Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

MacOS X vs. Windows XP

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This article at WebmasterMac comopares MacOS X and Windows XP. The conclusions you can largely ignore since many of matters of taste and the pro-Mac bias is considerable. But it is useful to see the two compared head to head in features and usability.

What do you think?

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I'll throw in my two cents. I work in OSX 10.1.5 all day as a graphic designer. An intern just installed Jaguar on his system. Comparatively, Jaguar is a GREAT upgrade. I love OSX, and find it useful. Maybe not as high and mighty as WebmasterMac, though. I use Windows 2000 in my home setup for 3D animation, and I enjoy it, too. What's my favorite? 2000 with Geoshell and OSX with MaxMenus. Both tweaked all to heck, which is the point of this site, isn't it? I like them both. Sue me.

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Complete waste of time! Mac lover cr@p

Xp doesn't include a webserver. mmm yeah OK

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I just LOVE Win XP with all it's little bugs and problems. I've tried the mac once for a week, and just couldn't get used to it. I pay all my money to Bill Gates...

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fipawic, i use MacOS9 on work (i'm also a graphic designer too), becuse i have a lot of problems on MacOSX: the fonts management (i have not a program like ATM with Type Reunion for font families grouping -Suitcase don't wortk-; Freehand 10 crashes a lot on OSX).
But OSX will be a perfect OS for home if...
-Apple's computers are less expensive (ok ok, imacs are aconomic, but you are paying always the monitor)
-There's not the variety of softwares as WinXP, and sometimes these programs are shareware not freeware.
But i prefer OSX

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mmm... article readed, so i opine: the athor are very Mac radical, because are analized more favorable Mac aspects. On compatibility, WinXP wins by far

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Carlitus -- I agree that font management is broken, and has sort of been fixed in Jaguar (to the point that they Apple has put a tool in to manage all of the font folders.) I don't have a Mac at home, and there are two reasons: 1) I upgrade my machine about once every 18 months for around $450-600 dollars (I have a friend who does so with his iMacs -- $1200-1800 every 18 months, although last time he actually just bought a ZIF accelerator for his iMac.) 2) I have all of the apps I use at work and about 25000 more available. I guess I can see the slant of the article if you come from a visual point of view -- most of the functions on a Mac don't need to be explained to someone -- the cues are easy to read. Not everywhere, but most places. It is pretty intuitive, and the developers who make apps that enhance the interface are using the same logic, and generally those things work well, too (see MaxMenus or LiteSwitchX for examples.) The hard fact is that 2.6% sales or whatever Apple is sitting at right now -- that means that 97% of the people in the US are buying nonMac PCs. Yeow. I think that speaks for itself.

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I have to agree with fipawic. I was a Mac person and certainly enjoyed using the machine for what it was (had not used a Windows machine), but the money involved in keeping up-to-date is

! I have a friend who just spent $130 on the Jaguar update after already paying for the original release of OSX. This is more criminal than Gates! End of the subject. I would love to use the Mac, but I simply won't pay out the kind of money my friend does on hardware and software just to keep up. I build my own PCs and can upgrade them at will without killing my beer money

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What ever one thinks of the system prices (I don't mind paying possible higher prices for my Macs as, frankly, I find they give me the best computing experience I've ever had) I think Jaguar is more than worth the $129 price tag. This isn't just a simple update. It's got some rather wonderful new features. If they were asking that much just for bug fixes and simple updates, then I might moan about it.

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jtfolden -- I agree.

We have three main workstations -- one of them is still OS9, and the other two were just updated. Maybe it should have been called something other than 10.2. The changes on my machine are worth about a half-hour (or more) of productivity a day from the interface speed increases alone. It will pay for itself next week.

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That review was pretty dissappointing. He mixes OS and Application behavior to draw OS conclusions, doesn't understand some basic functions/features of XP (e.g. the context menu size command), has an especially deficient understanding of network security (We ctrl-alt-delete to logon because of boot viruses?!?! I've heard stranger things, but this one is a stretch)
Apple biased or not, if you're going make comparisons compare what you know.
For genl OSX info I suppose it was a useful article, but his comparisons killed my interest about half way thru. (And I'm a big mac fan who is seriously considering switching from XP when I retire my current laptop)

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Actually Brian, It's not a stretch at all. Microsoft agrees with me (yes, I'm the author of the article). Just go to your User Accounts control panel and click the Advanced tab. To quote that control panel "This guarantees that the authentic Windows logon prompt appears, protecting the system from programs that mimic a logon to retreive password information." So it looks like you've been Ctrl-Alt-Deleting all this time without knowing why! (I'll add the screen shot of this ctrl panel to my article for other nay sayers to read). As for those of you that have pointed out inaccuracies in the article, I've already corrected inaccuracies about networking, web serving and the Size command. I've even changed my scores in some categories. But mainly my conclusion still holds true.

Remember, the article is about usability/features/functionality, not about hardware/cost of ownership (though you should note the link on the home page that Gartner concluded Macs have a lower total cost of ownership than PCs).

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Oh well, i'm tempting to use always OSX (now i need to search some of my fonts as 'BXO Futura ExtraBold Oblique', not as 'Futura Oblique'. This is not very bad, because i need (by long time ago) to renew all my new fonts

Now alls apps are working OK (no more computer crashes

). It remanains only one app (or Twain device) for the scanner

, and one rip for the Inkjet Printer. But all programs that i need (bitmap edition, Design, Page design and prepress) are working OK on OSX.
About the Jaguar, this version are to many expensive, considering all new things that are offering >

Carlitus one big slap to Apple!

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Well, I stand corrected on the login issue. I would posit however, that other OS's could also be suceptible to similar spoofing, it's just that no one has spent the time to implement it.

I stand by my take on windowing comparision: the windowing differences are application issues, not an OS issue. (I must admit, I was more than a little frustrated when I couldn't get Word back into MDI mode, as that was the way I preferred to work)

BTW: Kudos on updating the article.

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As for your comment in windowing issues being an Application not an OS issue, I can agree w/that. However, the article isn't just about the OSes, but rather about the total experience of the OS. Since the OS ships with a handful of apps, then I include those as part of the review. I think it's valid to point out that Apple's apps use a consistent windowing metaphor, while Microsoft's apps are all over the place. As much as I don't like MDI, I would have been a lot more leniant on MS if they consistently made ALL their apps MDI. Or even if they provided an over way to switch windowing metaphors (there may be such a way, but I haven't found it yet) so that it became user choice.

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upon submitting that last post I realized that the desktop screenshots compare word and excel, which aren't part of a base install (oops!). I'll post additional screens using just base install apps. However I won't remove the existing screens, because word and excel are ubiquitous and they are made by microsoft, so I think the comparison is still valid.

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