 10/100 LAN.
Total costs: ?1130. Again, you can upgrade the screen for ?60.
My conclusion, Apple laptops are overpriced in both the high-end and the low-end categories. And I didn’t even bother to check other PC laptop manufacturers than Dell.
Yes, you are limited in what customizations you can do to Aqua, but guess what, JBM …
You can run X 11 under OS X and you can tweak those X Windows any freakin’way you like. You can run KDE, Gnome, Windowmaker, or any desktop environment that’s been “finked” and it’s totally tweakable.
In fact, I hear tell that if you’re a real command line wizard you can set the system to open X 11 as it boots and you’ll never have to see Aqua again. See, Apple actually bundles its rather bulletproof X 11 with 10.3. It’s an easy install. Put disk #3 in and click continue instead of stopping with disk #2.
Personally, I flip between the two windowing systems on a regular basis.
So don’t tell me you can’t tweak OS X. It’s more tweakable than Linux because you have TWO different windowing systems to play with.
All prices are in Euros including VAT straight from the Apple and Dell store in the Netherlands. For some reason the Euro sign shows up as a question mark, although they previewed fine.
This is an article without substance. The author identified himself as a “traditional Mac Zealot,” and then proceeded to look down his nose at the great unwashed who use other operating systems. I am very happy he considers Windows workable. Still, I have yet to see it slowed down much by feature bloat, something I have seen with OS/X. Version 10.3 is significantly faster, but even then, a G4 feels slow to me.
As for Linux, it has its ideologues, but Torvalds himself is remarkably free of it. Linux has evolved, as a result into choices of distribution and emphases appropriate to the task.
A few other comments. Windows does well in a business environment with sysadmins who know what they are doing. With Windows it is possible to standardize on e-mail software and browsers that do not result is “crippled systems and other bizarre behavior.” While a firewall is built into Linux, in Windows they are widely available, AND they regulate what can send out data down to the individual dll. The author has seemingly failed to do any of these things on his in-laws’ system.
On Linux, I have never “hit the command line” to get a sound card working, ever. The one place the Mac has the lead is on wireless networking, but I expect Linux to catch up within the year.
I have three Macs – a G5 with a 19″ CRT, a G3 500 PowerBook and a G3 450 console. All run OS X, the latter two also have YDL installed. I use W2K on a Dell at work. There is simply no comparison in stability, ease of use, intuitive interface, availablity of quality software, ease of maintenance and long term value.
Sure, windows machines can be cheaper, but you get what you pay for. If price is the only factor, the go intel. Otherwise, check out a Mac.
Well, you are right for sure. But you haven’t mentioned the weight. Macs are at least half a kilo (a pound) lighter then the corresponding Dell machines. If you go down in waight you go up in price quite drastically. When I got my PB12″ I bought it because it was cheaper than IBM’s, Sony’s, Dell’s, FSiemens etc. in that weight category. I wanted just a machine to install linux on. Later OSX grew apon me…
i do like the mac. i have had a powerbokk 500mhz wich was realy nice until someone sat on it
. the i bougth a g4 1ghz
powermac and a cheap pc lapop. i noticed that when i wanted to do schoolwork on the mac i often booted up linux to write esays and code and stuff. i never relly liked ms offfice
.
so i sold the powermac and bougth a dual mp rig for linux instead witch gives a tad more peformance
.
but if i get a new laptop it will absolutly be an apple i just love those machines. osx is nice and all but i seldom use osx applications and ifeel that *nix applicaions are nicer in linux. hmms pherhaps i should say gnu applications.
I develop for FPGAs for fun, as well as doing development for embedded processors. I’ve long thought that mac would be worth a try, but without viable alternatives for these things, a mac is pretty worthless to me. Any suggestions? Virtual PC won’t cut the mustard because even on my Athlon XP 2500 Xilinx Webpack takes a minute or two to compile a 100 line (verilog) design.
Also, parallel/serial ports are needed for most of these purposes. How could I deal with that?
Thanks bud!
After I read your comment, I cancelled my G5 order.
For example, Mac OS X is bloatware.
People should be banned from forums for using silly generic terms such as: bloat, fud and troll.
To begin with, you are paying a premium for a Mac because you are getting decent quality hardware
Like the Powerbook case that looses its paint? Or the faulty logic boards on iBooks? Maybe you mean the new crappy interconnect on the mini iPods that breaks after a month of use?
On Linux, I have never “hit the command line” to get a sound card working, ever.
Reaaaaaly! you must be new to linux then…
Now try using said soundcard for MIDI playback or full duplex recording. Any luck?
It funny that you mention the weight of the 12″ PB. At 4.6 pounds, it is about the heaviest 12″ screen laptop you can find. You should check the new IBM X40 starting at $1500, it’s 2.7 pounds. Ok it doesn’t have an optical drive, but even with the external drive bay attached it’s just 4.0 pounds. And you can get lighter and smaller USB optical drives if you don’t want the IBM bay.
I never understood why people would want an optical drive in a ultra-portable. USB flash memory/hard disk or a cross-over lan cable is much more convenient for quick file transfers, and if you want to watch movies you can rip them to the hard disk at home. But if you really must have an optical drive built in, you can always get something like a Fujitsu P-series. Remember when Apple dropped the floppy and all those Mac users claimed that they never used floppies anyway? Well I haven’t used a cd/dvd in my laptop for a year. So here another option lacking in Apples line-up: an ultra-portable laptop without optical drive. You know, like the ancient Duos.
I used to secretly like OSX a lot. I used to yearn for it’s sleek,drop-shadowed,pin-striped,brushed metal UI. Lately i’ve been using Jaguar a lot for Photoshop and Illustrator work. You know, the “creative” things that macs are supposed to shine at. At the same time i was taking my work home on a photoshopped windows machine.
The machines are about the same age and the x86 machine was probably about $500 cheaper than the silver G4. I noticed a few things.
#1: the Mac UI isn’t as solid as it looks. There are a lot of little things that over time start to give OSX the “held together with scotch tape” feeling that Gnome and KDE suffer from. Except the scotch tape is a lot sexier. An example is error messages. When a message pops up it’s not bound to the erroneous window. Therefore, you may close the program that had a problem, and the error window is still there doing nothing!
#2: the windows version of many “creative” apps (flash,illustrator,photoshop,dreamweaver) is cleaner. In OSX there’s a constant feeling that you’re never really using the whole screen. The dock is always at the bottom waiting for the mouse to go down there and wake it up. And all the tool boxes are sort of floating around, not really “joined” to the main window you’re working in. In windows you never have tools just floating around on an empty desktop because there’s a backdrop to the application, so you always know what you’re working with. This is especially bad (in OSX) in Photoshop and Illustrator. The tools look exactly the same. The only way to casually tell the difference is the artwork above the main toolbox and even that is similar.
#3: Mac’s do NOT make up for their “premium” price by providing “premium” hardware. Macs haven’t been in a position to compete with the x86 world in 3 years. The G5’s are decent machines, and can probably best most P4s, but their laptops can’t get CLOSE to similarly priced x86 laptops. I won’t start talking about AMD Opteron CPUs because everyone here hopefully knows about them.
Even if OSX was ported to x86, I’m starting to think i still wouldn’t use it. I’ve come to really respect windows’ usability in the last few months and began to really hate OSX’s. Linux isn’t quite in a position to compete, but OSS developers know their weaknesses fairly well and i think we’ll see a linux desktop that is solidly better than XP by the time Longhorn comes out. After that it’ll be a battle again. Perhaps skyOS will be a true contender by then as well. One thing’s for sure: The better linux and windows get on x86 hardware, the less important OSX becomes, especially on PPC hardware.
I never understood why people would want an optical drive in a ultra-portable. USB flash memory/hard disk or a cross-over lan cable is much more convenient for quick file transfers, and if you want to watch movies you can rip them to the hard disk at home.
I don’t want to bloody rip movies to my HD to watch them!!!!
Duh!
To begin with, you are paying a premium for a Mac because you are getting decent quality hardware and a boatload of bundled applications (and those applications are of fairly good quality for their target market).
The only “high-quality” bit of (non-laptop) Apple hardware is the case, and maybe the motherboard. Everything else is off-the-shelf OEM stuff, the same as what you buy on Pricewatch. There is a definite price margin on Apple hardware. The G4 lines are worth half what Apple charges for them. The G5 line is actually priced good for what you get, but only because the Opteron platform is still relatively low-volume and expensive. Once Intel’s 64-bit x86 chip starts shipping in volume, Apple will have to lower prices or again be stuck in the premium price category.
articles like this bring out the Platform trolls like crazy.
why argue with these people? they lie, they contort the truth, and the make sweeping generalizations.
I must be addicted to my physiological reaction toward people who make comments like that because I keep reading to see if some one makes comments like those I classified above.
and no…I am not a Mac zealot.
” A basic install of Panther will take about 1 GB “
Yep. But so does an install of WindowsXP.
” And all the tool boxes are sort of floating around, not really “joined” to the main window you’re working in ”
That’s really a matter of personal prefrence. I like the way OSX does it. On windows it seems to me like Photoshop is taking up too much space. It’s just a matter of what works best for the user.
Once an OS does what you need it to do, it’s personal preference. I prefer OS X, but like many things about Windows.
Oh, and there is no such word as “virii”. This is faux Latin hypercorrectness. Latin words ending in -us form the plural in -i if they’re second declension nouns. However, “virus” is not. It is a fourth declension mass noun, and has no distinct plural. Its English plural is simply “viruses”.
Dell? I’d like to see it. Show me a stock Dimension running Linux.
There are two reasons Dell gets Windows XP for less than any OEM: volume and exclusivity. And it’s because of that deal that Dell will be the very last company to sell Linux desktops as home PCs, if it ever does. Because Dell will have to fork over another $20/machine to Microsoft if it ever does, and will lose one if it’s main advantages over other OEMs.
HP has quietly started selling business desktops with Mandrake and Suse, but *nobody* out there is selling home PCs running Linux. Walk into any chain store like Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Walmart etc. and you sure won’t find one. OK, Walmart.com has sketchy whitebox machines, but that’s a tad different … Joe Sixpack isn’t going to buy a computer brand he’s never heard of with an OS he’s never heard of without at least trying it first!
I got a Dell 400SC server to use as a workstation. Sure, it came with RedHat 9 … but just the CD, not installed.
And to get the onboard sound working, I had to download ALSA driver source code from Dell’s website and compile it. Dell provided an installer shell script and buildmodule routine so the driver is recompiled automatically whenever I upgrade my kernel (of course I have to know to always install the kernel source) … which I think is pretty neat, more than I expected from Dell. But that’s not the sort of crap a newbie is going work through!
G3/500? for $400??? Are you *insane*??? $430 will buy you a 2.6GHz Dell with a 17″ monitor. Yeah, you can say “you get what you pay for” all you want, but I’ve got an XDS D300 that’s been chugging since 1998. Right now, its been in my basement, which has been renovated for the last several months, working fine despite ingesting huge amounts of dust. I’ve got three Dell desktops in my room, and while the software is constantly a problem (typical spyware/virus-infested XP machines…) the hardware runs just great. Of course, since the only difference between a Dell and an Apple is the motherboard and the case (and since Dell uses modified Intel motherboards and custom-engineered cases), similar reliabilities are to be expected!
Oh, and I use OS X 10.2.8 on a G4 800MHz all the time. Its not too painful, but its definitely on the slow side. I’d shudder to think what OS X is like on a G3!
“#1: the Mac UI isn’t as solid as it looks. There are a lot of little things that over time start to give OSX the “held together with scotch tape” feeling that Gnome and KDE suffer from. Except the scotch tape is a lot sexier. An example is error messages. When a message pops up it’s not bound to the erroneous window. Therefore, you may close the program that had a problem, and the error window is still there doing nothing!”
Seriously, what are you talking about? There’s absolutely NO WAY that you quit an app in OS X and it left dialog boxes sitting around. It’s simply not possible. The only dialog that has anything to do with other apps that may be a left over error message is “The application WHATEVER has unexpectedly quit.” You must be confused
Second, Apple is actually making dialog boxes more usbale via “sheets” which are those little dialog boxes that are CONNECTED to the window they’re associated with.
Also, your comments on the use of floating palletes, many people prefer this to the Windows style and it’s actually been one of the major praises of Office v.X (which also uses floatng palletes) versus windows versions of Office.
I love open-source and I wished osx was totally open source.
But.. I would never even consider getting kde or gnome *cough* on my g4.
I hope some day there will be a totally free and open environment that can compete but that is not going to happen for a long time.
OsX is simply the best os distro at current time.
Why is it that the open source community IS capable of making excellent software, but LACKS vision?
Look around, and most you see is clones or look alikes. WHY is there no such project with a visionary approach as Next did years ago, or as Microsoft is doing now (as well as apple.. a bit), and especially Sun.
I think, maybe oss is too much built around the programmers, while those companies are build around loads of other kinds of people in addition.
Design is especially important as wel as marketing. And you cannot create an identity of an os by coppying it after an exsisting os. Not that you cannot copy at all, but pleez get the start button and the systray and the look alike open panels and the filebrowser-internetbrowser integration things out! (Same goes for osx copies or neXt copies)
well, cu
“Buying any sort of Mac hardware is a rip off, plain and simple. It doesn’t take long for a power user to realize there is nothing of substance on the Mac. A gaggle of iApps does not make a platform. ”
Well you obviously ar not a power user, OR you have not really studied the OS and the Hardware. Please take another look around, ’cause there is some interesting stuff going on. It’s definately more then some gathered lgpl software, and the hardware ir not that bad either.
Dell? I’d like to see it. Show me a stock Dimension running Linux.
There are two reasons Dell gets Windows XP for less than any OEM: volume and exclusivity. And it’s because of that deal that Dell will be the very last company to sell Linux desktops as home PCs, if it ever does. Because Dell will have to fork over another $20/machine to Microsoft if it ever does, and will lose one if it’s main advantages over other OEMs.
How about an Optiplex or Latitude?
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/alliances/en/lin…
G3/500? for $400??? Are you *insane*??? $430 will buy you a 2.6GHz Dell with a 17″ monitor. Yeah, you can say “you get what you pay for” all you want, but I’ve got an XDS D300 that’s been chugging since 1998.
Unfortunately the Dells priced at 400-500 dollars are unusable. They come with 128 MB of RAM which is just not going to cut it with WinXP. I find so many people who want to buy a 500 dollar computer but don’t realize that it’s just a marketing gimick. WinXP sucks unless you have at least 512MB of RAM. I know some people will argue with me but XP is dog slow otherwise. If you want a usable desktop you are going to spend at least $750 on it (for a total package), and even then you are only going to get a celeron and a crappy integrated graphics card.
just a few questions for you, but i know you won’t respond anyways.
1) have you ever used mac os x exclusively for any period of time
2) are you a pc gamer
3) do you build your own machines a lot (including the ugly ones with the windows and neon lights)
4) are you a UNIX user in the slightest bit (i.e. actually installed linux once or twice by yourself)
5) do you have a college degree, or are you even out of high school yet
6) what do you do professionally (if anything). is it computer related, such as programming, or is it general computer-user?
you’re more than likely a troll who’s never used os x, or barely used it. even if you have you don’t know what linux is. chances are you wouldn’t let go of windows because you actually think it’s a superior OS. you probably play counter-strike constantly because of what little you have in the professional or educational depts. since you so blindly believe that it’s SUCH a waste of money/time you clearly build your own machines out of the cheapest deals on pricewatch and think nothing should ever cost more than that. i’m just trying to get more info on you. i should do a psychoanalysis of you trolls. so interesting how someone can defend a vastly inferior operating system like windows.
Linux is now so easy to use and install I use Mepis and Lindows and Xandros and they are all easier than Windows for average user stuff… what with 10 minute installs and up and running for no configuration… I would love a Mac but cant afford it…
mepis cost me zero dollars and has everything I need and is so easy to use and I am a windows XP user till a few months ago… now if we could get OSX on an intel structured machine… if it is based on Unix why hasnt someone tried to port it…
> Unfortunately the Dells priced at 400-500 dollars are unusable. They come with 128 MB of RAM which is just not going to cut it with WinXP.
Ummm use Win2K? Runs fine on my Dell 400SC, crippled Celeron and all. Fedora (GNOME, KDE) runs even better.
Although I had to buy a Radeon 9200SE just to play Max Payne 2, it’s still < 400 bucks.
Who buys RAM from the manufacturer? I always get the absolute minimum RAM configuration, because manufacturers uniformly overcharge for RAM. Another 256MB of RAM (Kingston) is $50, shipped. As for being too hard for people — c’mon, my *dad* installs his own RAM! And if you can’t, you can get your local 12-year-old geek-in-training to do it for the price of an ice-cream.
I’m a switcher …… from Win 2k to Mac OS X to Windows XP. XP really is quite a nice system.
I have read it several times. The author has simply offered the suggestion that if you are not satisfied with your current operating and are thinking about what your alternatives are then one should at least consider a Macintosh.
He made it clear that he was not bashing Windows or *nix and even agreed that users could be satisified with whatever OS they are currently using. Note: his comment was for those who might be considering a change.
So, please, let’s stop the incessant bickering on things like cost, etc. Nothing is proven by the rantings on any side of the arguments. They are old and very tiresome. HOW ABOUT SOME INTELLIGENT discussions.
Because people would cludder it with cheap crap like Asound and Amptron drivers. And no one on the Windows side would purchase it, they would just rip it off like it was just some piece of crap software. Most linux people (who generally love MacOS X) believe that everything should be free, and would not pay for it even if it came with a free bar of gold and car washes for a year.
.02
I think Apple should port more of their software to Linux as well as OS X and Irix, like they do with Shake. Forget windows on the high end app’s.
“Thanks bud!
After I read your comment, I cancelled my G5 order.”
I will take your order then, I’m just about to upgrade soon!
I switched from Windows to Linux as a desktop OS when I lost a hard drive back in 2001. It was x-mas time or so. I went hard core red hat linux 7.1 or so with Ximian Desktop. At the time Evolution was new and the best way I knew to get it was Ximian’s Desktop.
I used this for maybe six months. I even bought Loki games and such so I could play some games on my new linux machine.
I don’t remember exactly what caused it, but there were things that just ‘didn’t work right’ and it was starting to drive me nuts. I’m not too demanding of a user I just wanted email, web surfing, games, and the occasionaly photography related thing.
So I bought the wife an iMac in July 2002. The idea being she reads her email & surfs the web, maybe uses print shop. I could play with iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto and the like and make movies and stuff of the kid.
I bought a PowerBook G4 550MHz on eBay, then a 12″ Powerbook in March 2003 and have not looked back. I actually sold my last desktop PC last month. I’d unplugged myself from the online games of DAOC and Star Wars completely and now use my Powerbook exclusively.
The thing I hate about Mac OS is limited now to one thing. Financial Software. Microsoft Money rocked. Quicken on Mac OS X is a big steaming pile of shit. And I swear they go out of their way to make it *not* work with the banking OFX standards. I don’t get it. It can’t be that hard, but they sure make it that way.
So I do my checkbook/finances on my work provided laptop on Windows. It bites that I can’t do this the way I want.
Ummm use Win2K? Runs fine on my Dell 400SC, crippled Celeron and all. Fedora (GNOME, KDE) runs even better.
Does the average consumer have a copy of Win2000 laying around? I don’t think so. Those machines come with WinXP and they are not suitable to run XP.
Who buys RAM from the manufacturer? I always get the absolute minimum RAM configuration, because manufacturers uniformly overcharge for RAM. Another 256MB of RAM (Kingston) is $50, shipped. As for being too hard for people — c’mon, my *dad* installs his own RAM! And if you can’t, you can get your local 12-year-old geek-in-training to do it for the price of an ice-cream.
I’m sorry to inform you but most people don’t want to open the case of their computer to do anything. It’s easy as hell to install memory and pci cards but you would be amazed at how many people will gladly pay a tech $30 rather than install it themself. There are a lot of people who don’t know anyone that can install memory for them. I deal with these people on a daily basis at work.
The most techinically oriented people are not going to buy those shitty PCs anyway. We build our own or when I need a crappy PC I buy a used one. The people that buy them are people who know nothing about computers and see what they think is a good deal.
I like the Mac, but some things just leave me scratching my head. For example, Mac OS X is bloatware. A basic install of Panther will take about 1 GB and doesn’t give you much to play with (not even the iTools or BSD subsystem, depending upon where your interests lie).
Given the price (and size) of hard disks, why do you care ? A gig of space out of an 80 (or even 40) gig hard disk is nothing.
Once you get into the realm of Unix applications, there is really no benefit to Mac OS X: X11 and several other major Unix programs are easier to install, a few great tools are installed by default, and the Terminal is very nice, *but* the package manager and compiling applications (if need be) is the same old drill.
Less screwing around keeping the system working is worth a lot of money to some people (like me).
Wow, I’m surprised that you haven’t been corrected thus far. Apple’s prices are in no way out of sync.
The cheapest Mac (eMac) costs AU$1350 new.
A bottom end Dell (Dimension 2400) costs about AU$900 new.
A 50% price difference is significant.
As a matter of fact, in many instances they offer systems that are much less expensive than the competition.
Many ? No. Some, perhaps, in certain circumstances.
I think what you’re getting at is that with buying a PC, you can buy less and therefore pay less, but that of course does not make a PC less expensive but rather… more *configurable*.
Or you can buy as much (or even more) and pay less.
PCs are cheaper *and* more configurable.
Is it all about the money then? You get what you’re paying for.. And since PC’s are cheap enough (or not as expensive as MAC’s) then PC buyers should compromise with the fact that the quality is poorer than a MAC..
No wonder why a more expensive piece of hardware performs better..
I guarantee you that 10.3 will run quite snappily on a G3/500 (I run it acceptably fast on a 350/320ram) and the prices on the 700 are a steal.
You have a *very* strange idea of “snappy”.
About a year ago I ditched a PB 667 (w/1Gb RAM), mainly because it was intolerably slow and frustrating to use (much as I liked OS X). The Latitude D600 (w/512Mb) running XP I replaced it with not long afterwards was, in terms of UI responsiveness and “snappiness” at least twice as fast, if not more.
I recently borrowed a friend’s PB800 to give 10.4 a month-long test run to see if the responsiveness had improved (which it has – markedly – but is still chunky in places). Because of that, I am contemplating buying an iBook when they are next updated. I think a 1Ghz G4, 512Mb RAM and the next version of OS X might nearly make it as snappy as my XP machine at work (A 1Ghz P3).
However, no G3 and most G4s will not run OS X “snappily”. Hell, a dual 2Ghz G5 *still* can’t resize windows smoothly. If you are satisfied with the performance of a 350Mhz or even 500Mhz G3 running OS X, then a ca. US$100 Pentium 3 will run XP “blazingly fast” in comparison.
I’m the guy whoi is able to install linux on almost everything and to get it fully working (I did it on a lot of pc, on some crappy ultra sparc 1, on an atari falcon, on imac, on powermac and last but not least on a old, old powerbook wth not enough ram to get the installer running) but the hardest thing I ever did with a computer was to setup a mac os 10.2 box with a win 2k one on a network and make the mac share its printer or even worse access to the shared printer on the pc….
1° the mac has the usb adsl connection and it shares it with the pc trhoug ethernet (it tooks forever to get it work before I dig a lot and found this wonderfull apps called IpShareNetX)
2° for the printer it didn’t even show the access smb printer…. You know what ? you have to press option while selectionning the add printer entry in the menu of the print manager just to see another “advanced” entry into this menu… you beleive you’ll be able to browse network and to just add the printer (as in the good old mac classic way), no, you have to enter a crypto url with the proper adress ip to get it work…….
and nothing……..
the best os which used magic key not even documented ????
it doesn’t even connect…
after a couple of hours, you’ll find some tips in the gimp print telling you that you have to edit by hand /etc/smb.conf to add the proper entry for printer… of course, you’re supposed to be some wizard to figure out what are those option means (I’m a lamers, I used for years gnomba to edit mine in linux or linuxconf or webmin or whatever)……
the nightmare is not over because you have to add by hand some symbolics links between /usr/libexec/cups/backend and smbclient….
and then it’s not over because mac os X is too clever for you, it doesn’t provide all the pdf2ps needed when you want to communicate whith the foregn printer……
I could go on forever on this topics but even when you want to access shared folder from the pc you have to manually connect to server.. ok, one times it’s not grave… BUT
this crappy things will add some garbage at the end of the name the next time you reboot so obviously it would not connect automatically…..
and don’t try to share your drives via samba without a 3rd party apps…. it doesn’t even start to work……..
even in the official mac support forum they link you to the gimp-print faq to do that…
I’ve been able to get it work but it took forever and even now, it’s more easy to move the printer each time my gf want to print….
Mac os X is cute, mac os X is easy, yeah, yeah…. even my mandrake 8.0 is more user friendly to make advanced stuf work….
so I assume, Eric Raymond was wrong, setting a network printer is harder in mac than in lintel.. I swear.
the only, only five star for mac os X is their 3rd party software, whatever you said it’s great to run flash mx, illustrator, photoshop, ms office while you’re on a X session connected to your linux box…….
The Horror!
All of these non factual ignorant posts have been posted here before ad nauseum, and probably by the same folks!
With OS X you get the best of both worlds with the headache of neither. Mac OS X has the commercial apps that most users want (MS Office, Adobe Suite, etc) without the eternal security issues of Windows. Mac OS X has most of the non-cost advantages of LINUX without the setup/configuration issues and the need to rely on applications that are, feature-wise, 50-75% of their commercial counterparts.
Add to that:
1) X11 client allowing tons of Unix and other open source apps to run on the desktop.
2) The DarWine project promises the ability to run Windows x86 software on the Mac without Windows emulation.
3) Unix Terminal without emulation.
4) Cool technologies like Rendezvous, that is doing for networking what Plug & Play has done for devices.
5) Native PDF, which for the average user is a godsend.
You get the idea
…is because choice is so limited. Just imagine if a linux company was to set up and make its own distro that would only work on a small, controlled subset of hardware. Everything would “just work”.
IMHO, companies like Apple and Sun know exactly what they’re doing. In order to make things easier for the user, you have to limit his/her choices. This is why GUI is easier to use than CL. The GUI drastically limits what the user can input into an application.
Not only are the top of the line mac notebooks way overpriced, but way underpowered. A 1.3ghz G4 is top of the line mac notebook? give me a break. I was willing to give Apple a chance when doing research for my new notebook, but when comparing what you get and the price to what someone like http://www.pctorque.com gives you it was a no-brainer to go with x86. Now granted, I’m not talking about an ultra-portable. Pentium-M will give you more bang for the buck in that regards anyway. I’m talking about a desktop replacement machine which is becoming a hot market. Apple just doesn’t have anything in the same league as x86 until they get G5s in their notebooks. And of course it’ll still be way more expensive.
This whole discussion has proved (yet again) that some people prefer Macs, some prefer Windows, the majority don’t know and/or don’t care (but use Windows because it’s ubiquitous), and few are likely to ever change their opinion.
I very much agree with the statement that Mac is Linux without the headache. I use Linux since 1996, so I would assume I know the system. I also used Mac OS 7-9 which I did not like very much. I recently got a new Mac box with OS X and I find it extremely nice. It combines the worlds of Windows with good applications and a nice interface and of Linux with its excellent development support (which is my profession).
I can do anything I want on the Mac. Programming in various languages, run most Linux apps in X11, have access to the powerful Linux commandline development tools, run native Cocoa apps, do word processing with Office X and OpenOffice and play some games. The integration of Java into OS X blows me away. Java, which is certainly not desktop-ready on Win32, indeed would be a top-notch choice on OS X.
I would not give an OS X to the average non-IT employee because they are often reluctant to any changes, but for people in the IT business I personally consider OS X a very interesting system. The only which requires me to boot Windows occasionally is to run code through a Win32 compiler to get some app ready to be shipped to the customers, as that’s what the majority of the common world is using. By the way, what’s the deal with VirtualPC on G5… Vaporware?
quote: “In windows you never have tools just floating around on an empty desktop because there’s a backdrop to the application, so you always know what you’re working with. This is especially bad (in OSX) in Photoshop and Illustrator. The tools look exactly the same. The only way to casually tell the difference is the artwork above the main toolbox and even that is similar.”
If you work them in Windows you work them on a Mac, it’s the same exact piece of software, with the same exact pictograms, the same exact placement, the same exact toolboxes… even Photoshop and Illustrator have similar interfaces to make things easier to someone who understands one but never touched the other.
I have both platforms and to me it is the same crap.
Personally I prefer a Mac and OS X (Panther) just because of its simple and minimalistic behaviour, I relate to that. And generally I like having things done without wasting time with OS bureaucracy.
Sometimes when I’m on the road I have to carry my lame old HP (a P3 500) w/256MB mem… yeah it is painfully slow, and painfully heavy (Just can’t wait to get a replacement for that), but I still need to have things done and I can’t excuse myself saying “You know, my laptop is sh*t and I don’t dig Photoshop on windows” .. Imagine me getting a headbutt after that comment.
But when working essentially with 2D/vector design programs it just goes down to taste, aesthetics and what you’re willing to spend. It’s completely irrelevant where you work with those two apps as long as you know HOW to work with them.
>>>OK. Give me a Mac that has hardware that is as inexpensive as my “crappy” ASUS motherboard and Lian-Li Case and I’ll gladly “settle” on “non premium” hardware. The only thing premium about Mac hardware is the price.
lian li?
lol rotflmao. dude, if you consider a lian li case tight, you might need glasses. sure it’s aluminum, but it looks like a giant block head. Can that thing get any more square?
I’ll take a piece of garbage dell case any day over lian li.
lol.
no thanks. i’ll stick with my antec no frills case…it works just fine for my dually opteron rig.
now the G5 case…that _is_ a work of art, AND functional.
and the aluminum powerbooks? you can’t really find a better looking notebook. (though i won’t buy one till they go G5, cause they are too slow)
just admit it, you are a 11 year old lanboy wannabe.
probably pretty funny to see some 4’9″ tall kid lugging his 200pound lian li to lan parties.
(typing this from a dell mobile precision m60, dual booting xp and slack)
I totally agree, IME Linux requires constant work and effort to use. When running Linux I was spending several hours each night playing with config files and reading FAQs and HowTos. Even after 3 or 4 months I was still struggling to get everything working smoothly. Graphics problems, sound problems, problems running needed Windows software using WINE, problems with USB storage devices and particularly network problems. For me Linux has been nothing but a source of hassle and frustration, it wasted more of my time in a few months than Windows has in the last 10 years.
I never got filesharing using Samba working properly between the Linux system and the other machines on my network. Even though I spent weeks working on it and the network itself was working fine. I could see the samba shares from Windows but accessing them was too slow to be usable. OTOH setting up the whole windows network with file and internet connection sharing only took a few minutes. It was so easy I almost couldn’t believe it was working perfectly with so little time and effort spent. Adding a Mac OS system to the network was totally trivial too.
If you can get a Linux geek to setup and administer the system for you, or you enjoy spending all your free time playing with an OS, then Linux may be fine for you. But for me a system that just works without all that hassle is worth a bit of extra money.
Mac OS X and Windows XP are both amazingly easy to use and well designed OSes IMO. Which is the better OS just comes down to your personal preferences and needs.
“I think Apple should port more of their software to Linux as well as OS X and Irix, like they do with Shake. Forget windows on the high end app’s. ”
Shake was available for Windows until Apple bought it.
There are quite a few very high-end applications that have no counterpart on the Macintosh and never have.
Sorry to hear that your experience was troublesome, but do understand that its certainly not the only way things could happen. We dual-boot Windows and Linux at work (RedHat 9), and the machines Just Work (TM). Install went flawlessly, the (vanilla) hardware was detected, and RedHat’s GUI tools made it easy to set up filesharing.
In general, I’d put it this way: someone who has had an equal amount of experience using Linux and Windows will find that the easy stuff in both is easy. The intermediate stuff is usually more complex in Linux, and more straightforward in Windows. The hard stuff is tractable in Linux, and impossible in Windows. Examples:
– Basic setup actions are easily done via YaST or redhat’s control panel. Both are between Windows Control Center and Windows Management Console is power and ease-of-use.
– Intermediate stuff like setting up Wine is less straightforward. Windows tends to have GUIs for everything, like intermediate stuff in Linux is often relegated to text files. Of course, its usually not as bad as it looks at first. Take setting up wine for example: an experienced Linux user would know to use winesetup instead of mucking with ./wine/config. This is a matter of experience. Windows users are used to installing a program, and diving into the GUI to see what gadget does what they want. Linux users are used to Googling for a few minutes to determine the best plan of attack before trying to solve a problem. Often, this will yield various tools that make the problem much easier to solve.
– Linux makes hard things (getting misbehaving hardware to work) possible, while Windows makes it impossible. To this day, I’ve got 2 Windows machines that just refuse to play nicely with my wireless network. One has a connection that cuts in and out, while another works only if you uninstall and reinstall the network bridge driver after each reboot. In Linux, hard things are usually more complex off the bat. For example, setting up that network bridge would require messing with netfilter, as opposed to Windows where its a two-click affair. However, when netfilter failed, it would leave behind tons of debug info and log output, and a Google search would lead you quickly to possible solutions. In Windows, you’d get no usable debug output, and since the failure is in a closed-source, vendor-specific driver, you won’t find any problem solution info online.
“2) The DarWine project promises the ability to run Windows x86 software on the Mac without Windows emulation. ”
Can’t be done without emulation. DarWine is using the QEMU x86 emulator.
“Unix Terminal without emulation.”
Pretty much any platform has this available.
just admit it, you are a 11 year old lanboy wannabe.
You’re the one who used “rotflmao” and “lol” and no capital letters in you’re post, and he’s the 11-year-old lanboy wannabe?
“Is it all about the money then? You get what you’re paying for.. And since PC’s are cheap enough (or not as expensive as MAC’s) then PC buyers should compromise with the fact that the quality is poorer than a MAC..”
Which, of course, isn’t true.
“No wonder why a more expensive piece of hardware performs better..”
Probably because it doesn’t.
I agree that Mac OSX is a very compelling option. However, its marriage to the PowerPC platform prevents it from ever capturing enough marketshare to truly compete with Windows. Ease of use is its strongest selling point among non-Windows operating systems. However, for the most part, the people who would find this the most compelling lack the technical expertise to have enough confidence to purchase an alternative hardware platform.
As a very technical person, I’m happy enough with opensource. I have fluxbox for when I want something minimal and I have Gnome2 when I want something user friendly.
In my opinion, a full port of MacOS X to x86 (not just Darwin) would be the only real competitor to Windows on your everyday Desktop, but we all know that will never happen. Therefore, I think the only hope for any real marketshare growth for MacOS is through laptops. Since laptops aren’t quite as prone to commodity hardware, PPC doesn’t have the same price or configurability disadvantages. However, by the time any marketshare can be found through this route, the usability of open source environments will have advanced far enough for MacOS to lose most of its advantage.
So, the way I see it, MacOS’s market positioning just doesn’t appeal to enough users to carve out much more of a niche than it has now.
In windows you never have tools just floating around on an empty desktop because there’s a backdrop to the application, so you always know what you’re working with.
Oh give me a break. Why do I need a backdrop window for an *app*. I already have a desktop. Do I need yet another useless window construct adding to the clutter on the screen?
“Oh give me a break. Why do I need a backdrop window for an *app*. I already have a desktop. Do I need yet another useless window construct adding to the clutter on the screen?”
Like he said – it’s a good way to know what application a toolbar is attached to.
dude, I’m tired of your negative posts here.
pretty much you and the hashish dude post here all negative about Apple.
you know , in the real world, mac’s are not as bad as you want to keep posting to try and change minds.
I have a suggestion, get a life, dude.
and also windows id=s good , linix is good, they are all good.
Go outside, meet a girl, drink a beer, and let the hatred go.
Reaaaaaly! you must be new to linux then…
Now try using said soundcard for MIDI playback or full duplex recording. Any luck?
On my laptop with an Intel 810 chipset, I never bothered. If the movies play, I’m happy. On a desktop with a Turtle Beach card, duplex playback and MIDI was easy with ALSA. My distribution (Libranet) installed it with the click of a button.
As for my length of Linux use, no I don’t go back to Slackware one. I started trying to install Linux three years ago, and switched over about a year ago. So you are right, recent Linux is far easier to configure than older versions.
My own needs include the usual Internet stuff, personal finance and word processing, but also amateur photography. I need to be able to drive negative and slide scanners. I need to process Canon RAW digital camera files. Vuescan drives all my scanners, and is available on multiple platforms. The rest was available via Debian’s APT.
i have been using linux since i was 12 in the days of Red hate 4.0 back when they still had that ugly tophat for the logo. I have played with mandrake, suse, and now im kicking it with Gentoo. I love my ability to mold my OS to what i see fit. But when the Titanium powerbooks came out and i need a portable computer i was like hmm looks nice. When OS X came out i was like FOOOK YA. I have all the power of the main ingrediants of free BSD, the ease off use off Windows, and the support from both the Thrid party compaines like Adobe (i love my photoshop), and Macromedia, and also the Support of the open source community (Video lan Client , nuff said). For all and all i only get crashes on my powerbook when i know im doing something i should be doing and only then only the application will crash not the system (and giving me the black and white text kernal panic of doom i only had those in 10.0 beta) all in all i love My Mac OS X . I miss Theme Changer (before that ugly ass unisanities gui kits) that was the most robust and very simple way of making themes to change the look of the OS but give it time youll see even more Adoption by apple into the themeing structure for personalisation off the OS. Not to mention if i dont want to run aqua i can always type >Console at the login screen and go right to the good ol CLI then type Start X and get into either Gnome or KDE or Blackbox so im happy with that too.
ANyway to get to the end of this rant OS X is just i think the perfect blend of Closed and Open Source software. all i need now is the ability to set up jails like in FreeBSD, and i will be plenty happy
oh and last but not least
Final Cut Pro 4 and Shake 3, Protools, and Garageband
Nuff Said
I think I read that there aren’t enought high-end or technical pieces of software for the Mac. I’m an engineer – not a computer guy – a mechanical engineer, but I’ll briefly go through my experience. Two years ago I bought a Dell 8200 with XP pre-loaded. I later installed gentoo, but now, I run libranet (debian – commerical) and it is very stable.
One year ago, I purchased a G3 Mac iBook only because I wanted a lightweight laptop which used *NIX and had a stable GUI. OS X worked fine on the G3. Last month, my iBook was stolen. Fortunetly, I had a script which rsync’d my documents with my Dell every night. That evening – I knew that I had to get a new Mac G4. My reasons why are:
1) I can run Matlab, Mathematica, Maple, Excel, OpenOffice, Scilab, Octave, Gnuplot, etc… all of these run very smoothly.
2) If I need to write code, it is the easiest thing in the world to use kwrite (or even XCode!) to code in gcc or g77. XP makes it very difficult for me to write my own code. Why doesn’t XP promote work by having something free like XCode???
3) Scripting – some of my numerical codes are written for mainframes. It is very simple to write an sh script to move files around – write necessary directories and config files, etc, automatically.
4) Emacs…
5) PDF’s! I write most of my documents in LaTeX. Of course, I can easily make a PDF with TeX, but I can “print to PDF” from any program in OS X. Also, many technical papers are still in PostScript. Do you know how difficult it is to find a good ghostscript for Windows?
6) The best part about OS X is that it combines the functionality of Linux with the ease and power of a nice GUI. Yes, I do run KDE 3.2 on my Dell – but I also run it on my Mac. My Mac has never crashed on me – but when I ran XP on my Dell, this occurred often when some of my calculations took up to many resources. Furthermore, while most technical pieces of software come in Linux variants as well as OS X, they play “nicer” in OS X than they do in Linux.
7) Hardware – does anyone know how difficult it was to install gentoo on my Dell when I had a state-of-the-art ATI video card??? OpenGL was non-existant for a month while I played with drivers.
The only thing I miss about OS X is text highlighting copy and middle button paste… Can’t win them all I guess.
Anyway – For my needs, I won’t buy another Intel machine again.
-Jon
The bottom line is that Apple hardware is no better than anything you would get on most commodity x86 hardware. Everybody knows it, but for some odd reason some Mac people keep on trying to perpetuate this myth. The only reason I can think of is because they feel a little guilty for overpaying for hardware. They should just admit that Apple hardware is overpriced but they are willing to pay a premium on it for the pleasure of running OSX.
So many people want OSX on x86, but until Jobs is gone from Apple, it’s just not going to happen. Jobs has had a hardware fetish from day 1 and this is unlikely to change – especially now that the powerpc supply problems seem to be gone for the moment.
That’s why Apple will always be a niche market, which is fine, except for when it’s market share gets to a point where software developers just don’t think it’s worth the effort – which is already starting to happen. Then Apple could face real trouble, because it’s unlikely that Apple will be able to write all their own software.
7) Hardware – does anyone know how difficult it was to install gentoo on my Dell when I had a state-of-the-art ATI video card??? OpenGL was non-existant for a month while I played with drivers.
Installing the ati drivers should be as easy as “emerge ati-drivers”. If that doesn’t work you just download them from ati and run a script to build and install for your particular kernel. The harder part is getting the XFree86config-4 file setup properly. For my Sager notebook, I just popped knoppix in, got a reasonable config file and then merged that with the configuration utility that ATI supplies.
I apologize: I mistyped. I had an NVidia GeForce 4 Go card – not ATI. At the time, NVidia had very preliminary versions of the Linux drivers. It wasn’t until about 4-5 months after I had the computer, that they finally had an OpenGL driver which worked well with my system. I must have installed 4 different driver versions…
One of their later versions actually had decreased OpenGL performance than a previous driver. Anyway, all I was trying to say is that all of my Mac hardware inherently works with my software. It’s just nice.
I agree about the XF4 config file. It was very difficult to get a dual-monitor view with my NVidia card in my config. That’s another great part about Mac’s – i don’t have to work with XFree86config-4!!!
-Jon
I’m a big gamer. I don’t really agree with the article when it stated that if one was big into games, they’d consider a console anyway. I have console systems and a PC for gaming, and I find that each platform has a unique gameplay experience to offer.
So I’d gladly switch to mac, but all I need are the games. Sure a lot of the newer major games are getting ported to mac, but the PC game market is really so much larger than it is on a mac. It’s more of an afterthought than anything, so until that changes, I’ll be chugging away on a PC — though I love the idea of OSX.
So I’d gladly switch to mac, but all I need are the games. Sure a lot of the newer major games are getting ported to mac, but the PC game market is really so much larger than it is on a mac. It’s more of an afterthought than anything, so until that changes, I’ll be chugging away on a PC — though I love the idea of OSX.
Switching doesn’t mean you have to throw out your pc. I primarily use Mac OS X, but also still use Windows (for an occasional game) and Linux (for bringing crappy old computers back to life :-))
If you ever want to buy a notebook, buy an ibook or powerbook. Notebooks aren’t suited to gamers anyway, but make an ideal work-machine.
“Yeah, it’s quite slow, although I’m not too sure about the compatibility. I did some Word documents on a Win2k workstation using Office 2000. Tried opening them up using Office X and the graphs (which were pasted into the original) came out like a negative photo!”
Things like that can happen within Windows. I have known a Word doc crash the computer right back to rebooting, when opened in a different copy of Word on Win2k.
These are problems with Microsoft software, not with OS X.
I just bought a Powerbook 17″ in addition to my Thinkpad T40p (1.6GHz PentiumM 768MB 5400RPM HD 14″ 1400×1050 ATI FGL9000/64) and Thinkpad A31 (P4 1.6GHz 512MB 4200RPM HD 15″ 1400×1050 ATI M7500/32). The Mac’s only problem seems to be game performance, and I’m not sure why. The video card is better (ATI M9600/64), maybe it’s the bus.
Everything else is as fast or faster than the 2 Thinkpads. Things are in most cases also easier (really). For example, my MX900 Bluetooth mouse doesn’t need reconnecting every time I bring the machine from sleep, on my T40p WXPP I need to reconnect it each time!
Anyway, I just got the Powerboook so I’m not an authority just yet, but I am starting to really like MacOSX and Aqua, and it’s only been 4 days!
Please don’t discount another platform, whatever platform, until you’ve really tried it and compared it to equivalently-dated technology. I’ve tried them all, and they all have their faults (1 mouse button? fixing dependencies?)
Anyway…
get’s it in the chops.
‘switching’ is for non-techies.
no self respecting geek who visits osnews.com would switch.
we just “add”.
here, running, pentium 4, athlon, opteron, ppc g3, ppc g4, 12″ alum powerbook, decstation 500 (dec alpha), pentium-m(centrino), pentium 2….
running a variety of operating systems, os9, os x, xp, slackware, freebsd, dos, mandrake, and yellowdog.
stop the idiocy. are you a tech enthusiasts expanding your skills? or are you a whining fanboy of a single niche?
Then Apple could face real trouble, because it’s unlikely that Apple will be able to write all their own software.
Why not? Isn’t that what Microsoft does? They write the OS, the word processor, the databases, the spreadsheet, the presentation program, the email client and server, the development systems, the project manager, the web browser, the web page creation app, the charting application, the media player, the games, etc, etc, etc.
That pretty much leaves scraps and vertical apps for everyone else.
“I don’t care if my OS is full of holes and crashes 12 times a day as long as I can change my desktop theme.”
Because you are not smart enough, and too cheap to own a Mac.
I love you clowns, who spout Mac is crap.
Here’s an oldie but a goodie about a group of Mac Zealots.
Tell us how stupid these people are.
“For our [Mars] landing site work, we always get the highest-end desktop Mac we can find…….”
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/perl/story/32837.html
“Oh yeah, I forgot, no games!”
( Bill Gates Loves You )
I own both a Mac (powerbook g4) and a Linux PC and the only thing the Mac does better is hardware integration and commercial video and sound applications, and that’s why I chose it for the laptop rather than doing the Linux on Windows dance on a Intel laptop. That wouldn’t have happened if I had been able to by a Debian or Mandrake loaded laptop in Europe, with the standard support and guarantee agreements, or at least, an osless laptop with “Linux ready” hardware.
Linux is a much better candidate for one size fits all (although it’s still not the case, it’s getting there) : a few names illustrate it : Mandrake (personal desktop), Montavista (embedded), RedHat(enterprise), Agnula (sound processing), Xandros (corporate desktop), clusterKnoppix (clustering). These are just examples of how linux can be cut to size. But more importantly, anyone with the right skills can do it. MacOS can be cut to size but only by Apple.
“dude, I’m tired of your negative posts here.
pretty much you and the hashish dude post here all negative about Apple.”
Actually, my posts aren’t so much negative about Apple, but disagreeing with posts that are negative about the other platforms.
“you know , in the real world, mac’s are not as bad as you want to keep posting to try and change minds.”
I’m not trying to change minds.