[galarneau]

I've been a Mac user for a long long time... since ~1990 when I first went to college. I love them. I've had more Macs than I can count. I recently built a PC, just for gaming, and with the thought of turning it into a PVR when I get the software worked out.

Now, my new iBook is plagued with the '4x maximum burn speed' issue, and I've been pretty fed up with Apple's refusal to make it right. I mean if it says 16x burner... well nevermind. It's getting looked into finally.

Anyway, I've been getting more comfotable with Windows XP, and in my frustrations thought to myself...

"Self, why not just ditch the Mac altogether. You can use WinXP pretty well. It doesn't crash, and it doesn't annoy nearly as much as Win9X or WinME"

Well, I really was close to doing it, but here is what stopped me: The horrible multitasking on Windows. Yes, it's great to have a 3GHz processor, (mine is only 1.8GHz), but it multitasks like a dog. When I go to maximize a browser window from the taskbar while doing something else, it can often take 5-10 seconds (or more if I'm doing something like a DivX encode). In comparison, I used to run ffmeg encodes on my iBook 800 and just keep working away in the foreground. Now real slowdows, and certainly no 5-10 second waits to maximize a friggin' window.

Similarly, I installed ResHat 8.0 on my box and was disappointed by the 'smoothness' of the interface. Just by doing a simple un-tar of a file, it made my GUI almost unusable.

I miss my little Mac now. I took the smooth running interface of OS X for granted. Sure, for balls out speed, other machines are faster (rendering, or whatever), but nothing currently out there is as smooth in use as OS X (notice I said current... kudos to BeOS for getting this right way ahead of time)

There you go... just a little soliliqy from a guy who almost jumped ship. Take it for what it's worth.

[Spliffdaddy]

horrible multitasking on Windows?

[Sean2068]

Same thing here. I considered switching when I bought a PC for gaming. I didn't consider it long as I couldn't see myself living without navigation with column view and proper mutlitasking.

[Judge_Fire]

I've put myself in the grey area, too.

I'm in process of building myself a gaming PC (a nice, small Shuttle to accompany our Cube.)

Getting familiar with XP lately (playing UT2K3) I've come to like it. And its wasted potential saddens me. Let me summarize:

- The Windows XP 'app' is quite nice, with large icons and consistent, stable behaviour. I even like the task- based mentality.

- 99% of the other apps (including MS utilities) are from another planet compared to the OS. Keyboard shortcuts, behaviour, UI logic - no consistency.

I enjoy using a PC for using one app at a time (like a game, or web surfing), but any attempts at using more or even configuring multiple apps and devices to work together is unpredictable.

Microsoft's idea of an operating system clearly doesn't involve the concept of a cultural climate, where the user can gain from the shared base of UI values in the software.

It's hard to see that getting better, no matter what MS does.

Let's hope Apple can keep it alive in OS X.

J

[pliny]

Originally posted by Judge_Fire:
I've put myself in the grey area, too.


- 99% of the other apps (including MS utilities) are from another planet compared to the OS. Keyboard shortcuts, behaviour, UI logic - no consistency.

J

This is a Big One for me. The PC flagship products are ok but many if not most others seem a bit well, junky. YMMV of course.

[solitere]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
horrible multitasking on Windows?

yes it´s bad on windows by default.. escpecially if you using powerapps.

[Prahn]

Hi,

I use my PowerbookG4 at home and anywhere, I use a WindowsXP machine for a year now at my office. This is a Compaq something (I don't any specs because I don't know where to find them.) Before using Windows regularly I hated it. But now I was getting more and more like "Yes, it is working fine" "It has speed" "You can do more special things because it is a way bigger market" and so on.

But now I tried to exchange my office PC with a Mac, and suddenly I have back the smile on my face when I'm at my office desk. You can do everything on a PC what you can do on a Mac (maybe more), but the REAL difference is that it makes fun with a Mac. And doesn't fun counts at all? If you don't like what you are doing you are not happy. The real happy guys out there should use a Mac!

You get a relationship to your Mac (some people, like my girl-friend, even fall in love with it). Did you heard of something like this in the Windows world? You care about nice Icons and smooth interfaces on your Mac. I never cared about f**king icons on my PC, it is only working...

Long Live the Mac!

Prahn

[TheIceMan]

Prahn: I know what you mean. When I had my Dell computer, it was just that...a computer. But eversince switching to the Mac, I feel like it's a part of me somehow. I know it's a SICKNESS =) but I just cannot help it. So I would just like to say:

"HI, MY NAME IS ICE AND I'M A ADDICTED TO MY MAC!"

[JB72]

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
horrible multitasking on Windows?

I've actually noticed this too, even on fast machines. My experience suggests that it has more to do with the OS graphics updated slow sometimes when it really shouldn't, or getting stuck. It's very odd.

I do own a Windows XP machine that I use occasionally for games, but I really don't like using it. Too many things just don't make any sense to me. It's the whole "maintenace man in my own home" type of thing I suppose.

[stew]

Originally posted by JB72:
I've actually noticed this too, even on fast machines. My experience suggests that it has more to do with the OS graphics updated slow sometimes when it really shouldn't, or getting stuck. It's very odd.

I guess it's a consequence of the way Windows handles priorities and events. When changing some apps' priorities, I can get away from a lot of those problems. However, the effect that often windows do not react instantly on moving, resizing etc occurs because usually Windows applications handle those events in the same thread as their application logic. Some other environments (prime example BeOS) separate such things in other threads, so can be handled no matter how busy the app itself is.

As for switching back and forth: I don't care too much. I have a Dell Inspiron and an iBook, and both have their pros and cons. I don't actually have a preference (though I'd love being able to run BeOS on both of them ), they're both almost the same to me.

[jayg]

I've used Windows 2000 since it came out (and NT 4 before that). It has two big OS level problems.

First, the VM system seems to be crap. As soon as you run out of real memory, the machine slows to a crawl. I have half a gig and still need to reboot ever week or so since the performance gets so bad, and certain system processes seem to slowly grow while they're running. Exiting everything that I can doesn't free up nearly as much memory as is there is on a freshly booted machine.

Second, though outright crashes are rare (on 2K, NT was much less stable), runaway processes seem to be able to take over the computer at times. I've seen programs get into messed up states where they start to use 99% of the CPU. They're clearly stuck in a busy wait or some other infinite loop. If something like this happens, the whole machine can get so unresponsive that a hard reboot is really my only option. I've seen it take like 10 minutes to bring up the ctrl-alt-delete dialog. Trying to use it to kill a process was nigh impossible.

There are a number of things it does better than OS X though:

1) Open/Save Dialogs. The ones in X are hard to use and inflexible. The one's on Windows aren't amazing, but at least I can sort them, and switch disks without having to drag a horizontal scrollbar around.

2) The desktop is the conceptual root of the file system. Apple invented this idea as far as I know, but forgot it when they released X.

3) Keyboard control. Some of it is poorly thought out, and harder to use than it should be, but you can still do almost anything entirely from the keyboard. This has always been a problem on the Mac, and X didn't make it any better.

4) Customization. You can write a COM object to modify almost any aspect of Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer. This can be as simple as new toolbars (e.g., Google bar) or as complicated as completely new views of parts of the file system. If Apple allowed this kind of some could write modules to, for example, turn the /Applications into a meta-view that would show all the applications in ~username/Applications and the Network applications tool. Or keep track of where trashed files came from, and show that path and a restore command in the Trash folder (just like MS does with the recycle bin). Instead, Apple seems to discourage customization, actively preventing developers from using the menuling API.

5) Downloading and installing. Most of the things I install from Windows, I install directly from the web (I know it really runs from the temp directory). I don't see any messy .dmg.tar.gz files, and the installer doesn't take forever to "optimize" my system. Most small installs can be completed in seconds. And if I don't like what I got, and I can uninstall the app, it's preferences, shared libraries, etc. in basically one step.

Both platforms have pros/cons, and I still use X at home, but I think Apple has lost a lot of ground. While X (finally) brought a real VM, and multitasking, I don't think it did much to make the computer much easier or more efficient, and it lost a lot of niceties that 9. I'm not ready to jump ship yet, but I'm not as enthusiastic about Apple's OS as I was in the past.

[allap]

I personally think OSX has tremendous potential, much more than I see from XP, barring a complete re-write of the os. Apple just needs a few more years to "perfect" X (yes i know it'll never be perfect). Really the only aspect of Mac ownership which would ever make me jump ship is clockspeed (not trolling) and games. Aw well, i love my ibook's 4h battery life (praying it doesn't die as i've read in other threads).

[wadesworld]

The thing that bugs the &#$&$ out of me on my PC laptop (which I use at work) is when IE gets in some strange state where it won't close windows.

You can click the close box and the window just sits there. You can click on it in the taskbar, but nothing changes.

Anyone seen this?

Wade

[clarkgoble]

Most XP applications are very poorly multithreaded. I give Apple's Finder a hard time about this to, since it is equally poorly multithreaded. However the XP Windows Explorer is very well multithreaded. It is fairly rare that I take down the whole program.

IE, Word, and Outlook are not well threaded. Further, as people mentioned, different MS applications use different interfaces. For instance compare the latest version of Office with XP. The menus are different. The applications don't totally follow whatever theme is applied to XP.

Worst of all, while IE does browsing very fast, it *waits* for ad windows to download before fully displaying the entire page. That means that on many pages with overloaded ad servers it is FAR slower than either Chimera or Safari. A poor bit of coding, that. Yes it does Flash far faster than Chimera or especially Safari. But over all it is less impressive.

Having said all that, the development tools are far better in XP than in OSX. Project Builder at the moment can't hold a candle to Visual Studio. It really is night and day in terms of productivity. Which is why for work my XP station is still my primary machine.

BTW - for d/ling files. It is dangerous to simply have IE open them up for you automatically like that. All it actually is doing is unzipping them into the /tmp directory and then auto-running the install program. This is why Windows has so many viruses and trojan horses!

On the Mac installing a program is much, much easier. The typically Windows program installs files all over the place and then accesses the Windows registry. On the Mac most programs simply give you a directory that you can copy anywhere and move at anytime. Even the installers typically just copy those files. There are exceptions. Microsoft Office installs stuff in your /Library directory. A few other programs do as well - mainly utilities like Stuffit Deluxe.

In general though what you consider a "bonus" simply is the result of a complexity and danger on the PC side that is NOT a good thing. Sorry, but autoinstalling software off the net is simply irresponsible. Further you don't have a backup of the software to know what you installed or how to reinstall it. When dealing with stuff off the net keep a directory where you put the .sit, .zip, or .dmg file.

Further there are few Mac programs that use the .tar.gz. Those are mainly more Unix-like programs for the Mac. Most regular programs for the Mac use the .dmg file which installs a pseudo CD Rom on your desktop with the program.

One last thing. That vaunted customizability with COM objects is also the bane of Windows. How many pages have you visited only to have GATOR or someone else try and install one of those things on your browser? I've had to completely reinstall IE at least three times because of that "customizability" you sepak of. Worse, many web pages try and do it without you even being aware of it! Further IE has far less support for pop-up blocking or Outlook for Spam. Those are starting to become my big concern simply because of how much they are affecting me. Popup blockers simply don't work that well and seem to cause many side effects I don't like.

[la_thomas]

I almost switched too.

Some apps are just too damn slow, especially "simple" ones, like web browsers.

IE, Mozilla, Omniweb, Opera.
They all pretty much suck.
Go back to previous pages takes several seconds. Render pages takes forever.
Try click on check buttons on webpages. Takes forever too.

Then Safari came and I have faith again. It's a snappy browser! Renders fast and acurate.

Multitasking is OK under OSX.

Speed is just OK too. Here's a simple test:
Download apache 2.* and compile it.
Now do the same thing on Intel Linux with a 733 Mhz computer (as my QuickSilver is).
Compare speeds of serving web pages.
OSX is way behind here.

/Thomas

[clarkgoble]

Remember that OSX is tuned for interactive use. So running Apache on it won't be as fast. Aqua is taking up cycles. You may need to tune Apache as well. I don't know on that. At best I use my OSX for personal pages and OpenBSD for everything else.

However in general Macs are slower due to the slower G4 chips. I believe that OSX Server is better optimized and probably would run Apache much faster. Still, depending upon your use, I think you are better off with OpenBSD or FreeBSD on an Athalon system.

Not that I'd want to do *work* on those systems. As improved as KDE is, it still sucks compared to OSX.

[undotwa]

If you're going to be running a dedicated web server, there is no benefit to running Mac OS X (unless you go into console mode).

Just use Linux or the BSDs. Nothing else. Don't use an operating system that has a GUI, it hogs resources.

[Gee4orce]

Originally posted by la_thomas:
Here's a simple test:
Download apache 2.* and compile it.
Now do the same thing on Intel Linux with a 733 Mhz computer (as my QuickSilver is).
Compare speeds of serving web pages.
OSX is way behind here.

/Thomas

Apache 2 is perfectly demonstrates that bigger isn't always better - 2.0 was written specifically to improve performance under Windows, and as a result Unix performance can actually suffer compared to 1.3. Other benchmarks I've read show OSX as one of the fastest Apache server platforms.

[itai195]

As far as dev tools go, if you want to do serious Mac development then use CodeWarrior... It's kind of comparing apples to oranges, since PB is free software.

5) Downloading and installing....

Yeah, just hope your registry doesn't get screwed up when you uninstall it

For customization... There's an easy way to set up your apps folder the way you want -- use symbolic links. I'm not a fan of COM, they tend to screw up look and feel, are difficult to remove, and the technology itself is a mess.

I disagree where you say X didn't make anything easier. There's one big area where I think it quite clearly outclasses Windows -- networking. X makes every aspect of it easier, from setting up internet connections, to managing locations, to connecting to shared printers and file servers.

[V0ID]

I've also noticed poor multitasking under WinXP when I witnessed MP3's skipping during playback on my friend's AMD2200 when installing Warcraft III at the same time. That is just totally ridiculous. Win2000 performs a little better since XP is designed to allocate more resources to one app (hence the better game performance under XP compared to 2000).

[stew]

Originally posted by V0ID:
I've also noticed poor multitasking under WinXP when I witnessed MP3's skipping during playback on my friend's AMD2200 when installing Warcraft III at the same time. That is just totally ridiculous.

Lousy priorites. You can fix it with a little hand tuning.