Vista vs. OS X?

It's great having stable software, but Windows is often only shaky because people like to load umpteen different programs running in the background. Apple's certainly stable, but never gives enough customization options, they feel they know best, which is probably mostly true - but anyone like me who wants their computer just how they like it, but isn't quite the developer they wish they were (or we'd use Linux) then Windows is the next best thing?

OS X is a good operating system. However, it's not as good as you claim.

Let's stat with finder it should list folder first then files. Such feature was not provided in a new OS 10.5.4 even though over million users asked for -- that's over a million os x user ignored by Mac/Apple & Steve Job. Remember, this feature is part of UNIX/LINUX/BSD, but Mac boys removed/crippled it -- just as cups are crippled by Ubuntu.

Modifying files require a root account, but it's been disable, among other things. It took me three days to setup the system as I would like to use.

I am using Linux & Mac. I find it very frustrating, like "home, end keyboard keys' crisis! Let's not forget that it's a locked operating system design by a company that doesn't want to us to replace a battery even on a phone!  I find the company highly dictatorial. Still, I am happy with my first mini mac computer. It's not a perfect system, nor it is design for professional computer technican. Well, I buy another apple PC?

It all depends on how long this one last.

Regarding:

"Computer code is meant to be broken because from that unjoined code comes personalization that no company can give me."

For me, it means:

"It's not a bug, it's a feature!"

I truly agree that a system/application should be customizable to be customizable. Ask the guys at Mozilla Foundation.

But I DO buy broken chairs, and the end result is a much cooler piece of design than something new... futhering the metaphor, Linux would be buying gear to make a new chair - but I'm just not clever enough haha - and Apple is buying a brand new Eames lounge chair.

You are being unfair. Linux is not a broken operating system. Nor unstable -- try Kubuntu/Ubuntu. They are very much like Mac. Once you get used to them moved to a higher end distro like Debian/Gentoo.

I should mention that I have been using Linux for over six year -- by no means as expert. But I have never gotten into any major trouble with it.

Microsoft Vista is very unstable, slow, and the most hated operating system in the market. Users have been downgrading to XP Pro, and in some case buying mac -- myself included. I just buy my first Mac computer. And I have installed Linux & Windows XP in my laptop.

"I like windows because they're not proprietary."

What does that mean?

I agree. There are so many applications out there that only run on windows. So that's a shame. I believe just for that reason I will always have a windows system in my home. However, I already run a linux system as a server because I didn't want to have to reboot it every week. Linux distros are infinitely more configurable than OSX, XP, or Vista. The problem is, they don't support the plethora of apps that MS OS's do.

I think that both Microsoft and Apple have made good products - I liken them to Chevy and Ford. But see what I want is a Mazda Miata. And using Linux, you can "build your own."

You are absolutely correct that Linux offers the most "flexible" choice. The omission was intentional ~ the assignment was to compare MS v Apple.

However, in terms of flexibility, nobody is going to beat Linux.

It's pretty interesting to keep an eye on what the Linux systems and the other open source software guys are doing. The rate of improvement and the determination and organization of these people is phenomenal. The best desktop distributions like Ubuntu and OpenSuse are pretty much surpassing XP in usability, and have almost caught up to Vista and OS X. But where will Vista be in 4 years? There will be very little improvement if MS's past is any indication, until the next generation. Apple has done a little better. But Linux has been improving significantly every six months or so, certainly on a year by year basis.

Open source is gaining momentum and is likely to start overtaking commercial software on a number of fronts.  Vista is much better and slicker than XP, but I think once the shiny new gloss of Vista wears off, the bloat and licensing and DRM and security headaches will start to reveal themselves for the warts they are, and people are going to start looking at Linux as well as OS X a lot more.

"For me MacOS X is the equivalent of a good looking women having a lot of IQ, and Windows is like a boring girl trying to look good and trying to be intelligent but falls short of that."

Probably that is why everyone admires Mac,but buys a
Windows!!!

Speaking to this user's comments on cost - he makes an excellent point.

I recently completed an assignment where 10% of a 3500-user company was using MACs - for development of rich content, flyers, commercials, advertising, etc.

They had their own printers, support staff, procurement channels and various other bits to run their environment.

From the senior managements' perspective they were tolerated because they had a maverick unit manager who refused to bow to corporate pressure to replace the MACs with PCs.

Now onto the cost structure...

For those 350 MACs, they had 1 support guy... two servers, a NAS device and three high-volume or high quality printers.
I was tasked with doing a quick business case (I was working in the PC side of the company) to do a TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) exercise on the MAC environment.

The PC infrastructure had ~3200 desktops, multiple servers required to manage them, printers everywhere, Huge amounts of bloated storage because people didn't know how to manage their files, locked down desktops, and over 50 support staff.

I won't bore you with the details, but the PC desktops cost the company approx. $280/user/month to run, and the MACs cost the company $190/user/month to run.

The results of my TCO were never made available to senior management because the windows-bigot director who was trying to quash the MACs didn't like the results, even though the financials had been signed off on by the finance dept.

Sigh. It was because of this that I started to look long and hard at Macs.

"Like many mindless fanatics, so called "believers," it is a blind act of faith not founded in facts. "

Now that is rich. I have never met more fanatical people than MAC users. To listen to MAC users is like listening to evagelicals.

To compare a PC to a MAC is like comparing an eagle to a human or a cheetah to a human. yes the eagle can see better than any human can ever dream of and the same can be said for the running speed of a cheetah. But PC are generalists. Look how well the Xbox works. It is a product that has optimized its hardware with its software and vice versa. There is a very good reason why MACs are only built by apple. That way they can optimize their software to their hardware. No wonder it runs great.
While I admit that apple is a wonderfully creative company one has to also see that it is easy to be creative when you are allowed to work with a blank canvas...I would like you to make a Picasso out of a Loutrec

Some good points - but...

I tried hard to become a Linux user. I really did. It was one of the biggest disappointments of my life that it is not ready for prime time. I couldn't get it to work properly. I really do believe all software should be open source. SO I bought the Mac with OS X, which is ALSO UNIX - just as flexible if you want it to be as Linux, but with a ready-for-prime-time GUI!!!

It is nice to believe that MS is better for usability - but if that was really true, how come they are knocking off the mac's usability features every chance they get? Truth is, they are now about the same....until you calculate total cost of ownership (the value of your time) into the usability analysis - since in the XP/Vista universe you will be spending a lot of your time fixing problems, fighting viruses exploiting all its holes and otherwise allegedly customizing the software.

It is true that Apple could have become a software company in the 1980's, and maybe even clobbered Microsoft. They chose, wisely I believe, to be a hardware company. There is a good reason for that, probably many. If they became a software company in those early days, the pressures of the market would have demanded they cheapen (or otherwise degrade) their product. Apple chose wisely not to give into such pressures by not merely controlling the hardware, but by making the best hardware available in the world. Microsoft took the low road, and gave into every pressure to make Windows more bloated, to rush out updates, to make it everything to everyone so it really isn't great for anyone. I believe that Apple took the high road.

Thanks again for your thought provoking article.

I didn't mean to be offensive, merely convey that the subject and content seemed to vary by a wide margin, and needed to be more succinct.

In essence, I believe that with their move to Intel processors, Apple has shifted the paradigm.

No longer do people have to choose between a PC with Windows and a MAC with OS X.

Windows still has a lot of life left in it for business use and third party software development, but I think with the capability to run Windows inside of a MAC that the decision is no longer one of OSX or Windows, but really the option to do both on one platform.

I only hope that Apple tries to calm down their hardware development group. They sometimes have a tendency to release hardware, and then immediately offer something 2 months later that is better. I may be a bit bitter in this regard, as immediately after buying my iMac Intel Core Duo 20", Applea released the 24" Core 2 Duo with significantly improved hardware specs. like a Bigger monitor, faster processor, better mounting options, Wireless N networking, etc - not to mention that the G5 was swing-arm mountable, the Core Duo iMac was not, and the Core 2 Duo Mac IS. That's a slap in the head...

If Apple wants to truly own the space it is entering into right now, it needs to do more end-user usability testing or requirements polling. They love their flash bang surprise announcements and media hype, but in the end, they need to fill their user's requirements.

/DA

I disagree that for usability Linux is behind MS. 

Try keeping all of you programs up to date in MS and then do the same in Linux.  Tell me which is easier.

Try keeping your system free from spyware and viruses in MS and then do the same in Linux.  Tell me which is easier.

Try running XP (I won't even dare you to try Vista...) on <500MB of RAM.  Now do the same in Linux.  Tell me which runs faster (isn't this part of usability?). 

Try reinstalling Windows or upgrading to a newer version while preserving all of you user settings and files.  Now do the same in Linux.  Which is more "usable"?

I'm never a big fan of the "analogy" argument, but following through with buying a home -- in fact, people buy homes all the time that need improvements, upgrades, additions and the like. And we have the "freedom" to go to any store or contractor we choose to get the job done.

You aren't confined to the purchasing only through your real estate agent.

We buy "things" all the time that aren't perfect coming out the box. Many people accept that (I haven't changed my Pontiac Vibe one bit), but others like the opportunity to tweak as they see fit.

This is the basis of my argument -- not that one is superior over the other, but that one system offers more "usability" than the other. For some, that is a key selling point; for others, it is not.

My favorite Windows analogy is the one about buying a new car. Would you buy a car that wouldn't start unless you rolled down the windows first?

The conventional Windows "believer" point of view is that you can customize it. I say again, you mean "fix" it so it is less broke.

The believer always parrots the idea that there is more software choice. However, that is also an illusion, with the exception of certain games and scientific or engineering applications. Speakingfor "everyman," what most people do every day, personally and in business, can easily been replicated on the Mac. And if you like the Flexibvility of Liknux/Unix, you should love the Mac - it is Unix, with a better GUI shell. All the open source you can download works just fine. The Unix command line interface is available either in a terminal window or on bootup when holding down a coule of keys.

Seems to me all the comments are just parroting the old and now hackneyed Windows vs.Mac arguments without really understanding the Mac. Most of these folks probably never actually used it.

I might add that I was a Windows power user and professional consultant. I build my own Windows PC's. The last one I built a few months before buying the Mac. I rarely turn it on any more, though it is virtually new. I applaud the mac not due to blind faith, but through intimate, hands on, in depth actual experience of both systems as a power user.

hey, apple may be tight on the hardware part but defintily not on the software.its open freeBDS.

linux is a nice alternative,but i think its needs to be a bit clear on the "apps running" part.
BTW i must confess i know nuthing about linux.
got any website to help me out in that?

"Now that is rich. I have never met more fanatical people than MAC users."

Both camps have their believers. However, as I point out in a reply above, I am both a PC and Mac power user and used them both for years, building many of my own PC's along the way. After OS X came out, however, it was a new ballgame...because OS X is UNIX. The superiority and functionality advantages of the MAC are not because they control the hardware - that is an old story before OS X. It is because it is UNIX. OS X is just the GUI - and a damned good one.

I don't understand the eagle and cheetah analogy. Perhaps you should use an Eagle (the mac - far-seeing, sleek, fast) and an Ostritch (head in the sand, ungainly) or a vulture (scavenger).

I specifically in my first post gave Microsoft a "pass" on the Xbox....the got that one right. 

Unix is hardly a blank canvas. It was invented around 30-40 years ago by AT&T, and developed by the open source community for decades. It is a solid foundation for a well designed GUI like OS X. Both Picasso and lautrec would love it!

What a ridiculous bunch of rhetoric. Apple has a blank slate to create from? Microsoft has too many platforms to support? Intel and AMD processors are the same. The video cards, the IO processors and the peripheral connections are also the same. And of course the storage systems work the same as well.

Dell, Sony, Gateway, Toshiba all produce hardware to run Windows, not the other way around! Microsoft have created vendor lock-in systems based on exclusive contracts. OEM's don't create hardware with no idea of what software will run on it, they know! If you have an exclusive supply contract with a manufacturer, you'll have control over the hardware. OEM's will rush to optimize your software features to differentiate themselves from other makers offering essentially the same products.

Microsoft isn't concerned that the buzz surrounding Vista is lack luster, because they know they'll get their money. So what if Vista looks just like a wanna be MacOSX? They know they took all Apple's ideas, the gloss, the shine, transparency, the little applications, they changed the names a little but yeah they ripped Apple off. But so what, where else you gonna go, suckers, give them their money.

Microsoft has a history of delivering bad products simply because they can, and no one can force them to do other wise, not even the DOJ. Those that continue to purchase their products (Dell, Gateway, Sony) either have a contract saying they must, or those (average users) that simply don't mind tinkering with broken stuff, wasting money and settling for much less.

leopard is a built 64bit but can also handle a 32bit if reqiures.so i think it is clever peice.
microsoft need to stop smoking stuffs & start thinking.
ya i agree "OS X only MAC" is a disappointment but i think its OK for me.

but i see sensabilty in you may people tell things about macs & critize them.but ask them one question "have you ever used one?"
and the subject kinda changes to the format wars.

Where oh where to begin?

I guess we'll weed hardware out of this discussion fist, since it has nothing to do with the comparison between two different software products... not that Linux has anything to do with the discussion... but so much for what we were supposed to talk about. 
Buying a PC or a mac with installed proprietary software does not make you a blind retard and should not make you feel all bad inside. There is an army of Linux users online who want to save billions of computer users from being damned to silicone hell for using products that you can't change and configure, all day, every day, until the end of time. The fact is, if Linux settled down six years ago, it very well could have held a huge - contending with windows, surpassing OS X - market share of desktop systems. It stayed true to it's nature instead... which is good.  It is a good choice for non-desktop environments. I recommend linux for servers and workstations and such because the work going into configuring it is less than the work it could possibly do on its own, once properly configured.
Let me clarify thus, computers were supposed to make our lives easier. They were supposed to do work for us. So when you spend 8 hours writing your own perfect custom Apache script and another few hours installing and configuring PHP and SQL and linking them together, you would benefit if it let thousands of people access your site without it crashing. Go Linux!

If, on the other hand, you spend that much time configuring your audio to output anything at all, building your video card drivers and linking them to your kernel, trying to find a way to change your resolution, and loading up your favorite OS X-like or XP-like skin just to sit on Digg and Slashdot to damn other users to a fiery hell where Bill Gates and Steve Jobs laugh at all the fools who blindly followed their path and sold their DRM'd souls for drivers that actually worked with their peripherals and applications that don't require you to configure or MAKE everything in order for it play nicely with your hardware, you have become a slave to your computer. It is not working for your to the extent that you are working for it.

And to the thousands,possibly millions, of Linux coders, you should be proud of yourselves. When you had the opportunity to sweep the desktops, when Apple users were PO'd at Apple for their then slow and buggy revolutionary OS, and MS users were PO'd at MS for all the viruses that started popping up (the latter never changed, but people learned to deal with it), you made a token effort to make the Linux installation process for Red Hat and a few other distros slightly easier to understand, but otherwise never sold out your high end users by dumbing the system down. You passed up the desktop market to remain strong were Linux has always been strong.

I used to love Linux... and it makes sense. I once asked a friend of mine who had been in a bad relationship why she didn't want it to end. She said that you have to love things that you take care of-because you have spent so much time and effort on them-even if you would hate them otherwise. Cats, fish, dogs, people, religion, linux, whatever. It's universally true. And the user whose statement I am replying to loves linux, and perhaps won't, perhaps shouldn't, change. He or She seems well informed enough to make his or her own decision... seems, other than the comment that WIN computers were around in the early days (it's semantics that Windows specifically wasn't around in the early days, I know what the author means, and likely agrees that the early days were even before Apple carved computers out of wood and Microsoft wrote software for them) , a veteran of the computer age. I also agree with software subscriptions being a bad idea. I simply disagree that Linux presents an viable alternative to mainstream desktop computing.

Now on to POSIX. It may be true that the linux kernel is POSIX compliant, and you should therefor be able to run most any POSIX compliant software on it. This is, of course, not true out of the box for Vista, so I'll leave that out for now, but is true out of the box for OS X. In fact, I hear that 10.5 server is going for UNIX certification, a bragging right badge held by particularly few operating systems these days. Not all applications, depending on your installation and distro of Linux are POSIX compliant, which means that there are still some applications which cannot be ported to native OS X without some help. There are also some Linux apps which cannot be ported to OS X at all, or some that cannot be ported to specific macs (such as the inability of POWER based macs to run emulators and such that are written in X86 assembly language). For the most part, however, you can build or install binaries and run open source software packages on OS X, just as you can on Linux, with no modification whatsoever. Many popular applications even have Aqua front ends for OS X, giving you the luxury of a mac with the configurability of Linux. Linux desktop environments can be run in conjunction with Aqua(which, in my opinion, leaves too many toolbars all over the place), on top of, or underneath the Aqua UI, giving you the ability to run even the applications written specifically for Gnome or KDE or the like. 

What is often talked about when comparing operating systems is PC's and their ability to run alternative OS's as well as Windows, and, in the other dark corner, Apple computers with their proprietary hardware. Ten years ago it was not the case, and it is not the case today. The only piece of hardware that couldn't be purchased off the shelf is an Apple motherboard. You can and always could (though a while ago you needed less common SCSI drives) swap your Fujitsu or Toshiba hard drive with any other. You could use standard, non-Apple branded memory to upgrade your system, provided you had the a supported bios and drivers(on the manufactures side) you could use any interface card made for your available interface ports, be they firewire, PCI, USB or SCSI. Apple serial ports and ADB input devices were an Apple only affair, but many manufactures made hardware for these ports... and they have long gone the way of the Saber-tooth Tiger. You could and still can take that Fujitsu or Toshiba harddrive out and put it in a PC. Video Cards generally had special firmware for mac versions, but consisted of the same hardware as equivalent PC cards. Memory and video cards were once, a long, long time ago incompatible with PC counterparts when the memory used in Apple's were 5V chips as opposed to the more common 3.3V PC memory chips, and NuBus cards were once used instead of PCI,PCI-X,or PCI extreme cards, however these were all standards, and all were available off the shelf. Processors, and not just the new intels, but going way back to the POWER PC 601 (and even earlier if you knew what you were doing) were standards (Power pc REference Platform, and Common Hardware Reference Platform I recall being two standards used), off the shelf products that could be fitted to any mac with the correct pinout and bus support.

Of course, modern macs, in addition to every other piece of hardware, use Intel processors, and those with removable processors can be upgraded with off the shelf processors, just as any PC can. The only difference between Apples and PC's these days, hardware wise, is the Bios system.

Since Apple made available it's BIOS emulating boot loader for download (which will soon ship with it's evil, proprietary operating system) it has the same flexibility an off the shelf PC has.

So it can be said now that it is neither the case for PC's or Macs that buying the hardware locks you into some roadmap from Apple or Microsoft, as either computer can run many other open source operating systems if desired (and, of course, the Apple can run Windows, but not vice-versa). so we can remove the hardware aspect from the conversation.

Assume you bought a mac, and you have the option of running OS X, Windows, or Linux, and you have a debate. I don't feel that Linux will come out on top until evil, proprietary, closed source software is written for it. I don't mean all the software, or, like Apple, most of the software, but specific applications. Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver(does that still exist?), Avid or Final Cut Pro, Logic or Protools... applications that professionals and even some amateurs have invested huge chunks of time and money to master. These programs cannot, in most professional uses, be replaced by linux counterparts without suffering from either functionality, or retraining, and often both. A windows photographer can learn to switch to Photoshop on a mac, but isn't going to swallow The Gimp without a fight. I'm sorry to be the one who has to say it. Proprietary software is as important to common users as proprietary hardware is to you. And neither is more evil than the other... and the purest of the purist army of the proprietary computer hasn't yet, to my knowledge, built their own processors or the like.

...there was more to the previous article, but the writer's system crashed due to a driver conflict in the Windows system, resulting in 3 hours of troubleshooting by the IT Department, finally resolved by erasing the hard drive and reloading the system afresh.

Writer is currently reconfiguring the system, and should be able to finish the article, God willing, before year's end.

He called me to pass the emergency word on to you, since I'm on a Mac, and am currently on my fifth year without a crash, virus, or configuration issue.

He also wants to let you know that the two systems are still pretty much the same, or something like that (his handwriting was garbled).

Thank you all for your patience.

- A Friend with a Mac

If it helps, Vista may be a new OS, but the company that makes it is still Microsoft.

How brilliant is that likely to be?

Hey there:

It's true that I use Macs on and off, and I am more comfortable with the PC.

I think you've misread what I wrote. I wasn't using a VCR or any other recording device. My television ran through my computer (the XP Media Center); I used the digital guide to set recording; and once it was recorded, I ripped the DRM and built the DVD right from there.

To address your points:

1) I was recording television straight to my PC using the Media Center DVR capabilities (which comes with DRM to keep you from burning to a DVD). In order to burn a DVD from that, you have to get around the built-in protections.


2) If I was using a Mac, as I understand what you are staying, I would have needed to record a show using a VCR - then record to my Mac and edit. With the PC, I recorded straight to digital and edited from there.

3) My PC came with a very easy-to-use software program as well; once I pulled the television programming from the hard drive.

hey i think you need to learn maths.
1+3=7.
why don't you tell it?
[
Adding 19% to 8511.22 renders different results depending on whether you use the % button or multiply by 1.19. The difference is more than 0.04. Which es enough to make you look stupid when writing an invoice. See this video and find out that the bug is related to the locale in use.
]

didn't your maths teacher teach you rounding of decimals??

FWIW, the argument I made wasn't that one OS is better than the other...in fact, no single OS can claim that mantle. That is determined by your needs, skills, ect. My argument is that when you design an OS that is so widely used ~ on a platform that is independent of hardware ~ by it's very nature, it must not be completely "finished". It requires tweaking.

OS X and Vista the same? I dont think so mate. Here, a picture is better than a thousand word:
http://amani77.blogspot.com

Osx is a toy. A beautifully implemented toy.
But a toy.
1) Osx is hardware restricted. A playstation os works well because is written to fit that hardware. OSX is better than playstation os because it works even with a dvd disc.
2) Osx stable? Stability of every Apple os reaches its maximum two months before a new release (you must pay to buy) is available, via firmware upgrade or "system patches". windows "unstability" is the result of a lot of hardware software tecnologies that mac only dreams;
3) apple innovation? what the hell is innovation in bsd? when mr. jobs discovered its toy was prehistoric, he decided it was time to go unix...
4) desktop publishing? twenty years ago it had sense. now it is only an habit but it has no logical reason.
5) why do i should buy a machine that is old after six months paying three times more than a personal computer? in six months for the same price i buy three personal computers...
6) what do you say about the word: hardware upgrade?
7) what do you say about tweaking? why should i have a "plastic shiny packaged" os but without any possibility to tweak it?
8) why should i write a virus knowing that if i even could infect all mac on the earth, i would infected ten computers at all? (this is the main reason there are no virus or spyware on mac)... too much hard work for nothing...
9) Architecture? Powerpc powerpc becomes Intel Intel Intel. A 9th level spell i've never seen, even in dungeons & dragons. Yep! The difference is a protected firmware so you can not change anything in your machine!! This is Architecture!!
10) Explain to the apple mouse designer WE HAVE FIVE FINGERS NOT JUST ONE!!!
11) Design? Yes, beautiful is beautiful, but why pay over 1.500 $ for a beatiful toy?
12) Only one last thing: if your mac is no older than six months, sell it to iggy pop. buy one pc 1500$ worth. You'll have a machine more powerful than nine macs together.