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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

TechTV Screen Savers Host Tries "The Switch" 134

Posted by pudge from the waaaah-the-g3-is-too-slow-and-my-program-won't-run dept.
lwbecker2 writes "Patrick Norton, from the TechTV show 'The Screen Savers', and an admittedly loyal Windows/PC user, recently borrowed a iBook from Apple and has written an article about his three-month experience with 'The Switch'. It seems like a well-though-out review and IMHO provides some balanced coverage of the potential issues and experiences involved in switching from Windows XP to Mac OS X."
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TechTV Screen Savers Host Tries "The Switch" More

TechTV Screen Savers Host Tries "The Switch"

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  • No Such Thing Asd Bad Advertising (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ihatewinXP ( 638000 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @04:06PM (#5399982)
    This is so much better than any Ellen Feiss 'switch' ad, and Yao Ming, and certainly and Jeff Goldblum voice-over. I know that TechTV may be already preaching to the choir (i.e. nerds) but 95% of nerds still dont use Apple computers. Personally I don't have a TV but as my neighborhood "mac guy" my friends are laways mentioning 'that new cool apple thing' that they saw on TechTV and specifically Screen Savers.
    I'd be very interested in seeing a survey along the lines of "Your a PC user, do you even consider the apple platform to be a real alternative?" My guess would be a very low % of people honestly consider the platform. But with the 50/50 split of airtime and having a host 'switch' - Apple just cannot buy better advertising.

    • Re:No Such Thing Asd Bad Advertising (Score:5, Informative)

      by zsmooth ( 12005 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @04:17PM (#5400099)

      I'd be very interested in seeing a survey along the lines of "Your a PC user, do you even consider the apple platform to be a real alternative?" My guess would be a very low % of people honestly consider the platform.

      I disagree. I think many of us are in the same boat - seriously interested in a Mac but without the funds to buy one. I've already decided my next computer will be a PowerBook, once I can afford it.

      • Man, it's almost time for my anual Mac purchase. *grin* But, I don't know... I did splurge a little last year with the $3000 plasma screen.

        But I agree... I think more and more people are seriously eye-balling Macs since MacOS X. It's what got me to buy my first Mac 2 years back. I hated Macs prior to that.

        I just can't wait to save up for the 17" PB. *drool* ... but alas, my 1 year old 15" PB will have to suffice for a while.

        For those considering the switch... unless you HAVE to have all the latest games, get a Mac! Heck, I even play enough games to suck up free time I dont' even have (Damn I love Ghost Recon).

        -Alex
      • I've already decided my next computer will be a PowerBook, once I can afford it.

        Well, one of the first rules of business is "ignore all the losers without money."

        I mean, if you work at McDonals and can't afford to buy a new computer, then why should Apple consider your needs at all?
        • Because they could really use the market share.

          I'm also a die-hard PC freak who has recently decided to look into Macs. Like everyone, I just can't afford them. I've got my well-equipped Athlon 1800 with 1.0gb of ram and a 40gb hard disk. I do just about anything with it: audio, video, gaming, development, graphics; and it didn't cost me an arm and a leg. Let's say it's worth 1500$ today with all the gadgets.

          Now I could buy an entry-level Mac for that same 1500$, and it would carry 256mb of ram, 30gb HD, 700mhz CPU (I know, more power/hz), and no monitor, no burner, no Geforce4 TI, no high-end pro-audio card. And no optical mouse, too.

          So basically, to get something functionally equivalent to my current PC, i'd have to spend nearly triple the amount. Yes, I know the Mac is expertly designed and rock stable. Yes I know it's got the most amazing UI the world has to offer. Yes, I know it's probably worth every penny, but there's thing concept in life called Budgeting. I just happen to have a zillion other things to pay, so blowing 4000$ on a computer raises a Big Red Flag (tm), especially when I know I'll have to upgrade in two years at most.

          If the first rule of business is "ignore all the losers without money", then the world will soon be run by Verizon, Disney and Microsoft. People with limited funds make up a big majority of the population, because if you hadn't noticed the whole continent is in a financial slump and we're all broke and bleeding.

          Selling cheap computers might not make you a zillionaire in 7 days, but it will buy you market share, thus the power to control that market. And wouldn't you know, power eventually leads to money and respect if you wield it well.
          • Ok, I know I shouln;t bitch about you're specifics in the comparison because you're doing a back-of-the-napkin type thing, but you're just wrong. Bottom line iMac has the built-in monitor, combo drive, and optical mouse (they don't make anything else). I'd then argue that almost nobody who buys a computer for a $1500 expects it to do pro audio. "Pro" cards are usually over $500.

            Otherwise, you do have a good points. the lack of upgradeability does bother some people, but its rare to find a non-geek (or relative of geek) that upgrades anything beyond ram or a hard drive.
          • Switching isn't just about throwing up your hands in front of your Windows XP Pentium4 system with all the trimmings and then getting in your Jaguar and speeding dangerously to the local Apple Store and getting a decked-out Power Mac with two Cinema Displays and every software title with "Pro" in it. It's very much about just giving Apple a look next time you're going to get a new system and comparing what Apple has to offer with what you thought you'd get from your current vendors and what you thought you knew about the Mac. They have $999 iBooks that come with an enormous software bundle and make a great notebook to augment a UNIX or MS Windows desktop machine, so it is not about throwing out your current kit and mortgaging the house to replace it all with Mac stuff.

            The $999 iBook even comes with a free printer. Remember when you couldn't switch to Mac because you would have to get a new printer? Ha ha.

      • It's worth it... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Midnight Ryder ( 116189 ) <(midryder) (at) (midnightryder.com)> on Thursday February 27, 2003 @04:43PM (#5400382) Homepage

        I've already decided my next computer will be a PowerBook, once I can afford it.

        It's worth it. I bought one for my wife, and for me to port some of my game projects over to (since the Mac has a smaller, but less cramped game market). I now need another Mac - she loves it, and I would really like to have one o' my own after doing some work on it. I bought the 12" Powerbook - very nice.

        I disagree. I think many of us are in the same boat - seriously interested in a Mac but without the funds to buy one.

        I've been hearing that from A LOT of people lately - "My next computer will be (insert Apple product)." Heck, part of 'em I know have picked out exact model and specs. Something about the platform really tends to grab people after they play with one a bit, and not within just a certain grouping - geeks and non-geeks both.

        I think Apple's sales strategy should be this - give everyone a Mac to play with for a week, then take it away. Treat Mac OSX like a drug - the first hit is always free ;-)

        • Photoshop was developed on Macintosh because the salesman let the Knoll brothers take home a Mac and play with it for a few weeks.

          It's not a new idea, but it's a good one. :)
        • Once upon a time, they did ("the take it home, try it out" idea)... If i remember right, it was right after Apple introduced the Mac. You could go down to the local Apple dealer, fill out some paperwork, and take a Mac home for a test drive. I think that at that time the price was so high ($5,000+), that they didn't have much sucess with the program.

          Of course, that's when a GUI OS was brand new and OS X was at least 15 yrs away...
        • give everyone a Mac to play with for a week, then take it away.

          It funny you mentioned that because when my Dad was looking an a new computer he first went to a store that sold PCs and he wasn't very impressed with what they had to offer.

          He then headed over to an authorized Apple dealer and instead of just letting him play with it in the store, they let hime take it home. Despite the machine costing almost twice as much as the PC he was looking at, he decided to go for the Mac.

          He says nowadays that if they didn't let him try it out for the week he probably would be using a Wintel machine.

          So not only do you have a fine idea, it is also a proven one.

          Oh, did I mention that this was in 1985? Still a great idea though. Because of this I've been a Mac user all of my life.
          • The modern version of this is an Apple Store. Everything is running and you can try stuff out pretty thoroughly before you buy. It's an amazing contrast to CompUSA.
      • I agree with ya brother. I have done my research and decided to buy a PB because I like the flexiblity that the new OSX brings to the table e.g. having a unix base I won't need third party software to bring up xterms. The only problem is its taking 10 weeks to ship!

    • Re:No Such Thing Asd Bad Advertising (Score:5, Informative)

      by afantee ( 562443 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @09:15PM (#5402618)
      >> I'd be very interested in seeing a survey along the lines of "Your a PC user, do you even consider the apple platform to be a real alternative?" My guess would be a very low % of people honestly consider the platform.

      Oh, really? But at least 4 /. editors including CmdrTaco have switched, and so have many super geeks like James Gosling (Java Inventor), James Duncan Davidson (original author of Tomcat and Ant) and the Perl 6 core team (according to Tim O'Reilly).

      Everyone should at least take a look at Mac OS X before buying another computer. Macs are no longer expensive and come with the best Unix and the sexiest UI plus tons of powerful programming tools and gorgeous applications. In fact, Apple portables are cheaper than similar Wintel ones.
    • No TechTV isn't preaching to nerds, they are preaching to people that want to be nerds. TechTV is for the technically inept. Not that that is bad, I just don't think it's terribly technical. They aren't an Ars...

  • Have you no shame, sir? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Demona ( 7994 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @04:07PM (#5399993) Homepage
    It seems like a well-though-out review
    You Slashdotteri always sound so awfully smug with your pinkies up and a copy of the article safely snocked away in your cache while us masses flail helplessly away at a dead server, clamoring for a crust of bread while you fat bastards eat all the pie. Er, um, cake. Anyway, ELMO THINKS YOU HAVE NO SHAME! [house.gov]
  • I work for an ISP of which name shall remain unknown, and no not AOL, but anyways I have noticed that a lot of the techs there are also very loyal to their OS X. I even admit that I have tampered with it a little and the interface really is kind of nice. If I could afford to buy one I might even do that, maybe some other time...
  • If anyone got a chance to mirror the site before it god slammed, posting a link here would be wonderful.

  • Kind of old, isn't it? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by diverman ( 55324 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @04:27PM (#5400204)
    This was on TechTV in January, I thought. It was around the time of the MacWorld SF.

    Did someone just come across the article in an archive?

    Patrick is pretty good about giving in depth, objective feedback on things... although he does have his pet pieves and strong opinions on some things.

    -Alex
    • This was on TechTV in January, I thought. It was around the time of the MacWorld SF.

      Did someone just come across the article in an archive?

      It's not old. It may have discussed here when he started the "switch" trial, but the end result is news.

      He reported his experience the first time on last night's (02/26/2003) "The Screen Savers" TV show on TechTV. That's when the article was posted to the web site.

    • Re:Kind of old, isn't it? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      Maybe you're thinking of David Coursey [zdnet.com]?

  • Lack of substance (Score:3, Funny)

    by jamey.v ( 311718 ) <slashdot&ajvester,com> on Thursday February 27, 2003 @04:45PM (#5400409)
    This is typical tech-tv article. Nothing to it. He bitches about the browser and says that Mac's are expensive.

  • Shouting to People on the Street (Score:4, Funny)

    by oni ( 41625 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @04:48PM (#5400432) Homepage
    from the article: "...I couldn't help but kick a hole through the ceiling, climb up on the rooftop and shout its praises at every passing soul"

    Yep, he's from San Francisco.

  • I like how he jumps though every hoop... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cerebus ( 10185 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @04:52PM (#5400494) Homepage
    ...to avoid having to mention that the web browser that sucks so bad is Internet Explorer. And then he blames Apple for it!

    I'm flabbergasted. What a moron.

    • Apple put it there, and now it keeps bowing to microsoft to "please keep producing office for the mac". Safari will rock IE5/Mac's world, and I for one and glad it will.

      (I still would have rather seen a gecko-based browser with staying power, but Safari will do).
    • ...to avoid having to mention that the web browser that sucks so bad is Internet Explorer.
      He was very clear about it on the TV show. Of course, we already knew that and switched long ago to Chimera, Mozilla, or Safari.

      He was quite positive about his experience on the TV show, surprisingly to me given how negative he was on the show at other times about Macs even while he was using it for the past few months. He did gripe about the speed of his iBook. My guess is if he had a faster tower, he'd have griped about the price.

      Also, he erroneously states in his review [techtv.com] that MacOS X comes with Quicken. It doesn't. His iBook does (and so does the iMac), but if you buy MacOS X retail (or a PowerBook or Power Mac) you won't get Quicken.

      • Also, he erroneously states in his review that MacOS X comes with Quicken. It doesn't. His iBook does (and so does the iMac), but if you buy MacOS X retail (or a PowerBook or Power Mac) you won't get Quicken.

        Is this recent? I bought an iBook last July with 10.1 and I don't remember getting Quicken.

        Slightly off-topic, but as a switcher from Windows, Quicken 2003 on the Mac lags Quicken '99 on Windows in many respects. Everything else about switching has been positive, but so far Quicken is a big disappointment.

      • He did gripe about the speed of his iBook. My guess is if he had a faster tower, he'd have griped about the price.

        Fact is, the Wintel notebooks that are available for less than the iBook don't lag. The iBook does.

        Personally, I love OS X, but I don't see how anyone could use it on a daily basis. It's just too damn unresponsive!!!

        No, I'm not kidding and this isn't a troll. I was just at the Apple store. The top of the line G4 towers they have on display there STILL feel slow, even the fastest ones with the latest 10.2 software.

        • It's not unresponsive, it just responds differently than MS Windows or Mac OS 9 or other legacy systems. You get used to it pretty quickly and not ever crashing sure makes up for having to adjust my muscle memory a bit for Aqua. The system is compositing a beautiful desktop for me every microsecond, creating a realistic environment in which it's easy to get deeply into some creative work and come out with professional results without once cursing or crashing or working around weird technical glitches.

          If you can get over the way the UI feels then there is plenty of processing power there, and also low latencies throughout the system, which is important for real-time stuff like multitrack audio editing (which I do on a G4/733 in Mac OS X and it is sweet).

          The sub-$1000 Intel notebooks I have seen were a joke to me. There is no software, no security, poor system integration, and the Intel mobile processors are a scandal if you compare them to the desktop processors. You get a quarter-P4 in a P4m at best and then it slows down to half speed when you're on batteries. While on batteries, a P4m/1.5GHz notebook runs at 750MHz, which is slower than the iBook's G3 that does double the work per clock cycle.

          A "power user" like this TechTV guy should have a G4 system, there's no doubt. An iBook is a great system but it is not built for speed. It's built for small, rugged, long battery life, cheap, easy, reliable, and it gets people onto the Mac OS X platform which is just ramping up for a great 10-15 years before we will have to do any major transitions because we left so much legacy behind over the past five years.
    • I'm a moron? Uh, I avoided mentioning that it's Internet Explorer? Did you even read the article?

      >>How can Apple throw in this painfully slow >>browser, Internet Explorer for Mac 5.2, on the >>iBook, or any other Mac? This is the company
      >>that gives you a solid office suite in AppleWorks, a >>killer video editor in iMovie, iTunes for your >>music, iPhoto, a free DVD player, and a rock-solid >>open operating system.

      I'd say that's a pretty strong identifiation of IE. And I'll make sure the nice web editors fix the opening page and name IE.

      Which apparently you didn't bother to read past.

      >>And then he blames Apple for it!
      This is the company that made iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes and iDVD. Don't you think they could have stared on Safari BEFORE OS X shipped???

      Whether you like it or not, Apple decides what goes on the machines they sell, and they chose IE.
      Patrick

      • You gripe about the included browser three times, and indirectly whine about Chimera (by complaining about the beachball) one time, but name IE exactly once-- in a sentence condemning Apple for including it at the end of the article-- without suggesting what the alternative could possibly have been.

        On other sites I'd call that at least "-1 disingenuous."

        Overall, the tone of your article indicates you went into this little test looking for things not to like. You found some, but you had to really look. Congratulations.

        Additionally, your article contains misleading statements that call into question your credentials. For instance, under "What's Wrong With the Mac" you cite the G4's purported lack of speed in video editing as a problem that needs correcting, using the existence of the dual-G4 tower systems as proof. However, you weren't using a G4, but a G3. It is misleading to extend your experience with a G3 to the G4 line; they have significant architectural differences. A less careful or less informed reader will take you at your word, which is frankly a crock of shit.

        So yes, moron. I stick by my initial description. I certainly wouldn't call it journalism.
      • Internet Explorer was the default browser for the Mac for the last five years by an agreement with Microsoft that also had them commit to five years of MS Office, which brought MS Office to the new operating system. The agreement expired and Apple released Safari and Keynote and dropped IE. This was the "huge" deal where Bill Gates appeared as a giant head at Macworld and said that IE and Office would be around for five more years at least and that MS was investing 150 million in Apple and they were settling some old patent disputes.

        Safari is a very lightweight Cocoa interface using the system's new HTML and JavaScript rendering engines which are derived from open source. It couldn't be built five years ago so Apple had MS do the honors during the transition. Now Apple's browser is plainly much better than IE so there are no politics involved in switching to it. You can run both side by side and you want to stay in Safari right away.

        Safari would have been met with skepticism a few years ago but now all the stuff it includes is mature (KHTML, Flash, Shockwave, QuickTime) on Mac OS X and it is a legacy-free browser from a Mac perspective.
    • EVERY browser runs slower on OS X than on Windows, so it doesn't really matter whether it was IE or not.

      Note that I'm not saying "Macs suck" or "OS X sucks". But for every browser I've tried, the Windows version runs is faster than the Mac version. In some cases, lots faster. That includes IE, Mozilla, Opera, and Netscape.

  • Just in case it's \.ed, here is the text (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 27, 2003 @04:56PM (#5400568)
    Windows XP is not perfect. That's no secret. Just ask anybody who doesn't have broadband but has downloaded every single Critical Update for the operating system. Is Mac OS X that much better? Apple's 'Switch' campaign says so. So does Leo, my hard working co-host.

    Leo and I have been debating the Mac vs. PC split for a while. He often claims that the Mac can do everything a PC can do, yet he just built a 2-GHz Intel Pentium 4-based PC to play games like "Unreal Tournament 2003."

    To settle this long-running debate, I borrowed an iBook from Apple to make the switch. For the last three months I've been running OS X Jaguar on a fresh Apple iBook with a combo drive (DVD and CD-RW in one) and an AirPort card for Wi-Fi access.

    The switch and the catch(es)

    Here are the main issues I came upon during my switch.

    OS X needs a fast, free Web browser that's stable. The latest beta release of Safari makes big strides in this direction.

    One of the most important applications TechTV uses has no Mac version. Avid iNews basically provides the backbone of our show. Everything about the show is managed using iNews. I finally understand the feelings of Mac users in a world dominated by PCs and Windows.

    For the money, the PowerPC processor needs to speed up or get shipped out.

    In the words of a friend of mine, those aren't petty criticisms.

    Why you should switch

    With the criticisms in mind, the Mac holds great promise for users willing to try it.

    The iBook came with more software than I needed, so as long as you don't need an "odd" application, like the iNews package I mentioned earlier, you should be more than OK. Apple bundles great video, photo, and MP3 software, along with an office package. That's just touching the surface.

    OS X may have crashed once in three months, and I may have mistaken an OS crash for the browser going down.

    The hardware really is wonderfully designed, and the OS is not only BSD stable, but it looks great.

    People are starting to make some seriously slick apps (such as Konfabulator) to run on OS X.

    The OS isn't the problem

    The biggest problem with switching isn't the Mac or OS X. It's when you have to deal with the Windows-centric parts of the world. If you can avoid them (most folks don't need compatibility with odd applications in the office), you could be all set right out of the box with your Mac.

    Read on for a deeper explanation of my points above.

    As I write this, it's 9 p.m. in San Francisco, on Tuesday, February 25. A turkey breast is roasting in the oven. I've got a mason jar full of ice and Dr. Pepper in reach. I'm sitting at my kitchen table staring at an iBook. I'm trying to condense nearly three months of living in OS X ("Patrick and the Switch," as it were) into a few clever words and a handful of lists. It's not one of the simpler things I've tried to do for "The Screen Savers."

    I was hoping it would be easier. I was hoping that Leo would be 100 percent right, that the iBook and OS X would prove so superior to any PC running Windows XP that I couldn't help but kick a hole through the ceiling, climb up on the rooftop and shout its praises at every passing soul.

    It's not that simple.

    There are great things about the Mac. There are things to consider before the switch. There are some things that suck about the Mac. And there are some myths about the Mac that should be debunked. Quickly.

    The masses in mind

    One of my political-science professors told me that a country gets the government it deserves. Thinking about OS X, I think it's safe to say that most of us aren't brave enough to buck the Windows majority, or are willing to put the time in to work around it. We get the OS we deserve: Windows.

    The machines that run Windows are cheap. Most everything is designed for the great hulking mass of Windows users first.The games are plentiful (not quite bread and circuses, but you can't help but wander in that direction when considering the Mac versus PC question). If there's a computer store in your town, chances are it's stocked for PC users.

    Which reminds me: Windows has some great Web browser options.

    I've been flipping between TextEdit and the Navigator browser, Chimera, which is locked up. (Nothing against AppleWorks. I usually write in basic text editors. In Windows I use WordPad.)

    As I write this, I'm watching what I rather less-than-affectionately call the little "rainbow swirly" (the peculiar icon that means your application is busy and won't respond) on my severely locked up browser. Frankly, I'm wondering if my not-quite-crashed browser will resolve its inner problem and let me change browser windows, or if my rather lengthy email to Paul at FireGuys Racing will be lost forever when I break down and force quit Chimera.

    (For the uninitiated, force quit is the Mac equivalent of doing the three-fingered salute in Windows. It's like going to the Windows Task Manager and killing an errant application. OS X has slightly different shortcuts than your Windows PC. Learning these shortcuts should be a prime goal of any would-be supergeek when moving to the Mac.)

    How can Apple throw in this painfully slow browser, Internet Explorer for Mac 5.2, on the iBook, or any other Mac? This is the company that gives you a solid office suite in AppleWorks, a killer video editor in iMovie, iTunes for your music, iPhoto, a free DVD player, and a rock-solid open operating system.

    Apple's Web browser, Safari, is in beta, but I found it to be rather dysfunctional, even for a beta. Safari gets better with every beta release, though.

  • More or just fluff? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gozar ( 39392 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @04:56PM (#5400571) Homepage

    Was there supposed to be more than 3 pages to the article. Patrick just kinda trails off at the end complaining about web browsers (where was Mozilla?).

    Other then the web browser problem, I agree with everything he said. I'm lucky, I work in education so almost everything is cross compatible and the funky school information system software is becoming web based.

    Apple does need to fix the perceived speed of the Macs, they come across slow. Case in point, we are moving from Macintosh Manager under OS 9 to Workgroup Manager under OS X. Log-in times under OS X seem so much slower than OS 9, even though they are the same, around 15-18 seconds. The difference? Under OS 9 there is an indicator that something is happening, but under OS X there is nothing. Now if they played a little animation or something, they would still appear to be fast.

  • Comments from a recent switcher (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Greedo ( 304385 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @04:57PM (#5400578) Homepage Journal
    With regards to the 3 main peeves:

    OS X needs a fast, free Web browser that's stable. The latest beta release of Safari makes big strides in this direction.

    Hey, Windows needs a fast, free Web browser that's stable too. Yes, Safari is nice. So is Mozilla. Etcetra. My point is that I sure hope that Patrick wasn't referring to MSIE.

    One of the most important applications TechTV uses has no Mac version. Avid iNews basically provides the backbone of our show. Everything about the show is managed using iNews. I finally understand the feelings of Mac users in a world dominated by PCs and Windows.

    Can't really comment on this one ... although doesn't Avid make their other software for the Mac platform too? I imagine if there was enough demand, they'd consider making an OS X port.

    Later on, he says that the iBook is great and comes with all the software you might need, unless you need something "odd" like iNews. Well, how many Windows laptops come with "all the software you need"? At the least, most people are going to have to purchase MS Office or some equivalent. And how many come with iNews? You're going to have to buy iNews anyway, no matter what platform rocks your boat. His argument is a bit thin.

    (And hey, he could always follow his own advice [techtv.com] and use VirtualPC.)

    For the money, the PowerPC processor needs to speed up or get shipped out.

    Depends what you do with your computer, doesn't it? Yeah, the iBook is using a G3. Why didn't you try out a Powerbook? Or an iMac/eMac/G4 tower? And isn't Apple due to move to a new PPC chip this year anyway?

    • Yeah, the iBook is using a G3. Why didn't you try out a Powerbook? Or an iMac/eMac/G4 tower? And isn't Apple due to move to a new PPC chip this year anyway?

      Well, there is an issue of some "bad timing" here. From what it sounds like from his review, what he really wanted to do was pick up a review unit today that just happened to be a 12" Powerbook with the latest Safari Beta on it. He then installs Virtual PC, installs his iNews thingie, and completely goes to town (since now his video-editing stuff will also be much faster).

      But note that I think the comment about waiting until Apple moves to a faster PPC late this year is a bit of a problem. If the question being asked is "should I switch today?" the answer should not be "well, it will all be faster in a year" if in fact there is a machine that fits your needs right now. And if you're somebody who wanted an iBook formfactor notebook that you could use to edit video and run an oddball PC program, then you're *golden* right now. But he started in December, so I can't gripe too much about his choice of machine.

      • I wasn't suggesting that he wait a year (or sooner [slashdot.org]) for a faster PPC. I'm writing this on a P3/500 (work machine) so I completely agree with the buy-what-works-for-you mentality.

        What I was saying was that he's kinda doing the equivalent of going out and buying a low-end Celeron laptop and then complaining that Intel needs to get it's act together. The G3 in his iBook is probably 2 generations behind what you can buy today, let alone what you can get "in a year".

  • A good article, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ejunek ( 562968 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @05:01PM (#5400642) Homepage
    Haven't we seen this all before? I feel as all these "second looks" at Apple and Macs seem to all come down to the same thing: OS X is great, there are some great apps, but the hardware side of things still needs work. I too am a recent "switcher" of sorts and do love my TiBook...but certainly wouldn't give up my PC, if only for the gaming. I'm just happy that the Mac and PC have at least *started* to live in harmony. Rendezvous and Samba do a nice job of connecting things and start to bridge the PC/Mac divide. It's too bad Patrick didn't spend more time metioning this instead of repeating things we've all heard already. My only other qualm with the article was the use of an iBook in the review. As a professional in the tech industry, I think he should have been taking a look at the Powerbooks, but I suppose the iBook has its own merits as well.

  • A bit short, isn't it? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alex Thorpe ( 575736 ) <alphax AT mac DOT com> on Thursday February 27, 2003 @05:02PM (#5400646) Homepage
    I was expecting a little more info, perhaps another page or two. But mainly he complained about the lack of an app that I've naturally not heard of, and IE for Mac. I've got 5 web browsers installed myself, there's plenty to choose from. It just seemed to end abruptly, like part of the article is missing.

  • This is an oddball review of the platform... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by King Babar ( 19862 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @05:03PM (#5400662) Homepage
    OK, so this was a strange little review. As best as I could tell, the system performed flawlessly, and better in fact (by implication) than his Windows machines, but then he whined about precisely 3 things about his set-up that weren't good for him.
    1. The guy borrowed and used an iBook (=slowest machine in the Mac line-up), then talked about how the G4 doesn't cut it, speed-wise. Especially for video editing. Does anybody else see something wrong with this picture?
    2. His entire on-line work-life depends on a bizzaro application that I'll bet 95% of the world has never even heard of that is PC only. Unsurprisingly, it won't run on his Mac, and that's a problem.
    3. He doesn't like the browser situation, which is fair enough, but then reports on experiences that I think I can safely say are somewhat atypical. So Chimera was never tops on my "force quit" list, Safari is and was very impressive (and not "unstable even for a beta") and he is apparently the only person I know who can't get Preview or Acrobat to start-up automatically for PDF files from the browser. (For that matter, he seems to think that if Acrobat is running inside a browser window, that it doesn't download the document?)

    Another oddity in this review was that the things that went well with the platform usually only barely deserved mention. His evaluation model had Airport built-in, and the iBook pretty much is the ideal wireless notebook. But this apparently wasn't worthy of mention. Another awesome feature of Apple laptops is the "instant wake-up" upon opening thing. Again, no mention. I guess I can't blame him for not worshipping Rendezvous since he only had the one Mac to play with, but even still...

    I am glad he noticed that iTunes rules, though. But then puzzled that he thought AppleWorks was so great when it's just...well, Appleworks. In summary, this article is not worth bringing down their server over. :-)

  • It's up now. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Zapman ( 2662 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @05:06PM (#5400694)
    The article is up and loaded swiftly for me. That said, I was hoping for some more 'meat and potatos'. Short version:

    1) I can't get my special app (iNews) to work. I need it for my work, so I'm kinda screwed.

    2) Web browsing sucks (because IE is a hog). Safari is in beta, but getting better. He didn't mention Moz or Chimera (or whatever they call it this week).

    3) It's very nice to work with. If you don't NEED a piece of software that is windows only, you'll love it.

    I recently did some pricing (each with 1 gig ram).

    Dual 1.25ghz power mac: $2400
    Build your own dual Athlon MP: $1100
    Build your own dual Xeon: $1700 (iirc)

    I know it's not fair, but that's only because I can't build my own power book. (buy a dual Xeon, and you're in the $2-3000 range too.)

    I'd love to have a (reasonably powerful) apple on my desk. I just can't justify the price difference.
    • He didn't mention Moz or Chimera ...

      Yes he did, on page 3 [techtv.com] of the article.

      • Re:It's up now. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by King Babar ( 19862 )
        He didn't mention Moz or Chimera ...
        Yes he did, on page 3 [techtv.com] of the article.

        But, alas, he mentioned that Chimera had hung up. More seriously, there *is* a point here about the slowness of browsing on an iBook with either the stock MSIE or Mozilla, compared to what you can do with MSIE on even a cheap WinTel notebook. That's why Chimera was started and why Safari will probably take over the Mac world. Unfortunately for him, most of his review time was with the earlier betas of Safari, which I suspect did unexpectedly quit more frequently than one would like. (So, for example, if you go to a lot of sites that are like devcenter.netscape.com, you could rapidly get annoyed.)

        • The new build of Mozilla (1.3b) uses Mach-O binaries instead of CFM. This makes it a hell of a lot faster at the expense of no longer working in OS9.

          I now use Mozilla as my main browser on a 500Mhz iBook. It's fast.

          Another interesting option is to install X11 and use fink to install an X build of Mozilla. Really fast, but so far no plugins.
          • The new build of Mozilla (1.3b) uses Mach-O binaries instead of CFM. This makes it a hell of a lot faster at the expense of no longer working in OS9.

            I now use Mozilla as my main browser on a 500Mhz iBook. It's fast.

            Interesting; guess I should exercise my cable modem tonight then. :-) Now the question is, is it "really fast like Safari" fast or just "noticeably faster than 1.2" fast? Guess I'll have to find out.

            • I wrote:
              Interesting; guess I should exercise my cable modem tonight then. :-) Now the question is, is it "really fast like Safari" fast or just "noticeably faster than 1.2" fast? Guess I'll have to find out.

              And the answer is, I didn't notice it as being that much faster than Mozilla 1.2, and it is consistently 50% slower than Safari in rendering pages I care about (e.g., Slashdot, w3c.org stuff). The one killer feature it has that Safari has is "type ahead to links on the web page".

              Next stop is to see if the latest Chimera is worthwhile.

              • Next stop is to see if the latest Chimera is worthwhile.

                And the brief answer is, "Yes it is, but Safari is faster in some areas." So if I were running a recent Chimera nightly, I'd be happier with the speed than with Mozilla or older versions of Chimera, and MSIE just doesn't even rate anymore. One decisive advantage for Safari is that it is a Cocoa app, so I don't have to do anything to get emacs-style editing keys in forms like the one I'm typing in. Now that I know Safari Beta 62 has tabs, I really wonder whether Chimera will be able to keep this a fair race for much longer.

                Either way, I think the "speed and goodness of web-browsing" point that the reviewer feels now favors Windows will be completely moot by the summer solstice.

    • what's funny, is the new version of iNews' server runs on Linux. the old one is sco (that's what we have where I work). You would think OS X would have a client...
    • wait, so you are saying iNews, using the apple naming system of i---- (iMac, iBook, iLife, iTunes, ipod...) doesn't even run on a friggin mac? Does something sound odd to you too, or is it just me?
    • Everyone knows you can roll your own for cheaper if you leave out a ton of stuff and can get along without any support. The software and additional connectivity of the Mac is harder than ever to discount, though. Mac OS X and many applications are now very mature and you get so much software even in an iBook.

      If your Ethernet port stops working on a Mac, you call Apple and they fix it. They don't have you run a diagnostic on the hardware to see if it's a hardware or software problem before referring you to someone else's company. What you buy from Apple keeps functioning fully for years, and updates its own software even. It's a whole different kind of solution than a white-box PC.

  • Oh please... (Score:5, Funny)

    by inertia187 ( 156602 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @05:14PM (#5400781) Homepage Journal
    OS X may have crashed once in three months, and I may have mistaken an OS crash for the browser going down.

    Typical Windows user; can't tell the difference between an OS crash and his browser going down.
    • Typical Windows user; can't tell the difference between an OS crash and his browser going down.

      Of course he can't tell the difference. In Windows, a browser crash typically takes the OS with it. :^)

    • I thought that was a weird comment that Mac OS X may have crashed. If he had a kernel panic he would have known it, surely? Text is written across the display in multiple languages including Japanese that tells you to restart your system. Only one of our 4 Macs here has crashed in the last year, so when it happened I noticed it. Other than that I guess the window server could freeze and you would think the system was frozen.

      If the Finder crashes it can look pretty extreme if you have a lot of windows open, and then it starts up again but the open windows may be in an earlier configuration. Maybe that is what happened. Of course, this can go on all day and no other application on Mac OS X cares.

      Mac OS X Kernel Panic [rockgarden.com]

  • Did anyone actually watch the show? (Score:5, Informative)

    by nycroft ( 653728 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @05:34PM (#5400947) Homepage
    After Patrick Norton spent his three months with the iBook, he gave a great review right on par with what a daily Windows user would say. He likes the machine, and the operating system. The only problem was stuff he couln't go cross-platform on. They use some Windows-only scheduling software at TechTV. He also mentioned the price of the machine being a little high, but also commented on what software was already installed as a way to visualize offsetting the price. They'll probably rerun it in a couple of weeks. Check it out.

  • Worst Switch Article Ever (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bedouin ( 248624 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @06:05PM (#5401237)
    The biggest problem with switching isn't the Mac or OS X. It's when you have to deal with the Windows-centric parts of the world. If you can avoid them (most folks don't need compatibility with odd applications in the office), you could be all set right out of the box with your Mac.

    It would have been nice if he went and explained what exactly he meant here. For all intensive purposes, particularly those that his core audience probably would be interested in, a Mac integrates fine in Windows dominated environments. The biggest focus of most (and I know not all people) is going to be file and printer sharing, and the transfer of Office documents -- something OS X handles nicely. A mention of a good version of Office for OS X would've been nice too.

    Which reminds me: Windows has some great Web browser options.

    Emm, and I'm wondering what exactly those are? OS X has Mozilla, Chimera, Omniweb, iCab, Opera, MSIE, Safari -- the options seem to be fine.

    As someone else pointed out, he failed to make any mention of Virtual PC, that probably would've handled his Windows-only app acceptably.

    This has actually been one of the worst Switch articles I've read. It didn't really go into much depth, and the things it said that were accurate, one could basically deduct without even owning a Mac. This was written after 3 months of research and use? I could've wrote this after 1 hour of intense use (he probably did). Why is it this article looks like some lazy-ass had a Mac, didn't use it for three months, then tried to meet an article deadline two nights before?

    • Re:Worst Switch Article Ever (Score:5, Informative)

      by lwbecker2 ( 530894 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @06:36PM (#5401525)
      ..For all intensive purposes,...

      what exactly is an intensive purpose?

      did you mean "intents and purposes?" [wsu.edu]
  • My problem with the review is that he doesn't explain his criticisms. For instance he says Safari is dysfunction and then never explains what he means by that. What didn't it do? With his passing Chimera comment he mentions that it locked up, but then I have IE on XP lock up about once a week also. Safari has yet to lock up for me.

    The custom app problem I can understand, but it seems odd to criticize the platform for. Speed is a valid criticism, although to be fair he is using a very low end system. But overall I find that speed is the biggest thorn in the Mac's side. That should change with the 970 - especially if there are dual 2.5 GHz machines out.

  • Perception Counts (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Go Aptran ( 634129 )

    Journalists that aren't already Mac zealots will, unfortunately, highlight every little problem that they encounter when they use a Mac... even if it's not Apple's fault... but if it's on a Mac... it's going to be perceived as a Mac problem.

    I think it's a fair article but it seems to end rather ubruptly. I share some of his concerns.

    After five years with a Windows laptop (then desktop) last December I splurged and bought a 1 Gigahertz 15 inch TiBook with a Superdrive and after using both my PC and Mac for a few weeks... now I just turn on the PC to play games while my Mac burns DVDs!

    I'm extremely happy with my choice but something things are inexplicably slow on the Mac... moving a large group of files for example feel slower on a Mac than on a PC. I say FEELS because you have no indication of how long the process will take. Just a rainbow swirl that lingers on for a really long time.

    Viewing preferences seem to switch back to the default almost at random... in some folders but not all.

    I wish that the Free Space Left on Your Hard Drive problem would get fixed. It's very disconcerting to empty your trash can and see LESS free space on your hard drive and not MORE.

    I'm sure that future versions & upgrades of OSX will smooth these problems out. I'm keeping current with upgrades and have already seen some of my pet peeves eliminated. These are not catastrophic problems... but for someone who is on the fence between OSX and XP, this makes the system appear less "finished" than it really is.

    • Moving files? Doesn't it give you a progress bar showing how much is left? It does for me, save for when it's done so fast that it doesn't bother putting it up. Plus, all file operations are a LOT faster in OS X than OS 9 and earlier. I can now copy 40MB files from one partition to another in about 2 seconds, and moving a file to another folder on the same drive is instant.

      I do agree about the Free Space problem, but it's generally a minor annoyance, as I'm always thowing something out to keep it up to date.

      • Unfortunately when I move more than several hundred graphics files at a time (I'm an artist)I usually just get a beach ball and wait and wait and wait.

        The amount of time seems to be random... sometimes it's a few seconds... another time I restarted the finder after about 10 minutes of colorful spinning.

  • URL for "Switch" Commercial on Page (Score:3, Informative)

    by WCityMike ( 579094 ) on Thursday February 27, 2003 @08:12PM (#5402255)
    If you want to watch the "Switch" commercial, you may run into the usual "you don't have a Windows Media Player plug-in" problem.

    This can be gotten around by putting

    mms://stream.techtv.com/windows/thescreensavers/ 20 03/ss030225q_165_0.asf

    into the "Open URL" feature in your copy of Windows Media Player.
  • Well, the one thing you have to look at in the Mac/PC debate- What are you going to use it for? If you're a bare-bones (E-mail and word processing) or a gamer, then I can't seee any reason in your right mind why you would want a Mac. On the other hand, if you have a digital camera/camcorder, a big CD library, or can't get over the coolness factor, then a Mac probably would be worth the extra cost.

    By the way, pay attention to used Mac sites (I.E. www.smalldog.com or Ebay), you can get some (comparatively) cheap Macs. I've got a four year old iMac that still runs OS X pretty well. Unless you're a video/graphics monger, they should run pretty well for basic-pro system tasks.

  • Detecting Bias (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Amiasian ( 157604 )
    This was a very biased article. I only read the article itself, granted, and did not click any of the links therein.
    However, he is constantly complaining about the Mac having fewer VERTICAL market applications - such as that iNews, or whatever it was. The funny thing is, Apple created (NeXT created) Cocoa for just that purpose! Vertical market business applications. It has expanded since, of course.

    He never actually seems to have USED the Mac. And what I mean by that is, he never really points out what's unique about it. Right then and there, there's bias. How? Simple, he babbles about how unique the PC's vertical market applications are a holdback for Apple, and yet he doesn't mention that the Mac has applications not available on the PC, et al.

    I found it particularly interesting that he gave a MS app -
    "How can Apple throw in this painfully slow browser, Internet Explorer for Mac 5.2, on the iBook, or any other Mac? This is the company that gives you a solid office suite in AppleWorks, a killer video editor in iMovie, iTunes for your music, iPhoto, a free DVD player, and a rock-solid open operating system."
    A negative review.
    In fact, the Safari negative reviews can only help Apple - consider this article's only true function as a Safari Bug report by someone unable to diagnose the bugs.
    • I don't know, it seems a fair thing to point out. If you switch from Windows to anything else, you have the risk that some application you depend on for your daily work will not have a version for that OS. It's in the nature of Windows having such a huge market share, and before you switch you need to be sure that everything you need will run on the new platform. This applies to Linux switchers too.

      Of course, you may be able to switch to something similar, but in many instances this is not possible.
  • The article does not mention unique and great Mac OSX stuff like "Location Profiles" or the great bluetooth integration. Both make Apple Laptops really portable compared to the rest of the pack these days. In general I have the feeling that he did not really work with his ibook but only used it for writing his article one afternoon.
    • Good point... I'm one of two Mac integrators in a smallish PC-centric consulting firm, and the Windows guys were blown away even by Location Manager in OS 9. They couldn't believe that I could change all those settings to hop on different client networks with just one mouse click-- AND without a reboot! I can't believe Microsoft hasn't stolen the idea yet.

      Same with Bluetooth-- everyone that I've shown the OS X Address Book is amazed when I ring my T68i and the caller ID info shows up on my iBook's screen. And that's before I flick the Location Manager and start pulling up web pages via GPRS.

      ~Philly
  • What I'd really like to know what email client someone should use on OS X. I'm pretty much used to mutt and emacs-type of handling mail and I don't really like Outlook.

    What are all the geeks out there using on their Ti and AlBooks?
    • Available here [apple.com]
      • Do you read the mail from a local mailbox or via IMAP? - How do you deliver local mail? fetchmail?

        thanks for your help!
        • I'm not too hot on configuration of email, but I collect my mail via IMAP. Apart from that I can't really tell you anything other than it has good context sensitive help. If you ever need to know anything, hit ? and read. Good Luck!
  • 1. Shame on Apple - if I were them and had a reporter that wanted to experience a switch, the *very slowest* piece of hardware would not be what I would loan him.

    2. If you want PC apps, you can either run Virtual PC or stash a bargain basement PC in the corner and access it with RDP. Ironically, the RDP client for MacOS (available from Microsoft, believe it or not) is actually a lot nicer than the TSC you can get for Win2K. It's more or less a full port of the XP RDP client. You could even do what TechTV did and put a PC in a drive bay on a powermac and access it with RDP (to heck with the KVM switch, I say).

    3. He complained about IE on the mac. He needs to get in line. IE is worst-of-breed. Of course, I maintain that it's worst-of-breed under Windows as well, but that's another story. People have already commented here about the list of alternatives, any of which is a better choice than IE.

    Ironically, I actually suffer the same desktop disease as Patrick - I put all sorts of semi-temporary stuff on my desktop. I don't really agree with Leo that it's particularly "un-mac-like". But that's off-topic.

    So I would have to agree with him about switching, with the caveat that if you have high-end PC hardware, you're not going to be terribly happy with low-end Mac hardware (Duh).
  • I gave up reading that article after the fourth page. Each page has only two paragraphs of text. How many pages full of flashing banner advertisements do they expect people to ignore while trying to read an article?

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