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Stuff that XP has that OSX doesn't...

The main thing that keeps me from going Mac only is the overall feeling of slowness that OSX has. Though it's rock solid, and does many things faster (thanks to PowerPC/BSD), simply scrolling through windows and stuff can be painful.

I like how from any explorer window in XP, you can type in a url, or network name and connect without manually executing a program.

I like how compressed files can be executed and manipulated without actually unzipping them, and no additional software is required.

If OSX had the speed of XP or even OS9, I'd be Mac only at work.

Now at home....I gotta have my games, so I'll always be using some version of windows. ;-)
 
Re: Re: Well, for starters...

Originally posted by alex_ant

Can you elaborate on this?

Whoa - has THIS thread really taken off in the few hours that I've been away...

Well, alex -

I was surprised to read in the latest issue of UK Mac User magazine (13 Dec 02 - Vol 18 No 25 Page 16) of a new arm of the US government department - created by good 'ol George "W" - called the "Department of Homeland Security", which has the juristiction to sirrupticiously scan your computer whilst you're connected to the net - as a safeguard to terrorism. The benefit for Apple users is that this will only be able to be done if the user is on Windows (Bill Gates swiftly raised his hand when the Government asked for help, hoping that copious amounts of butt-kissing might persuade the Attourney General to "look the other way" in any further Microsoft Trials).

Here's the full article...

US President George Bush has approved a bill to boost US national security that threatens the privacy of computer users around the world.

The full extent of the new arm of the US government - called the Department of Homeland Security - is still being determined, but it will ensure that computer operating systems, hardware, data and the Internet are secure. The US government will be able to access these computer systems to fulfil its remit of protecting national security.

Industry experts suggest the ramifications of this agency are huge. 'What kind of control will the US government have over the development of commercial computer operating systems so it can access private information under the guise of "national security"?' said Marc Rotenberg, the director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

'In the end, how much more will "Big Brother" know about you and me because it will now have access to information they previously couldn't get?'

The department brings together 22 existing federal agencies, ranging from the Secret Service to the Coast Guard and the Border Patrol. Its stated aim is to guard against the ever-increasing terrorist threat to the US.

While the roles and rules of most agencies in the new department are remaining the same, much of what the body does is directly related to protecting the US from computer terrorism.

However, Rotenberg believes the agency's real goal is to create large-scale data warehouses to analyse everyday activities, such as credit card purchases and travel reservations, as well as to access personal computers if necessary.

The Department of Homeland Security has been given new powers to prosecute computer crimes. New laws have been enacted, which include life prison sentences for computer hackers found guilty of serious crimes.

While today's existing operating systems are being developed to provide as much security protection as possible, operating system developers, such as Apple and Microsoft, will have to weigh customers' privacy concerns against the US government's desire to access personal data.

Already, Microsoft is working with the US government to develop its IT framework for homeland security. The software company has also committed itself to work with the government to create better security systems for Windows.

Judge for yourself - OSX seems to be the safer bet. And if this new idea of Apple's to sell its intel-based OSX variant "Marklar" gets onto the shelves, then I'd expect a great deal of consumers will be voting with their feet, and changing operating systems, if they feel their security is being compromised by the government, and their right to free speech is being challenged.
 
Re: Stuff that XP has that OSX doesn't...

Originally posted by mrpepsi
The main thing that keeps me from going Mac only is the overall feeling of slowness that OSX has. Though it's rock solid, and does many things faster (thanks to PowerPC/BSD), simply scrolling through windows and stuff can be painful.

I like how from any explorer window in XP, you can type in a url, or network name and connect without manually executing a program.

I like how compressed files can be executed and manipulated without actually unzipping them, and no additional software is required.

If OSX had the speed of XP or even OS9, I'd be Mac only at work.

Now at home....I gotta have my games, so I'll always be using some version of windows. ;-)

I completely AGREE! OSX (Jag) is too slow, even with dual systems with the required Vid card etc.

Also, I wish there was a way, when opening or saving a file from an App like Photoshop or Maya or whatever, you could sort the files viewed in the save/open window in any way you want (date modified, by name, etc.) I hate that its Alphabetical order ONLY. Also, in Windows, you can edit names of files from those windows and move them around, etc--just like thru the Windows explorer.
 
Originally posted by cr2sh
<snip>
One last thing, my 10.0 was a free upgrade to 9.2... I had to pay for 10.1.

:confused: ...really? You "upgraded" from 10.0 to 9.2 for free? ;)

If you purchased 10.0, you could get 10.1 for free at an Apple Store or authorized reseller, or for a $20 "shipping fee".
 
Originally posted by Durandal7
Let's see,
Windows browses files via *Explorer*
OS X can't put those wonderful ads on your desktop if you want :(
OS X doesn't have that wild Luna interface
OS X may never reap the benefits of Palladium

I swear if Apple doesn't shape up I'm going to switch to Windows.

You MUST be joking right!? And one more thing,,,,just go on and switch to PC,,,bye,,,be gone. i am so over peopl,e saying that they are gonna go to the dark side,,,just go be gone,,,and dont ever come back here.

Have a great day!!!!
Digi
 
my OSX wishlist...is this still on-topic ?

explorer in windows is not really rock solid, but I really like the 'unified' browser idea. Not just for files and web, but also ftp...plus, it is super fast to 'launch' (since it is always open).

I also would like more options to view/arange files in OSX, but maybe I just did not look in the right places for these options...

Oh, and a configurable GUI ! Aqua is nice, but it gets a bit tiresome after a while (am I the only one thinking this ?), also, it would be so nice to be able to switch it to a barebones UI, minimal button/bar sizes and no 'funky' effects: maximize speed and screen real estate.
 
The one thing I have been envious of from Windows XP is the remote desktop feature.

It is much better than any VNC and has many more features than Apple's Remote Desktop. You can actually listen to sound on your computer from another location among other things.

Its something that would be very useful as I like to use VNC a lot and have played aroun with Apple's Remote Desktop. I don't see why they couldn't have a remote desktop built in similar to Remote X, the true remote desktop for Linux systems.

Just my two cents
 
Well im a windows user... and a mac user.
My PC is my main machine... a 1.4Ghz T-Bird Overclocked to 1.8Ghz. yada yada yada. Im a tweaker... and i find that mac os x is not so tweaker friendly.

That and macs are so damn expensive. compared to what i can build for half the price.

Also, Mac OS X feels slow. It may do five gazilion floating point calculations a second... but it comes down the the fact that its slow to use.

Windows XP is lighning fast.

Im a graphics designer so i use macs for photoshop and whatnot...
but what made me use a mac in the first place (photoshop WAS faster on a mac) is now reversed. I can do anything in photoshop on my pc at least twice as fast as i could in mac os x (or 9 for that matter).

I can find any application i want for windows... but i cant do the same for macs.

and... i never thought i would say it.. but... my mac crashes more than my windows machine. my mac (dual G4 800Mhz) doesnt like dealing with large files. my mac will crash at least once a week... whereas my windows machine has crashed about 3 times in the year ive had it.

I have to say.. the quality of macintosh programs is far superior to windows.
I WISH i could run REALbasic on my windows machine (RB is awesome www.realbasic.com)

my two cents.
 
Go tell apple

I think there are a lot of good ideas here, I think that everyone should tell apple at thier OS X feedback site.

I really wish that they would just trash the finder and re-write it in cocoa, and fix all of those "little" bugs like broken FTP and SMB connection through the finder. I like the task switching in windows, maybe if the Dock was tabbed with a "app window," "minimized window," "short cuts" tabs etc...
 
Originally posted by Rower_CPU


:confused: ...really? You "upgraded" from 10.0 to 9.2 for free? ;)

If you purchased 10.0, you could get 10.1 for free at an Apple Store or authorized reseller, or for a $20 "shipping fee".

yeh, I bought what was suppossed to be a dual 500 from MicroCenter August two years ago. Microcenter (somehow) gave me a 733 with superdrive instead (valued at much more than what i payed) ... anyways, it came only with 9.2 but there was a mail in thingy at that time, where I got the 10.0 disk for free. When 10.1 was released, I had to buy it.

Several people have noted that XP Home is a "lite" version of XP, okay.. maybe that should be noted... you can't get a 'lite' osX for any price...
 
Re: Is there anything that Windows has that OSX doesn't?

Drivers for my Fastlane USB MIDI Interface, or my Midiman USB MIDI Interface.

Drivers for my MOTU 828 Firewire Audio Interface.

Drivers (I mean, working drivers) for my HP AOI Laser Printer-Scanner-Fax

Drivers for my Philips ToU Webcam.

Running versions of all (!) my $4000 audio plugins. Heaven knows if/when any of them will be ported to OSX. I could get a crossgrade to Windows for most of them for a nominal fee.

Shall I continue?

All these things worked fine in OS 9, and still do for my part. I can't switch to OS X when the bread and butter software isn't available.
 
Re: Re: Is there anything that Windows has that OSX doesn't?

Originally posted by pianojoe
Drivers for my Fastlane USB MIDI Interface, or my Midiman USB MIDI Interface.

Drivers for my MOTU 828 Firewire Audio Interface.

Drivers (I mean, working drivers) for my HP AOI Laser Printer-Scanner-Fax

Drivers for my Philips ToU Webcam.

Running versions of all (!) my $4000 audio plugins. Heaven knows if/when any of them will be ported to OSX. I could get a crossgrade to Windows for most of them for a nominal fee.

Shall I continue?

All these things worked fine in OS 9, and still do for my part. I can't switch to OS X when the bread and butter software isn't available.

it has to be annoyng listening to everyone rave about osx when all of you audio guys are stuck in os9, but i just want you to know you aren't the only ones stuck there. at least you audio guys know that 'some' audio apps are coming by years end. scientific software is far worse. many of the applications we use were discontinued years ago, so osx versions will never come. many companies moved to pc ony in the early 90s and the majority of scientists still use the 10 year old mac versions (will developers ever realize they lost 70% of their market when they switched/). luckily every application i and my colleagues use works flawlessly in classic (in fact they run faster in classic than when i boot into os9). the only hope we have though is that new applications to replace the ones we have been using for years are created that have osx ports. (on the bright side, many unix apps are now available via the command line).
 
Re: Re: Re: Is there anything that Windows has that OSX doesn't?

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon
scientific software is far worse.

Such as? What is scientific software? :confused: Give me a program name so I can say "oh.. thats scientific software!" :)

Editing rules! (and now i'm off to LOTR..)
 
Scientific Software...

For me, I use Scientific Workplace (much more user friendly than mathematica).

I also use LabWindows which lets me interface with PCI cards, and the PCI cards are all PC compatible.

I also use PSpice to draw schematics and simulate complex electronic circuits.



So far these do not have Mac versions. :(



Another gripe I have about switching to the mac platform is that my scanner isn't supported to my knowledge. Its a Visioneer 8100...

Ah well. Guess I'll live with VPC or the sorts. :( Maybe I'll have to learn to program in mathematica :(:(:(
 
Really, I don't see how people say that OS X is so terribly slow. My iBook (500mhz, 8Mb VRAM, 384 MB RAM) runs Jaguar great. Office is slow all the time (the project gallery hangs majorly), but most other apps run well. Now when I just had 17 apps open and Omniweb filling up 100 megs of cache, that was slow.:D But the dual 1 gigs I've seen open iPhoto, iCal, iTunes and other substantial apps in 1 bounce. So there's some substantial speed here.
 
Jag aint slow

I am a habitual "open all apps i might need at boot up/login" person. I find that jag (on a DP 1ghz) compared to XP Pro (on an XP 1800+) has much better boot time. I open at least ten apps at boot/login and jag loads tham an we are away. If i want to hibernate i have problems. if i sleep i work fine.

Jag works and runs fine. I only started having probelms when we had a power blackout in OS9. then she needed a re-install. Not that XP didnt need one. An, jag was easier, faster and moved all existing apps, fonts, files over to the new system. Actually i didnt move files it thought were corrupted. No prooblems.

Go Jag. XP is ok, jag is just better thats all.
 
Originally posted by pimentoLoaf
Windozzzzzzzz XP supports:

  • Flight Simulator Pro
  • Combat Flight Simulator 3
  • InterActual Player
    [/list=a]

    The latter toy allows linking from DVD's to the Internet.


  • Whatever man. We have X-Plane!
 
Re: Re: Re: Is there anything that Windows has that OSX doesn't?

Originally posted by AmbitiousLemon


it has to be annoyng listening to everyone rave about osx when all of you audio guys are stuck in os9, but i just want you to know you aren't the only ones stuck there. at least you audio guys know that 'some' audio apps are coming by years end. scientific software is far worse. many of the applications we use were discontinued years ago, so osx versions will never come. many companies moved to pc ony in the early 90s and the majority of scientists still use the 10 year old mac versions (will developers ever realize they lost 70% of their market when they switched/). luckily every application i and my colleagues use works flawlessly in classic (in fact they run faster in classic than when i boot into os9). the only hope we have though is that new applications to replace the ones we have been using for years are created that have osx ports. (on the bright side, many unix apps are now available via the command line).

hey, at least your stuff works on classic! No audio apps work in classic. :-(
 
Originally posted by d1e
Is there anything that Windows has that OSX doesn't?

Simple. OSX doesn't have nearly enough software for what I do.

After Janurary, without the ability to boot to OS9, audio production will be impossible on the Mac with lack of support from 3rd party vendors.

I really hope Apple pulls an ace out of their sleeve at MWSF, or else I'm switching....back to PC.

...here we go again... another switcher to the darkside...

<insert lightning and thunder sound here>
 
Originally posted by benixau
Standardized ones. Cmd-F = Find (good :)) Cmd-D = Send/Bookmark/Delete (bad :()

oh well cant have it all. rather a mac than a dell.
Windows has some oddities too, my daily pet pieve on Win2000 at work is that CTRL-F on 99% of moder app's opens a "Find" window. Not in Outlook though - there, from the Inbox, it does a "Forward Email". :rolleyes:
 
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