Thoughts from a Mac OS X lover

Personally I really can't imagine why people would buy a MAC OS over Windows if they were running a PC. The big selling point of the MAC is the fabulous design quality of the systems themselves.

I bought a Mac about a year ago because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I tried to like it - I really did, but as time went on I found myself using it less and less. It seemed more of a toy than a serious tool and nothing worked the way I, as a long-time Windows user, expected it to. It seemed counter-intuitive to me.

So now it sits alone and I'll probably either eBay it or give it to one of the kids. Just not my cuppa tea.

It's because of the speed of a mac compared to a pc its faster than windows however with windows 7 its all goign to change. Dragonfly just put windows on it lol.

Macs used to be "De Rigeur" when it came to publishing / image processing.

I still have a nice Apple Cinema Display -- beautiful piece of kit.

However what most of the "Mac fanboys" forget (and I don't mean this with any disrespect) is that Apple had a very strict control over what hardware and software one could connect to it and (until recently) if Apple didn't make or approve it --tough luck.

Windows on the other hand has had just about every piece of hardware and software imaginable thrown at it with a fair degree of success -- from such places as measuring gear on an Oil rig to a bog standard TV card on a home users laptop. Not easy to provide an interface that makes such diverse pieces of gear available.

True the Windows GUI was a bit cludgy -- if you come from a Linux background where you just had an X server (graphic server) and could run a choice of different GUI's then Windows took a bit of getting used to -- but typical Windows users aren't Linux tinkerers and basically just want to switch on their machines and run the apps.

The main reason Viruses aren't so common on Apple / MAC machines is nothing to do with the Linux kernel --it's just that there are so many fewer users ()around 10% world wide) that most hackers can do far more damage trying to "Break Windows".

If you believe that there aren't any viruses for OS X or Leopard you are certainly living in cloud cuckoo land. Just google again. Any OS can be hacked given time and resources.

My complaint with Windows is still that it takes a lot of skill to customize the GUI into ways YOU would like to have it running (and often it's not even possible)


For starters why not have "Virtual desktops" --With 4GB RAM and more you can run literally dozens of applications at the same time --keeping track of these can be difficult. =There are 3rd party apps out there (even free one's) but this should IMO be built into the OS.

Customisation of the desktop with cludgy themes is a mess as well -- also needs admin privileges --why should I have to go to the IT dept to increase or change the standard Font size or background colours --they don't know what my eyes are like do they.

But for what it does and for the sheer millions of Windows installations it works rather well and you can't really call Microsoft as the Evil Empire

-another topic but the Bill Gates foundataion gives probably more money to charity etc than any other body on earth.

Cheers
jimbo

DJ54 said:

It's because of the speed of a mac compared to a pc its faster than windows however with windows 7 its all goign to change. Dragonfly just put windows on it lol.

No, that's not a Mac running Windows. That's a dual monitor/two computer setup with the left screen running OS-X and the right running Vista 64. Same speed processor in each and the same amount of RAM.

My Vista box is faster than my Mac box (with basically the same hardware).