WYE, WYG: Windows Vista vs Mac OS X Leopard

[elektro80]

WYE, WYG: Windows Vista vs Mac OS X Leopard

[dewdrop_world]

Worth a chuckle, sure, but Vista is really just too easy a target.

James

[Kassen]

I expected rediculous amounts of bloat and chrome and now it turns out it's in fact rediculous amounts of bloat and chrome. Do I win?

Oh, no, wait, everybody loses.

They look exactly the same to me, Steve Jobs said he felt the same, then everybody laughed at him. as did I.

Do we need another topic about this? Has anything about either improved since we last debated them? Why do people never compare MacOS to BeOS, OS/2 or Amiga OS?

I'll give some example areas we could cover;

One out of those 4 isn't realtime, guess which? Guess which one was last to implement multi-tasking? By how many years? All of them have been called "the most advanced OS in the world"at various times, those claims differ mainly by the reasons given, shall we list them for the respective OS's?

[dewdrop_world]

Since when is posting a link to a joke at M$ expense an invitation for another thread?

Can't we just share a chuckle and move on?

Geez, I know this is one of your hot button issues, but lighten up already!

Personally I don't want to get into it again -- my views are clear. I could take elektro80's post as a reference to a nice little joke and leave it at that.

James

[elektro80]

I imagined Kassen would skim that site for more chuckles as well.

[Acoustic Interloper]

[Kassen]

[Kassen]

[v-un-v]

Do you all think that the Vista vs Mac OSX affair bears just more than a passing resemblance to the end sequence of David Cronenberg's "Scanners"??

[elektro80]

I was thinking more along the lines of Gone With The Wind - The frankly my dear - scene.

[v-un-v]

[Kassen]

I don't realy understand what's bad there... Of course he goes straight for the terminal, so would I... who wouldn't? If your computer "starts doing weird things" it's time to check out what processes are running, who owns them, what amount of CPU and memory do they take... In such cases the terminal would be great, it would also be the last thing I still trusted on a computer "doing weird things" and probably the only way to administer things as Root when needed(?).

That sounds like a very sensible choice to me and I wouldn't know how to "repair disk permissions" either, I didn't know those needed repairing or could break in casual use, sounds quite serious. Depending on what exactly goes wrong "broken disk permissions" sounds to me like a hypothetical worst case scenario for a Unix install.

I had to look up "expose", sounds like alt+tab to me. I realise that is hard to understand (in turn) but for non-Apple users the whole concept of having a way to switch windows that has a name and is considdered a seperate feature is very, very odd.

It's what you're used to, to me getting a few developer libraries and compiling a program is a minor chore, hunting for a dll online and manually copying it in is business as usuall while those may sound terrible to you. On the other hand the very idea that disk permissions may break has me shaking in terror while that's perhaps a task you do one handed while having a pint and chatting on the phone.

[Kassen]

I looked it up. To me "repair disk permissions"sounds like a fsck crossed with a sort of compensation for the lack of a package manager. Not running something like fsck for a year would indeed cause issues to the tune of a few pages of garbage, yes. If I don't do it manually my Linux box will automatically run fsck every 30th time the filesystem gets mounted.

I don't like this concept of installers run with root priviliges mucking with file-ownership at all. Of course that will cause issues and of course people coming from a Linux background won't expect those... That's hardly a cause to get together and laugh and the funny people who just switched, more like cause to report to Apple that that's not acceptable behaviour for a OS that's supposed to be the most advanced in the world, this is more like a temporary work-around that would be good enough for in-house aplha testing.

[elektro80]

Kassen, this is something else. Please study the OS X architecture a bit first and try to understand issues re .frameworks and such. Yes, sometimes you would want to install certain stuff using root, simply because you want to install serious stuff right into the system - and you might want to do this because this stuff would be accessing core tech globally in the system.

[v-un-v]

[Kassen]

Yes, of course you need to install things as root every now and then. What I don't like is the idea of this leaving potentially system-destabilisng trash. If it's a closed-source installer that has to be run as root there is a tremendous responcibility on the maker to make very sure it works perfectly; you are basically entrusting such a person with your whole system.

I think I have studied the working of OSX quite extensively now for somewbody who doesn't have to use it and would prefer not to and I plan to read more on it but good solid info is hard to come by, most of what I found is apparently aimed at people who use a computer for the first time. The issue isn't that I refuse to study it, it's just lacking the sort of documentation I need. I'll read any online doc you sugest as explaining this sort of thing well, I also need info on whether and how OSX native apps can be run under X-windows based window managers, after stopping Finder/the doc/etc can't find that either. I also couldn't find how you can select your window manager when loging in and whether each window-manager can have it's own startup script.

Anyway, I don't think V-un-V's father could be expected to know he needs to clean such things, just like I don't think you can expect the average Windows user to know how to manually clean his registry (which he still does if he wants to keep it running well). Stuff like that should just work, not go down after a year just because somebody didn't intensely study the inner workings. I find it quite hard to understand the combination of OSX being so easy to use and it being funny if n00b's haven't yet figured out they need to repair file-permissions themselves.

edit; I'm not a "Linux nut", it just sucks the least of the three current major OS's in my experience. I also find it needs the least care to keep running and there isn't as much need to be a computer scientist with a specialty in OS design. I still think OS/2 warp is a much better OS but Linux makes more sense to compare OSX to.

[v-un-v]

Kassen, have a guess how many times a year I need to repair disk permissions?

It seems that the people who have to repair such things are those who go poking around not really knowing what they are actually doing!
(like my old man! )

But you've already made up your mind anyway haven't you? You don't really want a Mac do you? Buying a Mac is like shopping in IKEA isn't it? As opposed for instance to picking something similar up in a car-boot sale (No- I'm not talking boots ), or second hand shop for next to nothing and/or getting it to work!?

[Kassen]

Ok, so running a Mac for a year without the repair causes issues, then I would guess you might need to run that tool 3 times a year to be fine?

I would probably run fsck more often then that but there were some hints about using OSX that recomended against using fsck for non-specified reasons.

And yes, I have always known that I don't want a Mac and that I don't like them and their attitude. That's not the issue. The issue is that I may *have* to if I want a modern laptop that has drivers and can run Ableton Live on occasion. Vista I hate even more, Vista is no option and I'd prefer no XP if it's avoidable.

I also run XP and I don't *want* to run that either, I wanted Win98LITE but for 98 there were no video drivers. Windows98 also sucks and I don't want to use that either but at times it's the best compromise.

The big question to me is not whether I dislike Apple, the question is whether I dislike it so much that the cons outweigh the pro's in owning a modern computer and I might be better off programing something like a Arduino. This depends on factors like how extensively OSX can be reconfigfured to suit my needs and how much time and efford this will take.

The price isn't realy a big factor there. As I see it Vista made for a increase in "MS-tax", previously when buying a computer you had to pay 100 or 200 bucks extra to get Windows (even if you didn't want it), now because of Vista you have to pay 1000 bucks extra in order not to get it, a steep increase but with the Euro we already saw a 200% overnight inflation on many things, that seems to be the way money works these days, I can't do anything about that so I think it's best not to wory about it.

Basically I'm stuck, that's why this matters to me so much.

[Fozzie]

Vista is really improving by the minute
http://apcmag.com/vista_activation

[Kassen]

Exactly. I think Vista will make a lot of people move away from Windows, and Apple is one of the obvious picks.

[dewdrop_world]

Since I tend to agree with Kassen's initial suggestion that we don't need another thread on the subject...

I'm keeping my mouth shut.



James

[mosc]

[blue hell]

[Antimon]

I admire you, Kassen, for keeping up the energy to care about these things. For my sanity's sake, I've made up my mind that OSs (among other things) are irrelevant, and decided for me by external forces.

At work, they give me a Windows XP PC - nothing else will work or is indeed allowed.

I got a MacBook Pro a couple of years ago, because I got a good price, and I unconsciously wanted to join a community or something. It's my main computer at home.

I have a Windows XP PC at home, that I need for playing mouse/keyboard FPSs and other PC-only stuff. It has fans that make it sound like a vacuum cleaner, so I have to turn it off while messing around with music.

For any given task, there is usually only one of these that fit the need. I try to be satisfied with whatever I get, because if a start caring - chasing drivers, configuring - I know that things will start to break in my apartment, because I am hitting them with my fist, over and over until it starts to bleed or something snaps, and the glorious pain makes me forget that there are computers in the vicinity. This also happens every time I try to set up a Linux computer at home.

/Stefan

[Acoustic Interloper]