PC to Mac: My Not-So-Genius Switch - Page 12  

No. But I've heard some serious complaints about Mozilla too!

Safari on windows is horrible.. Firefox is way better. Chrome - meh I use IE only when compatability demands it.. thankfully not that often.

Come to think of it.. does anyone choose3 to use IE? I see the EU is getting all tense about it being bundled again.. I wonder if they'll get upset about Safari being on all the Macs.. hmm

Firefox is very stable for the most part. There *was* one particular day a few weeks ago when the browser kept crashing. I think it was gremlins.

Gremlins can attack anytime, anywhere.

I would never hold a browser responsible for a gremlin attack. I may be demanding, but I'm fair.

Well, I can think of a few sacrifices I'd have to make if I didn't have a PC and I didn't have Windows installed on my MacBook.

First would be good DVD playback. I like movies as much as I like music. Good DVD playback is extremely important. DVD Player in OS X is far far behind paid solutions in Windows and even the built-in decoder in Vista, due to the lack of bitstream decoding support in OS X. The quality of Tiger and earlier versions of OS X's DVD Player was just flat out awful. Head over to AVS and do some searching through some older threads for screenshot comparisons.

Second sacrifice is good disc burning software. OS X's built-in software is no better than Windows. However, 3rd party apps like Toast are woefully behind Nero in every way possible.

Third, games. OS X "ports" are usually well behind the Windows originals, even if they're native OpenGL like UT2k4 and Doom 3. I know its developers not porting their games that is one of the problems. But the real problem is that Apple does absolutely nothing to bring their OpenGL support into the modern era and they do almost nothing to help game developers optimize games for OS X. And then with all of the platform transitions Apple has had, customers and game developers alike have to worry about how long that game will actually be able to run and how long it will be supported or need support. On Windows I can still fire up my original Quake CD, or my first pressing of Myst for Windows, or even Mechwarrior 2 (DOS or Windows 95 edition). Yet with Mac OS, some stuff released as recently as 4 years ago won't run on modern systems.

That applies to regular software as well. If you're a customer you have to worry about how long that piece of software you're buying will continue to run through the platform changes and OS upgrades. As a software developer you have to wonder just how much you want to invest in developing that product because you don't know how long it will be usable or how many times you'll have to update it to keep it running.

That brings me to the point of lack of software. Choices are extremely limited in OS X. Look at media players. In OS X you have iTunes, Songbird, VLC and what? And let's all be honest, iTunes is pretty much the only choice anyway. Look at firewalls with outbound controls. OS X's built-in firewall offers no such feature. Windows Firewall does. Plus Windows has an endless selection of good free firewalls that will do all you want. With OS X you basically have to rely on the built-in Firewall for incoming protection and your only choice for outbound is Little Snitch, which is easily circumvented.

Let's look at hardware too. You have to make significant sacrifices when it comes to hardware selection. You can't build the system yourself. The only machine they offer that is in any way upgradeable starts at $2,799 and only offers 1 open PCIe x16 and 2 PCIe x4 slots. Which cuts out probably 99% of all internal upgrade and add-in possibilities. USB device support is extremely limited as well. And look at MP3 players. You have the iPod and... the iPod? Sure theres a fair amount of other players out there that just work as USB drives where you drag and drop your music. But you miss out on the quality players, like the Zune.

Now, one could make the argument that some of these problems could be rectified if developers and manufacturers would support the platform. But as a developer or manufacturer you have to think about a few things. Just how many operating systems would you have to support? Would it be good to support as far back as Panther, or Tiger? And if you only support Tiger and/or Leopard, do you allow PPC support? And if you do have PPC support, G4 support or G5 only? How many updates will you have to issue over the product life cycle to keep up with Apple's platform changes? If you release a fantastic product now that can still be used 4 or 5 years from now, will it still be supported with the OS changes Apple will make in that time?

Please don't try to say "Apple advancing technology is a bad thing?" because, let's face it, despite Apple's claim of "200 new features" in Leopard, very little REAL change was made compared to Tiger and most of the new features it got, like somewhat better DVD playback and thumbnail previews of everything, have been in Windows since the Win98 days.

The real problem is that Apple only cares about Apple and not about 3rd parties. That will continue to drive developers and customers alike to Windows and that will continue to mean that people who do buy into the Mac platform have to make sacrifices.

Plex handles every media file and format I throw at it just fine, better than anything I've used with windows.

Disk utility has done everything I've needed from a disc burner.

I don't play games on my mac, I have a wii for that.

Any given software title on mac is as well supported as any given software title on windows. And mostly mac software is more intuitive, because there are standards for how the interface works.

I'm glad you prefer windows, what's the problem again?

Get FFDShow in Windows. That + Media Center = unmatched. If you want MKV support, get CCCP. It'll bring in FFDShow as well.

It's extremely limited and, in my experience, not the most reliable way to burn discs. Toast is definitely better but not anywhere near as good as Nero.

Plus you actually have choice in Windows. Let's say I download the newest Ubuntu. imgburn is pretty much THE choice for burning or making an ISO.

Well some of us prefer real games. OS X is terrible for that. You need Windows.

I've been using OS X for almost 2 years now. Leopard most of that time and Tiger for several months before that. In that same time I've used XP and Vista.

I honestly have never once seen how OS X or OS X software is "more intuitive". Never. I can think of several ways its un-intuitive, such as how even with official uninstallers, a bunch of files and folders still get left behind by application uninstalls, requiring you to hunt through several folders in various directories to fully delete everything. That includes uninstallation via AppZapper and AppDelete as well. Where in Windows you run the uninstaller and then a quick couple of clicks in Ccleaner will take care of everything. Another very unintuitive way OS X works is folder browsing. Let's say I'm browsing the folders in my iTunes library. If I'm scrolled half way down in the window and see a folder I want and open it, it opens just fine. However, if I press the back button, it takes me back to the top of the previous window. In Windows I get taken back to the spot I left off. Ironically, if I leave a window scrolled half way down and close that window, the next time I open it, it will open where I left off. But if I go into another folder in that window then hit back, I'm taken back to the top and have to scroll ALL the way down again. And why do folders get alphabetized along with files? Why can't I have it set like Windows where the folders get organized on top of the files?

The problem is that Mac owners (myself included at one point until I "saw the light" so to speak) act as if Mac OS X is the best thing since sliced bread. In reality, it still has a LOT of catching up to do compared to Windows. Oh and what happened to live previews in the Dock? Apple brought those in after Microsoft demoed them, but took them out in Leopard. Why?

Lots of people act as if their computer solution (or their audio solution, or there car solution) can cure cancer. Big deal, get over it. It's a computer. There's no need to slag something you don't like. You don't like it, we get it. Bye bye.

MoSXS don't forget you can always put Windows on your Mac, then you can run all the other software you might need.

One day, in a perfect world, we'll all be on the same OS. and It'll run any legacy software, even good old CP/M and Amiga OS.. Now wouldn't that be something.. everything run virtualized, no having to choose one or the other, no reboots..


It's kinda amusing to me that MS office for the Mac sucks compared to the PC version and itunes for the PC sucks compared to the Mac version.. it's almost as if they were doing it deliberately badly on the "opposition" platform...



hehe Grawk, come on now.. lets not be disingenuous and pretend you don't care. Obviously anyone posting in here does. And being dismissive with the Bye Bye comment, well that's a bit of a cop out isn't it? Especially after MoSXS did come up with some pretty valid points.

When people realize that an operating system is a tool and not a religion
we will all get along better chose the tool that works best for you and the
job at hand will work better it also helps if you have a complete understanding of the system.

I disagree that his points are valid, but it's hardly worth arguing. He gives strawman arguments. That's fine, he doesn't like mac.

I'm afraid with Apple's popularity increase more thread bashing will probably take place why I can not understand its just one of many tools.

Which link?
He have two posts in this thread, and neither have a link in them as far as I can see.

It was removed yesterday by a mod.

^ Ah, no wonder I did not find it.
Guess it was not worth following anyway, since it was enough to get it removed...