Are Macs really all that superior?

[menoinjun]

Please don't flame me, you all know where my alliance lies...

but I can't help but wonder about the major windows flaws.

1. Crappy code. Mac OS X is a cheetah (jaguar? lol) compared to Windows.
2. Conflicts. Most crashes are caused by conflicts between programs or accessories.
3. Vulnerability. Windows is plagued by security holes.

Since Apple only has 5% of the market share, there aren't very many viruses that are written for them. I'm sure if people would put forth the effort, there could be viruses written to easily destroy Mac systems. Also, not as many security holes are found simply because not as many people use them in the same way as PC's. Now what about the conflicts? If the amount of programs and accessories were written or made for the mac as the PC, then wouldn't it be fair to say that we would be succeptable to just as many conficts as the PC's are? I admit that since Apple makes both the operating system and the software everything runs a lot smoother out of the box, but what about after lots of upgrades?

I agree that Macs are fundamentally superior and far easier and more pleasing to use than PC's, but what if we had 80% of the market share? Would we be the "bad guys" with the "inferior" product?

Just food for thought. Macs still rule and I will NEVER go back to a PC.

-Pete

 

[arn]

I don't know if the reason many of us are using Macs (Apple) is due to these specific reasons...

Overall, I think it's an agreement with their philosophy... and I know Apple's a business, and they don't really have altruistic motives... but let's look back...

The Macintosh... regardless of the naysayers... the original Macintosh was an innovative machine. Sure... it had limitations... but I remember the old CLI vs GUI arguments back in the day... wanna bet what the CLI advocates are using right now? I bet they're using a Windows-based machine.... I doubt they stuck to their guns and stayed with DOS or switched to non-GUI's unix shell.

The whole GUI experience was defined by Apple. Many of the people who "got it" back then, probably still own Apple/Macs.

In 1992, I had to get a computer for college. The decision was Mac OS 7.0 vs Windows 3.1. The decision wasn't hard. I bet if suddenly everyone was transported back to 1992... and had to decide all over again.... I'm sure Apple would have 80% of the marketshare. Win 3.1 was crap.

Now... my favorate example is the Newton... ah - such a well thought out piece of technology. The Interface, the OS, the development environment. Incredibly fine. Really focused on the end-use-tool of it all. Anyhow... Newton died for other reasons than it's technology...

So... flashforward... Mac OS 9 vs Windows 2000 or whatnot... yes... Apple was showing it's age... and people jumped ship... lots of 'em. The hardcores stayed... but now... with Mac OS X and the Digital Hub apps etc... I'm again very positive on Apple and just really feel that they are where I want to be.

arn

 

[mac15]

yes and remeber MAC OS X vs Windows XP.....nuff said
os x has changed apple and all of us using it

As a new school mac user I don't know much history.....but it sunds like apple used to suck...pardon my french

It seems like a great time to be a mac user and I couldn't have joined at a better time

 

[iapple]

Originally posted by mac15
yes and remeber MAC OS X vs Windows XP.....nuff said
os x has changed apple and all of us using it

As a new school mac user I don't know much history.....but it sunds like apple used to suck...pardon my french

It seems like a great time to be a mac user and I couldn't have joined at a better time

Yup, I think so anyway. My PowerMac 4400 was not a very good machine, and the present hardware/software is superior, it's like we jumped a decade!

And it REALLY sucks, because around the time apple was going through a so-called financial "crisis", before Steve Jobs' comeback, a LOT of people got windows based machines! and schools started to get PCs into their labs, etc..

If OS X could have been introduced EARLIER, which could well have been done, if SJ came back earlier, then Windows 2000 would have been BLOWN AWAY! We would also be around Mac OS X 12.1 by now!

The NeXT technology that OS X uses was THERE way back before 9 (I think..) so if Apple dropped the Copland project, and started EARLIER with X development (which was possible) then I think we could have gained MUCH more market share, purely because of REALLY SUPERIOR technology!

Imagine, Mac OS X 10.2 back in 2000!

 

[j763]

Mac OS X is by far the best consumer OS out there... I used to use a mac in 96... but then the dark days of 97 came along and yeah, i wasn't exactly rushing out to get another mac. So I was then a wintel user. windows' rather large cr@p factor led me to switch to Linux. It was when i was d/l'ing QT for a friend's wintel box that I noticed that Apple had introduced a UNIX based OS and I was sold...

Fact is that apple used to be crappy and expensive when compared with wintel... I know I'm going to get flamed for saying that, but it's the truth... You couldn't multitask and you'd be restarting every 5 minutes with OS 9. OS 9 is the only OS that i've seen that I can label as "worse than windows"... Needless to say, my HD is free of OS 9 -- there's no reason I'd ever need to use it... Put simply -- it sucks.

But that was the Apple of yesterday. Today they woke up and well, they're making a real OS with (finally) some semi-not-quite-but-almost-xserve-comes-close-to-real hardware. A G5 would probably put them on par with what AMD's doing today, but I've really got no idea how they plan to compete with AMD's 64-bit chips, especially if we have to wait for mwsf for the g5 to come out... H/W is my only complaint but the xserve makes me drool... and i'm more interested in s/w rather than h/w... so yeah, apple rules!!! but the entire mac community always wants more... oh well, they better get used to it

 

[iapple]

I hate to say this but...

Originally posted by j763
Mac OS X is by far the best consumer OS out there... I used to use a mac in 96... but then the dark days of 97 came along and yeah, i wasn't exactly rushing out to get another mac. So I was then a wintel user. windows' rather large cr@p factor led me to switch to Linux. It was when i was d/l'ing QT for a friend's wintel box that I noticed that Apple had introduced a UNIX based OS and I was sold...

Fact is that apple used to be crappy and expensive when compared with wintel... I know I'm going to get flamed for saying that, but it's the truth... You couldn't multitask and you'd be restarting every 5 minutes with OS 9. OS 9 is the only OS that i've seen that I can label as "worse than windows"... Needless to say, my HD is free of OS 9 -- there's no reason I'd ever need to use it... Put simply -- it sucks.

But that was the Apple of yesterday. Today they woke up and well, they're making a real OS with (finally) some semi-not-quite-but-almost-xserve-comes-close-to-real hardware. A G5 would probably put them on par with what AMD's doing today, but I've really got no idea how they plan to compete with AMD's 64-bit chips, especially if we have to wait for mwsf for the g5 to come out... H/W is my only complaint but the xserve makes me drool... and i'm more interested in s/w rather than h/w... so yeah, apple rules!!! but the entire mac community always wants more... oh well, they better get used to it

You know, I hate to say this, but now we have X, and X.2 coming up, OS 9 was not the most stable, although it had many new designs, ease of use and elegance. It DOES NOT crash every five minutes, unless you do some heavy task with it, and Windows is NOT the more stable than 9 all the time. (at least 98 isn't and Me was crap! Some people say Me triggered the stagnant PC market! I hope they got rid of Me code in XP...)

Again, not always the company with the potential, can make good results. Apple had plenty potential, if it wasn't for poor marketing, and guys that used to be CEOs of Pepsi! I personally think, apple could have succeeded if SJ wasn't fired, if those crappy CEOs didn't exist, and if NeXT Step could have been made into OS X EARLIER! It would have been possible for Apple to release X in 2000, if "luck" prevailed... which it didn't...

BUT NOW! NOW Apple has a chance, with a competant CEO that invented the Personal Computer (with woz of course ) and has great (sometimes crazy I must admit... but that's necessary!) ideas, and a super stable UNIX based server system/ operating system Mac OS X, I think we are getting somewhere. Dont forget the hardware too and the apple stores (which should help, since you really can't GET "Mac" with the specs)

In 2 years, I think people won't be bothered by speed of computers, because all of them will be so damn fast! Also, a lot of optimisation to X will be done, and a lot more Java/UNIX apps will be ported as well as QuickTime 6 and on, etc. etc.

Who knows what will happen, but I don't think apple is going under any time soon. Just my two cents.

 

[Hemingray]

Re: Superior

If you're talking software, I'd say Apple's superior. If you're talking hardware... well... I'll get back to you in July on that....

 

[Catfish_Man]

Re: I hate to say this but...

Originally posted by iapple

I hope they got rid of Me code in XP...

Luckily for Microsoft, XP isn't descended from ME. XP could have been named "NT6", with 2000 being NT5, and NT4 being NT4. It's an interesting parallel, Win3.1 = MacOS 1, Win9x = MacOS 9 and earlier. NT = neXt. 2000 = rhapsody (but without some of the problems), XP = Mac OS X. Each company has had 2 OSs in the works, and they brought their fancy one (neXt, NT) to the consumers at the same time. Unfortunately for Microsoft (and fortunately for Apple ), they really f*cked up the UI (and a bunch of other things) in XP.

 

[King Cobra]

I think that people only buy peeseas because people get such great deals on them. Basically what the Dell dude is saying "Now you can get a DELL [demented?] desktop with an Intel Pentium 4 processor, which is so cool, for only $999."

The way I see it is: "Right now we have lots of crappy PCs with F-able software and complete instability at a price, which is so low you probably will not care if you are writing your dissertation to find out how a cow even got on the Gateway desktop computer box. With this supersale of products at such a low price we are even going to throw in extra crappy software, with more bugs, some more useless junk, and a hidden Winpose crash maker, running on a PC with an Intel P4 processor, so that your computer can crash at a phenomenal rate, all for only $999."

The way I see Apple's version of products: "Currently, we are selling computers that can perform gigaflops, running our most stable operating system ever. We have also included extra free software that will easily help you edit video from a camcorder and export it to a DVD with almost no errors whatsoever, plus a whole lot of extra software with almost no errors and an easy to understand interface. And you get all this at a price that is well worth completing your dissertation on why Apple should be the #1 computer provider in the world, but is getting screwed over."

I wonder if I will get Beej's award for this...
__________________

Fear the King.

 

[SilvorX]

personally i feel that G4 Macs are superiour to PC's since theyre very stable, most of them are faster than PC's, and lots of people who converted from PC to mac (that i have talked to) say that buying a mac was the best choice they made (computer wise). but then again the macs we have at our school (OLD powermacs from 98, n a couple old imacs with 8.6), some of those macs still have 8.1 on them (the older computers)! lol
the head technician at our school has a G4 powerbook and wow! nice big display *kinda*, n he was trying to show me what to do for something that im supposed to do for school....but then again he set the default OS (if u can) to 9.2...

 

[LethalWolfe]

Re: Are Macs really all that superior?

Originally posted by ptrauber
Please don't flame me, you all know where my alliance lies...

but I can't help but wonder about the major windows flaws.

1. Crappy code. Mac OS X is a cheetah (jaguar? lol) compared to Windows.
2. Conflicts. Most crashes are caused by conflicts between programs or accessories.
3. Vulnerability. Windows is plagued by security holes.

Since Apple only has 5% of the market share, there aren't very many viruses that are written for them. I'm sure if people would put forth the effort, there could be viruses written to easily destroy Mac systems. Also, not as many security holes are found simply because not as many people use them in the same way as PC's. Now what about the conflicts? If the amount of programs and accessories were written or made for the mac as the PC, then wouldn't it be fair to say that we would be succeptable to just as many conficts as the PC's are? I admit that since Apple makes both the operating system and the software everything runs a lot smoother out of the box, but what about after lots of upgrades?

I agree that Macs are fundamentally superior and far easier and more pleasing to use than PC's, but what if we had 80% of the market share? Would we be the "bad guys" with the "inferior" product?

Just food for thought. Macs still rule and I will NEVER go back to a PC.

-Pete

In regards to conflicts, I don't think Apple would ever be as "bad" as a PC as long as Apple keeps control of the hardware. I think there are more software-to-hardware/accessory conflicts on PCs than software-to-software conflicts.

And I do think that if Apple was the size of MS more flaws/holes would be found w/o the OS because more people would be using/abusing it and trying to write virus for it. Again, would there be as many holes as MS has...? I dunno, but I bet there would be more than there are now.


Lethal

 

[chmorley]

Agree and disagree

I have been using Macs since 1990, and I think some of what has been said is fair and some is flat out wrong. The big mistake Apple made was letting M$ catch up. They had something like a 6-10 year lead in the OS, and then stagnated. They stopped innovating in the right places in the OS. They allowed Windows 9x to become about as stable as the Mac OS. They continued to try to prop up an aging OS (just as M$ did with Win 9x/ME as extensions of DOS). They lost the speed lead they had with the Power PC.

However, Steve Jobs' firing was probably the right decision at the time. He had lost touch, as evidenced by the pricing of the NeXT cube, which was a great machine, but not affordable. Besides, I actually think that he might not have developed what has become OS X had he not been forced to create a more modern OS with NeXT. His return has been a godsend, but that doesn't mean he should never have been fired.

Lastly, the machines of the 90's were not all bad. There were gaffes, and quality slipped a bit overall, but much of the PowerMac line was and is great. I still use my 7500. It's upgradeable motherboard allows me to purchase upgrades and keep it up to speed. It came with full digital video and audio built in. This was what represented (and continues to represent) what makes Macs great. A friend of mine has just recently had to purchase a Mac for the digital printing business he is starting. He bought a used PowerMac 9500 and can't believe the power of the machine. When I told him it had the digital video and audio, he said, "Macs are just amazing." This from the era when the machines "sucked".

Lastly lastly, the selling point of any computer for me has always been how easy it is to do my work. M$ has simply never been able to compete in this area.

Chris

 

[buffsldr]

Are macs superior? that is an ill-posed question. It depends. It depends on how you define a superior computer. If a superior computer is cheapest up front, then no. If superior means it has a parallel port, then no.

You have to figure out what is important to you to get out of a computer and buy the one that works the best for you. mac users just get frustrated sometimes because we think we know whats best for other people.

I dont care to even read or hear if other people think macs are superior. To me its the same as a stranger telling me she doesnt think my dinner selection is superior to hers. Who cares? I like it, and it is the best I have found. You may prefer something else.

So, are macs superior? To me, yes. But to somebody else, they may be a poor computer.

 

[AmbitiousLemon]

i think a lot of you who just came over to mac because of osx are still suffering brain damage from all your years on windows machines. to even imply that os9 was less stable than any windows os is a joke. makes me wonder if you people ever even used os9 on your own machine. and insulting the old machines for crappy hardware. wow, you peopel really are out of touch with reality. id agree it was expensive, no doubt about that, but it was expensive because apple was using non standard high quality parts. this is why you still see so many SEs 8500s etc running all over the place. these machines outlive modern machines as far as durability goes. you act like your brand new powermac is higher quality... ive got news for you dont expect your brand new powermac to last well over a decade with no new hardware and no maitenance like those old machines did. apple gave us what they need to, cheap amchines, but quality was sacrificed in the process. i think many of you were using your windows 2000 machines and comparing the os on your finely tuned windows machine to some mac at a school somewhere that you saw that had been abused for years and likely was given to the school because it had some bad hardware inside that was causing problems. i dont run os9 on my machines anymore but back in the day my uptime in os9 would beat the uptime in osx. im not saying the classic system didnt have problems, im simply saying that you people dont seem at all qualified to discuss what the problems were considering your obvious ignorance of the platform and hardware. we like to discuss steve's reality distortion field but it sounds to me like all of you are still suffering from a windows distortion field. making all the idiotic claims we hear from windows users everyday. people who liek to tell us how bad macs are when they ahve never used one. and i can tell you one thing, os9 converted more people than osx has. why? because os9 worked and was bug free. i still feel nervous when demoing osx to a windows friend because it is such a buggy slow POS. when ever i know a problem is coming up i try to distact them with the shiny apple on the imac's base. sure osx is better than os9, and its clearly the best os out there, but it is by no means perfect. i love having you unix guys on board. its one of the greatest benefits of osx. we get a whole big group of computer savy users who think in a different way. its brought great things to the platform as are evidenced by some of the new software the has come out in the past 2 years. but please dont make ignorant claims about where apple was before osx came around unless you used macs yourself during that time. its always fun to pretend that a band didnt become cool until you started listening to them, but lets try to be realistic here and nt continue to perpetuate the myths about apple that ignorant windows users constantly throw in our faces.

 

[King Cobra]

Well said, Lemon.

As far as OS 9 goes, it seems to be mostly stable to me, but does have a few problems. And, of course, we all want to avoid the nightmare errors of Winpose whenever we can. And OS X, IMO, seems a lot more stable than OS 9. At least now if there are errors I can fix them, or find out how to avoid them, for the most part.

But OS X is not even finished yet. It still lacks some needs that people find useful, such as our old friends, the spring-loaded folders. That's why Jaguar seems to fix many problems and add lots of our favorite features from OS 9. Jaguar will probably not be Apple's last OS update, but I am sure that it should have many significant improvements over the old OS X and the current OS X.
__________________

Fear the King.

 

[iapple]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
im not saying the classic system didnt have problems, im simply saying that you people dont seem at all qualified to discuss what the problems were considering your obvious ignorance of the platform and hardware. we like to discuss steve's reality distortion field but it sounds to me like all of you are still suffering from a windows distortion field. making all the idiotic claims we hear from windows users everyday. people who liek to tell us how bad macs are when they ahve never used one. and i can tell you one thing, os9 converted more people than osx has. why? because os9 worked and was bug free. i still feel nervous when demoing osx to a windows friend because it is such a buggy slow POS. when ever i know a problem is coming up i try to distact them with the shiny apple on the imac's base. sure osx is better than os9, and its clearly the best os out there, but it is by no means perfect. i love having you unix guys on board. its one of the greatest benefits of osx. we get a whole big group of computer savy users who think in a different way. its brought great things to the platform as are evidenced by some of the new software the has come out in the past 2 years. but please dont make ignorant claims about where apple was before osx came around unless you used macs yourself during that time. its always fun to pretend that a band didnt become cool until you started listening to them, but lets try to be realistic here and nt continue to perpetuate the myths about apple that ignorant windows users constantly throw in our faces.

I've got a few things to say about this post. What I was saying earlier (and by the way, I have NEVER used a Windows machine in my house, and our family has been using the Macintosh since the Color Classic!)

Probably I worded my post wrong... I did not intend to say the os 9 was at all a "bad" OS, but as far as I see it, it didn't reach the level of being "superior" to the Windows 2000 systems. Ofcourse, it had many advantages, but it wasn't "way beyond" MS. Yes it had it's strengths, yes it had it flaws, and I think the flaws wil be (some are already) fixed with OS X. Since OS X is actually only version 1.1 (NOT 10.1, and I think apple made a mistake with this numbering, which makes it soud like it is had 10 major updates!) It will be optimised, features will be added, and I think finally, we can get a really "superior" OS, in terms of power, speed (I hope...), stabiliby (yes, definitely!), new apps, user interface (has anyone seen the hideos green/blue awful horrible XP design? If MS is going to copy apple, they need to do a better job! That default interface is CRAP!) etc. etc.

I see OS X having huge potential for Apple.

 

[jefhatfield]

i have used apple on and off since the late 70s/early 80s and pcs only since windows 98 on a daily basis

i do remember some of the bad days of windows 3.1 like arn mentioned above...he he

when i first got my original ibook with 32 mb of ram, os 9 crashed like crazy

but since i upgraded and maxed out my ram to 160 mb, my uptime is 99 percent and i am happy...sometimes my laptop will not wake up from sleep mode, but that is also rare

overall, i like os 9 better than windows 98, and both machines i have are laptops with 160 mb of ram...i did try windows 2000 on my wintel laptop, but the hardware was not fully compatible and the drivers were not all supported or written...but then again, i was warned by compaq and others on the net that my particular wintel laptop would not be 100 percent compatible...but from what i see windows 2000 was not that bad, but os 9 is cleaner

now from what little i have seen of os x, it seems really nice and i can't wait to get a fast enough mac to run it on with sufficient ram...maybe i will try a new ibook or whatever portable there is out there for the consumer at MWSF

 

[AmbitiousLemon]

o dude, jef, all this time i didnt know you hadnt tasted the sweet fruit that is osx. should be really neat to hear your impressions once you make the big jump and hey even though 10 aint so shabby now, it will probably be totally kickass when you get to it.

 

[AlphaTech]

OS X DOES kick ass (10.1.4) as long as you don't try and do something stupid with it. Then again, that applies to any OS. DO a reasonable amount of maintenance on your system and it will run like the fast cat it is. Give it the memory amount it likes, and you will be happy with it. Try and use it with too little memory (~128MB or less) and it will bog down. The faster your processor, the better it runs, as with most things computer.

Personally, I use Mac's about 95-99% of the time both at home and work (I have to maintain about 30 or so pc's at work and over 240 Mac's). I dread the day that we are told to install winblows heXPee onto systems (looks like that might happen in 2003 ). Of all the windowz versions, 2000 is the best (still not as good as OS X). It's reasonably stable (for window$) but still harder to maintain and fix then any Mac OS. You will NEVER find me with a pc (in my house) that runs heXPee. M$ charges way too much for their OS's and their 'updates/upgrades' are also too much.

Oh, and before I forget... heXPee still has severe security issues. M$ is putting out 'critical updates' for it weekly just to plug the holes. Anyone else read about the hotmail fiasco??? Talk about lack of security... leave it to m$ to shaft it to it's customers in a bad/hard way.

 

[eyelikeart]

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
o dude, jef, all this time i didnt know you hadnt tasted the sweet fruit that is osx. should be really neat to hear your impressions once you make the big jump and hey even though 10 aint so shabby now, it will probably be totally kickass when you get to it.

yeah no kidding....

jef's gonna have to change his shorts when he gets his hands on it...

I'll say that I've been more than impressed with X despite the mixed reviews I got before I installed it on my TiBook...

I've always found I do much better by finding out for myself rather than by what others tell me...

but I agree....OS X kicks almost as much @ss as AlphaTech!

 

[AlphaTech]

Originally posted by eyelikeart
but I agree....OS X kicks almost as much @ss as AlphaTech!

Depends on how evil I am feeling that day/night and how stupid the posts are at the time... I am living by the 12th commandmant now...

"Thou shall not suffer an idiot to live"

 

[jefhatfield]

i know os x gets more compatible with each release drivers wise and that is a good thing

as for speed, i still love the g3 ibooks that apple has now but i keep on reading that altivec and os x are made for each other and maybe i will have to hold out until well into next year to get a g4 ibook which i am sure will happen after powermac hits 1.3-1.5 ghz or g5 and tibook hits 1 ghz+ or so

i don't mind os x because it does copy the cool aqua that os x made famous...it's just that xp is a weak copy

i have often called for os x for pc machines so they can ditch windows if needed...many a pc user is tired with windows and want something new but still like their old pc otherwise

but os x to pc will probably not happen