[Scarpa]

Disclaimer: This is purely a cheerleading post.

When I got my Powerbook one of the features I played up to my boss (who paid for it) was it's Unix core. Now I knew what Unix was, and had used it for a limited time at school but I was simply repeating a buzzword to get my boss to buy in.

Since then I have learned a tremendous amount about what that buzzword really means and I have much more respect for Mac OS than I did back in the System 7.5 days when I abandoned Macs for PCs.

Some of the highlights of my "education"

- ssh built in. My roomate and I put together a Linux box and wanted to ssh into it. After searching on his XP machine for about a half hour for SecureCRT + a crack for it I opened up Terminal and typed "ssh server-ip-address". Bam, done. To this day my roomate asks for the Powerbook when he wants to mess with the server.

- tcpdump & ethereal. Both of these handy tools have been useful to me at my work. Great apps that nothing on Windows comes close to for the price. (Free)

- OpenOffice. I had OfficeX on my machine until I did a clean upgrade to Jaguar. It's going back on but last weekend my girlfriend wanted to use the Powerbook (yes, it's very popular at my house) to type notes. Since I didn't have the OfficeX install CD with me I simply downloaded X11 and OpenOffice. Painless install, functional and Free. Works for her, works for me.

- CONSOLE! This is what really prompted this post. After upgrading to Quicktime 6.2 my desktop wouldn't load up correctly and the dock was missing. I poked around in System Preferences for a bit but whenever I went to the Desktop panel it crashed with an "Unexpected Error". That was the first time I had seen that error in almost a year of ownership and it brought chills to my spine as I recalled the infamous "Application has Unexpectedly Quit" error from back in the day. I was nearly resigned to reinstalling the whole freaking system when I remembered the console. Fired it up, and there was a very handy error scrolling by telling me that my desktop preferences file was corrupted. Even told me where to find it! Trashed it and everything was good as new.

I'm sure there's many other delightful things I will find in this OS, and I'm deliberately not mentioning the awesome software developed by Apple. I'm taking my newfound appreciation for the command-line to my work as a Windows SysAdmin and that has in turn prompted me to re-learn how to program (scripts ), which is why I used Unix in the first place in school. I'm quickly turning into the rabid Apple fanboy that I used to be in high school.

[fat mac moron]

I'll add to the cheerleading bit also...

I studied computer science in college and focused mainly on Unix development. I've used Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux (Slackware, RedHat), SunOS on SPARC's, and HP-UX. I love Unix-based systems due to reliability and the fact there is nothing Unix can't do. It's a workhorse that's been around for many, many years and will be around for years to come.

I saw this on Slashdot a while ago:

Jobs' Mac gave us windows, icons, mice, and pointers. His NeXT computer gave us the WWW. His iMac gave us a network appliance. His OS X gave us Unix for teenagers & grandparents.

Quite a set of lifetime achievements...

[gatorparrots]

Originally posted by Scarpa:
- CONSOLE! This is what really prompted this post. After upgrading to Quicktime 6.2 my desktop wouldn't load up correctly and the dock was missing. I poked around in System Preferences for a bit but whenever I went to the Desktop panel it crashed with an "Unexpected Error". That was the first time I had seen that error in almost a year of ownership and it brought chills to my spine as I recalled the infamous "Application has Unexpectedly Quit" error from back in the day. I was nearly resigned to reinstalling the whole freaking system when I remembered the console. Fired it up, and there was a very handy error scrolling by telling me that my desktop preferences file was corrupted. Even told me where to find it! Trashed it and everything was good as new.

This is really nothing to cheer about. What do you think corrupted your preferences file? Don't get me wrong, I'm a Mac user from way back but this doesn't happen on Windows. I know, we all have our Windows horror stories, but I've never seen an OS this flakey with preferences files. Apple needs to fix this, quickly. It is a horrific bug that never should have made it into a publicly-released commercial OS.

[geekwagon]

Originally posted by gatorparrots:
This is really nothing to cheer about. What do you think corrupted your preferences file? Don't get me wrong, I'm a Mac user from way back but this doesn't happen on Windows. I know, we all have our Windows horror stories, but I've never seen an OS this flakey with preferences files. Apple needs to fix this, quickly. It is a horrific bug that never should have made it into a publicly-released commercial OS.

I hope you are kidding. What do you think the registry is in Windows? It used to be such a problem that machines would randomly corrupt their registries that MS had to work around the problem with a complicated "snapshot backup" system in XP. I'd much rather have text files I can modify or (even better) just pitch and get things working again.

I have been administering Windows servers for about 5 years now, so I have rebuilt enough machines to absolutely hate the registry.

[gatorparrots]

As much as anyone, I can't stand a monolithic registry. However, my personal experience has been that Windows 98 & 2000 (no experience with XP) are far and away more stable with preferences than Mac OS X 10.2 has been. I've lost Finder prefs, Dock prefs, System prefs, and various application prefs with application crashes, sudden logouts, user interface deaths, and kernel panics. As much as I dislike Windows OSes and prefer Mac OS X, my personal experience has been that Windows OSes are more stable with retaining application- and system-level preference settings.

So, yes the BSD core is rock-solid and stable. The uptime on my headless OS X 10.1.5 server machine testifies to that. I can laud and appreciate the BSD core. The fault I am highlighting lies strictly in the GUI layer and needs to be fixed before OS X can truly be considered an industrial strength, rock-solid OS.

[Scarpa]

Well, given that I've never had a problem with preferences in Windows 2000 and that I've had ONE problem in Mac OSX I think it would be safe to say Windows is INFINITELY more stable that Mac OSX right?

I hope you noted that I had ONE problem in about 10 months of use. I'd hardly call that a show-stopping problem. On top of that I am pretty sure that the cause of the corruption was due to my own actions - namely starting a software update on 15% battery life and then going to dinner. Since I have had no problems with SU on other occasions I think it's safe to say the error was my own.

That is fine with me. I do not expect a general purpose workstation to be as solid as the AS/400 at my work or even the Linux box at my house that is half-assed configured and does little more than serve webpages and Samba. I have a firm belief, due to over 8 years in the computer support business, that the vast majority of computer problems are caused by the user. All I ask for in a workstation is the ability to FIX what is wrong, without having to re-install.

The reason I left Macs initially was that while Windows was hardly more stable, I could at least poke around and figure out what was going on. Now it seems the tables are turned. Windows has gotten so bloated that it's nearly impossible to tell what has gone wrong WHEN things go wrong.

And one final point - Windows NT has seen no major architectual changes in over 15 years. I'd sure hope that a product that has a 12 year head start on MacOSX is at least a little more stable.

[gatorparrots]

Originally posted by Scarpa:
And one final point - Windows NT has seen no major architectual changes in over 15 years. I'd sure hope that a product that has a 12 year head start on MacOSX is at least a little more stable.

Exactly (yet a little too forgiving and apologetic of OS X).

OS X is young and buggy. And preferences are easily corrupted. I'm an ardent Mac OS X supporter, yet also a realist and critical of its noticeable flaws. I can live with functionality and feature deficiencies... I just want stability.

[Rainy Day]

I've lost Finder prefs, Dock prefs, System prefs, and various application prefs with application crashes, sudden logouts, user interface deaths, and kernel panics.

Interesting. In two years, i think i've had one preference file go south on me, and that was for some minor app, and certainly wasn't anything more than a minor annoyance at the time. I've never experienced a sudden logout.

However, i have been having all kinds of grief with System Sleep. The so called coma sleep problem, well known among older PowerBook users, where the system either crashes when going to sleep, or upon waking up (i.e. totally freezes without any diagnostic message of any kind, nor log entry, and requiring a power manager reset to reboot). This has caused severe disk corruption on a few occasions (i.e. disk wasn't mountable; nothing Disk Warrior couldn't fix, however).

I suspect that the user experience is at least partially dependent on your hardware, with different Mac models exhibiting different problems and differing levels of stability. If it weren't for the sleep issue, i'd say MacOS X is rock solid, GUI and all. Since i don't hear too many people complaining about that particular issue, i'm assuming it's more or less limited to folks with older PowerBooks.

Application crashes are much more likely the fault of the application code than the OS.

[BkueKanoodle]

Originally posted by Scarpa:


And one final point - Windows NT has seen no major architectual changes in over 15 years. I'd sure hope that a product that has a 12 year head start on MacOSX is at least a little more stable.

Umm Windows NT was completely redesigned for version 3.1 in 94. At that time it went a completely different path then Win 9x and windows

Windows NT 3.1, 94-03-01 is Microsoft's platform of choice for high-end systems. It is intended for use in network servers, workstations and software development machines; it will not replace Windows for DOS. While Windows NT's user interface is very similar to that of Windows 3.1, it is based on an entirely new operating system kernel.

Windows NT 3.5, 94-04-12 provides OLE 2.0, improved performance and reduced memory requirements. It was released in September 1994. Windows NT 3.5 Workstation replaces Windows NT 3.1, while Windows NT 3.5 Server replaces the Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server.

Windows NT 4.0, ("Cairo") 94-03-15 Microsoft's project for object-oriented Windows, and a successor to the "Daytona" release of Windows NT.

Windows 2000 again introduced a new subsystem and comlpletely redesigned OS Philosophy

Any OS is stable when you don't run a GUI on it. DOS never blue screened on me. Even linux has a less then stellar track record when it comes to gui's (you can tell a geek designed the user interfaces on the linux distro's, they have got to be the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Functional? Sometimes. Pretty? Never.

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by BkueKanoodle:
Umm Windows NT was completely redesigned for version 3.1 in 94. At that time it went a completely different path then Win 9x and windows

Windows NT 3.1, 94-03-01 is Microsoft's platform of choice for high-end systems. It is intended for use in network servers, workstations and software development machines; it will not replace Windows for DOS. While Windows NT's user interface is very similar to that of Windows 3.1, it is based on an entirely new operating system kernel.

Windows NT 3.5, 94-04-12 provides OLE 2.0, improved performance and reduced memory requirements. It was released in September 1994. Windows NT 3.5 Workstation replaces Windows NT 3.1, while Windows NT 3.5 Server replaces the Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server.

Windows NT 4.0, ("Cairo") 94-03-15 Microsoft's project for object-oriented Windows, and a successor to the "Daytona" release of Windows NT.

Windows 2000 again introduced a new subsystem and comlpletely redesigned OS Philosophy

Any OS is stable when you don't run a GUI on it. DOS never blue screened on me. Even linux has a less then stellar track record when it comes to gui's (you can tell a geek designed the user interfaces on the linux distro's, they have got to be the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Functional? Sometimes. Pretty? Never.

It should also be pointed out that even though the Win32 API has remained pretty constant, Windows Server 2003 will only have about 60% compatibility with Win NT apps, according to Microsoft.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2133899,00.html