This is incorrect. If you do the same type of things on both systems, the risk will be the same. If you download software from suspicious sites and then run it on your computer you invite the troubles. Given that there are very few things available for downloading for Mac gamers (or Warez software in general) the risk is generally lower for Macs users (i.e. security by obscurity).
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Microsoft Posts 'PC vs. Mac' Section to Windows 7 Website
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This is incorrect. If you do the same type of things on both systems, the risk will be the same. If you download software from suspicious sites and then run it on your computer you invite the troubles. Given that there are very few things available for downloading for Mac gamers (or Warez software in general) the risk is generally lower for Macs users (i.e. security by obscurity).
Been running Windows 7 since the beta days. Personally, I can honesty say I've stopped checking spyware (and I have yet to get a virus in W7) after the first few months of use as I simply never got any. Never really had a problem with spyware in Vista in SP1/SP2 either.
Actually....
Speaking as both a Mac and a Windows user and a sysadmin at a pretty large enterprise where everyone and their brother can set up what they want mostly.
Where I see the most virus infestation is the average clueless user using internet explorer to visit an average website hosted by a colo (Colocation Facility).
Why? When the economy tanked lots of companies outsourced their server ops to colos because it was more economical then running it themselves and the colos who had a giant collection of new servers to run just weren't that emotionally invested in keeping their newly acquired servers patched up to date as their own.
So I saw more and more of the rogue antivirus apps (the latest virus wave over the last 24 months or so) hit people the most NOT surfing porn or gambling sites but local businesses sites (Joe's Interior Decorating and Suzy the freelance I.T. Tech etc) and it generally came from the clueless surfing using I.E.
Firefox is safer but convincing some people to use something other than "The Blue E they always used" is tough.
Look: the average Joe doesn't care if it's a PC or a Mac - just that it's cheap and does what they want. Unless you're a little more discriminating. We're seeing a lot more Mac adoption at all levels of the business though which is nice.
Speaking as both a Mac and a Windows user and a sysadmin at a pretty large enterprise where everyone and their brother can set up what they want mostly.
Where I see the most virus infestation is the average clueless user using internet explorer to visit an average website hosted by a colo (Colocation Facility).
Why? When the economy tanked lots of companies outsourced their server ops to colos because it was more economical then running it themselves and the colos who had a giant collection of new servers to run just weren't that emotionally invested in keeping their newly acquired servers patched up to date as their own.
So I saw more and more of the rogue antivirus apps (the latest virus wave over the last 24 months or so) hit people the most NOT surfing porn or gambling sites but local businesses sites (Joe's Interior Decorating and Suzy the freelance I.T. Tech etc) and it generally came from the clueless surfing using I.E.
Firefox is safer but convincing some people to use something other than "The Blue E they always used" is tough.
Look: the average Joe doesn't care if it's a PC or a Mac - just that it's cheap and does what they want. Unless you're a little more discriminating. We're seeing a lot more Mac adoption at all levels of the business though which is nice.
I had to laugh a little when I read this. The CLI bit was particularly amusing given Apple's history of "idiot-proof interfaces" where they offered no control of the underlying OS what-so-ever. In fact, I had NO interest in Macs at all until OSX came about because only then was it a true power OS. I come from the Commodore Amiga world and CLI + GUI was lock, stock and barrel from Day 1. If anything, the GUI lacked a good deal, but 3rd party tools like Diskmaster 2, etc. made it work like butter with a little effort.
Windows has been on a quest since its inception to *RID* itself of the CLI "Dos" throw-back interface and here you want MORE of it.
I understand, but most people will not, ESPECIALLY the average Mac user who wouldn't touch a shell command line with a 10 foot pole. Quite honestly, my biggest problems with Linux has been similar to AmigaDos in that they've struggled to make everything possible via command line to work via GUI. In an ideal world, BOTH should be fully functional and left up to the user to decide which he/she likes best. Few things in this world are ideal, however and OSX is no exception.
You talk about a unified API, which ironically is Linux's biggest fault right now (they've done a reasonable job...albeit over 10+ years) to get the GUI to be "capable" on many distributions, but without Mr. Torvalds INSISTING that all Linux distributions carry a "core" compatibility API/GUI standard, 3rd party commercial software is just a flat out JOKE. I mean when you have more packing/archival methods than you do commercial software packages, something is definitely WRONG on your platform.
But you were talking about Windows, not Linux.... While surely you have some points, I could just as easily argue that OSX is OVERLY unified in some areas, notably the GUI. Windows and Linux both have all kinds of theming options and even operational/functional changes to the entire GUI system available. On the Mac, I cannot even do something as simple as to choose to have the menu bar on the window instead of the top of the screen which works like absolutely CRAP on really large resolution monitors (long long distance to move the mouse just to make a selection change). It's even worse when you go to multiple monitors since the menu bar is available only on the default monitor!!! Imagine having 4 monitors connected to your Mac Pro only to have to move THREE SCREENS over just to select a menu option. It's INTOLERABLE and yet OSX could solve that problem by either offering menu bars on ALL monitors or letting the user tack them to the windows where they really belong. The stationary screen idea is nice for quick flicks to find the menu bar on small monitors, but becomes a bear on larger screens and especially multiple monitors. Apple should have fixed this problem clear back in 10.3 even, yet it carries on to 10.6 and will surely still be there in 10.7 and beyond because like with 3-button mice, Steve doesn't want to admit the interface from 1984 doesn't make perfect sense in 2010.
I hope you like the metallic look or whatever comes next for OSX because Mr. Jobs decided that you don't need any options to continue to the "old" Aqua look (even if you liked it better). Worse yet, 10.5 was somewhere "in-between" inconsistent in many regards with some apps looking aqua and others looking metallic. So it's not just Microsoft that lacks total uniformity, but I'm also saying that's not necessarily a good thing. Theming would allow creativity and choice for the user and not just feeling like another "Borg" unit from Cupertino (or is Shanghai?). Apple offers very few choices for organizing the GUI and no theming ones. And if you're going to argue about APIs, let's talk about OpenGL being stuck back in the stone ages (in computer years). At least Microsoft has kept DirectX moving forward. The OpenGL team has moved it forward to compete once again, but Apple is two full versions behind so should it be any wonder between that and the utter lack of driver updates that games run at 50% of the frame rates as they do on Windows machines using the same engine (e.g. look at the Steam games). Once upon a time, the Mac was known for being a video machine...no longer.
I tried to give Linux a chance 10 years ago and checked in every year or so to try newer distributions. Things HAVE improved greatly since then (but COULD have improved to this point 8 years ago if the developers had actually CARED about making Linux user friendly instead of just hacker nerd friendly...but oh how some of those nerds LOVE that "special" eL88t feeling of being able to do things on an OS that no one else even cares about). No, the problem for Linux these days is less GUI and more standards as I talked about above. When you have more windows managers and GUI standards and package managers competing against each other than you have commercial software packages, you have a REAL problem. Linus Torvalds is probably the ONLY PERSON in the entire UNIVERSE that could change that situation but he seems as much an elitist hacker mentality as any of the major developers and thinks Linux should basically run amok for eternity and that somehow chaos will eventually evolve into form. The problem is that a Universe full of incompatible, unmatching software standards does not a happy user make. You can't run a Gnome app unless you have the Gnome libraries installed. Those apps won't use KDE themes (and vice versa) so all your Windows will look like they came off two entirely different operating systems. If you're running Black Box, God bless you, but you won't even get a startup bar. You'll have to add all those new apps into your right-click app list by hand (or use some shoddy 3rd-party distribution program that attempts to control those things, only to fail when something in the GUI gets updated and the CLI control no longer functions the same, etc. etc. etc.).
Linux COULD be awesome. But it will NEVER be awesome (except to hackers) because hacker type developers won't talk to each other to make their different "standards" compatible with one another. Instead of coming together and taking the best ideas of all camps to make one killer GUI with a lot of theming options (that would then be consistent among ALL applications), they choose to compete against each other and so NOTHING is "standard" and everything runs, looks and feels like CRAP. They, of course, will tell you that it's all good free choice and free information and they don't WANT any commercial software in their world of free information, but we all know that's a load of horse poo unless you live in your mother's basement and recite obscure Unix commands as poetry in Vogon.
I just want to add that GUI uniformity is a double edge sword. This applies both to OS X and iOS. Sure there is a benefit to uniformity but the situation is not as simple as some people represent it. The best GUI should be designed with the specifics of the given application in mind. One can say that for any given application the best GUI must be fully custom. Obviously if every app had unique GUI it would be confusing. So the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Like Apple OSX, it asks for an admin password. (Unlike Apple OSX and most of the *NIX systems, there is no single "superuser" account. You can supply the password of any account which has been granted the privileges that are needed.)
Same with any normal system tools that need elevated privilege - it asks for the password of an admin account.
MacintoshToffy - your post shows that you are completely ignorant of the current Windows CLI tools, most notably Powershell. Most of the UNIX admins that I've showed Powershell to would sell their firstborn male child to get that kind of CLI functionality on a *NIX system.
...or the weird quirkiness of *NIX systems. Your argument can transparently be reversed....
Even cheap windows computers have way more than enough power to run AV software lol. My dad told me last year he bought a quadcore system with 4gb ram and a 24" monitor for less $500 and all he does with it is office stuff and browse the web.
Ok, I think Macs are better myself, but you must realize most of the mac users had PC's in the XP years, and we hated it and we still haven't forgiven Microsoft. Its like the alcoholic murder who starts going to church and does good deeds but, you still hate him.
Also there is a reason why Microsoft should still exist, If Apple was the only computer provider, the prices would soar! Look at Comcast for example, since it is the ONLY big cable provider the prices have soared! So please don't offend are Apple and we wont offend your Microsoft.
First of all, I was not really commenting on the current state of Microsoft CLI tools as I don't use them and barely use Windows for anything these days except gaming. I found the perons's post amusing moaning about Windows' CLI when MacOS (Classic) didn't have ANY CLI. As for this PowerShell and your friends selling their first born, why don't they do something more useful and help make a better CLI for Unix if they find something lacking. Unlike Windows, Unix operating systems tend to be mostly if not entirely open source. If you don't like something, roll your own. Good luck doing that with Windows. If you don't like the crap MS is shoveling, too bad.
I personally don't see anything good about the ordinary command line in WindowsXP (last MS OS I bought since Vista sucked and I haven't bought a new computer since Windows7 came out and I currently mostly use my PC to game anyway other than using it as a workhorse to encode movies via handbrake since my MBP is usually doing video editing or music production and my PowerMac is too slow for that sort of thing and mostly runs my whole house audio/video server and surfs the web). I can't do half the things as easily as I can in Unix. Maybe this is because I assumed it was still the same crappy MS-Dos syntax from Win98 and didn't look into it since I no longer had any real need to, but most of the time a regular user wouldn't even need to touch the CLI in Windows (I was not referring to administration tools but as a regular user). I hardly ever have to use it in OSX either. But when I started playing with Linux around 2001, I had to use it all the time since there was no other way to do half the configuration operations and other settings (let alone entire sets of CLI based programs that only ran in a shell) period. In those regards, OSX and Windows were light years ahead of Linux until the past couple of years when I found things had improved considerably in SOME distributions. That in no way negates the combative and competing GUI, packaging and window manager "standards" (if you could even call them that) which hinder Linux from going anywhere in the desktop commercial software world.
The only Windows I really liked was Windoes 98 SE. It was so open and hackable. It still had DOS (extremely useful and needed for troubleshooting). It had to be reinstalled every two months, but that was a good way to flush out the viruses and trojans. I've reinstalled it so many times I had memorized the CD key without even trying.
I don't mind less flexibility in the UI as long as I can open up a terminal session, use the tools I an familiar with in the UNIX environment and then head back into the quaint world of Mac's GUI. I don't expect Microsoft or Apple to please everyone in their GUI choices but I do want the option to be able to open up a terminal window in Windows that isn't gimped. The easiest solution would be if they allowed all users of Windows 7 to install their UNiX Subsystem for Windows rather than only having it available for the high end - there should be no reason why I can't run it on Windows 7 Home Premium.
Oh god, I remember every time there is an attempt to create some sort of uniform core you end up with the shrills of the OSS world screaming about how it is fascist and limiting freedom and it all doesn't matter because one day the OSS world will catch up to the commercial world.
For me I don't mind the inflexibility as long as it does what I need it to do - the look, the feel, I don't care as long as it is consistent across the whole operating system rather than the mish-mash of different ways of doing things in each part of Windows - Windows reminds me in many ways of GNOME 1.x when it first came out with the mish-mash of different toolkits, themes and so forth. No unification, no standards - a whole heap of stuff dumped in one location with the poor end user being told, "best of luck - you'll need it!"
I loath Aqua when it first came out but I guess I'm lucky given I jumped on board with an eMac circa 10.2 of Mac OS X it was toned down a little but I've liked the move towards more of a metallic subtle approach rather than the 'big loud and proud in your face' appearance that previous releases had. Yes, it annoys me there is a lack of uniformity when it comes to the current Mac OS X GUI but those pale in comparison with Windows where you can have three different control panels open and each are doing their own thing, or when custom themes are applied they don't apply uniformity because each application uses a different generation of common controls thus have their own quirks. As I said, there should be nothing stopping Microsoft from moving all their common controls from being drawing using GDI/GDI+ to Direct2D/DirectWrite, move all the bundled applications to use the latest revision of common controls, and then come up with a standardised way in which certain applications should be written - if your application does xyz then you should use a menu HOWEVER if it does xyg then it should use the ribbon since it is better suited for it. I don't think that is much to ask IMHO.
I don't want each application 'doing their own thing' I want uniformity - I want application vendors to focus on their application and not wasting half the development concerning themselves with the theming engine and how they can tickle the customers fancy as a distraction they've added next to no new features. It is the one thing that pissed me off about Mozilla even on Windows, each application doing their own thing with zero advantage to the end users usability - what do I have to benefit from an application that stands out like a sore thumb?
Lets also remember that custom themes with Windows has only been recent (if you ignore the 9x and theme packs) - to get custom themes working on Windows XP you had to install a hacked up version of UXTheme.dll, so it is hardly something unique to Apple. I have to admit though the latest version of Windows 7 does look pleasing to the eye but you can't avoid the eye sores that exist once you move beyond the skin of the operating system.
DirectX is a prime example when you have one company cracking the whip and pushing out a uniform API that all developers know will work regardless of the underlying hardware present on the end users computer - they aren't dealing with extensions, vendor quirks and so forth. This is the one area (of many areas) where Microsoft have really shown what is required - it is too bad that they haven't taken the same approach to all other divisions and products developed. As for OpenGL there are improvements on their way in driver performance but that'll only address performance, I don't see them suddenly going, "ah ha! here is OpenGL 4.1 for ya!" in the next couple of months. Some have argued that as a user I shouldn't care about OpenGL versions but as users we should - if a game developers life is made 200% more difficult then they're simply going to flag the idea of a Mac OS X port and focus on Windows and games consoles because the added work just isn't worth it in the long run.
Don't get my wrong, I'm not a Mac fanboy, I'll be waiting till 2011 to see whether something appears about Mac OS X development, maybe a rebalance between Mac OS X desktop and i-devices. XCode 4 maybe a start where Apple has pushed all the features into iOS that developers really need, now it is a matter of creating a first class development environment to push up the developer numbers, application numbers and in turn users on the platform. Like I said, I'm sitting back and waiting and giving Apple a year to shape up or otherwise the Windows world will enter my radar as a possibility.
And the "ordinary command line" in XP has nothing to do with Powershell (which is part of the "software update" for XP and later - any XP system running automatic updates will have Powershell).
Any *NIX shell looks like Fulton's steam engine compared to Powershell. (And, to be fair, the 'XP ordinary command line' looks like something from the stone age compared to Powershell....)
Cygwin is better if you need to interact with *Nix systems while scripting.
QT would be the closest to a common API.
IMO, Cygwin is simple crap that lowers a Windows system down to the least common denominator of all of the *NIX systems.
Cygwin works if you want to use stone age tools on a Windows system.
If you want to use 21st century tools, you'll go with Powershell.
Lowest common denominator scripting is a good thing in a multi-os environment.
Powershell goes against the preferred standard of just about every other shell out there.
Powershell uses pipes are used for intra process communication. They move objects around. Thats all well and good, but pipes are historically used by shells for inter process communication.
Redirection locks files so that you cannot read them as they are being written. Terrific, so I cannot monitor powershell process that are launched in the background.
Redirection of standard error mangles the output. Why is it that such a good thing?
That isn't low level enough for Adobe since they do all the processing rather than pushing it off to QuickTime. Apple needs to realise that not everyone wants to use their high level API's - that sometimes you have to provide low level ones.
All, so very true.
It seems that PowerShell was thrown together by a committee wanting to write a programming language, but not wanting to write a scriptable command prompt.
For something intended to be a "shell," PowerShell is completely inadequate.
Unfortunately, with Windows, the console model is, and has always been, fundamentally broken, which limits things in a serious way - the command-line interpreter of Windows is paltry, to the point of being defective.
What's always been missing on Windows, is a decent command prompt, of which the Windows console model is fundamentally baked into Win32, or should we say, half-baked.
One would imagine that the fact UNIX/OS X have a better command-line environment would give MS an incentive to improve things, especially since they've been trying to push command-line administration with crap such as PowerShell (POS) and Server Core. Instead, they haven't touched this fundamental Windows failing - it's been this way since NT 3.1.
For programming, C# or Python are far better languages, with better tools, providing a nice command prompt, which can be used to write simple scripts.
PowerShell (POS) doesn't even exploit the feeble and limited capabilities that it does have - it makes simple tasks complex, and the additional features are so convoluted and complex to use, that they are actually way easier to access via C# and VS.
Overall, a syntax which is easy to learn and remember is much more desirable than a hundred bells and whistles.
So much for 21st Century tools.
This sums up PowerShell (POS), and effectively, MS's MO, quite well.
Using C#, Python or Ruby for scripting would be like putting out an errand cigarette with a fire hose. Perl, BASH or a Basic Dialect would be much more suitable.
A lot of Linux's power (Apart form being a superior Server OS in just about every way possible) is that its completely functional and configurable without a GUI, this speeds it up a considerable amount.
True, I was referencing C# and Python in regard to programming, not scripting.
For programming .......
To clarify, even these programming tools are capable of offering a more optimal scripting experience.
You kids and your Windows 98. Back in my day we just had Windows for Workgroups....and that was the way we liked it!