So because creating a virus on the Mac is more difficult, it is “simply not true” that more users will lure hackers to the Mac? I don’t follow you, or perhaps I don’t share your optimism.
You said:
This just isn’t the case. That is what I was referring to.
Yeah, OK, well you said G5s could run Jaguar, which just isn’t the case. So there. 
What cmason32 said. Creating a virus on MacOS X is much more difficult than creating one under Windows. It’s like the difference between running around the block and running the Boston Marathon.
A malware trojan horse would be simpler, but that’d still require deceiving a user to run the program and invoke it.
Er, no. I just said they didn’t need (i.e. it’s not mandatory) to upgrade from 10.2.7
Dooku: Think about this: If crackers were drawn to the most common systems and if cracking all systems were equally easy (your two theses), then why isn’t Linux cracked more often than Windows? In the realm of servers and other high-end networking machines, Linux has long been a major player and is at least as popular as Windows NT. So, how come the only worms you hear about are targeted at Microsoft’s software?
Jeez, I already conceded that it was more difficult to crack a Mac. Here it is again: I’ll grant that it would be more difficult to create a virus on the Mac.
Because the Unix crackers hate Microsoft but love Unix?
Dooku: If you did so concede, I missed it. I’m sorry. I look like an ass now.
Ok?
And as for Unix crackers, well, I’ve never heard of anyone simultaneously smart enough to run Unix and stupid enough to write malicious programs. Have you? 
Anyway, so it is tougher to write malware (worms and viruses, and I think we’re all clear on the difference?) for Unix-based OSes. I think it’s due to fundamental decisions made by Microsoft as far back as MS-DOS, and needlessly perpetuated through Windows 95 and right up to Windows XP. I’m not ragging on anyone in specific, really, just the whole idea of an OS that runs on the 386 and doesn’t provide full process control (Windows 95 and MS-DOS 3), any OS that doesn’t provide file protection and the idea of a non-root user, and a corporation that sees nothing wrong with releasing patches that not only leave huge holes still unpatched, but introduce problems all their own.
rjung
I have also had some problems with some SCSI CD-burners and scanners for OS X. Even ones that are supported by drivers – I run Retrospect Backup for our lab, and once every few times it will just crunch the SCSI bus, especially if someone has used the scanner daisy chained to the burner. Again, a new problem, as the same setup was dandy in 9.2. Not to mention the Agfa flatbed scanner and 12x Smart&Friendly CD burner we tossed because they were unsupported. That’s just part of OS upgrade – older third party hardware often gets tossed. Not unique to Apple by any means.
I won’t dare to try OS X with the Hamamatsu and Zeiss proprietary hardware for image capturing off of compound and dissecting scopes. That would be suicide, I’m sure. And that isn’t $200 like the scanner and the burner. That’s more like $30,000.
But, I love OS X, wouldn’t trade it for the world. I’ve been running Linux since 0.99pl12, and now that Apple has gone all BSD on us, I look like a friggin’ genius with the computers. We just bought a luminometer which only talks to the outside world through a one line LCD or an RS232 port. Bought a USB->Serial converter to hook it up to an iMac, and it took me 10 minutes to write a little bash script to log input coming in off of the /dev/tty.usbserial0 it created. OS X allows me to run X11 apps and perl and bash scripts locally. It is a huge benefit, it simplifies my life considerably: my only other option was to build a Linux box specifically to do all of the genome work.
Better hardware? What universe are you living in bub? Or do you still believe that bull about the “meghertz myth”?
Fact is, I love my XP machine. She’s been great to me. I’ve had three times when it paused at startup over two years of use, but that’s not a common problem. the only other problems aren’t tied to the OS, but rather that Radeon 8500 in the box. ATI was never very skilled in drivers. Still, I love it, its easy to use.
Of course, unlike most Windows users, i actually know how to take care of my PC and don’t run it into the ground. most of the idiots I’ve seen (here and elsewhere) don’t realize you need to treat your PC like a thoroughbred horse. She’ll give you great speed and she’ll go the distance, but you have to feed her, cover her up with a blanket at night, and take her to the doctor now and then. And you don’t break her legs and then whine that she won’t run fast no more, or that she stumbles a lot.
Palladium is enough to send this lifetime Windows user to the Mac side. If M$ seriously thinks people are going to allow 3rd parties to control content on their own personal machines they’ve got another think coming.
Preach it, bro. This is the very reason I’m keeping a close eye on Linux. The moment Palladium becomes unavoidable in windows, I’m going to go take a nap with the penguins.
Well, that depends on what hardware you’re talking about. While Macs nowadays use mostly standardardized components, they are rather fussy about the quality – as noted above, MacOS X is very fussy about the quality of the RAM it uses, and the LCDs Apple uses in their stuff is consistently brighter, sharper, and better than the industry average.
And if you move into Apple-specific components, there’s really no equal in the land of Wintel. Check out the mechanism and fit of the articulating arm on a flat-panel iMac, or how the new Powerbooks automatically sense the amount of ambient light in the room, then adjust the screen’s brightness/contrast and keyboard backlighting accordingly.
Yeah, but the neat thing about using a Mac is that it’s a lot harder to break the legs in the first place.
Good point. Although I wouldn’t be surprised if the next generation of whiz kids spawned a few.
I completely agree. In fact, it was one of the reasons I left WinPPT when they formed the MacBu.
This is all very true, I am sure.
But I don’t know if you realize that you are painting the PC as some quixotic and picky creature which requires constant care and maintainence. Which is not exactly a turn-on for me.
I also might add, I got a $400 PC (thereabouts) and I know that sometimes, you get what you pay for. It was very unstable and buggy. I upgraded some of its cheaper parts (motherboard, specifically) and now it runs much better. Suffice it to say, it is no longer a $400 machine.
My G4 does all of that too, but I don’t have to treat her like a thoroughbred horse. True, I try not to abuse my G4 (nor my PC) but I am one of those ignorant computer users you talk about that doesnt know all the ins and outs of the care and feeding of a “thoroughbred” computer that expects constant maintenence and pampering. And yet my G4 survives my ham-handed treatment of it quite well, and keeps plugging away.