[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by leperkuhn:
I've only connected with Access and MSSQL. But it does use an ODBC driver so i would assume you could connect to anything.

It's a damn shame apple doesn't include this. Since I've started using databases I've been very happy. Everything I've done is related to data storage and presentation, and it is questionable when my choice of OS has very little database integration.

Of course, Apple doesn't really play well toward the business world, so that might just not be on the agenda either.

Apple has lost in the 'business world'...I don't see Apple ever gaining any grounds in that market. That's probably why you do see many business-y apps from Apple. The concentrate more on consumer apps and pro apps.

[leperkuhn]

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Apple has lost in the 'business world'...I don't see Apple ever gaining any grounds in that market. That's probably why you do see many business-y apps from Apple. The concentrate more on consumer apps and pro apps.

A company can only choose to exclude itself from so many markets. Not including an easy way to connect a cocoa application to a database is a bad decision.

I would love to write a cocoa app that runs on a server that uses a database backend, but it's so much easier with PHP because of mysql_query().

[clarkgoble]

This is probably going a bit astray, but I believe there are Obj-C interfaces to many of the popular database formats. So I don't see this as being that big a deal. I agree Apple ought to have it standard as a framework of sorts. I don't do much obj-C stuff, but perhaps they have it. But I do know there are several for mySQL and a few others because I downloaded them planning on using them and then got too busy.

[Brass]

Originally posted by leperkuhn:
A company can only choose to exclude itself from so many markets. Not including an easy way to connect a cocoa application to a database is a bad decision.

I would love to write a cocoa app that runs on a server that uses a database backend, but it's so much easier with PHP because of mysql_query().

But there are plenty of free Cocoa frameworks to do this for you already!

And I can't wait for the built in SQLite/Cocoa integration in Tiger (not for remote databases, but for local database documents).

[jbartone]

XP is soooo frustrating...for some reason now...everything starts up real slow. Plus my iPod wouldn't mount properly. Connecting it would crash everything, or make it go real slow. ******** that I didn't ask for has started showing up on my desktop (I did not click 'yes' on ANYTHING, nor have I even USED IE for a long time!). And to top it all of, Explorer (Windows GUI thingy) randomly crashes and I have to restart that again.

Grrrr I feel like punching a god damned hole right through this piece of s**t and throwing it off a two storey building

I'm going to make damned sure my next computer is a Mac.
Doesn't help the laptops our school gives us are overpriced Celery pieces of junk.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/georg...rbush/mofo.mpg

[Amorya]

Originally posted by leperkuhn:
A company can only choose to exclude itself from so many markets. Not including an easy way to connect a cocoa application to a database is a bad decision.

I would love to write a cocoa app that runs on a server that uses a database backend, but it's so much easier with PHP because of mysql_query().

EOF (the Enterprise Objects Framework) comes with WebObjects, and it is entirely possible (although unsupported) to make a Cocoa-EOF application.

It's not that widely known, but apparently it works. (I've not tried it - I've only used EOF with WebObjects - I'm not a cocoa programmer.) And EOF can connect to any JDBC-compatible database.

Amorya

[EmmEff]

Originally posted by jbartone:
XP is soooo frustrating...for some reason now...everything starts up real slow.

Ok, so you have a botched installation or bad hardware or both. No operating system that I am aware of will function properly on bad hardware.

******** that I didn't ask for has started showing up on my desktop (I did not click 'yes' on ANYTHING, nor have I even USED IE for a long time!).

Do you really think that Windows XP has built-in spyware that just magically appears at random? Please...

And to top it all of, Explorer (Windows GUI thingy) randomly crashes and I have to restart that again.

See my first comment.

[CubeWannaB]

Originally posted by EmmEff:
Ok, so you have a botched installation or bad hardware or both. Do you really think that Windows XP has built-in spyware that just magically appears at random?

Or the problem could be that XP has very poor security that allows unauthorized software in the form of spyware and viruses to load themselves and take control of the machine.

In which case the fault does ultimately lie with the OS.

[BenRoethig]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
"GUI customisation. Themes, sounds, and even the cursor. You can get these through shareware, but why pay for what should be included in the operating system."

Aren't these available for OSX also through shareware? Is that APE plugin for customizing your UI that much more limited? Admittedly Windows has more control out of the box (i.e. colors, text size, etc.) But there are plenty of fairly good shareware programs that can really customize your interface.

I think you missed the second sentence.

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
"Support for hardware sound APIs."

What do you mean here? Aren't there 3rd party sound cards you can easily plug into the Mac? Admittedly I've heard the API is a bit difficult - but it is there.

Apple only supports software audio. The audio cards can be used, but it's the Mac's CPU doing the work, not the audio card's processor. That's one of the reason's creative's stab at the mac market failed. Apple wouldn't support EAX or any other hardware API.

[clarkgoble]

I'm really, really sure Apple also supports hardware sound and that is how M-audio's USB based 5.1 stereo works. It was out before the G5's were.

Consider the following, for example:

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=...a955aa6ae2db1c

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=...70e87c79f47cdb

Apple has Core Audio which I believe can make use of hardware sound. The problem (and this may have changed) was that not all applications use the Core Audio API.

[jbartone]

Originally posted by EmmEff:
Ok, so you have a botched installation or bad hardware or both. No operating system that I am aware of will function properly on bad hardware.



Do you really think that Windows XP has built-in spyware that just magically appears at random? Please...



See my first comment.

My hardware is fine, thankyou very much! It has been working fine for the last year, and everytime this crap happens I have to reformat the piece of junk. It's a waste of time.

[EmmEff]

My hardware is fine, thankyou very much!

Typical refrain of a PC user... Sorry, I've heard it all before. I work on these damned things for a living. Windows has come a long way and it simply does not crash nearly as often anymore. When I see problems like you describe, I blame the hardware and most of the time I am correct.

I am still using the same Windows XP installation from two years ago on a development machine and have never had to reformat. I still think there's something wrong with your hardware.

Windows XP still has it's share of problems (spyware probably being the first and foremost), however stability is no longer one of them. When I can run the same development machine for 60+ day uptimes on Windows XP, I think they are doing alright.

With that said, I have no Mac or OS X experience, but from what I've heard/read on these forums, I think I'll like it. I have no reason to bash either platform.

[jbartone]

Originally posted by EmmEff:
Typical refrain of a PC user... Sorry, I've heard it all before. I work on these damned things for a living. Windows has come a long way and it simply does not crash nearly as often anymore. When I see problems like you describe, I blame the hardware and most of the time I am correct.

I am still using the same Windows XP installation from two years ago on a development machine and have never had to reformat. I still think there's something wrong with your hardware.

Windows XP still has it's share of problems (spyware probably being the first and foremost), however stability is no longer one of them. When I can run the same development machine for 60+ day uptimes on Windows XP, I think they are doing alright.

With that said, I have no Mac or OS X experience, but from what I've heard/read on these forums, I think I'll like it. I have no reason to bash either platform.

Why would it be the hardware? Always, after 3-6 months of use I have to reformat again, everything starts chugging along slowly. After a fresh re-format, however everything is fine.

And, you WILL like OS X

[EmmEff]

Something is obviously wrong... you shouldn't have to reinstall every 3-6 months. Either your machine is getting polluted with spyware, virii, or other crap or there's something wrong.

I don't want this thread to degenerate into the type of Mac vs. PC thread that I typically ignore. If you want legitmate help with your XP problems, please contact me via email or private message.

[clarkgoble]

I agree you shouldn't have to reinstall every 3-6 months. Although installing once a year isn't at all uncommon. A lot of problems can be avoided though by simply avoiding IE and using Firefox. As soon as I did that my stability increased dramatically.

[sniffer]

It isn't unusual with some crazy issues on my Mac from time to time either in my experience. It's just that I ALWAYS find a way around to fix the problem (even in OS X. OS 9 was lovely like that, but it had its share of instability issues in between.) In XP I find it a little more complex to troubleshot, and sometimes reinstalling seems like the easiest path around. In OS X the problem always lays in lack of maintenance (Cocktail is my friend), or some fluky settings files in your ~/Library path. In rare cases I need to reset PRAM to fix the problem. There are very few variables to check to solve a problem in OS X. I wonder how trouble shooting in LH will be. Hopefully it can just take care of it own problems, seeing just how abstract XP can be.

Oh well.. I am just rambling.

[EmmEff]

I know nothing about OS X (I am not implying that you know nothing about XP) and would probably think the same thing. Reinstalling XP is the absolute last resort for me and I have been successfully able to bring clients' XP installs back to life that they had, perhaps prematurely, written off. Essentially if the system still boots into Safe Mode, it can be recovered.

[sniffer]

Originally posted by EmmEff:
I know nothing about OS X (I am not implying that you know nothing about XP) and would probably think the same thing. Reinstalling XP is the absolute last resort for me and I have been successfully able to bring clients' XP installs back to life that they had, perhaps prematurely, written off. Essentially if the system still boots into Safe Mode, it can be recovered.

Do you have any special steps you might want to share in that regard, fixing XP installations? I don't have many problems with my XP Pro installation, but I am the first to get phoned if my father runs into problems with his XP Pro installation. It's not that he have had any problems running the system, it's the small quirks that is a nightmare if they grow big enough. The last issue he have had was that Windows update over web stopped working. Now how can you tell if the system is updated or not if web-WU doesn't respond on your machine? Apparently you can't!
Anyway, I called MS support and after me and the tech had been banging our heads to the wall for a week to no avail, we couldn't get around the problem. What struck me as quite shocking is that the MS tech suggested third-party SW like ad-aware, and what not. WTF?
Anyway, incidentally I found that new accounts on the machine didn't have the problem, so the problem could've been in the *\Profiles area for my dads account, but the tech misunderstood and took that as "mission accomplished" as we could always check WU at the other account. So at that point I pretty much gave up my self and left the whole "rescue mission".
Bottom line, there is more to it than just having a system that boots up. Having a system that works the way you expect is another. But if you have some pointers what to do when that doesn't happen, please be my guest and share your knowledge. I'll be anxious to get a glimpse in the secrets that I've been missing out on.

[EmmEff]

I do not have secrets, per se. Nothing I do in an attempt to resurrect a broken XP system isn't already documented somewhere.

In the case of your father's system, first off, you said yourself that the problem is limited to a specific user. Obviously there's something wrong with the settings for Internet Explorer. This fix might be easier than you think. While logged in to that user's account, use the registry editor to remove all of the Internet Explorer settings from HKEY_CURRENT_USER. This might be extreme, especially if there are settings you wish to retain.

Whatever you do, do not delete the user profile! Doing so will screw up file permissions on NTFS. User "bob" created a month ago is not the same as user "bob" created today.

In general, use the Task Manager to determine which tasks are running and any that are unreognizable, search for the name on Google to see what they are. Use the Registry Editor to remove programs that run when Windows boots (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ru n). Also check the Startup groups (local and global).

On a fresh XP installation, I install AVG Anti-Virus, Adaware, Spybot S&D, BHODaemon, and SpywareBlaster (all are freeware applications). McAfee also has their Stinger tool which will remove the "virus of the day". It's a very handy tool when virus protection software is non-existent or not working.

After resolving the problem, I attempt to determine what caused it. Unpatched Windows seems to be the primary reason why people are getting infected. They're using unpatched Outlook Express and in it's "preview" mode, it's following links and/or executing malicious JavaScript in spam emails.

Although Internet Explorer is the browser of choice for virtually everybody, I still recommend Firefox (w/some good extensions like Adblock) and Thunderbird. Firefox doesn't have BHOs which have been a primary method of users unknowingly attaching toolbars and other crap to Internet Explorer.

The solution to these types of problems aren't quite cut and dry. It's not like I can give you a precise recipe that says do this, do that, and your XP will be fixed. Virtually every problem has to be attacked from a different angle, using different sleuthing techniques, and in some cases different tools (ie. some spyware can not be removed by Adaware or Spybot but by specific tools for that particular spyware).

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by jasong:

* Volume control - The system doesn't have a hardware volume control, which is fine, except that Windows keeps hiding the volume icon in the system tray, thinking it is inactive because I am not changing the volume every 5 seconds.

That's simple to fix. Just right-click the taskbar and then press 'customize'. Then you can tell XP what to hide.

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by CubeWannaB:
It is just "Mac" not "MAC". "Mac" is not an acronym, it is short for Macintosh, a kind of apple.

McIntosh, at least in Ontario

http://www.foodland.gov.on.ca/facts/apple.htm

[Drakino]

Originally posted by jasong:
* Battery Profiles - While I can save different power management scenarios, Windows won't change from plugged in to battery on it's own. So when I unplug, I have to open the control panel and manually switch profiles.

In the Power Options, it should have two setting per profile, one for battert and one for unplugged. The Profiles are more to change from normal screen blanking to presentation mode and such, not for battery and AC changes.

If Windows is not giving you both options, it doesn't know it is on a laptop for some reason. You may want to call the manufacturer to see if some driver is needed to get it to work right.

I even get two settings on my desktop if I attach a USB UPS since it sees it as a battery.

[Drakino]

Originally posted by S.SubZero:
As opposed to the MAC, with it's ultra-intuitive "Macintosh HD." It gives no indication that's where things are.. It's just one of the only things on the desktop so someone would eventually click on it, as opposed to being told bluntly "Start here."
The Start menu can be modified and made as un-clumsy as the user likes. The quick launch bar (which I like, and for some reason is no longer on by default in XP) is a handy tool.

You have the Dock though as well. True, different then the start menu, but a vast improvement from OS 9 and below from a first time user perspective.

I found Media Player 8 (which comes stock with XP) to have a really nice interface, but ever since MP9 more and more stuff simply doesn't work right in MP8. I have no problem with Media Player for playing back anything I have, and quality is fine.

Eww, media player 8 and 9. horid bloted things with way too many buttons, and the one you need either really tiny, or just not there. I install Media Player Classic on any Windows machine I use and disable WMP. Much cleaner, for when I just want to watch a file.

Windows ME, XP, and 2003 all support two different network setups. If contact with the DHCP server is lost, these OS's will try the alternate configuration. They will also do this if they can't find a DHCP server at boot. If you have 2 locations, ie. home and work, you can set up these two profiles very easily, and Windows will (if DHCP is on the primary profile) figure out which settings it should use automatically. I have done this for a few years now with my laptop.

Sadly this doesn't change what network ports are enabled, nor proxy settings. It also can't deal with multiole DHCP enviornments with alternate configurations. I, along with many others have DHCP at home now due to routers and such.

I have a single processor 1.25Ghz G4. For all the presumed power it's supposed to have, how come in Safari if I do so little as click the scroll bar, anything animated in Safari (ie. animated GIFs) stops?

Safari does have some issues, like the 95% CPU usage the animated gifs and ad are causing.

[jbartone]

Let's see if someone can help me with my XP Networking woes.

OK, so I share a drive with full permissions to Everyone, Administrators, and ANONYMOUS LOGON. When I try to connect to it from another PC running XP, after going through the drive a bit I eventually get "Access Denied"

So I've been using the Administrative share instead lately, but now for some reason everytime I try to connect to that I get a pre-set username that I can't change

Is there a way to set just one password that gives complete total full unrestricted access to a shared drive?

[Brass]

Originally posted by EmmEff:
Windows XP still has it's share of problems (spyware probably being the first and foremost), however stability is no longer one of them. When I can run the same development machine for 60+ day uptimes on Windows XP, I think they are doing alright.

Windows users sure have a different perspective! If you think an uptime of only 60 days is in any way good, then that's a sad reflection on Windows' poor stability.

Good BSD-based systems measure their uptimes in months or years, not days. For example, see netcraft's list of the longest uptimes. Not many less than a year in that list. Not many windows servers either.

Mind you, there's not many Mac OS X servers either. But my point is that 60 days uptime is pathetic for a server. At work here most of our servers are up for around a year between reboots, only being restarted for kernel level software upgrades, or for some hardware upgrades (or very lengthy power failures). Even most hardware upgrades can be done on the running system.

60 days uptime IS a stability problem.

[Brass]

Originally posted by EmmEff:
Whatever you do, do not delete the user profile! Doing so will screw up file permissions on NTFS. User "bob" created a month ago is not the same as user "bob" created today.

Since this is a Windows thread on a Mac OS X forum, I think it's fair enough to compare this Windows action with the equivalent on Mac OS X, just out of interest.

Deleting a Mac OS X equivalent of a user profile, and then creating another with the same name has the same problem, in that the UID behind the username is what counts. However, I would never advise anyone against doing it on Mac OS X, as there are a couple of solutions to the problem that are trivially easy to implement. One solution is one single Terminal command (sudo chown -R ~/<username>). The other is a little more complex but doesn't require the user of the Terminal or CLI (ie, use NetInfo to change the UID).

I guess there may be work arounds in Windows too, but since few peole seem to be aware of them, I'm guessing they're probably not as simple as issuing a single command, or changing a single setting.

Just another reason to be glad we don't have to use Windows all the time.

[EmmEff]

Originally posted by Brass:
Windows users sure have a different perspective! If you think an uptime of only 60 days is in any way good, then that's a sad reflection on Windows' poor stability.

I was rebooting the system after installing a device driver that I was developing...

Good BSD-based systems measure their uptimes in months or years, not days. For example, see netcraft's list of the longest uptimes. Not many less than a year in that list. Not many windows servers either.

There's more to life than a long uptime...

Mind you, there's not many Mac OS X servers either. But my point is that 60 days uptime is pathetic for a server.

Who said anything about a server? I am talking about a desktop (development) machine.

[EmmEff]

Originally posted by Brass:
However, I would never advise anyone against doing it on Mac OS X, as there are a couple of solutions to the problem that are trivially easy to implement.

Ok, to put it another way, go ahead and remove and recreate a user with the same name, but when you do, you'll have to change the ownership of the files in your home directory and any other files owned by the "old" user.

I guess there may be work arounds in Windows too, but since few peole seem to be aware of them, I'm guessing they're probably not as simple as issuing a single command, or changing a single setting.

No command line required, just use the Explorer Security page.

[Brass]

Originally posted by EmmEff:
I was rebooting the system after installing a device driver that I was developing...



There's more to life than a long uptime...



Who said anything about a server? I am talking about a desktop (development) machine.

Why you were rebooting is not relevant, since you were saying that Windows doesn't have stability problems based on an uptime of 60+ days as evidence.

Yes, there is more to life that a long uptime. But there's no stability if there's a poor uptime.

I was using servers as an example. Another myth of the desktop computing world is that servers are stable, but we just expect desktops to be unstable. There is no reason why desktops should not be more stable than they are. And in fact with Mac OS X, or Linux, or most Unix based OS's, they are very stable.

Windows users (and I don't mean you necessarily, but Windows users in general) expect stability problems, and consider it to be normal. It should not have to be this way. (Mac users had the same problem with the classic Mac OS's).

[sniffer]

Originally posted by EmmEff:
In the case of your father's system, first off, you said yourself that the problem is limited to a specific user. Obviously there's something wrong with the settings for Internet Explorer. This fix might be easier than you think. While logged in to that user's account, use the registry editor to remove all of the Internet Explorer settings from HKEY_CURRENT_USER. This might be extreme, especially if there are settings you wish to retain.

Thanks for your input. Not all of them apply directly with my fathers case, but the above sounds interesting. But there is a big IF with it; what am I risking here? The thing is, several of my attempts with the support from the MS tech was about resetting I.E. in one way or the other, but that approach had some terrible side effects. WU forgot ALL its past WU installations, and started from scratch with the mini SP1 patch. Now that was a bummer considering he only has a 56k modem.
Anyway, what do I risk by remove all the IE settings from HKEY_CURRENT_USER? I think my father can get by if he at least can keep his bookmarks (, and WU doesn't get screwed up further). I need to know if the possible consequences is worth the effort. There is a lot of work-hours and money on stake with this comp, so I can't attack it with an axe. But your suggestion sounds interesting.

Thanks so far. BTW sorry if I am derailing this thread somehow.

[Brass]

Originally posted by EmmEff:
Ok, to put it another way, go ahead and remove and recreate a user with the same name, but when you do, you'll have to change the ownership of the files in your home directory and any other files owned by the "old" user.

Isn't that sort of what I said?

[Brass]

Originally posted by EmmEff:
No command line required, just use the Explorer Security page.

So I guess that's similar to using the NetInfo method in Mac OS X (no CLI required). If so, then I guess there's no reason why Windows users should not delete user profiles, as in "whatever you do, do not delete the user profile" in Windows? (as posted by someone earlier).

[EmmEff]

Originally posted by Brass:
Windows users (and I don't mean you necessarily, but Windows users in general) expect stability problems, and consider it to be normal. It should not have to be this way. (Mac users had the same problem with the classic Mac OS's).

I totally agree. People definitely expect stability problems but what I am trying to convey is that Windows 2000/XP are NOT anything like Windows 9x/Me. I have clients who's eyebrows raise when I tell them that a properly functioning machine shouldn't need to be rebooted daily. There is so much garbage PC hardware out there as well. It doesn't help matters worse. Given the quantity of hardware that Windows has to support, one must give them some credit for even being able to do something at all.

[EmmEff]

Originally posted by sniffer:
But there is a big IF with it; what am I risking here?

Quite honestly, probably not much. You could simply just rename the registry key and fire up IE and see what the effects are. If you don't like it, delete the newly created key and rename the old one back.

WU forgot ALL its past WU installations, and started from scratch with the mini SP1 patch. Now that was a bummer considering he only has a 56k modem.

That's kinda crappy... do your father a favour and burn all the big stuff onto a CD-R. All of the patches available from Windows Update are available as standalone downloads from www.microsoft.com.

There is a lot of work-hours and money on stake with this comp, so I can't attack it with an axe. But your suggestion sounds interesting.

Given it's current state, how much would you lose if you had to reinstall? As I said earlier, reinstalling is my last resort. A Windows install would have to be pretty baffed for me to reformat.

Thanks so far. BTW sorry if I am derailing this thread somehow.

Same here... it is not my intention to preach the merits of Windows. If anything, I am defending it against falsehoods. Windows is Windows. Not all of it is as bad as most OS X users seem to imply.

As I stated before, if you want more personalized help, PM or email me.

[EmmEff]

Originally posted by Brass:
So I guess that's similar to using the NetInfo method in Mac OS X (no CLI required). If so, then I guess there's no reason why Windows users should not delete user profiles, as in "whatever you do, do not delete the user profile" in Windows? (as posted by someone earlier).

Agreed. The only reason why I said this might not be a good idea is that most Windows users (especially those coming from Windows 9x/Me) don't quite grasp filesystem security. They don't know that removing a user and readding it doesn't make it the same user. They don't know that they'll lose access to any protected files unless they change permissions. If one knows the ramifications of adding/readding the same user, it's as safe to do as it would be on any other OS.

[booboo]

Originally posted by CubeWannaB:
Should I laugh or cry?

Both.

It gets me too.

[BkueKanoodle]

Originally posted by jasong:

...

* Network Profiles - Changing locations with specified network settings is a real PITA. While the Location Manager on OS X is still a far cry from what it used to be, it is a million times better than what Windows has.
....



-- Jason

I agree, OS X is far and ahead of Windows XP. I recommend doing a google for a program called Netswitcher. It brings a lot of functionality to switching networks. It's kind of clinky, but still better then doing it manually.

[EmmEff]

Agreed, this is one place where Windows XP falls a little short, however I am not sure the 'problem' is widespread enough to affect a large percentage of users.

I have a work-issued notebook that exists on my work and home networks. I would like to be able to easily switch between profiles, however simple DHCP hasn't proven to be much of a limitation. I presume if one was running static IPs, the limitations of XP would be more of a headache.