Comments

1. Sephiroth

   
   Posted on: December 13, 2006 at 1:47PM  

   It's interesting how if you want to stay on top of technology with a Mac, you have to buy a whole complete Mac system.  Then within months, it will be obsolete.

   A PC gives me the flexibility to upgrade my motherboard and CPU for only pennies compared to having to invest in an entirely new Mac system.  This is one of the primary reasons I remained faithful to PCs and not necessarily the OS even though both are inseparable.

   If Windows Vista is as good as OSX, then there is saving grace up towards Vienna.

   The ball is in Microsoft's court, the game has begun, the clock is ticking, and the audience is on the edge of their seats.

   Make this shot count with Vista!  Make it a sure thing with Vienna!
2. tbcpp

   
   Posted on: December 13, 2006 at 2:14PM  

   That's an interesting piece of (mis)information there. With Macs you don't have to upgrade nearly as often. The Graphics card maybe, but apple osx 10.4 will run fine on many older systems. Infact I have heard of it running fine on a 400Mhz G4! That's a 7 year old system running Apple's modern OS! In comparision a 400Mhz machine running XP is bearly usable, and Vista would simply not run at all.

   For that matter, I have a 180Mhz SGI O2 in my room that can capture video and audio and edit it. Try doing that on a 180Mhz PC!

   I'm not a Mac Fanboi, I just can't understand the mentality of Micro$oft. I'm a professional programmer, and when I write code I try to findout how fast I can make it go as I'm coding it. Every Microsoft product I have ever seen seems to be written by brain-dead programmers. Why is it that every other OS is faster cleaner, and requires lower spec hardware? I don't think it's features, it's simply because Vista is poorly designed.
3. Fista

   
   Posted on: December 13, 2006 at 3:42PM  

   Septhiroth, if you upgrade almost anything in your PC, Windows will complain and possibly lock you out.

   Is that really a better way?
4. tbcpp

   
   Posted on: December 13, 2006 at 5:29PM  

   LOL, that is funny. So sad, but so true. Why can't my copy of Windows trust me? I have never pirated Windows, and I never will! Why then must I be treated like a criminal.

   Not to mention M$'s view of DRM. If Vista ever gets to the point where it requires full DRM to play a dvd (or hd-dvd) at full rez, I will switch to Mac/Linux simply because I trust them more, and they trust me.
5. asiafish

   
   Posted on: December 13, 2006 at 5:47PM  

   Whoa, lots of myths here on both sides of the platform divide.  Lets see if I can shed some truth, which as someone who currently owns 3 Macs, 3 PCs and a Windows server, I can do honestly rather than relying on myth and hype.

   First off, Windows activation does suck, but it doesn't lock you out with one or even multiple hardware upgrades.  What it looks for are major changes, like a motherboard swap.  I've upgraded graphics cards, processors, added PCI expansion boards and upraded hard drives many times since the arrival of XP and was only asked to reactivate once, when I swapped a graphics card, hard drive and processor at the same time.

   Another Windows myth is that Vista requires lofty hardware to run well.  Bull!  I run Vista RC2 on a 5-year-old laptop with a Pentium IIIm processor and 640MB of RAM.  This is pushing Vista's minimum specs, but it runs great, albeit without the Aero Glass interface.  The fact that a 5-year-old laptop runs a modern OS is rather impressive, if you ask me, and is about the same as Mac OS X Leopard, which many predict will require a PowerPC G4 or better, meaning a 5-year-old laptop.  Hmm, funny how similar requirements can sound so different to a Mac or a PC user.

   PC fans complain that Macs don't run enough software or that they aren't any more secure than Windows PCs.  Again, that just bull.  First off, modern Macs actually RUN Windows natively, meaning that they run MORE software than regular PCs do.  And yes, Macs are far more secures than Windows.  130,000+ malware attacks in the wild for Windows, ZERO for OS X, do the math.

   What most people really fail to see, however, is how alike the two platforms are.  Yes, each has its pluses (no antivirus required on a Mac, more and cheaper hardware choices for Windows), most things that people use computers for are exactly the same.  

   I wrote an article today in Word for Windows, and when I went to paste in some text from another document, it was as easy as "Control-V".  Had I been using a Mac with Word for Macintosh (or just about any other word processor on either platform), it would have required the far more complicated "Command-V" to do the same thing.  There is no difference folks, for most of what people do.  If you depend on an application that doesn't exist on one platform, USE THE OTHER ONE.

   My primary computer was a 12" Apple PowerBook for three years.  I loved the hardware design and it was reliable and performed well.  My work today is best accomplished on a tablet, and so I bought a Toshiba.  Was it any great effort to move from a Mac to a Windows PC?  Not really.  When I get home and want to do something on the Mac Mini (last year's G4 model) does it take any effort to switch back?  Nope, none, nadda, zip.  Most tasks are accomplished with that single adjustment of using the "Command" key on the Mac in place of the "Control" key in Windows.  

   Put another way, do you forget how to drive when you move from your Toyota at home to a rented Ford?  The controls are marked a bit differently and are put in slightly different places, but after all of about two minutes, its second nature.  So too with computer interfaces.  Microsoft stole so many UI elements from Apple over the years, and yes, Apple stole more than a few winners from Microsoft as well, that even seamingly advanced UI functions like application switching (Alt-Tab) work about the same on either platform.  Alt-Tab, by the way, is an example of a much-loved Mac feature that originally debuted in Windows.

   So, will I buy Vista?  Absolutely.  THe improvements to the UI don't really excite me (I turn off most eye candy on both Mac and WIndows anyway), but the improvements to handwriting recognition for my tablet is significant, as are some under-the-hood improvements in the OS itself.  I don't know enough about Leopard yet to say if I will buy it or not.  I bought Tiger because it added features that really work for me, and I'm guessing that Time Machine is such a feature that will have me buying Leopard.

   Finally, I'd like to concur with a previous poster about Windows 2000 being the high point for Windows.  WHen Windows 2000 was released, OS 9 and Windows 98 were both long passed their prime, and this was the first of the modern operating systems.  I still use Windows 2000 one of my PCs, and will likely use it on another instead of buying another XP license.  It still does everything I want an OS to do in the office environment.
6. tbcpp

   
   Posted on: December 13, 2006 at 6:58PM  

   I agree with what asiafish said almost 100%. However the one thing about Vista that concerns me is this: Areo. I work at a PC retail/ IT tech support store. In the past, when a person came to us and bought a copy of XP they (or we) would install it and all is well. However, %80 of our customers are going to come complaining to us when they try to install Vista, because it "doesn't have the pretty graphics". They will think their computer is broken because it can't do the pretty fades and transparency.

   Doing without all the fancy GUI's is fine for you and me, but for Joe Sixpack, all he wants is the fancy graphics on his cheapo Dell he bought from Best Buy last year.

   And this doesn't even get into the headache we'll have when users start compaining that their Windows Basic (read brain dead) version won't run Areo, or that it can only run 3 programs at a time, etc., etc. And it will be up to us to explain to them that they need to spend more money (in the $100s) to get it to work.

   I should probably start buying asprin now...
7. JimAll

   
   Posted on: December 13, 2006 at 7:13PM  

   Hey tbcpp:  one correction:  Windows Vista Basic can indeed run more than 3 apps simultaneously (there is no OS-imposed cap); what you're thinking of is Windows Vista Starter Edition, which is only available in emerging markets (e.g., Vietnam, Egypt, etc).
8. Mike.NET

   
   Posted on: December 13, 2006 at 8:00PM  

   Jim, I can only wish that every company would have such highly educated technology leader in their organization as you are. Too often in business I see sales or marketing type people running the IT departments.  Too often I see developers engage in “monkey coding” (a.k.a. kludge) practices.  With no engineering practices set forth by the leaders and no commitment to architecture by developers (but rather programming by mere convenience to write a “hack” or a dirty patch solution).  Too often requirements create “surface” feature in software that people rarely use, and only bloat code and increase the feature-creep. I applause your 2004 decision to revamp the development practices at the Windows Division.  It would provide great insight for many if they would know more about the reasons and conditions that lead to the decisions.  Usually news articles do not cover such interesting topics, but I think many people in the software development could relate to your 2004 decisions.

   I see growing cap between technical minded and no technical minded people in software development.  More emphasis needs to be put on code architecture and engineering practices inside organizations as more and more software will be written to provide solutions to growing number of business problems.  It should not be necessary to have to present or phrase gravity or urgency of technical situation in “business” terms so that no technical minded people start to pay attention.

   I wish you all the best in future engagements, and congratulate on your leadership of the Windows Platform that you have lead over the many years.  Microsoft is in gratitude for your contributions.
9. tbcpp

   
   Posted on: December 13, 2006 at 9:04PM  

   I stand corrected. Thanks.

   But I hope my point is made. The six versions of Vista are going to be a pain to explain, especially to some of our small business clients who blur the lines between home and office.
10. A_Pickle

    
    Posted on: December 14, 2006 at 4:25AM  

    It'd help if a lot of you weren't outright lying. And I'm talking about, mostly, the people who think Windows Vista has outlandish hardware requirements. You, tbcpp, are pretty out there.

    >>>tbcpp said: "That's an interesting piece of (mis)information there. With Macs you don't have to upgrade nearly as often."<<<

    You don't need to upgrade Windows nearly as often, either. My grandfather uses an old Dell XPS D300 running Windows XP Professional, it has a 300 MHz Pentium II processor, 384 MB SDRAM, an an 8 GB hard drive. I since gave it a 20 GB hard drive, and for kicks, a Geforce 4 MX 440.

    About the only area you're right in, is that Windows requires an incredibly large amount of hard drive space. Of course, Mac OS X isn't free of that criticism -- it takes about 6 GB of available hard drive space.

    >>>tbcpp said: "The Graphics card maybe, but apple osx 10.4 will run fine on many older systems."<<<

    So will Windows XP. I've recently installed Windows XP on a Dell Inspiron 7000 notebook for my father, it has a 266 MHz Pentium II, 384 MB RAM, and an 8 GB HDD. My old Compaq Presario 1700US had an 850 MHz Pentium III, 256 MB RAM, and a 20 GB HDD. All of those ran Windows XP.

    By comparison, a friend of mine owns a 12-inch PowerBook G4 with an 867 MHz G4 and 640 MB of RAM, and it runs Mac OS X very, VERY poorly.

    >>>tbcpp said: "Infact I have heard of it running fine on a 400Mhz G4! That's a 7 year old system running Apple's modern OS! In comparision a 400Mhz machine running XP is bearly usable, and Vista would simply not run at all."<<<

    I have proof of Windows XP running just fine on 200 MHz and 128 MB of RAM. XP would be barely usable on 128 MB of RAM, but the feel of Windows XP is largely unaffected by processor speed. You can comfortably run Windows XP on 384 MB of RAM. You can't comfortably run Mac OS X on 384 MB of RAM.

    Windows Vista isn't perfect, but it's darn good. I'd like to see some improvement, because I really think that 10 GB of hard drive -- gone, is a little ridiculous. Especially for notebooks.

    Go Microsoft. :)