HardOCP Spends 30 Days With MacOSX 708
boyko.at.netqos writes "Hardocp.com has published "30 days with MacOSX" — with the same author from "30 days with Linux" and "30 days with Vista" doing the evaluation. Ultimately he likes the stability and security but other concerns keep him from recommending it. From the article: 'The hardware lock-in and lack of quality freeware makes owning and maintaining a Macintosh an expensive endeavor ... Mac OS X has some amazing capabilities, but you spend a lot of money. Indeed, it seems the preferred method for solving Mac computer problems is to buy your way out of it. Slow computer? Buy a new one. Want to convert a file? Buy a utility. Want to do simple tasks? Buy a commercial program. Peripherals don't work? Buy replacements.'"
what's that smell (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guy is full of it ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Guy is full of it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally gave up and sold the printer to a windows-only relative.
But earlier you said:
I love my new iMac, but I have a one year old Canon laser printer/scanner/copier that won't work with it. One year old, not 10-20.
So which is it? Is the fact the Canon printer works only with Windows a problem with the printer or a problem with the Mac?
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See, now this is why (Score:3, Insightful)
I concur. This is why I advocate, at a bare minimum, one wife for cooking & cleaning, one for intellectual discourse, one for sex, and one for bearing children. Those all in one models just don't cut it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I did some research and ended up with a Brother AIO. The printing seems to work fairly well, but the scanning software is crap. It will often claim to be una
Re:Guy is full of it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is true though that when your mac is old and slow you have to buy a new one. Not like a PC. if your PC is slow you either wave your magic wand over it to make it faster or better yet you install the new Windows OS and its like your hardware is brand new.
I guess his complaint is about upgrading your computer. Of course I use a laptop most of the time so I hardly notice the lack of upgrading. But I thought the new Intel macs had upgradeable CPUs (didn't someone upgrade one to an 8 core before apple released one?) and you can upgrade the ram and the hard drive. I admit I know nothing about upgrading video cards on the mac these days (laptop again) so that might be an issue.
I don't get it. Sure maybe the mac is a little less upgradeable than the PC, but very few people replace their motherboards these days, its easier to just buy a new machine. This sounds like hyperbole to me.
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Re:Guy is full of it ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is, if you are upgrading your motherboard and your video card and your processor and maybe buying new ram (or even new hard drives to match your mother boards new built in controller) at what point are you pretty much just replacing the whole system. Sure its nice to keep that DVD burner around but how much are you really saving? And if you were on a Mac Pro you could buy a new one that didn't have the high end optical drive, or the largest hard drive available, and just put your old ones in your new computer.
Sure, its not the same, you cant build your own mac and Im not going to claim that you can, but I think the difference here is not as great as the article makes it out to be. And for the vast majority of users its practically no difference at all.
Re:Guy is full of it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's what happend to me. My home built athlon machine died. Processor or motherboard, I'm not quite sure which, but it was one of them. I could buy a new processor to test it out, but then I'm out the cost of the processor if it doesn't work. So I went to buy a new motherboard, figuring I would grab one with some expansion room so that if I needed a new processor, I could up it just a little. Turns out, there aren't many boards like mine anymore, at least not at the shops. Sure I could buy it online, but I need this today. Of the options, none appeal to me, not for the money and because the few ones that are worth the money are unuseable for me because they only have PCI E and not AGP. In the end, I settled for an upgrade to both the CPU and the motherboard, but as I didn't want to upgrade my RAM at this time, I was limited a bit even in that selection and I still need a PCI E graphics card. When I'm all said and done with this, I'll have put about $400-$500 into this computer, and even then, I won't have a great machine, just one that I can say is better than what I had before.
By contrast, my father just had his old mac tower die (processors). He found used tower that was a generation after his, swapped out the various expansion cards and harddrive. Same general idea as my repair about $500 for a computer that's better than what he had before, but no where near top of the line. In the end, in my experience, it's about the same, PC or Mac. If you want top of the line, you'll pay thousands, no matter if you upgrade or buy outright. If you want to move up a little, you'll pay a couple hundred, no matter if you upgrade or buy it outright. If you want to stay with the exact machine you have, that's the only place I've seen upgrading do any reall good.
Re:Guy is full of it ... (Score:5, Interesting)
To make the machine modern (PCIe, SATA, etc.) the whole machine has got to get replaced. The case is about the only thing I could keep. With all the CPU socket changes, a motherboard rarely survives more than one or two MINOR upgrades anymore.
In a Mac I can upgrade easily: CPU, video card, RAM, hard drive and optical drives. Oh yeah, and on the laptops at least, the wireless is really easy to upgrade as well.
So what if I can't upgrade the motherboard? Even in the PC world with a new socket coming out all the time, it's just about the same. This argument was much more valid a few years ago. Upgrading was also a much different realm when everything was on a PCI card. But now? My motherboard costs $60 - $120 (even more sometimes) and has everything but video and if I'm not a gamer... everything on it! New motherboard practically = new machine.
And when my machine gets slow? For everything but gaming and video (neither of which are things I do a lot of) how fast does your machine even need to be any more? The ONLY reason I'm not still using my G4 PowerBook is virtualization. That's it. Having quick access to IE6 and IE7 on my work machine is just too convenient to pass up. But, really, that's all.
All in all, the article was weak. Never trust a gaming centric site to give a decent review to anything but Windows based machines with the latest in "penis grade" hardware (like $500 video cards). For those of us who do work on your computers, many understand the relative strengths of Windows, Linux, OS X and whatever else appeals to our needs. Not everyone needs a $2,500 and a video card that requires its own power supply.
Re:Guy is full of it ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, the Mac Pro towers are some of the most gorgeous, easily upgradeable computers available anywhere- he admits this, but they start at $2,500. What this guy's asking for is what Apple used to sell from the release of the Beige G3 tower in 1998 until the release of the G5 tower in June 2003- an easily user-upgradeable machine for something around $1000.
Some of us like computers and mess around with them and, as he said, like to pop in new components to relieve bottle necks with some frequency, rather than always replacing the whole thing at one go. I had one of those G3 towers, and I bought it as a 266 mhz G3 with 32 MB RAM and a 4 GB HD, and I sold it 6 years later as a 533 Mhz G4 with 768 MB memory and over 100GB of HD space. Along the way it stepped up from a CD-ROM to a CR-R, it gained USB 2 and firewire ports through a PCI-card, and it went from single monitor support to much faster 3 monitor support with a Radeon 7000 PCI card. That machine cost about $1,000 new, maybe $1,200. Now, while the price of PC's has fallen dramatically since 1998, the price of the cheapest upgradable Mac has doubled. I still think the Mac Pros are a great deal- if you price something similar at Dell, you'll pay $1,000+ more. But regardless of whether they're a good price for what you get, they cost an arm and a leg. Minis, and more particularly iMacs, are great machines, but they offer extremely limited ability to upgrade compared to PC competitors. Apple has abandoned the market segment for people who like the flexible tower form factor but don't want to pay an arm and a leg, a segment that's very well catered to by nearly every other PC manufacturer.
Re:Guy is full of it ... (Score:5, Funny)
Complaining that the mac mini is not upgradeable enough for a power user is like complaining that a geo metro is unsuitable for towing a boat.
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Re:Guy is full of it ... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/ [versiontracker.com]
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Re:XFCE... (Score:5, Funny)
I like my GUIs like I like my women: small, light, and fast!
I like my OS like I like my women: low maintenance, easily customizable, and an appropriate reaction to the three finger salute.
Re:XFCE... (Score:5, Funny)
I like my women like I like my monitors: thin and fast [easy] to turn on.
I like my women like I like my mice: ergonomic and easy to hold.
I like my women like I like my peripherals: plug and play.
I like my women like I like my keyboards: touch sensitive.
Women can jump in here any time...
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Sorry, command line is great for a lot of things, but so is the GUI, so it might as well be nice. And when I want the command line... there it is! In that terminal window! And when I maximize it, I get more info on the screen than you do without a GUI! Hey, look at that!
Re:what's that smell (Score:4, Insightful)
Though, honestly, when he called NeoOffice an X11 app, I had to take away his credibility card...
Re:what's that smell (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm not saying he didn't have some good points, I found some of the things he said true to my own experiences with MacOS (His "The Bad" section I thought was fairly well accurate, "The Good" had some things that were just too subjective for my liking, but had it's pros and cons). But if he can't do his research, and p
Re:what's that smell (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, well... (Score:5, Insightful)
If not - you can always try to do things the "source" way
-uso.
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Re:Yeah, well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind that he just finished up his reviews on 30 Days with Vista and 30 Days with Linux, so he had just dealt with the exposure to the large amount of Windows programs and numerous alternatives, and also the massive amount of Linux software available. Now he is testing out Macs, which have fewer programs available when compared to Windows/Linux, although the programs that are available are quite good. The point could be argued that Macs can be cheap, but in reality, Macs will be more expensive when comparing high-quality software (and performing hardware upgrades) with that of Windows/Linux/PCs, and it's a point that should be emphasized if you're in the market and deciding if you want to go with Mac OS X/Windows/Linux.
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Wow... What a Difference a Day Makes... (Score:3)
I have a question to the person who wrote the article:
Q: If every review that you do is merely comparing itself to your experience with Windows XP and 2000, then exactly how can you claim to be objective?
Basically your reviews are this:
- Take a new computer.
- Cram on all the Windows applications you can find(Office and such)
- Look around for exact copies of the same w
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Can you please clarify?
You're not the first person to mention these "closed source Apple formats" (actually, the word I hear misused more often is "proprietary".) As a Mac user who occasionally has to use a PC, I have yet to encounter any of these formats. In fact, the only "proprietary" format I can think of that occurs frequently on the Mac is Quicktime. Other than that, every program I use is eiher an
Fink (Score:3, Informative)
GNUstep apps on Fink? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GNUstep apps on Fink? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why informative? (Score:4, Interesting)
I use osx, x11, xp (parallels), firefox, thunderbird, itunes, etc all day long on 1GB w/ a 2GHz MB. The last time I saw the pin-wheel was during bootup sometime last week.
BUT.. if we want to complain, Linux and Windows is always still there for the taking. I, personally, just think it is nice to have so many tools available in such a newbie OS without needing a credit card. Mind you, this is getting outside the realm of what the OP was driving home:
The guys over at HardOCP are just being the idiots they can't help but be. Whatever opinion is 'cool' in the gaming community, at any given moment, will be what they blindly repeat and get all opinionated over, and instantly dislike anything that doesn't "fit" with the "scene".
Things the author missed that were so painfully stupid are all over the article. Just like the whole deal with Windows having ready access to openoffice. If these chaps knew anything about this free software they need and support, then they should know there's a branch named Neo Office which works just dandy with OSX. Just like how the author could not find a "wordpad-like" program.. TextEdit anyone? It's Wordpad on steroids, and it's built into the operating system. Don't get me started on the simple things missed, like Dashboard and Spotlight. Spotlight should have been the first thing he clicked on when unable to find things.
Don't trust these articles for anything, really. The only reason Linux didn't get a complete thumbs down is due to it being "cool" in the "scene" (note above), ever since Carmack did some fps dev under Linux back in the day. So, regardless of how little he understood, how much trouble things were to get done, Linux had to have a good review or else he would not fit in with his gamer buddies. That's the impression I get when OSX gets knocked for having some of the exact same tools, with same level of knowledge needed to make them work in either OS.
Re:Why informative? (Score:4, Insightful)
And don't even start about fink, or macports, or whatever else is out there. The casual user should NOT have to install some goofy third party port-of-a-port of a BSD application.
Re:Why informative? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to take that line of thinking further, then review the Vista comparison. That should have been done by a person who never used Windows before, since about 90% of the interface is the exact same thing with a more osx-looking title bar at the top. Alternatively, as this same thinking should have been applied to switching to Linux. In order to take on that task, there were three outlets of support mentioned as last resorts before giving up on any issue.
The things you have issue with are the things any OSX user will find within 10 minutes if they are a former windows or linux user. Spotlight is on the desktop at all times, it even looks like a search function to someone who has had SOME form of computer exposure in the past, as it has the icon of a magnifying glass.
Expose/Dashboard/Spotlight are all covered in way too much detail on the apple's switch site, the tiny little quick start manual that comes with the system, and all over the internet. This isn't just a case of a new user not being able to figure out how to progress with their new system, this looks more like someone sat around getting frustrated and calling something stupid before they even bothered to approach the problem with some logic. Other things, like the applications he couldn't find that were at his fingertips. Not to mention, how Apple sort of made these features key points in all their switch advertising text. These are of the few things that differentiates the brands anymore, and our hardware expert wasn't aware of any of them.
In 30 days, if you have not found your applications folder or spotlight in osx, you probably just want to go back to playing Q4 on Windows and calling yourself a "power user". The fact he missed the Applications folder's beauty is another bit of evidence of the personality we are dealing with. For those who aren't mac-inclined, it's like the Program Files folder in Windows, only without all the settings and clutter. Typically, there's just a list of
I'm certainly going to put a Windows XP partition on Whakataruna for the near future - but I've decided to keep the bulk of my hard drive - and most of my day-to-day operations, in Linux. XP is going to be my OS for gaming, audio loop editing, and Photoshop, but for everything else, Linux has transformed into an attractive, utility-driven, customizable, and generally easy-to-use interface that takes all of the virtues and none of the faults from the other major OSes and gives it to the consumer for free.
Here's some more chatter from your friend. If he had actually been using ubuntu since that text was written, he would have probably had something to say about how nice it is to be able to run his xapps off his Linux box on the laptop. He probably would have known what apt is by now, thus not crying about the lack of software. There probably would have been mention of how nice it is having a terminal icon on the desktop, so he could do things the way he did them in Linux. Can't have none of that, mainly because I don't believe much of what happened in the article reflects upon any reality outside of his teenage tech fantasy land.
I suppose the thing I find most annoying is the fact that I picked up osx and started using it right away, with no problems, using only google. My new boss came in one day and sat down new little macbook and said "Here's your laptop!". Within half an hour of first boot, I made it further and had used more features than this sap found in 30 DAYS. I'm not some
Re:Fink (Score:5, Informative)
Other things he is completely wrong about:
* NeoOffice is the Mac port of OpenOffice, it does not require X11 to run. It works well, IMHO.
* There are plenty of free open source apps, just like in Linux and Windows: Handbrake and MacTheRipper for DVD ripping, etc.
* The model between the Mini and MacPro is the iMac
I use OS X and Linux a lot, and there are some real issues with OS X, that's for sure. But this article didn't go into any of them. I could go on, but I'm sure this thread went from 3 comments to 200 by the time I hit submit.
Re:Fink (Score:5, Insightful)
* NeoOffice is the Mac port of OpenOffice, it does not require X11 to run. It works well, IMHO.
That is a typo, and it is being corrected. The line: "While AbiWord and NeoOffice are both available through X11," should be "While AbiWord and NeoOffice are both available, and OpenOffice is available through X11,"
* There are plenty of free open source apps, just like in Linux and Windows: Handbrake and MacTheRipper for DVD ripping, etc.
The issue is not that there is no freeware, in fact, I used Handbrake and Transmission and Colloquy in the article. However, DVD Ripping, BitTorrenting, and IRC chatting are all secondary compared to WordProcessing and Graphics Editing - and NeoOffice/AbiWord/OpenOffice(X11)/GIMP all had significant problems with either stability or ease of use. BitTorrent is nice to have, but word processing is mission critical. That's the lack of quality freeware I was talking about.
* The model between the Mini and MacPro is the iMac
I don't know what you're referring to here. I say that there is no consumer-priced model from Apple that has easily accessed components, like the former PowerMac stand-alone tower line. To get to upgradability of that nature, you need to go all the way to the MacPro - is that what you mean?
The Results Were Pre-ordained (Score:4, Informative)
I shouldn't have bothered. To save everyone else the time here's a summary:
1. Hate Apple, Apple hardware, and hate the Mac OS X.
2. Review it.
3. Result: Hate Apple, Apple hardware, and hate the Mac OS X.
I have to admit that I didn't expect much, really, when I read in Slashdot's article summary that there's a "lack of quality freeware" for Mac OS X... the author definitely doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
Must be a slow news day.
--Richard
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And one further point - the *only* machine that i
Re:The Results Were Pre-ordained (Score:4, Informative)
One of the best parts of my switch to OS X has been the quality of the freeware, and the ease of finding it. Some of my personal favorites: Adium (IM), Colloquy (IRC), Smultron (text editor), Transmission (torrent client), Cyberduck (FTP), Xee (image viewer), backuplist+ (backup), etc, etc. All are nicely featured, well polished products. The counterparts I've managed to find for XP all feel like half assed crap in comparison.
I really couldn't believe that quote about the lack of freeware in the article summary.
Ignorance can be brought about by bias (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed, it seems the preferred method for solving Mac computer problems is to buy your way out of it. Slow computer? Buy a new one. Want to convert a file? Buy a utility. Want to do simple tasks? Buy a commercial program. Peripherals don't work? Buy replacements.
I couldn't agree less.
A few good points (Score:4, Insightful)
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The use of, benefits of, and shortcomings of Mac OS X have been thoroughly documented on a thousand* different sites. It's not like it's even a new version--10.4 has been out for TWO EFFING YEARS!!! Where has this retard been? (Reminds me of the NewsRadio episode when Bill discovered rap.)
Up next: 30 days spent b
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http://www.versiontracker.com/ [versiontracker.com]
http://www.macupdate.com/ [macupdate.com]
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Normally I am all about free software, but if you really want good syntax highlighting, tons of language support (some support you have to download separately), in a nice Cocoa app, you should really consider buying TextMate. It the only apps I've paid for in years. Well
Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
it seems the preferred method for solving Mac computer problems is to buy your way out of it. Slow computer? Buy a new one.
Which other operating system can I use that doesn't require me to buy a new computer when this one feels too slow? If it's a lack of RAM that's slowing things down, then I'm just as likely to be able to chuck more memory into a Mac or a PC. If it's the hard drive, then again, I can put a whizzier one in regardless of whether it's a Mac or a PC.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
If it's a lack of RAM that's slowing things down, then I'm just as likely to be able to chuck more memory into a Mac or a PC. If it's the hard drive, then again, I can put a whizzier one in regardless of whether it's a Mac or a PC.
As the guy who wrote the evaluation, I have to disagree here. Apple no longer makes an affordable "PowerMac" line where you can add new components. You can upgrade the RAM on a MacMini, but it is extremely difficult and risks damaging the case, you can upgrade the RAM and hard drive on a MacBook, but that's about it for upgrades. In order to get any decent expandability, you really need to go with the MacPro line, which is overkill for most people's computing needs and wallets. That's what that line is about.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
It does seem a teeny bit like you had your mind made up before starting the review, with a glaring error like that one.
Before you ask, no, I'm not a Mac zealot; my main workstation runs Fedora.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
Look, when you type up a 14,000 word article, you're going to make a mistake somewhere in there. NeoOffice. OpenOffice. Similar programs. Similar names. Exact same function. Any surprise I got them a little mixed up at the end? I've already sent a correction - it'll get changed soon.
Sorry to be snippy, but I've been breaking my back on this article and 90% of the criticisms are from people who haven't even read the damn thing (not you, but... people...)
"Why didn't you try Fink and MacPorts?"
"I spent 2000 words on Fink and MacPorts, and both get their own page."
"Why do you complain about Microsoft Office not being free for Mac when it costs the exact same amount for Windows?"
"Because the Windows platform has OpenOffice for free and the Mac platform doesn't."
"Why didn't you just use NeoOffice/Abiword?"
"I tested both and neither were stable."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Where your argument falls apart is your construal of "most people's needs". If you had put forward the thesis that your target for evaluation was the casual user who wanted a computer for basic daily computer needs (some WP, some email, web browsing) than the idea of "overkill" of course makes sense because the Mac Pro is a professional's tool for professional uses. As for the Mac that targets the "typical user" you infer in the conclusion -- well, the issues you raise of upgradability, exandibility, and professional applications, (or Unix apps and their availablity, functionality, etc) -- are moot for this user -- yet in the openeing you appeared to be evaluating a Mac Mini (!) from the standpoint of a Power/Professional user(!!). You yourself are confusing audiences for these products in unfolding your own arguments. You are confusing your own arguments in the balance of the review in fact. WHAT are you reviewing and WHO for? Please decide before you start typing.
And your entire argument of little or no freeware, that's just daft. Aside from the Unix/X11 apps, there are thousands of Mac OS X native freeware apps that fill nearly ever niche. I know that in thirty days of searching it's hard to find them all (easier if you are looking for something specific rather than saying 'where's the freeware?') and not surprising you didn't find them (although a little search of VersionTracker would have clued you in) -- but that's a very different matter than saying there are none.
This strikes me as one of those reviews where some communication with an actual professional Mac user could have made all the difference. Reminds me of a review of the Mini I read when it first came out, from a PC user who'd heard that MS Office ran on Macs, inserted his PC-version CD install disk, and had it fail. As he had (or utilized) no other resource than his assumptions, he wrote (and published) that the claim of Office running on Mac's was false.
Yours is not journalism, but anecdote, and not well-informed for the weight of the conclusions it posits.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Funny)
Either he has been in a tech coma for some time.
Or he is 12 years old.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
I semi-agree with you on this -- on the current MacBook line you can't even replace the Airport card without performing major surgery, and getting the RAM in there is a complete bitch. On the other hand, I currently use two Macs in my house: a last-fall's MacBook and the one I'm using right now -- a formerly top-of-the-line PowerMac that turns 6-years-old next month.
"Affordable" is what you make of it. I bought this thing for less than $4k six years ago. My modifications are probably still under $4k. I've bought five HDs (usually I keep filling them up; I had one fail) and used it as the main production computer for a weekly newspaper for three of those years. I've replaced the DVD drive and just last month the CPU fan started making some noise, so I freshened it up. Oh, and I've worn out three keyboards. Not spilled anything in them, just wore them out. I type a lot.
I wish I had some idea of the number of hours of actual use this machine has had. I've owned it for far more that 50,000 hours and had it on and running (not sleeping) most of that time. $4k for 50k hours would be 8 cents an hour. You figure most people use their computers for 8 hours a day for two years (roughly 3000 hours) and then get a new one, and even if they're $600 machines then it's still 20 cents an hour.
I don't know how one would adjust for inflation (well, I do, as it would be about $4,600 in today's dollars) or adjust for the fact that you can just add a lot more to a MacPro than you could those old PowerMacs. I mean, you can drop anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 now. I can build one that I'd be real, real happy with for $3,800.
And as far as software goes, I can't possibly disagree more. Excluding games (yes, they have them for Macs), I've purchased exactly three commercial software packages for business use -- Office, Adobe Creative Suite (back before it was called that and then upgrades), and Stuffit Deluxe. Everything else I've ever used has been freeware or shareware or was bundled with the OS. I generally don't use Office or Stuffit now and today's earlier post on CS alternatives have got me investigating those, though it'll take a small miracle to pry InDesign from my hands. But you clearly just had no idea what you had or how to use it -- and were comparing it to something you did know, which is not the same as being a total noob.
In the end, though, you get what you pay for.
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With that said, the one area that I've never liked Apple's current product line are the iMacs. I hate integrated m
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I will agree with you that it's no more difficult but the truth is when I swapped out the battery, I was left with an iPod that had a deformed case. There seemed to be no way around that, and I didn't want the same thing to happen to the MacMini.
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Did you read the article? In the article, he actually says that Macs are *cheaper* on a part-for-part basis than most other systems.
The point he's making about price - and it doesn't really apply to notebooks - is that not being able to upgrade components makes the computing experience more expensive. I don't know how good an argument this is, but the ability to upgrade individual components is considered a huge deal among hardware enthusiasts. Given that this article was posted on HardOCP.com, this point
Someone who doesn't look doesn't find (Score:2)
Almost anything on the Mac can be solved with freeware.
NeoOffice needs X11? (Score:4, Interesting)
If I'm not mistaken, NeoOffice is a native Mac app that is as easy to install as any other, and integrates just fine with the OS. Is the author think of openoffice.org?
Re:NeoOffice needs X11? (Score:5, Funny)
Hardware Lock-In (Score:2, Insightful)
NeoOffice Inaccuracy (Score:2)
Peripherals don't work? (Score:2)
Isn't this what you always do when your peripherals don't work? ;) I use FreeBSD, Ubuntu, Mac OS X, and occasionally windows at home and none of them can magically fix a broken mouse.
Article summary: The UI is pretty, there is less freeware, Minis aren't good for games.
Wasn't all of this known to the author before he wrote this detail-light article?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again (Score:3, Interesting)
Not just preferred, but official.
Let me tell you all (again) the story of my Blue and White G3, Revision 1.
This particular hardware has a CMD IDE chip. Apple screwed up implementing it. Various people claim that it is a problem with the chip, but the identical chip is used in oodles of other hardware (including early UltraSparc workstations) and it works fine there. So Apple blew it. What did they blow? If you use UDMA transfer modes with it, most devices will experience data corruption. The problem occurs most when the CPU is heavily loaded (if you have one of these systems, a bit of testing will bear this out) but it can happen any time. And it's easy to load the CPU (even if just for a moment, which is long enough) when it's a ~300MHz G3.
Apple published a TIL (TechInfo Library) document on the subject. Their solution? Either purchase an add-in IDE host adapter, which for the mac at the time cost something like five times as much as for the PC, or purchase software like FWB Toolkit to disable UDMA transfer modes on the disk. That's right; Apple's solution is to spend money to make your computer slower. No logic board replacements were proffered.
That isn't the worst of it, though! When Apple rolled the TIL into their new Knowledge Base (KB) the article was deleted. I used to have the TIL document # noted down and actually searched for that, and could not find it. The information on this problem is available on lowendmac.com, by the way... The point here is that Apple not only treated their customers like shit by selling them flawed hardware, then knowing and admitting they were flawed, and suggesting a ridiculous solution (spend more money) but they then later attempted to bury the evidence of the incident by eliminating the best reference to it on the web.
If this is the kind of company you want to patronize, that's your business. But Apple has never been shy about making users spend money, even when it's Apple's fuckup that you're working around.
Re:I've said it before, and I'll say it again (Score:5, Informative)
The only fault with Apple is that they didn't issue a free driver update to disable DMA on those chips. I won't fault them for not replacing the chips, because no PC maker I'm aware of did either, and the things were fairly popular in the mid-'90s.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Or how about this gem (albeit anecdotal, still 100% true)...
My time costs more than the apple tax. (Score:3, Insightful)
Lack of freeware? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, you do have to pay for MS Office and Photoshop, but no shit. You have to pay for these on Windows as well. He states that the free options like Abiword lack all the features necessary, but that's going to be true of any Office or PS knockoff. So not only do you have the option to buy Office and PS (just like on Windows, and unavailable for Linux), but you have a number of free alternatives, most of which aren't any harder to install on OS X than on Linux.
All told, the author is either ignorant of or biased against Macs. He complains about the Mac Mini lacking a more powerful graphics card and more RAM, but he fails to point out that it's a $600 entry level machine. He also complains about OS X not running on non-Apple hardware. That's a business argument for another day (and one that he would have a hard time winning), but it shouldn't be relevant to a technical review.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It might be true in terms of pure quantity: there are more freewares on Windows ok... but you usually have 3-4 competing freewares doing the same thing on Windows, but only one which is actually good. Let's take an example. A utlity like DiskSize on Windows has many many freeware/shar
Windows (Score:3, Insightful)
Saying OS-X has no freeware is both wrong directly (there is plenty of good freeware for OS X) and indirectly (Alot of open source unix apps compile directly, have premade binaries, or have ports going)
Using fink one even has the full apt functionality from debian and debian based systems.
Although things have been changing slightly in the past couple years, freeware for windows is harder to find, and before then almost impossible. Everyone was on the bandwagon of crappy worthless shareware apps, and worse, apps labeled as freeware but require a serial to unlock, by definition shareware.
I'd say only recently has windows even come close to a freeware pool like the OSS crowd has enjoyed, and continue to enjoy under OS X.
Lack of quality freeware... (Score:4, Insightful)
No freeware, maybe. But one of the things I really like about OSX is the amount of high quality, reasonably priced useful mini apps there are for it. Things like TextMate (or TextWrangler, which is free!) and Transmit are worth the money. There is a lot of "freeware" for the PC, but a lot of it would be better termed "crapware".
Lack of software? (Score:5, Informative)
While Apple computers are more expensive up front, you do get quite a bit of bundled software, and a good, standards compliant, OS. I feel the software more than makes up for the extra cost.
Once you've paid for your Mac, you now have the world's most flexible computer. It'll run MacOS, Linux and Windows. With VM software you can run it all at once, with few compromises.
That means you can run freeware for all three operating systems, so the Mac actually has more free software available than any other computer. Many Linux programs build flawlessly under MacOS for instance.
Good stuff!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if the "lock-in" crowd will ever get it? Don't want to be locked in to a good product? Ok, your choice...buy a Dell and enjoy your MS Experience. Why come to a Mac OS party and complain about Apple Hardware lock-in?
Quality Freeware (Score:3, Informative)
MacPorts and Fink provide access to a large range of open source solutions, but they are clearly aimed at the IT savy. As for replacing hardware when it is no longer good enough, well this is not different to replacing your video player when it no longer does the job. If you have a non-compact computer then you can upgrade it all you like, but a compact computer such as a portable will always have limited upgradability, and the target audience really doesn't seem to mind. What makes a good computer depends on who you are and what you are doing with it, but the greater public once something that just works, and does not want to play around with the innards of their system unless they are forced to.
apple's sad focus on flashy consumer glitz (Score:4, Insightful)
I am sadly disappointed in the support that apple has given the open source community. there are a LOT of free applications that do work well on mac osx, but apple does not seem to care. there is almost no official support for integrating open source applications. dports, fink, etc. - none of them really work well. you walk into an apple store and they say "if you are typing into a shell, we don't want to (read:can't) talk to you," literally. selecting and promoting open source software would be a way for apple to take a commanding lead in the os market, but they don't.
apple should have a marketing campaign like: "set yourself free" or something like that and let people choose them as a real windows alternative.
He's right and he's wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Where he gets it wrong though is about the freeware. I've found a wealth of freeware and tinkering advice for getting more into/out of your Mac--I'm always amazed at how much is actually out there, considering the relatively small user base. And that doesn't even count projects like Fink, if you want to do real tinkering. So he's right and he's wrong, but it seems he entered the argument with his mind made up, and that's the real mistake.
Nice tech article. (Score:4, Insightful)
So you're telling me that an author from HardOCP, an overclocking website, considered the task of adding memory to a computer to be too daunting to bother with? Come on. It tells you how to add memory to the computer in the manual.
Author is biased (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm definitely not a Mac 'fanboy' but the review seems undoubtedly slanted against Mac. He also claims:
"Virtually unusable" with 512MB RAM? I have one of the first Mac Minis with only a meagre 256MB RAM, and I use it all the time for many kinds of tasks and actually pretty seldom run into any performance problems. Yet with horrendously over-dramatized hyperbole he states Apple has "blood on its hands" for releasing a machine with "only" 512MB RAM?
Either he is a serious power-user with intensive day-to-day tasks (in which case his criticism has no relevance for the man on the street), or he is outright lying.
He also criticizes that its X support is not great. But Windows comes with all of absolutely no X support!? He also points out that if you want to do serious photo-editing you need to pay for Photoshop - gee, I didn't know the Windows version of Photoshop was free. And there is GIMP for Mac [gimp.org] so he can't complain that its because Photoshop is the only option or something.
Either the reviewer is trolling for ad-views for his website, or he is a corporate shill for MS, or he is biased and using different sets of standards to evaluate the Mac vs. (one can only presume) Windows.
His drive fails, so he blames OS X? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wtf? If my external drive ceased to work, and it did so on anything I plugged it into across multiple other OSs, I would blame the drive, not the OS. This guy is grasping for reasons to blame OS X for stuff and for ways to give it a bad review. Typical FUD: my drive died, while using OS X, so Im cautious about using any drives with it cause it obviously kills drives!! heh. His other complaints are just as laughable, blaming OS X for making people buy hardware? Name the last Windows version that did not require a Major upgrade in hardware over the previous just to run? Name an OS that wont go faster without buying more ram or faster processors? It like saying "my car wont accelerate any faster unless I replace the engine with a bigger one, so I must be a crappy driver." And the comment on lack of quality free software, how many quality free aps can you get for windows? Almost anything from the Linux/Open Source/*nix world will compile on OS X, there's even this project called Mac Ports that makes bringing normal FOSS stuff into the native OS X environment easier. Gimp is a prime example. If you look around, there is plenty. This guy is just spewing FUD, looking to complain about everything, riding the thought that to get better viewer ship for his articles he has to be negative, just like the major TV news is these days.
Blah
Tm
This is review of the MacMini, not OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
The MacMini only has 512Mb ram (because I configured it wrong)
The MacMini has Wifi and bluetooth with I don't need instead of more ram (because I configured it wrong)
The MacMini isn't expandable (I bought the wrong machine)
Which product was he supposed to be reviewing?
Why does the MacMini suddenly turn into a MacBook when he tries to return it?
30 Days and an Expert!? (Score:5, Insightful)
One won't get far using a Macintosh from day-to-day without a word processor, for example, and the effective choices are limited to the iWork and Microsoft Office suites. Only the latter has features that professionals find themselves using with regularity (like edit tracking).
So we all need edit tracking?! How many of us really need the feature-creep of Office 2007? There are some, and there are some who really are doing DTP with a word processor, but the vast majority of people do not. Most of us would be well suited with TextEdit.
While AbiWord and NeoOffice are both available through X11, neither had the full functionality that we needed, not to mention that we had a hell of a time getting them to work at all.
AbiWord works like a charm and does not use X11, nor, IIRC, does NeoOffice. What functionality does this author 'need' that exists in Word for Mac but not AbiWord or NeoOffice? The Microsoft logo?
From time to time, there are small, niche apps that cost you - like the DVD shrinking software or the WMV converter - which have a freeware equivalent on both Windows XP and Linux.
How about HandBrake? While I've always been annoyed at the 30 dollar QuickTime fee, the same libraries for conversion, etc, are freely available on Mac so many free alternatives exist. Which WMV convertor for Linux are we talking about? If VLC, it also exists on Mac.
Not everyone needs BlueTooth and WiFi - and I would have rather had a computer I could use.
What is this doing in the article?
Dual-booting on a Mac brings the Mac platform an ability to play the games that were once the sole province of Windows. This should have been a net bonus for Mac but the limited and underpowered graphics solutions coupled with the inability to upgrade them negate that advantage.
So he tested on a Mac Mini and found that it couldn't play games well since they didn't cram an 8800 into the fat sandwich case. Great. Now, try the brand new MacBook Pro's video card or the iMac or the Mac Pro and see how that goes. And, the Mac Pro is upgradeable.
Furthermore, though people complain about DRM in Vista, the DRM of an Apple computer puts it to shame. There is no technical reason why Mac OS X can't run on other hardware, and even where technical compatibility is a problem, no one is asking that Apple have any sort of support for third-party hardware. Third-party drivers can take care of that, but we want to be able to have a user-friendly, stable OS to use on any hardware that we want without Apple actively preventing it.
Vista and OSX DRM issues are quite different. Apple has an understandable rationale for not wanting OS X to run on any hardware. If you don't agree with it, it is not at all impossible to subvert as a quick peek at Pirate Bay will show.
It is also expensive. The OS is sadly chained to the anchor that is Apple hardware, and I am less enthusiastic about that. It means that to use Mac OS X, you need to spend at least $600 on a new computer, and more for a computer that actually runs well. It also means that unless you go for the absolutely top-of-the-line Mac Pro line, you will need to replace your entire system when it starts to become outdated, rather than gradually solving bottlenecks by upgrading components.
600 dollars. Tragic, isn't it? If that is a problem, buy a used Mac. One of the effects of Macs being excellent, consistent 'package' computers is that they are very loved in the resale market, both for buyers and sellers. If only they would let me but this 600 dollar graphics card in the Mac Mini though...
Furthermore, the lack of freeware requires either resorting to illegal activity or resorting to paying out the nose for commercial software. Don't get me wrong, comme
"Buy your way out of it" (Score:3, Insightful)
"Many ill-fated customers who upgraded have yet to get their PCs back to perfect working order" it says here [hardwareanalysis.com] and in many other places. Vista broke quite a few hardware drivers. And if your device is more than a few years old, the MBAs who decide these things are likely to decide against spending development money just to please loyal customers, so in most cases the simplest option is... to buy your way out of it.
Conversely, there are many things Mac OS X can do that Windows can't do unless you locate commercial products or shareware. I just found out yesterday, for example, that, unlike Mac OS X, Windows XP has no built-in way to check the S.M.A.R.T. status of a hard drive. And, of course, as far as I know there's no way to create a PDF file on a Windows machine without installing extra software.
Peripherals (Score:3, Informative)
* HP 1020 printer -- This is a bargain basement printing solution that HP made reliant on Windows in order to keep it under $100. It clearly states on the product page that is Windows only. Yet he somehow blames Apple and MacOS X for not supporting it. HP chose to make the product this way and he chose to buy it.
* Canon CanoScan LIDE 30 -- Another bargain basement device; it's worth all of $25 now from various camera shops and is listed as being compatible with "MacOS X 10.1 and higher". This means it's been around since 2001 and that Canon did not upgrade the drivers on an obsolete, low-end product. And somehow this is, again, Apple's fault instead of the manufacturer's or the buyer's.
DRM in OSX? (Score:3, Insightful)
Having to buy Apple hardware to run OS X seems to be about 90% of the author's complaints, and it's a valid one, but the fact that on *some* Macs (and not all) this uses a DRM chip to enforce the lock-in doesn't mean that this is DRM, any more than using a Power PC rather than an intel chip was DRM in the previous generation. The only actual DRM in OS X as shipped is the barely-honor-system-quality encryption that iTunes uses... and that is hopefully on the way out...
Lack of quality freeware... (Score:3, Informative)
HardOCP is virulently anti mac (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of intelligent people over there, but when it comes to the Mac they behave like a bunch of fucking baboons, and this "review" should be taken with a very large grain of salt.
OK, so what has he got RIGHT...? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that - although biassed and with some suspect statements (NeoOffice requires X11 and is impossible to install? WTF??) there is a grain of truth in what he says. OSX is not the worlds greatest platform if your main requirment is GUI-based Open Source.
I certainly share the impression that there is less native free (beer) ware than Windows - and that although most of the FOSS stalwarts have been ported they do often rely on X11. This is rather second-best, Since the Unique Selling Point of OSX over Linux/FreeBSD is its GUI, many of the advantages of which disappear under X11, this does rather defeat the object. There's quite a lot of reasonably priced shareware though, and I get the impression that things are stepping up a bit post-Intel.
So, basically, if you want a totally free ride, use Linux or FreeBSD - its no great revelation that OSX is aimed mainly at people who are either going to use iLife + (maybe) Office or shell out $$$HOW MUCH!? for professional creativity gear.
I've been using OSX for web development (targetting Linux servers) using Eclipse, PHP PostgreSQL and its largely great - proper unix filesystem (unlike Windows - what's ths point of living if you don't have symlinks?) better/more responsive GUI than Gnome/KDE, easy testing on Firefox & Safari & fire up parallels for testing on (multiple versions) of IE. However - I've had a few issues with the PostgreSQL/MySQL GUI tools not being up to snuff on the Mac.
PS - last time I looked there were multiple sources for Apple-compatible RAM - which isn't so much non-standard as not-the-cheapest (e.g. SODIMS instead of regular sticks). Crucial and Kingston will even arrange - for far less than Apple's price - for the traditional seventeen virgins to journey to the summit of Mount Fuji laden with gold and crushed lotus blossums and obtain from the ancient and venerable hermit therein the rare and valuable FB-DIMM chips coveted by the Mac Pro.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
...there is a grain of truth in what he says. OSX is not the worlds greatest platform if your main requirment is GUI-based Open Source.
If that had been the author's premise, to evaluate the state of GUI open source on different platforms, I might agree. I do not, however, think many people would consider that to eb a very interesting or useful study. Most people don't care about GUI versus CLI as much as they care about what works easily for their needs, which varies by audience. Also, most people don't care about open versus closed source nearly as much as they care about freeware versus payware.
I certainly share the impression that there is less native free (beer) ware than Windows...
"Native" is a pretty subjective term.
Problems with this article - minor, but still... (Score:3, Informative)
"We'd start testing on Apple's lowest-end computer, a $600 Mac Mini. We wanted to see if a low-end computer could handle the Mac OS X operating system. We would then move to a higher-end $1500 MacBook."
Both are the bottom of the barrel for performance in their respective classes of machine. One in the desktop category, the other in the laptop category. He didn't even hit "mid-grade" in the performance curve of the overall Apple hardware lineup (presumably because he couldn't afford them), but complaints about performance in the article must fall on deaf reader's ears who understand that Apple has ALWAYS under-powered their lower-priced machines.
Second:
"Additionally, each program does not terminate when you close all its windows. To do so, one has to either choose to quit the application from the menu bar, or right click on the icon in the dock to quit it. This is a boon when you want to keep an application resident in memory because you know you'll use it frequently, and a bane when you close out the windows and forget to close the application."
A skill learned by most regular Mac users is keyboard shortcuts. (Truthfully, by any user of any OS... if they're smart.) A simple Apple-Tab (analogous to ALT-TAB in Windows and in virtually the exact same keyboard location, not much "learning" to do there) and Apple-Q to Quit the application selected, and it's gone in two keystroke sequences.
Just like Windows... ALT-TAB, ALT-F4.
Plus, the OS will swap out anything that's not truly running/doing anything... any modern OS will -- it's not sitting in active RAM making your machine sluggish, unless you left the application DOING something...
Third:
"Yes, there is right clicking in Mac OS X - there has been for some time - and Apple even sells two button mice now. If you're on a notebook without a mouse, holding Ctrl while clicking the trackpad works as well. Right clicking in the dock brings up a list of commands, which include quitting an application. Holding down the alt button while doing so brings up an alternate list of commands - including a "force quit" option for misbehaving applications."
He also never read the manual or looked at the online help -- all Mac laptops today ship with touchpads that understand multiple finger-presses. Drop two fingers on the pad, and hit the single mouse button, instant "right-click" functionality. (Working on my wife's older iBook which doesn't have this functionality or my work IBM/Lenovo laptop that also doesn't have it drives me crazy now...)
Fourth:
"Though the Mac Mini does not have a DVD burner, there was an option to save it as a disc image (an
You can buy Mac Mini's with DVD burners, or add external ones. No brainer. Apple's consistent use of "Combo Drive" for CD burning drives, and "SuperDrive" for DVD burners, is a bit obtuse, I'll admit. Clicking and reading the specs on the two choices for Mini's makes the option abundantly clear for anyone REALLY shopping for a Mac.
Fifth:
"Had Apple sold a computer configuration that was easily upgradeable at a lower price point than the quad-core Mac Pro line, I probably would have made the decision to go with it for my evaluation."
He completely disregarded the iMac, probably on aesthetic, not technical merits. Then complains that there's no "mid-range" machine he could have purchased.
Summary:
He didn't do a very good job for a professional reviewer... but we're all used to that from tech writers these days.
Re:No quality freeware?!?! (Score:4, Interesting)
SecretRabbit, not only have I heard of MacPorts and Fink, but each one of them gets a seperate page in a 13 page, 14,000 word article.
Re:No quality freeware?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't you just admit that you didn't read the article? He specifically discusses Macports, and goes into excruciating detail about his attempts to use Fink, which he concluded was just too hard to use (matching my own experience exactly). He also goes into great detail about the shortcomings of X11 applications run on OS X.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
He concludes that "11 functionality is poor and the learning curve is very steep." which is rather a joke. If he would have expended time enough for just a couple emails to MacPorts mailing list (this IS an OSS project after all), then his experience would have been a hell of a lot better.
I mean seriously, he's on IRC checking things out, but can't send an email to MacPorts?!?! He's able to tell "it looked like the problem w
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Editors, this article is pure flame-bait... (Score:4, Funny)
Right at home on Slashdot, I would say...
They actually did the same sort of article on Vista and on Linux a while back, so they are giving everybody a chance to complain.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)