Mac OS X Lion Has a Browser-Only Mode 231
dkd903 writes "It turns out that there is a feature in OS X Lion which no one expected and was never announced at WWDC. The feature we are talking about is 'Restart to Safari.' As you might have guessed from the name, this feature makes it possible to restart the Mac into just the Safari browser and nothing else."
Next post: how to jailbreak it. (Score:3)
If the restart isn't instantaneous (i.e., if there isn't an instant-on-to-browser mode built in) then this would seem to be a means of sandboxing a machine, as for use as a public kiosk type of terminal.
In which case the question is of course how to get back to a fully-functional shell, if, say, you lose your keys, or sump'n like dat.
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A very interesting question, as the new method of distribution (electronic download vs. physical DVD) doesn't allow you to reboot in order to reset the password. Sure, the previous method was a horrible security flaw, anyway, but how are you supposed to reinstall the OS from scratch?
Was Mentioned By Apple (Score:5, Informative)
Actually... Apple did mention as part of "Find My Mac":
http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/07/os-x-lion-developer-preview-4-adds-find-my-mac/ [macrumors.com]
The idea has three purposes:
1. Guest Access (as has been pointed out here)
2. Recovery. If you hose up your HD it may be possible to troubleshoot using this browser. It actually boots from a "recovery partition"... so your actual OSX installation doesn't even need to work.
3. Finding a stolen / lost machine. The idea is that if someone picks up your machine and tries to use it.... they might use this browser mode for a while allowing "Find my Mac" to phone home and show the coordinates of the machine.
That last one seems dodgy to me.... but that's the rumor going around the Mac sites.
Personally, I think Guest Access is a great idea. If I know I'm going to have people over to my house all evening (maybe to watch football)... I can leave a laptop around in this mode for anyone to use all evening... without fear that they are getting into my personal stuff.
One final note: This is only enabled after downloading the iCloud installer to go with Lion preview.... just in case anyone else out there is trying to figure out how to use it.
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Another thing about "Recovery". Since Lion is going to be electronic distribution only.... some people are thinking that this browser mode might allow you to reinstall the OS somehow.... either by saving the Lion image to a USB Key or doing some sort of direct install.
I don't know about that one personally.... but I guess it is possible.
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It's not electronic-only. It's electronic additionally. They're still making DVDs for it. It's an OS after all...
No, GP was correct. There will be no DVDs for this one.
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There will be no DVDs for this one.
It is trivial [osxdaily.com] to make an install DVD (or USB stick) out of the downloaded version of Lion. Whether or not Apple eventually decides to sell a DVD copy is another question. Given the ease that someone can put the installer on virtually any bit of memory they so desire, it may be a non issue except to the most technically challenged of people (who should probably just get an iPad).
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Given the ease that someone can put the installer on virtually any bit of memory they so desire, it may be a non issue except to the most technically challenged of people (who should probably just get an iPad).
Well, digging around in application packages is not something you expect an average Mac user to be able to manage, even the ones that have to do stuff you can't do on an iPad.
At WWDC, Apple announced that there will be no physical medium for Lion, so the only install DVDs will be DIY (if that will even be possible with the release version).
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It's not electronic-only. It's electronic additionally. They're still making DVDs for it. It's an OS after all...
The WWDC keynote specifically pointed out that there would NOT be a DVD.
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That last one seems dodgy to me.... but that's the rumor going around the Mac sites.
It's not just a rumor; click the link you posted and look at the first image.
While it won't stop professional thief who knows to take apart the computer, pull the battery, wipe the PRAM and hard drive before ever turning the thing on, the vast majority of computer thieves are fortunately not IT experts. Computers that boot to a hidden partition, connect to the nearest unsecured wifi and scream "Here I Am!" will definitely help owners and police in tracking them down.
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That last one seems dodgy to me.... but that's the rumor going around the Mac sites.
It's not just a rumor; click the link you posted and look at the first image.
If you RTFA, you lose the Game.
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Mobile phones can be blocked when stolen but that doesn't stop people pilfering them, not least because they can be unblocked by someone with the know-how. That suggests that many thieves are tech savvy than you suspect, at least to the point where they know they have to unblock the device before selling it.
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Bah, I was able to do this on my Mac Classic, and the image was in ROM, not on a 'recovery partition'. Command-option x-o
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Just turn on the guest account. That way you can still stream from your iTunes library on your personal account, upload photos to Flickr, or do the 100 other things background processes enable.
I guess... (Score:2)
Windows should have similar feature (Score:4, Insightful)
I've thought for years that windows should have a 'boot to Outlook' feature for executives; allow the entire available space of the drive to be used for indexed email storage to avoid having to decide which emails to delete, and load office programs by clicking on attachments, but don't confuse them with any other interface than just Outlook.
And optionally support rebooting by holding it upside down and shaking.
ch
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And optionally support rebooting by holding it upside down and shaking.
Well, as long as it's optional. I don't want to reboot my Windows machine each & every time I get mad at it.
Great (Score:2)
OS X? no Mac (Score:2)
I do remember a reference to Kiosk Mode is some early announcements, so this isn't a surprise. It would have been nice to quote from the original post and not some web copycat. (http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/12/mac-os-x-lion-can-run-in-chrome-os-like-browser-only-mode/) And attached to the Macrumors.com article the was comment showing that Apple has dropped many of the references to Mac OS X and they just have OS X, (not all references, just most of the stuff linked to the Apple home page)
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In a lot of places this just isn't practical at all, mainly just because of power. I can't justify leaving my machine powered on 24/7 especially since I don't use it every day necessarily. Hence I actually turn it off each evening.
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Do computers use more than 1 or 2 watt when suspended (mine don't but they top out at about 50watt anyway).
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Suspend to disk is even better - brings power draw to zero. Or at least as close as possible - we shouldn't be counting standby power here, since that's there after a full shutdown, too. And, while not quite as fast to restart as restore from RAM, restore from disk is still usually fas
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Suspend to disk is even better - brings power draw to zero.
Provided all the hardware comes back up properly. In my experience, suspend to disk has been less reliable (blank screen, no sound, or X crashing and restarting in low-graphics mode) than suspend to RAM.
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This is yet another indication (in addition to general stability problems) of hardware vendor's driver quality. Big name quality hardware, even if it has the same actual chip as brand X quite often has far fewer problems with this sort of thing due to the increased level of testing and QA.
Its also why on the mac it "just works" (limited hardware to support), but windows is plagued by problems with dodgy drivers. It can work just fine on Windows as well, but you need to be lucky/careful with hardware (a
Re:STR (Score:4, Informative)
Suspend to disk has nothing to do with hardware, and everything to do with drivers. From the hardware's perspective, resuming from disk is no different than a cold boot. It's up to the OS to reload the memory contents and initialize hardware back to pre-suspend state.
With the right programming, you could use S2D on an ancient 286 PC. There was a popular game cheating TSR that did just that, to provide "save anywhere" functionality in just about any DOS game. On top of memory dump/restore, it also managed state for a few sound cards like the SB16/Pro and GUS. I can't remember if it was Pro Action Replay or another, but it was pretty big back then.
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Suspend to disk has nothing to do with hardware, and everything to do with drivers.
Which is why suspend "just works" on Macs: fewer driver combinations.
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Suspend to disk is even better - brings power draw to zero.
Provided all the hardware comes back up properly. In my experience, suspend to disk has been less reliable (blank screen, no sound, or X crashing and restarting in low-graphics mode) than suspend to RAM.
For $30, you can buy an OS that properly comes back up from suspend.
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Not legally you can't. And also - it only works properly on an extremely limited hardware subset. I've hackintoshed 2 different machines (neither with exotic hardware - just onboard nic, sb x-fi, nvidia) and getting everything working on boot is a pain in the arse.
If you're talking about running on a real mac, certainly.
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Yes you can. You walk into the Apple store, lay down ~$30 and walk out with a boxed copy of OS-X 10.6.
Since I don't have any recent experience running Linux on a laptop, can you tell me which is easier: getting OSX onto a Hackintosh, or getting Linux to properly wake from disk?
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And if you read the license, you're not permitted to run it on non-apple hardware.
And the license clause may or may not be valid according to your local laws (consumer, contract etc.).
In some jurisdictions post-sale conditions are not necessarily enforcable, and the license would only be valid if you were required to read and sign it before/at time of purchase. In other jurisdictions your right to use something you have bought** however you wish*** may take precedence. As Apple has shown no inclination to t
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For $30, you can buy an OS that properly comes back up from suspend.
If you're referring to Mac OS X, then a new MacBook costs $600 more than the laptop I use now. Feel free to convince me though that being able to suspend to disk is worth the extra $600.
Just trying to help. It seems you have a hardware/software combination that doesn't provide rather basic functionality. I was offering a suggestion to remedy that problem. Perhaps $600 is the tariff to get shit that works.
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Feel free to find a laptop (without a crippled "home" OS) that has the same specs as a MacBook for $600 less than.
Very few people want a laptop with "the same specs as a MacBook", though - many laptop buyers are happy with less and some need more, but only a tiny number want that precise specification and set of features.
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12W is a lot... in the realm of laptops (the majority these days) that's the average idle power draw for many machines. Even for a desktop that sounds like quite a bit too much...
The tiny 28Wh 4-cell in my Thinkpad lasts for days and days on end in standby, so the drain can't be much more than half a Watt or so...
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Suspending to RAM on my 2007 MacBook Pro will deplete batteries from full is 10-15 days, I think the latest Air's last for 30. Never had a problem suspending either to RAM or disk under OS X, Windows XP hibernating has never worked on any machine I have used, most apps crash and sometimes a BSOD when switched back on, unsure about 7 as I have only use that a couple of times.
Re:STR (Score:4, Insightful)
It's likely this could be great for Kiosks and a more bare-bones Guest login
Great for my mom (Score:2)
I've been looking at snagging a chromebook for my mom, but I hate to not get an apple. And sometimes you want to do a bit more than what a chromebook can do. Sometimes I actually need to use the computer too. But 99.9% of the time everything else gets in my mom's way and confuse the hell out of her. after 20 years she still does not know what it means to "quit" an application. the concept is unlearnable. But she can use a browser and web mail and even write a document.
Now if only it would just boot to
Re:Great for my mom (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds like she needs an iPad and an external keyboard.
Been there, aunt is happy.
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Thought about that. But the lack of flash means whe can't listen to all her favorite gurus. And can you really have an ipad without having any other computer around? I heard IOS5 is supposed to address that but I'm skeptical.
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http://www.apple.com/ios/ios5/features.html#pcfree [apple.com]
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So get an Asus Transformer. Tablet with the option of being a full laptop, assloads of battery, and Flash.
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These days, it is nearly impossible to find a computer that doesn't support suspend to ram properly. Do people really shut down their computers so often that this feature would actually be useful? I just don't understand it.
Four reasons:
1. Security-- Using whole disk encryption, the machine is well-secured when completely powered off. When on, the key is in RAM and the disk is accessible. This also goes for services that are running.
2. Energy savings-- Why keep a machine using energy, even a few watts, if that adds up to something over the life of the machine?
3. SSD-- My computer boots and halts in about fifteen and five seconds, respectively, only slightly longer than the resume from hibernate.
4. Freshness-- Though rarely
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No you don't understand... (Score:3)
Guest account gets access to a lot more than browser, and this nicely restricts them to only one application (and most useful one at that). Also, none of the browsing history is saved, so nothing
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I see it as useful for basic troubleshooting. Something goes wrong, user profile gets seriously messed up, etc... how do you look something up on the internet? I use another computer, but that may not always be handy. This way, if you can boot this far you can look things up.
Seems like one of those things I'll only use once every few years, but would be really handy when I need it.
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My computer's BIOS has this ability as well. I believe it is called "Splashtop". I can surf the web, watch porn^H^H^H^HYoutube videos, or make skype calls without spinning up any drives. I've used this feature to solve unbootable OSes (namely Ubuntu when GRUB gets hosed... again...)
I think this has been common on a lot of ASUS motherboards since about 2005. Hmm... Doesn't Apple farm their logic board designs out to ASUS?
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I think it's just a fad and will go away in the next few years.
- My Windows 7 desktop and laptop both boot in 20 seconds from an SSD.
- For recovery you can boot a CD or USB flash drive, and in fact that is the only option if your HDD is failing and you want to do emergency data recovery.
- I already do quick bits of web browsing on my phone and will probably get a tablet to do it at some point
impossible to find a program that doesnt leak (Score:3)
memory.
there are literally hundreds of thousands of lines of code that go into me being able to type a single character on this message box and have it go through the internet and show up on slashdot.
until every system in the entire planet moves to some magical language where nothing ever leaks, on all levels from assembler hardware drivers to the lower level libraries to the UI layer to the drivers for video cards to the 3rd party programs we all use like Chrome or Firefox,
then there will always be memory
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Macs have always been "Leave on and let it sleep" machines , even back in the ugly days of the pre Os/X era. It was one thing that I found interesting and at first a little disturbing coming across from windows was shaking the idea that windows seem to instill that rebooting often lead to greater stability, whereas OS/X and Linux you where often better off leaving it on as much as possible and just letting it take naps when necessary (granted linux has had a shaky relationship with laptop power supplies, hi
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A computer uses anywhere from 5W when "turned off". A few W more when STR, maybe 7W. It's from the standby power lead.
At $0.10/kWh, 7W for 18h/day, this works out to about $4.60/year/computer. So if you have 1000 computers, this gets you at least $4600 in savings if you have a policy of a real shutdown of a computer (ie. a switch that cuts power to computer)
And if you have 1000 iMac computers, you're wasting $50 or more a night as a sysadmin walks around the floor turning them on by hand for system updates, software installs, and virus scans, cursing dumb power policies, and Apple (for not having a real WOL).
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Ignoring the OS X virus debate, no one I know in IT or otherwise has ever seriously performed a virus scan on OS X in the way one regularly does on Windows. I'm sure there are fringe incidents but my point stands; running virus scans on an iMac is not a standard day to day job of a systems administrator.
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And if you have 1000 iMac computers, you're wasting $50 or more a night as a sysadmin walks around the floor turning them on by hand for system updates, software installs, and virus scans, cursing dumb power policies, and Apple (for not having a real WOL).
Hibernating computers is not a dumb policy. It saves a lot of money in energy. It's too bad that governments & energy companies don't jack up the out of hours power rates to motivate companies to enforce it on all non-essential machines.
As for admins, if there isn't an app for OS X which pushes out updates remotely during the day or which can temporarily disable power saving when they are scheduled then there certainly should be.
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Mac's even have wake on via wi-fi. Always worked fine for me.
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I don't know what kind of PC draws 5W when off, but my monster PC doesn't even register a whole watt. It could have to do with your choice of hardware. When everything is suspended, my entire rig snoozes at 8w, including the four 27" displays on standby.
I figure, if I'm going to be afk for less than eight hours, it's better to suspend than shut down, because a cold boot takes about 5 minutes and averages 1000w while everything spins up and POSTs, since the BIOS is too naïve to handle power management
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Really, if you want this Browser-only mode for the power savings, get an iPad. On a full Mac it's just a gimmick, you're still running all that hardware for nothing.
You do know that modern computers are able to power down sections of hardware that aren't needed, such as CPU cores & functional units, GPUs, busses, drives, etc? A computer running a full OS can easily draw more power than a version tuned to run on less resources.
Yes, the iPad will probably use even less than a full Mac in Safari-only mode but that doesn't mean it's completely useless to try to save power through that mode.
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A computer uses anywhere from 5W when "turned off". A few W more when STR, maybe 7W. It's from the standby power lead.
Maybe *your* computer uses 7W "off"... My Macbook Pro is using less than a W sleeping (non-hibernate).
$0.10/kWh - I wish (Score:2)
A couple of years ago, I figured out that the old VCR machines used about $17/year just sitting there, blinking "12:00"...
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Where I am in California
To quote Adam Savage "Well there's your problem!"
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1) Your policy isn't actually going to work for half the staff, so that's $2300 down the tube.
2) Your staff are going to spend 5 minutes going and getting a paid coffee while their machine boots. Assuming your staff are paid even UK minimum wage (£6.30 an hour), you're losing $900 a *day* in waiting for them to boot again.
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I thought only ChromeOS was used by Google employees.
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only to find that there's an update but it's been patiently waiting to restart to install the update.
You are right. That stupid icon in the top right corner of the Chrome window indicating there is an update pending should be replaced. Obviously Google should implement one of those popups so that you can immediately interrupt your work to update your browser. Or better yet they could automatically restart your browser while you are surfing. This way everyone will always have the latest and greatest version.
Obviously, some people on the Chrome team don't use Macs.
I can keep Chrome open for weeks on Windows and on Linux too, that's nothing special.
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Re:Basic OS functionality (Score:4, Informative)
You can still directly into any X app if you want.
I just checked and ">console" login still works on Snow Leopard.
1) Edit login options to display the login window as "Name and password"
2) Logout of all accounts and login with the username ">console"
3) Enjoy your Darwin shell.
It's not much different at all than the Linux shell. If you install Gnome, XFCE, KDE, etc. You can launch them with startx. If you want to boot straight into another application edit your startx scripts (.xinitrc, etc).
I'm sure you can compile Chrome, Firefox, and the like to not use Aqua and just the X11 libraries.
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You can still directly into any X app if you want.
I think you accidentally the verb.
who -r (Score:2)
run-levels on a UNIX like system will do the trick.
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Apple didn't even mention it. At all. It isn't stated anywhere on Lion's feature page and has only been discovered by users testing preview versions. Nice try at a negative spin though.
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You are a good person who makes good posts.
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The fact that Apple and/or its faithful manage to make a big deal out of every 20 year old idea is not "negative spin". Whether it's Apple itself knowing how to drum up good PR or just insufferable fanboys preaching the word, it makes the Mac community a painful one to be around.
I've "switched to Mac" three times in my life and switched back again within a couple of years, each time leaving with a bad taste in my mouth: the first was with a Mac Plus, as the alternatives had already played and won catch-up;
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'sok, I wouldn't expect an Apple fanboy to care for detail.
Re:Basic OS functionality (Score:4, Interesting)
When I originally read about this, it was mentioned that this feature was in fact a honeypot to encourage a thief to plug the machine into the internet. After all, for many people all they want to do is get online anyway. Thief plugs it in, the Find My Mac stuff is able to connect and send information back to the owner who can contact the authorities. Farther evidence of this was that it's a guest account, you're not able to enable it for your own user account (I haven't personally used it, so I can't confirm).
It was also mentioned that this browser would throw out realistic looking errors for some sites, even if the site was actually fine.
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And now that I've read TFA, they stated the same thing... surprised nobody mentioned that angle in the comments.
Re:why is windows still in business? (Score:4, Informative)
The answer to the question "why is Microsoft still in business?" is because Apple doesn't license its operating system to OEMs. Apple is a hardware company, and they want you to buy their stuff. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it's the reason Macs have the reputation of just working. Restrict the hardware you have to support to a very limited range and you can work out all the bugs.
Microsoft, however, allows any Joe Dirt to buy OEM licenses and install on any homebuilt computer. And so we have the great trade-off: Monopoly on hardware and higher unit prices, but fewer bugs vs. Competition from different manufacturers and lower prices, but more bugs and security issues.
Most people go for the lower priced computer.
Disclaimer: I own a MacBook Pro and various home-built desktops
Re:why is windows still in business? (Score:4, Interesting)
My homebuilt Windows 7 machine has been a far smoother experience than my store-built iMac. The latter was pretty smooth on Tiger, to be sure, but Leopard onward was glitchy. I'm really not sure that Apple do too much testing on their previous generation hardware.
And I'd rather have 14 years of reasonable support - thank you, XP - than 2-3 years of slightly better.
Retail for using, OEM for selling (Score:2)
Microsoft, however, allows any Joe Dirt to buy OEM licenses and install on any homebuilt computer.
Only when building a computer to sell, not to use. (Source [microsoft.com])
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Even if Apple offered MacOS to other vendors they probably wouldn't want it. The average brand name PC comes pre-loaded with masses of shovelware, links to the vendors online stores and affiliate marketing. A significant part of the profit comes from those, just like a significant part of Apple's revenue comes from iTunes and the App Store. Judging by Apple's attitude towards competitors products that try to cut into its markets you can be fairly certain that they would be unable to resolve this conflict.
iO
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I don't understand.
because not everyone is stupid enough to see executing the browser instead of the shell as a great new feature
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Because it's by far the most functional, open, well-supported, cost-effective desktop computing environment in the world. While other offerings have some of these features in greater measure (Linux - openness would be the obvious one), no other choice has an adequate measure of them all.
Which of the things listed does the Mac *not* have in "adequate measure"? And it's far from clear that Windows is "by far" ahead of the Mac across those areas you listed.
Windows is "still in business" because it established itself as the default choice almost two decades ago. The PC and Windows were *much* better suited for business use at the time, and business decisions drove the market. People wanted to have the same system at home as they had at the office.
For the past 5 years, Mac growth has outpaced P
Re:Windows ... well supported... (Score:2)
Because of about 7 years of brutally aggressive corporate strategy, it will never be an even contest. Every platform will have to measure against the incumbent Windows paradigm like it or not.
Mac or Lnux - Mac has some money behind it and by using BSD they escape some some obscure trolling situations.
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I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say here. There isn't business software, PCB design software, label printing software for the Mac? That's quite a bold set of claims, and easily shown to be false.
Or are you just echoing what I wrote, that the entry price point for Macs is higher than for PCs?
Perhaps you could elaborate?
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Well I've been tracking this issue for more years than I'd like to remember. What really keeps Windows in the dominate position is not the merit or quality of Windows itself, but rather market forces. Microsoft had been taking advantage of market forces in order to attempt to monopolize the software industry to varying levels of success. The only serious competition Windows had so far has come from free operating systems and software because they exist and develop independently from the market. That is
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Well, kinda sorta, Microsoft's OSs are capable of ONE thing that other OSs aren't, or at least aren't great at, and that is implementations of Microsoft's proprietary protocols. This creates a massive amount of lock-in, which is furthered by the fact that Microsoft has refused to implement
don't forget kickbacks, bribery, threats, (Score:3)
intimidation, political maneuvering, invasion of the k-12 school system, and soon, predatory litigtation (especially patent litigation)
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They sit around for 23 hours a day because they CAN. They cover all of their survival needs in 1 hour a day. That's not lazy. That's efficient. U jelly.
My Mac eats small children too. OS X Lion is fitting.
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