I'm getting a Macintosh ASAP...

Perhaps your computer is a piece of shit? No OS can overcome crap hardware.

 

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There is a version of OSX for PC's out there. I've seen it on the P2P's. I would post the link but I'm not sure if that would be kosher here. I have seen it on emule.

 

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How has MS done this? As much as we might say "oh god another service pack AGAIN?" does this not indicate a willingness to improve? Improvements don't need to be cosmetic!

MacOS emulators for Windows have existed for years. Plus with the advent of Intel into the Apple space...what's to prevent MacOS from running on a PC?

 

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If you want to play with your computer, get a PS3.

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. They're cheaper.

 

I kinda said that in jest, but actually, it's a good point. The PS3 comes with a version of Linux that you could easily download more free software for. It's got an Ethernet port for Internet connectivity. You can easily get a keyboard and mouse for it and use it as a computer. You can pretty much do anything you want with it that you can do with a normal computer that has Linux installed on it. Not to mention Blu-Ray, HD support, and, of course, games. And the main unit only costs $600 bucks. Nicht so schlecht.

 

There are many security improvements that Microsoft could have made in the past that they didn't for various reasons. They have been good at keeping their software updated and in making sure that the average user maintains these updates, but they are always way behind the power curve when it comes to new threats and changes in the security world. We are just now getting an updated browser with phishing protection (how long has THAT been a problem) and it took years to get pop-up protection out of IE and even then it doesn't work worth a damn. Users are forced to use third party apps like Firefox and defraggers just to keep their system up.

My biggest beef, as far as "proud", is the outrageous price their software commands. When you can buy a PC for as little as $400 Microsoft expects you to pay half again the total cost of your PC just for an OS. That is the stripped down version! The premium version would cost more than that PC!! Then you look at Linux.... Most distributions range from free to less than $60 with all the support and updates you get from Microsoft. Nobody should have to pay $200 to $400+ for an operating system. That is outrageous and one of the main reasons I finally began moving away from Microsoft and installed linux on my laptop.

By the by, I believe that the release I saw for OSX was not an emulator but a bootable distribution that does NOT run under Windows. I have not tried it so I may be wrong, but that was the impression that I got.

Sorry if this sounds like I am ranting, it wasn't meant to be but upon re-reading it, it does kind of sound that way.

 

I actually completely agree with you Bubber on the $400 bit...that is a risky marketing move on MS part. The thing is tho...they have corporations in their pockets. Vista will be distributed with new PCs and under open license agreements. It is an assimilation process, and many users will want Vista in their homes after seeing it at the office.

IE is not an OS by the way

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Fraggle: Just as i said before (basically) any OS will do if you just sit and work on your PC as if it's a glorified typewriter ( jk

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). At any rate, all of the rants against Windows; I have never experienced to any great extent that people love to complain about. My office PCs and my house PCs all run for days on end with no error.

Just to give you an idea...my previous job was system administrator. In charge of 100 odd XP and 2000 machines outside of the servers. Currently I'm a network admin, and there are about 300 machines here all XP. In all 400 or so machines in 2 jobs, I have yet to see XP behave as erratically as is complained. I have also yet to see XP be hard to use by anyone. Not even an hour ago, I explained to my IT unlearned dad how to explain to his IT unlearned IT manager how to assign permissions on network shares.

Probably 1% of these PCs have ever "simply crashed". Lost and corrupt files occur on all platforms while on a network and are more often than not, ID-10-T errors. The THREE macs i dealt with (2 G4s and 1 G5) while on the 100 PC network all had file corruption issues, the one with MacOS X had a consistent problem where it eventually (re)corrupted an Outlook PST. My most problematic machines were those 3 Macs. The irony? They were used by the 3 graphics artists.

Compare MacOS to Win98/ME and you'll get no argument from me. 98/ME were crap. However 2000/XP are stable and very viable for use on many end-user PCs.

 

Correct, it isn't.

It is, however, tightly woven into the windows structure, such that without it, you wouldn't be able to browse files or network shares, read help files, display computer properties etc. etc.

The only part of windows that IS an OS, is the kernel. Everything else is added software that makes "windows" what it is.

 

I know, doesn't that suck?

 

agreed. compared to Win9x or WinME or Mac OS 10.0 or earlier, Windows XP is awesomely stable.

Market share is a big part of the lack of viruses/spyware. No software can protect the user from themselves - if a black hat can trick you into installing his malware, then it doesn't matter what system you are on.
But at least *nix (including OSX) have 30 years of user security development behind them (unlike Vista's UAC), and don't run the common user as an admin (like XP).

1st, the dev tools do come with the machines, they are just not installed by default. A G4 iBook would have come with three disks - an OS install disk, a second OS disk with additional printer drivers for the super-professional types, and iLife. The dev tools are on disk #2.
second....umm, above the 3 key?

EDIT: I was chatting with a co-worker, and he reminded me that the British Powerbooks and iBooks had different Shift-number key symbols, and the British Pound symbol is over the 3 key. In order to get a #, you had to type Shift-Option-3. (or hit the KeyCaps application)
So you may been correct in your comment afterall

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it has been done in the past, but it is not supported and drivers are not always available for certain hardware combinations.
There is a Palladium chip on the new Intel macs, but work-arounds have been available for more than a year.

Just so I'm balanced in my replies, Mac low-end laptops have been having issues over the past three years. Comparison studies have shown that these issues are not out of line with industry standards (considering that with the move to intel, Macs are basically PC's on the inside), but that Mac users tend to be more vocal in thier complaints.
That plus Apple's switching of their iBook (and now MacBook) production to the FoxConn plant increased problem occurrences IMO. Things appear to be better with the MacBooks than with the last two generations of iBooks, but are still not as good as early G3 iBooks and before (minus the 5300C fiasco).

We'll have to see how quality issues crop up over the lengthening lifetimes of the intel-macs.

Google for reviews of Vista's UAC (user-access control) system. they have improved it since the initial Betas, but it's still a hack, and it shows. However, it's a hell of a lot better than XP.

Macs tend to have a longer shelf-life than Windows machines. IME, my mom replaces machines once every 4-5 years. I average 6-7 years. The cost amortizes.

Oh, heh. Ok, Linux wins.

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I like Ubuntu; had it running on an old Mac Mini, and also on an old throw-together PC. It's a really good system.

The MacOS emulators only go up to OS9, as far as I am aware.
Palladium is the only thing preventing OSX from running on a whitebox PC. I'm not going to link to the available work-arounds either, though, as I'm sure it isn't kosher to do so here.

Agreed. I built my GF a win2000 box last year that we just upgraded to XP (she finally found some stuff for work that required XP). Perfectly acceptable for the amount of time she spends on it.
Same with my Mom. I had built her a Win98 box after her dumpster Win95 box died. recently built her an XP box, and she's happy enough with it. Trying to do home videos on it has been difficult, but it's good enough for the time being.



Now, I work on XP and 2000 all day, because the company I work for builds custom software for major companies and government branches; 95% of which use Windows. However, about 60% of my co-workers have our own Macs on which we perform most of our daily tasks; simply because that .01% increase in ease of use becomes a huge factor when you are working 9 hours days 5 days a week year after year. The same reason why many others in our industry have Linux on thier home machines.

The difference between the available OSs is not as drastic as it once was, but the difference is still there. If I wasn't working so much, I'd go Linux for the cost savings + the *nix backend. However, I'm not into compiling stuff when I', not doing it for work, and since I've been pulled into photography for the family events, Photoshop is a must. For work use, MS Office is also a must.

So *for me*, OSX's minor design advantages over Windows are a major plus, and OS X's binary application availability make it win out over Linux.

Windows does some things very well, others well enough for most needs, and some things horribly. Same with OSX (Finder and RAM caching, I'm looking at you!), but I find that OSX's issues are more often annoying, as opposed to Windows's show-stopping, or restart inducing.

Uptime comparisons should have gone the way of the dodo once we got into the realm of weeks.

In the past three years, I've only restarted my 7 year old G4 tower when I'm traveling for work, and shut it down since I won't be home for more than two days. I had some issues three years ago when a third-party HD controller PCI card died, and things got flaky. Since then; no problems at all. And that includes multiple OS updates, software installs and removals, dev tools installs and removals, HD swaps, and a GPU upgrade.

I've got a 2 month old Dell Latitude Centrino Duo for work that requires a restart roughly once every week and a half, and the OS randomly loses the Ethernet port (it puts the port into low-power mode, and then can't remember how to turn it back on again), which requires the Ethernet Drivers to be re-installed. Some of it's issues are Dell's fault, but most are XP, XP's user access design, or XP's driver memory access design.



to sum up: at least we are moving quickly away from shared .DLL's!!!!!