What do you think of Apple/Mac OS X?

[Sirin]

I am a bit curious to know why most Linux users dislike Apple even worse than Microsoft. Is it because all of their hardware and software is not 100% free and Open Source and stealable, or is it because they have Microsoft support, or they own the most popular UNIX derivative and "are taking up our UNIX space"? :confused:

[GeneralZod]

I am a bit curious to know why most Linux users dislike Apple even worse than Microsoft.

This is news to me :confused:

Edit:

Oh. Is this some kind of parody/ joke thread?

[nocturn]

I am a bit curious to know why most Linux users dislike Apple even worse than Microsoft. Is it because all of their hardware and software is not 100% free and Open Source and stealable, or is it because they have Microsoft support, or they own the most popular UNIX derivative and "are taking up our UNIX space"? :confused:

Yeah, never heard about this too.

I think Apple has some bad and some good sides. I prefer Free software though.

But, I do not hate them in any way, it's not like MS that they are forcing their products on me.

[bnj]

I am very surprised about this poll, too. I do not hate apple at all. I actually like their products very much, even though they are not open-source.

[Stormy Eyes]

What the hell is this heeho? I don't hate Apple; I've got an iPod and am quite pleased with it thus far.

[Mr.X]

The only time i have used an apple computer is at school.
Apple computers own for graphic works, atleast for others :p

[Master Shake]

'tis a flawed question. I know people have problems with iPod, and the proprietary music format, but for the most part, if anything, linux users are FANS of Apple, because of the unix-base of OS X

[bonzodog]

I might hate MS but I am happy to see people using apple instead. OSX is a very cool piece of kit, built on on the Darwin BSD derivative. Darwin itself is Open Source, and indeed there is a few Darwin projects going on out there. It's only the desktop/GUI system that is closed. Apple have got some wierd Ideas about DRM though, and I would support them more if they relaxed their stance a bit on it.

[Arktis]

Apple wants the whole pie, not just a slice. They want to glean riches by controlling the hardware and the software; the content and the players. They hide behind this false creation of this puffed up image of coolness but they're really just a bunch of greedy opportunists looking to exploit people and make shortcuts where they can just like any other corporation. Apple is just like Microsoft in my book.

it's not like MS that they are forcing their products on me.Please forgive me, but that's extremely naive of you to think. Microsoft does it's level best to dominate the market and get your money. Bottom line. They want their products to be unavoidable in as many aspects of life as possible, and have even released press statements to this effect. This equates to an attempt to force their products on you.

[Kvark]

You got it the wrong way around.

Back when I was a Windows using computer geek I did see Apple as a sad joke even though I had never actually tried any of their products. For the simple reason that every single other Windows using geek I've ever talked about Apple with hated them and said Macs where not real computers, they where just unusable toys and the PC's evil twin.

After switching to Linux and talking to other Linux using geeks on the net I'm getting more interested in Apple's stuff and wish I could afford a Mac to dual boot OSX plus Ubuntu.

[Arktis]

That's a nice story, but it doesn't have much to do with the current market and apple's highly questionable buisness practices.

[Sirin]

Please forgive me, but that's extremely naive of you to think. Microsoft does it's level best to dominate the market and get your money. Bottom line. They want their products to be unavoidable in as many aspects of life as possible, and have even released press statements to this effect. This equates to an attempt to force their products on you.

Actually, I think he/she was saying that unlike MIcrosoft, Apple doesn't try to control you or force their products on you. ;)

[xequence]

OSX looks cool. Noone can dispute that...

But they are the reigning kings of DRM!

[fuscia]

at the time, a mac-mini was not in our budget (bought a house) so i installed linux instead (bored with ME, microsoft's best product ever). since then, i have been to the apple store a few times and have always been disappointed by the sluggishness of the machines. otherwise, i think a mac would be interesting to have. i wonder if osx could be stripped down to more of the bsd elements and make use of a smaller wm.

[ember]

Actually, I think he/she was saying that unlike MIcrosoft, Apple doesn't try to control you or force their products on you. ;)

If it's not control then what do they do with their braindead iTunes-software then? ... I don't say that Apple is evil on the whole, but I do think that they are quite good at preventing you from using songs that you do not have stored on your PC.

[Arktis]

Actually, I think he/she was saying that unlike MIcrosoft, Apple doesn't try to control you or force their products on you.Oh, gotcha. I dissagree though.

The most effective buisness model is one in which it's true intent is masked. For example, when you see an iPod commercial, you see the image apple wants to project, they don't just come out and say, "everyone buy this now so we can get your money". They wouldn't really be too successful that way; packaging is 90% of success. The purpose is still the same and the image is a merely means to an end. Apple dominates the sale of online music and the player market and so the net effect is the same. They use DRM, and cool packaging. It amounts to a psychological campaign to get people to mass their money into one area, an area that apple wants to continually control to keep the cashflow coming in to one central location. It's an old game.

[Sirin]

If it's not control then what do they do with their braindead iTunes-software then?

It's the most popular because users chose it.

[Brunellus]

other reason:

Apple is even more committed to proprietary solutions and vendor lock-in than Microsoft; this is one of the reasons, ironically, that my family went for IBM-Compatibles running MS-DOS over Apple computers back when we were buying our first computer back in '86 or '87.

Apple promises a universe where stylish people carry elegant, tightly-sealed Apple hardware, living in a kind of digital utopia where there are no hardware conflicts, driver issues or competing standards. There is only Apple, and Apple's elegant solutions. Anyone else wanting anything different, or, indeed, merely curious to find the workings of the hardware, never mind the software, will be brutally smacked down.

Of course, the iPod-wearing, dancing citizens of Apple's Alphaville (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphaville%2C_une_%C3%A9trange_aventure_de_Lemmy_C aution) are blissfully unaware of their total lack of freedom (in the GNU sense), because they are held in thrall by the overarching power of Steve Jobs' reality distortion field (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field).

The very nature of their business model is anti-GNU.

[Arktis]

It's the most popular because users chose it.That's only half of the story though.

I was having a debate with a friend of mine the other day about persuasiveness and how it works. Basicly, we equated it to knowing certain rules and characteristics of people and being able to manipulate them with this knowledge, much like a chemist knows certain physical laws and characteristics and manipulates them to produce a chemical reaction. They are the same in the sense that to carry out a chemical reaction, one doesn't need to manipulate all conditions but just certain key ones, just as to persuade people one must know the key conditions required to carry the desired reaction and does not need to completely control all of them.

They are both involve science (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=science) and people study both and practice both every day.

[Hitchhiker427]

OSX looks cool. Noone can dispute that...

But they are the reigning kings of DRM!

I can. I think OSX looks god awful! I'm all for eye-candy, but brushed metal and aqua are ugly :-#

[mstlyevil]

I want the option in the poll that says I could care less one way or another. I have no problem with there being more competition in the world.

[Sheinar]

Oh. Is this some kind of parody/ joke thread?
Even though I'm sure the question was serious, this thread is still a joke.

[TechSonic]

I like Apple. I plan on getting one when I get around to a new computer.

[orev]

I don't hate apple.

I would like a free and open source computer that looks as cool or cooler than a mac, and an even better gui than macOS, with the full power of linux.

Neat thing is...any of us (probably?) can build a sweet computer with style and certainly more individuality than a mac, and all of us ubuntu lovers are working on the gui right?

I think that macs, and the macOS, are important references for the future of open source computing.

Now if we can just figure out different interfaces (besides the keyboard and mouse) and all hitch a ride on a Virgin Galactic flight to the moon....(or anywhere in space for that matter...
:)

hal? hal? are you there hal? (I think the reality of the future will be MUCH better than HAL.

[aysiu]

This poll's existence surprises me, frankly.

I'd be more curious as to why the Linux community generally likes Apple (while disliking Microsoft).

Apple is extremely proprietary/closed source, etc., but most Linux users seem to not have the same disdain for Apple that they have for Microsoft.

Can you point to a few threads or posts on these forums that indicate Linux users seem to hate Apple or at least hate Apple more than Microsoft?

[equal]

at the time, a mac-mini was not in our budget (bought a house) so i installed linux instead (bored with ME, microsoft's best product ever). since then, i have been to the apple store a few times and have always been disappointed by the sluggishness of the machines. otherwise, i think a mac would be interesting to have. i wonder if osx could be stripped down to more of the bsd elements and make use of a smaller wm.

I'm assuming by "best product" you mean best example of why they suck?

[jc87]

What about the option i don´t hate apple?

I personally will never buy a MAC , because i´m not willing to pay a small fortune for a PC harder to upgrade , with DRM in the future , and that cost´s a small fortune , besides , i already use a Unix based OS , so i´m not interested in Mac OS X just because has some cool graphic´s (Gnome is fine for me).

I hate m$ because they almost put a gun at my head to force me to use their crappy stuff , since Apple does not do that , i personally don´t see a reason to hate them , in spite off i don´t exactly like them either.

[Bragador]

I hate Apple.

They are worse than Microsoft.

They don't want to sell their OS on other computers than the ones THEY make. They want to promote THEIR filetypes and standards WITHOUT leaving space for other formats (i.e. Ipod and .ogg files for exemple).

For now everything is acceptable in the eyes of most users because Apple is not #1 but they are using business practices that I do not endorse.

The linux market is much better and open to competition. All competitors (distributions) can fight each other without much compatibility problems. Same things with the other softwares.

Apple is too self centered and they are trying to get users addicted to their formats in the same way Microsoft did 10 years ago.

So I hate Apple, I hate Microsoft, and I hate any company that can't compete fairly.

Getting the users addicted to your software so they get stuck with it 10 years from now is just plain wrong.

[fuscia]

I'm assuming by "best product" you mean best example of why they suck?

i fully enjoyed my five years with windows ME. i just needed a change.

[Brunellus]

i fully enjoyed my five years with windows ME. i just needed a change.
you must be a masochist.

[Brunellus]

What about the option i don´t hate apple?

I personally will never buy a MAC , because i´m not willing to pay a small fortune for a PC harder to upgrade , with DRM in the future , and that cost´s a small fortune , besides , i already use a Unix based OS , so i´m not interested in Mac OS X just because has some cool graphic´s (Gnome is fine for me).

I hate m$ because they almost put a gun at my head to force me to use their crappy stuff , since Apple does not do that , i personally don´t see a reason to hate them , in spite off i don´t exactly like them either.
but they are forcing you to buy their stuff. To use their hardware, you must run their software, and vice versa....if anything, their lock-in is much more secure than Microsoft's.

[briancurtin]

the linux community hates apple? where the hell did this come from? its news to me.

[Bragador]

The real question is "why would someone actually like how Apple is acting".

This is why linux users tend to "hate" Apple

[ronb]

I switched to Apple 10 years ago, and I'm glad I did. The hardware and software seemed much better - smarter. It was a 5 minute job to add RAM to an older Mac even back then. PC hardware is put together better now.

Sometimes even little things in the Apple software suggest that the designers are looking for a better way to do things. Sometimes big things in MS software suggest that the MS engineers are thinking, "That's good enough for the likes of our customers."

I like Ubuntu, too, of course.

[arctic]

AFAIK, Linux users generally don't hate Apple. I don't know where you grabbed that "news", but it ain't correct, if you ask me. I do own Macs and Linux boxes. I don't hate Macs (they are actually some nice piece of hardware/software). The only thing I don't like with Macs is that they are so extremely expensive...

[aysiu]

Given a lot of the responses here in this very thread, wouldn't it make sense for there to be an option that says, "I don't hate Apple, actually, and I have no idea where you're getting this Linux community hating Apple thing"? This is news to me

Edit:

Oh. Is this some kind of parody/ joke thread?

Yeah, never heard about this too.

I think Apple has some bad and some good sides. I prefer Free software though.

But, I do not hate them in any way, it's not like MS that they are forcing their products on me.

I am very surprised about this poll, too. I do not hate apple at all. I actually like their products very much, even though they are not open-source.

What the hell is this heeho? I don't hate Apple; I've got an iPod and am quite pleased with it thus far.

I might hate MS but I am happy to see people using apple instead.

You got it the wrong way around.

After switching to Linux and talking to other Linux using geeks on the net I'm getting more interested in Apple's stuff and wish I could afford a Mac to dual boot OSX plus Ubuntu.

I like Apple. I plan on getting one when I get around to a new computer.

I don't hate apple.

What about the option i don´t hate apple?

the linux community hates apple? where the hell did this come from? its news to me.

AFAIK, Linux users generally don't hate Apple. I don't know where you grabbed that "news", but it ain't correct, if you ask me.

[tseliot]

I don't hate Apple. I don't use it because it's expensive and I like free software (both as in speech and as in beer)

[ndhskp]

I can't stand Apple and I don't know if that qualifies as hate so I'll just say this, I wish Steve Jobs and his Lemmings would go off a cliff. :twisted:

Now I don't mean that personally to any individual person I'm refering to the whole scary cult of Jobs. So no thanks Apple I prefer to think for myself and not destruct when the comet flies overhead.

[Bragador]

Well I'm surprised it seems I'm the only one who have a problem with Apple's attitude.

I don't really understand why one wouldn't like Microsoft but like the more self centered and less cooperative Apple company.

Oh well...

[skierkegaard]

tseliot has it right.

The working quote here is "Macs are for hippies who want to look rich, and rich guys who want to look like hippies."

[imagine]

Apple is even more committed to proprietary solutions and vendor lock-in than Microsoft;
That sums it up nicely.
However I still don't hate Apple (although I don't buy their products either), because with a four(?) percent marketshare you just aren't *that* successful with vendor lock-ins.



And could somebody please remove the poll or replace it with something serious?

[j2r7]

This poll would work if there were only two types of people, the "Apple hating" Linux Community and Apple - oh and the people care enough to poll them, plus those who do not belong to those three groups, and here I am wasting valuable time - wait - that puts me in the fourth group ! I want my own poll !
(long time listener - first time caller)

[angkor]

I didn't see the "Why would I hate Apple?" option, so I didn't vote.

I don't hate Apple, I don't hate that easily. Besides they make a damn fine operating system and have some really nice hardware. Neither do I hate Windows for that matter, even though I generally dislike their software.

[Malphas]

That sums it up nicely.
However I still don't hate Apple (although I don't buy their products either), because with a four(?) percent marketshare you just aren't *that* successful with vendor lock-ins.
Exactly. I'm basically indifferent to Apple, although I think the iPod and iTunes are massively overrated and that there's better alternatives available. And I wish people would stop using the Quicktime file format.

[Vlammetje]

I don't hate Apple. I cannot imagine myself ever buying Apple hardware though, because quite frankly it's kinda out of the reach of my budget.

I do own an iPod (Shuffle) though, which was a gift and serves me nicely.

As for Apple software, well some of it works very well for me.. some doesn't.

[dada1958]

I don't hate Apple, I have three Macs in this place. When I bought my first one it was because I didn't like Windows, 3.11 at that moment, it looked stupid and it acted stupid. I didn't hate Bill Gates. Besides, I'm a graphic designer, technician by origin.
What I sometimes do dislike is the mass hysteria about a bunch of ones and zeros and calling it digital lifestyle, the wishful thinking that the human race has outgrown the middle ages... We're still sticking together, fighting our little religious wars, and it's always the others who receive the blames.
Nobody can force me to buy things or even 'think (buy) different'. I see myself as a computer user, not as a platform evangelist. I like my Ubuntu PC very much as well, I enjoy fiddling with LaTeX e.g. with it.
But it has to be said that it is easier to get f**cking MySQL running with Mac OS X :rolleyes:

[poofyhairguy]

Were is the option for none?

This smells like a thread destined for the backyard.

[joflow]

This poll's existence surprises me, frankly.

I'd be more curious as to why the Linux community generally likes Apple (while disliking Microsoft).

Apple is extremely proprietary/closed source, etc., but most Linux users seem to not have the same disdain for Apple that they have for Microsoft.

Can you point to a few threads or posts on these forums that indicate Linux users seem to hate Apple or at least hate Apple more than Microsoft?

The linux culture is just blindly anti-MS.

Its obvious from reading these forums that alot of the anti-MS sentiments are just blind hate.

People saying things like Me was MS's best OS.
People talking about BSODs in XP (I've used XP for 4 years and only experienced 2 BSOD and both were because of hardware failure as opposed to about 10,000 BSODs with 95/98).

It makes me wonder if some people here have used modern MS software.

[TechSonic]

Ever wonder why Apple computers usually NEVER have hardware issues with the hardware they build?

Think of it this way, Maximum compatiblity.

[fuscia]

People saying things like Me was MS's best OS.

'people'? i think i'm the only one whoever said that here.

It makes me wonder if some people here have used modern MS software.

ME is the only os i have ever had besides linux. i had it for five years and enjoyed my computer quite a bit. one could hardly blame me for exaggerating slightly.

[Malphas]

People saying things like Me was MS's best OS.
You realise that this is sarcasm?

[aysiu]

The linux culture is just blindly anti-MS.

Its obvious from reading these forums that alot of the anti-MS sentiments are just blind hate. I agree. We have two threads about this, actually: Why is everyone so anti-Microsoft? (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=65863) and Windows sucks? ... change attitude please (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=128491)


People saying things like Me was MS's best OS. I believe only one person said that (fuscia...?), and I don't think it was intended to be a slight against Microsoft.


People talking about BSODs in XP (I've used XP for 4 years and only experienced 2 BSOD and both were because of hardware failure as opposed to about 10,000 BSODs with 95/98). I've read that a lot, too (personally, I've never experienced a BSOD on 2000 or XP), but it doesn't happen as much on the Ubuntu Forums as on Linux Questions.

[Brunellus]

Ever wonder why Apple computers usually NEVER have hardware issues with the hardware they build?

Think of it this way, Maximum compatiblity.
equals total control, equals vendor lock-in.

Historically Apple hardware has been more expensive than x86 hardware, too. Why? because x86 hardware commodified faster, and Apple kept a tight grip on hardware specs.

Apple are the anti-GNU; Microsoft are merely irritations.

[mips]

I would actually be quite happy if I could get my hands on a new Mac laptop, just a bit pricey.

Solid OS and I can use BSD apps on it, even Linux although slower.

[joflow]

You realise that this is sarcasm?

According to fuscia it wasn't.

Not to knock you fuscia, but if you dislike MS and have only used Me then you should give XP a try. Its way more stable and secure with SP2.

[Almighty]

I for one LOVE what Macs can do. Of course every OS has there good and bad sides, but if you want a more secure mainstream system that has good 3rd party software support, go with a Mac.


As far as MS goes... XP to me is the only decent OS they they have made.

[Lord Illidan]

I don't really hate Apple. I don't like it either.
I am content to admire the interface (though I got Ubuntu looking like it for free) and its products (though I don't have an Ipod, as my creative zen micro does everything i need), from a distance. However, as regards DRM, Apple certainly gets on my nerves. Also, I think lots of its products are overrated (style over substance).

Just because it has got UNIX code in its kernel doesn't mean we have to like it. They are eager for profit, too.

And don't make out Bill Gates to be the villain and Jobs to be the martyr, or the hero. Gates donates more money than Jobs. Whether it is for PR or not is another matter, but the end result is the same.

[grimdaze]

Gates donates more money than Jobs.
first of all, you don't know that. just because you see or hear about gates donating more than you do jobs. do you know them personally? do you moniter their funds?

second, even if it were true, the simple fact is gates has more money than jobs, he should donate more.

[Qrk]

The whole reason I started using Linux was because Apple was way too expensive. I had a nice computer (used) that had a ton of viruses. I had resolved to go and buy a Mac, but the one I could afford was the eMac (by all accounts, the ME of MACrosoft)

So I downloaded Knoppix in an attempt to back up my data before wiping windows, saw how great Linux was and haven't looked back.

I couldn't give up the package managment, choice of desktops and community of Linux and Ubuntu just for a pretty GUI.

[Bandit]

I choose OTHER..
I dont hate Apple or Mac's, I think they are fine systems.
They are just not what I am looking for.
Cheers,
Joey

[mstlyevil]

According to fuscia it wasn't.

Not to knock you fuscia, but if you dislike MS and have only used Me then you should give XP a try. Its way more stable and secure with SP2.

Actually fuscia was being dead serious. She loved her Windows ME and likes to make it known. I personally think ME was the biggest POS that MSFT ever put out. I am not a MSFT hater/basher but I take great delight in bashing ME because it was the only OS system I ever dealt with that was a huge dissapointment. I like 2000 and XP and believe they were excellent products.

[darkoptix]

lub apple...

[prizrak]

I was not aware that Linux community hates Apple. I think most people have a misguided opinion of Apple. Because it's an underdog most people think of it as a good company. The reality is that Apple is ALOT more closed than MS even with switching to Intel they are not allowing us to run their OS on anything other than Macs. Just because they are not on top doesn't make them any better than the leader.

[Protostar]

I don't hate Apple, I just think their computers are ridiculously overpriced. I bought an eMac and will never buy another Apple computer. OS X is a pretty cool OS, but Linux is so much better. Plus on the eMac I have, OS X is pretty sluggish and it has a 1Ghz G4 processor. Plus you can't really upgrade a Mac unless you get a PowerMac, and even then you have to use Apple compatiple hardware which is often more expensive than its PC counterparts. Just too expensive, plus I can do a helluva lot mroe with Ubuntu than I can OS X or Windows. From multiple desktops, to a HUGE amount of free software Linux has it all.


BTW, the iPod is SO overrrated.

[zenwhen]

As a Mac user, I love Apple.

As a Linux user, I hate Apple because they benefit from open source so much and give back so little. (or they are at least minimally cooperative)

[DeadEnd]

Well I come from the Personal Computer community andlove n hate em all equally.

Does that make me freak ?

[K.Mandla]

I don't hate Apple, but I don't own any of their products either. I will admit to looking down on Apple, but I think that's because I have a heavy Windows background, and some of that was probably jealousy. :???:

But again, I have to use XP and Apples (usually OS 9.1 or 9.2) at work and try to avoid the Apples, just because everything is in the "wrong" place and it takes me longer to get things done. It's fear of change, fear of something different. ... You know the score.

But hate? Nah.

[Sirin]

Aw crap, can somebody put in the "I don't hate Apple" option in the poll? :D

[Iandefor]

I am a bit curious to know why most Linux users dislike Apple even worse than Microsoft. Is it because all of their hardware and software is not 100% free and Open Source and stealable, or is it because they have Microsoft support, or they own the most popular UNIX derivative and "are taking up our UNIX space"? :confused: Stealable? Is that how you see it?
Go and learn a wee bit more about OSS and the GPL.

Apple doesn't scare me as much as Microsoft because: I've not heard of them pulling anything overtly monopolistic (feel free to send me links which speak to the opposite!). Microsoft, however... just look at what they did to DR-DOS, or Go Corporation. Look at their actions when they came under federal investigation. They clearly care only about owning the market, and will do anything to win it. Apple seems to actually play fairly and legally.

[professor_chaos]

I hate apples!!! But i really like oranges:)

Apple doesn't scare me as much as Microsoft because: I've not heard of them pulling anything overtly monopolistic (feel free to send me links which speak to the opposite!)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/07/apple_itunes_antitrust_suit/

There are other alligations out there of a similar topic. A company may not be a monopoly to practice in an overtly monopolistic manner (ie. unfairly competitve business practices). In fact any company that produces a product that is not supportive of common formats (when adding support would be a minimal effort) is acting with an anti-competitve practice, and is greedy and anti-consumer. I don't see apple as coming off like some kind of saint here. The fact that are not an monopoly, doesn't mean that if they had the chance to overthrow M$ and rule all in the very same way, if not worse that M$, that they wouldn't.


No really, I don't hate apple, but thats because I don't have a long history with a mac and over the 3 years I did, it didn't piss me off like my experience with windoze.

But, I'm alittle baffled at the response of the tenured members of this forum that respond indifferent or pro mac. The confuses me, as there are many reasons the OSS crowd would object to the philosophy and business practices of apple. Prove me wrong, I double dog dare you!!!

Excuse my rant earlier, it's the whisky speaking.

[3rdalbum]

I don't hate Apple (I'm writing this on Ubuntu PPC) but I do think OS X is an extremely disappointing operating system. Interface-wise, it's inconsistant, inconveniant, and Windows-y. Speed-wise, it's shocking. And OS X is probably the only BSD-based operating system which can actually give entire control of the processor to a misbehaving program.

I'm also annoyed that you can't load MP3s onto an iPod through normal plug 'n' play drivers. Sure... no other HD-based ones do that, and many other flash-based ones are the same; but Apple was the company that practically INVENTED plug 'n' play and drag 'n' drop!

And Apple moving to Intel was a bit of a silly idea too. AMD's chips run cooler, faster, and more power efficient than Intel's. They're cheaper too. How could Apple have lost with *that* deal, especially considering their fascination with making computers without fans? Also, Intel are branching out into making actual computers too. When this happens, expect Intel to have "supply problems" just like IBM.

But I don't hate Apple. I just think they've gone astray.

[AndyCooll]

Apple or Microsoft, I don't hate either I simply prefer Linux.

Both OS's have good and bad points (and I could say the same about Linux), however I prefer the free and open-source philosophy which neither of these two companies demonstrate.

:cool:

[jeffjj]

My wife uses a Mac and I have Ubuntu. We both couldn't be happier. All the spyware, viruses, reboots, crashes, etc... are just something I read about, but have not experienced in quite a few years. Mac is a great OS if you need better multimedia support. Plus there a few apps such as Quicken that we still need and Mac provides. The Mac keeps me from having a certain other kind of machine around.

And I really do not get why people are so anti-mac? For some it seems that success is somehow wrong. Its not its a given that Apple will make it as a company. They own basically nothing in the market except the Ipod and now everyone is so weird about that there seems to be this conspiracy to crush that business. Apple could easily go out of business. I think its great that they know who their customers are and cater to them.

[TeeAhr1]

I certainly don't hate them, I just think Apple's a joke. Sure, it's easy to make your OS look real l33t when it only has to work one (absurdly overpriced) architecture.

[Lanrond]

I am conviced that it's quite the opposite. :)
I mean, all the Mac users I know are pretty inclined to try new paths.
Linux included.

[Bragador]

Just read around and you'll that that Apple is more self centered than Microsoft.

If you hate companies that try to force people to be dependent on them, Apple is the worst.

[patrick295767]

If you would like to work in a company, most of the time, u'd need MAC and not Linux !! ;)

The softwares are much better in MAC os than under Linux !

An example:
If you are an expert in this subject:
If you compare Adobe Illustrator and the Inkscape for Instance ....
The conclusion is very easy : Illustrator is sooo good & so far away from Inkscape

Softwares softwares ...
Depends what u wanna do with your Tower ....

Linux, Mac, Windows, ... the choice depends on what u wanna do with it .

For sure, softwares are much better and more adapted to professional with a MAC than a LINUX (and it's like KDE thousand Crashes for instance) ;)

Greetings,

==========
(Please you'd have to try everthg & know everthg in details before judging sthg and make a wise and well-founded judgemnet... )

[earobinson]

we hate apple? .... No vote for me cuz i dont hate apple

[Deaf_Head]

I hate apple so much I'd like to have an ibook?

[Arktis]

we hate apple?Yes apparently some of us do.

Certainly not the entire Linux community though. The topic title is a bit misleading. Take any group and you'll find that some of them like and some dislike pretty much anything thing you pull out of the air.

BTW, my position is: I dislike apple a great deal. But that should already be obvious, heh.

[Iandefor]

I hate apples!!! But i really like oranges:)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/07/apple_itunes_antitrust_suit/
Eh, that case sounds lame to me.

Oranges are yummy, especially while backpacking :).

[patrick295767]

Yes apparently some of us do.

Certainly not the entire Linux community though. The topic title is a bit misleading. Take any group and you'll find that some of them like and some dislike pretty much anything thing you pull out of the air.

BTW, my position is: I dislike apple a great deal. But that should already be obvious, heh.

I really think that since I can read replies and Posts of you, guys, the poll & thread is maybe exagerating ... Most Linux users do not hate Apple... Hate is a strong word. Apple has a very good OS, and that has been always known.

Greetz

[Bragador]

It's not about hating Mac OS (which is good) or the way Macs look (they are cute).

It's about Apple the company and business model.

[patrick295767]

This is news to me :confused:

Edit:

Oh. Is this some kind of parody/ joke thread?

35 PM
Bragador It's not about hating Mac OS (which is good) or the way Macs look (they are cute).

It's about Apple the company and business model.


Not every one understood this way, I think ...

[orev]

i fully enjoyed my five years with windows ME. i just needed a change.


Is it just me, but wasn't WinME widely recognized as the most bloated, crashy, I love the blue screen of death products to ever come out of Redmond?

It seems like everybody wanted to go from Win98 to XP...? (I know IT guys with large deployments of MS products, that did so...)

The best thing about a forum is that, while I never used ME, I can sure put in my 2 cents.:rolleyes:

[handy]

What a crazy poll!!:confused:

[Harry_Sack]

I'd concider it if I had the money. I have the osx86, going to try that some day. But whenever I have to help my housemate who doesn't know *** about his machine except fom making music on it, I find it kind of boring and difficult to work with. Because it's supposed to do everything for you. And it does'nt. So when you get into trouble, there's nowhere to look. Ahhh, it's just a bit boring. Maybe 'cause I haven't tried it enough. But all proprietary software tries to take control over your machine, quicktime wants to be your default video player. I don't like that. I hate that. They should **** off. And try to make som user friendly **** instead.

[dudus]

because I ripped 110 cd's just to find that my ipod can't play open formats

[Bazon]

I don't hate Apple. But I don't like it as well.

Two reasons:

1. I don't think, Apple software is customizable (speaking of function, not of look...). I have to admit: The only Apple software I really know is iTunes on windows (which should be sort of a commercial produkt I think...), and in this case I have to say: I really can't stand this piece of software, I nearly hate it! It is so slow and unflexible!

2. I don't like the attitude of the apple-users: Oh, look at my stylish hardware! They are snobs!
OK, I got an iPod, too (mainly because it was the only music device with a 60GB harddrive at that time...), but I never used it with that "look, I got an iPod" silly white earplugs. [Earplugs suck anyway. I only use headphones. Sennheiser rules! :)]

[Sushi]

I am a bit curious to know why most Linux users dislike Apple even worse than Microsoft.

Huh? I haven't seen Linux-users "hating" Apple. Sure, there propably are some Linux-users who dislike them (for various reasons). But there's propably Linux-users who hate coffee, does that mean that "Linux-users dislike coffee"? No it does not. Different people have different likes and dislikes.

[Sushi]

I'd be more curious as to why the Linux community generally likes Apple (while disliking Microsoft).

Apple is extremely proprietary/closed source, etc., but most Linux users seem to not have the same disdain for Apple that they have for Microsoft.

Few reasons:

a) people like to root for the underdog
b) Microsoft actively tries to kill Linux, Apple does not
c) In addition to B, Apple actively supports several open-source projects. GCC, CUPS, Samba and KHTML for example. Microsoft does not do any of this.

Sure, their OS has closed and proprietary parts. But when compared to many other OS'es out there, they are quite open. Not as open as Linux in general, but A LOT more open that Windows for example.

No, I don't use OS X. I do love the hardware though.

[Sushi]

They don't want to sell their OS on other computers than the ones THEY make.

Do you think that Dell and others have some God-given right to sell machines with OS X preinstalled? Apple is a HARDWARE-company. If they license their OS, they would be undermining their hardware-sales.

They want to promote THEIR filetypes and standards WITHOUT leaving space for other formats (i.e. Ipod and .ogg files for exemple).

it does support mp3's, and that is not Apple's "filetype".

For now everything is acceptable in the eyes of most users because Apple is not #1 but they are using business practices that I do not endorse.

Such as?

The linux market is much better and open to competition. All competitors (distributions) can fight each other without much compatibility problems.

Yep.

Same things with the other softwares.

like Windows?

Apple is too self centered and they are trying to get users addicted to their formats in the same way Microsoft did 10 years ago.

Uh, Apple isn't doing anything different that they haven't been doing for 30 years already.

So I hate Apple, I hate Microsoft, and I hate any company that can't compete fairly.

How exactly does Apple not "compete fairly"? Examples please.

[Sushi]

but they are forcing you to buy their stuff.

No they are not. I haven't been "forced" to buy a Mac. I wasn't "forced" to buy an iPod. I did buy a Mac Mini (which I'm now selling) because I wanted to check out OS X, and because I liked the hardware. I also bought an iPod Mini because it was the best mp3-player on the market.

To use their hardware, you must run their software, and vice versa

There are LOTS of people running Linux on Macs you know. And just few weeks ago Apple released software that lets you run Windows (or Linux) on Intel-Mac. So how exactly are you forced to run their software, when they give you the possibility to use some other OS instead?

[FISHERMAN]

I don't hate any company. Not Apple, not Microsoft.
The only thing I hate are the bad results of the MS-monopoly(less Hardware-support,less Software for other OS, IE-only sites, MS Office as document "standard").
But personally I believe that that is more the fault of the customers than of MS.

[FISHERMAN]

because I ripped 110 cd's just to find that my ipod can't play open formats
If you have a 4G or 5G iPod, you might want to consider putting Rockbox on it.
I've done it and it has great *.ogg support.

[helpme]

Do you think that Dell and others have some God-given right to sell machines with OS X preinstalled? Apple is a HARDWARE-company. If they license their OS, they would be undermining their hardware-sales.

That's not what he said though, is it?
Why should it be unreasonable for a potential customer to not choose Apple because he/she doesn't want to be stuck with an OS that only runs on one brand of hardware?



it does support mp3's, and that is not Apple's "filetype".

I don't think that's the issue here. Apple is clearly trying to use the ipod to push their own music service and vice versa. They do this by makin it impossible for other to sell music for the ipod, as mp3 is not a format people can use to, at least, sell mainstream music, as they simply will not get a license for a non-drmed format.

[Sushi]

That's not what he said though, is it?

Yes it is. He complained that OS X only works (legally that is) on machines that they make & sell (Macs).

Why should it be unreasonable for a potential customer to not choose Apple because he/she doesn't want to be stuck with an OS that only runs on one brand of hardware?

Did I say it's unreasonable? Some people choose to buy a Mac, someone else decides to buy a Dell. Each have their own reasons for their choice. Nowhere did I say that "It's unreasonable to NOT buy a Mac!". What I said that it's dumb to whine about OS X only working on Macs. Macs are a total package. Same company makes the hardware and the OS. That fact has some downsides and it has it's benefits. Some people are not confortable with that scheme, whereas others love it. Don't like that scheme? Fine, then don't buy a Mac. Problem solved.

Why aren't people whining because the OS on Nokia Communicator only works on the Communicator? In many ways the Communicator IS a computer.

I don't think that's the issue here. Apple is clearly trying to use the ipod to push their own music service and vice versa.

Yep. So? I have an iPod, and I have NEVER bought anything from ITMS. I'm in no shape or form forced to buy anything from there. Hell, I don't even use iTunes anymore!

Apple is doing the smart thing here. They have a positive feedback-loop here. More and more people are buying iPods, and because of that, there's more and more people using ITMS. And because of that, there are more and more people buying iPods. And along the way, some of those iPod/iTunes-users turn in to Mac-users as well. And there's NOTHING wrong with that. No-one is being forced to do anything, they just choose to do (or not do) something.

They do this by makin it impossible for other to sell music for the ipod, as mp3 is not a format people can use to, at least, sell mainstream music, as they simply will not get a license for a non-drmed format.

You can thank the record-labels for that DRM. And if some independent band wants to sell DRM-free songs for the iPod, there's NOTHING preventing them from doing so. They can sell normal mp3's through their website, and they would work just fine on the iPod. What exactly is the problem here?

[awakatanka]

I don't understand that everyone is crying that microsoft puts IE and a messenger and Mediaplayer in its OS. And Apple does one step more and sells its hardware with it. Both sell a total package. Apple get away with it because it looks trendy and cool. And its cool to bash MS.

Btw i hate none, all have good and bad points, Linux gives some more freedom of choose ( only some extreem users try to decide whats good for the rest ).

[helpme]

Yes it is. He complained that OS X only works (legally that is) on machines that they make & sell (Macs).
And this is equal to saying that Dell has a right to sell PCs with OSX exactly how?



Did I say it's unreasonable?
Yes, by taking a reasonable complaint and then acting like it meant something else and attacking this something else that nobody said.


Why aren't people whining because the OS on Nokia Communicator only works on the Communicator? In many ways the Communicator IS a computer.

First off, who is whining?
Second, the Communicator is not only in many ways a computer, it simply is a computer, but it's an embedded system, which makes this a whole different ball game.
Third, Symbian is available on many devices, not only on the Communicator.


Yep. So? I have an iPod, and I have NEVER bought anything from ITMS. I'm in no shape or form forced to buy anything from there. Hell, I don't even use iTunes anymore!

So? The problem is not that they can force you to buy music, the issue is that if you want to buy music online, which millions do, your only chance is ITMS.


Apple is doing the smart thing here. They have a positive feedback-loop here. More and more people are buying iPods, and because of that, there's more and more people using ITMS. And because of that, there are more and more people buying iPods. And along the way, some of those iPod/iTunes-users turn in to Mac-users as well. And there's NOTHING wrong with that. No-one is being forced to do anything, they just choose to do (or not do) something.

Again, the issue is not that somebody is being forced, the issue is that this is anti-competetive behavior and I strongly believe that the lack of competition ultimately hurts consumers, so I would never, ever even consider buying an ipod.


You can thank the record-labels for that DRM. And if some independent band wants to sell DRM-free songs for the iPod, there's NOTHING preventing them from doing so. They can sell normal mp3's through their website, and they would work just fine on the iPod. What exactly is the problem here?
For the third time, the problem is that Apple is not allowing competition for commercial vendors who want to sell music for the ipod. That some indy band might not care, or even some small alternative labels sell their music as mp3s does not change this fact. Tell me again why I shouldn't have problems with a company that doesn't let me freely choose where I want to buy my music online by denying competitors the possibility to license their propietary DRM technique?

[helpme]

I don't understand that everyone is crying that microsoft puts IE and a messenger and Mediaplayer in its OS. And Apple does one step more and sells its hardware with it. Both sell a total package. Apple get away with it because it looks trendy and cool. And its cool to bash MS.

No, Apple gets away with it because it is not a monopoly. This has probably been explained a thousand times on this forum alone, but abusing a monopoly in one area to get market share in an other is illegal and that's exactly what MS is accused of doing.

[Sushi]

I don't understand that everyone is crying that microsoft puts IE and a messenger and Mediaplayer in its OS. And Apple does one step more and sells its hardware with it. Both sell a total package. Apple get away with it because it looks trendy and cool. And its cool to bash MS.

There is a difference: Microsoft is a monopoly, Apple is not. Microsoft can't do things that some other company could do. THAT is the reason why Apple can do it, while Microsoft can't. When Microsoft bundled IE with Windows, they basically killed NEtscape, because everyone got IE by default, and it gave Microsoft easy method of saturating over 90% of the market with their product. That is something Apple can't do.

[awakatanka]

There is a difference: Microsoft is a monopoly, Apple is not. Microsoft can't do things that some other company could do. THAT is the reason why Apple can do it, while Microsoft can't. When Microsoft bundled IE with Windows, they basically killed NEtscape, because everyone got IE by default, and it gave Microsoft easy method of saturating over 90% of the market with their product. That is something Apple can't do.
Doesn't matter if someone has a monoply, if MS can't do because of laws then it applys to apple to.

[lucia_engel]

Is it just me, but wasn't WinME widely recognized as the most bloated, crashy, I love the blue screen of death products to ever come out of Redmond?

I just want to point out that my parents' computer is still using WinME and it's completely useable. The OS came with the computer, which is quite old by today's standard, so there's never a desire to upgrade now that I have my own laptop. They only use it to check emails, surf the web, print documents and do the tax. I've tweaked it so it actually boots faster than my XP and Ubuntu partitons and I check for spyware/virus regularly for them (and there are none). The only time I see the BSOD is when I have 10 apps opened at once...so my parents didn't have that problem. Of course, there's occasional problems like networking with XP, but normal users wouldn't have these headaches at all.

This is just based on my own experience of course.

And to be on topic:

I've never used an Apple product other than old mac during elementary school. I don't hate Apple though, I just like to have more freedom over both my hardware and software.

[helpme]

Doesn't matter if someone has a monoply, if MS can't do because of laws then it applys to apple to.
No, it doesn't as there are laws against abusing a monopoly that by their very definition can only apply to those who have a monopoly.

[Sushi]

And this is equal to saying that Dell has a right to sell PCs with OSX exactly how?

*sigh*.... the original poster whined that Apple only allows their OS to run on their hardware. I merely pointed out that other computer-manufacturers have no God-given right to OS X. OS X is Apple's OS, and they can do whatever they want to do with it. And since Apple is a hardware-company, it's sensible for them so limit their OS to their hardware, since the OS is one of the major competetive advantages Apple has over the likes of Dell and others. If someone doesn't like the fact that OS X only works on Macs, he's free to buy some other computer instead. But if he wants to use OS X, he has to buy a Mac, period.

Yes, by taking a reasonable complaint and then acting like it meant something else and attacking this something else that nobody said.

Again, the poster whined about the fact that OS X only runs on Macs. I merely pointed out that whining about that is pretty dumb. I did not distort his words in the slightest.

First off, who is whining?

The original poster

Second, the Communicator is not only in many ways a computer, it simply is a computer, but it's an embedded system, which makes this a whole different ball game.

To Apple, computer is an appliance. And they have every right to that viewpoint. And if you want to, you can replace their OS with some other OS.

Third, Symbian is available on many devices, not only on the Communicator.

Yes it is. And Darwin (more or less equivalent to Symbian in this example) runs on non-Macs as well. So what is the problem here? Sure, Darwin doesn't give you all the bells and whistles OS X has, but Symbian doesn't give you all the bells and whistles of Series 80 either.

So? The problem is not that they can force you to buy music, the issue is that if you want to buy music online, which millions do, your only chance is ITMS.

You can buy non-DRM'ed music as well if you want to. If you don't want ITMS, then buy some other player. Yes, I would love to have system that is interoperable. But I have hard time supporting a scheme that is tied to Windows Media as well.

Again, the issue is not that somebody is being forced, the issue is that this is anti-competetive behavior and I strongly believe that the lack of competition ultimately hurts consumers, so I would never, ever even consider buying an ipod.

There's plenty of competition in here. There are several music stores, and the market is FULL of mp3-players. And you are free to choose among them. maybe those other stores/players are just too crappy to be really competetive?

For the third time, the problem is that Apple is not allowing competition for commercial vendors who want to sell music for the ipod. That some indy band might not care, or even some small alternative labels sell their music as mp3s does not change this fact. Tell me again why I shouldn't have problems with a company that doesn't let me freely choose where I want to buy my music online by denying competitors the possibility to license their propietary DRM technique?

If I were you, I wouldn't buy ANY music online. Why is Apple-DRM bad, whereas Microsoft-backed Windows Media-DRM (which is used by the other music-stores) is good? I have said no to DRM, and I haven't bough ANY DRM-encumbered music online, from ITMS or elsewhere. My iPod is still perfectly good mp3-player, and it plays my mp3-collection just fine.

[Sushi]

Doesn't matter if someone has a monoply, if MS can't do because of laws then it applys to apple to.

No it does not. There is no point in arguing about this, since the law clearly says that it's illegal to leverage one monopoly to gain dominance in another market. MS used their OS-monopoly to gain dominance of the browser-market, and that is ILLEGAL. But that limitation does NOT apply to Apple, because Apple does NOT have a monopoly, so there is no monopoly for them to leverage.

[helpme]

*sigh*.... the original poster whined that Apple only allows their OS to run on their hardware. I merely pointed out that other computer-manufacturers have no God-given right to OS X.
Indeed, sigh.
Complaining that OSX only runs on Macs is not the same as saying "other computer-manufacturers have no God-given right to OS X".


Again, the poster whined about the fact that OS X only runs on Macs. I merely pointed out that whining about that is pretty dumb. I did not distort his words in the slightest.

See above.


To Apple, computer is an appliance. And they have every right to that viewpoint. And if you want to, you can replace their OS with some other OS.

That's nice, but doesn't address the point I made. Embedded systems are different from multi purpose normal PCs.


Yes it is. And Darwin (more or less equivalent to Symbian in this example) runs on non-Macs as well.

You can probably say a lot of things about Darwin, but that is in any way equivalent to Symbian, least of all in this example, is simply hilarious.


You can buy non-DRM'ed music as well if you want to. If you don't want ITMS, then buy some other player. Yes, I would love to have system that is interoperable. But I have hard time supporting a scheme that is tied to Windows Media as well.

Me too. However that doesn't make me any more sympathetic towards what Apple are doing.


There's plenty of competition in here. There are several music stores, and the market is FULL of mp3-players. And you are free to choose among them. maybe those other stores/players are just too crappy to be really competetive?

Nobody denied that there is competition on the whole market, the issue is that there is no competiton if you buy an ipod and that there is no competition if you want to use ITMS.


If I were you, I wouldn't buy ANY music online. Why is Apple-DRM bad, whereas Microsoft-backed Windows Media-DRM (which is used by the other music-stores) is good?

Please stop making up new strawman arguments in any reply. That someone doesn't like Apple's anti-competitve strategy does in no way mean or even imply that the person has to think that Windos Media-DRM is good.


I have said no to DRM, and I haven't bough ANY DRM-encumbered music online, from ITMS or elsewhere. My iPod is still perfectly good mp3-player, and it plays my mp3-collection just fine.
Fine and I'm glad you are satisfied with you ipod.

[Stone123]

Apple is worse them microsoft in many ways. Cheap thirdparty hardware? No buy from apple. Sowftware ? Buy from apple. I would rather see apple bakrupt then microsoft. And i realy dont see any advantages of apple computers.

[Sushi]

Indeed, sigh.
Complaining that OSX only runs on Macs is not the same as saying "other computer-manufacturers have no God-given right to OS X".

In a way, it is. Who makes those other computers the user wants to run OS X on? Other computer-makers. And is the whole core of your argument my choice of words?

And isn't it a bit strange that people who apparently value freedom whine because Apple doesn't let them run their proprietary closed-source OS on hardware of their choosing? I would assume that to Linux-users, it's completely irrelevant on which platform Mac OS runs on (or doesn't), since Mac OS is just another proprietary OS. So why the whining?

I might understand the whining if Apple actively prevented others from running some other OS (like Linux) on their hardware. But they are not, quite the contrary in fact.

That's nice, but doesn't address the point I made. Embedded systems are different from multi purpose normal PCs.

Sez who? Who are you to say that "Apple is wrong when they consider computers to be appliances"? Many appliances are starting to resemble "multi purpose PC's", where do you draw the line? I can make phone-calls from my Communicator. I can play games with it. I can write texts with it, I can view presentations with it, I can send and receive emails with it, I can surf the web with it, I can make SSH-connections from it. Where do you draw the line between "embedded system" and "multipurpose computer"?

And like I said, you are free to run some other OS on their computer if you want to.

You can probably say a lot of things about Darwin, but that is in any way equivalent to Symbian, least of all in this example, is simply hilarious.

Darwin is the core upon which OS X is built upon. Symbian is the core upon which Series 80 is built upon. What exactly is the difference here? Or is there a difference because you say that there is a difference?

Please stop making up new strawman arguments in any reply. That someone doesn't like Apple's anti-competitve strategy does in no way mean or even imply that the person has to think that Windos Media-DRM is good.

You are whining that you can't those other DRM-encumbered music-stores with the iPod. Well, excuse me, but I have little sympathy for you, since I don't want ANY DRM, by Apple or by anyone else. I like my music with no DRM, and the iPod plays that content just fine.

[Sushi]

Apple is worse them microsoft in many ways. Cheap thirdparty hardware? No buy from apple.

Third-party hardware works just fine with Macs. Vid-cards and the like are an issue though. I bought a external HD for my Mac and it "Just Worked".

Sowftware ? Buy from apple.

Are you saying that ALL software that is available for the Mac is made by Apple???? Clearly, you have ZERO clue what you are talking about.

And i realy dont see any advantages of apple computers.

I own (for now) a Mac Mini. And I have fiddled around with PowerBooks. And both pieces of hardware are simply superior to their PC-counterparts. Of course, yuo could quote some specs that "prove" how the PC is better. But I'm talking about the overall "feel" of the machine. No annoying stickers, no "Designed for Windows XP"-crap. Just smooth aluminium, VERY uncluttered design that for some reason is STILL eluding the PC-OEM's. The machines feel very.... serene. I have occasionally seen vaguely similar PC's, but they carry a huge price-premium with them. And no, Macs aren't THAT expensive when compared to PC's.

[stoeptegel]

Please stop putting words in my mouth, i can do that myself.

[helpme]

In a way, it is.

No, it isn't, not even in any way.

User A makes a reasonable argument: I don't like that Apple are tying their OS exclusively to their hardware as that doesn't allow me to for example build my own machine or buy a machine from some other vendor and put the OS on this machine. That's why I won't buy Apple.

Sushi: OMG! Stop y0ur Wh1n1ng!!!11!!! Dell hasn't got a god-given right to put OSX on their machines.

Pretty silly and a typical strawman argument.

Btw., did you even notice that you changed your argument and now try to defend something you in previous posts claimed you hadn't done at all?


And isn't it a bit strange that people who apparently value freedom whine because Apple doesn't let them run their proprietary closed-source OS on hardware of their choosing?

Who says that people who post here value freedom when it comes to computers and if they do, who says they define it the way the free software foundation does?

And just for future reference. Calling everything critical someone else says which you don't agree with whining is only a very poor substitute for a well thought out argument.


Sez who?

Basic logic. Embedded machines != PCs


Who are you to say that "Apple is wrong when they consider computers to be appliances"?

First off, believe it or not, but I consider it my right to disagree with Apple.
Second, don't attack the messanger, attack the message.
Third, I did not say that what you claim Apple says is wrong, I pointed out that embedded systems are different from PCs.


Darwin is the core upon which OS X is built upon. Symbian is the core upon which Series 80 is built upon.

So now you want me to agree that the core of an OS is the same as the OS itself on an other system?
Silly.


You are whining that you can't those other DRM-encumbered music-stores with the iPod.

I'm not whining and I made my critizism very clear the first 10 times around. No need to repeat it here to answer yet an other strawman argument from you.


Well, excuse me, but I have little sympathy for you, since I don't want ANY DRM, by Apple or by anyone else. I like my music with no DRM, and the iPod plays that content just fine.
I also don't want any DRM, but that's not the issue here, no matter how much you try to spin it.

Seriously, if you can't come up with at least one halfway sane reply to what people actually said, I don't think there is any need to continue out little conversation here.

[Sushi]

User A makes a reasonable argument: I don't like that Apple are tying their OS exclusively to their hardware as that doesn't allow me to for example build my own machine or buy a machine from some other vendor and put the OS on this machine. That's why I won't buy Apple.

For the record, this is the quote that started it all:

They don't want to sell their OS on other computers than the ones THEY make.

And I merely pointed out that other computer-makers have no God-given right to OS X and that Apple can do whatever they want with their OS. Don't like it? don't buy it. You are in no shape or form forced to buy Mac. I did buy a Mac, but I'm selling it.

Pretty silly and a typical strawman argument.

Not exactly. The original poster whined (yes, whined) that Apple only sells OS X for their own hardware. And (again) I merely pointed out that other OEM's have no god-given right to OS X, and whining about MacOS X only being available for Macs is pretty dumb. And there's nothing "strawman" about that. I did not distort the original comments in any way (but you DID distort my comments).

there are LOTS of devices that come with hardware and software bundled together. The two are a coherent whole where you can't replace one half with something else. But that is not acceptable when we talk about computers? Why? And even in this case, you are free to replace the Mac OS with some other OS. What you can't do it to run OS X in some other system. And I see no problem with that, since Mac OS is really meant for just one class of computers: Macs. Just because Windows, Linux and other OS'es were designed to run just about everywhere, it does not mean that ALL OS'es should be like that.

Apple sells computers. They also sell operating system to go with those computers. And they have that right. And if they want to limit that OS to their hardware, they have that right as well. And you have the right to not to buy their computers.

Btw., did you even notice that you changed your argument and now try to defend something you in previous posts claimed you hadn't done at all?

How exactly did I "change my argument"?

Who says that people who post here value freedom when it comes to computers and if they do, who says they define it the way the free software foundation does?

Maybe they should then just buy Macs and be done with it? If they want to run OS X, all they have to do to buy a Mac.

And just for future reference. Calling everything critical someone else says which you don't agree with whining is only a very poor substitute for a well thought out argument.

I called the original comments whining because that what they were.

Basic logic. Embedded machines != PCs

Uh-huh. And if those embedded machines do everything PC's do?

First off, believe it or not, but I consider it my right to disagree with Apple.

Sure, go right ahead. It's not like I worship the ground Steve Jobs stand upon.

Second, don't attack the messanger, attack the message.

What makes your "message" more correct than Apples message? Especially when we are talking about Apple's hardware?

Third, I did not say that what you claim Apple says is wrong, I pointed out that embedded systems are different from PCs.

And there are lots of "embedded systems" that do very same things as PC's do. No matter how much you pout and shout does not change that fact. So the question remains: What is an embedded system and what is a computer?

So now you want me to agree that the core of an OS is the same as the OS itself on an other system?
Silly.

You said that Darwin and Symbian are two totally different things. But they are in many ways quite similar. True, they are meant for different things and they are two different products, but they are both platforms upon which someone else built a total OS. Apple built OS X on top of Darwin. Nokia built (among others) Series 80 on top of Symbian. You then said that Symbian runs on other devices besides the Communicator. Well, Darwin runs on other hardware besides Macs. OS X does not, but Darwin does. Series 80 only runs on Communicators, but Symbian runs on other devices as well. What is the difference here?

I also don't want any DRM, but that's not the issue here, no matter how much you try to spin it.

DRM is not the issue, when you complain that other DRM'ed stores wont work with iPod? DRM is at the very core of this issue. Why don't those other stores work with iPod? Because of DRM. And yet you claim that "DRM has nothing to do with this"?

So you want "competition" so we could choose from different flavors of DRM? Whooppee, let's hear it for "competition"! isn't competition great? Not only can I choose to get screwed in one way, I can choose to get screwed in several different ways!

Seriously, if you can't come up with at least one halfway sane reply to what people actually said, I don't think there is any need to continue out little conversation here.

EDIT: I admit, I was being annoying here. So I removed the offending parts. My apologies.

I think that we should just agree to disagree here.

[zubrug]

Have always wanted a nice Apple, can't afford one. Probably end up installing linux on it though!

[ComplexNumber]

i don't thiink people do hate apple. its more that mac fanboys hate linux, despite knowing jack about linux. a very strange and illogical breed indeed.

here you can read about the qualities that make up the different groups

Some interesting observations

Apple Macintosh users fell into two categories. The first involved company loyalty which I expected. The other group wanted the applications available on Microsoft Windows including Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop.

The Apple Macintosh users also had little knowledge of Linux but indicated extreme prejudice against it. I also observed that Mac users fell into more vertical categories such as graphics, music and film editing and journalism. It appears Apple has lost its traditional education market.

Windows users voiced dissatisfaction with Windows and said they primarily "put up" with Windows to use Microsoft Office productivity tools. Primary use of Microsoft's productivity suite followed a pattern I anticipated. Of those surveyed approximately 80% used Microsoft Word, 10% used Excel and 3% used Access and the remainder used a variety of other tools such as Project.

Windows users overwhelmingly used Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express and Internet Explorer while Media Player has wide spread use among home users and modest use in organizations. Windows users were subject to panic disorder, anxiety attacks and depression consistent with those in the general population.
read the rest here (http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/55888/index.html).

[Stone123]

... a lot of bla bla bla...
And no, Macs aren't THAT expensive when compared to PC's.

I realy dont see your point here , are you trying to sell me an apple computer?
I dont hate them i just dont want to support them. (apple , dell ,a.s.o. )

outsourcing beeing the main reson for not supporting dell.

[tomski]

in my own personal opinion i actually put apple macs higher up than anything created/rehashed by MikeWrong $hafted because they did a better job at reselling/rebranding/recoding unix than M$.

if you speak to any one who has moved from M$ WindBlows to *nix they feel quite lost at first, but when you ask the same question to someone who moved from Apple to *nix they still feel at home and recognise the similarities.

Basicly winblows is a marketing scam gone wild & became the norm because there were to many people out there that did not recognise what a bad idea it was to let billy do what he wants, hence the reason why he's now in court every 5 minutes with acusations of monopolising and expoliting every niche,nook,cranny & Granny in the OS market.

sorry to offend with such a generalisation but i feel my IT knowledge has been adversly affected by billy

[Super King]

i don't thiink people do hate apple. its more that mac fanboys hate linux, despite knowing jack about linux. a very strange and illogical breed indeed.



This is how it is in my experiences as well. Mac fanaticals just love spouting the same ol' lines they've heard for years, mostly against Windows, but also against Linux.

There was a previous post in this thread where a Mac user was impressed that he could plug a USB hard drive into his Mac and that it "just works." I hear this phrase a lot :rolleyes: Try plugging the same drive into an XP or Linux box. OMG! Incredible! It also just worked. A number of Mac users simply haven't tried Windows regularly (or tried Linux at all) to realize stuff like this is not some magical benefit of OSX.

As far as design goes, I would agree with those that say Macs are generally better looking that Dell/HP/Whatever desktops/laptops. You're still getting the same type of parts on the inside, but generally with a abetter looking case. Something like the Mac Mini is quite impressive; even though it's essentially a laptop-sans screen/keyboard component wise, it's compact and also quiet. I am considering one to dual-boot XP and Ubuntu (not impressed with OSX, but that's another story).

[ComplexNumber]

Mac fanaticals just love spouting the same ol' lines they've heard for years, mostly against Windows, but also against Linux. that may well be because, traditionally, there was apple and there was microsoft. apple had one corner of the market, and MS had the rest. despite linux coming up through the ranks, its been like that a while with apple and MS. and because apple is very niche, this has helped to strengthen and solidify their cult belief in apple so much so that they can no longer be pragmatic about it.
on linux, things are almost at the 'just work' stage. but they never used to be like that. in a few years time, maybe linux fanatics will be exactly the same as mac fanatics.

[ubuntu_demon]

I didn't vote because I don't hate apple.

I'm happy with Ubuntu because the high degree of configurabilty and because it's open source. But I've adviced my dad and others who are less "geeky" than me to try a mac with OS X.

OS X is unix
The major part of the OS X kernel is open source
There's more commericial software available for OS X than for linux(for example games)
OS X has better hardware support than linux and windows (because they sell hardware and there's less configurability)

I hope Apple goes more open source though.

[AlphaMack]

Apple is worse them microsoft in many ways. Cheap thirdparty hardware? No buy from apple. Sowftware ? Buy from apple. I would rather see apple bakrupt then microsoft. And i realy dont see any advantages of apple computers.

Cheap third party hardware? I have 3rd party RAM, a 3rd party HDD, and a 3rd party DVD burner thank you very much. No fiddling with the OS required.

Are you suggesting that all of the software titles on the Mac come from Apple alone? Clearly you have no idea what you are talking about. And let's not forget that you can run OS X, OS 9, CLI, GNOME, and KDE apps (although the latter two are quite slow).

I have my reasons for disliking Apple's policies even as a Mac/Ubuntu user, but I would rather see OS X proliferate than Windows, even if Apple sticks by its policy of security through obscurity (http://www.rixstep.com/) (further reading).

[htinn]

Good job, guys. Great gag thread. Laughed my *** completely off. :D

[helpme]

OS X has better hardware support than linux and windows
My printer would like to disagree here.

[ubuntu_demon]

My printer would like to disagree here.
well maybe not for printers (I don't know) but AFAIK more there are at least as much 3d party hardware manufacturers supporting OS X as there are supporting linux .. probably a lot more. If you already own a mac before buying a printer it's very easy to select a printer which is supported (probably easier than for Ubuntu). And if you buy a new mac the machine perfectly supported out of the box ofcourse.

Ubuntu has good hardware support and it is improving but it is not good enough yet for some new users.

[IYY]

Ever since Apple introduced OS X, the Linux community started liking them a lot more than MS.

Personally, I don't really like their closed-source policies and "you must buy our hardware to run our OS" attitude. It's their right though, and they're a fairly cool company.

[stimpack]

I was going to write this in a Mac forum but there are so many idiotic apple fanboys that lack any technical skills and worship at the altar of Steve Jobs testicles, that I would just be flamed into oblivion. So I am presenting my experiences to you, let it serve as a warning, the grass is not greener and hype means little.

I bought myself a Macbook, 2ghz 1gb ram intel, these things are considered fast by the apple fanboys used to PPC. I will dismiss that straight away, the hardware may be fast, but OS X is the slowest OS I have yet used, which is Linux and Windows. A bit like windows, it boots fast and displays the desktop but kinda cheats, you aint getting anything done for another 10seconds.

If its an Apple application like Safari is loads fast, if its not, like Firefox jeez, it takes 40seconds to load. Apps like google earth run slower than the Linux version (and the linux version leaves some to be desired)

The inbuilt applications *suck*, you have to get Firefox to replace safari, VLC to replace quicktime. iTunes is complete crap compared to Amarok, the terminal is pathetic compared to Konsole or Gnome Terminal. iWeb is web design for the retarded, seriously if you cant figure out dreamweaver you shouldn't be exposing us to your crappy webpages.

Every so often you see a beach-ball mouse cursor that stops you doing anything, I remember when I used windows 95, maybe it was even 3.1 with the hourglass... its like that..

You get strange errors every so often, the usual advice is to 'repair' permissions, which usually works, but the fact that the unix underbelly is getting screwed up that much is disturbing.

Clearly there are some good points.. I would still take it over Windows. Things do 'just work', WPA wireless,bluetooth, all do work (with some minors flaws). I also use it to burn CDs since my CD burning broke in dapper.

OS X is often considered to be the pinnacle, its not, its quite good but no more!, I'd recommend it for a senile grandparent to learn with.

oh and my 60gb disk came 50gb full... 10gb to play with, nice =/

[lapsey]

well, at least you can install something better onto that :)

Apple's usability conventions are what turned me off from OSX: it's no more simpler or user friendly then any other desktop, only the icons are larger. In fact I found the lack of cross-OS interoperability most frustrating; for example: DRM, limited-life proprietary formats, strange filing system (thumbnails.db x 100), etc.

And the way they try to make certain things simpler on the surface (yet more complex internally) only makes it more difficult to get out of a bad situation (iMovie crashed, only thing left were a couple of hundred, oddly named MOV files that weren't really MOV files)

But it's shiny, I guess.


re: 'things just working'. Isn't all that hardware produced or certified by Apple in the first place? What a hard job that must have been

[stimpack]

Forgot to mention, Finder is the worst filemanager ever, not a patch on the KDE and Gnome managers.

But ^^ it is indeed shiney :).

[professor_chaos]

stimpack, are you a long time *nix user before trying OS X? I have been in the market for an new laptop and becuase of the discussions on this forum I picked up a Macbook with specs similar to yours (80GB insead of 60). I did this to take a new operating system for a spin and so far I'm quite impressed. Regarding your comments on application speeds, I have read a few articles regarding "Rosetta" and the fact that a lot to the code is less than optimized for the new intel processor, as much of it was borrowed from the PPC versions.
http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/pcs/macintel-only-25-faster-than-g5-when-jobs-lies-macbooks-fry-150292.php

I am amazed at the boot time and impressed with the preformance of Ubuntu running in Parallels.

My system came with only 18GB of used space. I wonder why you had so much used space.

Appoligies to the forum for this post, as it's not really all that linux related. Did I mention I'm running virtualized ubuntu on the macbook. :)

[weasel fierce]

My wife's laptop is running fine enough, with no errors so far, over a period of 4 months.

[stimpack]

Linux user since RH7, dont know if thats long time or not, I can certainly be and frequently am, a noob still.

I was very impressed at first, and still am impressed with the hardware, the macbook is a sexy thing. I don't mean to put OS X down too much, rather bring it down to earth, it is in no way the pinnacle of operating systems, it is quite ordinary imo.

[ArizonaKid]

I am switcher.

Except I gave up on OS X last year. I just didn't see the point anymore. With the transition to Intel, Apple has very few native applications.

I found many Mac users use OS X simply for the sake of not using Microsoft. Well, there is Linux for that.

With the transition to Intel, Apple can no longer clame hardware superiority. I mean there are just making the box. And now, they are making boxes that whine, overheat, and stain a yellowish tint.

Additionally, it is amazing that Apple claims their Intel machines are 2-5 times faster than the flagship G5s. This basically means their claims previously about the PPC superiority were nothing but lies. Now I get to see those annoying commercials all day.

If you wanna "Think Different", use Linux. And save yourself the time of getting a decent notebook that won't whine.

Add...and at least with Linux I don't get that spinning beach ball of death. Stable??? My Windows XP Pro partition is more stable than OS X.

[netkid91]

I've been thinking of getting a Mac Mini from freepay. I have to admit it right here and now, before I even was thinking about it I tried to install OS X on my 'vanilla' PC, only testing it, deleted it. I have to say, OS X is 'Shiny', but it does leave a lot to be desired for long-time power-user & linux-user people. The Terminal app is a JOKE, and the HOME/END keys don't work like they should. OS X is about the eye candy, hell, I got AI/XGL. Even though I am still considering getting the mac through freepay 'cause I need a new PC, OS X probably wouldn't be my primary OS(I do like iTunes though, bought two songs off of it.)

[ArizonaKid]

I've been thinking of getting a Mac Mini from freepay. I have to admit it right here and now, before I even was thinking about it I tried to install OS X on my 'vanilla' PC, only testing it, deleted it. I have to say, OS X is 'Shiny', but it does leave a lot to be desired for long-time power-user & linux-user people. The Terminal app is a JOKE, and the HOME/END keys don't work like they should. OS X is about the eye candy, hell, I got AI/XGL. Even though I am still considering getting the mac through freepay 'cause I need a new PC, OS X probably wouldn't be my primary OS(I do like iTunes though, bought two songs off of it.)

If you need a new PC, and your not primarly running OS X, why get a Mac Mini? :-k Your just going to have to go through the trouble of running bootcamp to even get Linux up and running. You can install a copy of Windows 2000 Pro (because there is no activation) to run iTunes. You can build a better PC, for less than the Mac Mini.

Fry's Electronics, iBuyPower, TigerDirect, etc...

[netkid91]

If you need a new PC, and your not primarly running OS X, why get a Mac Mini? :-k Your just going to have to go through the trouble of running bootcamp to even get Linux up and running. You can install a copy of Windows 2000 Pro (because there is no activation) to run iTunes. You can build a better PC, for less than the Mac Mini.

Fry's Electronics, iBuyPower, TigerDirect, etc...
Ehhh....why you think I'm getting it from FreePay? Besides, I'm primarily getting an OS X PC because I have fallen in love with TextMate for Ruby on Rails work, and I have friends who use OS X so it's a pain to help them troubleshoot their systems without making the open a terminal...That...and...it's pretty........

[briancurtin]

oh and my 60gb disk came 50gb full... 10gb to play with, nice =/
im surprised that im the first person to say this...but i dont believe that.

[netkid91]

Ditto...considering a BASE OS X install with iTunes, and a few other things should be at MOST 10 gigs. I don't think even iLife takes up much space.

[nalmeth]

A lot of negative reviews of Mac ..

I can't refute any of this, I've never owned a Mac, and don't really plan on owning one in the future.

I'm not bedazzled by the eye-candy, rather, I've always thought of Mac's as 'Cute' rather than 'Stunning'.

I don't like the interface very much, the OSX bar at the bottom just has a bunch of pretty icons, and I've never been able to believe that it actually offers much of anything in functionality. I used engage before, but tossed it, as it was a pretty, but useless tool.

The menu bar up top is actually pretty functional, and I'm sure if I used it alot I would start to like it, but I can get that bar in KDE aswell anyway. And I choose to not use it.

The biggest detterent though, usability and looks aside, is the whole fanclub attitude towards a fiercely proprietary company, headed by a fanatical lunatic who only aspires to have the market control that Microsoft does.

I know I'm rehashing things already said in this thread, but I've already got an alternative to Microsoft. And when linux fanboys go off on a tangent about 'stickin it to the man' and doing something original, what they're saying is at least partly genuine. It's not some half-baked marketing trend, through which people can look 'hip' and be 'individuals' by putting a Mac sticker on their rear-windshield.

Dear lord, are the commericals stupid too... Yeah, Mac's are invulnerable to malware, and PC's are inherently susceptible to the common cold.

That said, I would probably use a Mac if it was given to me, and just install linux on it.

I prefer to see Macintosh solely as a computer manufacturer.

[fuscia]

starting before i used linux, i have considered getting a mac on a number of occassions. but, whenever i would go to the apple store to play with their stuff, i would leave disappointed. i've not seen the macbooks, but the ppc models were slow as hell and the ibooks were fairly fuzzy (i love the wsxga screen that i got on my system76). the apple store itself reminds me of that old show with patrick macgoohan, called the prisoner. whenever i'd leave the store, i'd worry about getting chased across the parking lot by some giant white bubble.

[nalmeth]

the apple store itself reminds me of that old show with patrick macgoohan, called the prisoner. whenever i'd leave the store, i'd worry about getting chased across the parking lot by some giant white bubble. HAHAHA
jeez man, that's one to remember

[lapsey]

..

[professor_chaos]

... The Terminal app is a JOKE,...
Whats funny about the terminal? Seems fine to me.

Good Things So Far...
35-40sec to boot and access the gui terminal app.

The best program for UI I have ever used is the program Expose. Drag mouse to corner of screen and all windows become visible in a shrund down tiled manner. It think there is something in xgl/compiz that does this?? VERY functional eyecandy.


Bad Things...
I'm having a hell of a time understanding the BSD, or possibly bastardized BSD filesystem structure.
I also hate that when I try to execute/open an app, I have to give it the full path preceeded by the command "open" to launch. This is crazy. Installed system-wide apps not in my path, and using "open" is driving me nuts.

There is no apt-get variation, and I'm getting tired of searching for apps on the web, and having to wade thru shareware and trialware. However, there is a project called Fink, which installs apps using apt-get and can install ported linux programs. Quite nice.

Final Statement...
The macbook is so far the perfect notebook/computer that just works. Allows me to surf the web at starbucks (and look cool doing it), edit openoffice files and do other fun stuff.
But, I don't feel all that powerful when using OS X, I feel very constrained. Finding software (esp opensource apps) is extreemly difficult. And I feel like OS X won't give me control without a fight.
So what do I do when I'm unhappy with the OS X interface and software. Well just click one button and start ubuntu in parallels. Hell, maybe there is a program I want to run in windows. ClickClick. Now I'm running OSX, Ubuntu, and XP all at the same time. This freakin kicks ***.

Yes, I bought a MAC to run all these OS's simultanously, not because it makes sense, but because I can.

[Boomy]

I think OSX is just hype. It's a pita to navigate, I don't know wtf the Mac fanboys are talking about with OSX having better workflow. I can't even browse thumbnails in Finder because only about a dozen icons load thumbnails, if there are more photos than that in the dir they don't show up as thumbnails. Also there is no apt, so installing any software that has dependencies can be a pita. Who has time to search the net for software these days? Synaptic ownz! I honestly prefer Ubuntu, I think it is easier to use (once set up). I have a 3 year old ibook and a 3 year old PC and the PC is 150X faster than the ibook, which is a pig, and probably cost double what my PC did. The only advantage Mac has is commercial software support. I can't run Pro-Tools or Reason on Linux.

[aysiu]

Looks - 10/10
Usability - 5/10
Cost - 1/10

[professor_chaos]

[/QUOTE]aysiu;
Cost - 1/10[/QUOTE]

I picked up a macbook
2GHz Intel Core Duo
L2 Cache 2MB
System bus 667MHz
1GB RAM
80GB 5400-rpm Serial ATA
DVD±RW/CD-RW
Video camera Built-in iSight
Display 13.3-inch (diagonal) glossy TFT widescreen display, 1280 x 800 resolution
Ports One FireWire 400 port (8 watts); Two USB 2.0 ports (up to 480 Mbps); Mini-DVI port with support for DVI, VGA, S-video and composite video output (requires adapters, sold separately)
Audio Built-in stereo speakers, built-in omnidirectional microphone, combined optical digital audio input/audio line in, combined optical digital audio output/headphone out
Networking Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit)
Wireless Built-in 54 Mbps AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi (802.11g)3; built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) module.
AND a IR remote for media playback
Ohh, and weighs 5.2lbs

For $1450.00


Can you find a similar or comparable system for much cheaper. I couldn't. I was suprised too, because I thought Apple overcharged for everything, but this system was quite reasonably priced for the hardware.

Looks - 8/10
Usability - 7/10
Cost - 8/10

[AlphaMack]

I am switcher.

Except I gave up on OS X last year. I just didn't see the point anymore. With the transition to Intel, Apple has very few native applications.

Truth. And with MS and Adobe sitting on their respective application suites, what does that say about their commitment to the platform? No one is going to bend over backwards for 2% of the desktop market.


I found many Mac users use OS X simply for the sake of not using Microsoft. Well, there is Linux for that.

I was also one of them until I installed Breezy on my girlfriend's Dell in January. Then I figured, why not do the same for my PowerBook? It has been a challenge, but I finally have a fully functional dual-boot system with wireless and (almost) everything. And I'm still learning something new every day.

With the transition to Intel, Apple can no longer clame hardware superiority. I mean there are just making the box. And now, they are making boxes that whine, overheat, and stain a yellowish tint.

And there are many more issues as documented both at Apple Defects (http://www.appledefects.com/) and Rixstep (http://www.rixstep.com/) (see Industry Watch and Learning Curve).


Additionally, it is amazing that Apple claims their Intel machines are 2-5 times faster than the flagship G5s. This basically means their claims previously about the PPC superiority were nothing but lies. Now I get to see those annoying commercials all day.

How is Apple going to explain to professionals the Intel's superiority when they release the Mac Pro? Intel doesn't do 64-bit computing. Apple have literally traded Ferrari engines for Fords.

When Apple pitched promos to the scientific community to choose a Mac, the G5's superiority was frequently cited especially with regards to 64-bit.

Apple has been lying all along to keep what is left of their 2%. The PowerPC claims. Free e-mail that is "yours to keep" (iTools before the bait and switch to .Mac). "Optimized for G3s" (OS X Cheetah). I could go on and on.

If you wanna "Think Different", use Linux. And save yourself the time of getting a decent notebook that won't whine.[/quote]

OS X is not even UNIX anymore. Apple have turned it into a beige box nightmare to appease to the rabid fanboys who wanted their OS 9 bits back. Then you have the likes of Goober (Daring Fireball) spearheading the zealotry and war cries over Mark Pilgrim and Cory Doctorow's departures from OS X to Ubuntu.


Add...and at least with Linux I don't get that spinning beach ball of death. Stable??? My Windows XP Pro partition is more stable than OS X.

Linux runs circles around OS X on the same hardware. I replaced Panther on my clamshell with Breezy and literally breathed new life into it - a 6 year old (quickly approaching 7) laptop that was supposed to optimally run 10.0. We all know how that one turned out. :evil:

[3rdalbum]

OS X is not even UNIX anymore. Apple have turned it into a beige box nightmare to appease to the rabid fanboys who wanted their OS 9 bits back.

I have to disagree with this bit. (the rest of the post was spot-on). The rabid fanboys are the ones who immediately proclaimed that OS X was the best thing since sliced bread. The long-time, down-to-earth users were the ones who wanted the interface a bit more friendly to people who were familiar with OS 9. Apple did nothing to appease OS 9 users. Quite simply, OS X encourages disorganisation, which was the bane of the professionals who continued to use OS 9 even after the end of its support, and who now use Windows.

And how balloonin' slow is OS X? I know it's a microkernel, I know the PPC chips are no longer as good as x86, I know it uses a kinda high-level programming language, I know it uses a fair bit of legacy 1990s code, I know it has eye-candy... but its lack of speed is absolutely ridiculous.

[Rick 1]

You're spot on, but OS X wasn't always crap. NeXTSTEP was brilliant - as was OpenStep. Clean interface with the Unix underbody and nothing in between. And it was very portable, running on Solaris, Windows NT (with an occasional wince or two) as well as x86, Motorola, PPC, HP-UX, and so forth.

What you used was a pale corrupted copy of NS/OpenStep. OS X has been increasingly a mess since before it came out. The peak - where OpenStep was prominent and the 'junk' didn't yet overtake it - was right at the end of the 'Jaguar' cycle. By 10.2.8 quality control was going out the door and the 'Apple enhancements' were really bringing the thing down.

NS/OpenStep come with a pedigree from Alan Kay's Smalltalk-80. As such they're unsurpassed even today for systems development and ease of use.

In fact, despite the GNOME die-hards, they would make a great alternative for Ubuntu which could really push Ubuntu out in front of the pack - including Windoze.

To this day there is no real counterpart anywhere. GNUstep won't do it, even with Window Maker. What Avie accomplished at NeXT and in the first years at Apple was good stuff. After that the fanboys started taking over and it was just a question of time. Today OS X is a royal mess and it's only getting worse.

OS X slow? You bet. There are so many middlemen in the code it's not funny. You don't have a clean interface like GNOME to the Linux kernel - or like NS to FreeBSD in the 'good old days'. And NS threading was never particularly good or sophisticated. That part of the game came after their initial work in Redwood City as I understand it and they never caught up, obsessed as Apple management have been with more and more silly bells and whistles.

So while OS X is truly starting to smell bad, the technology used to build this hodgepodge once upon a time was as clean and well designed as anything you've ever seen, fully on a par with what you're using today and in many respects still way out in front where you can't catch it with the technology you have available today.

[Rick 1]

I have to disagree with this bit. (the rest of the post was spot-on). The rabid fanboys are the ones who immediately proclaimed that OS X was the best thing since sliced bread.
And I have to disagree with your bit.

The rabid fanboys were against Jobs and NeXT from the get-go. They literally booed Steve Jobs on stage when he previewed FileViewer. (What did they get? The same program with the name 'Finder'. And that appeased them.)

It took Apple YEARS to get a completely turnkey system out the door in Cupertino. OpenStep was running All Over The Place. Back in 1997 Amelio wanted Rubinstein and Tevanian to each do their thing and produce the best h/w and s/w to run on anyone's h/w and s/w no exceptions. OpenStep didn't need more work.

And back then MS had not yet come out with Windows 98. Think about it: Apple finally released a usable version of OS X on 24 August 2002. But the 'merger' took place in January 1997 - over five years earlier.

What did they do for those five and one half years? Improve OpenStep? Really? Haha. How?

No: they backtracked - continually. They ran into violent opposition from fanboys and fanboy ISVs. They decided (and history will condemn) to wire in a Carbon 'toolbox' (which is reason #1 for bad performance to this day). That took a LOT of work: all the NS code had to be yanked out of those pristine classes and put in procedural form so fanboy ISVs didn't have to spend three hours to learn Objective-C. [True.]

And they missed what? They missed MS coming out with (count 'em) Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows Me, Windows 2K, and Windows XP. Talk about mismanaging marketing opportunities. They should all be fired.

And what for?

So don't say fanboys applauded OS X because they didn't, and looking back at what was written at the time (and how David Pogue and Chris Stone have had to knock heads to get them to listen) it's pretty obvious they were resistant - violently so.

As any NeXT programmer will tell you, the only things wrong with OS X today are what the fanboys whined and stomped to get pushed through. Had they not made such a childish stink, OS X would have been out Q2 1997 and preempted Microsoft completely.

[Rick 1]

Regarding your comments on application speeds, I have read a few articles regarding "Rosetta" and the fact that a lot to the code is less than optimized for the new intel processor, as much of it was borrowed from the PPC versions.
It's not a question of optimisation. The code has to be recompiled. But even that doesn't tell much of the story.

Intel CPU architecture is vastly different from PPC architecture. Intel is old as in 'long gray whiskers' and PPC is cutting edge as in 'tomorrow' and 'Cell' and Xbox, Sony, the rest. The PPC houses dozens of on board registers, meaning code's brought in and just runs. Intel has to be doing switcheroos all the time, and even if they have RAM access down to one clock cycle it still takes time - a lot of silly extra clock cycles for nothing.

Meaning 'optimised' code has to take this into account. You can't have wandering temporary (not automatic) variables all over the place. Your Intel will have to do switcheroos all the time. Seemingly unrelated instructions become related. Intel programming is a nightmare.

Moving on an Apple box to a 'universal' build means using another version of the GCC as well and some old snippets won't work.

Running PPC code through an ABI is never going to be as fast. And code running on an Intel is never going to be as good.

[f1dave]

Final Statement...
The macbook is so far the perfect notebook/computer that just works. Allows me to surf the web at starbucks (and look cool doing it), edit openoffice files and do other fun stuff.
But, I don't feel all that powerful when using OS X, I feel very constrained. Finding software (esp opensource apps) is extreemly difficult. And I feel like OS X won't give me control without a fight.
So what do I do when I'm unhappy with the OS X interface and software. Well just click one button and start ubuntu in parallels. Hell, maybe there is a program I want to run in windows. ClickClick. Now I'm running OSX, Ubuntu, and XP all at the same time. This freakin kicks ***.


To start off with, it's rather amusing to see one rabid post dissing other rabid posters :P I'm not calling the original poster a fanboy, or saying they're a lunatic, but there's probably a... calmer... way of saying what he or she wanted to say.

Anyway, I'd like to relate my macbook pro experience. I bought it in March, and with a bundled iPod and education discount it didnt cost me /that/ much, seeing as it's dual core and all it was reasonably comparable to pc laptops- reasonably, for god's sake I'm not saying that's a surefire $1000 saving fact here :)

It's performed remarkably well, runs windows and mac os x without flaw, and is really, really fast. It makes a nice addition to my kubuntu/windows box and my sid box. I have had none of the whining or exploding or falling spaceships or whatever else people complain about on apple forums (jesus, that's a scary place).

Overall, I agree with professor chaos in his summary. The OS does constrain you a little, but that's its job in a certain sense- apple does have a whole range of applications for you to buy :/ So, how do we go about starting to fix this? Why, Open Source of course! http://www.opensourcemac.org/ showcases the best and brightest application offerings for the mac, and fink allows a world of software at your fingertips, just like apt. And yes, god damn does parallels kick some serious booty.

A few other points-
**It's been brought up firefox is as slow as a slug. Well, the vast majority of people I know don't use firefox, they use camino, which has been designed with the mac in mind in all aspects- looks, performance, UI integration, etc.
**Finder has been bashed around a bit, perhaps deservedly so... but for god's sake, don't use finder! Use QuickSilver! It's katapult, but more advanced!
**amaroK beats iTunes hands down. Unfortunately, iTunes just ties in too nicely with the mac os to be using anything else... once again, good ol' quicksilver to the fore.

So please, from a person who uses all three major OSes (even though linux remains a favourite), give the mac a bit of a chance here. It might seem weak at first glance, but if you're a user you soon wonder why the heck you were thinking that in the first place.

Anyway, my two cents.

[bruce89]

I bought it in March, and with a bundled iPod ...
Nice to see that Apple are locking you into their iTunes service already.

Why would you have to buy Quicktime just to get full-screen, even though you paid loads for the computer in the first place? Of course, the solution is just to install VLC.

[GarethMB]

I had to use a Mac last semester. I hated it. It randomly crashed just after i had imported all my footage into iMovie, so i had to do it again. There is nothing intuitive about only having one mouse button or hiding all the USB ports and power button at the back of the monitor. OS X's eye candy is quite nice, but it doesn't beat Compiz. The effect of all the eye candy is the RAM gets choked. Seriously OS X is a one ap at a time OS and i'm all about having lots of programs running at once.

The link between the 'i' series of programs is a joke, the first time i burned my project somehow between going from imovie to idvd the sound was lost. I had to reimport and re-render which frankly takes ages, i'm only burning a DVD for crist sakes. Safari is the slowest browser ever, i swear, and its really clunky with it.

And to finish my project i had to bring my laptop with ubuntu on it in anyways so i could rip some films but oh wait iMovie can't handle .vob. Thanks, Mr Jobs, guess i'll use VLC to do what quicktime and iMovie can't.

Mac OS X is a big fat shiney joke.

[f1dave]

Nice to see that Apple are locking you into their iTunes service already.

Why would you have to buy Quicktime just to get full-screen, even though you paid loads for the computer in the first place? Of course, the solution is just to install VLC.

VLC is installed, funnily enough.

iTunes is great- but I have yet to find something on there that is good enough to warrant me buying it as opposed to grabbing a cd from my local music store or an archive of free, live concerts.

I think people can take the whole mac marketing thing a little too seriously, in a number of ways- either becoming obsessive with the mac and not seeing flaws, or totally dismissing it in the first place on the assumption that a person buys a mac for the reasons mac proclaims. I hardly ever use frontrow- even though its a good program, I just don't use it. Does this mean I've wasted my money though? Of course not.

[bruce89]

I think people can take the whole mac marketing thing a little too seriously, in a number of ways- either becoming obsessive with the mac and not seeing flaws, or totally dismissing it in the first place on the assumption that a person buys a mac for the reasons mac proclaims.
I don't like the way they call "Windows" a "PC". There is nothing wrong with the hardware, provided it runs Linux.
...archive of free, live concerts...
There was a large concert on near Kinross (Scotland though!) over the weekend.

[Bezvardis]

From 1991-2005 I used windows of different kinds (and am still using). Since 2005 I am using aslo Mac OSX (PowerBook). Since a month ago I use Ubuntu as well. Here are some points to counter the nagging of the original post:
1) in Mac OSX I never ever needed to open termina and type there any sudo's and similar crap (excuse my French)
2) in all environments where I worked OsX during this year of intensive everyday usage around the globe connected flawlessly to anything. (which is not the case with Ubuntu which constantly require some sudo-grooming)

Now, this said, I think the current version of Ubuntu is nice too, but still it is not for 'human beings' yet, considered that 'human beings' don't come with innate knowledge of command lines. MacOSX on the contrary does not require any of such knowledge and most of the tasks can be performed intuitively. For those who think that computing IS command-line, of course Ubuntu and any other Linux is the perfect choice. But I think that Ubuntu is going rapidly away from the terminal-experience-as-computing.

Concerning speed... I dont think Ubuntu is the definite leader here either. I know my desktop where I run it is not the fastest, but windows seems to perform many (especially multiple windows) tasks much better. I still have Windows XP for one reason only on my machine: I need it to watch internet TV (which has the digital rights management thing in it and therefore wouldnt play under Ubuntu). Otherwise I would delete it promptly.

[f1dave]

I don't like the way they call Windows a PC. There is nothing wrong with the hardware, provided it runs Linux.

There was a large concert on near Kinross (Scotland though!) over the weekend.

Och! Aye, me friend from England was nearby... :P

And I completely agree with you about the way they call windows a pc... but this is marketing- I generally dislike marketers, I find them to be evil prophets of propaganda and ruiners of the truth. Except social marketers, those people actually do consider what they're doing.

That said, if my marketing mates from uni ever read this, sorry guys!

[Rick 1]

**It's been brought up firefox is as slow as a slug. Well, the vast majority of people I know don't use firefox, they use camino, which has been designed with the mac in mind in all aspects- looks, performance, UI integration, etc.
Firefox, Camino - same diff. They both use the Gecko engine. Firefox is not as slow as a slug once it's started but that Gecko engine takes forever to load.

DIY: go to disk and see how big a Gecko executable is. You're talking 10-15 MB. Now compare with Safari. About 1 MB. Now check the dependencies. Be sure to count all the stuff in the Camino/Firefox package ALL of it: the dependencies, the graphics, the whole ball of wax.

The Gecko engine is very good - it just takes a while to load. What the danged thing was designed for platform wise has no bearing.

[bruce89]

Firefox, Camino - same diff. They both use the Gecko engine. Firefox is not as slow as a slug once it's started but that Gecko engine takes forever to load.
Camino is to MacOS X as Epiphany is to GNOME. (In other words, it uses the native widget set for the UI)

[Rick 1]

Camino is to MacOS X as Epiphany is to GNOME. (In other words, it uses the native widget set for the UI)
Somewhat but what I can see not completely. But it still has zip to do with speed.

[bruce89]

Somewhat but what I can see not completely. But it still has zip to do with speed.
No, but it looks nicer. The UI elements in Camino/Epiphany are faster although. The actual gecko bit is the same.

[Rick 1]

No, but it looks nicer. The UI elements in Camino/Epiphany are faster although. The actual gecko bit is the same.
Fine. Great. Wonderful. But I thought this thread was about performance. Gee, my bad I guess. :grin:

Camino still makes a lot of bloopers. Not as many as Firefox, but still and all. Part of this is due to the fact those developers have only worked with Windoze, GNOME, KDE, things like that. They've never seen a true OO environment before.

Witness their slaughter of sheets. A royal mess.

[stimpack]

Hey thanks, for what was a little late night rant, it spawned some very interesting comments.

As for hard drive space free, I will get an exact figure later (on ubuntu now prepping for a WoW raid), 50/60 was a guestimate, it definatly was more than half full, in fact I read numerous posts on macrumors discussing why the disks are so full and how to free up some of that space.

As for camino, I guess I will try it, though I like firefox because it is cross-platform /boggle

[kabus]

Now, this said, I think the current version of Ubuntu is nice too, but still it is not for 'human beings' yet, considered that 'human beings' don't come with innate knowledge of command lines.

Last time I checked human beings came with the innate ability to learn.

[aysiu]

Human beings don't come with an innate knowledge of how to speak sentences or wear clothes, either.

I guess those, like the command-line, aren't worth learning.

The terminal is just like any other language--it's powerful if learned, but it needs to be learned. I can cross my legs and jump up and down every time I want to tell someone I want to go to the bathroom, or I can take the time to learn language and say, "Excuse me. I have to to go the bathroom. I'll be right back."

I prefer speaking and writing to charades.

[tseliot]

Human beings don't come with an innate knowledge of how to speak sentences or wear clothes, either.

I guess those, like the command-line, aren't worth learning.

The terminal is just like any other language--it's powerful if learned, but it needs to be learned. I can cross my legs and jump up and down every time I want to tell someone I want to go to the bathroom, or I can take the time to learn language and say, "Excuse me. I have to to go the bathroom. I'll be right back."

I prefer speaking and writing to charades.

Nice image ;)

And BTW when I tried (for 2-3 minutes a Mac a few days ago) I expected to lauch programs and open folders with a double click but it didn't work (ok, shame on me).

Of course then I used the equivalent of Beagle to launch apps.

[fuscia]

Last time I checked human beings came with the innate ability to learn.

that's a gross generalization.

[metaltailz]

I think the main point of OS X is too be nice and shiny, pleasing to the eye. If you actually want to get some work done, well, your screwed. I was in Futureshop a while ago and I saw a demo Mac running OS X. It looked beautiful, I love who the windows minimized. After that I got bored, it had NOTHING! Things were slow to load, slow to close. It was just a general pain in the *****.

[professor_chaos]

I think the main point of OS X is too be nice and shiny, pleasing to the eye. If you actually want to get some work done, well, your screwed. I was in Futureshop a while ago and I saw a demo Mac running OS X. It looked beautiful, I love who the windows minimized. After that I got bored, it had NOTHING! Things were slow to load, slow to close. It was just a general pain in the *****.

Care to elaborate a bit? Some specific examples might be constructive and help others understand why you feel the way you do.

[f1dave]

I think the main point of OS X is too be nice and shiny, pleasing to the eye. If you actually want to get some work done, well, your screwed. I was in Futureshop a while ago and I saw a demo Mac running OS X. It looked beautiful, I love who the windows minimized. After that I got bored, it had NOTHING! Things were slow to load, slow to close. It was just a general pain in the *****.

Demo machines, at least where I am, are notoriously bad examples of hardware in action. They never have the best software installed (if any software at all bar the OS), they've been thumped and hammered and played with for eternity, and have probably been left running for god knows how long, with a stack of applications in the background to make memory paging oh so fun. What's more, they don't have the extra RAM that makes say a macbook pro turn from an alright machine into an absolute bullet.

I would advise if you really want to see a mac in action, talk to someone who owns one. Even better, talk to a linux/unix enthusiast who owns one. I'm sure they'll be happy to show you their machine, no doubt decked out with the best gear, customised apps and extra bits that make it so attractive to them. Then you'll start to see some of the attraction of OS X and Apple computers in general.

Remember, a base linux install (even with a DE installed) doesn't always look fantastic or have all the applications you want either. A friend of mine for example is a gnome user, but cannot stand to use his machine until he has amaroK, Opera and gdesklets installed. If you spend a bit of time and think about what you want, there's always going to be something that can fufill those objectives.

[PryGuy]

I haven't been using Apple products for a while, so I can't judge of the speed and such, but I can't agree with your critics related to the software that comes with MacOSX.
iTunes is complete crap compared to AmarokAnd i think that iTunes is a masterpiece, probably the best music player ever created! And I'm dreaming of it's Linux port though I doubt it will happen. All your decisions are so personal and not all of us think the way you do.

iWeb is web design for the retarded, seriously if you cant figure out dreamweaver you shouldn't be exposing us to your crappy webpages.Dreamweaver is a professional software my friend, and it costs pretty penny. Do you critisize VW Golf because it's not as fast as Lamborgini Diablo? I doubt that 'cause you understand that these two cars are for different things and for different people really.

[Bezvardis]

Do you critisize VW Golf because it's not as fast as Lamborgini Diablo? I doubt that 'cause you understand that these two cars are for different things and for different people really.

Yes, and a tractor is a beautiful piece of machinery, it has lots of possibilities and zillion horsepowers but if one would come to a person who needs a car and try selling the tractor to him (her)... :) In short MacOSX is ready for mainstream usage. It does not require lots of learning to work flawlessly on it. Same with Windows. The result: millions of people are ready to open their vallets for OSX and Windows exactly because of this feature. There is no need to argue that a tuned up Linux works like God. That's true. But there is also no need to pick on people who don't possess the knowledge to do the tuning or downplay OS's that allow them doing that. I applaud Ubuntu project exactly because it has left the arrogance of 'if you cannot learn the command-line you are not worth a computer' (well - or on the way to leaving it :) )

Concerning speed - a relative thing. Right now I am writing this message on my PB (which after a week of pain I managed to hook-up wirelessly with my Ubuntu desktop, because I had to 'learn' a lot, i.e., copy-paste lots of command lines from forums) and on the Ubuntu desktop the nice screen-saver is crawling like a snail. In this situation my speed test is definately in favour of the PowerBook

[PryGuy]

I applaud Ubuntu project exactly because it has left the arrogance of 'if you cannot learn the command-line you are not worth a computer' (well - or on the way to leaving it :) )I applaud it too, but it's still not ready to hit the shelves so far IMHO though it gets closer and closer release after release. You still neet to tweak your xorg.conf manually in most cases to release the power of your graphic card for instance! I really want Ubuntu could install with the OpenGL acceleration enabled out of the box! Yet it would be nice if xorg could do a reconfiguration on the fly if user would swap his graphic card for another one. Yet I'd love to see Grub and Samba frontends that would allow to configure their .conf files without necessity to edit them with gedit or mc.
Yet, I want all the folders but home to be hidden by default for all not root accounts. There's no use in them 'cause user can't write/modify their contents and their quantity will scare an ordinary user (read: switcher) IMHO.
and on the Ubuntu desktop the nice screen-saver is crawling like a snail.That's a nice confirmation to the words that I've said above, you have to enable OpenGL acceleration in xorg.conf to make it fly like a breeze!:)

[kabus]

that's a gross generalization.

http://www.elizabethbear.com/moodtheme/amused.jpg

Well played.

[NNxD]

As a Ubuntu and Mac user I can not leave this uncommented.

If its an Apple application like Safari is loads fast, if its not, like Firefox jeez, it takes 40seconds to load.

This is not normal. I bet you there is something wrong with that machine. There is no way on earth that a healthy Mac Os X system needs that kind of time to start Firefox.

The inbuilt applications *suck*, you have to get Firefox to replace safari, VLC to replace quicktime. iTunes is complete crap compared to Amarok, the terminal is pathetic compared to Konsole or Gnome Terminal.

Your opinion. The mac apps are really basic and for the novice user, I give you that (let me exclude iTunes which is a great music player). But you know.. if you buy a Mac, you have a Mac. If you try to make a linux system out of it, you will run into problems. VLC on mac is crap. I never could get it to work right.


oh and my 60gb disk came 50gb full... 10gb to play with, nice

There we have the proof. There is definitely something wrong with that computer. There is no way on earth they ship this system with 50GB of used harddrive.

I admit it, Mac Os X is slower than Linux. You have to have powerful hardware to have it running smooth, but it's not that bad.

PS: With all due respect: If I EVER heard a "Fanboy" in my life ... it's you. Sorry :rolleyes:

[bruce89]

VLC on mac is crap. I never could get it to work right.

Your opinion!

[PryGuy]

PS: With all due respect: If I EVER heard a "Fanboy" in my life ... it's you. Sorry :rolleyes:
Yeah, I doubt that Firefox can start 40 seconds too... Yet, I love iTunes as well, it's a nice and a well designed app and I've never seen something like this in Linux so far... It is strange how the guy could use Linux if he can't even tweak his MacOSX system or understand why it takes 50Gb on his hard drive!!!

[Stormy Eyes]

Your opinion!

VLC on Mac is fine until you try to watch a bootleg anime or a porn video that uses a codec that VLC for Mac doesn't support. Then you're screwed.

[Bezvardis]

Firefox starts on my 2 year old PowerBook in 10 seconds or less...
As for opinions - I like iTunes as well and did not like Amarok when I opened it for the first time. Indeed - a matter of habit and opinion.

[bruce89]

VLC on Mac is fine until you try to watch a bootleg anime or a porn video that uses a codec that VLC for Mac doesn't support. Then you're screwed.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html

Firefox starts on my 2 year old PowerBook in 10 seconds or less...
As for opinions - I like iTunes as well and did not like Amarok when I opened it for the first time. Indeed - a matter of habit and opinion.

I'll say it again, Camino might work better, as it uses native MacOS X widgets.

[3rdalbum]

It's completely unfair to say "iTunes is crap because Amarok is better".

Amarok is better because it's the most feature-packed program of its genre. I don't even think Apple would argue with that ;-)

(Note: I don't use Amarok, so don't flame me :-)

[PryGuy]

Same here! But the most important thing is not how many features program has but how many useful features it has! I mean the features that can and will be used by users.

[Stormy Eyes]

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html

I checked that. Guess what; a lot of the anime and porn I've downloaded lately is in WMV3 format. Quicktime doesn't handle that **** either, so I have to look into making mplayer work on Mac.

[Bezvardis]

you have to enable OpenGL acceleration in xorg.conf to make it fly like a breeze!:)

can you hint me how to do that?

[SilentGreg]

VLC on Mac is fine until you try to watch a bootleg anime or a porn video that uses a codec that VLC for Mac doesn't support. Then you're screwed.

Or if you try to stream music from your desktop in the basement over wireless, then it sucks. Dropped packets everywhere. :(

Anyway, I own a MacBook, it's my first Mac. (Sorta) -- I love it, it's fast and everything does infact work. I am not a fanboy of anything nor do I rub one off for Steve Jobs but it is a nice machine. I'm happy. OS X is nice, you just have to get used to it...

My two cents.


Greg

[PryGuy]

can you hint me how to do that?
Yup, what graphic card do you have? Thank God if you've got nVidia. If it's so you only have to do execute the lines below and restart gdm or reboot.sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-kernel-common
sudo nvidia-glx-config enableThe second line didn't work for me in Ubuntu 6.06 though and I just had to edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf manually, scroll down to the "Section "Device"" and find the following line there: Driver "vesa"Replace "vesa" (or anything that is in quotes) with "nvidia" and restart gdm or reboot.

It's a bit different with the graphic cards from other manufacturers, Intel drivers seem to be bundled with Ubuntu 6.06 and it worked for me when I changed "vesa" to "i810" on my notebook.

P.S. You better install mc 'cause it all may lead you to the X failure and text mode and mc will help. Forgive me, the Linux gurus but I think that the Midnight Commander is easier than the command line...:)

[tseliot]

Yup, what graphic card do you have? Thank God if you've got nVidia. If it's so you only have to do execute the lines below and restart gdm or reboot.sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-kernel-common
sudo nvidia-glx-config enable

nvidia-glx-config enable is broken

You can follow my guide (Method 1):
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=139264

[PryGuy]

ah, that explains it... I really shouldn't have given information that didn't work for me for some reason, sorry...

[Bezvardis]

Thanks, yesterday I did this: opened Synaptic Package manager and followed instructions there for installing nvidia legacy drivers. There was some mistake in automatic installation and I had to change manually the driver name to 'nvidia'. After rebooting the screensavers are smooth. Is the method I used OK or actually differ from what you suggest? I am also still trying to find if the redrawing of windows can be somehow optimized. At the moment they are redrawing very slowly if more than one window is open (i.e., if moved they get smeared around the screen for a second or two)

[curtis]

Ditto...considering a BASE OS X install with iTunes, and a few other things should be at MOST 10 gigs. I don't think even iLife takes up much space.
10GB is still a lot for an operating system though... imagine how many applications you could fit inside GNU/Linux, whilst still keeping under 10GB.

[PryGuy]

Thanks, yesterday I did this: opened Synaptic Package manager and followed instructions there for installing nvidia legacy drivers. There was some mistake in automatic installation and I had to change manually the driver name to 'nvidia'. After rebooting the screensavers are smooth. Is the method I used OK or actually differ from what you suggest? I am also still trying to find if the redrawing of windows can be somehow optimized. At the moment they are redrawing very slowly if more than one window is open (i.e., if moved they get smeared around the screen for a second or two)
That's strange... You say that your OpenGL screensaver runs smooth now but it takes much time for your system to redraw windows? Am I right? That's really strange 'cause if you install the proper driver for your video card it accelerates 2D as well...

[Bezvardis]

Am I right? That's really strange 'cause if you install the proper driver for your video card it accelerates 2D as well...

well, I hoped that it would, but this window redrawing stayed the same,.ie., it was slow before as well. Only the 3d changed.

[Bezvardis]

10GB is still a lot for an operating system though... imagine how many applications you could fit inside GNU/Linux, whilst still keeping under 10GB.

I agree, I have on my desktop 10 GB disk space in totall and there I have put an Ubuntu, a Windows XP and still some space left :-) I think the lots of disk space OSX is taking is partly due to the fact that there you have also integrated that OS9 (classic) part

[PryGuy]

well, I hoped that it would, but this window redrawing stayed the same,.ie., it was slow before as well. Only the 3d changed.Tell us your system specs please.

[Bezvardis]

Tell us your system specs please.

A good question... is there a way I can get them listed?

[PryGuy]

A good question... is there a way I can get them listed?Do you dualboot with Windows? You can watch there. I can't remember any sysinfo program in Ubuntu so far.
The thing is that probably your processor is too slow to handle not accelerated 2D. Or your video card is not compatible with the drivers you've installed.
How old is your PC?

[Bezvardis]

Do you dualboot with Windows? You can watch there. I can't remember any sysinfo program in Ubuntu so far.
The thing is that probably your processor is too slow to handle not accelerated 2D. Or your video card is not compatible with the drivers you've installed.
How old is your PC?

OK, here I got something:
AMD Duron 700
memory: 256MB
video card, nVidia Riva TNT2 with 32Mb memory
It's an older PC but I got it from a place where it was used (back in 2000) as a gaming PC :-)

[PryGuy]

Well, it's an old machine of course but well, I can't evaluate how slow the GUI on your machine actually works. It's a problem if it's really slow... I have no such experience everything works smooth for me... Hope that more experienced people here will give you a helping hand.:)

Know what? You better start a new topic in the appropriate sub-forum and tell the people that visit it of your problem. Guess they'll help you.

[Lucho]

So, resurecting an old topic (or beating a dead horse),
here's a question for those who are more experienced than
I.
If I have an Apple laptop- what ever the G4 one is called
(that's the powerbook?)- how is the performance vs Intel vs AMD?
I mean that, assuming the same hardware (video card, RAM, etc)
and OS (Dapper for example), how does the PPC-powered mac
compare to a Pentium-powered/Athlon-powered PC of the same speed?
I'm also assuming that same hardware and OS is for general
(mostly multimedia) tasks like watching DVDs, listening to music,
ripping/editing/encoding both, administrative stuff (if it would
really make a difference), perhaps a game or two, and the like.
My Google-fu is a bit rusty; if benchmarks have already
been posted, can someone point me in the right direction? Otherwise,
what's the general consensus?

[aysiu]

According to Apple's website (http://www.apple.com/imac/intelcoreduo.html), the Intel processors are 2-3 times faster.

[Lucho]

According to Apple's website, the Intel processors are 2-3 times faster.

I've heard that, but given that Apple use to say the same thing
about it's G5 (i.e. it's faster, better, etc), I was hoping for a
second opinion. My question was if, assuming equal hardware and
software, the PPC performs better than the x86 for the same GHZ.

[aysiu]

Maybe at the time they introduced G5, it was faster and better. Likewise, when they moved to PowerPC, maybe that was faster and better at the time, too.

Now, though, Intel Core Duo is faster and better.

[Lucho]

Maybe at the time they introduced G5, it was faster and better. Likewise, when they moved to PowerPC, maybe that was faster and better at the time, too.

Now, though, Intel Core Duo is faster and better.

Ok, that's what I figured. The thing is though, is that I'm asking
because of a chance of getting a G4 or G5- probably used, but new ones
are still sold here :shock: . So, my question has to do with if it's
worth it to buy one, or if I should stick to a regular laptop- which here
means an Intel ~2GHZ. More or less the same as the G5, but is it worth
the extra cash?

[szadek]

As far as I'm concerned, the Macbooks are very pretty. But I wouldn't buy one. A: I've learned the hard way that the hardware isn't stable. B: I discovered the reason why (Acer makes Macbooks, Acer outsources to bottom of the pile component manufacture ECS (EliteGroup Systems) which makes Fry's PCs, "Great Quality" PCs.) That last one is enough to turn me off permanently. I was considering it until I learned about ECS.

BTW: For those who know about ECS, they will soon be manufacturing Fujitsu :(



I've worked on the Macbooks for the last few months, along with G3/G4s/Powerbooks. They are alot faster than it's predecessors, and that display is gorgeous. Easier to work on than the old ones too. Poor design has caused alot of issues, including a gap between palmrest and basecover, discolorization (reason for recall) and random shut downs caused by every issue under the sun, from OS to RAM to possibly heatsink sensors, to the "main logic board" (MLB for short), and the SOD (Super Optical Drive). Even the newest Revision (10.4.7) could be the cause.

I think the main things I like about the Macbook is A: You can load OSX on any Macbook from firewire drive and create OS images, and re-image the main drive as well (as well as diagnose the hardware) I want to try this on Linux/WinXP, not sure if I can on Linux, but Ghost should do it with WinXP.

B: Target mode: Linking two computers, using one as a firewire drive could be very handy for fast transfers and troubleshooting.

C: Airport card's ability to extend the wireless network.

D: Is it the OS or the Display that causes everything to be so nice looking?

I also like how the GUI loads from the get go, no text while loading, just a simple Apple with a loading indicator. This would be nicer if you did have the ability to switch to the text mode for troubleshooting.

Everytime I worked on one I couldn't help but to get engrossed on some of the design decisions, then I'd have to remember the lack of intake ports, overheating, random shut downs, almost impossible to fix gaps, etc..

Actually, I'd have to say that seeing OSX and realizing it was a FreeBSD port, made me check out FreeBSD, which led me to Ubuntu after realizing that not alot is supported in FreeBSD.

Ok, I am tired and rambling. Good night.

[3rdalbum]

Ok, that's what I figured. The thing is though, is that I'm asking
because of a chance of getting a G4 or G5- probably used, but new ones
are still sold here :shock: . So, my question has to do with if it's
worth it to buy one, or if I should stick to a regular laptop- which here
means an Intel ~2GHZ. More or less the same as the G5, but is it worth
the extra cash?

The G4 chips (as used in Apple laptops pre-Intel) are badly dated; they simply don't deliver bang for the buck like they did quite a few years ago.

If you're thinking of getting a G5 desktop Mac, be aware that Ubuntu doesn't have fan control with them. You might have more success with Gentoo... possibly. But once again, the G5s are dated. And to make things worse, Mac OS X was built more for rapid development than for actual performance.

If the price is right for one of these machines, buy it, because they'll work for years after they're obselete. But if you want performance at the right price, your only real decision is which x86-based computer to buy.

[SKLP]

I checked that. Guess what; a lot of the anime and porn I've downloaded lately is in WMV3 format. Quicktime doesn't handle that **** either, so I have to look into making mplayer work on Mac.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx might be what you're looking for ?

[RAV TUX]

I was going to write this in a Mac forum but there are so many idiotic apple fanboys that lack any technical skills and worship at the altar of Steve Jobs testicles, that I would just be flamed into oblivion. So I am presenting my experiences to you, let it serve as a warning, the grass is not greener and hype means little.

I bought myself a Macbook, 2ghz 1gb ram intel, these things are considered fast by the apple fanboys used to PPC. I will dismiss that straight away, the hardware may be fast, but OS X is the slowest OS I have yet used, which is Linux and Windows. A bit like windows, it boots fast and displays the desktop but kinda cheats, you aint getting anything done for another 10seconds.

If its an Apple application like Safari is loads fast, if its not, like Firefox jeez, it takes 40seconds to load. Apps like google earth run slower than the Linux version (and the linux version leaves some to be desired)

The inbuilt applications *suck*, you have to get Firefox to replace safari, VLC to replace quicktime. iTunes is complete crap compared to Amarok, the terminal is pathetic compared to Konsole or Gnome Terminal. iWeb is web design for the retarded, seriously if you cant figure out dreamweaver you shouldn't be exposing us to your crappy webpages.

Every so often you see a beach-ball mouse cursor that stops you doing anything, I remember when I used windows 95, maybe it was even 3.1 with the hourglass... its like that..

You get strange errors every so often, the usual advice is to 'repair' permissions, which usually works, but the fact that the unix underbelly is getting screwed up that much is disturbing.

Clearly there are some good points.. I would still take it over Windows. Things do 'just work', WPA wireless,bluetooth, all do work (with some minors flaws). I also use it to burn CDs since my CD burning broke in dapper.

OS X is often considered to be the pinnacle, its not, its quite good but no more!, I'd recommend it for a senile grandparent to learn with.

oh and my 60gb disk came 50gb full... 10gb to play with, nice =/

Overall I have found OS X a great disappointment, OS X is great for X-windows users for the most part...

as many OS-X users are discovering Linux. It is all part of an symbiotic evulotionary process:

windows>OS X>Linux

(and all correlations interweaved, respectively8-))

[PenguinMan]

I am not disappointed with Mac OS X at all, because we have two Macs in our household. I use the Mac mainly for graphics and web stuff.

The forthcoming Mac OS X Leopard is really going to let Windows Vista have it, and that I am looking forward to very much. It's going to be so lovely to see Microsoft squirm when Apple unleashes 10.5 early next year.

[kostkon]

I just hate Mac OS X, this is my feeling. For various reasons; please don't ask me to elaborate with some offensive post... ;) pleeeaaseee...!!!:mrgreen:

[H.E. Pennypacker]

For someone who has never used Mac OSX, this thread is a complete shock. I have always thought Macs were divine products that out-shined any existing operating system, in almost all areas.

I can't believe some of this stuff! I always thought Mac's Quartz was lightning fast and everything, as claimed by Apple's website. I believe aysiu (a forum member) said Quartz is easily superior to our (Linux) Xorg.

Remarkable! I was even telling my sister Macs are high-end products that are nothing but quality, and explained that is why they're as expensive as they are. I've always thought Macs were from the future, and we (Linux and Windows) are ancient operating systems that should model after OSX.

Thanks for the wake-up, you all.

[kostkon]

For someone who has never used Mac OSX, this thread is a complete shock. I have always thought Macs were divine products that out-shined any existing operating system, in almost all areas.

I can't believe some of this stuff! I always thought Mac's Quartz was lightning fast and everything, as claimed by Apple's website. I believe aysiu (a forum member) said Quartz is easily superior to our (Linux) Xorg.

Remarkable! I was even telling my sister Macs are high-end products that are nothing but quality, and explained that is why they're as expensive as they are. I've always thought Macs were from the future, and we (Linux and Windows) are ancient operating systems that should model after OSX.

Thanks for the wake-up, you all.

Hey, I can undestand you, believe me!! I thought the same thing until...

... this damn day when my flatmate bought a PPC G5 and I got to live with Mac Os X for a long time. I was seeing him all the time using it and I also used it some times and I really got sick of it. What a perfomance-killer OS this is!! I hate the GUI conventions of it. The bar, I don't know how to call it, the small targets you have to hit with the pointer (my opinion), the ball as you said etc., the whole feeling of it. I just don't like it.

No apps to get install easily, OK there is fink but again you have a small number of free apps. You have to do the same as with Windows, scour the net for freeware and shareware apps, that you hope you'll be able to crack.

Speed? Two processors and not as speedy as I expected to be. On the contrary, I was utterly dissapointed.

And of course you have to pay as a sucker for EVERY new version of the OS, which upgrades much more frequently than Windows; with Windows you can justify the money for an upgrade every 5 years or so. But for Mas OS X???!!!

In general, I don't have the courage to be more specific about what I disliked but believe me I had a full experience with it, so my opinion is not from google images and imagination.

Thus, as a recap, I say I had good feelings about apple and Mac OS X, but after that day I saw the truth and it wasn't so pretty, unfortunately. As a example, I thought apple is good with open-source, but even from only my practical experience with the system, I saw this was not the case.

My heart was broken after that day... (hahahaha!!!! very emotional ending!!)

;) ;) ;) ;)

[chetman]

First, I use both Ubuntu and OS X on a daily basis. I prefer OS X for its polish and for the apps to which I have access there -- and, in general, ease of use. Ubuntu is the easiest to install, configure, and use Linux I've yet seen, and I'm sure it's only going to improve, but for my money it still lags behind OS X on some important points, especially on a laptop.

Just a few bits in defense of OS X, since more than a couple incorrect points are raised above:

1. iTunes and iPod don't lock you into any DRM at all if you're primarily interested in ripping your own CDs, or in downloading from a non-DRM online vendor like eMusic. For simple management of music and playlists, iTunes is pretty nice. It's probably not the best ever, but because I use an iPod, it's the one I'll keep using. I don't do DRM if I can avoid it, though, which means that when I decide to move my music to something else I'll have essentially zero trouble.

2. The original poster's brand new Macbook probably had two major apparent speed issues brewing.

a. First, Apple is darn near criminal in their willingness to ship machines with the bare minimum of RAM. OS X will *run* in 256MB, but you sure won't be happy. A gig is probably the functional minimum. (Looking back, I see he has a gig, so that's probably not it.)

b. Since we're in the first year of the Intel transition, many applications aren't yet Intel native and are therefore running in emulation. I expect Apple's are native, but I don't know about things like Firefox (e.g.). That's definitely going to hurt apparent speed, but that's also going to get much better.

3. It is somewhat unfortunate that the Finder is the only file browser that ships with OS X, but there are others available (free and nonfree). I find I'm pretty happy with it for minor tasks, but I end up at a bash prompt for bigger jobs.

4. iWeb is probably crap. Some pros may use Dreamweaver, but most of the good ones I know use a text editor. No pros use iWeb. It's for your mom to put up vacation pix.

5. Terminal's ok, but iTerm has lots of OS X geek types pretty happy. I haven't switched, but keep considering it.

6. TextMate uber alles.

7. The O.P. complains of boot times, but I can't imagine why. My experience with OS X laptops is that a reboot isn't really required more than about once a month (if that). Boot time is a bit of a red herring.

8. The inbuilts probably aren't best of breed, but I use Mail, Address Book, and iCal because of their easy integration, both on my desktop and with my Treo. That's hard to beat. (I'm fond of saying that Mail is the worst mail program I've ever used -- except for all the other ones.)

9. Can you say more about the "strange errors?" I've used OS X daily since launch on at least one of my boxes, and haven't had much experience with weird failures or errors.

10. I'm glad you backed off your disk usage "estimate". I've got a new-ish G4 Powerbook (Dec 05) that still has 29 GB available of 100GB, but I've also got 40GB of MP3s on it. I think it's safe to say Apple leaves you with plenty of room.

Kostkon has more recent gripes, most of them personal in nature. I'll note that the Dock you seem to have trouble hitting is in fact adjustable, but most high-power OS X folks eschew it for most tasks and use the excellent Quicksilver launcher/butler/kitchen-sink tool. Beachballing is typically due to an errant task (when the ball is confined to a single app context) or disk swapping (when it's not); if the latter, check your RAM total and see above in re: suggested real-world minimums.

I'm glad you mention fink, since the presence of a good package manager seems to make Linux types happier. I use it often, and find it generally good.

As for OS revs, well, yes. They cost a shocking $100 or so, but come out relatively infrequently. OS X 10.1 (the first real usable version) was released in 2001, ISTR, and in 5 years we've had .2, .3, and .4, so fewer than one a year. We won't see .5 until spring, I believe.) Not everyone upgrades, though the increased performance and additional features are enticing enough that folks who live and work in OS X are generally hard pressed to find a reason NOT to.

Sure, OS X isn't for everyone. You can't please everyone, nor should Apple try. Ubuntu isn't for everyone, either; I can't imagine trying to get my mother or my CEO to use it full time. However, if you need *nix power and flexibility while retaining compatibility with your poor Windows-bound colleagues, it's probably a good place to go. That's doubly true for laptop folks. Linux is still kind of a pain to make work on a laptop -- not just boot, but hibernate, use full screen rez, etc. OS X on Apple hardware just works, right out of the box, and you're on your way.

best,
C

[3rdalbum]

Unfortunately, OS X is fundamentally low-performance. Darwin is derived from a kernel which has performance problems (hybrid-microkernel), parts of the system were written in the 1990s for NextStep, and the preferred programming language for it is Objective-C (performance-wise, not up there with C or even C++). There are so many layers to OS X as well that I'm sure eat up a fair bit of memory.

I'm sure it's very easy to hack around on OS X, and that explains why Apple have such a frequent update cycle with many many new features each time. But the fact is, OS X is a bit of a slouch when it comes to speed.

[ComplexNumber]

OS X is a bit of a slouch when it comes to speed. they did some tests to compare some time ago and found that linux is,overall, 5 times faster than mac OS X.
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436&p=8

[Bezvardis]

I've always thought Macs were from the future, and we (Linux and Windows) are ancient operating systems that should model after OSX.

Thanks for the wake-up, you all.

Don't be fooled. I am convinced that the couple of people that complain here about Mac OSX are a tiny tiny minority. As a person who works both on Mac OSX and on Ubuntu I can say that (sorry, guys) Ubuntu cannot even be compared. I don't know what kind of speed some people are talking here about or what kind of performance because Ubuntu (and probably other Linux distributives) first and foremost simply doesn't work. In order to make them work you have to work hard to optimise, personalise and update. In comparison to that - Mac OSX (just like Windows) works out of the box. Plug-and-play so to say. Now, it is a very nice thing to be able to custom-build a car in one's own garage and then boast that it outperforms every single factory made Toyota or Ford. But just don't tell me that I should buy a container of spare parts and then be happy about this purchase of a 'car'. Ubunutu is a bit more than just a pile of spare parts, but it needs serious mending before it can work.

In comparison to this crap MacOSX is just heavens - imagine this:
:D it works out of the box!
:D In 99% of cases there is no hacking needed, and no command line has to be messed with!
:D Programs can be installed via simple installer or by drag and drop! (compare with synaptic, building pains and dependency issues that you get when you try installing a program in Ubuntu, not to mention that you cannot install most of programms that are not in depositories without extensive knowledge of English and at least basic command-line skills+hours on internet search)
:D Applications can be deleted and re-installed by simple click.

And if somebody tells me that MacOSX is made by use of some older programming language - I don't care (and I am sure - nobody does except some programming snobs) I need it to work and that is what it does brilliantly. If anybody does that on Ubuntu (make it work out of box) only then one can argue about speed and performance.

[PenguinMan]

Yesterday, I installed Mac OS X 10.4.7 (Tiger) on my Power Mac G4 (dual 1.25 GHz, mirror drives) computer that had 10.3.9 (Panther) on it. What a difference - it is like night and day!

My boot up time to the Desktop is less than 30 seconds now! Shutting down takes less than 15 seconds! Very impressive! One thing for sure, Apple has made the OS function more quickly IMO. It is like I have a whole brand new computer again. :)

I am really looking forward to purchasing a new Mac Pro tower in Spring 2007 with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

[ComplexNumber]

I am convinced that the couple of people that complain here about Mac OSX are a tiny tiny minority.
i keep on hearing/reading so many stories about all these people getting fed up with OS X and looking for an alternative (usually linux).
this (http://www.bryanobryan.com/?p=28) highlight some of the many problems that people are having.

[Bezvardis]

No apps to get install easily, OK there is fink but again you have a small number of free apps. You have to do the same as with Windows, scour the net for freeware and shareware apps, that you hope you'll be able to crack.


If you mean that there are no repositories and the associated system - yes, you are right. But you shurely have forgotten that most (all that I have seen so far) apps for Mac OSX can be installed either by drag-and-drop (i.e. the user does not perceive it as an installation at all) or with a simple installer. And believe me - none of the freeware needs to be cracked.

don't get me wrong - Ubuntu's great but it is raw. Only a minority of computer users can use it without specialised help. None of this minority can use it without spending lots of time customising essential things. That is why I am sure that people who are praising Linux over MacOSX are tiny minority.

[PenguinMan]

i keep on hearing/reading so many stories about all these people getting fed up with OS X and looking for an alternative (usually linux).
this (http://www.bryanobryan.com/?p=28) highlight some of the many problems that people are having.

There are imbecile fanboys everywhere in this world, even in the large Ubuntu forums. I try to avoid people like that, because to me a computer is a tool to get your work done. I can't stand it when computer users with any platform start yelling, "I am better than you are." That just makes me want to leave, and leave very quickly.

I like Mac OS X... I have been a Mac user since the AMIGA platform died when Commodore went bankrupt. At the time, it was the natural route for me to take, because I could not stand Windows at all. I run Windows XP now, but only for all my gaming. i.e. especially Day of Defeat: Source. ;)

I also run Ubuntu, but I don't think Linux is anywhere as productive as Mac OS X. I simply get more work done on my Mac. Mac OS X just feels more natural too, because of the relatively strict Apple User Interface Guidelines. Linux comes close, but I find the GUIs for GNOME and KDE leave a lot to be desired. Windows XP? Garbage GUI.

The Macintosh market is growing and growing very fast. This is good IMHO... More Windows users are leaving for the Mac, and some are leaving for Linux. On the whole, I see more Windows users wanting Mac OS X than Linux. Apple now has 12% of the entire notebook market in the USA. That is no small feat for one single company. With the recent introduction of the Mac Pro computers, Apple has hit a huge home run. Few were expecting Apple to use Intel Xeon (dual core) processors, and two of them too! Personally, I was expecting them to go the Core 2 (dual core) route. This new Mac Pro will walk circles around my Power Mac G4 (dual 1.25 GHz), and my G4 is fast with Mac OS X 10.4.7.

I ignored the Mac platform completely since the introduction of 10.3 (Panther), because of all the Mac fanboys. I have learned something though over the last couple of years. Fanboys are everywhere, like a sickening disease. They were with the AMIGA platform. They are also in the Macintosh platform, Windows platform, and yes, even the Linux platform. Just ignore them...

Don't get me wrong... I love using Linux, because it is something new for me, since last summer. I just find I am way more productive on my Mac.

[ComplexNumber]

There are imbecile fanboys everywhere in this world, even in the large Ubuntu forums.the subject of that link was a previous mac software developer who became disgusted and disillusioned with quality of mac software, the whole culture surrounding the mac, and apple in general.
yup, fanboys exist for all OS's.

[3rdalbum]

In order to make them work you have to work hard to optimise, personalise and update. In comparison to that - Mac OSX (just like Windows) works out of the box. Plug-and-play so to say.

Well, when all the hardware is controlled by the makers of the software, it's not too hard to make it work out-of-the-box. Having said that, my Ubuntu worked virtually perfectly from the beginning - only thing I needed to do was install the ATI proprietry driver. No biggie, and I know the same happens on most Ubuntu-running computers.

No optimising necessary, either, but I have optimised a little.

Programs can be installed via simple installer or by drag and drop!

There are heaps of Linux programs which can be installed by a simple installer or drag and drop. Most .debs are easier to install than a drag and a drop. Many other programs like Google Earth and Songbird are installed using a Windowsy-Maccy installer. Nexuiz is a drag and drop application.

The only time installing is difficult is when the developer has been a bit too lazy to create a binary, and only distributes source.

:D Applications can be deleted and re-installed by simple click.

When? And where's the one place you go to update all your programs?

And if somebody tells me that MacOSX is made by use of some older programming language - I don't care (and I am sure - nobody does except some programming snobs). If anybody does that on Ubuntu (make it work out of box) only then one can argue about speed and performance.

Well, Objective-C is a newer programming language, rather than an older one. It's designed so that Apple's engineers can easily write additions to the OS; but it doesn't give the raw speed you need. Most parts of a Linux distro are written in C or C++, which execute much faster than Obj-C.

We all live within the limitations of our means. Ubuntu worked out-of-the-box for me. If I tried to install OS X on this computer, I bet my sound card, CD burner and possibly my Firewire port wouldn't work and couldn't be made to work. "Ahh, but OS X wasn't designed for your computer", I hear you say. Yes, but neither was Ubuntu.

[xenon2000]

I know this is no excuse, but I only got through reading most of the 1st page of this thread. So excuse me if I am repeating what others have said.

My brother and I are long time linux users, since Slackware was first released. Heck, used slackware until 10.2 and then I decided to use Ubuntu. Anyways, different story.

My brother bought a MacBook about 2 months ago. Because he wanted OSX and a Dual Core laptop. At the time a PC version Dual Core laptop was the same cost or higher.

Granted, he loves OSX over Windows XP. And both of use won't switch to Linux for our daily laptops and daily desktop units because of commercial driver support. Different story.

The main thing we both don't like about OSX is that there is no "maximize window" function in OSX... only a "Maximize height" function. Lame. And a few other things that mostly revolve around the transitioning stage from PPC to Intel x86 arch.

For anyone looking at Mac hardware, if you are not going to use OSX and just want to replace it with Linux or Windows, don't waste your money on Mac hardware. Now that it's x86 arch, there is no argument about which hardware is faster or better, etc. So unless the Mac "look" and attention is your main goal, then save your money and get a Dual Core laptop from Dell for $650 shipped and put linux on it. And there are plenty of other x86 laptop and desktop solutions that are cheaper than the Mac x86 solutions.

It's really only worth the cost if you want OSX. Which for me, OSX is the only Commercial "linux" flavor that I would use on a daily basis. Since then I can be assured that when I go into a computer store that the hardware will more than likely be supported and pretested for OSX. And until another flavor of Linux gets that same level of support of 3rd party vendors, I will have to use OSX. (but note, I am actually a big windows XP and soon Vista user on my main machines.) I use Linux where Linux excels; my LAMP webserver and cluster rendering farm for blender (which I am in the middle of completing using Xubuntu 6.06)

[CcA DoGG]

Umm... yeah, whoever started this is right in a couple points, Safari should be replaced with firefox or camino, and quicktime should be replaced with vlc, but it does not boot up slow at all, and all the applications boot fine also, and linux does not have all the games you may want, and also itunes is awesome. All the Os's do have there disadvantages and advantages, but only the disadvantages of mac os x and the advantages of linux were stated.

[paullinux]

I've got 3 computers on this table:
900mHz Duron 768MB ram with Ubuntu
Dell Inspiron laptop 2.8Ghz 512MB ram with XP home
Imac G5 (PPC) with osx.
Guess which one always booted faster...
- Imac G5 boots 3 times faster then Ubuntu...
- XP home, well.. even Ubuntu doesn't need that long...

I know the specs of each are not comparable. But I do not think that it is that important. It is how the booting is set up that makes the difference. And with XP there is that Anti-virus crap that slows it down.

My children (9 and 11) both prefer ubuntu and OSX to play with on the internet (flash games..).
And they are a bit annoyed that they can only play really good games on XP...

As for myself: I do like my mac because it is 'a truelly well made and polished package' Ubuntu still needs allot of tinkering and terminal-stuff to make it work. And most of the times somewhere allong the HOWTO's there is some glitch... the hours of frustration I had with linux...
But there is some sence of releaf and joy when I finally managed to get something working...

Anyway, lets face it: Ubuntu is NOT ready for the main users who just want it to work out of the box. OSX is...

But someday perhaps...

[xenon2000]

Dell Inspiron laptop 2.8Ghz 512MB ram with XP home
- XP home, well.. even Ubuntu doesn't need that long...

Anyway, lets face it: Ubuntu is NOT ready for the main users who just want it to work out of the box. OSX is...

But someday perhaps...

One of my laptops is an AMD Athlon XP-M 2400+ with 512MB ram and the same factory XP Home install from about 4+ years ago and it boots quite fast compared to Ubuntu with 1Gig ram and 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 HT. So you might want to check out your Dell for spyware and even legit apps starting up at boot time.

Though no matter how fast any of my Windows, XP, or Intel Macs take to boot... doesn't matter much to me because they are rarely fully shutdown. Usually in sleep or hibernation. But even my Pentium-III 500Mhz 256MB compaq laptop with XP Pro boots very fast. Much faster than it's original Windows 95 install.

As for OSX, I agree... All distros of Linux are behind the commercial times compared to OSX Linux. The interesting part is that Darwin Linux is free and open source... it's the "desktop" and support of OSX that Apple has created that is the successful part.

[greggfathead]

I found many Mac users use OS X simply for the sake of not using Microsoft. Well, there is Linux for that.

...

If you wanna "Think Different", use Linux. And save yourself the time of getting a decent notebook that won't whine.



ArizonaKid, you are my new hero. I don't think I've ever heard a better Linux / Mac argument - well put!

[hajk]

Trying to wrap this discussion up:

1. OS X ain't Linux
2. Linux ain't OS X
3. Looks are somewhat important
4. Price is somewhat important
5. Speed is somewhat important
6. Items 3--5 are not all that important

Geez.

[anil_robo]

I like OS X in just about two weeks of usage.

When I received the macbook, the default install occupied about 20GB disk space. I upgraded the RAM myself to 2GB, and the system is now flying like a dragon.

Bootup time: My bootup time is a little less than 50 seconds... thats' when the desktop shows up. I have a lot of apps added to the startup (Mail, yahoo messenger, skype, about a dozen automator actions, and things like that) which takes another 20 seconds... so I have a fully functional desktop in just about 70 seconds, which is nice by all comparisons.

The interface: Well... umm.... I didn't like OS X in the beginning... but I recall my first experience with computers 12 years ago, and I didn't like windows on first use either. I didn't like Ubuntu on first use either. However, each interface has its own pros and cons, and it's a matter of adjustability. Only if you remember the furore on these forums that was caused by changing the desktop looks from breezy to dapper :)

Ubuntu on macbook: My external firewire hard drive arrived today morning. I believe macbook can boot up from a firewire HD... so I'm planning to install Ubuntu on that the coming weekend. I hope I don't have to hack Ubuntu much...! And I also hope the iSight camera will work with Ubuntu.

[xenon2000]

Ubuntu on macbook: My external firewire hard drive arrived today morning. I believe macbook can boot up from a firewire HD... so I'm planning to install Ubuntu on that the coming weekend. I hope I don't have to hack Ubuntu much...! And I also hope the iSight camera will work with Ubuntu.

The intel Macbooks are standard Intel hardware and will work fine with XP and linux. As for firewire and USB booting, that is dependant on the bios and not the hardware as it's standard current Intel hardware. As for booting from Firewire on a PC or Mac, I am not sure I have personally used any x86 bios that allowed booting from Firewire.

As for installing Ubuntu, it has to work, it's an x86 computer with a standard Intel cpu and board. Now as for drivers, that is a different story. You may or may not have sound, or accelerated video drivers, etc. USB, firewire will work for sure. Ethernet will most likely work or has drivers available. Etc. As for the iSight camera built in... I am sure it's on the USB bus internally, but may or may not use general USB cam drivers.

[tofuconfetti]

I'm very late in chiming in on this thread I realize. I love linux and have used it since Mandrake 5.x. I started on KDE 1.x desktop and it took me three weeks to configure my first modem. However, after climbing the intially steep curve (all but gone these days), I loved it. After leaving Mandrake (way too unstable for me) and going through a Gentoo phase (great learning tool, but too much work), I settled on Ubuntu and love it. So far I can do anything I want to with it.

I also have the highest end MacBook Pro they make. The hardware is exquisite and it runs like the wind. It boots faster than my Quadmac, dual processor, dual core towered Mac. It actually runs some applications faster. Why do I mess with a Mac when I dearly love linux so much? Well, I love video and audio also. Nothing can touch them in these areas - period. I'm not using them because I don't like Windows (although I really don't), I'm using them because it is the best platform.

Linux still lacks the high end professional applications like this. When it gets them, I'm outta here on anything else but linux. For now, Mac is still king in those areas.

One thing I hate about the Mac is the terminal, where I spend oodles of time in Linux. The Mac terminal key mapping is BAD. I have no pagedn or pageup, no end of line, etc. It drives me mad. So if I need to interface with a server, I grab my Ubuntu laptop and boot it just to have a great termainal.

That is just my two cents worth.

[Endow]

To original poster : I think your probs with it were beacuse of the hardware and not necesserilly the OS.I've heard a number of people have some probs with the Macbook.

Anyways you can't really use "inbuilt software sucks" in a debate unless you justify yourself.From my experience Safari is better than Firefox in a Apple machine.As far as options are concerned the inbuilt Apple software is very good imo.

[sdubois92]

I just bought a macbook earlier this month and i love. i switched over from windows and boy what a difference. its easy to use and i dont have any problems, Safari works fine, the finder could be better, but hey, its a big step up from windows explorer. Macs can do tons of stuff Linux and windows can;t. But I always say, theres room for everyone.

[jonkun227]

It never ceases to amaze me that there are people who can endlessly debate/discuss the virtues and limitations of various Linux distributions, recite their Linux history better than their family members' names, and be able to tell you how to restart serviceX or daemonY on any given distribution they've used, and yet not grasp the concept that OSX is fantastic for certain uses.

I'd hardly consider myself a Mac fanboy (then again how many fanboys recognize their status?), as I left Mac in the 90s in favor of Windows. (I had quite a list of reasons, and participated in many Mac debates. (I have been exposed to Linux since my brother started installing it on his 486 with floppies. It wasn't then nor is it over a decade later a viable solution for me, professionally.)

But OSX (Panther and beyond) changed my mind. The stability of a *nix backend and not only a pretty but perfectly usable GUI really turned my head. Combine that with full support from Adobe and I'm on board 100%. (Someone here said that Adobe isn't going to bend over backward for 2% of the desktop market. You really don't understand the market on this one. Even if your number was accurate, a very large percentage of Adobe's users are on OSX, particularly the paying ones. And most companies are more than willing to bend over backwards for the bulk of their market.)


There have been many great responses here. I'd like to either add or re-emphasize a few points:

1. I've tried 3x tonight to install Ubuntu on a system that I know is 100% supported. It keeps hanging, with no indication why. I'm faced with swapping devices until I figure out which one isn't working. (I suspect the hard drive, but that's for another forum.) I can do a full install of OSX in less than half an hour, with every option turned on. And that's on a PowerBook fast approaching its second birthday.

2. 10 Gigs MP3s. 25 Gigs of photos. (I'm a photographer; this is just 2 current shoots; everything else is on the samba server.) 5 gigs of personal documents and such. The full Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, Bridge, InDesign, Acrobat), Dreamweaver, Flash, iLife, and numerous other utilities and widgets installed. 5 gigs available space on the hard drive. 60 gig drive. Explain to me again how OSX takes 50 of your 60 gigs? I'm calling BS on this one.

3. I'm currently running Camino, Mail, iTunes (playing from my library), Photoshop (batch processing 12 mp RAW photos into JPGs; not an easy task, especially considering how resource-hungry Photoshop is anyway), and Bridge (used to organize and queue Photoshop's workload), and yet I can get FireFox to launch and sit waiting for input in exactly 8 seconds. Again, this computer is nearly 2 years old. What in the world are you doing wrong that it takes 45 seconds to get it to work on your brand new macbook? Seriously, I'm practically trying to slow it down and I can't come close to your numbers. And I haven't restarted my computer in weeks. I close the lid when I'm not working on it, I open it when I want to again, and it just keeps on working. The only time I ever restart is when I know Photoshop is screwing with scratch disk space and hasn't relinquished it as it should.

4. iWeb is for people who can barely type to get a blog online. And it's a hell of a program for the price. Same for iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, etc. I don't care for the naming scheme (the iMac made sense; a computer that you could take out of the box and get on the _i_nternet in 10 minutes), but the programs work for their intended audience. Video professionals often find iPhoto great for organizing family photos. But they wouldn't use iMovie or iDVD for their professional work. I love iMovie and iDVD for my home videos, but I haven't launched iPhoto since the week I bought the computer. It's not meant for me. Still the overall package is a great value. Why does this logic escape so many people? This same logic applies to the Finder and Terminal. They're more than sufficient for most users. Nearly all Mac users, and more than most Windows users could ever dream of using. Just because it isn't enough for a hardcore CLI guy doesn't mean the entire OS is a failure.

5. Much like #3 above, I'm trying to understand the "OSX is a one program at a time OS" comment earlier in the thread. I consistently run Bridge, Photoshop, Illustrator, Mail, iTunes, and Camino together. Sometimes I even get crazy and throw Limewire or VLC into the mix. No, it doesn't run like it would with only Photoshop or Camino open, but that's true of any operating system. Yet it works well enough that I have no problem doing it on a daily basis, and I still get everything done during my workday.

6. When the PowerPC chips were introduced they were certainly faster than their x86 counterparts. But Apple doesn't make processors. They never have. That's not their business. So when R&D failed year after year on the part of the chips' actual manufacturer they were forced to switch to something else. PPC development slowed way down while x86 development at least kept its own pace, if not actually speeding up. So now Apple compares the current lineup of PPC chips with the current x86 chips and the PPCs fall short. This doesn't mean they were lying the whole time (although if you believe any word of any paid advertisement without questioning it I'd advise you to reconsider your belief system).

7. Apple advertising is embarrassing to most Mac fans, regardless of how die-hard they are. Why the hell do they show the power cord instead of the OS? I find them humorous enough to watch, mostly because I like the interaction of the actors in the current round, but if I were advertising Macs I'd have an entirely different approach.

8. It really baffles me that there are people in this world who spend so much of their time installing programs that apt-get (and similar) is the only viable solution. I'm not saying that people who are annoyed that OSX doesn't have that functionality are lying, just that I don't understand it. When I do an install of an OS I have a list of programs that I need and then I'm done. And the programs that I install aren't ever going to be available through a command line. That's why OSX is a good choice for people like me. If it's not for you, why are you so dead-set on berating others? Why the personal insults and general hatred? Use your favorite distro and get over it.



I love OSX for its sheer simplicity and functionality. The looks are nice (the overall enclosure as well), but that's not why I bought it. I bought it so I could get my work done without fighting with windows or spending a single second recompiling or tweaking or executing a single command line instruction. It's there if I want to use it (I regularly use it for ftp and ssh), but I don't have to. (Nevermind that even if I wanted to spend my time getting a Linux distro to work as well as OSX does out of the box, I still couldn't run Photoshop or Illustrator or InDesign or Lightroom. None of the programs that I use daily. Gimp is nice. More than cute, but far less than functional for a working professional dealing with thousands upon thousands of photos and real world deadlines.)

But I wouldn't use it for a fileserver. I wouldn't use it for a web server. And I don't play computer games (I prefer movies). I have Linux fileserver on a Pentium-MMX 366 and it's great. It would take a much better machine before I felt a noteworthy difference in performance. Anyone who claims Linux is anything but efficient and lightweight is likely just ignorant. Windows is bloated, and OSX is far from svelte.

The day I can install Linux in under 30 minutes and have native support for the applications I actually use I will switch completely.



- Jon

Sorry for the novel. This is what happens when A) you come to a thread late in the game; and B) you're installing Linux and have a lot of time on your hands.

[Sirin]

http://imachate.tripod.com/ <-- Extreme Apple hate site

Your Mac computer crashes often and you recieve powerful viruses

Wow this is amazing We are getting such a boom of people coming to this website. I love it I have been getting such a boom of people its making me happy. We have been getting so many emails saying how they switched back to Pcs. The latest request I have gotten in our email is to open up a page for reviews and also a page for inventions in the Pc comunity. I also got a email asking for all the best freeware links and reviews. So this website will be expanding. A lot. I will be expamding our software section so that Pc users will have more stuff to bragg about. Feel free to send emails of how to expand our website.

[jonkun227]

Can you say, "Trying too hard"?

I love it when people tell me that because I like my Mac I must be lying to make myself feel better. Such incredible irony. Textbook case of a displacement coping mechanism.

Now if I said my Mac was perfect and that Steve Jobs could do no wrong, then you'd have yourself a lie.

That site is beyond lame. Poor design, awkward navigation, and too busy being hateful to have involved any actual thought. As soon as it spawned 3 or 4 popups I knew something was wrong.

Can someone explain to me what has to happen to someone for them to become that angry? I mean I hate Microsoft but that's the extent of it. I don't dwell on it. I certainly don't spend time making hateful websites. I just move on and use something(s) else. I guess I just don't get it.


- Jon

[RAV TUX]

after using OS X at my work for a while now, I have come to dislike it. honestly I would rather use windows then OS X.

but I don't use windows, at home I have two computers, on one I use Ubuntu on the other my primary computer, I use Sabayon as my primary OS.

[mike3k]

A lot of negative reviews of Mac ..
I don't like the interface very much, the OSX bar at the bottom just has a bunch of pretty icons, and I've never been able to believe that it actually offers much of anything in functionality. I used engage before, but tossed it, as it was a pretty, but useless tool.

The menu bar up top is actually pretty functional, and I'm sure if I used it alot I would start to like it, but I can get that bar in KDE aswell anyway. And I choose to not use it.

I prefer to see Macintosh solely as a computer manufacturer.

The dock doesn't have to be at the bottom; in fact I always keep it on the right side. Since the screen is wider than tall, it wastes less space that way. Also turn off the genie effect & magnification and you may start to like it.

A lot has been written about the Mac's menu bar vs. Windows' menus in each window. The big advantage is you can reach the menu bar without looking since items tend to remain more or less in the same place (at least within a single application & the first 3 menus in almost all applications) and it's easier to just push the mouse all the ways to the top of the screen rather than having to stop to look & think where the window menu is.

I'd like to see Mac OS X running on other systems. For me the OS is what's special, not the machine.

[mike3k]

If you mean that there are no repositories and the associated system - yes, you are right. But you shurely have forgotten that most (all that I have seen so far) apps for Mac OSX can be installed either by drag-and-drop (i.e. the user does not perceive it as an installation at all) or with a simple installer. And believe me - none of the freeware needs to be cracked.

don't get me wrong - Ubuntu's great but it is raw. Only a minority of computer users can use it without specialised help. None of this minority can use it without spending lots of time customising essential things. That is why I am sure that people who are praising Linux over MacOSX are tiny minority.

DarwinPorts (which I think was just renamed MacPorts when OpenDarwin.org shut down) is a lot better than Fink. It has many more packages which are much more up to date. It works sort of like Gentoo's emerge by downloading the original source, applying patches, and building it.

The nice thing about Fink is it uses apt-get & dpkg.

[escape]

...

For $1450.00

Can you find a similar or comparable system for much cheaper. I couldn't. I was suprised too, because I thought Apple overcharged for everything, but this system was quite reasonably priced for the hardware.

Looks - 8/10
Usability - 7/10
Cost - 8/10

See, the thing is, you can get the exact same hardware on a Dell for half the cost. Check below - the only thing different is the Dell's DVD writer burns twice as fast, and the Macbook Pro has an X1600 vs. the Dell's X1400.

http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/7532/screenshotup3.png
http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/5300/screenshot1rw6.png

And what is this about paying for a new revision of OSX each time it comes out? Anyone who bought OSX (and had OS 9 originally) had to pay like 400 dollars for it, and if they want to stay updated, it's another $70 for each increment. You'd have payed $680 now just to be at 10.4!

Oh, and what if you want another charger or other replacement parts (another power supply, or a battery, say)? Expect to pay about $30-$100 more than you would for an equivalent part for the PC.

And what is this bull about .mac accounts? People actually fork over $100 a year for it? Or paying an extra $200 for a black macbook instead of a white one?

Mac users is they think their stuff is reasonably priced because Apple's forced proprietary-ness prevents them from realizing that they can get equivalent stuff for the PC at half the cost. Yes, a price with specs like that is good... if you are buying a mac.

[jonkun227]

If there's only one thing I could convey to Mac haters, it's this:

A Mac user's choice to pay more for OSX rarely has anything to do with ignorance. Commercially supported software on a stable system is worth a lot more than what we pay.

People who don't use their computers for a living almost never understand this. Those who use their computers for a living, and use software that is available on Linux only sometimes understand this.

And just because we buy Macs doesn't mean we buy .mac accounts. In fact I personally know a couple dozen Mac owners and only one .mac user. And I think he only has a Mac because he likes how it looks. He doesn't have a clue how to use it.

Also, I don't know very many users who purchase every release of OSX. Many skipped 10.3. I personally skipped 10.4. And very few jumped in at 10.0 anyway. Most didn't join (because it was essentially beta and not yet supported by our commercial apps) until 10.2. Then there's the fact that a copy of OSX is $130, not $70. All-in-all I'd say your math is faulty at best.

Again, just because you don't understand the value doesn't mean it's a rip-off to those of us who do.


- Jon

[hanzomon4]

Can you make the dock less square at the edges and more rounded. Also is Osx themeable.

[3rdalbum]

OS X is completely unthemable. I believe that, unlike OS 9, you can't even get extensions to make it themable.

(I had the Mac OS 8 theme on my computer when it was running System 7.1... those were the days!)

People who buy Macs aren't chumps; they know the value of having an operating system and hardware that are designed specifically for eachother. Music professionals know how good the Mac OS is for audio and MIDI work... Windows can't touch it for that, and Linux will never come close.

[3rdalbum]

The intel Macbooks are standard Intel hardware and will work fine with XP and linux. As for firewire and USB booting, that is dependant on the bios and not the hardware as it's standard current Intel hardware. As for booting from Firewire on a PC or Mac, I am not sure I have personally used any x86 bios that allowed booting from Firewire.

As for installing Ubuntu, it has to work, it's an x86 computer with a standard Intel cpu and board. Now as for drivers, that is a different story. You may or may not have sound, or accelerated video drivers, etc. USB, firewire will work for sure. Ethernet will most likely work or has drivers available. Etc. As for the iSight camera built in... I am sure it's on the USB bus internally, but may or may not use general USB cam drivers.

Do some research. Macs don't have a BIOS. Firewire booting has been possible on Macs for years though OpenFirmware and now EFI, regardless of whether it's been possible on any machine with a BIOS.

Installing Ubuntu doesn't always work, but it seems to on Macbooks. They are not "standard Intel hardware"; if they were, OS X would've been hacked to work on beige boxes 9 months ago.

[regeya]

I'm primarily getting an OS X PC because I have fallen in love with TextMate for Ruby on Rails work, and I have friends who use OS X so it's a pain to help them troubleshoot their systems without making the open a terminal...That...and...it's pretty........

That brings up one of my biggest OS X gripes, which the parent poster also brought up: I end up installing a metric f**kton of 3rd-party apps to get things where I want it. On my work machine:


I disabled Dashboard and installed Yahoo! Widgets.
I installed Quicksilver.
I installed FontExplorer X to manage fonts.
I have TextWrangler and Emacs for text editing, because TextEdit is too automagic.
I installed iTerm because I couldn't handle Terminal.app
I installed Desktop Manager to have virtual desktops (Exposé? Oh puh-leeze...)
I installed BurnX Free because burning CDs in Finder sucks.
I had to get Disk Warrior because fsck doesn't fix everything every time.
I installed HardwareGrowler because having a removable disk icon disappear from the desktop doesn't necessarily mean the disk is unmounted.
I installed VLC because QuickTime just doesn't quite cut it.
I installed Stuffit Deluxe 10.0 because the version of Expander that shipped with Tiger was broken.
I installed Firefox because some of the websites I regularly visit (work-related sites, at that) choke on Safari.
I installed Xee because Preview.app sucks for previewing large number of photos. Ditto for the Photoshop file browser.
Carbon Copy Cloner for those jobs that the Migration Assistant can't handle.
GPG extensions for Mail.app because Visa demands PGP.
Hey Folders! for properly labeled folder icons.
Shadow Killer because shadows on an older G4 are a performance-killer, even with an Nvidia card.
OnyX for periodic routine maintenance tasks, including the repair-permissions-after-installing-software-in-case-the-installer-left-the-system-borked problem.
AppleJack, so I can do routine maintenance with a minimum of fuss, by booting in single-user mode and typing 'applejack AUTO restart' from the command-line.
Fink for Ruby, because Apple's Ruby package tends to be broken in odd ways, and on a couple of system updates ended up being re-borken for me
AmaroK from Fink, because Apple still doesn't support Ogg Vorbis, despite the fact that it'd cost them little to nothing to do so. But they keep improving their DRM support.
tun/tap kernel drivers for Hamachi. Why weren't tun/tap drivers shipped with the system?
The UNO theme (yes, you can get themes for OS X, or at least one) so that Finder, iTunes (when I run it), Mail, and other apps look like they were written for the same operating system
Mail Stamps so I get the classic mail toolbar icons
Lingon for a semi-nice GUI for launchd
An anacron launchd item so periodic jobs run on schedule on my periodically-running machine. Would you believe one of the most common items in 3rd-party repair utilities is 'run cron jobs'?


And I'd use Path Finder if it integrated in with everything else well.

Why fawn over a system on which I replace and supplement most the standard system apps, and would replace the rest if I could?

[billT]

Why fawn over a system on which I replace and supplement most the standard system apps, and would replace the rest if I could?

That's a good question. Why are you using a Mac if there's something out there that'll better fit your needs? I'd imagine that the people who actually like and get good use out of their Macs don't have experiences similar to yours.

[Alfa989]

There is nothing intuitive about only having one mouse button or hiding all the USB ports and power button at the back of the monitor.`

Macs come with a 4-button mouse you know... And putting the USB ports on the back of the monitor reduces desktop clutter

Seriously OS X is a one ap at a time OS and i'm all about having lots of programs running at once.

Well Mac OS X beats Linux and Windows in this area... just try it out...

Safari is the slowest browser ever, i swear, and its really clunky with it.

Slow?? I would call firefox slow, not Safari, and firefox takes much more screen space than Safari, and it increases desktop clutter.

Mac OS X is a big fat shiney joke.

Really?? What's the OS that has the stupid-and-unusefull windows like UI??? Let me think..mmm Linux? (KDE & Gnome)

[Alfa989]

10GB is still a lot for an operating system though... imagine how many applications you could fit inside GNU/Linux, whilst still keeping under 10GB.

Actually, about 3 gig is taken by the Printer Drivers, and if you choose no to install this and other few minor part of OS X, you can keep it at about 5,5 Gigs..:)

[Alfa989]

I have to look into making mplayer work on Mac.

You can try to use MPlayerOSX ;)

[Sushi]

Macs come with a 4-button mouse you know

How many buttons are there on Apple-laptops? hint: not four.

Well Mac OS X beats Linux and Windows in this area... just try it out...

Years ago I tried to bring my SuSE-box to it's knees by running around 50 apps at once. It worked like it should. Are you now saying that things are worse today? OS X handles multiple apps just fine. But I can't see it handling multitasking any better than Linux does.

Really?? What's the OS that has the stupid-and-unusefull windows like UI??? Let me think..mmm Linux? (KDE & Gnome)

I have used both KDE, Gnome and OS X extensively. And I don't think that the Linux-GUI's are "stupid and un-usefull". What makes you think that they are "stupid" and "windoslike"? There are plenty of retarded things in OS X GUI.

[Sushi]

Linux still lacks the high end professional applications like this.

Like what? Shake runs on Linux, Blender runs on Linux, Maya runs on Linux, 3ds Max runs on Linux, Flint runs on Linux, Smoke runs on Linux, Inferno run on Linux, Flame runs on Linux... There are lots of VERY hi-end apps that run on Linux.