Why is Microsoft called the standard when their own software is the least standard?

[Fonz]

Those dickwads are always defying comventions that THEY put in place.

Want to have a window come back to the same size as you left it? Anything but Notepad.

Want to use cut and paste off the screen? Anything but the Windows pop-up error messages. And they also usually block the "print screen capture" at that point too, so you are forced to copy down line after line of "status hex bytes" that may-or-may-not prove useful to the tech.

And what's the only program that can defy a Double-ctrl-del-alt to bring down the system? MS Outlook. You don't even get a chance to use "Not Responding - Kill Anyway? NOOO.. you have to clear a bunch of warning messages, and specifically click on the close box. And why? because it has to empty it's trash bin.

Plus they let you change every icon and it's name but their own.

And you can remove any icon but their own dopiest ones.

When they take a tumble (and they will, remember when IBM called the shots? and before them CP/M?) I'll be first in line to get the replacement.

[Dogzilla]

I'm bilingual -- I can use both PC and Macs with equal deftness. Thus, I'm a huge Mac fan. (Here's hoping a hijack Mac vs PC debate doesn't start...)

PC's suck and it's all Bill Gates' fault. In fact, I blame everything that has ever gone wrong with the universe on Big Bill...

The software is clunky and difficult to re-learn every time they upgrade. The upgrades rarely address the real problems encountered in the last version. Usually just smoke and mirrors and a whole bunch of new buttons you don't even need.

The Office products gobble up WAY too much memory so you have to have a gagillion mgs of RAM if you want to run Word and Outlook email at the same damn time...

I can go on and on, but instead...

Q: How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. They just call Bill Gates and he declares Darkness the new industry standard!

[Gomez]

Microsoft is just plain evil.

[capacitor]

Funny, I'm running Windows 2000, loading up only FreeMem Pro and an anti-virus. Guess what? Win 2k leaves me wth more RAM, about 12MB, free than Windows 98 at startup with the same start programs.

The problem with leaving MS is that your competition, Linux and Netscape-AOL, are beginning to dish out bloatware as well.

Programs take way too long to load and execute probably because many programs are written in languages which, though very flexible, are slower than BASIC. The CPU speed sometimes cover program sloth, sometimes not. The CPU's are getting fast, but the increased speed is virtually useless against sloppy and bloated programming.

Apples are easier to use, but are still expensive, and refuses to run Windows apps and games unless one has an expensive emulator. If Apple makes its computers run Windows apps smoothly, smoother than the programs running in Windows9x, NT/2K or CE, then Steve Jobs will have the last laugh after all.

[Geek Mecha]

Originally posted by capacitor
Apples ... refuses to run Windows apps and games unless one has an expensive emulator.
This is one of the weirdest criticisms of the Macintosh I've ever seen. How Windows-centric can you get?

It also has nothing to do with the OP.

How can any platform's inability to run a different platform's software be a valid criticism against it? Are you saying you think we should live in a one-OS world? Surely you realize the serious disadvantages of such a scenario.

If it's cross-platform compatibility you're arguing: Macs can open PC files without emulators such as SoftWindows and Virtual PC. Many Mac apps come with conversion capabilities. There are even shareware programs that can open and convert PC files to Mac-readable files. I myself use ResEdit, which is free, to convert PC files. Macs can also open and write to PC floppies.

These capabilities may not be even close to running Windows apps without an emulator, but they sure as hell top the strides towards cross-platform compatibility that Microsoft's made. Which, essentially, are zilch.

BTW, why isn't it incumbent on Microsoft, rather than Apple, to do all the cross-platform bridging? They'd have an easier time, given their market share, don't you think?

If Apple makes its computers run Windows apps smoothly, smoother than the programs running in Windows9x, NT/2K or CE, then Steve Jobs will have the last laugh after all.
If the Macintosh could run Windows apps more smoothly than Windows can, then Steve Jobs would own Microsoft.


Re the OP:

Why doesn't MS follow anyone's standards? Because they don't have to. It's one of the many ways they've used their dominance to do as they please. Heck, they can't even be consistent within their own apps (as Fonz has already discovered on his own). :)

[SPOOFE]

Fonz...

Want to have a window come back to the same size as you left it? Anything but Notepad.... Want to use cut and paste off the screen? Anything but the Windows pop-up error messages.... And what's the only program that can defy a Double-ctrl-del-alt to bring down the system? MS Outlook... Plus they let you change every icon and it's name but their own... you can remove any icon but their own dopiest ones.

"There are exceptions to every rule." Sheesh, whoever said that a company always has to be completely consistent? Apparently you don't realize just how limited modern technology is.

Dogzilla...

PC's suck and it's all Bill Gates' fault.

Perhaps you're misplacing blame to the easiest (read: richest) target. Do PC's suck because of market manipulations from Microsoft? Or, rather, do PC's suck because of demands from the consumer base?

AudreyK...

How can any platform's inability to run a different platform's software be a valid criticism against it?

To put it another way, Macs can't run the majority of programs on the market. If they deliberately excluded the majority of the software out there, they deserve criticism. The fact that they've begun synchronizing their hardware with more software shows that Apple's finally realized this. How I long for the day when a Mac is fully compatible...

BTW, why isn't it incumbent on Microsoft, rather than Apple, to do all the cross-platform bridging? They'd have an easier time, given their market share, don't you think?

Because it was Apple's choice to not design their systems to be compatible with all the other systems on the market. Microsoft has no direct control over Apple's manufacturing policies.

[Duke]

SPOOFE responded to a question in the following manner:

How can any platform's inability to run a different platform's software be a valid criticism against it?

To put it another way, Macs can't run the majority of programs on the market. If they deliberately excluded
the majority of the software out there, they deserve criticism. The fact that they've begun synchronizing their
hardware with more software shows that Apple's finally realized this. How I long for the day when a Mac is
fully compatible...


I have sympathy with Mac-lovers, but this is the one thing I don't understand about their devotion. Surely, if Apple's hardware is so much better than PC hardware, if Apple had synchronized their software with the PC we'd all be using Apples within months--even Big Business recognises the advantages of running industry-standard software on a faster machine. So, why has Apple resisted for so long?

[lawoot]

Who's the largest maker of Mac software? Microsoft.

What is the best version of Microsoft Office? The Mac version. It does many things that the PC version can't.

originally posted by DukeI have sympathy with Mac-lovers, but this is the one thing I don't understand about their devotion. Surely, if Apple's hardware is so much better than PC hardware, if Apple had synchronized their software with the PC we'd all be using Apples within months--even Big Business recognises the advantages of running industry-standard software on a faster machine. So, why has Apple resisted for so long?

Consider that the main reason that Apple has done as well lately is Marketing. Their marketing sucked for YEARS, and their sales showed it. Plus the tend to be higher priced than most other computers on the market. But they are the preferred platform for music and movie companies. Why the resistance? Anti-PC bias within the company and the customer base, mostly. I use both... a PC at work, and a graphite iMac at home.

originally posted by AudreyKwhy isn't it incumbent on Microsoft, rather than Apple, to do all the cross-platform bridging? They'd have an easier time, given their market share, don't you think?

Not to mention that THEY are the software company...

[Geek Mecha]

Originally posted by SPOOFE Bo Diddly
To put it another way, Macs can't run the majority of programs on the market. If they deliberately excluded the majority of the software out there, they deserve criticism.
I guess I would be more accepting of this criticism if this inability to run Windows software hindered Mac users' productivity. In a broad sense, it certainly has not. You can draft a letter, create a spreadsheet, create and manipulate graphics, surf the net, host websites, and so forth, just as well on a Mac as on a Windows machine. Of course, being unable to open an .exe file on my Mac doesn't exactly do wonders for my productivity, but IMO that is more an issue of file conversion between the applications themselves rather than the platforms they run on.

Because it was Apple's choice to not design their systems to be compatible with all the other systems on the market.
Microsoft is also guilty of introducing incompatible technologies. Yet it's not looked down upon as much. The reaction is almost the opposite- some people consider it progress.

Microsoft could (and is in the best position to) make cross-platform capabilities because of its considerable presence in both PC and Mac software. As lawoot said, they're the biggest developer of Mac software. (This is addressing only a software-side fix, though; you'd probably need both a software-side and a hardware-side fix for anything decent.)

If real cross-platform compatibilty was even possible, the best opportunity for it is long gone. It would have been back when both MS and Apple held little market share and would have benefitted from a collaboration. Collaborating, of course, could have led to either one capitulating to the other and becoming essentially a single company. It also doesn't eliminate the possibility they would have eventually split off anyway.

As it is now, it's a pissing contest. MS and Apple have had years' worth of opportunities to make complete cross-platform capabilities a reality. But neither would budge.

Originally posted by Duke
I have sympathy with Mac-lovers, but this is the one thing I don't understand about their devotion.
Mac-lovers? Devotion? Sheesh, that makes it sound like a cult or something! :D

[drewbert]

You want to see some Windows interface problems? Try the
Interface Hall of Shame (http://www.iarchitect.com/mshame.htm). There are some Apple examples there, but not nearly as many.

But FWIW, rumors are that the upcoming Mac OS X has been successfully compiled to run on the Intel platform, just in case Apple decides it would be a strategically good thing to do. Right now, it's probably not.

[Homer]

Remember Microsoft BOB? Or Microsoft Home? OMG. Now all who know what I'm talking about will double over with laughter while the rest are bewildered.

Man talk about crappy products.

--Tim

[Jeep's Phoenix]

But you can take any company from any industry, not just the computer industry, and come up with a good list of crappy products for every single one of them.

In my opinion, the idea behind BOB was just expanded too far, and the MS Home concept was just pushed in the wrong direction.

[Alphagene]

I would like to know why my Aptiva looks for Windows Updates every five minutes every day from now until the last syllable of recorded time. I keep setting it to "Never" but every start up there it is in my Task Scheduler, checking every five minutes.

Not only does this annoying feature assume that I have constant direct access to the internet, but it also assumes that Microsoft posts Windows updates more often than I take a leak.

Crimony. If I really want that "Fashion Desktop Theme" I'll download it when I want to. And I'll officially become gay.

[tbea925]

One of my pet peeves is the Microsofte concept that every window has to look like a browser. Really, really bad idea.

[AHunter3]

SPOOFE:
To put it another way, Macs can't run the majority of
programs on the market. If they deliberately excluded
the majority of the software out there, they deserve
criticism. The fact that they've begun synchronizing
their hardware with more software shows that Apple's
finally realized this. How I long for the day when a
Mac is fully compatible...


First reaction: that's a silly thing to say!
Second reaction: I bet lots of folks think in those terms because they don't know any better.

Oh, let's see...all right, way back when in the early days of ATM machines, Citibank had lots and lots and lots of branches in the NY metro area that had their own proprietary ATM machines, and nearly all the other banks that provided ATM services belonged to an interconnected system called 'NYCE'. I can recall cursing when I'd be looking for an ATM machine and I'd go past a Citibank: why the hell can't they be compatible like everyone else? (And, indeed, they have long since joined NYCE and are now compatible.) Similar sentiment?

Dissimilar situation. Macs are NOT to PCs as Citibank ATMs were to NYCE ATMs.

For a situation more similar to the Mac / PC situation, consider the Mack truck. It has wheels like your Chevrolet, it has a steering wheel like your Chevy, gas and brake pedals are basically in the same place, but dammit, it uses that harder-to-find DIESEL fuel!! Why the hell can't a Mack truck be compatible with the vast majority of road vehicles? Well...because the engine does its fuel-burning thing in a fundamentally different way, that's why.

The Macintosh computer is not merely good hardware that *just happens for some silly proprietary reason to run an OS different from and incompatible with what everyone else uses*, it is different hardware altogether. The CPU and all of the supporting chips such as those that control ports and drives and memory management are not latter-day versions of the original IBM Personal Computer and its overall architecture; it performs many of the same functions, often in roughly similar ways, but everywhere you look there are differences that are not easily reconciled.

I am not enough of a low-level operations kind of geek to give you totally accurate and/or highly detailed examples of the differences, but there are things like the PC doing several different types of activity on the same channel and relying on a request for attention in order for that process to get hardware-system attention, whereas the Mac's activities flag themselves so that they are recognized amidst the noise and chaos of other processes by the intended recipient of the signal, so that certain types of interrupt requests are unnecessary; and there are things like the way that the processing unit picks up a block of bytes for processing and, if PC, assumes the starting point is on this end, but, if a Mac, thinks of the starting point as being on the other end, sort of akin to right-to-left languages like Hebrew being compared to left-to-right languages like Spanish (got a good word processor that will let you type both languages in the same document?); and the CPU's themselves expect a certain instruction language for upper-level programming such as the operating system and the other software that runs within it. The PC still uses what is essentially the 386 instruction set with MMX and a few other expanded instructions; the CPU's themselves are highly specialized little engines that tear apart those instructions and break them up into more digestible parts of equal length and pops them into an instruction pipeline in the order that it thinks it will need them. The Mac uses a vastly different instruction set which is essentially the IBM POWER instructions with AltiVec and various refinements that have occurred during the development of the PowerPC chip.

So what would have to occur in order for the Mac to 'become compatible'? It would have to be able to process the modern x86 instruction set. To do so in hardware, in the CPU chip itself, would add a huge overhead to the G4 PowerPC chip (kind of like building a high-performance gasoline engine INSIDE your Mack truck's diesel engine so it could burn gasoline as easily as diesel fuel). To do so in software is less intimidating, design-wise; in fact, the Mac OS already emulates another CPU's instruction set as part of what it does: the older Macs were built on the 68000-series Motorola processor, and the PowerPC Macs can run the programs designed for the older Macs by running them in transparent emulation. Emulating the 486 or the Pentium in software is a bit more difficult due to messier dissimilarities between PPC and Intel x86 versus PPC and Motorola 68K-series, but definitely doable.

But suppose you've got that much, and your Mac is interpreting the x86 instructions when you tell it to open and read PC executable code--what is that code telling your Mac to do? "Yo, Mac, check for interrupt requests from the parallel port, and would you mind sticking this here set of data into your {PC-architecture-specific} chunk of reserved memory for later use?" It is as if you had translated printed Chinese into phonetically rendered syllables using the Roman alphabet common to European language, and now you can pronounce what you see on the page, but can you read it? The Chinese restaurant up the street does that on its menu: I can order Chow Har Kew, it says so (and presumably the Chinese characters also are pronounced "Chow Har Kew" if one can read Chinese characters), but since I don't know Chinese I don't know what the phrase "chow har kew" MEANS just because I can now pronounce it.

So in addition to interpreting the x86 instructions, we'd need to make some kind of map of equivalent meanings and hire a translator to sit in there and read off the x86 instructions which assume an Intel-standard architecture and tell the Mac hardware environment "Check for I/O activity indicating the presence of a device and hold this here set of data in your {Mac-architecture-specific} memory address range for later use, OK?"

If the code in question is a a software program--and that's the whole purpose of compatibility, to be able to run PC programs, right--we have the additional level of Windows. You open Access or AutoCAD and it expects to be able to say "OK, I need a document window, so do the built-in Microsoft Windows draw-a-window thing with the following {MS Windows-specific} window-description parameters". So even if your Mac can interpret x86 code and parse its hardware instructions and convert them to equivalent Mac-hardware-appropriate instructions, it also needs to take Windows-specific instructions and either map each of them to a MacOS-equivalent instruction or else (far easier; why reinvent so many wheels?) simply run Windows as a process within the MacOS environment

Here is a good article on how Connectix build Virtual PC, an excellent implementation of such a strategy:

http://www.byte.com/art/9711/sec4/art4.htm


So in that sense the Mac is already compatible. It could become more compatible in an illusory sense if Apple were to buy VirtualPC from Connectix or write their own emulator and embed it invisibly in the Mac OS along with some interface tricks so that PC executables would APPEAR to be running as Mac programs when in fact they were running in a copy of Microsoft Windows in which the Windows desktop was hidden and on top of the interface elements of which a Macintosh "skin" was grafted to keep the environment consistent. But you'd probably take more of a speed hit.

The existing solution is by no means unworkable. Put VPC on your Mac and you have a hell of a lot of compatibility; you run native PPC Mac programs fast, you run old legacy 68K Mac programs slower in emulation in a Mac environment, and you run PC programs by emulating a PC environment and running them in Windows (or for that matter DOS, OS/2, NT Server, or whatever other PC OS you want to run) also somewhat slower. Get a fast enough Mac and you have an adequately fast-enough PC in emulation. (Besides which, when you catch a PC virus you've only lost a virtual environment you have to reinstall).

For a while, a couple of vendors (Orange Micro in particular) were selling an entire PC chipset on a card that you put in your Mac. This did not emulate a PC but literally put an entire second computer's chips in your Mac (with some kludges to let it borrow your Mac's video circuitry, use a virtual hard drive, and use the Mac mouse and keyboard). That didn't compete well because four years after you buy your emulation software, you move it to a faster Mac and have a faster PC as well, whereas four years after you buy your much more expensive PC-on-a-card, you have two out-of-date machines to upgrade.

The only other alternative would be to make the Mac PC-compatible by making it Mac-INCOMPATIBLE. Why the hell would Apple want to do that?

[SPOOFE]

AHunter2...

Blah blah blah blah blah...

No offense, but what the fuck are you talking about? Mack trucks? ATMs?

From what I can gather from that horridly-long post is that you think that Apple can either be compatible with their software, or compatible with all other software (based mostly on your last sentence). Here's why that's utterly ridiculous:

1. The latter would be preferable, as the products made for the Mac are in the minority, take longer to put on the market, and generally cost more.

2. They've already begun integrating their systems to be more compatible with PC/Windows-based software, while at the same time remaining compatible with their own software, showing your statement (and, as far as can be discerned, your entire post) to be FUBAR.

In short, your post would have had more accuracy if you had posted a listing of John Tesh songs.

[yosemite]

I understood what AHunter wrote. (Well, most of it - I am not much of a techie.) And I understood the analogy between Mac Trucks, diesel fuel, and the like. I appreciated AHunter going to the trouble of explaining it (thanks AHunter.)

I think Apple has made great strides to be "compatable" but there is only so far it can go. Because it is a different kind of computer, and that is why many people want to use it. Just like some people want to use a diesel car, instead of a car that burns regular gas. There are good reasons for wanting one type of machine over the other.

A Windows emulator is a great thing on the Mac. Though, I don't need one, since I use my Mac and PC side-by-side. Sure, there are programs that are only available for Windows (Paint Shop Pro, HomeSite, etc. etc.) but usually the top-notch programs are developed for Mac. Besides, do we really need a kajillion different word processing programs, or umpteen graphics programs? A lot of these Windows programs that competing for the market are crappy. I know, I have tried a lot of them out. And messed up my registry in the process. (No, I'm not saying that it isn't nice to have a lot more to choose from!) But Mac users will tell you that they have all they need in the way of word processing applications, graphics applications, etc. etc., for the Mac.

[SPOOFE]

Yosemitebabe, AHunter....

The problem with Apple isn't just its incompatibility with software, it's incompatible with hardware, as well. Yet hard drives are basically the same on both sides, RAM is basically the same on both sides, CD-ROM drive, DVD, monitors, sound and video cards...

Is there any reason why Apple's motherboards and processors can only use Apple hard drives and CD-ROM drives, while all products for PC/Windows systems are, for the most part, interchangeable?

[yosemite]

They are different kinds of machines. You can't expect a diesel car to run regular unleaded, can you?

For the record, I believe the latest Macs can use standard PC hard drives, and I'm not sure, but I think they can use standard PC-100 RAM too. (But I'm not sure.) As far as motherboards and processors go - THEY ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF MACHINES. The Mac G3/G4 processor is vastly different from an Intel or AMD processor. But I am not enough of a techie to explain it to you. AHunter is far more qualified!

[SPOOFE]

The Mac G3/G4 processor is vastly different from an Intel or AMD processor. But I am not enough of a techie to explain it to you.

Not as different as diesel fuel is from unleaded, which is why the analogy in this case just doesn't work. The difference is, surprise, in the processor architecture, allowing the G4 to make more calculations per second. However, the architecture of the Pentium chips and the Athlon chips and the Cyrex chips and the Celeron chips and the Duron chips are all different, yet they all work with the same products on the market (for the most part).

The point is that Apple has refrained from conforming (bad for individuals to do, good for corporations to do) to the marketplace for so long that it's now incredibly difficult for them to do it now. But they are doing it (fortunately). My original beef was with this:

How can any platform's inability to run a different platform's software be a valid criticism against it?

...which implies that it's not Apple's fault that their products are incompatible with the majority of the market.

[Geek Mecha]

Originally posted by SPOOFE Bo Diddly
My original beef was with this:

How can any platform's inability to run a different platform's software be a valid criticism against it?

...which implies that it's not Apple's fault that their products are incompatible with the majority of the market.
I didn't intend to imply that, SPOOFE. I should have explained myself better-- I was coming from the point of view that the two platforms are fundamentally different enough that to imply that they should have some level of interchangeability is ridiculous.

The point is that Apple has refrained from conforming (bad for individuals to do, good for corporations to do) to the marketplace for so long that it's now incredibly difficult for them to do it now. But they are doing it (fortunately).
Agreed.

Originally posted by SPOOFE Bo Diddly
...the products made for the Mac are in the minority, take longer to put on the market, and generally cost more.
This can be attributed to software manufacturers having made Windows versions of their software their top priority. I seriously doubt developing for the Mac is inherently more difficult or costly than for PCs. Most software companies (admittedly wisely) choose to play numbers-- there are more PCs out there, thus a larger potential customer base. If a company that made primarily PC-platform software decided to make Mac versions of their titles, 1) it would never be a big priority for them, which would explain the extra time they'd take to get it released, and 2) they'd have to hire Mac programmers, whose cost of hiring they may try to recoup by making the Mac version prices higher.

Companies can indeed profit from producing Mac products, as evidenced by the dominance of Adobe, Macromedia, and, ironically enough, Microsoft.

Fewer Mac software titles, yes, but as I stated in a previous post, this has not hurt Mac users' productivity any. It's expected, anyway; you have only whatever percentage of the world's computers, you're only going to have roughly that same percentage of the world's software.

Is there any reason why Apple's motherboards and processors can only use Apple hard drives and CD-ROM drives, while all products for PC/Windows systems are, for the most part, interchangeable?
This is a consequence of Apple being a software and a hardware company, and being stingy with licensing. Had Microsoft produced both software and hardware, and licensed as Apple did, it'd be in the exact same boat.

yosemitebabe:
You're right, Macs can take certain PC components (I'm also not sure which, since I'm not looking to upgrade my system).

[lawoot]

No matter what I do, I still can't get my chevy pickup to run with a Ford Transmission. Why can't those losers at chevy get their heads out of their asses and GET WITH THE PROGRAM. After all, The Ford PIickup line is the best selling in the world, so they MUST be the best trucks for EVERYONE to use.

:rolleyes:

[AHunter3]

Apple's fault that their products are incompatible with the majority of the market.


::sigh::

a) Contrary to the beliefs implicit in several statements and diatribes in this thread, Microsoft Windows and the various software designed to run within it does NOT run under lots and lots of different platforms as opposed to the MacOS and its various software titles running only on the Mac platform. NO!!! Windows and Windows s/w runs only on PC's. Dell and Gateway and Compaq and Packard Bell and Samsung are not separate platforms that have gotten compatibility religion somewhere along the lines, they are the same platform rendered by different manufacturers.

b) Contrary to a related set of insinuations, the reason you have dozens of PC manufacturers while only Apple manufacturers the Macintosh platform is NOT proprietary selfishness on the part of Apple, NOR is it because no one cares to clone the Mac even if they could. No, the reason you have so many manufacturers of the PC platform is that other companies were able to reverse-engineer IBM's PC architecture to the point that MS-DOS (and its various programs) would run on their hardware. This did not happen with IBM's encouragement or invitation, and it occurred to IBM's detriment--IBM by no stretch of the imagination controls the platform or sets its primary course any more, and doesn't have a commanding market share of the personal computer market. Meanwhile, no one has as of yet created a credible Macintosh clone that would run the MacOS and Mac applications without either i) cannibalizing parts from older Macs or ii) stealing the ROM code from Mac hardware ROMs without license or iii) licensing the secrets of making Macs from Apple, which Apple did for awhile to the detriment of their market share, so they quit doing it.

c) Apple continues to make Macintosh computers for the same reason Parker Pen Company continues to make fountain pens: people buy them! As Mac owners, we'd like to see the MacOS gain market share so software development and availability would reach parity with Windows, but it is close enough for us to buy Macs anyway, which no one is forcing us to do. As a computer manufacturer, Apple does not have to be directly concerned with MacOS market share but only with Macintosh market share, which is pretty damn good, i.e., they sell lots of Macs. Compaq and Dell and Gateway and IBM and Samsung and so forth would all dearly love to have a computer of theirs selling like the iMac! So Apple keeps making them; we keep buying them; and they continue to be different from PCs which is why we keep buying them, whereas if Apple suddenly started turning out computers that were Wintel-platform compatible and (therefore) were no longer MacOS-compatible, we'd be unlikely to buy our PCs from Apple.

d) If it bothers you that a Macintosh can only run PC operating systems and executable programs in emulation mode, DON'T BUY ONE!!! Go buy a nice Gateway or a good solid Dell and enjoy the advantages and capabilities of your chosen platform and shut the fuck up about the Mac, which we love because of how it is DIFFERENT from a PC, which is why we keep buying them. (Well, OK, I suppose SOME folks bought their iMacs because they were cute and they couldn't get a candy-colored Dell. They may not have bought their Macs due to an informed preference for the Mac platform, but they still need the simplicity of the Mac interface unless YOU want to try walking them through their PC tech-support headaches!)

[AHunter3]

Is there any reason why Apple's motherboards and processors can only use Apple hard drives and
CD-ROM drives, while all products for PC/Windows systems are, for the most part, interchangeable?

Nonexistent problem. Older Macs used the internal SCSI bus for internal hard drives. If you wanted to replace your hard drive or add a second to your SCSI chain, all you needed to do was buy a SCSI hard drive; it did not have to be an APPLE-COMPATIBLE SCSI hard drive (that's redundant). If for some reason you needed to read a PC-formatted (FAT) SCSI hard drive, you could attach it to the SCSI bus and see the files and folders, remove it later, and hook it back up to a PC, no problem, completely interchangeable.

Newer Macs are more likely to use ATA hard drives, which have long been more common on PCs than SCSI (especially for internal hard drives). To put a new ATA drive into a Mac, you buy one, plug it in, and it works. Format it for HFS or HFS+, install your MacOS, and boot from it. Or just hook it up and boot from something else and, as with SCSI, you can see the contents of a PC-formatted hard drive. Two weeks ago, my girlfriend dragged out her old (dead as a doornail) PC notebook and I pulled out the 2.5" ATA hard drive, switched into my Mac PowerBook in place of my own hard drive, and booted from a bootable CD. I then proceeded to copy her long-unavailable files from her hard drive to a Zip cartridge, something she could not do from her new Compaq laptop due to the difficulties of getting it to boot from something other than its own internal hard drive.

Anyway, completely interchangeable hardware for the hard drives.

CD-ROM drives, similarly, come in two flavors (mainly): SCSI and ATAPI. Not all CDROM drives are bootable for Macs, but most CDROM drives will at least work for reading CD contents if you have the appropriate bus to connect them to.

External peripherals are now mainly compatible as the PC platform has turned away from its incompatible and archaic parallel port, serial port, dedicated mouse port, and dedicated keyboard port and gone with USB instead, while the Mac platform has mothballed the ADB bus (formerly for input devices like keyboard and mouse, mainly) and serial port and likewise gone with USB. This compatibility even extends backwards in both directions for both platforms: you can buy a USB-equipped PC, buy a USB-to-ADB converter, and hook up your classic Apple Extended Keyboard to your PC; or put on a USB-to-parallel converter on your G4 tower's USB chain and hook up an old Epson LQ parallel-port dot matrix printer.

[yosemite]

Originally posted by lawoot
No matter what I do, I still can't get my chevy pickup to run with a Ford Transmission. Why can't those losers at chevy get their heads out of their asses and GET WITH THE PROGRAM. After all, The Ford PIickup line is the best selling in the world, so they MUST be the best trucks for EVERYONE to use.

:rolleyes:


Indeed! What the hell is Chevy thinking? The nerve! Because, as we all know, all cars must be the same. People don't need to choose between different types of machines. Rolls Royce, Dodge, Ford, Jeep - they all should be built the same! Use the same tires, the same engines! Yes, that will make us all happy!

[Flymaster]

Originally posted by SPOOFE Bo Diddly
The Mac G3/G4 processor is vastly different from an Intel or AMD processor. But I am not enough of a techie to explain it to you.

Not as different as diesel fuel is from unleaded, which is why the analogy in this case just doesn't work. The difference is, surprise, in the processor architecture, allowing the G4 to make more calculations per second. However, the architecture of the Pentium chips and the Athlon chips and the Cyrex chips and the Celeron chips and the Duron chips are all different, yet they all work with the same products on the market (for the most part).

Nope...Duron, Celeron, Pentium, PentiumII, Pentium Pro, 486, blah blah blah, all use the x86 Instruction set. They use (mostly) the same assembly commands (mov, etc..) Granted, there are some differences, but these are in minor extensions, such as MMX.

The G4, meanwhile, shares NONE of the same instructions.

Not only are the instruction sets different, but they use a different paradigm. The x86 series of processors is CISC based, while the G4/PPC is RISC based. Don't ask me to explain this, as I only have the faintest idea of what it means.

In short, the difference in processors is actually MUCH greater than the difference between diesel and gasoline.

[SPOOFE]

The G4, meanwhile, shares NONE of the same instructions.

All right, now I'm curious... what, exactly, is it about the G4 (an admittedly powerful chip) that makes it so difficult to create an "adapter" so it can use the majority of the products on the market? As much as I respect Apple, I simply cannot see any point in trying to remain "isolated" for so long, which is why I believe they're taking so long to re-integrate back into the market.

And don't get me started 'bout the iMac :D. 'Specially the first ones (although the iMac is starting to be released with much better stats, thankfully).

[Flymaster]

It's not "difficult," per se, it's been done with softWindows and many others. It's just INCREDIBLY innefficient to translate all the code while a particular program is running. Asking why you can't run Windows programs on a Mac is like asking why you can't run nintendo64 games on a PC. It can be done, it just takes a lot of overhead, that really isn't worth it.

[SPOOFE]

So, in short, Apple decided to trade in compatibility for the bragging rights that come with producing a supercomputer for the general market? :D

[Geek Mecha]

SPOOFE: Exactly.

Originally posted by AHunter3
Go buy a nice Gateway or a good solid Dell and enjoy the advantages and capabilities of your chosen platform and shut the fuck up about the Mac, which we love because of how it is DIFFERENT from a PC, which is why we keep buying them.
You know, I'm a Mac user, but I despise this attitude. I had it myself until a few years ago, when I realized how immature and counterproductive it was. I use a Mac because it's what I grew up with, it's what I'm most familiar and comfortable with, and I have heard no compelling reason to change. I'm sure when you get down to it, the same goes for pretty much everyone. This my-computer-is-better-than-yours junk is just annoying.

They may not have bought their Macs due to an informed preference for the Mac platform, but they still need the simplicity of the Mac interface unless YOU want to try walking them through their PC tech-support headaches!)
Unless Macs are perfect and run flawlessly 100 percent of the time, you should not make statements like this.

[SPOOFE]

People buy PCs because A: many more options (although Apple is gaining there), and B: you can buy a powerful machine for under a grand... and for less than two grand, you can get a godlike computer.

People buy Macs because A: the sheer power is extremely useful (and often necessary) for the specialized tasks that they do, and B: yes, the MacOS is more stable, due to the lack of redundant programming designed to encompass a wider product base.

I really don't want to give the impression that I'm anti-Mac. I'm critical of Apple, yes, because they've made a lot of stupid mistakes in the past that nearly ruined the company. However, I just wish that Macs were compatible with more market products (the last number I heard was 15%, although I don't have a cite for that... get that compatibility up to 50%, and then they'd dominate the market, assuming they can do so without trading in any performance).

[yosemite]

I am in the slightly unique position of having both Macs and a PC. I started out with a PC, and got a Mac. (And then another!)

This "our computers are better than yours" thing is often (at least in my experience) started by PC users. Probably because there are so many more of them than Mac users. Sure, Mac users will do it too, of course. I am a little sick of hearing it as well, since I have both computers, and use both platforms.

I do believe it is true, however, that some PC users get bent out of shape at the very thought of Macs. I've encountered if first-hand. Also, once I caught some guy (looked like he was well into his 20s) playing with an iBook at the computer store. He was getting it to say "Macs suck" over and over again, with the Mac's built-in speech function. Sheesh, grow up, fella! And I've read tales on the IHateApple.com boards of guys going out of their way to mess up and almost destroy Macs that are on display in computer stores. Do Mac users generally go out and do this to PCs? I haven't heard of it.

AHunter wrote: (emphasis mine)

Go buy a nice Gateway or a good solid Dell and enjoy the advantages and capabilities of your chosen platform and shut the fuck up about the Mac, which we love because of how it is DIFFERENT from a PC, which is why we keep buying them.

I see nothing offensive in that. He calls Dells "good" and "solid" and he talks about "enjoy the advantages and capabilites". There is NOTHING wrong with choosing something else because you like how different it is. I love my Macs because they are different. And I will keep on getting Macs. I love being able to enjoy the best of both worlds, computer-wise.

[Geek Mecha]

Continuing the hijack (with apologies to Fonz):

yosemitebabe: I dislike the attitude because it implies that PC users shouldn't criticize Macs. I prefer the brutal honesty of PC users' criticisms of the Mac and Apple. If the criticism's got any merit, it points out weaknesses the Mac has. In the long run, they're actually helping you. At the very least, they've made you a more informed, more objective user.

Anyway, the OP:

I remember about a little while back there was an article about the Software Publishers Association lambasting Microsoft for not adhering to WWW-related standards. Could have been the W3C... memory's vague. Anyway, MS's insistence on not following standards has certainly not gone unnoticed. It's just a matter of no one being able to do anything about it.

[Monster104]

AudreyK: Thank you for veering this thread away from another Mac vs. PC debate.

Microsoft has created some genius software, but because it tries to accomplish too much with it's software, it starts running into problems. However, this is how innovations occur: trial and error, until it all clicks and they are able to proceed to the next step. It is far cheaper to do stuff this way than to start from scratch every time.

As for Microsoft not adhering to standards...Who's standard's are we talking about? AOL? IBM? Intel? Conglomerations of these companies? Microsoft has been pretty good about following standards that it has been involved with developing (Glitches and bugs are completely different than deviating from standards).

[Zenster]

Allow me to say that there is a special corner somewhere in Hell waiting for Bill Gates where he will have to perform Fluid Dynamic Calculations* on a fucking abacus!

*(Fluid dynamic calculations are so complex that, using pencil and paper, an individual could not complete a single one within their own lifetime.)

As to a more vivid display of vitriolic verbiage, I refer you to Warren N.'s tirade below.


Paul Allen can go up Bill Gate's ass with my Louisville Slugger that has been soaked for three weeks in old 40w motor oil and super glue then encrusted with broken glass and bits of barbed wire. Henceforth, this device shall be known as 'Warren's ClueBat', and we shall apply it liberally to anyone who dares to use the term Microsoft and "innovate" in the same paragraph.

Bah.

Linux forever.

Oh yeah, and PowerBooks too.



w

[Geek Mecha]

Originally posted by Monster104
AudreyK: Thank you for veering this thread away from another Mac vs. PC debate.
It's Sunday night, and I've got to be out of the house by 7:30am tomorrow to teach two classes. I'm doing myself a favor. :)

[Dogzilla]

Originally posted by SPOOFE Bo Diddly


Dogzilla...

PC's suck and it's all Bill Gates' fault.

Perhaps you're misplacing blame to the easiest (read: richest) target. Do PC's suck because of market manipulations from Microsoft? Or, rather, do PC's suck because of demands from the consumer base?



Sorry, I don't realy want to engage. I like to make gross sweeping generalizations which do not really hold up to the rules of logical debate. (Because, frankly it pisses people off, which can seriously liven up a debate!) I'm a pot-stirrer!

To answer the questions, I'd pick door #1, really, but I'm still hesitant to even post this. I started the hijack... my bad! I find PC/Windows software irritating, because it never does what I want it to and at the same time, I can get the same software to perform the elusive function on my Mac. However Microsoft products still hog my Mac's RAM and since other companies' software doesn't necessarily do so, I blame Bill - he's not enough of a programmer to understand that there is a more efficient way to code the stuff. Also, I just like to blame Bill Gates because I'm jealous he's a ga-jillionaire and I'm not. . .

I, too, am tired of the whole Mac/PC debate and only brought it up to point out that PC/Windows are not the only options out there. There is another way... and it's all relative, based on what you learned on and what you're personally more comfortable with. I think the cross-platform issues are becoming more moot with each passing upgrade.

You may now return to the regularly scheduled thread.

[AHunter3]

All right, now I'm curious... what, exactly, is it about the G4 (an admittedly powerful chip) that makes it so difficult to create
an "adapter" so it can use the majority of the products on the market?


It's a fair and reasonable question, and despite the BBQPIT venue, I've been thinking of how to answer it as a General Question kind of thing. (Do threads ever migrate from BBQ to GQ?)

OK, let's zoom in real real close and watch what our CPU is doing, shall we?

::watching together for awhile::

Mostly, you'll notice that it is loading values from RAM into its own little CPU desktop, optionally doing something to some of those values like multiplying or adding some of them, then storing it into some other locations in RAM. Incredibly simplistic, boring, straightforward kind of behavior, yes? In this particular case, the RAM from which it does the original LOAD is a set of values for red, green, and blue parameters for pixels. Those particular color values are part of an instruction set for drawing a window. The source location of the instructions is the operating system, in this case MacOS 8.6, but a conceptually (if not esthetically) similar set of instructions resides in Windows somewhere. The destination location of the instructions is a part of the computer's RAM that is devoted to what the monitor screen should look like right now. The reason that the CPU is moving these values from one part of RAM to another is that the application in question, Macromedia Freehand, issued the instruction to draw a window when I went Command-N because I wanted a new document. (It did a lot of other things at the same time, since merely creating the appearance of a window is not sufficient, but we are ignoring the rest of what Freehand is up to for now). This particular copy of Freehand is, of course the Macintosh version of Freehand. Therefore, it "knows" where in the world of RAM the always-available operating-system instructions for drawing a generic window are hidden, and where else in the world of RAM the always-present values for what your screen oughta look like are hidden.

The CPU understands the instructions given. The instructions as the programmers originally wrote them were typed out in a language called C++, which is chock-full of terms and brackets and indentations. The equivalent instructions that the programmers for the Windows version of Freehand wrote were also typed out in C++, but the Windows programmers could not call on the same ROUTINES for drawing a window, not only because a PC window doesn't look like a Mac window but because the memory addresses in which Windows stores instructions for window-drawing bear no relationship whatsoever to the memory addresses at which the MacOS holds window-drawing instructions. A window is a window and a house is a house, but if you borrowed one architect's blueprints and substituted them for the blueprints for a different house designed by a different architect, their ways of handling the same general requirements could be very different, and by the time you get down to the details you have no overlap at all.

Meanwhile, I have Eudora open checking my email periodically and I'm playing an audio CDROM. The MacOS contains instructions that each running app talks to regarding which window gets drawn on top of which other window, and which processes must give way to which other processes that have first dibs on dumping their bits of data into the destination locations. If Eudora wants to beep while the CDROM wants to keep making Shostakovich sounds, the OS must come up with the right load / store routine to make the right sound come out of my speakers, and the CPU must be able to speak the language.

The CPU does not speak C++. The CPU speaks "on" and "off", rather exclusively.

The binary rendition of the platform-specific compilation of the platform-specific version of the C++ code is ultimately a set of digits. These digits are the rawest elemental version (short of voltage drops and whatnot) of what even the geekiest of programmers think of in terms of things like

add rEAX,rEAX,20
add rEBX,rEBX,30
li rTemp1,40
addco. rPF,rTemp1,rECX
rECX,rPF

which is "machine language", the down-to-the-bone instructions for loading, storing, and doing things to loaded values. Problem is, what you see above is PowerPC machine language instructions. PowerPC is "RISC", meaning that it uses a smaller dictionary of possible instructions. The Intel CPU for which Windows and its various apps are compiled is also in real life "RISC", but it deals with "CISC" instructions in order to be backward-compatible with its x86 forebears. And CISC instructions use a much larger dictionary of possible instructions which, inconveniently, are not necessarily of equal length when they get to the level the CPU itself understands. So the Intel equivalentof the above PowerPC machine language is

ADD EAX,20
ADD EBX,30
ADD ECX,40/


OH YEAH, one other little thing...the raw digits that come the CPU's way, the ones and zeros, come in little chunks called bytes. Each byte contains a bunch of bits (8, I believe). Well, the PowerPC and its entire working environment work on the assumption that each byte comes with a certain "end" of it labeled "this end up"and it starts reading in digits from that end. The Intel architecture of CPUs does that too, only it makes the opposite assumption.

So.....you want to run a Windows app on your Mac and don't understand why the fantabulously powerful G4 chip can't just up and run it?

You're asking:

a) That, after staring at the string of instruction digits, it cleverly rejects the notion that the RAM is corrupted and that although the instructions mean nothing coming forward, it should up-end them and try them from the reverse order, never mind that, being a CPU, it has no intrinsic notion of where "start" might be from any order other than the one it is accustomed to.

b) That, having somehow managed to reverse the order of the packets of digits so that it is reading them in the intended direction, it cleverly realizes, after having read a few instructions it has no comrehension of, that the instructions are coded in a different language that would tell a different CPU with a different set of orders it knows how to follow; and being bilingual and well-educated and no doubt equipped with a monumental set of extra chips that aren't present on a real G4, reads them anyway.

c) That, having interpreted the foreign-language instructions from the little-endian ass-backwards PC executable instruction stack, it cleverly realizes, after looking at instructions that say, in effect, to load a block of memory from as incomprehensible and nonexistent memory address based on an entirely different memory map in which addresses are held in virtual file cabinets that the PPC doesn't even have, it cleverly understands that these instructions are NOT gibberish but should instead be replaced by a set of analogous instructions, based on its surprisingly intuitive grasp of how a rival chip would parcel out memory addresses and how they would generally compare with its own native memory-address space, despite perhaps having its own stuff from its own native OS or apps loaded into those rougly analogous locations, and despite the foreign PC application's usually inappropriate built-in assumptions about what is present in the memory-addresses that it is instructing the G4 to load from.

d) That, having encountered a (cleverly decoded and memory-remapped) instruction to load what appears to be an offset of the stored PRAM instructions for key repeat rate and load them into a destination currently occupied by part of a PostScript description of how to print the font "Helvetica", it ignores such silly instructions and says to itself, "let's see, if I were running Windows, which I'm not, those addresses would correspond to the places where Windows stores its windows-drawing instructions and where Windows keeps its current-screen-pixels raster, respectively, so I bet I should do the Mac equivalent", and then goes on to figure out the Mac equivalent which means loading a totally different set of instructions from a totally different location and moving them into a totally different destination.

e) That, having correctly intuited the Mac equivalent and implemented it as far as the correct response to this one running (foreign, PC) app is concerned, it then makes some educated guesses as to priority-setting and override-rights as far as how a running PC app in a MacOS environment OUGHT to behave in conjunction with running Mac apps.




And that's just for drawing one freaking little window. And I've probably grossly oversimplified.