Apple, Microsoft, or Linux?

[Kanabia]

Paraphrased from a class at my uni:

Lecturer: "OK guys we're going to be working on Macs for this subject, because you should be comfortable using a different range of hardware."
*grumbles from PC users, Mac users look happy*

First tutorial:
"OK, now, first thing we need to do is open up Sun Virtualbox and load up Windows XP, the software we're using doesn't have a mac version..."

[Meoton]

I'm just going to pull my Commadore 128 out of the closet when my home computer ceases to work.

[Tekania]

LOL!

I can just picture a Mac/PC commercial.

Mac: HI, I'm a Mac
PC: Hi, I'm a pc.
cust: and I'm a customer shopping on line... hmm... I can't Right Click...
Mac: oh, what you need to do is...
PC: *hands customer a PC mouse* here. use this.
Cust: but... it's a PC mouse
PC: yeah. so...
*Mac looks uncomfortable*
Cust: this PC device will work on a Mac?
PC: oh yeah.. no problem... just plug it in and go!
*Mac looks very Uncomfortable*
Cust: so... just plug this in... *starts to look Mac over*
*Mac looks VERY uncomfortable*
PC: well... show her where your port is... sport.
*Apple logo... the same apple logo with a bite taken out of it...*

Also why I have so much contempt for the "PC Tech"... Their knowledge is limited to "PC's" (hate the term, because a Mac is a "PC" in the strict sense too)... Which generally means some Intel derivative descendant of IBM's line, as long as its running Windows... Pull them out of that and they are lost. I have this concept because, for years, I have supported "PC's" running Windows, Linux or some flavor of Unix, Sun SPARC based systems, usually running Solaris, Apple systems (whether the present Intel based systems, or the previous PowerPC based systems, all the way back to OS 7), worked on quite a few DEC Alpha systems (servers and workstations, running Windows NT 4, Red Hat, or Digital True64 Unix)... And remember back when even something as simple as installing a hard drive involved the complex settings of specific drive parameters, such as head, cylinder and sector counts for the drive to be usable (and when Hard Drives were pre-IDE, having completely seperate controller boards from the platter housing)... When upgrading ram meant actually pressing IC's into sockets, and having to look for the proper vendor for those expansions..

A trained monkey could assemble a PC these days...

[Techno-Soviet]

If I had to choose, Microsoft. I like Windows interface better. Macs are buggy, overpriced and really not very useful for much of anything. If you can use it for Mac, there's usually a Windows or Linux compatible alternative that is either cheaper or even completely free. The fact that most Mac users I've seen are blisteringly stupid and moronic doesn't help either.

[JuNii]

A trained monkey could assemble a PC these days...

and that is why PC's will outsell Macs and other 'systems'.

because the PC is for the larger audiences. the common user.

and why, for all it's problems, the PC will continue to outsell the rest.

[Tekania]

The fact that most Mac users I've seen are blisteringly stupid and moronic doesn't help either.

Most Windows users are blithering idiots too.... Trust me, I'm in IT... the average Windows user knows no more than the average Mac user... The Average computer user PERIOD is a blithering idiot.

[Hairless Kitten II]

WINE and WINEX aren't answers. They don't work properly.

They work like they are supposed to... By providing an API layer for windows binaries to run in... It is an answer, for an interim issue. The ultimate answer being migration of commercial applications to binaries compiled for linux using either the GTK or Qt toolkit.

Virtually unneeded though, as just about any application there is for windows, there is available a free and/or commercial open-source equivalent which will work under Linux.

They are supposed not to work. So you are right.

WINE doesn't work with most games & applications. The few that are working need a lot of tweaking before it eventually will work.

That's what they say in the Dutch wiki about WINE:

"Het Wine project loopt al sinds 1993. Wine is echter nog steeds maar beperkt effectief, veel programma's zijn niet onder Wine aan de gang te krijgen. Dit hoewel veel bedrijven grote investeringen in Wine gedaan hebben."

I'll translate:

"The Wine project has been going since 1993. Wine is still limited effective, many programs are not going to run under Wine. Although many companies have made large investments in Wine."

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine

Cedega (WINEX) isn't up to date anymore and is even worse than WINE.

Are you suggesting that StarOffice is the same as MS Office? Are you suggesting that Linux is having a Visual Studio? Are you suggesting that Linux is counting an equal amount of games?

For every free and/or commercial open-source project under Linux, you have zillion times more free and/or commercial open-source projects under Windows.

Linux is nice in its niche, but I'm glad it is not a mainstream OS.

I tell you this: Since 1991 I hear the Linux girls crying similar stuff like you are shouting. And like the Jehovah's Witnesses, they promised the final collapse of MS numerous times. It didn't happen and probably will never happen unless the context of the OS would change dramatically (like thin clients connected to super servers).

[JuNii]

The fact that most Mac users I've seen are blisteringly stupid and moronic doesn't help either.

Most Windows users are blithering idiots too.... Trust me, I'm in IT... the average Windows user knows no more than the average Mac user... The Average computer user PERIOD is a blithering idiot.

Testify Tekania...

New Problem codes for our company...
PEBC-K: Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard.
M-VATOC: Meat Virus Attempting To Operate Computer.

Phrases from users that make me cringe
I got a message about low memory...
I got a message that said "Hit F11 to start system recovery..."
I was making room on my C drive...

but the one relavant to this thread is...
"I created this file on my home computer and it won't open."
"what kind of computer do you have at home?"
"A Mac."

*we use PC's.*

[Tekania]

A trained monkey could assemble a PC these days...

and that is why PC's will outsell Macs and other 'systems'.

because the PC is for the larger audiences. the common user.

and why, for all it's problems, the PC will continue to outsell the rest.

Yep... Also why Linux gets its "difficulty" myths... It's easier to "install" Windows (by install they mean, when they open their Dell box, Windows is already been installed on it)... Most people who have issues with Linux installs, can't make it through Windows installs too...

You know, HP does not distribute install media with their systems anymore? They include a recovery partition, and a wizard that can be ran from the machine to create re-install media in the event they lose their drive... You know when they are most likely to find out about this fact? 2 years later after their hard drive has fried...

I had someone who had gotten my card call me at 3:00AM because their new computer "crashed"... because the monitor said "Power save mode"

I've had calls about peoples WLAN card stopping working... Because they accidentally flipped the disable switch on the side of their laptop... I've had some of the same people call me back, after they did it again...

I had home-office client call me back irate about his system being infected with a virus, even with corporate level virus protection installed on his system... He got infected because he kept getting warnings at one site he was trying to visit, so he disabled it to proceed through this website with no warnings popping up...

These people are Microsoft's "Customer Base"...

[Tekania]

They are supposed not to work. So you are right.

WINE doesn't work with most games & applications. The few that are working need a lot of tweaking before it eventually will work.

That's what they say in the Dutch wiki about WINE:

"Het Wine project loopt al sinds 1993. Wine is echter nog steeds maar beperkt effectief, veel programma's zijn niet onder Wine aan de gang te krijgen. Dit hoewel veel bedrijven grote investeringen in Wine gedaan hebben."

I'll translate:

"The Wine project has been going since 1993. Wine is still limited effective, many programs are not going to run under Wine. Although many companies have made large investments in Wine."

http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine

Cedega (WINEX) isn't up to date anymore and is even worse than WINE.

Cedega is so not up-to-date that their last version update was WAY back in the dark ages of last Thursday...

Are you suggesting that StarOffice is the same as MS Office? Are you suggesting that Linux is having a Visual Studio? Are you suggesting that Linux is counting an equal amount of games?

StarOffice / OpenOffice is the same as MicroSoft Office, I can create, edit and manipulate any document that MS Office can, so yes it is....

No, there is no Visual Studio... there are several hundred IDE (Integrated Development Environments) however... There would never be a Visual Studio, because what would be the point in an application whose only purpose is designing applications for a platform that it is not on....

For every free and/or commercial open-source project under Linux, you have zillion times more free and/or commercial open-source projects under Windows.

"zillion"? How old are you, 6?

(oh Oh!, we gots like a gagillion-zillion more than you!)

Linux is nice in its niche, but I'm glad it is not a mainstream OS.

Why? It's quite a capable system... It's also far more fault-tolerant than MicroSoft Windows... We also measure out uptime in years, rather than seconds

I tell you this: Since 1991 I hear the Linux girls crying similar stuff like you are shouting. And like the Jehovah's Witnesses, they promised the final collapse of MS numerous times. It didn't happen and probably will never happen unless the context of the OS would change dramatically (like thin clients connected to super servers).

super-servers? Not going to have that anymore... Could connect thin-clients to a quad-core dell box and have multiple users on it with linux... Unlike Windows, Linux is an actual multi-user system...

Linux is just better designed...

Microsoft could be around awhile... still doesn't change the fact that the only reason they are is because the average computer user is a blithering idiot. And the market is driven by these blithering idiots.

[Hairless Kitten II]

Cedega is so not up-to-date that their last version update was WAY back in the dark ages of last Thursday...

Sure, they can make updates every nights, that doesn't mean it is up to date to the state of the art.

StarOffice / OpenOffice is the same as MicroSoft Office, I can create, edit and manipulate any document that MS Office can, so yes it is....

You can create, edit an manipulate documents with notepad too. MS Office is far richer in functionality as StarOffice, it can handle 3 or 4 times more languages, etc... It is also much more user-friendly. The document compatibility in StarOffice is a drama: works only with the older versions of MS Office and I wouldn’t use 'special' features as..oho...tables.

No, there is no Visual Studio... there are several hundred IDE (Integrated Development Environments) however... There would never be a Visual Studio, because what would be the point in an application whose only purpose is designing applications for a platform that it is not on....

And there are several thousands IDE for windows as well. But not one, and that's including the Linux variants, are matching the MS version in richness and user-friendly capacities.

"zillion"? How old are you, 6?

(oh Oh!, we gots like a gagillion-zillion more than you!)

Sure, the flaming starts when we are out of arguments, isn't? Linux girls forget that the developers army on the Windows side is far bigger as on the Linux side. And many of them create free open source software too.

Why? It's quite a capable system... It's also far more fault-tolerant than MicroSoft Windows... We also measure out uptime in years, rather than seconds

So? It's still a niche product with a user base of 1% or even less. It’s very uncommon that my Windows computers are crashing. I worked for dozen multinationals, all of them are using Windows as major OS. Uptime, fault tolerances are nice items, but when you evaluate an OS you have to look to the entire package. A serious business is always looking for the quick buck and they can't be all stupid due they selected Windows as their premium OS. If Windows computers would be ‘exploding’ all the time, those companies would have chosen another OS.

super-servers? Not going to have that anymore... Could connect thin-clients to a quad-core dell box and have multiple users on it with linux... Unlike Windows, Linux is an actual multi-user system...

No super-servers? Are you sure about that one? Larry Ellison of Oracle is still having wet dreams about it. And in what direction is Chrome OS pushing you think?

Linux is just better designed...

I don't know and you don't know either unless you are one of the chief programmers at the OS department of MS. And even in that case...

Microsoft could be around awhile... still doesn't change the fact that the only reason they are is because the average computer user is a blithering idiot. And the market is driven by these blithering idiots.

Maybe how you look at people is the reason why Linux will never will be welcomed by the so-called blithering idiots.

At MS they try to customize software for the people and with every version they are closing the gap.
In the Linux world, it are the people that have to customize themselves to the software.

Computer users doesn't have to be programmer guru's to work with computers, just like most of us know nothing about the working of a car but still are able to drive around.

[EvilDarkMagicians]

The only reason macs don't have a lot of viruses is cos' more people have microsoft computers so it will hurt more peoples.

[Mikertaz Kein]

As the thread starter I must ask that you keep nonsense/horrible grammar posts to a minimum. My eyes are burning from the amount of garbage I just read.

But back to the conversation.

After review, I must ask why all people who use Microsoft are considered 'blithering idiots'. I do not understand how using a more user-friendly OS makes someone an idiot. As a Linux user, I must say that this systyem is just as difficult to use as any Windows machine...or Mac for that matter...

[Intangelon]

I'd like to know where all the "buggy" and "slow" claims for Macs are coming from. I've had my iMac (PPC, running 10.4.11) for more than four years now. It does everything I need it to do, and despite being tempted to trade it in, I haven't and won't until it stops doing what I need it to do -- as quickly and as bug-free as it did four years ago.

[The Alma Mater]

Apple and Microsoft are both companies well versed in the doing of evil things.
However, I consider abusing a monopoly to bankrupt your business competition to be a far less evil type of evil than using slaves, including childslaves.

Apples denial was not convincing in my eyes. Therefor the evil of MS it is.

[UNIverseVERSE]

The reason for the apparent virus-proofing of a Mac is because it's not as widespread and in use like PCs are. If Macs were the hardware and OS of choice through the information society there'd have been a bonanza of Mac-specific virus long ago.

This is not true.

While it is the case that the attractiveness of Macs as a target is lessened by their comparative rareness, they are also fundamentally more secure. This is because they are effectively a shiny shell layer on top of Mach + BSD, which is a ground up multi-user operating system. In contrast to Windows, where everything to do with the internet and multi-user use has been patched on afterwards. This means that on Macs (and, indeed, on any Unix-like OS) things like access permissions are properly built in, and thus much harder to circumvent. Hence they are inherently more secure.

[Charlotte Ryberg]

Both, because I have to use a Mac to get the best out of Graphic design, while I have lots of very important software that were designed for Windows only. (D'OH!) But if I can remove IE in Windows 7 then I don't see why I shouldn't have to put up with running both, although I can do much more with a IBM PC.

[UNIverseVERSE]

You can create, edit an manipulate documents with notepad too. MS Office is far richer in functionality as StarOffice, it can handle 3 or 4 times more languages, etc... It is also much more user-friendly. The document compatibility in StarOffice is a drama: works only with the older versions of MS Office and I wouldn’t use 'special' features as..oho...tables.

That would be because MS refuse to support or use any of the open, standardised formats for these things, instead using proprietary formats.

(and no, OOXML is not an open format, despite what MS say)

And there are several thousands IDE for windows as well. But not one, and that's including the Linux variants, are matching the MS version in richness and user-friendly capacities.

The two very best development environments are free and from unix-land.

Sure, the flaming starts when we are out of arguments, isn't? Linux girls forget that the developers army on the Windows side is far bigger as on the Linux side. And many of them create free open source software too.

Free of cost is fairly common. But FOSS is near universally a *n?x thing, with quite a few applications being ported over to Windows.

Let me put it like this. Just in my system repositories (standard Debian), I have over 22000 packages listed. A significant minority of these contain multiple programs. All of them are FOSS.

No super-servers? Are you sure about that one? Larry Ellison of Oracle is still having wet dreams about it. And in what direction is Chrome OS pushing you think?

They're out of their time. Even Chrome OS isn't pushing that way -- Google doesn't run huge super-servers, it runs massive arrays of cheap and redundant machines, and uses Linux to do so.

I don't know and you don't know either unless you are one of the chief programmers at the OS department of MS. And even in that case...

Actually, various versions of the Windows source code have been released or leaked. The design is utter crap to start with (single user, no real concept of security or permissions), and has been extended with braindead decisions and patches ever since ("Backdoor for Excel to hook into the kernel" -- yeah, that's a good idea). The best part is the networking stack, which was lifted from BSD.

[Hairless Kitten II]

I'm waiting for the first that will say that open source programming is communist behaviour.

[NotnotgnimmiJymmiJ]

LOL!

I can just picture a Mac/PC commercial.

Mac: HI, I'm a Mac
PC: Hi, I'm a pc.
cust: and I'm a customer shopping on line... hmm... I can't Right Click...
Mac: oh, what you need to do is...
PC: *hands customer a PC mouse* here. use this.
Cust: but... it's a PC mouse
PC: yeah. so...
*Mac looks uncomfortable*
Cust: this PC device will work on a Mac?
PC: oh yeah.. no problem... just plug it in and go!
*Mac looks very Uncomfortable*
Cust: so... just plug this in... *starts to look Mac over*
*Mac looks VERY uncomfortable*
PC: well... show her where your port is... sport.
*Apple logo... the same apple logo with a bite taken out of it...*

Also why I have so much contempt for the "PC Tech"... Their knowledge is limited to "PC's" (hate the term, because a Mac is a "PC" in the strict sense too)... Which generally means some Intel derivative descendant of IBM's line, as long as its running Windows... Pull them out of that and they are lost. I have this concept because, for years, I have supported "PC's" running Windows, Linux or some flavor of Unix, Sun SPARC based systems, usually running Solaris, Apple systems (whether the present Intel based systems, or the previous PowerPC based systems, all the way back to OS 7), worked on quite a few DEC Alpha systems (servers and workstations, running Windows NT 4, Red Hat, or Digital True64 Unix)... And remember back when even something as simple as installing a hard drive involved the complex settings of specific drive parameters, such as head, cylinder and sector counts for the drive to be usable (and when Hard Drives were pre-IDE, having completely seperate controller boards from the platter housing)... When upgrading ram meant actually pressing IC's into sockets, and having to look for the proper vendor for those expansions..

A trained monkey could assemble a PC these days...

That's a bad thing?

[Pure Metal]

since the Mac OS is built on BSD unix, its never been 'immune' to viruses and malware. its just unix systems are better built than Windows regarding malicious software getting permissions to run. that, and the small market share of Mac OS results in fewer viruses and malware being written for it, compared to Windows.

as for that built-in malware protection mentioned in the OP, that's a new addition to the OS in the Snow Leopard update. so my guess is its not got a lot in it yet, but they're building something in expecting to have to deal with malware more as Apple picks up more market share.

personally, i use Windows Vista, and have never had any problems with it. i use free virus scanning software, free anti-malware software (which also protects the registry). UAC in Vista also helps to replicate the better permissions handling abilities of unix/mac OS'es, which is nice (if annoying). i administer a linux server and run an office network of XP and Vista machines, and like to use Ubuntu sometimes personally. my general feeling is that if i weren't tied down to Windows and Windows-only software, if i could start again, i'd make everyone in the office use linux.
i've very rarely use Macs - a friend has one, and the printers i work with most use them. the OS shell is pretty, but nothing compared to linux running Beryl or something, and not as customisable. other benefits often-touted for Mac OS don't apply to me either. "it just works" isn't a problem, because Vista 'just works' for me too, as does Ubuntu. if you can't make things work, learn how to - its not hard. having software built-in is not applicable to me as it would be irritating - i have a load of programs i like to use (mostly free) for things, and would much rather use them than anything that comes 'built-in'. "doesn't get viruses" doesn't apply to me either, cos i never get them because (shockingly) i use antivirus software.

what Apple can appeal to me with, however, is a decent smartphone OS... WinMo 6 sucks balls as an interface

[NotnotgnimmiJymmiJ]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W-ygu6_ ... r_embedded

[Fartsniffage]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W-ygu6_aDc&feature=player_embedded

Lol, how's this for irony. Watching that video and laughing at the part about Quicktime crashing crashed my laptop.

[East Coast Federation]

Apple Computer products, they are the first people I will go to if I want a stupid overpriced computer.

[Taeshan]

Apple Computer products, they are the first people I will go to if I want a stupid overpriced computer.

They make you pay to much for a product that has mostly features you do not need in a computer. Macs are about aesthetics, while PC's actually do the work you need done. Pc's are overall better for a general group of people, while macs are for the small group.