Mindless PC MAC Rant!

[tjwett]

yo OS X is bloated. if you disagree for the sake of being a zealot then so be it but come on. "get mac OSX software"? right in the apple menu? that's bloat. straight up. so is the annoying quicktime popup. 32 bit scalable vector graphics for icons is bloat. making them bounce and throb is even more bloat. i'm not saying it doesn't look good but it's useless and totally unnecessary. not to mention how much CPU it eats up. i'll take a plain gray folder that snaps open over that beachball anyday. but there is bloat everywhere. personally, i would find OSX alot more useful if it didn't come with all the eye candy and iCrap but that's the way it is. to make OS X work better just turn off all the preferences like Dock magnification, bouncing, kill the shadows, text smoothing etc. it's the only way it's useable for me.

 

[Choppaface]

I know that some win users say that "OSX isn't a true multi-user operating system because you can't run programs in the background when you log out"...er..well something like that....i just logged out and back in again, and it appears that setiathome continued running.... did they change something in jag to do this?

 

[Sun Baked]

3777,

Ever tried a book, wonderful things books.

Books can provide hours of entertainment, an education, or be used to beat an unruly brat silly.

But name calling, c'mon that's so childish.

Where's the wit and style in that?

Any four year old can do that, and I'd sure hate to see you lose to a four year old.

---

P.S. The above is just long winded version of, Yawn...

 

[Sun Baked]

Since this really is just a mindless Linux rant

from http://arstechnica.infopop.net/OpenTopic/page?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=48409524&m=3110905035

Why do people continue to even CONSIDER Linux as a BUSINESS desktop replacement?

I am employed by a largish organisation here in the antipodes, with some 20,000 staff. We have complex LAN/WAN environment, predominantly Windows based PCs but also unix boxes, as well as corporate mainframe etc.

We're 'upgrading' from Windows 95/Windows NT workstation (95%/5% ratio of thos) to Windows XP Professional for those 20,000 workstations. I'm part of that project.

As part of that upgrade, we're identifying workstations that have non-standard hardware attached or inserted or otherwise associated with the standard PC.

So we sent out a 'please tell us' note to the business lines within the company, asking for very specific information about electronic devices connected to workstations. This was VERY clearly spelt out.

We got back stuff like Electronic Whiteboards, talking calculators, TTY (teletype) terminals for deaf people, laser pointers, adding machines, virtually anything with electronics in it.

NONE of those things was -actually- connected to a workstation (or could ever be connected to workstations.)

Now this was a simple part of a complex ongoing exercise, and it demonstrates two things which are salient to the topic:

1) No matter how precise and clear you are, people will misread what you've said (careful here, there will be a quiz later)

2) In general, managers are stupid.

Now there are a bazillion reasons why a precise and clear request for information could come back with incorrect results, but that isn't really the point.

THE POINT: How the hell can you expect these submoron cretinous twits to cope with something as brainsmashingly 'difficult' as Linux on the desktop -- new programs, new ways of doing things, new everything.

There is just NO WAY that a large general office population could POSSIBLY cope without a correspondingly huge (and I mean massive, intense, totally disruptive) blanket education process.

So when I see people bandying about 'savings' and TCO figures for 'free software' solutions, I just think about the general thickheaded bozo component of the workforce, and say 'chyeah, right, like Joe Luser in Woop Woop is going to understand about how to use NFS to link to a server, or use a shell, or find out even basic information about their machine."

That doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of existing complex systems which are totally dependant upon a Windows GUI, like our call centre technologies (from NEC) which are tightly bound into the day to day business of the entire organisation.

Linux advocates are very vocal, very adamant that their O/S of choice represents a REAL business choice. ********. No technology is sufficiently magical to bridge the gap between corporate want and corporate population's ABILITY TO COPE.

Excession.

 

[sparkleytone]

i don't hate alex_ant. i really had yet to see anyone who did until 8DegreeIdiot came along.

As far as OS X being full of bloat, the examples given were incredibly weak.

Bloat is generally something that slows a program down in order to advertise or adding UI just for the sake of having more UI.

The "Get Mac OS X Software..." is a semi valid point. I dont use it but its there. I dont think many people do use it. Therefore its semi-bloat. I have never experienced it getting in my way or slowing down my system.

The Quicktime example is just nonexistent really. That isn't bloat, its sales. Quicktime is essentially shareware, and its got a right to give a few annoying adverts every once in a while. I don't experience it at all...why?? Because I bought QT6.

I'm not saying it isnt bloated, im just asking you to give better examples.

 

[alex_ant]

Re: Re: Re: Mindless PC MAC Rant!

Originally posted by Taft
BeOS acheived much lower latency and faster user response, but speed is a very subjective word. Be was designed so that any action would receive an immediate response and with low latency as a priority. Put Be and OS X running the same CPU intensive task on the same hardware and it'd be about a draw.

Yeah, I agree with that. If BeOS and OS X running on the same hardware were running the same task that didn't rely on the underlying speed of the OS, it'd be about a draw - but in that case we wouldn't be comparing OS speed, we'd be comparing application speed.

And what you call bloat, I call feature rich. And thats not just spin.

OS X (read NeXT) was designed very differently from most OS's out there. Sure Unix is on the bottom, but almost everything that apps interact with is a NeXT invention. And these APIs and laguages were designed to be very dynamic and highly extensible.

Everything was designed with the idea of being dynamic. Method and feature reflection is everywhere and many things are runtime bound. Its this behavior that allows Services without a severe construct added on. Instead of being added on, its inherent to the way the OS, its APIs, and esp. its languages are designed (this is why only Java and Obj-C can be used to hit the APIs--Carbon is just a proxy between old and new).

This comes at the cost of bigger binaries and libraries and more things in memory. Thankfully, todays hardware allows this design to work without severe performance hits. But this is why OS X apparently likes RAM so much. The OS is able to stretch its legs and have to do less paging for what we would consider mundane tasks (switching programs, windows, etc.)

I used the word bloat because OpenStep somehow managed to do basically all this (minus Carbon) and do it very well in 16MB of RAM on processors many times slower than todays G4s. I don't know what has happened that has caused this NeXT-derived OS to need nearly 20 times that much RAM for acceptable performance.

I don't want to sound like an OS X hater, because I'm exactly the opposite... it's my favorite OS. The best desktop OS I've ever used. I'm just saying it could benefit from better performance, because in that category, it currently comes in around last place in the OS wars.

Alex

 

[8thDegreeSavage]

WOW!!....we have some tight asses with no senses of humor in the house!



Give it up for the tightwads ladies and gentleman!




For the record, this is an internet bulletin board, I am entitled to give my opinion on the poster, and the post all i want as long as its not overboard, which my comment wasnt. Please refrain from getting your collective panties in a bunch over me thinking alex is obnoxious ...which i feel he is.


Do yourselves a favor(those who felt the need to help fight alex_ant's "dastardly wrongdoing flaming troll" battles) and get a sense of humor and get over it.....its the internet you nerds.



and no..im not trying to piss you off...im just trying to wake you up to this fraud.




And while you at it please give me the proper spelling of "Whom" I dont know it off hand.


Thanks dudes.

 

[alex_ant]

8thDegreeSavage, why not PM me, and we'll work out whatever issues you have in private. I work very hard at being obnoxious, and I'm glad somebody finally picked up on it.

 

[King Cobra]

I think a lot of us picked up on it, alex. That's why you stay clam when working your way to 1000 posts.

8thDegreeSavage, in case you haven't picked up on it yet, this is supposed to be a discussion on Macs v. PCs, not a flamepiss contest.

>(solvs) If you're just gonna play games, buy a PS2 or (shudder) xBox.

The heXBox isn't too bad when it comes to games, but, right now, the advantage to gameplay lies in the PC. Once Apple can hype up more capable processors from IBM and get better DDR-RAM going through the PowerMacs you will slowly see that start to change.

 

[i_wolf]

here here king cobra.

 

[solvs]

Originally posted by Inhale420

if you do you a 'lot' of web design you're probably a hand-coder. can you explain how it's 'so much easier' to edit say, two dozen web pages using bbedit's floating windows (or the mac version of dreamweaver) vs. homesite tabbed windows... (or the pc version of dreamweaver). if you're a pure visual designer or a video editor, i can understand using a mac. why fix what isn't broken? but unless you're doing newbie stuff, macs (the available apps) are horrible at web design. i hate having to use two platforms when my preferred one is a mac.

No offense, but if you had read my post, you would have seen that I said I do web stuff on the side. As in, little stuff. Yes, I do use Windows to do so, but mostly because I edited the web page at my last job part time. All I had was a PC. And it sucked. When I did a site for a friend recently, I put it together pretty quickly, and all I had to use was a PC. Right now, actually, I'm not doing much of anything. That's why I'm posting here so much now.

For the record, I'm moving (soon I hope), and due to a loss of funding from a project I was working on, was unable to buy a new G4 Tower as I had planned. Instead I sold or gave away most of my (many) computers. I have one now that will be given to a friend, and another one I'm building for myself out of spare parts. Both PCs. I do have an old Mac SE/30, but it doesn't work. When I get settled, I'm getting an eMac or iBook to play with 'til I can get a new Tower.

Sure I can do some stuff on a PC, and most of the time a lot faster for a lot cheaper. But who'd want to. As someone once said, "you can't use iMovie and FCP on a PC". I'm always gonna have both, but the Mac is so much better for so many things. The OS, whether it's bloated or not, is so much nicer. Someone else said, "OS X isn't perfect, but it looks that way next to Windows". I'm more used to OS 8 and 9, but when I saw OS X in action while playing with an iMac, I knew I had to have it.

Can't believe my Mom and my Sister still like 9. They don't like change and won't upgrade. It's funny cuz my Grandfather has been using X since the beta.

i_wolf: thanks for the compliment.

King Cobra (I don't know you well enough yet to call you Kingy): I probably shouldn't even have said anything about gaming. I haven't really played video games since I had an original Nintendo in Junior High (yes, I realize that dates me. For the record, I just turned 25). I have an N64 (I won it from Dr. Pepper) and a PS2 I use as a DVD player (I traded a PC I built for it), but I don't really play a lot of games. They might be going up on eBay soon.

You can only play Pokemon Stadium so many times.

I hate the xBox because it comes from M$. I have my (valid) reasons to hate M$ (as well as a few nosensical ones). I hear it's a great system, but it's from M$, which makes it evil IMO. I just hate when PC weenies say they won't get a Mac because it can't play games. There are so many things wrong with that, don't get me started. Some of us actually work on our computer (as well as surf for Porn, illegally download media, b*tch on forums about computers and the entertainment industry).

Are PCs really that great for gaming? No, really. I'm asking.

 

[bousozoku]

i_wolf:

Good points!

I think that AMD builds fine processors and I would be happy to have one running Linux, Mac OS X, or BeOS...well maybe if BeOS were really still alive.

If Apple were to build machines based on AMD processors, I'd be right there in line because Apple is extremely careful about putting packages together. I don't know of any other maker of small machines that does such a job. It is consistent with what makers of medium and large machines supporting hundreds or thousands or users do.

DOS was unstable, Windows on DOS (Win3.x, Win95, Win98, WinMe) is worse. WinNT was good, Win2000 isn't so good. Ask me about my last week and a half fighting with it.

I would imagine that Linux or FreeBSD or QNX is very stable and usable. I would be as happy running those on AMD hardware as on PPC hardware, if I had such a need.

Until something better than Macintosh comes along, more than just speed, I'll stay with what I have.