My Review of Mac OS X (first time Mac user, switched from XP)

[Legacy]

Hello everyone, it has been a couple of months I have been on this forum. I have just posted a review on Ciao of Mac OS X Tiger. I would appreciate it if some of the many learned users of this forum gave it a glance and suggested criticisms or commended the review so that I can improve both my understanding of Mac OS X and write better reviews in the future!!

Here is the link:

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Mac_OS_X_10_4_Tiger__Review_5545724

Many Thanks!!

 

[Applespider]

Just a suggestion; don't put the limitations at the top. I start reading and have to start thinking about the technicalities of the system. You almost want to sell it first and then put the 'bewares' near the bottom, particularly since you don't know who the readers will be. It's more likely they're considering a new Mac or have one from the past couple of years than an older model.

 

[Vinnie_vw]

If this is to be a professional review, I would refrain from using "In my opinion.." or any reference to the self. For the rest, the writing is pretty good, don't know about the fact-checking, but I'm only a novice in the Mac-world.

 

[Legacy]

If this is to be a professional review, I would refrain from using "In my opinion.." or any reference to the self. For the rest, the writing is pretty good, don't know about the fact-checking, but I'm only a novice in the Mac-world.

Yes I don't think Ciao like the whole professional thing. I did that with the iBook G4 review and there were calls for a more personal approach, that is why I tried to approach the review from a user-exprience POV.

BTW I have modified the structure slightly to accommodate the 'but' points at the end..thanks for that!

 

[Soulstorm]

Well, there are some things that I must point out to you...

Firstly, Core was introduced in Panther, with CoreAudio. CoreImage and CoreVideo were introduced in Tiger. And they are something more than just liraries and frameworks for the developer. CoreImage and CoreVideo are the reason why Tiger is faster than Panther in many ways when using tha same hardware and software. Every 2D and 3D graphic element that is to be drawn on-screen passes through CoreImage and CoreVideo.

Safari 2.0 is much faster and reliable that the one that exists in it's Panther ancestor.

Also, you mentioned something about the OS X widgets, and that they take 20-30 mbytes of physical memory. That is true, but not what it seems to a former PC user. You see, OS X has a strange memory management method that it can reallocate physical and virtual memory. That means that if you have 512 mbytes RAM and open 20 widgets, the system wont crash or do anything unexpected. The widgets will remain working as expected. That it the main characteristic of all the programs in OS X: They take as much RAM space as they can, even if they don't need it. If that memory is needed somewhere else, it will be reallocated. You can test that in your powerbook with any program. Try opening 20 programs at the same time and see if any program will close unexpectedly, or is you receive an "out of memory" error.

 

[Legacy]

Well, there are some things that I must point out to you...

Firstly, Core was introduced in Panther, with CoreAudio. CoreImage and CoreVideo were introduced in Tiger. And they are something more than just liraries and frameworks for the developer. CoreImage and CoreVideo are the reason why Tiger is faster than Panther in many ways when using tha same hardware and software. Every 2D and 3D graphic element that is to be drawn on-screen passes through CoreImage and CoreVideo.

Safari 2.0 is much faster and reliable that the one that exists in it's Panther ancestor.

Also, you mentioned something about the OS X widgets, and that they take 20-30 mbytes of physical memory. That is true, but not what it seems to a former PC user. You see, OS X has a strange memory management method that it can reallocate physical and virtual memory. That means that if you have 512 mbytes RAM and open 20 widgets, the system wont crash or do anything unexpected. The widgets will remain working as expected. That it the main characteristic of all the programs in OS X: They take as much RAM space as they can, even if they don't need it. If that memory is needed somewhere else, it will be reallocated. You can test that in your powerbook with any program. Try opening 20 programs at the same time and see if any program will close unexpectedly, or is you receive an "out of memory" error.

No, but the same is the case for Windows. They both utilise VM from the Hard Drive and that means churring waiting and well.. churring. You only get an 'out of memory' message, as far as I know in Windows 9x or Mac OS Classic. Whereas with Win2k/XP and OS X memory management is more OS based so users have less control over VM allocation. (Although I must accept that Windows does provide some control by allowing a fixed amount of VM to be allocated in System Settings) In any case, the problems I was referring to were about disk churring and time lag involved in using VM.

I have noted Safari's speed increase, it is something worth mentioning thanks for that.

And thanks for the distinction that CoreAudio was introduced in Panther, although I guess it is CoreVideo and CoreImage that actually have hardware specific requirements as far as I can deduce from the Apple website.

Regards

 

[bigboy99]

Hello everyone, it has been a couple of months I have been on this forum. I have just posted a review on Ciao of Mac OS X Tiger. I would appreciate it if some of the many learned users of this forum gave it a glance and suggested criticisms or commended the review so that I can improve both my understanding of Mac OS X and write better reviews in the future!!

Here is the link:

http://www.ciao.co.uk/Mac_OS_X_10_4_Tiger__Review_5545724

Many Thanks!!

F12 brings up the widgets, not F8

 

[Soulstorm]

No, but the same is the case for Windows. They both utilise VM from the Hard Drive and that means churring waiting and well.. churring. You only get an 'out of memory' message, as far as I know in Windows 9x or Mac OS Classic. Whereas with Win2k/XP and OS X memory management is more OS based so users have less control over VM allocation. (Although I must accept that Windows does provide some control by allowing a fixed amount of VM to be allocated in System Settings) In any case, the problems I was referring to were about disk churring and time lag involved in using VM.

I should be more specific when referring to memory management...

OS X implements a memory protection system that ensures that any program will not touch any memory address already taken by another app. Windows claims to have this too, but it starts to get slow after hours of use, and they constantly give inexplicable errors to the users. Blue screens may have been avoided to a certain extent but problems with memory management do exist, and you may verify that each time you see an application show strange popups in b&w, or see slowdowns even when minimizing or dragging windows.

It is true that you will not get an "out of memory" error in both XP and OS X. But in XP the programs will quit, giving you a vague explanation of why this happened. This is because a program needed more memory that it already had, and tried to allocate it. But it fell onto an address taken by another app. In OS X the possibilities that this will happen are way fewer than XP. I will not give further information of why this happens, because this matters are mostly handled from the Unix-variant kernel of OS X, which is irrelevant of the thread.

If you want to learn more about the technologies of Tiger, you should read this article: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars

It is for version 10.4.0 (so hundreds of bugs are fixed since then), and it may be a little intimidating for the average user, but I'm pretty sure it will give you a pretty clear idea of why a simple 1-page article can't conclude all the good and bad information concerning OS X.

Cheers

 

[Catfish_Man]

Well, there are some things that I must point out to you...

Firstly, Core was introduced in Panther, with CoreAudio.

um, CoreAudio has been around since 10.0. It just sucked until (iirc) 10.2.3.