Windows 7 VS. OSX

#221

Ok, you either haven’t read any of my posts at all, or you’re mistaking me for someone else.

My main issue is that mac-bashers just take one (agreeably big) fact, and use just use that as a basis to tear into the entire company and its products. No, Macs aren’t for gamers, I’ve said that before and I’ll keep saying it, not liking them (and the OS) for that fact is a very good reason. Another fact is that they’re expensive as hell, and again this is a solid reason to not like Apple products.

However, those two things don’t make the computers and OS suck. Apart from not having DirectX (and thus the gaming power), OSX isn’t any different than Windows in its purest essence. Their goal is to deliver the possibilities for users to do what they want to do. The only thing that is different, though, is the way both achieve the goal. There’s a huge amount of little things that both OS’s do differently, little things like Aero Snap vs Exposé (same goal, different approach).

But then people start throwing things like “iPhoto sucks, iTunes sucks”. No, they do not suck. They’re applications designed to do certain things, and they do those things perfectly and with style. iPhoto works because it offers you easy access to all your photoalbums, to all your pictures. It offers you a way to easily manage and edit pictures. It offers you easy management by simple dragging and dropping pictures around from one album to the other and into your desktop or in specific folders. Windows does this too, but through Explorer, in the form of folders within folders with a thumbnail preview.

Same goes for iTunes. The application doesn’t suck (at least not on OSX, and to be fair, I’m using it atm on Vista at work as well, and it doesn’t feel any different than on OSX), it’s a mediaplayer that offers you means to automatically organize and play your music/movies. It offers you tools to automatically add all the info of a certain song and/or album (including, bio, dates, cover art, credits, …) and the latest versions really don’t hog the amount of resources people in this thread have claimed so far (right now, iTunes (running for about an hour, shuffling through 2652 songs) is using 25mb of memory, WMP is using 27mb, Firefox using 88mb, Outlook 2003 is using 218mb (lol)). iTunes also doesn’t hide files (think I’ve seen someone claim this, not sure), and you can easily find the original files in neatly organized folders on the HD if you really wanted to (albeit in .mp3), and transferring these files to other computers also transfer all the data of the song (the stuff I mentioned above). Yes, some might want to put their folders in their own way on custom positions etc, but not everyone wants to mess around in folders to organize their files.

iPhoto and iTunes (and all of the packages a OSX comes with, for that matter) serve their purpose well and they fit the general mac-user mindset (as less hassle as possible). It might not work for you and you might want more personal control over all the things those applications do automatically, but that does -not- make the applications suck. To my understanding, an application sucking = an application that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do (best example: Internet Explorer, and its obsessive need to be different than every other browser, and ignore W3C completely).

In the end you just pick whichever gives you the things you want to have. If you want to play games, you just get a PC and Windows. But if you aren’t a gamer, then you start looking t other things. Things like: do you want to easily organize pictures, movies, music, without messing around in folders and moving files back and forth? Things like: do you feel like you want to pimp out your hardware as much as possible for maximum performance, risking less stability? Things like: which one feels more natural to me to use.

I picked OSX for home-use because I had experience using it through my education and professional life. I picked OSX because I’m not a gamer and I don’t want any hassle with files and cluttering. I picked OSX because it just feels better than Windows (this is something I can’t really explain).

#222

loony636
You keep providing your opinions and bad facts trying to support your arguments. Please stop posting in here. We know you despise Windows, but most of your posts are being extremely bias and making the content not worth reading.

Actually, max summed it up pretty well last page:

#223

The point I was trying to make is that those that bash Windows are doing it for the same exact reason that they claim that Windows people bash Macs for: “You haven’t actually used it, have you?” And I may have lumped you in with loony636. I was tired and I apologize.

But it’s not just games that Macs have a limited arena. I go to the store and look for software. There’s a Fry’s Electronics in my area. They have a ginormous software section. I’m talking aisles of software.

Then, there’s a shelf for Mac software.

If you like Apple stuff, that’s great, but I don’t because I like feeling the freedom that comes with Windows stuff. I’m sure there are workarounds to make Apple stuff do what Windows can, but, frankly, I’d rather just use Windows instead of trying to make Mac work like Windows. And if that freedom means that I have to deal with certain (extremely rare if you know what you’re doing) issues from time to time, then I’ll deal with them.

And it still cheeses me off that I can’t play Flash on my iPod Touch…

#224

Oh thanks, hadn’t even thought of that :retard:

#225

Irrespective of what else I’ve said in this and other Apple threads, all I really wanted to say was this:

  1. Yes, Macs are more expensive (on the whole) than PCs.
  2. Yes, you can’t play all games on Macs. There’s WINE and Crossover, but if you don’t want to bother then don’t get one. Use BootCamp if you’ve got Mac hardware and want to play a game.
  3. Everything you can do on Windows you can do on a Mac (bar games, but we’ve already covered that).
  4. Mac is, for me and seemingly on the whole, faster than 7, but there’s no way to substantiate this.
  5. 7 and Snow Leopard have comparable features, though I would still say, for me, that it has a better workflow and has a ton of useful features that a frequently use, from Expose, Spaces and a ton of additional apps that integrate with the desktop (like Growl, Caffeine, etc). And the Dashboard is awesome. Though, on the other hand, Windows pretty much has the same functionality in a lot of areas, so that’s pretty much a moot point too.

When I first came into this thread there was a whole lot of stuff being thrown around like “Windows is absolutely better than Mac”, and all I really wanted to show was that, really, they’re pretty much on par now. Mac has moved away from the niche market of, well, no one, to gaining mainstream appeal with a wide variety of applications for, well, everything conceivable.

There were also a lot of fairly ridiculous assertions made, and I wanted to thoroughly rebut them, but I seem to have become a little lost along the way. Apologies for the baseless Macfag comments; I’ll try to avoid them in the future.

#226

Edit: nevermind :expressionless:

#227

I always thought that OSX was more aesthetically pleasing. But I have so many programs that only run on Windows. Also, I don’t want to spend $1500 on a computer that is only halfway decent simply because of the brand. I like Macs though. They are easy to use, and quick to get used to, but I just prefer a PC.

That’s just me.

#228

Yes, they are. But, when it comes down to it, you’ve gotta pay for quality. Sad but true. You can only push cheap hardware so far… one reason I refuse to buy a Dell anytime soon. OT: Another is that custom builds are so much more useful :stuck_out_tongue:

OSX = unix based
Windows = based on something more dated ( can’t remember the name :\ )

OSX is better in terms of security and professional work… you won’t ever see a supercomputer running Windows. Trust me.

^ cwhatididthar?

Windows is meant for the average joe, a mass market–the way it’s put together and sold is made for a much wider demographic.

Also, what’s funny is that OSX doesn’t make you enter some CD key… unlike Windows. OSX won’t install unless you’ve got the hardware for it. You’ve gotta buy the hardware to run OSX
…hackintoshes are another story :pirate:

#229

Windows is based on NT.

Being based on unix doesn’t make it inherently secure. security professionals have said on many occasions that windows (vista) is more secure than both linux and Snow Leopard. See my avatar, I’m not exactly biased towards windows :retard:

You also will never see a supercomputer running OSX. You will, however, see the vast majority (almost 85%) running some form of linux.

#230
#231

Points 1 and 2 are negatives for Mac. Everything you can do on a Mac you can do on a PC (using special software, of course, but then again, you need to use special software to do Windows on a Mac, so they kind of cancel each other out).

So, the way I see it:

  1. Windows 1, Mac 0
  2. Windows 1, Mac 0
  3. Windows TIE, Mac TIE
  4. Windows TIE, Mac TIE
  5. Windows TIE, Mac TIE

Adding up the scores: Windows 2, Mac 0

…which, you’ve kind of laid out yourself there…

Which is what Windows has been doing since…what, the 1980s? Sorry, but you haven’t shown me a single “pro” for a Mac that doesn’t have a Windows equivalent.

The only thing that you got going for Mac, really, is that it was the first broad-appeal home computer with a GUI (which they kind of “stole” from Xerox, but they weren’t using it anyway). Microsoft took the idea (“stole it”?) and popularized it across the world in both the home and in major companies.

Windows took some time to catch up on the creative end (photos, movies, music) because they were concentrating on the business appeal, but they’re about even now on that respect.

Bottom line:
Macs: A bit more stable, a user-friendly interface, lack of software support, expensive.
Windows: A bit less stable, a less user-friendly interface, extreme software support, cheap.

Pick your poison.

I’ll go with Windows. :slight_smile:

#232

I’m afraid I have to beg to differ here. I find the UI on Windows 7 to be far above osx’s. Windows has aero snap, jumplists, taskbar, start menu, all programs, show desktop, and probably more. osx pretty much only has expose, the toolbar thingie and the dock. And the toolbar doesn’t do much more than a toolbar within a program does. I’m sure osx has a bunch more, but they are not very major issues and I’m sure most already have a windows equivalent. And there are companies like stardock that provide extra customization. And, IMO, and very arguably, Windows 7 looks wwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better.

#233

I’m still on Vista and don’t know much in the way of 7, tbh, and I was being ultra-liberal with my pros and cons there. :slight_smile:

I’m not in a financial situation at the moment to upgrade to 7, but I may in the near future.

#234

…

#235

Well, if you don’t care about games and price is inconsequential (as it is for me in Australia), then they’re really on par, which was my point (otherwise Windows clearly wins, which was, again, my point). I then picked Mac out of personal preference, and from a rather jaded bad history with Windows (and because I just like Mac more). But yes, as I tried to say from the beginning, all of those points are inherently subjective and impossible to substantiate. Hence, all we can do is agree on the above five things and then argue semantics for the rest of the time.

My god, the way you keep going on about some of Windows’ fairly insubstantial features as though they’re gifts from God Himself.

Okay, Mac has Expose, Spaces (which you have conveniently never mentioned), the Apps folder, the fan view for folders on the dock, the dock itself, Spotlight, the fixed bar at the top of the screen, Dashboard, the ability to switch to a different desktop, and probably more. Just because it doesn’t have Aero Snap doesn’t make it bad; you can just use the green + to make the window the same size as the content inside it anyway.

And there are also programs that provide a LOT of extra customisation on a Mac, so that point is completely moot. What’s actually important is which vanilla version has more functionality. I’d say they’re just about the same, but I find that I now can’t live without Expose and Spaces.

The point of Expose is to find the program you want underneath a pile of other windows. How you achieve this is the relevant question; I prefer Expose to Windows swapping windows thing, but each to their own.

If you have actually used iPhoto, you are extremely extremely extremely extremely mistaken as to how it functions and what its purpose is. It is a photo manager with some image editing functions built in. It is designed to import photos directly from your camera and store it in its library, or take photos from Photo Booth and directly import them, etc. It includes SOME image modification tools, such as red eye reduction or the ability to add effects, but its mainly for image organisation.

Once you’ve organised your photos in albums, events, etc (and added a slew of information like time/date and location of the photos), you can upload them to MobileMe, Facebook, Flickr or import them straight to your email. If you want to upload it to more, you can get an app called PictureSync to upload photos straight to Photobucket, etc etc. Its absolutely fantastic for management of your online albums.

Oh and FYI, attaching photos to emails is brilliantly easy if you use Mail, or by downloading a plugin if you use another mail client like Thunderbird.

#236

Sorry, but that “if” is what causes Mac to lose in my book. When marketing your product, you should make it available to the highest pool of potential customers as you can to attract more people to your product. If you systematically exclude certain portions of the population, then you are kind of biting off your own nose to spite your face.

I don’t give a flying rat’s ass about music editing; I’m not creative enough in that field to do anything music wise. However, if Windows could not edit music, it would be a negative for me, even if I never would ever do it.

And price being “inconsequential”? O_o

#237

The price is inconsequential because a) there was little price difference to ME in AUSTRALIA between my laptop and others with similar specs. Secondly, because I couldn’t stand buying another PC given that the last three laptops I’d owned had given me the irrits in performance and longevity, and I’d heard that Apple laptops were better in both of those categories. Hence I was wiling to hand over the extra dough and, hence, the price was inconsequential.

And its not necessarily the aim of every business to market to every possible consumer ever. Apple is trying to fill a market niche; the niche of trendy functionality over the more mainstream market of traditional Windows users. And I decided to go with the niche.

The way that Apple can expand its niche and become a far more mainstream product (which is what they’ve been doing over the last decade), is by reducing its two major cons; become more competitive on price and getting more games compatible with it. The latter end will be helped a lot by developments in WINE (as it gets closer to perfect), but also as their market share gradually increases more developers (especially game developers) will see the benefits of reaching over to the Mac side of the fence more often.

As for music, if you’re talking about GarageBand, my music savant friend (sitting next to me :stuck_out_tongue: ), says that there’s really no equivalent for GarageBand on Windows (or, at least, not one that he knows of that can replicate its kind of functionality). Music editing (i.e. editing of .mp3’s) can easily be done with cross-platform open-source music editors like Audacity.

#238
#239

One word. Automator.
and

After Effects, Premiere, Photoshop, Cinema 4D, Maya… need I continue?
Mind you, multiprocessing works on windows too.

#240

Aero snap is really just a done-up version of tiling windows; the whole idea is to be able to quickly organise the windows on your desktop, so instead of having to manually do it, it does it for you. Expose allows you to view all your current windows (both minimised and active, though it distinguishes between the two) and pick which one you want to have on top. They achieve basically the same thing, but I really can’t live without expose now.

Now to spaces. You saying that “oh, I’ve never used it, hence its irrelevant” isn’t actually contributing anything to this discussion; you really do need to go and use it. The set up process involves you ticking the box that says “enable spaces” in System Preferences. Very complicated. And, what’s more, its actually really really useful when you’ve got a lot of multitasking to do on a small monitor.

Huh? In terms of customisation, there are whole range of things that add notifications like Growl, things that allow intercompatibility between programs (like between iPhoto and Thunderbird), and a whole range of aesthetic options (which I’ve never used, but have perused at points in the past).

The lack of a Start Menu doesn’t cripple the OS at all. There’s the apps folder which lists your installed apps, Spotlight which allows you to search your computer, and the Dock which allows you to store your frequently used programs. In what way does the start menu limit my functionality?

No, but, you see, it doesn’t link you to an image. The whole point is that you DON’T store your photos ANYWHERE but in iPhoto. If you add an image to iPhoto and then delete the original, the photo doesn’t disappear. The photo, instead, becomes added to the main photo album. In this way, yes, its the same as iTunes.

I literally just smacked my head into the table. You sir, need to use iPhoto once in a while. It COMES with the functionality to upload photos directly to Facebook, Tumblr and transfer it directly to email. If you want more functionality, it took me literally 10 seconds to find the appropriate app on Google.

If you don’t want an app, here’s what you do. Create a folder on the desktop called “Photos to upload”. Select the photo/s that you want to upload in iPhoto. Drag them into the folder. Go into your favourite browser, and then just upload normally. After you’ve uploaded them, delete them off your HDD. How was that hard? What’s more, I didn’t have to go hunting around my HDD finding where they are; if they were in different folders in Explorer, say, it would take me substantially longer to find them and upload them.

And as for your personal experiences with iPhoto…I have no idea what you were doing, but yer doin it wrong. Seriously, you are.

Oh please, now you’re being silly. I already explained that you can copy the files to your desktop and upload them the old fashioned way if you want, but if you want it to be even faster, then you can get a very simple program which I had never heard of before a 10 second Google search. But, given that you clearly don’t care about enhancing your user experience on Mac, the chance of you giving enough of a stuff to Google four words (i.e. “use photobucket with iPhoto”) is nil.

Its not a workaround, its an plugin that makes the uploading process 10x faster by streamlining the whole thing. Seriously, try the app I said. Its free and works wonders.

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