IT-Enquirer has a three-part special on Mac OS X 10.4: Part 1, 2 and 3. Update: I declare the comments section on this news item to be a disaster zone. It can’t be saved. Just stay away.
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Special
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
because I am doing a research paper for my Computer Science Seminar class and I have all these PDF files….. a lot of PDF files. searching them all for relevant information is tedious, but if I had Spotlight now, I could just search for what I need and it will pop up with the PDFs that I should look at as well as the pages to see if I can use the information.
Yes, I do believe that Tiger will mark the beginning of substantial user migration to the macintosh platform; even at the business level.
How does Spotlight compare to Beagle?
http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/
People should stop comparing a Mac to a self-built x86 machine. Compare a Mac to a similair x86 from the Vaio range, for instance. You’ll see that a Mac is far from expensive.
And, when you buy that Vaio, you’ll still be stuck with Windows or Linux.
>>Also, feel free to build your own PPC-based mainboard and sell computers that are compatible with Macs. IBM and Freescale will be glad to sell you some G4s and G5s (and in fact the CPUs are AFAIK cheaper than Intel CPUs, though not cheaper than AMD ones).
You still can’t run MACOSX unless you buy from Apple!!!
Talk about lockin, eh? LOL
LOL, this was one of the best attempts at trolling I have seen in a while. Congrats….
>>And, when you buy that Vaio, you’ll still be stuck with Windows or Linux.
Arent you a SkyOS fanboy? What are you running SkyOS on? Troll.
Humor is a strange concept.
>>Humor is a strange concept.
So were you being funny on every Linux thread you posted on too?
Buddy don’t pass trolling off as sarcasm.
>>Humor is a strange concept.
So were you being funny on every Linux thread you posted on too?
Buddy don’t pass trolling off as sarcasm.
No, I wasn’t. But since when was this thread about Linux?
The point I made about that you should compare a Mac to a Vaio, and not a self-built x86, still stands. As usual, you can’t counter this argument.
>>No, I wasn’t. But since when was this thread about Linux?
Its not. Its about how you cover up your trolling by calling it sarcasm.
>>The point I made about that you should compare a Mac to a Vaio, and not a self-built x86, still stands.
Ofcourse it does, I never said it didnt.
>>As usual, you can’t counter this argument.
“As usual”? First, I’ve never talked to you before. Second, “this argument” wasent what I was arguing.
4-5 PC’s for the price of one mac means you can get a PC with a monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, pre-installed OS for less than $200. Tell me your secret vender, because i’ve got to get one of those.
Oh wait, you mistook PC for Playstation, you 13 year old fan-boy. (<–yes, thats a personal attack. You earned it)
Check Consumer Reports, they seem to be convinced you’re wrong.
well, the interface looks similar to that of the spotlight search window. But unless it is a filesystem level metadata indexing service that automatically updates as files are created and modified, then it’s not really close to the scope of spotlight. Kind of like how quicktime isn’t really just a media player.
Look at this screenshot: http://www.it-enquirer.com/media/burnfolder_big.jpg
The UI has gotten so totally schizo! It’s got the Metal background and buttons, Aqua buttons in the dialog box, and a Platinum-style list header in the main window. In this: http://www.it-enquirer.com/smartfolder.html shot, you can see Finder with the Metal background and buttons, Platinum buttons in the “Smart Folder” area, and even a combobox with a Platinum drop-down button, but an Aqua scrollbar slider! In the preferences shots, you see the Platinum background with Aqua buttons. And hmm, is that a hint of Pinstripe in the Platinum background? Why, yes it is! (zoom in and see).
Man, for all the abuse Linux get’s about UI consistency, at least we don’t have three different UI styles in the same program, or two different styles in the *same widget*.
If not I will anyway….
1)burn folders seem an odd ‘feature’, I must admit i dont understand what marks them out. Are they simply smart folders with a burn button?
2)Spotlight does seem nice, but im worried that it will require a high spec machine to keep it ticking, will a crt iMac (500 odd mhz) cope with this imposed strain for example?
>>burn folders seem an odd ‘feature’, I must admit i dont understand what marks them out. Are they simply smart folders with a burn button?
I *think* its like nautilus-burn in GNOME. A specific folder that you can drag/drop and burn.
I love how articles about OSX always turn into flamewars about how overpriced Apple’s hardware is. Guess what, I do everything on my Mac and I don’t really care that you think I paid too much for it. iBooks, btw, are NOT overpriced; I think I’ll be getting one of those next.
“2)Spotlight does seem nice, but im worried that it will require a high spec machine to keep it ticking, will a crt iMac (500 odd mhz) cope with this imposed strain for example?”
The WWDC Public Preview runs great in my iBook G4 800Mhz.. I know that laters builds are considerably faster..
Anyway, i think that spotlight requires more a faster hard disk than a CPU.. So.. Buy a faster firewire 400 disk if you want to make hard use of it
I don’t think it’ll be a concern for you.. Spotlight doesn’t need a 3Ghz CPU like longhorn to run a sql database..
You MAC People are touchy…
I never said monitor, keyboard etc…
My prices though were not too far off.
But there are a few things to this article response to Renaldo’s quote:
“Yes, I do believe that Tiger will mark the beginning of substantial user migration to the macintosh platform; even at the business level.”
I only know about a dozen guys/gals with MAC’s, but each have had their share of “Superior Hardware” issues.
Hardware goes bad.
Most people know, MAC has better hardware… then a e-machine or standard Dell, but most shops that are using Linux and even a fair amount using Windows, are building their own. That said, I admit my pricing was off, because some machines do not need anywhere near the power of a MAC or a well built PC with either Linux or Windows.
Most businesses (that I have had dealings with) have different computing needs for different departments or personnel. Some just office apps. And email, others doing a little more number crunching and multi-tasking.
I guess a good analogy would be that MAC’s are the off road 4 wheel drives of the computers. And MAC’s are a show room model. Where as many others build their own 4WD vehicles and tackle the same terrain as the MAC’s.
And with that philosophy, there is where Apple is missing the boat.
The majority of people, businesses included do not need 4 wheel drive and a little escort gets them going fine. And the companies will not budget a jeep for everyone when they are not ever going to go off-road.
I am not, repeat NOT knocking the quality of a MAC, just the foolishness of Steve Jobs trying to get rich on each machine.
I like how MAC’s look and run, and I wish they would not be so proprietary and have a much larger share of the market that they deserve.
Thanks and no offense intended, just venting some disappointments.
They are overpriced. OSX is RAM hungry so you need to go with the “512” option with your powermac. Get a powermac with 160 meg hdd, 128 meg ATI 9600,only a 1.8 Ghz proc, and protection plan = $1,973.00. All the same specs as my 2 year old, 2.4 GHz Dell I got for less than that. You may say you think OSX is the best OS, fine. But please stop trying to argue that Mac’s are cheaper.
Total Cost of Ownership includes maintenance and upkeep of the system, as well as expected life performance of the entire system, including all its subcomponents.
DELL is very well aware that most people purchase a system every 18 months.
DELL is also very well aware the average Mac has a 5 to 6 year life expectancy.
They are counting on the ignorance of the average user who like leasing cars needs a fix every 18 months.
Apple is counting on slowly growing their base, over time. Apple knows most Mac users own two or three systems.
Apple knows that if nearly half of all Apple-store first time Mac purchases are from Windows users they are going to grow their base.
Let’s revisit this in 5 years.
Microsoft will most likely lose a solid 10-15% of their base to Linux.
Apple will grow its base by roughly 150%.
If Windows Users are 200 Million strong then they expect to lose 15% of those to Linux users.
What hasn’t changed is the total number of PC owners growing the base which is already saturated.
The Mac base will continue to grow. It had 1/10th of the 200 Million reported no less than 2 years ago.
At 150% increase that would put them up to 30 million. Compared to x86/amd it doesn’t seem like much but it most certainly will as that curve continues to gain momentum.
Linux isn’t creating new First time Computer Users. It is creating a pool of disgruntled and seasoned Computer Users.
I use Debian Linux. I love it.
I worked at NeXT and Apple.
I love OS X.
I’ll purchase both, but the ratio will be 3 Macs for every 1 AMD based Linux system.
Why? I want seasoned, quality, industry top support that covers bumper to bumper the investment I make.
I don’t play video games. Most technically capable people who have addictive personalities towards computer games buy PCs to run Linux on because they are slaves to the games which predominantly are on Windows.
Microsoft knows this and that is why they invented the Xbox and their MediaCenter solution base.
People who love Linux for development most often love developing on OS X. Powerbooks run both. Linus develops on Power PC.
Do the math.
Dissing PowerMacs as too expensive without taking any real measure of what work one does is completely missing the selling point of Apple.
Apple and Steve has been about quality productive work from the small developer to the enterprise market.
NeXT was all about high-end enterprise clients. I know I supported many of them. It was about designing solutions for the many, supported from just a few.
OS X carries on this tradition.
Expect it to just be extended with all markets Apple persues.
Linux needs to take notes. KDE group more than welcomes the help from Apple’s WebCore Safari team.
I use Konqueror daily. Without the help from Safari KHTML/KJS would be a year or more behind where it is today.
Be thankful Apple works well with Linux.
Marc, you have a lot of points there!
But 18 month turn around? Not for the average business!
What company do you work for that still has an exuberant amount for spending on IT.
Most US companies have been making news for the past few years on IT lay-offs and just plain cutting and new IT related purchases.
I have worked for IBM, PWC, on the Global scale, and then also for some companies with less then 1000 employees, and also for companies with around 75 – 100 employees.
Most all these companies still have PC’s running Win 95. Old beater PC’s doing lighter jobs, but every company I know has newer PC’s and older PC’s. With the average of PC being 4 – 6 years old. They can last as long as MAC’s can and probably percentage wise do!
But the older PC’s cannot handle the newer OSes for Windows. However the few Linux boxes we are starting to use for the desktop work fine. We are not using the new KDE for them (too resource intensive) but are using the FVWM manager and it runs Open Office just as fast as the newer MAC’s and Windows XP run MS office.
Now on the other hand, I have heard that the older MAC’s can run the newer OS X pretty well.
But the MAC people I know with MAC’s replace them for the same reasons their PC counterparts do, They want the bigger one, the newer one, the faster one, seldom is it that they have to, they just find the excuses. Me included. My ACER 486 is still running as a firewall, print server and file server in my home set up.
Tell me over all they have fewer problems, but they do have their problems and surprisingly even cheap hardware can last a long time. But don’t dish out 18 months.
“while Burnable Folders are simply collections of dragged items that you wish to transfer to a CD or DVD.”
Interesting to see OS X copying Linux (nautilus-cd-burner), for a change
omg, that’s schizo indeed! I was already wondering about the whole brushed metal thing, but these screenshots show that they have totally lost control. What is it, some random() function creeped into the api’s? A metal dropdown with an aqua scrollbar?!?!
And how does the burn folder represent a device in real-life anyway?
To answer myself:
could it be that OSX is moving towards an all metal look? I was thinking about Lonhorn shots which combine the new looks with some old graphics, simply because it’s in development. It could be that what we’re seeing is a transition from aqua to metal. Or am I talking nonsense here?
“All the same specs as my 2 year old, 2.4 GHz Dell I got for less than that.”
A G5 1,8Ghz is more like a 3Ghz P4, it can also run 64 bit software..
Your PC has Firewire 800? Gigabit Ethernet? Serial ATA? Digital 5.1 audio? etc etc.. These things cost money, guy..
Anyway, i have to admit that the PowerMac 1,8Ghz is today a little overpriced (depends on what you compare to it), Apple simplily doesn’t want to compete with their iMac G5 17″.
How much noise does your Dell PC? How much CPU resources takes antivirus & spyware software on your machine?
Also, The ATI Radeon 9600 is a XT version, not the 2 years old Pro version.. :/ wich is slower..
I’m sure you will see new PowerMacs in January..
The cycle between revisions is bigger in the Mac World than in the PC World. Usually 6 months vs 3 months..
This is one of the reasons of why you can get more of it when you sell it in eBay
Don’t buy in the end of a cycle..
http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/
A smart folder is a pseudo-folder that holds pointers to files on your hard drive. In order to make a new pointer to a certain file, you simply drag that file to your burnable folder. When you choose to burn your burnable folder, it burns all the files to which it points to a CD.
A smart folder is a saved search done on your file system.
The difference is that burnable folders contain pointers to files that are manually chosen by the user. They are not part of a search, and they therefore may or may not related in any way.
I suppose it’s like bookmarking a google search (smart folder) and bookmarking normal web pages that you find (burnable folders).
…before you perpetuate misinformation. I invite those of you still chanting the “Macs are more expensive/slower/have less software” mantra to read these three pieces from LinuxInsider, and to keep an open mind. And I’m still mystified that people who claim to be familiar with computers still don’t know the difference between “MAC” and “Mac”.
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/36120.html
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/36964.html
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/But-Theres-No-Software-for-the-Ma…
Rayiner Hashem,
I completely agree with you about interface inconsistencies in OS X. Much of what Apple has been doing lately flagrantly violates their own Human Interface Guidelines. John Gruber has written extensively about this on his Daring Fireball weblog.
1.8 percent,
I’m presuming that your handle refers to the proportion of your cognitive abilities actually available to you, because you’re talking out your ass.
“The single menu bar paradigm was dead 15 years ago, but lives on in Mac land.”
This statement alone shows that you know precisely zero about interface design. Bruce Tognazzini’s decades-old studies conclusively demonstrated that the single menu bar at the top of the screen is actually the most efficient placement. The menu bar in each window is actually a perfect example of bad interface design.
“Apple’s pseudo-PDF system is fast but goes nowhere because it is not real PDF.”
And what, pray tell, are “pseudo-PDF” and “real PDF”? Care to explain that to Adobe? I’m sure they’ll be eager to hear from you.
“Building a giant laptop without a nice keyboard (17″ powerbook) is yet another example of Apple falling on its face.”
Absolute and total rubbish. I invite you to try any PowerBook keyboard (it’s the same keyboard on all three models) before spouting off. Everyone who has used my 15″ PowerBook has said the same thing: how impressed they are with the feel of the keyboard.
In short, you need a thorough beating with a clue-by-four. I don’t know what you consider “having worked in computers for a long time”, but it can’t be that long, because you come across like a 13-year old Linux fanboy who’s more concerned with ignorantly bad-mouthing other platforms than promoting the advantages of your own. I’m as impressed with Linux as anyone else, and your kind of moronic cheerleading certainly does the Linux community no favors. But hey, thanks for playing.
Wait until Apple finishes Tiger
By the way, I’m running the 8a294 build of Tiger and it’s very nice indeed. Even at this early stage it’s already quicker than Panther and the new features are very nicely integrated. That is what this thread is about, isn’t it? Oh, sorry it’s about mindless bickering between idiot fanboys….what was I thinking?
Quoting……
“Other new settings involve an Xgrid checkbox in the Sharing tab, and Voice-Over capabilities in the Universal Access tab. Voice-Over seems to be responsible for the Mac talking you through an install that looks like you don’t actually know what to do next (the installer does enable you to disable it in this build).”
Dispite what the comments are at this site by Macheads apprently Apple does not think much of their user base’s ability to install software on Macs !!!!
Quoting again…..
“One of the grand new features of Mac OS X 10.4 are Smart Folders and Burnable Folders. These folder types are dynamic; they may contain items from all over a system. Smart Folders are based on simple or complex search patterns, while Burnable Folders are simply collections of dragged items that you wish to transfer to a CD or DVD.”
In the antiquated world of OS/2 Warp and any version of Windows after 95 its called…. Right click > Send to……
Oh I forgot…. that high tech One Button mouse used by Mac.
Why keep reading this article ???
P.S. Anyone can imitate Apple cycle. Just wait 6 years and don’t buy a new pc. Then again why waste your time ??? Oh and not everyone runs Windows either so your anti-virus and spy-ware example is blown out of the water just like you claim about hardware as well. Also I your implied claim about noise levels is weak ! I can build or buy a pc that is quiter then your vcr or tv on mute while running. Again anyone with real experince at building their own knows you claims are dumb and false.
AdamW,
“while Burnable Folders are simply collections of dragged items that you wish to transfer to a CD or DVD.”
Interesting to see OS X copying Linux (nautilus-cd-burner), for a change
I kept wondering where I had seen something similar, but alas, thanks for the reminder. 🙂
Please !!!! Most of those…
…on pc’s right now !!
Why keep reading this article ???
…why waste your time ???
…software on Macs !!!!
whats the deal boys? You need dates, badly
The majority of people, businesses included do not need 4 wheel drive and a little escort gets them going fine.
I don’t know. There sure are a lot of SUVs in my area.
I think burnable folders means it no longer needs to write the files to a disk image before burning. Now you just select the files you want to burn at it starts burning them immediately.
just an educated guess.
Pretty good commentary:
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/37806.html
Dell is not the only PC vendor and yes believe it or not it’s cheaper and better to build your own !! If you can program and read code in C, C++, .NET, Python, etc..or if you just know how to read and follow directions like “green means go, yellow means start to slow down, red means stop” then you should be able build your own pc and save big bucks. Man you mac jihadist are really out in force today.
You sound like Microsoft (or any other persistant sales person for that matter. I believe the correct term is up-selling.) Sure the new Macs are nice, and if I had the money I would buy one, but not everyone needs all those features. Sure the Mac may be cheaper than a comparable PC feature-wise, but a deal is only a deal if you take full advantage of it. Sure my home-brew PC doesn’t have SATA, Firewire, Bluetooth, DDR2, PCI-Express, Gigabit, 54G Wireless, etc… I have no use for any of these technologies and really couldn’t afford the upgrade expense of upgrading all of my “obsolete” AGP and PCI cards, ram, ethernet, wireless, etc…
also: “Also, The ATI Radeon 9600 is a XT version, not the 2 years old Pro version.. :/ wich is slower.. ”
sure the Pro version has a slower clock speed, but performance wise it is about the same. http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/vga_charts-07.htm…
I already know that Dell isn’t the only PC vendor, but they are the one who sell more.. I can go with Hp, Gateway, IBM , Sony.. And you will have 50%+ of market..
They will be all the same..
“believe it or not it’s cheaper and better to build your own !!”
Yes, say that to the 90% of windows home users..
Because today, if you aren’t a freak like you & me you will be running windows..
For company’s, do you mean that they will have to spend more money paying IT personal to build all the machines?
This talk is never ending..
I like that there are options for anyone, and believe me, the cheapest option isn’t usually the best..
And those bucks that i can save building my own pc aren’t that big..
If you have ever sold an old machine in eBay, you will see why a Mac is a better investment than a pc..
Have you ever tried a Mac? I don’t think so..
OS X – particularly Safari – is disappointingly slow on my 1Ghz iBook. Indeed, from the (fairly extensive) experience I’ve had with a whole range of Macs it’s chunkily unresponsive on anything short of a dual processor G5.
Has anyone actually used this and can comment on the performance ? Or am I going to have to wait another 2 years to get a decent performing, affordable Mac laptop ?
it’s cheaper and better to build your own
It’s cheaper to build your own. Yes, I agree. It’s not necessarily better. That’s completely arguable. Is it better to write you own OS and device drivers? Better to create your own applications for every purpose?
I mean maybe you make your own clothes too, and grow your own food. I’m not trying to make fun.
“Sounds like somebody’s working for his computer. You’ve got to simplify man!”
Absolute and total rubbish. I invite you to try any PowerBook keyboard (it’s the same keyboard on all three models) before spouting off. Everyone who has used my 15″ PowerBook has said the same thing: how impressed they are with the feel of the keyboard.
The problem with the PB17 (and to a lesser degree, the PB15) keyboard isn’t the feel, it’s the layout. The 17″ PB probably has enough room to put in a full numeric keypad, but Apple didn’t even bother giving its users the luxury of dedicated Home/End/PageUp/PageDown keys, instead keeping that _atrocious_ Fn+Arrow kludge. In something that’s supposed to be a professional, high end, desktop-replacement style machine, that’s simply not good enough.
Most people know, MAC has better hardware… then a e-machine or standard Dell, but most shops that are using Linux and even a fair amount using Windows, are building their own.
What sane business builds its own PCs ? The tiny savings to be made on the hardware are more than outweighed by the cost of paying someone to build them.
That’s before even getting into the support issues when stuff breaks.
(There are of course some corner cases when hardware requirements are obscure and/or specific, but they’re few and far between.)
“Penny wise and pound foolish”, as they say…
The PC & Mac versions of those graphics cards are different..
And i never said that the iMac or any other model of computer is for everyone..
“I have no use for any of these technologies and really couldn’t afford the upgrade expense of upgrading all of my “obsolete” AGP and PCI cards, ram, ethernet, wireless, etc…”
Ethernet is usually today integrated in the logic board, when you want to upgrade your microprocessor you usually have to upgrade also your mother board, Airport Express and RAM is removable in any Mac, the same for hard disk and optical unit..
In the case of the iMac, its an all-in-one unit, so you can’t use pci/agp cards, if you want pci/agp upgrading possibilities you have to go with a PowerMac…
I wouldn’t like to have a x800 or a 6800 ultra in an old mother board with an old processor, is a little stupid because it’ll be a big bottleneck..
Will you put a agp 8x card in a 4x/2x slot? How much do you upgrade your computer that you need those constant upgrading capabilities?
I can understand that the actual models of Macs aren’t created for your needs, but this has nothing to do with the price of the Macs.. It has to do with configurability.
I think i sound like a sales person because my english is limited, so sometimes i don’t know the adequate word to say some things.. Sorry
I’m spanish, and to Eugenia doesn’t like the times i post in spanish..
“It is a shame that MAC wants to screw themselves and cannot see the larger picture.
It is like $14.00 for a cheese burger at one place with a designer wrapper, when you can go next door and get another cheese burger for $1.00 in a plain wrapper. ”
But how does a McDonald’s plain cheeseburger taste compared to a Red Robin Double Cheeseburger(or your fav burger joint?)…
Yes, Macs cost more. For a true PC workstation, compared to a iMac or even low G5, they cost a decent chunk more. The flip side is, the man hours it takes to deal with Windows issues like spyware, viruses and trojans are very near zero on mac. I work in an enterprise IT department that is Netware/Windows with zero macs. Windows TCO has almost nothing to do with initial cost. That is what the T is for, the long term cost of a system in use for 3 to 5 years.
I write this from my 12″ powerbook. I use PCs far more often, however.
You’re a little confused and rambling. Businesses build their own PCs? I’ve never seen an IT dept that had TIME to waste on that. As far as “MAC” seeing the larger picture, Apple’s stock prices don’t agree with you.
MAC is a hardcoded address assigned to network cards.
Mac is a computer brand from Apple Computers.
Mac OS / Mac OS X / Mac OS 10.x is an operating system written by Apple Computer that runs on their Mac platform.
Please, for the love of all things holy, quit calling a Mac (computer) MAC. And do not refer to MAC as a company. Apple makes the Mac computer.
It is like saying I bought a PC running Microsoft… Well no, you bought a PC running Windows, a Microsoft Product.
Please, out of respect for the computing industry. Try and differentiate the terms.
But the older PC’s cannot handle the newer OSes for Windows.
Any Pentium 3 class machine, with a dirt cheap RAM upgrade, can comfortably run Windows XP. Any P2 class machine, with a similar RAM upgrade will run XP (sans some eyecandy) usably, albeit not fast.
That’s going back seven years. A seven year old Mac probably won’t even _boot_ a current version of OS X, and from having spent about 3 months in front of a 233Mhz Beige G3 running OS X at a prior job ~18 months ago, I can assure you it won’t even run *close* to as responsively as a similarly aged PC. Hell, my ca. seven *month* old iBook I find to be only usable for light tasks – as soon as you load it up with any large documents or significant multitasking, the whole show grinds to a[n even slower] crawl.
Alternatively, if you want to extend the life of those old PCs even more, invest in a Terminal Server and use them as dumb terminals. You can install Windows 2000 or even XP on Pentium *1* class machines with 64MB of RAM (ca. 1995-96). Sure, local interactive use will be appallingly slow, but once the TS client has started that’s irrelevant. This is not even an *option* with old Macs because OS X doesn’t (yet, I’m sure it will eventually) have Terminal Server-like functionality.
Now on the other hand, I have heard that the older MAC’s can run the newer OS X pretty well.
You probably have heard that, from Mac users who are acclimatised to OS X’s overall slowness. *If* you are accustomed to that unresponsiveness, then an old Mac is probably usable. However, if you’re used to Windows or, in particular, lightweight X11 window managers, then OS X on anything short of a G5 class machine is going to feel like it’s always a step behind your every move.
Go and load up a few nice big (500 – 1000 posts) Slashdot threads into Safari and watch it crawl to a stop with the spinning beachball of death on *current* Macs like iBooks and eMacs. Observe how right-clicking an icon in the Dock gives a noticable delay before displaying the menu. Try and resize some windows. Now think about doing that on machines anywhere from 1/2 to 1/5 the speed, often lacking the advantage of Quartz-Extreme accelerated video.
Perhaps in terms relative to current and old Mac hardware, OS X on a 5 year old Mac compared to OS X on a current Mac is “less slow” than Windows on a current PC compared to Windows on a 5 year old PC, but that’s just because Macs over that same timeframe have increased so little in performance.
“But Expose is so fast !” the Mac zealots cry… And, true enough, it is, but when every other aspect of the interface is slow and chunky, that’s a bit of a hollow victory. Like Tog said, the focus of the MacOS interface has switched from usability to “demoability” – making the onlookers “ooh” and “aahh” at dynamically scaling icons and Expose.
Macs don’t see more usage because they’re any better at running older versions of the OS – they’re not. They see more usage because they cost so much more in the first place, companies are loathe to replace them without getting similar ratios of usage/$.
my 1.33 Ghz powerbook 12″ screams. Do you have enough RAM?
i have 512. and noone say that OSX is ram hungry, the only OS you can run comfortably in, say, 256 mb ram these daysis windows NT 4(maybe 2000) or my heavily customized install of lunar linux. My point is, many linux distros and certainly windows XP are RAM hungry. Though Ubuntu is great.
@drsmithy
I can attest to this, I have a G3 PowerMac B+W 300Mhz. I happened to have some extra PC133 ram laying around so it now has 768MB of ram. This didn’t help performance at all. It is usable, but resizing windows is laggy as hell, and menus seem to have a noticable pause. I only use the machine for compiling my QT apps for the Mac, though it also is my web/file server. I think the main bottleneck is the 16MB ATi Expert or whatever crappy PCI graphics card in there that doesn’t allow Quarts Exptreme.
@coolkamio
I am mainly pointing out that I would be wasting my money on useless features. Maybe if I had a bluetooth phone/pda, or an external hard drive/iPod/DV Cam, or a gigabit network already in place these features might be put to good use. Unfortunately I have none of these devices, so I would be paying a premium for useless (to me) features.
There are three different kinds of people in the world: Those who buy SUV’s and will never use it to it’s capacity, those who buy SUV’s and will use it to it’s capacity, and those who don’t buy SUV’s. To apply this analogy to computers, there are those who buy a Mac and won’t use any of it’s features just because it is a “status” object, those who will use the features of a Mac, and those who don’t buy a Mac because it doesn’t suit their needs. In a business there is little to no room to spend frivolously, so you need to find the right tool for the job. In situations where you need a lot of performance, little hassle, do photo/video/audio editing, etc… a Mac would be a good deal, especially the more expensive you get. In situations where you only need email/internet/office a cheap Dell or <insert commodity brand here> might running Linux would suffice. For a good software firewall you might look to OpenBSD.
BTW, as far as tools analogies go, Linux would definitely be Duct Tape — it can be used for pretty much any job imaginable, OS X would be Torx screwdriver — more expensive than an ordinary screwdriver, harder to find screws for it, but can be used in place of most common screws with the added beneit of polish and uniqueness, and Windows would be a hammer — almost everyone has one, it will work with practically anything, but it likes to do things its own way, and is prone to breakdown
(feel free to replace the hammer with something more appropriate, I didnt get much sleep, so my creativity is lacking)
/end long and drawn out post/rant
Sorry but you can’t compare building your own pc to the dumb analogies you used. They just don’t jive. I love how mac jihadist try to draw away the from the benifits of building your own system. I pretty sure if they had that option available that they would throw it at pc users faces. Sorry bub but mac’s just ain’t worth the price of adminision if you are looking for a serious power house machine with the latest tech.
Sorry bub but mac’s just ain’t worth the price of adminision if you are looking for a serious power house machine with the latest tech.
Actually at the top end they do stack up reasonably well. It’s the middle and low-end desktops where they’re poor value, particular if your needs/wants fall outside Apple’s limited-option offerings.
I agree,that’s why Apple doesn’t show the gaming benchmarks on their website,and only Photoshop.However the powermac G5 is a very good allround machine.I think many average users of other operating systems will feel at home right away.
I like to tinker and have some stress with the PC and its peripherals and don’t like to walk holding daddies hand.So
i like Linux although i have respect for OpenBSD and FreeBSD too.
You want to compare top end models ??? That’s where apple gets destoryed when it comes to price and preformance.
I can assure you it won’t even run *close* to as responsively as a similarly aged PC. Hell, my ca. seven *month* old iBook I find to be only usable for light tasks – as soon as you load it up with any large documents or significant multitasking, the whole show grinds to a[n even slower] crawl.
Hmmmm…. I have a 13 month old powerbook and it doesn’t appear to slow down. And I do a lot of multitasking. My wife even commented, being a windows user, “when is this going to start to slow down”.
Atleast with MacOS X slows down with load, Windows slows down for no reason over time. Fancy that.
Perhaps in terms relative to current and old Mac hardware, OS X on a 5 year old Mac compared to OS X on a current Mac is “less slow” than Windows on a current PC compared to Windows on a 5 year old PC, but that’s just because Macs over that same timeframe have increased so little in performance.
Wrong. A 2.5 Ghz G5 is about as fast as the fastest x86 cpu out there. So Macs today are significantly faster than those of yester years.
A 2.5 Ghz G5 is about as fast as the fastest x86 cpu out there. So Macs today are significantly faster than those of yester years.
Utterly wrong.I don’t know what you are doing with your PC’s besides some googling.Do you really think a powermac can keep up with an vaporchilled dual AMD FX-54 ?
The newest P4 (3.42Ghz) was beaten by “only” a AMD64 3200+ in numerous of real-life game tests.
Yet this doesn’t negate the fact that a powermac G5 is for many a desirable and very good allround machine.Not perse the hardware itself but the support and last but certainly not the least:MacOsX.If i would buy an mac it would be because of MacOsX and not the hardware.You can get much better hardware for the same prize as an mac.
But it is in my opinion the OS that makes *the*difference.
Hmmmm…. I have a 13 month old powerbook and it doesn’t appear to slow down. And I do a lot of multitasking. My wife even commented, being a windows user, “when is this going to start to slow down”.
I *really* want to know where to get one of these Macs, because in 5 years of using them I’ve never managed to stumble across one.
Every Mac I sit down and use – apart from the top end G5 monsters – is *slow*. It’s unresponsive and applications like Safari grind to a halt even under trivial loads (a few windows with a few tabs in each).
Atleast with MacOS X slows down with load, Windows slows down for no reason over time. Fancy that.
Strange how none of my Windows machines ever seem to do that.
The difference between PCs and Macs, is that a slow Windows machine is usually slow because it’s either a) built to be slow (ie: cheap), b) misconfigured (eg: hard disk and CD drive on the same IDE channel) or c) under significant load. With a slow Mac, OTOH, because there’s so few possibilities for misconfiguration (since there are so few variations), it’s almost never a possibility – and even just running Safari with a few pages, I can peg the CPU in my iBook *continually* at over 50%. That’s ridiculous.
My 1Ghz iBook has 768MB of RAM and I have replaced the stock hard disk with a 5400rpm, 8MB cache model – for a 12″ 1Ghz iBook, it’s _very_ fast. However, it’s still not a machine I can comfortably use for day to day work – it’s simply too slow – it becomes _frustrating_ under any reasonable load.
Even now, with only two Safari windows open and about 6 tabs in each – mostly OSNews, kuro5hin or Slashdot threads, there is a noticable (and annoying) lag between pressing space and the web page actually scrolling down a page. The CPU is “idling” at 25%.
Wrong. A 2.5 Ghz G5 is about as fast as the fastest x86 cpu out there. So Macs today are significantly faster than those of yester years.
But only at the very top end. Comparitively, the Macs mere mortals can afford and are likely to be buying – eMacs, iBooks and iMacs – haven’t gotten “as much” faster.
Or perhaps another way of saying it that they haven’t gotten significantly _cheaper_ like PCs have – after all, for most people performance is only relevant when balanced against cost.
In particular, when taken against the poor performance of OS X on that low end hardware, I believe my point is valid.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the only conclusion I’ve been able to come to is that Mac users have their “performance” compass aligned to a different baseline than me, because the only Macs I’ve used that feel as fast as even quite modest PC hardware running Windows are top end dual G5 models.
“Your PC has Firewire 800? Gigabit Ethernet? Serial ATA? Digital 5.1 audio? etc etc.. These things cost money, guy..”
Firewire 800? Pointless. Gigabit ethernet? Also pointless, unless you have a gigabit switch (hint: you don’t). Serial ATA? No faster than PATA, although the small cables are useful. It’s now commodity hardware on x86. 5.1 audio likewise.
“Floppy (You need it to install Windows XP… :/ )”
Eh? No you don’t. I’ve installed Windows on several machines with no floppy disk drive at all. Any proper purchased copy of Windows is a bootable CD from which you can install directly.
all for $1,295. Just through in a nice $200-250 dollar monitor along with inexpensive wireless network card to the setup and you are set!
Now, I could get all that for 1374 US Dollars directly from Apple.com.
– 17-inch widescreen LCD
– 1.6GHz PowerPC G5
– 512K L2 cache
– 533MHz frontside bus
– 256MB DDR400 SDRAM (Upgraded to 512, hence the extra 75USD)
– NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra (Here your config is better, granted)
– 64MB DDR video memory
– 80GB Serial ATA hard drive
– Slot-load Combo Drive
Now, with this setup I already have a 17″ Widescreen TFT. You argued that one should add a 200$-250$ monitor to that setup of yours. I’m quite curious where you will be able to find a 17″ Widescreen TFT (1440×900) for that amount of money. Here in the Netherlands you can just about buy a very low quality 15″ beige TFT for 199E. Indeed, that’s 258.203 USD. The cheapest 17″ here is about 350 Euros. that’s about 450$.
Your setup: 1295$ (computer )+ 450$ (monitor) = 1735$
My setup: 1299$ (iMac G5, base model) + 75$ (RAM expansion) = 1374$
I mean, I’m fine with both my x86 and my iMac. but saying that Macs are too expensive is just utter nonsense. And besides, what looks better on your desk; a big, clumsy and noisy Midi-ATX, or a 2″ thin white iMac G5 case?
.
What the hell is wrong with that – I come from Linux, to a 1Ghz iBook and never once had to right click – only in Safari, when I need to “Apple+Click” to open in a new tab.
And as for OS X being slow on everything but the high end models – bull – this iBook _certainly_ doesn’t slow down with a few Safari windows, and about 8 tabs in each (I know, its here now)
What I don’t know however, is why every single post about OS X (or Linux, or Windows, for that matter) has to degenerate into “It’s crap/expensive/bloated” being replied to with “It’s better/faster/open source”….
What I don’t know however, is why every single post about OS X (or Linux, or Windows, for that matter) has to degenerate into “It’s crap/expensive/bloated” being replied to with “It’s better/faster/open source”….
Don’t bother to think about it.All those people are very insecure and afraid they might have bet on the wrong cow.
It’s very well desirable to bring everything into the spotlight (heh).
The music that I listen to is far, far better than what all of you guys listen to. Also, I drink Coke, not Pepsi.
Because of these facts, I feel that I should try to convince you all that listening to techno and trance music WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE. Not only that, drinking Coke will also CHANGE YOUR LIFE. I regularly go out and drink excessive amounts of alcohol and pick up hundreds of chicks. How am I able to do this? It’s all about what music you listen to, and what soft drink you drink. Yeah.
I feel awfully big and clever now. See you schmucks later, I have a meeting down at the Yacht club.
But the older PC’s cannot handle the newer OSes for Windows.
Any Pentium 3 class machine, with a dirt cheap RAM upgrade, can comfortably run Windows XP. Any P2 class machine, with a similar RAM upgrade will run XP (sans some eyecandy) usably, albeit not fast.
That’s going back seven years. A seven year old Mac probably won’t even _boot_ a current version of OS X, and from having spent about 3 months in front of a 233Mhz Beige G3 running OS X at a prior job ~18 months ago, I can assure you it won’t even run *close* to as responsively as a similarly aged PC. Hell, my ca. seven *month* old iBook I find to be only usable for light tasks – as soon as you load it up with any large documents or significant multitasking, the whole show grinds to a[n even slower] crawl.
Alternatively, if you want to extend the life of those old PCs even more, invest in a Terminal Server and use them as dumb terminals. You can install Windows 2000 or even XP on Pentium *1* class machines with 64MB of RAM (ca. 1995-96). Sure, local interactive use will be appallingly slow, but once the TS client has started that’s irrelevant. This is not even an *option* with old Macs because OS X doesn’t (yet, I’m sure it will eventually) have Terminal Server-like functionality.
Now on the other hand, I have heard that the older MAC’s can run the newer OS X pretty well.
You probably have heard that, from Mac users who are acclimatised to OS X’s overall slowness. *If* you are accustomed to that unresponsiveness, then an old Mac is probably usable. However, if you’re used to Windows or, in particular, lightweight X11 window managers, then OS X on anything short of a G5 class machine is going to feel like it’s always a step behind your every move.
Go and load up a few nice big (500 – 1000 posts) Slashdot threads into Safari and watch it crawl to a stop with the spinning beachball of death on *current* Macs like iBooks and eMacs. Observe how right-clicking an icon in the Dock gives a noticable delay before displaying the menu. Try and resize some windows. Now think about doing that on machines anywhere from 1/2 to 1/5 the speed, often lacking the advantage of Quartz-Extreme accelerated video.
Perhaps in terms relative to current and old Mac hardware, OS X on a 5 year old Mac compared to OS X on a current Mac is “less slow” than Windows on a current PC compared to Windows on a 5 year old PC, but that’s just because Macs over that same timeframe have increased so little in performance.
“But Expose is so fast !” the Mac zealots cry… And, true enough, it is, but when every other aspect of the interface is slow and chunky, that’s a bit of a hollow victory. Like Tog said, the focus of the MacOS interface has switched from usability to “demoability” – making the onlookers “ooh” and “aahh” at dynamically scaling icons and Expose.
Macs don’t see more usage because they’re any better at running older versions of the OS – they’re not. They see more usage because they cost so much more in the first place, companies are loathe to replace them without getting similar ratios of usage/$.
I run Mac OS 10.3.x on an orange iMac G3 400Mhz with 256Mb and it performs its daily tasks with no major slowdowns. E-Mail, Web-Surfing, Office X, Dreamweaver MX and even some Photoshop for the Web Design. It also boots and is ready to use under 1 Minute.
Windows XP Professional on an Intel Pentium III 1Ghz with 256Mb is a different story. Sure, just after the clean install it works pretty decent. But load a few applications such as Office, Dreamweaver MX, Photoshop, Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Acrobat and use the machine on a daily base for a few months and it becomes unbearingly slow. Even just opening windows explorer and have it seen stuck for a while on folders that have more than 50 files before it finally loads them and then redraws the window again to show the icons. Oh and wait. While it is doing that for some reason the desktop icons disappear for a moment and then are being redrawn twice.
Picture Viewer will occasionally take up to 10 seconds to display a small JPG or GIF file.
Photoshop takes at least 2 – 3 times to load compared to the 400Mhz Mac and saving a file also takes about 2 – 3 times as long.
This is even after removing all possible spyware, viruses, cleaning up unsused crap from the registry, defragmenting the drive, running windows update for the latest fixes, keeping all the drivers (chipset, video, usb, nic, bios, etc.) up-to-date, removing unnecessary services (such as indexing, messenger, etc), disabling system restore and many many more tweaks.
The only way back to a nice responsive system is a fresh install (or better, play back a clean image that you hopefully made just after the fresh install 🙂 )
Oh, and by the way. This is a Dell that the company bought brand new with a 17″ CRT monitor at the time and it cost $2,200 at the time.
If you want to do the Terminal Server Approach get a nice X Server and use Apple Remote Desktop
Two areas I wish Apple would improve their system is the default amount of Ram they ship and the graphics card on the ‘higher’ end systems.
But then even Dell still ships Windows XP systems with 128MB of Ram which I’ll never understand.
Some of the PC Systems such as Dell, Sony, etc. you cannot easily just change components as you wish either as they custom design/build them and they will only fit parts from their own company.
As for the self built systems, yes, there is some limited amount of easy upgrading you can do but more often then not if you want a newer CPU you might need a new Motherboard and that new Motherboard either doesn’t support your old RAM or would be slowed down, so you also need new RAM, same with the Harddrive (though not as often) but you might not want a 5400RPM main drive in your P4 3.4Ghz EE machine or a change to SATA and similar can be said for the graphics card.
So yes, you can upgrade your PC but from what I have seen it’s been in limited way. With your self built system you also don’t get a system warranty and no software. This is not everyones bag to keep track of each component in your system and dealing with each components different manufacturer for warranty and any support. And you still need to buy a bunch of software if you are a windows guy to get a similar functionality and is as slick as with OS X.
So flame the Mac as much as you want. Windows XP (properly maintained), Linux (properly configured), FreeBSD and Mac OS X (out of the box) are all great Operating Systems that get their jobs done. Keep an open mind when you shop for your new PC.
I’m using a G3 PB right now, and I choose it over GNU/Linux only for a 3 reasons:
1. It goes to sleep when I close the lid, then wakes up when I open it.
2. It supports dual monitors
3. It automatically mounts my thumbdrive when I plug it in for backups, then I only have to drag it to the trash when I want to unmount it.
And it does those three things with no special configuring on my part. When a GNU/Linux distro comes along that does those three things for me, I’ll gladly switch to GNU/Linux (since I don’t like Aqua or Metal or how slow OS X runs).
1.6GHz PowerPC G5 <- vs his Athlon64 3000+
– NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra <— he had a GeForceFX 6800 GT 256MB
– 64MB DDR video memory <– 64MB is the only option!
– 80GB Serial ATA hard drive <– he had a 120 gig drive
Your system has the monitor tied to it also and it still cost $80 more. To build an Apple to compete with his system you’d have to configure a powermac. A dual 1.8 GHz powermac with those specs = $2,574.00
“Oh I forgot…. that high tech One Button mouse used by Mac.”
I can get the same amout of work done with my one button mouse as you can with a three button mouse. I guess that means that my Mac and I are three times more efficient than you and your PeeCee.
The trolls are back in town! The trolls are back in town!
Windows and Linux fans are screaming again because, once again, OS X is stealing their thunder. Maybe if you all started working to improve your respective OS’s, you wouldn’t have time to sit around and whine about the superiority of OS X.
For $600 you can get
– AMD Athlon™ XP 3200+
– nVIDIA® GeForce4™ MX (64)
– 512 MB DDR
– 160 GB HDD
– DVD +/- RW/CD-RW combo drive
If you want to go high end, a Dual 2.5 Powermac w/ a gig of RAM and GeForce 6800 runs about $3,848 . You can build a PC with the same specs for about $1,800.
After reading all of these posts and many others in the past I have come to the conclusion that there are too many crybabies and whiners. If you do not have the money to buy Apple products then you do not have enough money to buy Alienware products. And yes, you can build one to fit your needs at a lower price than you can buy one commercially made.
1. I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO AFFORD A MACINOSH: Either you belong to one of the groups that include (a) I don’t make much money (valid if you are on a low fixed income due to retirement or serious disability) or (b) I am too young or old to get a job or (c) I refuse to give up anything to save for what I really want. For this latter group all I can say is that the cost differential is not the same comparison of buying a BMW over a Ford Escort. Try saving the price of one pizza dinner a week (or two cups of your favorite latte coffee) and you will have time to save up for one while using a cheap computer.
2. I WOULD BUY A MACINTOSH IF THEY WERE CHEAP BUT OFFERED THE SAME PERFORMANCE AS THE TOP END OF THE LINE. This group has already settled in on their personal biases and wouldn’t buy one if they went for $100.
3. My system (substitute whatever you wish) is superior on the basis of price or performance or OS (Pick your own combination). This category includes the most ignorant group and where most of the dumb trolling arises.
I agree with many readers that you need to get a life or a job. Please stay on the topic at hand. If you have trouble understanding that the topic is not about price, performance, bias, etc. than zip it and say nothing.
ok no dell, fine, linux, fine… price coparison of a high end system fine..
JIM: 1800 dollars for a similar system then the dual G5? where??????
here is a simple comparison that rules out dell and chooses a good linux friendly manufacturer, Monarch computers.
dual opteron 2.4ghz,motherboard with LAN and DDR400, 1GB ram, Asus radeon 9600XT, DVDR (slowest one was 12x), 160GB SATA drive logitech keyboard, mouse,600W powersupply, Fedora Core 2 64bit NOTE: NO SUPPORT FROM REDHAT OR MONARCH FOR THIS OR FOR FEDORA CORE 2, total price configured : $3223.00 USD,
Mac dual 2.5ghz, 700W power supply, 1GB ram, radeon 9600XT, superdrive, 160GB SATA, apple keyboard and mouse, Mac OS X,
price configured: $3,149.00
now, on both systems you have nearly identical hardware, which means DUAL 64bit processor, none of this athlon64 single cpu crap that everyone is comparing to or this p4 3.x crap. its been long shown that even a slow 2ghz athlon 64 can outperform a p4 3ghz.
this is for the HIGH END. now both are WORKSTATIONS not homemade stuff.. sorry but for that cash i would rather hae the mac. as for the lowend i agree macs selection is a bit (not much) overpriced for the package in total. However give me a software package that is INCLUDED on a PC that can do what itunes, imovie and idvd does..there isnt any free or included version (dont insult me by naming mickeysoft movie maker).
now for the record:
i have 6 machines at home, one p4 2.8ghz HT with 1GB ram, 1 celeron 900 server, one compaq evo laptop , a powerbook 15″ and a dual 2 ghz mac with 2GB ram.
as soon as i can afford it my wifes 2.8 will be replaced by a imac 17″, Why? cuz not everyone is into gaming and fixing linux all the time. for her a gf 5200 will be just fine since she never games.
PEOPLE: Macs are for people who choose to use them and invest into them. They are NOT commodity hardware, they are not meant to be gaming stations even though unreal tournament 2004 runs excellently on an imac G5.
i know the trolls can never be debunked but next time when you compare , compare the right hardware.. and DONT compare to dell, dells commodity hardware sucks , compare to similarl workstations and since dell doesnt ship opterons compare to 64bit chips from intel.
as for performance of the PowerPC. they are on par with the opterons and the opterons are worlds ahead of the intel camp. intels only “rescue ring ” currently is that their chips are clocked so high. now even the newest P4 EE with a 1066mhz fsb cant keep up with an athlon FX..which is clocked WAY lower…
http://hardocp.com/article.html?art=Njgy
now i am done, just why does every osx article on osnews always turn into the price war? sheesh.. those who use macs use them, those who dont, dont.. so what, as long as we are not running windows we are ok…..
Dude, when i connect my logitech mouse to my ibook i have 7 buttons which all work with os x.
FreeBSD and Mac OS X (out of the box)
Excuse me,FreeBSD doesn’t do Jack Shit out of the box.You have to install and configure a lot extra.There is no daddy holding your hands when you want to play some music. There is
no easy installer for your desktop settings.Not that it bothers, i just can’t stand people who declare half the story
Windows and Linux fans are screaming again because, once again, OS X is stealing their thunder. Maybe if you all started working to improve your respective OS’s, you wouldn’t have time to sit around and whine about the superiority of OS X.
I couldn’t care less.Although i prefer Linux, objectivity thrives me to say MacOsX is a fine OS.Instead of stating: MacOsX is an operatings system for retired elderly,rich dead meat and nobrainers.
I *really* want to know where to get one of these Macs, because in 5 years of using them I’ve never managed to stumble across one.
http://www.apple.com
[i]Every Mac I sit down and use – apart from the top end G5 monsters – is *slow*. It’s unresponsive and applications like Safari grind to a halt even under trivial loads (a few windows with a few tabs in each).
Safari is fine on my Powerbook 1.25ghz with 15 tabs open, limewire in the background with iTunes playing songs. So it must be you then.
Strange how none of my Windows machines ever seem to do that.
You must be running some special version then. Ever windows installation I have ever seen *slows* to a crawl after 12 months of use for no reason.
[/i] With a slow Mac, OTOH, because there’s so few possibilities for misconfiguration (since there are so few variations), it’s almost never a possibility – and even just running Safari with a few pages, I can peg the CPU in my iBook *continually* at over 50%. That’s ridiculous. [/i]
Safari on my PB with 8 tabs
1001 Safari 0.0% 1:19.37 13 291 488 44.0M 25.9M 37.8M 426
At most there are spikes of cpu usage. If you are loading pages and pages after heavily flash and gif animated content, Safari nautrally would consume CPU cycles. However, with static content like slashdot pages and os news there is hardly any consistent cpu usage.
My 1Ghz iBook has 768MB of RAM and I have replaced the stock hard disk with a 5400rpm, 8MB cache model – for a 12″ 1Ghz iBook, it’s _very_ fast. However, it’s still not a machine I can comfortably use for day to day work – it’s simply too slow – it becomes _frustrating_ under any reasonable load.
Make up your mind is it very fast or too slow. And what day to day task do you do on it any way. Well A solution for you is to go sell it on ebay and stop complaining. You obviously have no clue on how to buy a pc to meet you requirements. Or you are using this as an exucse to increase the post count on OS news mac related article. Everyone I know who bought Apple laptops has never complained of it being slow. I know a lot of my colleagues who bought Powerbooks for the first time ever, and moved from vaio pentium-M based machines running linux. Highly technical people who work on kernel software and Cpus.
Even now, with only two Safari windows open and about 6 tabs in each – mostly OSNews, kuro5hin or Slashdot threads, there is a noticable (and annoying) lag between pressing space and the web page actually scrolling down a page. The CPU is “idling” at 25%.
Like I said sell your ibook get a windows laptop and be happy. Sorry to burst your bubble but I use safari with a few more windows than you and a atleast 10 more tabs and it is fine on a 1.25ghz PB with 512 MB RAM and a 4200 rpm disk.
[/i]In particular, when taken against the poor performance of OS X on that low end hardware, I believe my point is valid. [/i]
A lot of people are very happy running OS X on lowend hardware. Obviously you aren’t, so it’s time to sell you *low end* iBook. and get a x86 laptop. You will get a pretty good price. Macs do have higher residuals than pcs.
As I’ve said elsewhere, the only conclusion I’ve been able to come to is that Mac users have their “performance” compass aligned to a different baseline than me, because the only Macs I’ve used that feel as fast as even quite modest PC hardware running Windows are top end dual G5 models.
Finally, we agree on some thing. It’s you then, end of discussion.
drsmithy:
You claim to be an admin at some major firm. Yet I find it absolutely hilarious that you would buy a 12″ iBook without research, may be go to an Apple Store and try it out before buying it.
If it didn’t meet your needs, why did you buy it. BTW if a computer is idle and not at 100% utlization it is under used.
Others: if you can find a cheaper machine in the x86 world. Please do us a favor and buy it, be happy with your decision. I bought my powerbook and have never regretted the decision.
I do however regret assembling my own AMD athlon box, because it wasn’t worth it. Too many bad components, All highly aclaimed on anandtech and toms hardware, but too many problems.
hmm anyone just want to talk about Tiger here? I’m seriously think I will never come back to this site. Windows/pc/OSX/mac wars are stupid and it’s become old hat!
Tom: Sorry Tom you are wrong in your comparison. The PC I showed you is waaay faster and can compete with Mac’s high-end G5’s in terms of preformance. Oh and I can get a good monitor way under the $450 you listed !! You forget that this is not a Mac and so I am not stuck with one vendor and one price for a monitor. Again jihadist Mac zealots show their one-sided bias. You imac when compared to the PC I listed can’t compete at all.
vicious1: : Hey you know what you want me to find you a dual-cpu PC that smokes your dual G5 in terms of sheer power and price ??? Come on buddy just say so and I will.
“1. It goes to sleep when I close the lid, then wakes up when I open it.
2. It supports dual monitors
3. It automatically mounts my thumbdrive when I plug it in for backups, then I only have to drag it to the trash when I want to unmount it.”
You can do all those things on Linux right now. 3 without configuration on Fedora, Mandrake or Ubuntu. (Right click to unmount, not drag to trash). 1 requires a laptop where sleep works (that can be a pain, but I’ve got one, so they’re out there) and five minutes hacking in /etc/acpi. 2, well, some distros try to configure dual head out of the box, don’t know if it works as I never tried it. I just set my desktop box up to be dual screen yesterday, took half an hour from a state of originally not knowing how the hell to do it at all. (And 15 minutes of that was realising one of the cables wasn’t correctly plugged in :>).
Sure, this isn’t no config yet, but is an hour of your life that much to lose?
Even as someone that has bashed Apple for price in my last ~4 posts I have to say Linux and OSX are not in the same class. The grease monkey a couple miles down the road has a dragster that is pretty fast but it still is not a McLaren F1.
And I am not comparing dual proc systems because for most tasks I (and most others) use the overhead of distributing the load between 2 processors with separate memory offsets the gains of having extra processing power.
Apple has a great product, I just don’t want to sit hear and read people arguing they are cheaper, because they are not. Apple Inc. has never tried to brand itself as a cheaper product so that shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.
And back on topic: Apple has pretty good coverage of some of the new features in Tiger here http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/
It doesn’t matter how good the OS X is
Linux has freedom.
It is not about money.
It is about freedom.
That’s it.
Just what exactly is it that you are trying to convince people of, or set people free from?
What, so you’ve found something that you, personally, think is magnificent, and anyone who doesn’t think likewise is a total imbecile?
Listen. You have your freedom. Good for you. Strangely enough, I am free to do anything that I want to do on a Mac. I am willing to pay to have things taken care of for me, rather like how I don’t want to build my own car, or raise and slaughter my own cattle so that I may eat.
What is it that you think I could get out of using Linux? Which, by the way, I have already used in many forms (Slackware, Redhat, Debian), as well as having used FreeBSD and others.
I find these discussions increasingly amusing. Just what is everyone here hoping to achive? You convince me of nothing. And I am sure I am not the only person who feels this way. Your opinions should be left as such, without resorting to religious affairs.
Ahh.. schoolyard nostalgia.
Now I’ve heard everything, the ultimate idiocy:
“It doesn’t matter how good the OS X is
Linux has freedom.
It is not about money.
It is about freedom.
That’s it.”
The OS is no longer part of the equation. What a nitwit. (excuse the personal comment please)
Imbecile Im”be*cile, a. [L. imbecillis, and imbecillus; of
unknown origin: cf. F. imb[‘e]cile.]
Destitute of strength, whether of body or mind; feeble;
impotent; esp., mentally wea; feeble-minded; as, hospitals
for the imbecile and insane.
Syn: Weak; feeble; feeble-minded; idiotic.
http://www.apple.com
Well, I got mine from my local Mac dealer that I’ve known for ~5 years, but I imagine she got it from Apple Australia.
Safari is fine on my Powerbook 1.25ghz with 15 tabs open, limewire in the background with iTunes playing songs. So it must be you then.
Yes, clearly we have different definitions of “fine”.
Yet for some reason you seem to think Windows machines are “slow”, when they are much more responsive than OS X at any given “power level”.
Methinks your “performance compass” is aligned on “Apple good, Microsoft bad”.
Safari on my PB with 8 tabs
1001 Safari 0.0% 1:19.37 13 291 488 44.0M 25.9M 37.8M 426
A once off, carefully selected pasting from top isn’t really relevant. I’m tlaking about watching the CPU usage graph applet in my menu bar while I type or browse.
At most there are spikes of cpu usage. If you are loading pages and pages after heavily flash and gif animated content, Safari nautrally would consume CPU cycles. However, with static content like slashdot pages and os news there is hardly any consistent cpu usage.
Simply paging down on a large (~500 posts or more) Slashdot or kuro5hin thread pegs the CPU at 75%+. Consistently. As it does, I might add, on several demo iBooks I’ve checked with in stores.
Make up your mind is it very fast or too slow.
It’s fast for what it is. It’s not “fast” compared to my regular desktop PC (a dual 700Mhz P3) or even one of my test boxes (a 1Ghz P3 running Windows 2003).
And what day to day task do you do on it any way.
On the iBook, not much. On my work PC, multiple RDP sessions, dozens of putty windows, a couple of VMWare machines, Outlook, numerous word and excel documents, several Firefox windows with ~10ish tabs in each, a few IE windows, some MMC consoles and iTunes.
Well A solution for you is to go sell it on ebay and stop complaining. You obviously have no clue on how to buy a pc to meet you requirements.
Actually I do. The iBook meets the needs I purchased it for – a small, light, cheap notebook to travel with and keep my data, photos, music, entertainment, etc on-hand or do some impromptu on-the-spot computing with – quite well.
However, it’s got loads more grunt than the typical older Mac that is supposedly being advocated as a reasonable daily use machine. This iBook is less responsive running only Safari and Mail.app than my PC is running all the stuff above. Which I why I am always scpetical of people who say their “400Mhz G3 iMac” handles $SOME_SIGNIFICANT_WORKLOAD “fine” when such a machine has less than half the performance of my iBook.
Everyone I know who bought Apple laptops has never complained of it being slow. I know a lot of my colleagues who bought Powerbooks for the first time ever, and moved from vaio pentium-M based machines running linux. Highly technical people who work on kernel software and Cpus.
I find that _extremely_ difficult to believe. Most people I know who have switched to Mac – while they enjoy using their machines – do find them to be quite “slow” – particularly immediately after changing.
The reason they stick with them is for the other things that make the “Mac experience” nice, but certainly not performance (although I’ve noticed that many after a while acclimatise to the UI lag and complain of it less and less – except for the ones that regularly use other Windows or unix machines).
Like I said sell your ibook get a windows laptop and be happy.
At the time there was no comparable PC laptop (although Dell have since released a nice looking 12″ machine). However, I’d rather have my Mac. For what I bought it for and for the price it’s a nice machine – but I’d hate to have to use it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. It would drive me bonkers.
Finally, we agree on some thing. It’s you then, end of discussion.
Well, it’s possible, but the funny thing is that so many people who insist their Macs “aren’t slow” then go on to complain Windows is “very slow” on machines that should have it appearing significantly faster. So, I don’t think it’s me, I think it’s them. The look at Expose and those dynamically scaling icons then compare it to the odd dialog or window in Windows that doesn’t redraw immediately – and simply ignore that things like switching tabs, paging down or opening menus in Windows responds instanteously, while on the Mac it has a tangible delay.
If you want to do the Terminal Server Approach get a nice X Server and use Apple Remote Desktop
ARD and Terminal Services aren’t really comparable like that.
ARD is a remote management tool. Terminal Services is an application/desktop server for thin clients. ARD compares to something like PC Anywhere, not TS.
Some of the PC Systems such as Dell, Sony, etc. you cannot easily just change components as you wish either as they custom design/build them and they will only fit parts from their own company.
I can’t speak for Sony desktops, but certainly on Dells about the only parts that are “non-standard” are the motherboards and sometimes power supplies. All the stuff that matters – CD drives, memory, processors, hard disks, etc are standard and easily user replacable.
As for the self built systems, yes, there is some limited amount of easy upgrading you can do but more often then not if you want a newer CPU you might need a new Motherboard and that new Motherboard either doesn’t support your old RAM or would be slowed down, so you also need new RAM, same with the Harddrive (though not as often) but you might not want a 5400RPM main drive in your P4 3.4Ghz EE machine or a change to SATA and similar can be said for the graphics card.
You are picking and choosing your examples and assumption to suit your argument. This is hardly a valid method.
So yes, you can upgrade your PC but from what I have seen it’s been in limited way.
You can replace just about any part of a PC individually. Certain dependencies can occur (CPU -> Motherboard -> Memory -> etc), but typically motherboards will support a wide range of CPU speeds and memory technology doesn’t change _that_ quickly. You rarely _have_ to replace everything in the machine just to get one newer bit, although many often do.
Although personally I’ve never been a huge fan of the “upgradability” cry, because IME most people don’t upgrade and, if they do, they want to upgrade either hard disk, memory or video card. The typical “upgrade” the PC advocates talk about is often a nearly completely new system in the old case.
However, I was very disappointed Apple didn’t make the video hardware in the iMac easily (and cheaply) upgradable, given both the machine’s demographic and relatively low-powered standard hardware. IMHO it would have been fairly easy to have placed the video hardware onto a standard AGP form-factor card while retaining the machine’s form factor.
With your self built system you also don’t get a system warranty and no software. This is not everyones bag to keep track of each component in your system and dealing with each components different manufacturer for warranty and any support.
This is precisely why I don’t think comparisons of hand-built machines to Macs (or other prebuilt machines) are valid.
And you still need to buy a bunch of software if you are a windows guy to get a similar functionality and is as slick as with OS X.
Like what ?
You claim to be an admin at some major firm.
No, I don’t.
Yet I find it absolutely hilarious that you would buy a 12″ iBook without research, may be go to an Apple Store and try it out before buying it.
But I *did* research it and it *does* meet my needs well. It’s just that those needs don’t include being a desktop replacement, something it would not be very good at. However, others here are saying machines with substantially less power not only would, but do, serve well as desktop machines. It is these claims I am refuting, using my iBook as an example.
BTW if a computer is idle and not at 100% utlization it is under used.
Note that “underused” does not imply “fast enough”.
Yes, clearly we have different definitions of “fine”.
Yes clearlt we do.
Methinks your “performance compass” is aligned on “Apple good, Microsoft bad”.
Me thinks yours is the other way around.
A once off, carefully selected pasting from top isn’t really relevant. I’m tlaking about watching the CPU usage graph applet in my menu bar while I type or browse.
So the CPU usage bar only monitors Safari then????? There are other things running on the box you know.
Simply paging down on a large (~500 posts or more) Slashdot or kuro5hin thread pegs the CPU at 75%+. Consistently. As it does, I might add, on several demo iBooks I’ve checked with in stores.
And on XP IE does not?????
On the iBook, not much. On my work PC, multiple RDP sessions, dozens of putty windows, a couple of VMWare machines, Outlook, numerous word and excel documents, several Firefox windows with ~10ish tabs in each, a few IE windows, some MMC consoles and iTunes.
Is this on the dual 700 P3 box or the 1GHz P3 box? You surely aren’t comparing a dual cpu box with giga of ram to a laptop…..
You see there in lies the problem.
Actually I do. The iBook meets the needs I purchased it for – a small, light, cheap notebook to travel with and keep my data, photos, music, entertainment, etc on-hand or do some impromptu on-the-spot computing with – quite well.
Didn;t you say it didn’t meet your day to day task requirements? You obviously have a dual cpu box for that. Why don’t you run your day to day task on the single 1 Ghz p3 box with 768 MB ram?
If you said that the single cpu box was still reponsive, you are lying.
However, it’s got loads more grunt than the typical older Mac that is supposedly being advocated as a reasonable daily use machine.
Let’s see a dual 700 P3 with what 2 gigs of Ram has more grunt than a 1Ghz g3 iBook, DUH!!!!
I find that _extremely_ difficult to believe. Most people I know who have switched to Mac – while they enjoy using their machines – do find them to be quite “slow” – particularly immediately after changing.
I find your comments about how slow the iBook is very hard to believe as well.
At the time there was no comparable PC laptop (although Dell have since released a nice looking 12″ machine). However, I’d rather have my Mac. For what I bought it for and for the price it’s a nice machine – but I’d hate to have to use it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. It would drive me bonkers.
Then don’t use it for those long durations. I don;t think anyone is arguing that a iBook is a desktop replacement, expect you, ecspecially a 12″ one.
It is not that my performance compass is “Apple good, Microsoft Bad”, Yours seems to be stuck at “iBook not equal to my desktop, so it’s slow”.
Well, it’s possible, but the funny thing is that so many people who insist their Macs “aren’t slow” then go on to complain Windows is “very slow” on machines that should have it appearing significantly faster. So, I don’t think it’s me, I think it’s them.
Windows doesn’t do half as much as OS X graphically, that is why longhorn is even on the roadmap, to provide a richer graphical experience, among other things. There is no excuse for windows to slow down with each and every new app installed. But it does, OS X doesn’t.
My power book runs exacly as it did 13 months ago with multiple apps, updates and even an entire OS upgrade. My Xp install is crawling.
Anand @Anandtech had and article on Mac and his conclsion was OS X multitasked better than Windows. See almost anyone agrees than OS X is better at handling multiple tasks without slowing down.
But I *did* research it and it *does* meet my needs well. It’s just that those needs don’t include being a desktop replacement, something it would not be very good at. However, others here are saying machines with substantially less power not only would, but do, serve well as desktop machines. It is these claims I am refuting, using my iBook as an example.
Laptops are usually not comparable to desktops with the same CPUs, Laptops have lower performing parts for heat and power reasons.
For example desktops use 7200 RPM drives laptops at mosst 5400 RPM drives. Laptops have slower AGP buses than desktops do, they have slower graphics processors than desktops do.
I am not talking about those Alienware or Dell desktop cpu 1 ton luggables that are marketed to gamers. I am talking about real laptops which are light, thin and have a decent battery life.
You will find that the performance of a 1GHz G3 tower is higher than a 1GHz G3 laptop. The bottom line is laptops sacrifice performance for form and function by design.
Stop extrapolating your experience with a laptop to counter other’s with thier desktops.
If you are not happy with the iBook sell it and get a 1.33Ghz 12″ powerbook.
May I dare to ask whatever happened to the subject of this article?
Tiger?
Anyone?
Hello?
well, bugger, seems another site has been completely taken over by the OS flamewar trolls… Another bookmark to delete…
I think you need to study english more.
I think I hit the button by talkin about philosophical aspect of Linux movement.
I will bet, Mac can disappear but Linux will not.
It is like people can not live without freedom.
I already talked that it is not about money.
You say you are willing to pay money.
Yeah, go ahead pay money, It is not about freedom.
And live under that license my friend.
license you can only “USE”
But with Linux I own it.
So it’s your choice. Be happy with it.
But with Linux I own it.
No you don’t. Linux is a registered trademark of linux torvalds. A being GPL means anything you do with it has to be given free as well.
You are not as free as you claim to be with linux. I think the BSD style license is more free.
BTW I am looking forward to tiger. The search technology alone seems worth it, My check book will be waiting.
So the CPU usage bar only monitors Safari then????? There are other things running on the box you know.
None of them can account for a 60% – 70% jump in CPU usage. Particularly when it _only_ happens while I page down in Safari.
And on XP IE does not?????
Not as far as I can tell.
Even if it did, since while doing so it has a _vastly_ less noticable impact on all-round system responsiveness, I would have much less of a problem with it.
Is this on the dual 700 P3 box or the 1GHz P3 box? You surely aren’t comparing a dual cpu box with giga of ram to a laptop…..
No. At no stage did I suggest I would expect the iBook to be able to handle the same load as my desktop.
Didn;t you say it didn’t meet your day to day task requirements?
It doesn’t. I didn’t buy it to.
You obviously have a dual cpu box for that. Why don’t you run your day to day task on the single 1 Ghz p3 box with 768 MB ram?
Because I have the dual box. Having said that, I have run similar workloads (only Windows 2000 and older versions of VMWare, Office, etc) on a 933Mhz P3 machine with a gig of RAM and it handled that _much_ better than the iBook handles 1/4 (hell, 1/8th) the load.
If you said that the single cpu box was still reponsive, you are lying.
It’s a lot more responsive than the iBook. Even when both are doing practically nothing.
However, it’s got loads more grunt than the typical older Mac that is supposedly being advocated as a reasonable daily use machine.
Let’s see a dual 700 P3 with what 2 gigs of Ram has more grunt than a 1Ghz g3 iBook, DUH!!!!
Please improve your reading comprehension. I was stating my iBook has a hell of a lot more grunt than the typical “older Mac” supposedly running OS X well.
I find your comments about how slow the iBook is very hard to believe as well.
Well, they’re not hard to duplicate. It’s not like there are thousands of different types of iBooks out there.
Then don’t use it for those long durations. I don;t think anyone is arguing that a iBook is a desktop replacement, expect you, ecspecially a 12″ one.
Funny, people are suggesting slower G3 and G4 PowerMacs and iMacs would be good desktops…
It is not that my performance compass is “Apple good, Microsoft Bad”, Yours seems to be stuck at “iBook not equal to my desktop, so it’s slow”.
At no stage did I ever – or even suggest I ever – expected my iBook to be as fast as my desktop.
Windows doesn’t do half as much as OS X graphically, that is why longhorn is even on the roadmap, to provide a richer graphical experience, among other things. There is no excuse for windows to slow down with each and every new app installed. But it does, OS X doesn’t.
Difference being in Windows (and almost certainly Longhorn) you can turn off some of that flashy graphical processing to improve responsiveness. No such option on OS X.
Anand @Anandtech had and article on Mac and his conclsion was OS X multitasked better than Windows. See almost anyone agrees than OS X is better at handling multiple tasks without slowing down.
Right. So Anand is “almost anyone”.
I’d really like to know what these people who say OS X “multitasks well” are doing. Probably running a dozen videos at the same time and seeing if any drop frames, or something equally as useless like how high a -j argument they can pass to make and get an improvement.
Laptops are usually not comparable to desktops with the same CPUs, Laptops have lower performing parts for heat and power reasons.
Somehow I think my iBook is well and truly faster than G3-era Macs and ~500Mhz G4s.
I would certainly hope so, at any rate. Apple should be pretty bloody embarassed if it isn’t.
For example desktops use 7200 RPM drives laptops at mosst 5400 RPM drives. Laptops have slower AGP buses than desktops do, they have slower graphics processors than desktops do.
Not the 3 – 5 year old Mac desktops that are being talked about here they don’t.
You will find that the performance of a 1GHz G3 tower is higher than a 1GHz G3 laptop. The bottom line is laptops sacrifice performance for form and function by design.
Undoubtedly. I’d never suggest otherwise. However, I feel pretty confident in saying my iBook is faster than a 400Mhz iMac or a 500Mhz PowerMac.
Stop extrapolating your experience with a laptop to counter other’s with thier desktops.
I don’t need to – I’ve used just about ever Mac made in the last ~6 years for varying lengths of time and can draw from that experience (I’m pretty good mates with my Mac dealer). I mention the fact I have the iBook so I don’t get the typical Mac zealots responses of “you’ve never even used a Mac” or “you’re just jealous because you can’t afford one”. I _can_ afford one, I’m just not prepared to shell out the amount of money I’d need to to get a machine that had acceptable performance for day to day usage.
If you are not happy with the iBook sell it and get a 1.33Ghz 12″ powerbook.
I am mostly happy with my iBook (and a 1.33Ghz PB12 isn’t _that_ much faster, particularly for the $$$, considering the other PB niceties it misses out on as the poor cousin). I would not, however, be happy if I had bought a machine supposed to be used daily with similar levels of performance. I would be particularly angry if I had bought such a machine on the advice of others who insisted it would be “fast enough”. From my experience, as I’ve stated elsewhere, I’d be after at _least_ a dual G5 of some description to even get close to matching the responsiveness of my dual P3. And that is ridiculous.
OS X is _extremely_ slow. It needs intensive code-level optimising or the ability to turn off some of the more expensive effects. Or Apple needs to significantly bump up the speed of its systems to get the hardware far enough in front of the software curve such that the slowness of the OS is neutralised (as Microsoft banked on) – although I’m not even sure that’s possible. I used to think back in the days of 10.0 and 10.1 that a machine twice as fast would be able to run those OSes “well enough”. But the days of machines twice as fast have long since come and gone and OS X remains slow to use. Yes, it does some pretty fancy graphical stuff, but it just doesn’t seem to scale with the hardware. The whole “feel” of OS X’s lagginess stinks to me of unoptimised (or perhaps just poorly written, but I doubt that) software, not underpowered hardware. A machine substantially faster does _not_ give a proportionate increase in system responsiveness. It’s almost like the entire GUI is “rate limited”.
To be blunt I’m more disappointed than anything else. I really like OS X, it does some very cool things, it’s just a shame it’s so damn slow.
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/01q4/macosx-10.1/images/believe.jpg
You are such a liar that is not even worthy to have a go against your “facts”… Oh, and by the way about the OS X from ars: It is about OS X 10.1 :rolleyes:
And may I suggest that you should sell your iBook ASAP? You CLEARLY do not deserve one… You are full of Wintel FUD! :p
Sell it ASAP and continue your thing… That’s fine to me! Just sell the poor iBook! You DO NOT deserve to be even close to ANY Macs… Sell… Sell… Sell the iBook… I will even buy it from you! You have my email… Sell it to me please… ASAP! Then continue trolling and spreading FUD about Apple…
Sell the iBook! A S A P …
*It should read: You can have my email…
Now, when this “OSNews” will get an edit post function? :p
I recently purchased a PowerBook G4 with OS X 10.3, and I thank god I did. I would rather pay extra for an Apple Macintosh, just to be rid of spyware and viruses.
I used Windows for years and was fed up with my computer being filled with Spyware and all sorts of crap that websites dump on there. I hate having to run Norton Antivirus, and Norton Firewall which both slow the system right down. I hate the fact that after 3 months of using Windows XP, you need to reinstall the OS because it slows right down.
It doesn’t seem to matter what you put on a PC, Service Pack 2, all of the updates and various ad-aware applications, crap such as viruses and spyware still make there way onto the computer. I thought computers where supposed to be fun. Why should you spend most of your time running virus checks, spyware removal tools and Windows update.
Well no more, Thanks to Apple, I now enjoy using my computer again. I will definitely be purhasing Tiger when it comes out. I seriously doubt I will even touch Windows Longhorn.
Sure, I think Spotlight is going to be cool….but…I doubt it can be much better than Quick Silver, which is available now.
http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/
I have been using it for about 3 months now. Love it.
but it is more like a convenience application for finding a file you know about.
QS cannot search inside images or PDF files for data on a file so you cannot type in a search on information you want to read about in a fill full or articles in PDF form and have it return only the articles that have the information you queried about. Spotlight does have that function. smart folders is another aspect of Spotlight that will be helpful as it will remove the need for a structured home directory (while many of use are well organized, people like my father are not at all and smart folders will help him immensely.)
quick silver can only benefit from the built in search abilities of Spotlight.
… build your own kernel. To try and get proprietary drivers working with your OS. You’re free to spend hours and hours surfing websites and reading man pages trying to get trivial things working. You’re free to spend ages trying to get trivial things like video streaming in web pages working. You’re free to be forever “tweaking” your OS in the vain attempt that everything will work the way it’s supposed to.
Don’t get me wrong. Linux is great ‘n’ all but who cares if it’s free (as in speech)? I mean it doesn’t really matter much to a desktop user. I much prefer having a semi-proprietary OS that “just works”. OS X is far from perfect but at least all fonts work perfectly, iTunes works perfectly, java plugins in web pages work, flash works, GUI works etc etc out of the box. I didn’t have to drop to the command line once to get anything done. In fact I only drop to the command line to ssh to boxes and to do some developing.
Anyway, what’s with all the flame wars anytime that any news about anything to do with Apple is released?