How many of them will boot MacOS X?
I’m aware that that wasn’t exactly a cite. I’ll try to dig up some specific info, like “PCs have these chips here, and Macs have these semi-comparable chips in this other place instead”.
In the mean time, here is a post in an old ArsTechnica thread, describing hardware development of memory controller technology and when and how it might be integrated into future Mac models, etc;
I’m not sophisticated enough in these matter to say “Aha, see, this chip would not be addressed properly by the hardware abstraction routines used in Windows operating systems because they use the Vanilla Banana memory controller architecture class instead”, or “See, now if you just ported the MacOS to Intel it still would just run on a Dell because Dells and other mainstream PCs use Vanilla Banana memory controller architecture class chipsets here where desktop Macs use Motorola MotoScooter class chipsets of which this is a descendant, and they interrupt differently”.
It’s just a general-knowledge thing I grew up knowing, without knowing the technodetails. The Mac did not develop as a PC with a Motorola 68000 chip instead of an Intel 8088, any more than it was an Apple II wiht a Motorola 68000 chip instead of a Zilog CPU. Or, as another example, the Amiga, which actually used the same Motorola family of CPUs (68K series) as a Mac, was not a Mac; you could not load the MacOS onto it, nor could you load and run the AmigaOS on a Macintosh, even if they both used '030 chips.
Because the other chips in the box were different and connected to each other differently and so on.
Opinion offered as fact. Nothing more, nothing less. This is why Mac-types seem to turn these threads into flame wars. (Well, not all the time, but…)
MS doesn’t care about the end user? 90% of the market is MS. They all use the system in front of them. Seems a minority of us can navigate it. If Windows were so bad as to keep the user from using it…well, you know the rest.
My underlying OS is pretty clean as well. Of course, I know what I’m doing with it most of the time. I bought XP the night it was released and still haven’t had it crash. And the system has been powered off for about 10 hours combined since installing it.
And to the previous post about driver problems, you also know what the deal is with that.
Windows supports equipment from a ton of suppliers. HINT: They make Win-based eq because that’s what people use. If you get a peripheral that needs to download a driver, deal with the few minutes it takes to set it up. If you need the guarantee of a printer working 12 seconds after plugging it in, install it the day before.
Meanwhile, I’ll spend that time shopping 10 different companies for the best price\performance.
You do realize that “If Windows was bad, nobody would use it” is a weak argument, don’t you? After all, I could just as argue that Windows is so widely used because lots of people pirate it, and Microsoft benefits from the ensuing network effect and subsequent lock-in of software and hardware.
“Popular” is not the same as “best,” as McDonalds demonstrates every day.
OK, having failed to nail down a good explanatory web page, I requested a discussion of same on the MacOS X Hints web site, this thread. While some folks think MacOS X might run natively (once ported) on Intel PC hardware, others agree with me that, yes, the other chips on the motherboard are indeed different.
There’s also this old thread in which, having heard rumors of the XBox game console acquiring a fast PowerPC chip, a Mac user wonders whether or not one could just put MacOS X on an XBox. (No, for the same reason: the other chips aren’t the same).
We’re all in agreement that Apple could port MacOS X to run on conventional PC hardware, and in fact they’ve apparently done so already if only for development purposes. However, if Apple has legitimate reasons for going with different chips for various behaviors performances and features (legitimate meaning “other than to make sure a Mac isn’t electronically interchangeable with a PC so OS X users have to install their OS on a Mac”) — a reasonable assumption since why else would Apple not have just gone with a standard motherboard with PowerPC chip long ago? — I don’t see much cause for prompting Dept of Justice to demand that they make their OS run on equipment that differs from the equipment they release.
What could instead happen is that Dell or some other hardware company starts producing Mac compatible clones. For that matter, they could have started making PowerPC Mac compatible clones at any point since Apple stopped using proprietary ROM chips, and I’ve wondered for some time now why such machines have not appeared.
I could easily imaging somebody like Steven Kahng of the “Power Computing” company that made (licensed) Mac clones before the Steve Jobs era coming up with an inexpensive design that would run XP and MacOS X.
:dubious:
As a faithful user of Macs since about 1990, it’s been my experience that yes, Apple asks me to bend over every few years.
It’s also been my experience it’s usually after it buys me a drink or two and uses a lubricated condom.
Microsoft Windows users though, I’ll never understand. Windows sneaks up on you in a dark parking lot, slaps you across the face, bends you over and dry ass-rapes you.
Then all the Windows users are all, “well, yeah, he did dry ass-rape me, but he dry ass-rapes all my friends too, so it’s OK. I mean, he loves me, what else can I do?”
Can I officially state that I have had Windows XP lock up on at least three occasions.
There ya go. My anecdotal evidence cancels duffers.
Wait a second there. I’ve never had XP crash on me either, so one “it hasn’t” only half cancels out two “it hasn’t.” :dubious:
I’ve never had XP crash on me. I’ve had two programs that habitually crashed. One was a level editor for the game Thief (which was inherently unstable), and other is our old friend IE (which I’ve abandoned in favor of Firefox). But the OS itself has never, ever crashed.
You’re outnumbered, Princhester. 
It’s funny, the Mac/PC arguments remind me of the car arguments I have with my Dad. My father likes to buy the cheapest car he can find, a rails (loudly) about how anyone who would waste their time on a car that’s not bargain-basement is a fool, and wasting their money. (I’m talking about new cars) I know a lot of people who feel that way, and I’m sure they think I’m an idiot for driving a german car. I’m not an idiot. I KNOW that I paid more. I chose to pay more, for a whole host of things from engine performance to safety features. I will never convice my father it was worth the money. I couldn’t convince him a Honda is worth more. He sees a car as a method to go forward. Does it go foreward? That’s all he needs, and any extras just make you a dupe. After all, if you don’t go on the freeway, it won’t matter if it doesn’t have side airbags.
I feel the same way about my computer as I do my car. I will totally bend over if it means I can wander the internet without worry. If I can move files & programs around without losing them or having them stop working. There are some OSX features that I find, all by themselves, worth the price difference.
At work, my PC is a clean, secure machine. I see to that. I take care of it and am very carefull. My boss is another story. He doesn’t like that ZoneAlarm or Norton pops up with messages, so he turns them off. He’s always accidentally downloading things. He drives me to drink because his computer is a mess. If you’re not going to be a carefull user, you need a Mac. He needs a Mac. (So, by the way, does my Dad. He’s the same way, and he friggin’ calls me for tech support.)
I actually think a good part of the great animosity is because many if not most people who are Mac users by choice are required to use Windows on a daily basis at work. Like the song that you weren’t crazy about to begin with that gets played over and over and over until you despise it from the very depths of your soul. I really think that most Mac users would think, “Eh, Windows, not for me,” if we weren’t reminded nearly every day why we chose not to use it in the first place. (Just like my Dad’s poor taste in cars was just a polite topic of conversation until it nearly killed me 2 years ago) I will admit, though, that I do not hate XP with the deep and abiding venom I hated ME, which is what got over to Mac in the first place.
Obsidian, a faithfull Mac user who will admit she’s never had XP crash her system, despite daily use. My boss’s poorly maintained machine, also XP, however, crashes once a week. (So bad my only option is to hit the power strip)
I’m a new Mac user. (I/m on the PC now though.) A week ago – just a couple of weeks after getting my PowerBook – I got a message that an error occured and I had to restart the computer. So in the short time I’ve had it, Tiger has crashed once.
As for the PC, I’m running the original installation of Win98 that came with it. I’ve gotten The Blue Screen Of Death countless times since it was new. I use Norton AntiVirus and Live Update. I use AdAware. I occasionally scan it with Housecall. All spam is deleted from the webmail server without being allowed into my inbox. Attachments are never opened on the rare occasion that I open a spammail on the webmail server. My CD-ROM drive is not loading. My Internet connection disconnects very, very frequently. I can’t open MS-Word documents. Some web pages cause the computer to freeze up, necessitating a hard reboot.
When surfing for pr0ns, I used to always get these popup messages warning me, “Sorry, your computer is not Win32 compatible!” Well, the Web pages themselves always worked just fine, so I always wondered what these sites were trying to install on my computer. Since I use a Mac, I’ll never know…
Most of my Windows PC experience was with 98, and at the same time I had the comparable version of Mac OS on my Mac. I had some of the same programs on both computers. For example, Adobe Photoshop. Same version number on each computer. While Photoshop ran flawlessly on my 75MHz Mac, it was a horror on my 200MHz PC. For one example, I could batch process a folder containing hundreds of images on my Mac. Attempting the same exact thing on the Windows machine, I found it would let me do eleven files at a time. The advice (workaround) I got from another Windows user was to drag all of those hundreds of files onto the Windows desktop and batch process them from there! Yeah, right.
The biggest difference between the two machines, though, was that Windows was always in my face, while the Mac OS was transparent.
On the other hand, I recently needed to use my sister’s Windows XP machine while I was visiting her in a different city, and I will admit that XP is a massive improvement. It was almost as good as Mac OS X.
I always wonder about that too. I’m thankful they’re not doing to my computer, whatever it is they’re doing to Windows users’ computers.
Apple’s Safari web browser has a pretty good built-in pop-up blocker but every once in awhile a website will manage to sneak one though, and it’s always designed to look like a Windows XP alert message. “Click OK.”
Ha, ha, ha! Don’t think so.
To the argument over whether Mac OS X is more stable than Windows, perhaps I can shed a little light. I have used Windows XP since its release, and have used Mac OS 10.2, .3, and now .4 for about 2 years. Both have crashed on me, but it’s relatively rare. In the interests of full disclosure, I prefer the Mac, but because I prefer the look and feel (and Unix-y goodness), not because I think it’s inherently better or more stable.
On average, Mac OS X is more stable than Windows for two reasons: it only has to run on a limited set of hardware, and it doesn’t have to deal with .dll hell. Windows has to run on a much greater variety of hardware, and has all manner of poorly written programs overwriting important libraries with their own implementations. This is arguably a bad design on Microsoft’s part, but it wouldn’t be a problem if software developers would just use standard libraries and APIs correctly. Some people will have very stable systems because their hardware plays nice together, and because they haven’t installed programs that screw with the registry or important .dlls. Others will be terribly unstable. I experienced a surge of stability when I replaced a random junky soundcard with a standard SoundBlaster Live! card, so I’ve seen this effect in action. The problem, of course, is that until you actually put the system together, you have no way of knowing whether Windows will run nicely on it or not.
One reason that Apple will only let OS X run on select hardware is to keep the stability that they’ve had. If they opened up the OS to run on any random DIY box, they’d be constantly plagued by bad drivers and screwy hardware interactions, just like Windows. The other reason, of course, is money.