Audio in Vista is REALLY nice. Please can we have that in Leopard?
BTW, they said the same thing about drivers with Windows XP... it just never worked in reality.
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Vista Impressions (and comparison to OSX) (56k warning)
- Thread starter Chone
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Audio in Vista is REALLY nice. Please can we have that in Leopard?
BTW, they said the same thing about drivers with Windows XP... it just never worked in reality.
Not sure about better... but I do like that the widgets (sorry, gadgets) are visible in Vista.
I think the first time I saw the gadget/widget metaphor was in Active Desktop back in Windows 95! You could render a web page / javascripted page onto the desktop. This is long before OS X.
New facelift, same issues.
I fix Macs all day. I've been supporting and/or selling Macs for about eight years. I've recently begun learning XP from the techs across the hall on the M$ side of the shop thanks to Boot Camp and getting my Epson cert. What I've encountered is a very versatile OS that has an incredible array of annoyingly user-unfriendly features.
Conversely there's a few things I like in XP that OSX has yet to implement.
My issues with XP:
1: Lack of real Control Panels. In OS X if i want to twiddle my network settings, either at a basic or at a very advanced level I need only go into the apple menu/system prefs/network and change settings as necessary. Conversely, in XP there seems to be no direct route that does not involve a trip into a shell or third party App. This has it's drawbacks of course, I've seen more than one user who got themselves thoroughly disconnected.
However: from what I've seen of similar mistakes on the Windows side, OS X is user friendly enough that people are less likely to resort to the Terminal and Hacker forums to try and change what they don't understand. More than once I've heard the M$ techs cursing a customer for trying to fix in the Registry or (gods help us all) the BIOS what should have been done through the usual array of (asinine) Wizards.
2: IRQs. the very concept of having to guess at which device ID corresponds to the "actual" device in a list of some hundred-odd printers and other devices is stunningly lame IMHO.
3: Restarts. I haven't had to restart so often in ten years. even OS 9 was less prone to need a restart than XP in similar circumstances. Apple hasn't had a "restart/reset" button on their machines since the Quicksilver G4 in 2002. As much as it irritates me when working on them in the shop when actually using the machines under normal conditions you'd rarely ever need it unless something was seriously wrong (or you bought cheap-assed RAM).
4: VERY POOR SECURITY. While OS X's main advantage is a small market share (making malicious code a waste of time) there is also the compartmentalized structure of the OS to consider. Under XP, with so many core services directly accessed by so many Apps and processes the sheer number of opportunities for malicious mischief is STAGGERING. A competent, thoughtful power user in XP can argue all they like that XP is just fine and they've never had issues but when the chips are down the average XP user is under constant assault whereas the average OS X user is mainly concerned with "legal" malware like the rather insane DRM accompanying Adobe CS2, in which (say your HDD dies) moving files to backup, re-installing the OS on a replacement HDD and moving the data (and support files) back disables CS2 until you call Adobe and get an amazingly unsympathetic support tech. LAME.
5: Backup. In OS X I can image anything (except CS2) I like to any media it'll fit on and simply drag and drop to re-install when something goes wrong hardware wise. In XP I'd be a tad more screwed.
6: AMD. Dear god I hope Apple NEVER used AMD for anything. I've seen more dead AMD's in one year of working in this shop than any of you would believe and my experience with them has been that they are as unstable in hardware as OS X beta was in software. BAD. Until I met AMD's Athlon series I didn't know it was possible for a processor to overheat to the point of pyrolitically blackening the BACK of the processor daughter card.
Don't get me wrong, there are a very few things that XP does better. It'd be nice if more game developers that claim to be "cross platform" weren't lying through their teeth but as it stands Mac games are an average of five years out of date and are usually network-neutered because the companies now owned by Macsoft are too damn lazy to do more than a rather sloppy port. As a result of this foolishness I'm building an ASUS based game PC as I write this.
This is only Apples fault insofar as remaining loyal to IBM's rather abusive husbandry for a decade longer than was healthy. Had Apple gotten a clue about Hardware sooner we'd likely have a much better selection of software across the board but between the repeated changes in development protocol and the chip-barrier Apple lost a lot of development ground in the mainstream markets.
It may seem that I'm rambling but I do have a point: It's ridiculous to compare the two OS's for their most superficial features alone. I use Dashboard for a lot of things that I'd have to use the Terminal for otherwise.
Bottom line for me is that I like an OS that scales well with the skills of a user and doesn't actively obstruct or redirect. I prefer a GUI as I am a spatially motivated thinker. If I'm working in text I'm writing narrative, an E-mail or some other productive text-required task. The only Command Line tools I use regularly are the CRON scripts as previous versions of OS X and most laptops do not execute them well on their own.
Personally, I'd love to see Apple open the OS to a select cadre of "generic" parts. I think customizers'd love building their own Macs if they had the chance. I'm up to my armpits all day in Apple hardware and I can tell you right now they've done some AMAZINGLY stupid things here and there and their policies around how you can config a new Mac are more than a little naive. eg: A lot of user'd love to buy a Mac sans drives and RAM. Why? Apple RAM is horrifyingly overpriced in all but the MacPro and their choice of drives is both inconsistent and overpriced. I never know what brand I'll find when I replace an Apple drive and they don't seem to care that the WD's and Fujitsus they use are GARBAGE.
Enough even-handed bashing for you?
Bottom line: I'd love to see M$ get a clue about ease-of-use just as much as I'd love to be able to install an out-of-box Leopard on my new ASUS/Core Duo/ nVidia / Foxconn box.
I fix Macs all day. I've been supporting and/or selling Macs for about eight years. I've recently begun learning XP from the techs across the hall on the M$ side of the shop thanks to Boot Camp and getting my Epson cert. What I've encountered is a very versatile OS that has an incredible array of annoyingly user-unfriendly features.
Conversely there's a few things I like in XP that OSX has yet to implement.
My issues with XP:
1: Lack of real Control Panels. In OS X if i want to twiddle my network settings, either at a basic or at a very advanced level I need only go into the apple menu/system prefs/network and change settings as necessary. Conversely, in XP there seems to be no direct route that does not involve a trip into a shell or third party App. This has it's drawbacks of course, I've seen more than one user who got themselves thoroughly disconnected.
However: from what I've seen of similar mistakes on the Windows side, OS X is user friendly enough that people are less likely to resort to the Terminal and Hacker forums to try and change what they don't understand. More than once I've heard the M$ techs cursing a customer for trying to fix in the Registry or (gods help us all) the BIOS what should have been done through the usual array of (asinine) Wizards.
2: IRQs. the very concept of having to guess at which device ID corresponds to the "actual" device in a list of some hundred-odd printers and other devices is stunningly lame IMHO.
3: Restarts. I haven't had to restart so often in ten years. even OS 9 was less prone to need a restart than XP in similar circumstances. Apple hasn't had a "restart/reset" button on their machines since the Quicksilver G4 in 2002. As much as it irritates me when working on them in the shop when actually using the machines under normal conditions you'd rarely ever need it unless something was seriously wrong (or you bought cheap-assed RAM
).4: VERY POOR SECURITY. While OS X's main advantage is a small market share (making malicious code a waste of time) there is also the compartmentalized structure of the OS to consider. Under XP, with so many core services directly accessed by so many Apps and processes the sheer number of opportunities for malicious mischief is STAGGERING. A competent, thoughtful power user in XP can argue all they like that XP is just fine and they've never had issues but when the chips are down the average XP user is under constant assault whereas the average OS X user is mainly concerned with "legal" malware like the rather insane DRM accompanying Adobe CS2, in which (say your HDD dies) moving files to backup, re-installing the OS on a replacement HDD and moving the data (and support files) back disables CS2 until you call Adobe and get an amazingly unsympathetic support tech. LAME.
5: Backup. In OS X I can image anything (except CS2) I like to any media it'll fit on and simply drag and drop to re-install when something goes wrong hardware wise. In XP I'd be a tad more screwed.
6: AMD. Dear god I hope Apple NEVER used AMD for anything. I've seen more dead AMD's in one year of working in this shop than any of you would believe and my experience with them has been that they are as unstable in hardware as OS X beta was in software. BAD. Until I met AMD's Athlon series I didn't know it was possible for a processor to overheat to the point of pyrolitically blackening the BACK of the processor daughter card.
Don't get me wrong, there are a very few things that XP does better. It'd be nice if more game developers that claim to be "cross platform" weren't lying through their teeth but as it stands Mac games are an average of five years out of date and are usually network-neutered because the companies now owned by Macsoft are too damn lazy to do more than a rather sloppy port. As a result of this foolishness I'm building an ASUS based game PC as I write this.
This is only Apples fault insofar as remaining loyal to IBM's rather abusive husbandry for a decade longer than was healthy. Had Apple gotten a clue about Hardware sooner we'd likely have a much better selection of software across the board but between the repeated changes in development protocol and the chip-barrier Apple lost a lot of development ground in the mainstream markets.
It may seem that I'm rambling but I do have a point: It's ridiculous to compare the two OS's for their most superficial features alone. I use Dashboard for a lot of things that I'd have to use the Terminal for otherwise.
Bottom line for me is that I like an OS that scales well with the skills of a user and doesn't actively obstruct or redirect. I prefer a GUI as I am a spatially motivated thinker. If I'm working in text I'm writing narrative, an E-mail or some other productive text-required task. The only Command Line tools I use regularly are the CRON scripts as previous versions of OS X and most laptops do not execute them well on their own.
Personally, I'd love to see Apple open the OS to a select cadre of "generic" parts. I think customizers'd love building their own Macs if they had the chance. I'm up to my armpits all day in Apple hardware and I can tell you right now they've done some AMAZINGLY stupid things here and there and their policies around how you can config a new Mac are more than a little naive. eg: A lot of user'd love to buy a Mac sans drives and RAM. Why? Apple RAM is horrifyingly overpriced in all but the MacPro and their choice of drives is both inconsistent and overpriced. I never know what brand I'll find when I replace an Apple drive and they don't seem to care that the WD's and Fujitsus they use are GARBAGE.
Enough even-handed bashing for you?
Bottom line: I'd love to see M$ get a clue about ease-of-use just as much as I'd love to be able to install an out-of-box Leopard on my new ASUS/Core Duo/ nVidia / Foxconn box.
Mac OS X Shines In Comparison With Windows Vista
This is an interesting Vista versus OSX comparison:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196800670
This is an interesting Vista versus OSX comparison:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196800670
Some things I noticed:
1. Everything just seems way too cluttered. It looks like Microsoft was throwing icons and buttons and text all over the place because they have no knowledge of HCI and usabillity
2. The blurriness looks like crap. It's very attention-grabbing, these huge blobs of blurred text and graphics grab my eyes' attention and take it away from what I want to look at.
3. The transparency and blurriness makes the entire thing confusing. I had trouble figuring out what the hell I'm looking at, everything's like one transparent, blurry mess. The borders of windows are less defined. I'd rather have opaque windows and lose the eye candy.
4. The Expose ripoff is pointless. The beauty of Expose, is I can hit a key, and see every single window, in it's entirety. Vista's version of it covers up the windows in the back, and worse, puts them at a nasty angle making them impossible to read
And no offense, IE7 is not awesome software. Maybe it works fine on MacRumors, but working with tech support at a university, I have helped many a people who installed IE7, and then discovered that many websites quit working, or worse, affected more than just web browsing and completely hosed their system. It's just as much of a piece of sh*t that IE6 was.
1. Everything just seems way too cluttered. It looks like Microsoft was throwing icons and buttons and text all over the place because they have no knowledge of HCI and usabillity
2. The blurriness looks like crap. It's very attention-grabbing, these huge blobs of blurred text and graphics grab my eyes' attention and take it away from what I want to look at.
3. The transparency and blurriness makes the entire thing confusing. I had trouble figuring out what the hell I'm looking at, everything's like one transparent, blurry mess. The borders of windows are less defined. I'd rather have opaque windows and lose the eye candy.
4. The Expose ripoff is pointless. The beauty of Expose, is I can hit a key, and see every single window, in it's entirety. Vista's version of it covers up the windows in the back, and worse, puts them at a nasty angle making them impossible to read
And no offense, IE7 is not awesome software. Maybe it works fine on MacRumors, but working with tech support at a university, I have helped many a people who installed IE7, and then discovered that many websites quit working, or worse, affected more than just web browsing and completely hosed their system. It's just as much of a piece of sh*t that IE6 was.