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.'"
money money money (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, well... (Score:5, Insightful)
If not - you can always try to do things the "source" way
-uso.
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.
Hardware Lock-In (Score:2, Insightful)
My time costs more than the apple tax. (Score:3, Insightful)
Editors, this article is pure flame-bait... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Amen (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not a mac fan and I think that people who buy Macintoshes are fools. But with that said, the Mac OS comes with a richer suite of applications than Windows does, that's for damned sure.
Of course you get more with Linux. Shock, amazement. But Apple actually gives you several easy to use applications which still don't have reasonable analogues on Linux. Not as in "they don't come with" but as in "they don't exist". As annoying as iDVD is, for example, it beats the living shit out of both dvdstyler and qdvdauthor for ease of use.
Re:Guy is full of it ... (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.
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".
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Amen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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
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.
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?
OScar comparasion (Score:2, Insightful)
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: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?
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
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.
"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.
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.
You get what you pay for.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
Out of curiosity: What are the quality freeware apps for graphics editing and word processing you recommend for Windows? You do not mention them in your article about Vista.
For Linux, you mention Gimp, Abiword and OpenOffice. I use Gimp and NeoOffice myself, no problems at all. My only beef is that the keyboard shortcuts in Gimp use the Control key not Command.
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:Guy is full of it ... (Score:3, Insightful)
(It is a joke. Laugh).
Seriously, why do people complain and blame Windows when those things don't work, but they blame the device/manufacturer/whatever when it doesn't work on OS X or Linux? I'd say it's not fair.
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...
A few good points (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lack of software? (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?
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.
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.
Re:Yeah, well... (Score:3, Insightful)
If by "Linux programs" you mean X11 apps, you can forget it. No Mac user wants to run an X11 app. Besides the fact that they look hideous next to Cocoa/Aqua apps, they just don't integrate with everything else. It is like running Wine... you'll do it if you absolutely have to, but you'll always be on the lookout for something native. And this is coming from a 10+ year Linux user...
Sure, there's macports and you can get nearly all the same commandline tools that you have in Linux. But there's no substitute for a good Cocoa app... at at least a Cocoa front end to a commandline tool
-matthew
Re:Guy is full of it ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not only that, but it has all the functionality of a linux or unix box. That's why you'll find that the laptop of choice for a lot of non-windows/non-mac developers is OSX. People who think that it's some locked-down fisher-price toy don't have any idea what the hell they're talking about. It's like saying that because you don't know how to how to perform surgery, a scalpel is a stupid, useless tool.
Re:Guy is full of it ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, and of that 'free' software for windows, what percentage comes pre-packaged with spyware? 80%?
As far as upgrading hardware goes, yeah it's crappy that you can't swap out a motherboard on your iMac or laptop very easily. So sell the iMac. Did he price used macs on ebay? Doesn't he realize that even crappy old G4 iBooks are still worth real money? That does a lot to help keep upgrade costs semi-reasonable.
Re:what's that smell (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
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.
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.
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:HardOCP is virulently anti mac (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Lack of freeware? (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/shareware/and even COMMERCIAL! applications. But I had to google and try 5 freewares before I found one that works. I think that was WinDirStat.
Maybe the author failed to get some windows software equivalent on Mac. But the reverse is also true. For instance go look for a QuickSilver equivalent. You have the clumbsy launchy, the fat google etc.. but none is going to be as cool.
As for office tools. To be honest, unless you are working in a particular business environment and need to exchange documents a lot, i think Apple Works is quite worth is money (otherwise you need MS Office). I find it much more smooth to use than it's MS or OpenOffice counterparts. But the author has a point. There's no real office freeware tools available. OpenOffice is not (YET) ported and it is a SAD lack. NeoOffice sucks. I think you may use Ragtime for free, but it's not well known and frankly the UI is not that good... You also have some cool sharewares like Mellel.
But there's the unmatchable OmniGraffle that neither linux/windows has. If you need to make diagrams to show complex ideas and that you are frustrated to spend hours on a software for something that would take just a couple of minutes by hand.... then OmniGraffle is for you. And I have searched for equivalents so good (and FAST) to use, but never found any on Linux or Windows. For my needs, VISIO is a POOR alternative. And visio provides stuff i really never needs, like the semantic aspect of graphs, which in fact is annoying me when i want to take some liberties... For instance a UML diagram which does not abide the norm.
End to finish with the Linux argument...
The author tested the Ubuntu distribution and apparently he was not so scared to play with the command line and he did not complain about missing software except games and photoshop. He also did not complain about hardware support and i think that is biased... Coz Mac has hardware support, photoshop and slightly more games than linux...
I might accept the critics he made about OS X coz somehow they're true, but the lack of criticism on Linux is shocking. The truth is that MacOS X has a much less troublesome and greater hardware support (generally speaking) than Linux has. The reason is that many more manufacturers do provide drivers for MacOS X than for Linux (of course there are exceptions) and that you need not recompile your kernel everytime you add something (now i understand the technical advantages for LInux to do so... but MacOS X goal is to be easy, so it uses binary compatibility, kernel APIs and all that stuff Linus does not want to hear about for his own good reasons)
As for the software, virtually anything you can run on Linux for free will run on MacOS X too for free (except anything that interacts heavily with the Linux kernel... except drivers i dont know). That said it's reserved to user which are not afraid to use X11 and type some command lines (so not everybody and the criticims to OS X is fair). But that was not the case of the user, who can use some basic command lines on Ubutun. So I think he should have mentionned it. Coz honest he has the level to install some Nix packages on the mac. As to say the interaction with X11 and Aqua is not perfect yeah... it's true... but the interaction between a Motif, WxWidgets, QT and GTK app on Linux is not much smooth either, so that argument is to mitigate, even though with time they all tend to mimic windows (observe for instance the displacement of the close button on linux windows manager before and after win95)
Re:The Results Were Pre-ordained (Score:3, Insightful)
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 breathing air and drinking water--a Hard OCP exclusive!
* the funny thing is, "thousand"--usually an exaggeration--is in this case a drastic understatement. Googling for 'os x review' yields 67,400,000 matches. Just in case anyone has been under a rock and wants to read some good reviews by smart people, here are a couple:
Review of 10.3 by Bruce Tognazzini, Apple employee #66 [asktog.com]
Detailed technical review of 10.4 from ars.tecnica [arstechnica.com] with links to reviews of every version of OS X, ever
Typical review from a Mac site [macintouch.com]
Review of 10.4 from PC World [pcworld.com]
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?
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
The article is good for a solid "power UNIX user" but in writing such an article you're being ignorant of the 99% of the population that would rather purchase refined/supported commercial software rather then digging around for freeware.
I am a true "power user". I need programs such as Final Cut Pro, Logic, Pro Tools, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Quark, In Design, Illustrator, Flash MX, Quicken, DVD Studio Pro, etc. Being introduced to linux in 1996 I had anticipated that Linux would have similar apps available by at least 2001 so I could quit using windows. I HATED macs due to the confinements in Mac OS 9 (and prior). I wanted a unix option so I could continue my unix development and navigations in the shells, but needed the professional apps. Once i caught wind of Mac OSX which would bring the professional apps into a UNIX environment I salivated. It was everything I wanted.
I now have been using Macs since about 2001 or 2002. I forget when I switched over. But ever since the switch to mac I have more time then ever to do my hobbies away from the computer instead of spending time fussing over maintenance of my machines. I can buy a new mac and have it up and running out of the box with the apps I need in almost no time at all. I never have questions of compatibility or stability, it just works.
Sure, I have to pay $20 for an app here or there (Transmit by panic.com is an amazing sftp/ftp app, colloque is a great irc chat app, mac the ripper does the trick and "password repository" by pomola.com is fabulous) and I pay for commercial softwares to remain competitive and stable. But the alternative of being on Windows and rebuilding my machine constantly (ghost helps, but come on!) or being on Linux and digging for "free software" and updates regularly is a waste of time for a professional.
You seem impressed that you spent your 30 days writing up how you felt about OSX, but being ignorant to other parties other than yourself is very adolescent and selfish. Wake up, the world is bigger than you.
Re:what's that smell (Score:3, Insightful)
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 puts in fairly obvious falacities, then how can I trust his writings on topics I'm not familiar with? More importantly, does he have a right to be potentially misleading the public?
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: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:Less apps and we like it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Regardless of the article (Score:3, Insightful)
Read It Again (Score:2, Insightful)
He said, and I quote
He basically highlights 2 choices
I actually found TFA to be spot on.
Re:what's that smell (Score:2, Insightful)
He's right about the culture being more one that buys software rather than getting it for free -- but the quality of those tools is then also significantly higher than a lot of open-source software (with exceptions, of course). For example, CSSEdit or Fission are both easily worth the $20 or $25 you spend on and pay themselves back within days. On the other hand, he's wrong about the paucity of Freeware in general; it's just that the favorite tool tends to be commercial rather than freeware, as is often the case on Windows. On top of that, I've found the general quality of Freeware to be outstanding (Adium, Tunnelblick, TextWrangler, etc.), which is more than I can say for the download orgy that one often embarks on when searching for a tool on Windows.