Thank you! I agree. It cracks me up too. If the avg, or even the slightly above avg, user loads Home or Pro up at home they will not be able to tell the difference. Hell, 9almost) anyone not joining a domain will not notice the difference! Sure there is a small % of people out there running dual processors, or power users beta testing new drivers or some other ridiculous scenarios, but when people claim that Home is crap, get Pro, it’s obvious that 999 out of 1000 of them don’t know that they are the same thing.
Brutus, I’m not acting like anything is flawless. I’m simply amazed that anyone could use a Microsoft OS for more than a few months at a time without hitting a BSOD.
As for Unix-like and true Unix, what’s the difference besides having ponied up a few hundred thousand to The Open Group?
Hopefully post OS 8.6 is good, because most of the OS 8.6’s run like shit on the computers I use at school. Always crashing(even more than MS normally does). At least with MS, you get a BSOD that lets you know that you should likely just shut off the computer. With Mac, you press a few buttons and it takes a few minutes to not respond and tell you that you should just shut it down.
I’ve always had problems with mac, even though all my schools have been pretty much mac only. I had to use some software that only runs on mac for my Infotech final, and the program was extremely buggy and caused many complete freeze-ups of the computer. I’d save, that’d cause it to freeze up. I’d tell it to auto save(which should be included in quite a few programs), and chances were it would freeze up or caused it to shut it self by the time it should save.
It caused me to have to come to school on exam conflict day(in case your sick or didn’t have the proper supplies on exam day) which is normally a day off for people who complete their exams. It also casued me to have to do a bad job and waste six hours completing it without it having it crash on me.
Thankfully my teacher was cool about it and didn’t mark it too hard. Oh yeah, and I’d like to add that
I FUCKING HATE MACS
I love XP Pro. Running on NTFS it’s the most stable OS I’ve ever seen, including Slackware, Red Hat, Redmond, and Debian Linux and every other version of windows.
I’ve seen my online time on aim over 16 days before rebooting voluntarily. My record before crashing or BSOD’ing on win 9.x was more like 3 days.
Asian2: You do realize that OS 8.6 is a pretty old and creaky OS, don’t you? Would you judge Windows XP by your experience with Windows 95 or 98? Do you think your opinion on XP would matter one whit if you’d never used it, but rather had bad experiences with 95 or 98? Like who cares about that? What does that have to do with XP?
If you have no idea what comes after Mac OS 8.6, if you’ve never laid eyes upon OS X (most notably OS X.2) then you don’t know what the Mac is about now. And now is what counts.
I was under the impression that Macs weren’t DOS based either?
I’ve had to use Mac for pretty much all of my computer schoolwork due to all my schools using macs for “it being so user friendly.” Now, seeing as OSX is the newest mac OS, then 8.6 wasn’t that relatively long ago. I’ve had to use Macs for around 10 years(that’s how long I’ve been in school) it’s assumable that the school updated the oses and I wasn’t using os8.6 for the last ten years. The macs were always shit, Always.
They were good for one thing:Drawing. That’s it. I’ve had almost no good experinces with any of the mac oses prior and to OS 8.6. Just because OSX was good doesn’t draw away from the fact that mac has a history of being a shitty computer with me.
Take for example, the movie series A Nightmare On Elm Street. The first one was a good, although not one of the best ever, and it was no suprise that a sequel came. Sequel would’ve been good if it were a stand alone cheesy horror flick, but instead it was the same premise done shittier. Lets say Nightmare 1 was OS 1.0 for mac(assuming os 1.0 was good). After that, all the movies were duds(their was about six or seven following the originial) up until A New Nightmare.
A New Nigtmare is like OS X, a good movie among a long line of crap. It took them ten years to do a proper Freddy movie, quite comparable to all the shit OSes I’ve had to endure to actually possibly get to a good one.
Oh, and it’s Aslan2 
heheheh.
As much trouble as I’ve been having getting it hammered into the shape I want, I have admit XP Pro’s pretty stable. My record with Windows Me was about 8 hours of use between crashes or lockups.
Could this be because you’ve been spending too much time on linux discussion groups, where the denouncement of all things Windows is rather shrill, not to mention detached from reality and experience? I’ve been running Win2K then XP for almost three years now, and have experienced no BSODs that weren’t caused by either faulty hardware or my own stupidity. I’ve only experienced 3, and the last one was about 9 months ago. Just face it, the days of Windows instability are over. There are plenty of valid things you can complain about without resorting to historical cliché.
Anyway, given that the OP here showed two main desires - familiarity and compatibility with Office XP - what on earth led you to think that Linux was even slightly appropriate in this case? I realise that dosemu and Wine both exist, but do you genuinely think that installing a completely foreign OS, then installing somewhat developmental and not notably stable emulation layers on top of it is a sensible way to go about things?
Oh trust me, I understand. 3 days on other versions of Windows was a rare occurence. 8 hours was probably much closer to the norm.
With Windows 2000 it was more like 8 minutes but I think that’s because I was using FAT32. I only kept 2k for 2 or 3 days.
Win2000> 3 Years > No BSOD. 
But you haven’t used OS X. That’s been my point. Thanks for the history lesson about your school computer experience, though.
Once again, that’s just really riveting and fascinating, but it really has nothing to do with OS X. Which is what Macs run today.
But this says nothing about OS X, which is (once again) Apple’s current OS.
So what’s your point? If you don’t want to try out OS X, that’s fine. But you told the OP to not get a Mac. (I am sure you were being at least partially facetous, of course.) Based on what? Your experience of OS 8.6. Which is not relevant to today’s Macs.
With all due respect, your information and experience is out of date. I don’t trash PCs based on Windows 98 (which is why I got a PC with XP—I wanted to see what it was all about). I see no reason why you should trash Macs based on OS 8.6.
I’m trashing it on the fact that almost every Mac OS I’ve used sucked horribly, not just Os 8.6. I’m saying that people hail OS X like it’s the second coming of jesus. Yeah, I’ll try it, but even if it’s good eventually OS 11 or OS 12 will come out… And it’ll be a disappointment.
I just feel Mac doesn’t have a good enough track record with me for me to believe that they might actually continue quality with their OSes(if OS X is actaully good).
I asked him why he’d ever think of getting a mac, I’ve only encountered shit OSes and overpriced computers. The only good thing that’s been consistent is the beautiful look of their imacs, but that’s all they seem to be. Eye candy.
Alsom that “unrelated rambling comment”… What I said about those movies was comparable to the mac OSes… One good startingg OS(don’t know when os 1.0 was released, or if it was actually good, that’s just for example), then about 9 duds… And finally one that might actually be a good one.
But OS X was built from the ground up, based on UNIX. It has nothing to do with previous Mac OSs. Your opinion is based on ignorance.
::shrug:: It’s new, it’s different. You’ve never tried it, so you know nothing about it.
But you haven’t yet, so you know nothing about it.
And you can see into the future about an OS that you’ve never even tried? Wow—good trick. Can you predict who will win the 2004 election? What the stock market will be like in 2 years? You shouldn’t put such remarkable psychic gifts to waste.
You don’t have to believe in it. But you shouldn’t be telling someone else that it sucks based on old and moldy information. Like your experience with OS 8.6.
Maybe because he’s heard that OS X is good. Maybe because he doesn’t think that OS X has any resemblance to OS 8.6. Or maybe he was just being facetous.
But you don’t know anything about the current Macs, or the current OS. And a current Mac is what the OP would probably be buying if he did (unlikely as I’m sure it is) actually get one. Which is my entire point. I don’t judge current PCs by Windows 98, I judge them by Windows XP. I’m a Mac person who is at least fair-minded enough to try to keep current. I suggest you do the same.
Sigh. Yeah, I know you are just trying to ruffle my feathers with such comments, but it would help if you had a clue about the current Macs. Which you don’t.
I tire of these comments about how all Macs are good for is “eye candy”. I’ve done a lot of real work with my iMacs—websites, artwork, photography. These websites and photographs bring me money. So much for “eye candy”. :rolleyes:
Most of us get real work done on our iMacs, and all the other Macs. Just like PCs, they’re a tool. You have to know how to use them, and have a reason to use them. (BTW, I’ve since graduated to a G4 tower, but have fond memories of my two little iMacs.)
Wow. I post a short rant to vent some frustration before leaving for some Easter family fun, and come back to find out that I’m a dumbass. Let’s recap my dumbassedness, shall we?[ul]
[li]My problems all stem from pushing the power button too hard, or some other insanely stupid operator error.[/li][li]Linux is beyond my meager capabilities. May I have a note for my boss, please?[/li][li]I bemoaned the disappearance of DOS. From this we can conclude that I don’t know how to open a command prompt. I’m not sure how that follows, but okay.[/li][li]We can also conclude from a toss-off line at the end of the OP that I think that DOS and Mac OS are related in some way. I have no idea how to address this.[/li][li]I’m not even going to touch the media player and Access thing because it’s unbelievably stupid, and I don’t even like to pick up my own socks.[/li][/ul] How do I feed myself? Could somebody come over and help me tie my shoes? I’m confused.
At least we’ve moved on to a discussion about OS X, so I won’t have to die of embarassment at my own idiocy.
Aslan, if the Macs at your school, running 8.6, suck as you say they do, then it’s because too many users have done unpleasant things to them and the school hasn’t bothered cleaning up after them.
MacOS 8.6, as yosemitebabe says, is ancient history. The Mac operating system beginning in 1984 with System 1 and ending with MacOS 9.2.2 is one operating system with revisions and updates. MacOS X is a different operating system that has no more in common under the hood with MacOS 9 than Windows XP does, except for some of the GUI elements and behaviors.
Having said that, if your school’s 8.6 computers are running like shit, something’s wrong. MacOS 8.6 is a rock-solid (if elderly) single-user operating system, more stable than 9, and should be providing a good computing experience. Grab someone in charge of the computer lab and tell them to Norton them, rebuild the desktops, zap the parameter RAM, and if necessary reinstall 8.6. Also check the computers themselves for hardware probs (if they’re running 8.6 the PRAM batteries may be dead, for instance).
Linux is hardly beyond anyone’s meagre capabilities. If you want to try Linux without even having to mess with partitioning, get yourself a Knoppix CD and run Linux off of that for a little while. Linux user-friendliness has come a long, long way in just a few years.
Windows XP is the greatest OS ever. And I say this as someone who has hated Microsoft products for the past decade. I am still in awe of the power, sleekness, and stability of XP. The only issue I have with it is the change in font encoding tables, which renders some older fonts unusable (although you can fix this by renaming and re-generating them in a font editor). Other than the font compatibility flaws, I have had absolutely no problems whatsoever with XP.
The memory management is amazingly coded, so I can do more at once, FASTER. I am now spoiled by Windows. I use Mac G4’s at work (both OS 9 and Jaguar); and while OS 9 had many good qualities to compete with Windows 98, OS X can not come close to XP. I used to love Apple products, but over time, have come to be disgusted at the particulars of the Apple interface - the metaphors, file management, lack of task bar, its windows interface and the universal focus invoked application menus…
Its funny because I work in the art/design industry, where Apple holds its icy grip over content producers. These folks just ASSUME Macs are better for graphics because thats what they’ve been taught by their schools, mentors and employers. Up until a few years, this was true. But they’ve fallen so far behind the curve, in both OS functionality and hardware power that I find it absurd people are still willing to pay about DOUBLE for a G4 mac over an Intel/AMD counterpart.
My home system is an AMD based cheapie workstation (about 750 dollars), and this thing absolutely SMOKES the $2400+ G4’s I use at work. I bring home photoshop and illustrator files to work on, and the speed difference is staggering. Its not just the large discrepency in hardware specs either, but the way the OS manages applications. It is still a bitch to multitask on OS X - try to copy>paste a complex EPS image from Illustrator to a 600 MB Photoshop file, and the mac will crawwwwlll, and your mac will basically be crippled until the process is completed. Not so with a 2mhz Athlon.
That said, I do like Apple - they make competitive laptops (IMO, the best in the biz) and a great mp3 player - but their workstations are severely underpowered and overpriced. But that G4 case is sexy as hell, and to a visually discerning gent like myself, its almost worth paying the premium to have a nice looking computer to spice up my room instead of the tacky and tasteless offerings available to the PC world.
Wow. The very things I cite when explaining why I find the MacOS GUI so much nicer than the Windows equiv.
Task bar? First thing I do when installing MacOS X is take the Dock out back and kill it good 'n dead. ::stomp stomp stomp stomp:: The Windows task bar is almost as bad.
File management? I prefer the file ID system to the path system any day. I like being able to drag-copy applications from an old hard drive to a new one, or change my mind about where I’m keeping it. Or rename it. Or rename a folder. Admittedly, the “Open/Save/Save As” dialog boxes are anemic (and under OS X, horrible), but 3rd-party add-ons help, and as horrible as the MacOS X version is (column view), the Windows version (horizontal scrolling? please!) is no improvement.
Universal focus invoked application menus. ::blinks:: ::blinks some more:: you mean some people actually LIKE the window-embedded-in-a-window thingie that Windows does to you? How the heck do you arrange 7 windows from 4 different concurrently running programs so as to see them all at the same time?
::takes breath::
Takes all kinds to make a world, I reckon. There’s probably someone out there who likes Mac “Desktop Printers” cluttering up their Desktop. There’s probably someone who really liked Microsoft Bob, for that matter.