You know, this war is pointless between the OS. Frankly, its a matter of personal preferences.

ALL operating systems will eventually crash.:P

Now, which one I would prefer. Windows 2000
Screw xp

:)

The fact is Apple had all the ideas (icons, desktop, mouse, 3.5 inch floppies, built in scsi, built in networking). They were pioneers, they cost more but they gave you everything.

The fact is Apple sucks at marketing. They have no idea how to make people want their product. They will be used in college classes on what not to do.

The fact is, Apple had 65% of the market, then 45% then 20% then 4% then 11%, and now they are back to 5%.

The fact is, it's bad business to run your company on a platfrom that is only 5% of the market. A niche platform.

toekneec67 says "The fact is Apple had all the ideas (icons, desktop, mouse, 3.5 inch floppies, built in scsi, built in networking). They were pioneers, they cost more but they gave you everything. "

I beg your pardon?

Not one single thing you listed was an original concept developed by Apple.

I'm sure the folks at Xerox PARC (who did originate the ideas for the GUI, desktop, icons, and mouse) are just thrilled with your ignorant and incorrect claim that Apple "had those ideas".

The only area that Apple "pioneered" in connection with the things you listed was that they copied them from someone else and marketed them BEFORE Microsoft did the same thing.

I'm not saying that Apple has never innovated, but give credit where credit is due. Every last one of the examples you gave was someone else's idea (not Apple's)

I thought Apple purchased them, not copied them.

65% of the market was not with customers, It was with Schools, Govt, And so forth. Customers far as normal house users was only being used in mainly households of teachers who teached at schools in apple. Now in the govt. there moving all machines to everything but apple. Even the graphics machines are heading Pentium based systems. Yea there marketing has been a fact but there prices is what drove people away and lack of support for gaming and programing. I seen in a earlier sentence of Xerox mention, who was behind Xerox, bill gates. And if you people not in a bad since I mean, When you go to all your classes for certifications you will learn that Unix is the the mother of all OS's. No matter what OS you use it original was somewhat in someway from Unix open source codeing. And we all know that bill gates took his beginning from another programer and took the glory. Bill took on dos which someone else created and took the credit, then took it to a even higher level. Dont get me wrong Bill is a smart man and knows what he is doing. I also seen a earlier post that Apple origanated from BSD, oops BSD also origanated from Unix open source. Go to school first before saying anything were stuff came from. Its a good learning and perspective on how all software was devloped and how all came to be as we know it now. Does not matter to much, we all have are perspective on which OS to use. Its whatever a user feels comfortible to use. There all good in there own way so have fun and learn.

Same with DOS- Gates and co. bought DOS, then licensed it out, supporting it themselves (the original creator of DOS was offered $$$ from IBM if he supported it, but he wasn't interested).

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

actually toekneec67 i think you will find that Rank Xerox came up with most of the ideas and Apple adapted them and then Microsoft adapted them (i refuse to say steal as i do not know the whole story as do noone). So before you go on about Microsoft stealing ideas look at Apple's past also!

There's still some debate as to exactly how it happened.

However, since "purchased" is just "copied with permission in exchange for money", I'll still stick with "copied"

It does not change the fact that his statement that Apple "had these ideas" is 100% false.

ChronoCrossUT says "Go to school first before saying anything were stuff came from."

Wow, I could say the same thing to you considering how inaccurate many of your statements are.

"I seen in a earlier sentence of Xerox mention, who was behind Xerox, bill gates."

At the time in question (1980-1981) Bill Gates did not yet have any connection with PARC Xerox.

"When you go to all your classes for certifications you will learn that Unix is the the mother of all OS's."

Unbelieveably wrong. Not only were there many OS's not based on Unix, there were OS's before Unix.

"No matter what OS you use it original was somewhat in someway from Unix open source codeing."

Unix did not originate as an open source platform/OS, and is not an open source OS/platform to this day. Linux, FreeBSD, etc. which were derived from Unix are. Unix is not. (The Open Group - the current owners of the Unix trademark, list 12 vendors that have licenses to use the name "Unix", it does not appear that any of their "Unix" products are open source)

"And we all know that bill gates took his beginning from another programer and took the glory. Bill took on dos which someone else created and took the credit, then took it to a even higher level."

Uh, where have you ever seen anywhere that Bill Gates claimed to have written DOS? Microsoft has always been quite clear that it was purchased form the original programmer.

"I also seen a earlier post that Apple origanated from BSD, oops BSD also origanated from Unix open source."

Whoops, here you go again with "open source". BSD did not originate from any "open source" project. It originated with AT&T Bell Labs Unix (which was NOT open source)

Ken Thompson invented Unix in 1969 while with Bell Labs (AT&T), and Dennis Ritchie invented "C" as a pleasant alternative to assembly for Unix. AT&T funded it's development by both AT&T and Berkley. Berkley started developing software for Unix, releasing BSD1 (Berkeley Software Distribution version 1) with full source code in 1977. BSD rode on an AT&T source license until it released "Network Release 1" 1989 which was Unix - the 7 files that required an AT&T source license. You are very correct in your statement that AT&T Unix was not "open source", it was however available via AT&T license.

;-)

Agreed.

MS Purchased non-exclusive rights to QDOS in 1980, and released MS-DOS 1.0 in Feb 1981. MS purchased all rights to QDOS that july using funds earned from MS-DOS 1.0 sales, then later released 1.2 in 1982. ;-)

Yup, Gates *purchased* it, not "stole" it like many anit-M$ people like to claim.

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

I know one of the persons that helped fund Microsoft's original efforts. I suppose it's safe to say that he is very well off today. lol

I just constantly amazes me how many ignorant people automatically equate Linux/FreeBSD etc. with Unix and therefore claim that all Unix is open source and always has been.

I hear people all the time who complain "I don't understand how you can charge me that much for Solaris, HP/UX, etc. or for software that runs on it. It's Unix and therefore Open Source so I should get it for free"

Not surprisingly, pretty much everyone making those ridiculous claims either wasn't alive back then...or has never used any "real" Unix*** system

*** (Unix is a registered trademark of....blah,blah, you know the rest.)

Agreed. You should point them to the timeline for starters. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/levenez/unix/

Xerox was from Bill Gates.. See that is the good thing about taking Sco Unix SysAdmin Clases and more. It Teaches alot on how and what has come to be. No one is perfect and no software that was produced was one persons ideal. Far as coding programers have ripped from others over decades and took credit for it.

Only thing I agree with you on in your long sentence is AT&T and Unix. Unix started out not free but then became open source. Ill just say do your studies. Unix is the mother of all existing OS's.. No matter what OS you use has some Unix coding in starting it out..

ditoa said:

>actually toekneec67 i think you will find that Rank Xerox came >up with most of the ideas and Apple adapted them and then >Microsoft adapted them (i refuse to say steal as i do not know >the whole story as do noone). So before you go on about >Microsoft stealing ideas look at Apple's past also!

You are right in one area, you don't know! Apple paid Xerox for the ideas they "adapted", Microsoft never has. Microsoft has a history as a "code stealer". Most of the time they have been too lazy or don't know enough about the code to change it. Remember stacker? They even ripped some code from Apples Quicktime to bolster their then pathetic AVI code. Yeah I am a Mac user but I spend about the same time or more on my WindowsXP machine. I have used many computers since I started using them back in 1978...which do I find more stable and easier to use....do you have to ask?

Macintosh!

So if "purchased" is just "copied with permission in exchange for money"

Then what would "copied without permission in exchange for no money" be?

Stealing?

Look at the original PARC OS. It was a far cry from what the MacOS came to be, but the seeds of the MacOS where there. It is common knowledge in the industry that Windows came into being soon after Bill got a beta Macintosh machine from Steve Jobs. Windows 3.1 look and feel was in part from ex-apple employees that were hired after they left Apple!

The best thing about the PARC OS and the MacOS is they where right, look at WindowsXP....looks a lot like a Mac to me! I even use WinXP pro a hair more than my Mac....unless I am doing it for money, then I use my Mac.....more stable!

"Unix started out not free but then became open source."

Perhaps you still need to go back to your studies. Of the 12 companies licensed to call their operating systems "Unix".... NONE of them are "open source"

"Unix is the mother of all existing OS's.. "

A wildly incorrect statement made by someone who has probably only ever used 2 or 3 OS's. Let's look at secure computing environments. Wang designed their secure OS from the ground up...as did E-con....neither is based on Unix or uses Unix code as you claim.

But keep going. It's amusing to listen to someone with no real world experience try to claim that what they read in a book in a classroom is true....depite the fact that those of us who have been doing this for decades know better.

The fact is Apple had all the ideas (icons, desktop, mouse, 3.5 inch floppies, built in scsi, built in networking). They were pioneers, they cost more but they gave you everything.

The fact is Apple sucks at marketing. They have no idea how to make people want their product. They will be used in college classes on what not to do.

The fact is, Apple had 65% of the market, then 45% then 20% then 4% then 11%, and now they are back to 5%.

The fact is, it's bad business to run your company on a platfrom that is only 5% of the market. A niche platform.

if every one here tried OS X, Windows XP or Mandrake Linux..what would be the market share...i'm a Windows user and a Unix Administrator but my bet would be for OX...

Have tried (and used) all three.

I still have XP or 2000 on most of my desktops.

Application availability/compatibility is still the main limiting factor keeping OS/X out of everywhere except our Marketing/Graphics department.

Mandrake has gotten a lot better, but is still not a serious competitor on the desktop in my opinion.

XP here for full time use, with Lycorise Linux and RedHat 7.3 to play with. I will NOT go back to the Win9X core ever again!

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

just out of curiosity...what applications do you need that are not available on a mac?

About 6 different SQL Server management and administration suites, 4 SQL development tools, Visual Studio (6.0 and .NET), JD Edwards OneWorld, etc., etc., etc.

(Not to mention all of our custom software we wrote in-house)

About the only things we use on a regular basis that ARE available on a Mac are Microsoft Office (not that the Mac version is really a viable option), web browsers, e-mail, and Citrix MetaFrame clients.

In response, Kuney produced internal e-mail messages and documents written at the time in which Gates appeared far more spooked about Navigator and Java as threats to the Windows platform.

"If it'd be helpful, I would be glad to strike the word 'supposedly,'" Gates offered sarcastically.

"I'm always interested in ways you'd like to change your sworn testimony," Kuney replied.

Glad to see that whole gateway ad gone. :-)

Anyway, this is an old debate, mac vs. windows. Both OS are the same in terms of features and user-friendly GUI. None is really that much better than the other. What is the different when they practically share the same hardware (RAM, ATA drives, PCI, AGP, USB, etc...)? As for GUI, OSX and XP looks a lot a like. I guess if you can afford only one computer, then you have to choose between the two. Otherwise, buy both. Its foolish to buy a computer that can do it all, you're just asking for crashes. If you want a game computer, get a windows machine. If you're NOT into games and like the compact design of the Macs, then get that. If you want both, then get both. Computer hardware are so inexpensive compare to 3 or 5 years ago. Both OS are really easy to use and are stable enough to run smoothly. Linux is not easy to use, thats my only gripe against it. At least not Redhat 7.1. Or else it would be on the list also.

I would have to say stop with the reboots of 20 to 40 times a day with XP, that is purely a wrong observation and coming from someone who has a improper setup system who has tampered with to much. The war between Mac and Windows is a long battle. Both Operating system are based off of the mother of operating systems Unix. If you want stabibility at its best learn Unix. I am a Sco Unix certified person. But in this day and ages I have had the use of all existing OS's. Fairly to Mac, Mac was way ahead of Windows in the early years, but was to expensive and the support far as anything dealing with Mac people just did not feel a need to get involved with something that was only used for big graphic projects but coming from 95 to XP was a big step by microsoft. Mac lowered there prices which is great it actually gives people the chance to buy and expercience a great system. But Mac waited to late to lower prices. So I think personally its to late for mac. With Longhorn on upcoming, Mac will clearly be a thing of the past. Mac will never make it to were windows has do to there pricing in the past. Programers are more with microsoft then ever before. Far as I go, I will stay using my Unix and Lynux. But give a thumbs up to XP. I have 4 systems at home 3 of which have XP, and hardly next to none crashes since its release. My main system is dual booted between unix and lynux..

I have never seen anyone use the pronounciation Lynux for Linux. :)

then you should know osx is based on BSD and .NET runs/willrun on BSD.

??? OSX ???

give them time. I dont think you give them the credit they deserve. With an easily managable 3d interface which feasable to pull off given todays specs and their consistency towards cutting edge hardware they could have a very viable and affordable solution to a complete and wonderful computing experience by 2004/5

i wouldnt count any one out who's making the kind of money mac makes ;)

I love doing that.. Linux and Lynux.. I personally prefer to spell it that way.. Its just a habit I have..

An odd habit considering that it is NOT spelled that way (See Linus Torvalds' trademark)

Are you sure that you've ever actually USED Linux?

(Considering that your answer makes as much sense as saying that I use Windows 2000, I just like to spell it "Orange Crush Soda")

Joe Wilcox seems (superficially) fair, but a close exam should reveal lots of Microsoft cream cheese on his bagels.

Start with describing Windows XP Home as a "stable, multitasking" OS. Well, not exactly. Reboots are down to twenty to forty a day, unless you're trying (you guessed it) true multitasking, in which case, all bets are off.

Comparisons of operating systems based on "numbers of bugs" found and the like are meaningless. WinXP isn't truly multitasking OR multithreading, and the app writers know it. Look at the instructions for all windows-based CD or DVD burner apps - basically, turn off everything else, then hope for the best!

We're all victims of Microsoft hype. Marketing, not productivity, drives the bus at Microsoft, just as it used to do at GM before people found an alternative. Sacrificed to the god of an Ever Richer Gates are productivity and everyone else's time, as we search for true bugs (i.e. inadvertent scripting errors) and pseudo bugs (deliberately planted viral-like behavior designed primarily to interfere with competition or otherwise favor other Microsoft apps).

The alternatives may or may not be up to the task at this moment, but one thing is sure. It's worth a lot to keep looking.

Sign this "Ex Microsoft Dupe"

You have no idea what you're talking about. I don't know why the hell you're rebooting 40 times a day, but my XP box is rebooted every few weeks at most (and absolutely never crashes, despite all the torture i put my computer through). Maybe you're still stuck with the impression that you should reboot every time some poorly-coded shareware app gives you an error message.

And if you knew anything about how the NT kernel works, you'd know WinXP definately IS truly multistasking and multithreaded (as opposed to Win9x being only partly, and OS 9 not at all). The reason why you should turn off other programs when burning CDs (and this is true for ALL os's) is that if other programs start competing for the computer's resources with the CD app, buffer underflow occurs (unless you have a BurnProof cd writer, which you should). Also, although OS X may also have multitasking support, actually running multiple programs is a pain in the a** from a UI perspective. How the hell are you suppose to efficiently switch windows in OSX when you're trying to use a dozen different programs at the same time? Resize them and put them all in the corner? Or maybe fish through half a dozen identical-looking IE icons in the Dock? Window's taskbar is BY FAR WAY supperior, and Alt+Tab is simply beautiful. I still don't understand why Apple hasn't put that basic functionality into MacOS.

I am a programmer for the win32 api in C++ and VB. It is truely multitasking and multi-threading. Windows XP is by far the most stable OS I have seen yet.. to my record, this computer has an uptime of 4 weeks, without a reboot/restart. It is working fine. I admit Microsoft can be sneaky about the whole Windows Activation thing, but it's easly bypassable and it's truely a feature rich OS.

Don't forget Alt-s***-Tab ;)

Seriously, I agree that Apple should have at least gotten task switching figured out by now.

for the record, burnproof is BS. I've under run 2 cd's on this new drive and it says its "nearly impossible". still doesnt work, or at least doesnt in nero or premicd or whatever that garbage was i got with the burner

As far as XP being a truly multi-threaded/multi-tasking OS, the question you have to ask yourself is, "How well does it handle SMP?", or better yet, "How much am I getting out of my processor(s)?". Mr. Wilcox was quite correct in his statement about BeOS being one of the best OS' ever developed, it handled up to 8 processors without any reconfiguration by the user, and got almost 100% out of each additional CPU added to your machine. The pervasive multi-threading of BeOS required good programming practices by developers,and ensured that resources were rarely an issue. However, no apps=corporate demise.

Mac has always had far-and-away the superior hardware, and its software is quickly catching up. Building their latest iteration of the MacOS on Unix was really the best decision they've made in a long time(really it's a no-brainer), but they do need to loosen up the reins on developers a little, and not be so exclusive as to who the support. As long as a company or developer is willing to support them, Apple should give it right back.

Don't get me wrong I use several versions of Windows, Linux(Mandrake), BeOS, and if I could afford it I would buy a Mac in a heartbeat, so I'm not rabidly anti-MS or pro-Mac. I just don't think ANY OS that claims to manage its resources well can justify needing 128MB of RAM just to run. The fact that XP does need this has to raise some questions about the efficiency of the system.

Burnproof is BS?? You're bs or maybe your burner is bs. It works great and I see it working all of the time. I've burned a few hundred CD's and the only time I get a coaster, is when the orginal file(s) are bad.

I do not agree to the point about CD Writing not being multitasked.

I have successfully written several CDs on My Windows XP system WHILE encoding media files on Windows Media Encoder.

And I'm talking about doing this on my my Celeron 533 Mhz system with 256 MB of RAM and I am very much satisfied with the performance.

I do not use much of Mac so, I cannot comment about that platform though.

sometimes you get lucky...we bought a used e-Machines, celeron 500 to which I added a 20 GB HD, 256 sdram plus 16 mb pci video card, and it runs better than my new Dell p4 2000...but then again that's being used by the kids, not me...lol

Down to 20 to 40 reboots a day? LAUGH OUT LOUD IN YOUR FACE.
You either have NO idea what you're talking about, or your machine is so screwed up, you NEED to get a mac.
I never have to reboot my XP or 2K unless it's an update, etc, and I'm no genius in computer engineering, just a normal above average user.
Maybe you're confusing XP with ME?

Multitasking: is that when you have like 5 or more programs open and running at the same time, like burning a CD, being online, (posting in forums), Photoshop/Dreamweaver/Fireworks open at the same time? Hmm. I do this all the time, and have no issues at ALL.

nice insight. my burner is crap? heh. ok buddy. if it says "burn proof" on the label does it really matter if its crap or not. they sold me a product with the burn proof technology with a 2 meg buffer. 24*10*40. its hardly crap. and yes. i've had two coasters already, and i dont do a lot of burning. its not 100%.

Make sure the burner is on it's own channel, and not shared with any other device.

Didn't say it was crap.. but maybe you got a bad one? Maybe your cable is bad? Maybe your CD's are bad? Maybe you can do what fewt says and check what channel it's on vs. your HD and CD players.

Just wanted to let you know that other people had insights besides JUST yours. People have other experiences and some of them might actually be positive. So, just because you've had a bad situation with your burner doesn't mean Burnproof is BS.

"Multitasking: is that when you have like 5 or more programs open and running at the same time, like burning a CD, being online, (posting in forums), Photoshop/Dreamweaver/Fireworks open at the same time? Hmm. I do this all the time, and have no issues at ALL."

No?
If you tried Amiga or BeOS you know what TRUE multitasking is. There is NO Windows OS that is capable of that. It's not "multitasking" if you have "burnproof" on your CD-burner :)

"I am a programmer for the win32 api in C++ and VB. It is truely multitasking and multi-threading. Windows XP is by far the most stable OS I have seen yet.. to my record, this computer has an uptime of 4 weeks, without a reboot/restart. It is working fine. I admit Microsoft can be sneaky about the whole Windows Activation thing, but it's easly bypassable and it's truely a feature rich OS."

Please define: "multi threading"

An uptime of 4 weeks....this is actually a good thing?

"but my XP box is rebooted every few weeks at most (and absolutely never crashes, despite all the torture i put my computer through)."

Why do you reboot your OS if it not crashed?

I don't see how people get all these "many days/weeks/months" of uptime. I am lucky to keep mine "up" for more than a couple days, as I am always using mine to test out hard drives, saving stuff from customers' hard drives to CD, testing parts, etc.... LOL!
Besides, I turn mine on when I get up, then turn it off before going to bed most times.

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

It may also depend on DMA enabled/disabled, what burner software, is it patched, etc. All sorts of fun things to consider, eh?

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

My terminal servers currently have well over 100 days of uptime. (I haven't looked at the exact number, but it was 98 days the last time I looked ~ two weeks ago. It'll go down this weekend for the latest round of patching, though active script and all of the other misc goodies are already disabled on it.) It's possible to get a windows machine to run solid for months on end, but it takes a TON of work. Terminal servers are especially difficult, and take extreme care to keep running solid, but again it is possible. My Win2K systems tend to run for weeks if not months between reboots (Provided there are no new critical patches released in that time frame.)

Macs and OS X are simply superior to anything on windows...however, it's not worth the added costs...unless apple figures out a way to lower cost, people will simply buy wondows pc...just a note, has anybody using a mac (using OS X) ever had a crash?

Hehehe, I got one, with Virtual PC, in Windows...
No, actually, something wrong with Virtual PC and Virtual Networking got me a Total Failure, I mean, it became totally death, it was the GUI with some white letters just like DOS, but saying Darwin kernel, and I had to turn it off an on again. Maybe I should post an image.

I never met an Operating System I couldn't crash... :-)

I'm not saying that we really have a *Good* admin at school, but both OS X servers crash more than once a day. Of course there is heavy load involved, but OS X should be able to handle it.

do it!

in defense of XP, I've only crashed it once over the 2 months I've had it. The win 2k win2k install prior to it crashed maybe 3 or 4 times over the year and a half i had it installed. Be assured I put this system through its paces. ;)

so far I've burnt out a mother board, ram, 1 cdr, 1 dvd, a power supply, a WD 100 gig drive, and so on.

so much for using ram "i got from a friend". DOH! even with that hardware limping along during its short lifetime i rarely had a problem with 2k / XP in the crash and burn dept.

crash os x? oh may many many many times......... especialy on a iBook.... most of the "new" os x native code is extreamly buggy, and causes frequent crashes for me and my friends who are forced to use macs for art school..... just use photoshop for hours at a time and have it crash on u before u save a work.....

I am a user of both platforms and I disagree with the "superiority" of MAC OSX. MAC OSX is buggy and many times it crashes without being able to recover ( new G4 IMAC best model). The whole theory that Macs are light years ahead is pure BS. I think Mac OSX has a bright future once the applications are there. The mac is great for multimedia, but it doesn't justify its cost. For the price of a MAC I can make 3 highend pcs.

have you ever heard "Don't judge a book by its sexy white case.....err...... i mean cover" ?

I just recently made the convert! I was tired of windows 2000 and was not very impressed with XP. Now that I have my powerbook and OS X my computing experience has been a pleasure, no more blue screens, no more software incompatibilities and driver tweaks. My computer just runs I even seem to run out of stuff to do sometimes, with my pc it seemed I was fixing it 50% of the time and Working/Enjoying my computer the other 50%, now it seems like I am always just Working and Enjoying the machine 100% of the time.

As to the Digital Hub thing apple sure has a good thing going there too. I just purchased an iPOD and between My Powerbook/iPOD/Digital Camera/DV Cam all the iAPPS apple offers let me do just about anything I could want with these devices.

All us PC users should really take a good look at apples line during your next upgrade cycle I did and I don’t regret it OS X has been a great transition!

P.S. It would be nice to see more OS X Beta News Reviews and Articles!

I have been a PC user for many years, I still remember DOS and the great games it had.
Recently I got an iBook, and I got it because the main benefit it's the battery life, and it's pretty portable, but then back to OS X, I asked a friend, who said that Windows is better, so I told him: "Name one extension, .mp3, .wma, .txt, .pdf, .psd, anyone
And I was able to find a compatible app to open the file, I even told him to open some files, but he wasn't able, because of the Mac OS file system, and the other points already covered, like the easier use, and mainly because the market is expanding, you can see the new eMac for example, and the iBook in Universities.
So, my guess it's that it will bring a new order. Besides it's Unix with a GUI, the best Unix GUI i've ever seen.
So, that's my point of view, mainly I use the iBook, and my PC it's only the Internet server, because the Cablemodem I have it's not USB compatible with OS X, it needs to be Ethernet (BUT it's compatible), even that, a Mac is able to connect Ethernet to Ethernet with a PC without a special cable or hub.
And maybe Apple does not approves the making of clones, because in that way, they can control the upgrading so the consumer won't need to buy new hardware, I have heard about 200Mhz iMacs running OS X.

That's why I like Mac, so If you find something against, please let me know
That's why I'll always like

I will say it simply.

I love what apple did with osX. But you know what makes the OS? The applications... Tell me which #1 game you see coming for apple.... Is Grand Theft Auto 3 coming for apple? No.. Do you see halo or Doom 3 coming for apple? No not really I mean what cool game comes for apple right now. None... Same goes for apps.. only high end graphic applications and other software comes to apple. I will stay on the PC side of things until apple gives me the software that Iwant to run...

I think good old Carmack will make a Mac version, it wouldn't be very hand considering he uses OpenGL

agreed. Q3 runs on OS9 and linux(pretty sure about linux).

id's pretty good about supporting the whole spectrum.

Well, the best upcoming game for both PC & Windows in my mind is Warcraft III. That will probably be one of the only games I need to get me through all of summer vacation.

There is going to be an OS X version of Warcraft III

Whoops... when I said PC & Windows, I meant PC & Mac; I don't know what got to my head.

I think that perhaps Betanews shoudl ook into some method to more clearly differentiate their normal "news" stories from these "purely subjective, one man's opinion" editorial pieces.

nate has always seemed to doa pretty good job keeping stories as objective news reporting and left the opinions to the comments section.

I think it does Betanews a great disservice to mix these opinion pieces in with the news without differentiating them.
As is obvious from other's comments as well, these opionion pieces being presented incorrectly as "news stories" is offending the readership and tainting any further attempts at real "news stories"

I think it's pretty clear this isn't a breaking news story. From the beginning of BetaNews it has had general coverage and opinions on the technology industry and I don't expect that to change. This article presents a very important question to a lot of computer buyers these days and provides some excellent comparisons between two great operating systems. I don't really understand how you can confuse this with breaking news such as DirectX 9 Beta 1 being released.

The biggest problem is that many of our readers think they are experts when it comes to a certain topic. So when somebody else provides their opinion, they feel the need to tear it up, whether or not they are right or wrong. It's an unfortunate side effect of allowing anybody to post - but for the most part we try to keep it to a minimum.

If you don't want to read it, don't. But I think many people will find an in depth look at these two operating systems quite interesting. Just don't sit around and complain about it if you don't.

It was just a suggestion.

I don't think (personally) that it's a good idea to make the reader decide based on contect if an article is news or opinion. Most every other source of news makes the effort to distinguish the two up front. (It's actually considered one of the basic foundations of Journalistic Ethics)

If you choose to not use my suggestion, then fine. Don't.

I just feel that you are confusing and offending your readers by mixing the news and opinion stories and not making any effort to distinguish between them. Comments posted by other users in response to these opinion pieces (which appear to have been removed) would seem to support that.

Perhaps adding "Editorial: " to the beginning of the subject line for these stories would help without involving the amount of work that a separate Editorial section would.

That's why it says "Perspective" :) The article offers a single perspective on XP vs. OS X.

It's not that I didn't listen to or appreciate your suggestion - I just don't think it makes much sense to assume the readership of BetaNews is in their pre-teens and can't differentiate between an article offering an insight into a product, and one stating facts about a piece of software being beta tested.

How would anyone be "offended" by this article? It doesn't attack anyone's beliefs and in fact is pretty positive towards both operating systems. Besides, people can choose what they read and what they don't, can they not?

(can of worms)Why not throw a Linux vs XP and or Linux vs OS/X review out there as well (Provided you can find a non bias entity to write it).(/can of worms)

You could always write it ;)

I would, but I have to heavy a bias haha

I would but then I'd be forced to install linux on one of my machines AGAIN, and I'd rather just wait until they have some sort of official release of Mozilla, Wine, and possibly some direct x API support which may be WAAAAY down the road. After all. I still want to play mainstream games on my pc and kred alert, or kwolfenstien. For the most part you wont find anything without the label:

* requires a 100% Windows 95 OSR2/98/NT 4.0 (SP6)/2000/XP compatible 56.6 Kbps (or faster) modem

As I've said many times over I'd like a simpler interface and usability tool set installed that directly competes with the way MS tools work. Winzip, Photoshop(I'm sure gimp's great but a graphic designer is a simple person who doesn't want to relearn a whole new system.), Office XP(which may run on wine but like i said i want an official wine release and star office is so not cutting it for me), slimmed down installer menus, and generally better GUI tools for common consol commands.

Before fewt jumps all over me about how ignorant I am about all the newest greatest features and how b****y I am about the little things, I'll say this. Linux is wonderful for people who know it and love it. For the rest of us, it's still a toddler. But thats just my opinion ;) Feel free to add your own.

The comments that were removed seemed to indicate that at least some readers had issues with it.

As for offended, I menat that they were offended by having opinion pieces presented as "news stories"

Check out transgaming.com, they currently have directx 8 games running on Linux.

Looking back through the history of Betanews it does look like most of the opioon pieces have been identified with somehting extra in the title just like these two had ""Perspective:" and "First Look:".

Maybe people were confused from not seeing it for so long, or perhaps it's the lack of consistency in what descriptor was used for the opinion pieces. (Even in the past it seems to have varied a lot)

If you want a great gaming experience why not play the games that use the greatest graphics machine ever made? The real bonus is I can run them on Windows, Linux, BeOS and probably OS X as well. :-)

Try the Infocom Games, they use the human brain to supply the best graphics of all...

Take Bread
Light Lamp
Eat Bread

SW
SW

up

Oh the memories (^^ Enchanter) haha!

stable?

Doubtful..

fewt, you of all people should know that if you dont have at least 4 nines your products not worth a damn to me ;)

I agree with you Wendor, to a point.

But I think it's blatantly obvious that it was an opinion piece from the beginning.

Should Nate mark down editorials in the future? Dunno. Should all cigarette's be marked with a warning... oh yeah, they are, and people still don't care!

This is where I'm going with this... I think you're getting very nitpicky about something on a site that people read MOSTLY for their hobby. I don't need to read this site to function as a systems admin. I read it to get exposure to different programs and different points of view.

I think we'd all agree that this is not the only site we go to for "news". The article was just bringing to light some valid questions that people have about the two OS's. That's it. He didn't say, "This news article will cure cancer".

Sorry, it just sounds like you want nate to be journalistically "PC" (politically correct) and it just sounds like overkill for the situation.

You're entitled to your opinion.

I was just proposing a solution to the concerns voiced by a number of people who posted complaints about the "opinion" pieces (I do note that pretty much all of the posts that complained about it have been removed by the administrators since then)

Several people complained about "opinion" pieces being presented as "news" stories. I made a suggestion to alleviate their concerns.

Ahh, forgive my ignorance. I did NOT see the complaints. Otherwise, I'd have digressed and let the majority speak.

I was reading through here though and it looked more like an attack out of nowhere.. but since things got deleted, it explains a LOT more! Sorry. :)

No problem.

I will state however that it was never "..let the majority speak"

The complaints were not the majority by far, they just appeared to be a very angry minority.

Ahh, well then HELL with them! They're going to be pissed anyway! LOL

So now MS was "too cheap" to pay the licensing fees for DVD support... yeah ok, as I remember the facts, MS added both MP3 and DVD support and the there was a public outcry, saying how MS was giving the advantage to these specific companies.

Microsoft has signed a deal with McAfee to include limited virus protection in the next version of Windows. I haven't heard anybody crying.

The problem is that there is a difference from including (even limited) functionality in the OS, and making it dominant to the point that competitors have no chance.

I agree that maybe saying Microsoft was "too cheap" is going a bit too far, because it probably just made more business sense to sell the add-ons.

Correct.

Take this story as what it is. One person's purely subjective opinion piece.

He appears to have made little effort to check facts or present information objectively.

There was no public outcry, you are smoking it again.

Actually there was.

This was in the heat of the "Microsoft is unfairly putting software companies out of business by including features in the OS which other companies provide" debate.

(Windows Media Player unfairly competes with RealPlayer/Quicktime, IE unfairly competes with Netscape, adding CD burning capability to XP will hurt CD burning software companies, etc.)

Several large media companies complained that adding DVD support natively in XP would be "unfair competition"

So why should Microsoft fight yet another uphill battle for soemthing they no only had to develop, but would then have to pay additional royalties on?

There were even a handful of threads on Betanews about it at the time.

Thank you very much.

As a beta tester, this sort of stuff was verry annoying, because we had the functionality, it worked great, and then people complained... really annoys me.

One great technology that was also taken out of IE because of public outcry (read, stupidity/ignorance) is smart tags. The people complaining didn't actually have a clue as to what they really were, hadn't seen them in action, yet they complained. It's really stupid.

Awww, did those damn consumers keep you from getting windows the way you wanted it?

people complained because they didnt want microsoft's definition of how to speak their language as i remember. it seemed like a valid complaint to me, although i dont see why they didnt include it as an optional feature. i'm sure it had fantastic merit for thoes of us who canot spell or reed well.

No, more like damned idiots that have no clue (kinda like ZDNet and CNet reporters).

uhh, smart tags had nothing to do with what you speak of.

So, you must be the smartest person in the world and know what's best for end users better than they do huh?

I think you've hit the nail on the head. I don't care if a feature or piece of software is really included or not, the question is, "Can I remove it, if I want?"

>

Actually, Mircosoft DID release a public beta of Internet Explorer containing SmartTags--although who knows if the people who were complaining actually used it (personally, I didn't like them, but that's just me).

If I remember correctly it was not end-users crying just companies with enough money to pay lobbyists to help them make money when their programmers were failing miserably. There are still some of us out here that like having products integrated so they are easier to support and tightly integrated.

One or two of you perhaps.

You didn't like the representation of the smart tags in the IE6 beta, however, that was just a representation. Smart Tags were completely programmable.

So, now you know what he likes? Tell me can you teach others your special powers?

No, it was about MS trying to use it's IE monopoly once more...
Click on a word you like to know more about and MS decides what you get to see... of course, the company that provides MS with another truckload of money, gets the 'keyword'.
It was about MS changing the content providers created by adding their own tags.
What's next: the news Star Wars trailer in Windows Media and MS adding some extra scenes to promote XP? It's basicly the same, tampering with content.

And this is different how from Netscapes feature where you highlight a word and choose search and it feeds that word to Netscape's search engine (Netscape controls what gets returned by that engine)

Oh wait, you can change which search engine is used by Netscape for that functionality, so you can point it to a neutral source?

Guess what, you could with Smart Tags as well.

The difference: Netscape isn't a monopoly...
You might be able to change the search-engine in IE for smart-tags, but the number of msn.com start-up pages I've seen makes me think average Joe doesn't even know he can change it.

"The difference: Netscape isn't a monopoly... "

Irrelvant unless the court decides that Smart Tags are an abuse of Microsoft's monopoly. (Unlikely since they were found to have an OS monopoly, not a web brower monopoly) Remember, it isn't illegal to be a monopoly, just to abuse your power as one. The fact that Microsoft has an OS monopoly (according to the court) does not automatically make illegal every action they take that you disklike.

"You might be able to change the search-engine in IE for smart-tags, but the number of msn.com start-up pages I've seen makes me think average Joe doesn't even know he can change it. "

Not sure where you were trying to go with this one. Most users don't know that they can change Netscape's defaults for search engine or home page either. Only reason you don't see as many Netscape startup pages as you do MSN.com startup pages is that there aren't that many Netscape users to see int he first place.

So you made two statements of what the difference is....one doesn't apply at all and the other one applies equally to both sides.

No, my 2 statements were complementary.
MS illegally uses it OS monopoly to push it's internet technology of which IE (which would include the smart tags) is a part. By forcing IE upon the rest of the world (Windows is the only OS which has a browser part of it... Gnome/KDE is not an OS!!!), it would (if not has) also become a monopoly.
Just have a look at Mozilla 1.0 (it's been released) or the upcoming Netscape 7.0. See how easy it is to change the search engine (through XUL and the sidebar, anybody can even add search engines); now look at IE... you have to customize... and... no Google... Just face it, most users will keep the default settings which MS controls and which of course will be MS's own services hence using the OS/browser monopoly to further monopolize the services market.

How does Microsoft force IE on everyone. What stups anyone from putting Netscape or something on thier computers to use instead.

Is it just me or does this seem like an excercise in futility? I mean... why go through an indepth comparison when usually a consumer cant just "switch" to OSX or vice versa. Apple has a signifigant barrier to entry that I feel outweighs a lack of applications.

HARDWARE.... Except for a brief period, Apple has never opened it architecture to anyone.... and refuses to allow Apple clones to be made. They can then control the price... and charge whatever the hell they want because they have no competition. This is called monopoly. Noone is making a big stink over it now, but if Apple got huge in Microsoft-like proportions, I'm sure an anti-trust case would be coming down the pike very soon.

IF apple was smart ( and i very much doubt JOBS can see past his beloved hardware "artwork" )
They'd make a x86 OSX..... and make the barriers to entry a heck of a lot easier for Windows users to switch. The problem is that Windows users will not switch when it means that thier investment in windows-based hardware will largely become paperwieghts.

But of course JOBS wont do that becasue it would force him to give up his iron grip on hardware.

there was actually a lot of rumors about Apple releasing an OS for the x86 chip, and they did release some betas of the base kernal (i think it was called Darwin, but not sure.) i never tried installing it and i don't know where they're at now, but it was on the idea board for a while.

Apple controls it's own hardware for a good reason - and it's not so that it can become a monopoly. Apple guards it's hardware technology for QUALITY control, something the PC industry could use a little more of. Think about how many times you (or someone you know) has gone out and bought some new piece of hardware (say a video or sound card, for example), just to come home, and find out it won't work with your system. Huge waste of time, money, energy, etc. Now that wouldn't be a problem if IBM hadn't allowed it's technology to be cloned and modified and chewed all to **** by other companies. Think about it. I know you can get it ;)

Actually, no, I've never known that to happen, unless the piece of hardware was actually broken when it was bought, at which point it can be returned.

Obviously you've never purchased anything from Toshiba :)

The Darwin project is alive and well......

http://developer.apple.com/darwin/

It currently runs on Pentium II processors and is 100% open source. It will soon support all pentium/IBM processors. I suggest that you check it out...

I completely disagree with your point. Sure an x86 version of OSX could completely upend the computing world, but it's not necessary for Apple and Jobs knows that's not where the money is. Apple doesn't need to be the next Microsoft to make OS X worthwhile.

Consumers these days usually upgrade or buy a new computer fairly often (kids going to college, etc.) with the technology advancing so much these days. And with OS X a wonderful operating system, Apple is now just as viable an option as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, or Sony. Yes, moving to OS X would require an investment in hardware - but consumers are buying millions of new computer systems each day. Maybe you're used to just throwing in a new motherboard or RAM when you want to upgrade, but that's not how the majority thinks.

What's most interesting about OS X is that Apple is attracting the techie crowed. OS X is FreeBSD at the core, and has a wonderful interface to back up. Almost all of my friend and co-workers who are system admins or the like own an iBook or Powerbook G4 - I'm talking about 11 of them. If I hadn't purchased my Thinkpad so recently, you better believe I'd be at the Apple store right now.

So sure, maybe there is a higher barrier to entry for the folks who never buy a new PC or laptop and simply buy new parts when they need to upgrade. But for the vast majority of consumers, XP or OS X should be an important question they ask themselves. Problem is, most people haven't had the opportunity to sit down with the operating system and realize how excellent it really is. Plus, Mac Office is better than Office on Windows in almost every conceivable way :)

Why open source when the perfect (Windows XP) is out for you?

I am seriously considering heading down the ibook path myself.

Lucky you. I have a few pieces of junk laying around here.. My Umax 610P scanner for example..

OMG LOL

Ofcourse, I concur with your argument. If you want the computer to work for you go for Apple, but if you want to work with the computer then a better choice XP a qoute from some source which is so true. It's almost a full month since I switched from Apple OSX to Windows XP, I am beggining to educate myself with all the intricacies of XP. I have had the brand new Dell computer messed up and spent sleeples nights thinking how to fix it, went to all those support forums and learned a lot, and still in the process of learning. Learning the working of this superb OS is coninues, and there seems to be so much to learn, on the contrary Apple was so much easier and simple. No sir I do not want the easier way out.The fun part in the configurations, typing the paths correctly, registry tweaking, and tweaking the entire OS as such, to tailor to individual needs, only Windows XP allows you, there is a lot of challenge should something go wrong in the XP, you get your brain fully functional and thinking as to how and why and then when you finally put everything together again voila ! you sit back and cheer your expertise. There is no challenge left in Apple, since it does everything for you. I have had Apple before, but needed something more to challenge my faculties and I have found that in Windows XP. Windows XP may not be as colourful as OS X with the genie effect etc, but who cares XP is cool. I love to screw things up and reformat and reinstall,partition, create an image, tweak the registry, change the way my desktop looks. I love it, and it gives me much pleasure.

I have heard nothing but good things. The only thing to keep in mind is that OS X needs a lot of RAM, so you should plan on popping at least 512MB in the sucker. But with the price of RAM these days, what's another $100 bucks for a great system?

I had one of those things too. It made its way to the dumpster a long time ago. I'm surprised Umax can stay in business with the quality of products they sell (speaking only from experience of course).

To expand on that, a co-worker purchased a Protege laptop from Toshiba. It arrived with a broken video card (even on full hardware video acceleration everything ran like a Pentium 1), and Toshiba refused to understand what the problem was. After he drove the laptop to the nearest service center 40 miles away (no, they would not pay for shipping), it took them a week to get it fixed and he again had to go drive and pick it up. A week after that, his hard drive died for the first time. Over the next 8 months, his hard drive failed another 3 (yes, three) times. Each time, it took Toshiba between 4-8 business days to fix it.

Sure, nobody's perfect but that was just borderline ridiculous. He now owns a new iBook and has had nothing but good things to say.

My current business partner (in another venture) owns a Dell laptop and the support he's received is laughable. His hard drive died while he was overseas and last November the PS2 port died and the keyboard started getting flaky. After scheduling for service in late November, he called in early December to find out why nobody arrived or contacted him. The support person apologized and explained that somehow his scheduled time and problem was "deleted" from the system. The time was rescheduled and yet again, nobody contacted him about repairing the problem. In early January he contacted Dell again and the lady gave no reason for the silence, but said the parts would be shipped immediately. Again, nobody called but the parts did arrive. In early February he asked when someone would come to replace the parts that had shipped and pointed out that a new hard drive was not included in the package. The support person claimed she had thought he had fixed the hard drive problem (yeah, fix a dead hard drive?) and thus didn't put it on the list. And since it was now February, she could not fix it because the warranty for the Dell had expired in mid-January - despite the fact that he first contacted them in November. Needless to say, it was a nightmare and the Dell guy didn't show up until March 14.

My point? The quality of company you buy your computer (or parts) from is *very* important. Apple is known for their great service when there is a problem, which is extremely rare. IBM is another on the top of my list. The two times I needed to get my old Thinkpad repaired, IBM sent an Airborne Express guy to pick it up the very next day and had it back at my door in 3 days total (including weekends).

That was a much tamer response than I was expecting ;)

Honestly, my next systems will come with at least that.

Nothing to delete today. LOL!

If you want to work with the computer go with XP? That's a hoot. My limited understanding of OS/X is that it's grossly more configurable than XP. If you want to work with your computer, get a real OS like unix, not a consumer OS dumbed down so badly that even your grandmother can use it.

didnt you say in a previous post that your grand mother, kids, wife, friends, whatever could use your linux machines with no issues?

;) *shakes your own stick at you*

dumbed down is good fewt. building things around a one button mouse is a little stupid, but eh. it works for some and not for others. personally i could use two mice with four buttons each and be golden. but im pretty sure theres no market for what i want.

Ok this is strange, I cut and paste from word and all the quoted stuff disappeared... will repost.

*******Sure an x86 version of OSX could completely upend the computing world, but it's not necessary for Apple and Jobs knows that's not where the money is. Apple doesn't need to be the next Microsoft to make OS X worthwhile.*********

I’m talking the reality of the marketplace here. I'm not discussing which OS is better. Yes, I agree that Jobs sees where the money is. But that money depends on converting Windows users to be captive mac users. By captive, I mean that they have no choice but to run apple operating systems, with apple hardware once they switch. Realistically, Apple users have less choice that computers based on Intel processors.

Sure, Apple doesn’t need to be Microsoft to make OS X worthwhile. However, Apple could significantly increase its market share by taking windows based applications and hardware into account.

********Consumers these days usually upgrade or buy a new computer fairly often (kids going to college, etc.) with the technology advancing so much these days. And with OS X a wonderful operating system, Apple is now just as viable an option as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, or Sony. Yes, moving to OS X would require an investment in hardware - but consumers are buying millions of new computer systems each day. Maybe you're used to just throwing in a new motherboard or RAM when you want to upgrade, but that's not how the majority thinks.*********

I completely disagree here. Consumers are not replacing computers as frequently as they once did, recognizing that incremental computer improvements are less dramatic than in the embryonic stage of development. Also, consumers are looking for more value for thier computing dollar. They want to be able to use printers, scanners, digital cameras, monitors, software and other items that they have invested hudreds, if not thousands, of dollars in.
THAT is a signifigant barrier to entry for Windows users to switch to OS x.

******What's most interesting about OS X is that Apple is attracting the techie crowed. OS X is FreeBSD at the core, and has a wonderful interface to back up. Almost all of my friend and co-workers who are system admins or the like own an iBook or Powerbook G4 - I'm talking about 11 of them. If I hadn't purchased my Thinkpad so recently, you better believe I'd be at the Apple store right now *********

What many techie people forget is that a very significant portion of the public doesn’t give a rip what is under the hood of an OS. They just want it to work.

********* So sure, maybe there is a higher barrier to entry for the folks who never buy a new PC or laptop and simply buy new parts when they need to upgrade. But for the vast majority of consumers, XP or OS X should be an important question they ask themselves. Problem is, most people haven't had the opportunity to sit down with the operating system and realize how excellent it really is. Plus, Mac Office is better than Office on Windows in almost every conceivable way :) ********

I think I need to make my point a bit clearer.
Here's "surviving in the computer market 101".
PROPIETARY = LESS ACCEPTANCE OF YOUR PLATFORM FROM SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS AND HARWARE MANUFACTURERS, LESS CHOICE FOR THE CONSUMER, AND EVENTUAL DEATH OF THE PRODUCT.

That’s it. Plain and simple.

****consumers are looking for more value for thier computing dollar. They want to be able to use printers, scanners, digital cameras, monitors, software and other items that they have invested hudreds, if not thousands, of dollars in. THAT is a signifigant barrier to entry for Windows users to switch to OS x.*****

Well unless you are investing in Umax scanners (which tend not to work in anything but 98), chances are your equipment will work under OS X just as it does in XP. In fact your digital camera probably will work better under OS X.

The only real point I could agree on is software, but these days most consumers get the software pre-installed with their PC anyway - meaning they haven't spent any extra money on new software.

Yes, I did say that.. However he was trying to make a point using a dumbed down consumer OS that didn't hold water. I think Windows is GREAT for grandma (who even still gets on the net faster on my Linux desktop).

I have to make a comment aabout this. First let me say I am no Microsoft fan but I do use a PC. I would love to try an Apple with OS X but the biggest barrier is my investment in Software that runs on Windows. I just can't afford to buy a new system, (Which by PC standards is over priced to begin with) and then go out and buy all new software on top of that.

And there are many more people out there who already own computers that are in the same situation. You go with the system that will run the software you already have.

The two main reasons people will buy computers running Windows rather than an Apple are Price and software. Unfortunately Windows has the edge in both. Apple will not be able to mount a serious threat until they can bring down the price.

If IBM had kept the genie in the bottle...

Can you say $5000 for a PC or MAC that was still running at 100mhz??? :-)

I have read horror stories on both sides. And you are correct, you should always choose the vendor you buy your HW from carefully. I still have a lot of very old HW that still runs. I have a fully functional IBM PS1 model 20 with a 21mb HD and it runs just fine. I have several old SCSI hard drives in various sizes that run.

Anyway, to get to the point, if you go out and buy the cheapest noname part you can find expect to get what you pay for. I have bought very few parts I have had to ship back as defective and I have never had to ship back a full system because it would not work out of the box.

The biggest problem in on the IBM PC compatible side, (I feel I must put it that way because after all an Apple IS a Personal Computer), is not really the hardware, it is Windows.

*cough*bias*cough*

have you seen XP's stand by mode?

it takes me a total of two clicks to get online. one to log in and one to launch IE. I'd say that happens in under 15 seconds. Sorry fewt. linux cant touch that. ;) point XP

I can fully hibernate 512mb of RAM to disk (not just standby) in 3 secs on a Toshiba 5105-s607 Laptop.

And to resume, from pressing the power button, it is 3 secs as well and my apps and desktop is back and I'm fully also even fully back online and signed into my IM clients.

Standyby is less than 1 sec either way.

Toshiba did their homework, and implemented the legacy free designs and full ACPI specifications that companies like Microsoft were pushing several years ago.

In other words, there is no BIOS wait time, and it takes advantage of power management features only found in XP that allow the OS to fully drop (and drop all drivers) and power off in less than 3 secs. And in reverse, pull state RAM from the HardDrive and reinitialize all devices in less than 3 secs.

Simply impressive... I don't even bother with Standby anymore, Full power-off Hibernate is only 2 extra seconds. ;)

Quite nice for a laptop...

PS Anyone remember Jobs demonstration a feww years ago trying to get just standby back up in 10 secs... (The demonstration crashed, but that was good old System Software days - Pre OsX)

The Net Avenger

Yes, I quit using it after having to reboot everytime I hibernated.

http://support.microsoft...315502&&GSSNB=1

uhh move the mouse, or control-alt-g (or double click). What were you saying again? (2.5 seconds)

>>Get a real OS like Unix?

Ok, I have to respond to this one… Either you are really misinformed, or really young...

Here is a bit of information/history…

WindowsXP is based upon the NT project. The NT project was started in 1992 by Microsoft to create a portable high-end Operating System that met government C2 level security. (Meaning it had to be stable as well as secure, by separating processes ‘applications’ from the hardware they were running on.)

Here is the part that you seem to miss... Microsoft's lead developers and designers of NT were people like Dave Cutler. If you don't know who he is, go look him up. He wrote a lot of VMS (a major UNIX mainframe variant of the late 80s, and was considered to be one of the best UNIX OS theorists and gurus of the time; hence, why Microsoft hired him.)

He had full discretion to make NT based upon UNIX or any technology available. They chose for many reasons not to use a UNIX core, and they also worked from the ground up to overcome limitations of microkernels such as Mach, which is what MacOSX is based upon. (Microkernels inside a main OS kernel basically define the granularity of memory protection.) Here is a reference to a Linux Journal Article on the MacOSX and microkernels: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6105

He and his team SPECIFICALLY CHOSE NOT use UNIX for the fact to get where they wanted there would be way too many flaws to work around and still be limited in abilities to extend the OS. Instead of patching work, they knew it would be not only faster to create a whole new OS base, but it would also allow them to add OS concepts and theories that were not even being utilized in a production OS yet.

(The time factor has since been demonstrated, by seeing the patchwork Apple has been doing for the past 7 years to get MacOSX running on a UNIX base. And yet it doesn’t even have the ability to run System9 software without an emulated layer.)

So that is what the NT team did, they took the best OS designs and theories out there and coordinated them into arguably the most robust and extensible Operating System ever, NT. Before you scream at that last statement, stop for a second first, NT and the NT core/kernel is NOT what you seen when running NT or WinXP.

Most people, see NT and WinXP though the Win32 subsystem that is uses for the interface. However, NT is far more than that. The true Kernel of WinXP(NT) is not seen. When you write a Windows (Win32) program that accesses the kernel, it is accessing the Win32 kernel, NOT the NT kernel.

This is why when NT first shipped it had full Win32, Win16/DOS, POSIX (generic UNIX my friend), and OS/2 1.2 subsystems.

You see the true NT OS, is a token passing, object oriented based, layered -subsystem Operating System. Which means that it can extend far beyond what even the current OS dreamers of the time are conceiving, and way beyond what the FreeBSD/Linux/Darwin world will ever be able to do without extensible more patching and rewrites.

Saying that UNIX is a real OS, and WinXP(NT) is not, is ridiculous and is grossly misinformed.

Win2k/XP even still to this day has an optional FULL UNIX Subsystem that runs on the NT Core. It runs concurrently with the Win32 and other subsystems. Meaning that it gets the extra features of NT and can even share data back to the Win32 subsystem and yet Display its X Windowed apps on the screen right next to Win32 GUI apps. Running in its own subsystem, the UNIX portion is also running natively, no emulation.

This is something UNIX or MacOSX will never be able to do without emulation or without VMWare products. And yet NT was designed to do this stuff from day one.

Want an example of how the subsystems are so important. Open a System9 application on MacOSX for the first time. How long does it take to open? Even on the fastest Mac out there 60secs at the best and more like 90secs+. Now go to a WinXP machine and open a Win16 (Win3.1) application. How long does it take to open, 1 sec, or less? Um.. Strange, WinXP/NT is able to launch an ‘entirely different’ subsystem to run an application in under a second, and this Win16 application gets a full version of Win3.1 and its features offered to it. And it would also open these apps just as fast on 486 class machines.

The reason it can do this? Because the Win16 is a layered subsystem that attaches to Win32. It is actually running Windows 3.1 just for that app. (And it can have multiple Win16 subsystems open at once even, isolating each Windows 3.1 program from the other.) Which is something the MacOSX cannot do for System9 apps; if one System9 app crashes, it can crash the full System9 emulation system.

The same happens if you open a POSIX (generic UNIX) application on NT or a DOS application on NT.

If Microsoft wanted to, they could make a full Linux Subsystem or Darwin Subsystem for NT as well. And it would load and launch apps from these other OSes almost instantly and be able to show them onscreen along side the Win32 displayed applications.

(And this is just a tiny example of what is built in the NT core; there are things that WinXP is barely even using that have been in NT since 1992. In other words, "You haven't seen anything yet."

For example NT has always been a multi-user OS, the NT underpinnings were designed from day one to do this; however, it wasn't until Microsoft added multi-user features to the Win32 subsystem did people even realize it would do it.)

Do you get a clue how extensible and what is built into NT, does anyone here debating this stuff?

Don’t get me wrong, Linux/FreeBSD/MacOSX are truly great OSes. But none of them have the underlying structure NT does, or a UNIX fan and Guru like Dave Cutler would have made Windows NT a Unix OS as well… I don’t claim to have his knowledge, but rightfully yield to his insight as to what were the right technologies to use when building a ‘dream’ OS, which is the opportunity Microsoft gave him and his team to do.

Until your Linux/FreeBSD/Darwin can even do a portion of the features the NT core can, get back to me on what a REAL OS is...

Until that day, take care,
The Net Avenger

Just curious as to how many folks have built their own Mac, like I just built two custom full blown AMD XP systems with DDRram, dual hard drives, 512mb ram, etc, running WinXP Pro and Win2K Pro multiboot?
I have absolutely NO problems with crashing in the NT kernel o/s's like I did in the 9x series, so that's no even an issue anymore.
And, hmmm. let's see, guess I won't even get into software availiblity.
Pretty much rest my case.

Case in point.... Microsoft Office.
Office for Windows will not install on a Mac.
This then requires a consumer to repurchase software they already own just to switch platforms. I think you need to take a closer look at reality.

See how competition works =)
I will never understand why everyone thinks Microsoft having a OS monopoly is bad.

However, the same people defend Apple to the death for holding a monopoly over both hardware and OS's.
Could someobody please explain to me why its good for one company to a monopoly and others not?

Excellent post. Can you suggest any good links to sites that go this indepth into Microsoft Technologies?

I think a great deal of people on this board would benefit from some education =)

awesome. one less flamer.

you didnt even mention that cutler had 200 employees developing cutting edge 32 bit VMS applications for what was it, 5 years before they killed his team off? The way you discribed it as his "dream OS" puts in perspective just what MS has done. He had all the experience of building a cutting edge Unix based system and he took all the knowlege of his short comings and his best innovations he cultivated what is today a great, stable, and fully capable OS with all the dominate traits of the previous windows. As a coder I can completely indentify with this whether or not its skewed which i cant say for certain if it is but from what i read it was certainly very valid ;)

we're talking from the off position. if you want to talk about loging in and powering on a web browser you're not looking at the average joes computer. only people who dont care about their electric bill leave there computer on all the time. i for one couldnt give two flips about linuxes 2 year uptimes if i cant turn the system off or in stand by where there is nothing spinning moving on etc etc and turn it back on without waiting through those *ugly* *long* linux reboots. ;) you know the kind. the ones with the little spinning =======(\) ... yay. should i actually clock the speed of my logins and browsing for you fewt? i seriously doubt you have a 2.5 second to browse time from the off position. thats bubkus

you know what the best thing about all those bugs are?

they're being resolved.

That's a pretty depressing post. Where to start....

"The time factor has since been demonstrated, by seeing the patchwork Apple has been doing for the past 7 years to get MacOSX running on a UNIX base. And yet it doesn’t even have the ability to run System9 software without an emulated layer."

Where do you get 7 years from? If you are going to say patchwork to get OS X to run on Unix, then use the last 15+ years as a number (it started at NeXT) And how exactly am I supposed to run applications written for a $3500 operating system designed for a completely different architecture on Mac OS X? Or did you mean Mac OS 9? If you meant that, you are again mistaken. Classic is *not* an emulation layer. It is a fully enclosed "subsystem". It is it's own OS with shims for hardware and FS support. The most Applications in Classic can do to OS X applications is send them messages. There is *no* emulation going on here. Classic would be far less of an emulator than Wine would consider itself to be. And second, there is an option to start classic on login, so there would be no lag in starting the first application. You should also note that once classic has been started, application launch times are instant (and far faster than launching a native OS X application in most cases). And what says that these Windows subsystems are created a new each time?

Let's see how many subsystems OS X supports. BSD, POSIX, JavaVM, Cocoa on JavaVM, Cocoa, Carbon, Classic, and there's probably some others. So you can't exactly say that OS X isn't exandible in the least. Oh, yeah, WebObjects too.

"Win2k/XP even still to this day has an optional FULL UNIX Subsystem that runs on the NT Core. It runs concurrently with the Win32 and other subsystems. Meaning that it gets the extra features of NT and can even share data back to the Win32 subsystem and yet Display its X Windowed apps on the screen right next to Win32 GUI apps. Running in its own subsystem, the UNIX portion is also running natively, no emulation.

This is something UNIX or MacOSX will never be able to do without emulation or without VMWare products. And yet NT was designed to do this stuff from day one."

Wow, then what have I been running? Can you show me a screenshot of WinXP and X11 windows (the window objects) running side by side? I can show you OS X and X11, in rootless mode too! http://www.xdarwin.org/screenshots/ ;)

"If one System9 [sic] app crashes, it can crash the full System9 emulation system."

This is absolutely true. In order to run the most Mac OS 9 applications, you have to reproduce everything the application designers were told would exist. This inclused all the gestals, T-Vectors, shared memory, and bugs. This is a feature, not a bug. The only thing disable is low-level hardware access. Although you can usually get a lowish level of access if you disable (unload from memory) the OS X portion that would take care of the device.

In fact, I have seen very little that NT can do conceptially that OS X can't do better (Except that blue screen of death, although granted OS X has that rainbow beachball thing, but that can usually be cured if you have another machine, s***o the OS X box and kill the offending application, which is usually word, IE, or the lame screensaver.)

Yes it can blue screen better. I wonder if that came from VMS too. lol

Uhh you said standby, not off.

Where to start? First, I just want to say, once again, that I am not rabidly against Microsoft, or for "the other guys", I just want to clear up a few details, to keep things accurate.

Now, let's take this one point at a time:

***"WindowsXP is based upon the NT project. The NT project was started in 1992 by Microsoft to create a portable high-end Operating System that met government C2 level security."

Let's not give to much credence to the importance of a C2 security rating, understand that C2 is a minimal rating that means little to customers who really need security. Most modern operating systems can reach a C2 with little problem; NT(version 4 at least) couldn't if it was connected to a network. Security of a 'B'-level rating is needed for secure systems, and this software is only available from the big guns (Trusted Solaris, IBM OS products, etc.). Also understand that these ratings are tied to specific hardware models - your generic PC has not been so rated.

***"He had full discretion to make NT based upon UNIX or any technology available. They chose for many reasons not to use a UNIX core, and they also worked from the ground up to overcome limitations of microkernels such as Mach, which is what MacOSX is based upon."

This is not entirely true, Windows NT was in fact loosely based on VAX/VMS(as you point out, Mr. Cutler did have experience with this) just as DOS was cloned from CP/M, Mac OS X is based on Mach, and Linux on Minix. All these systems have evolved from an original concept. NT was not entirely new, and even if it was, any good sailor knows that the timbers in a ship are safest if seasoned, rather than untried. If they were going to go completely new why didn't they write the system in C++, a far more robust language than C, it worked well for BeOS.

***"He and his team SPECIFICALLY CHOSE NOT use UNIX for the fact to get where they wanted there would be way too many flaws to work around and still be limited in abilities to extend the OS. Instead of patching work, they knew it would be not only faster to create a whole new OS base, but it would also allow them to add OS concepts and theories that were not even being utilized in a production OS yet."

Let's focus on the comment about 'way to many flaws to work around', and the ironic choice of wording when 'patching' was used. Anyone have an exact number of released bugs, and security holes/leaks detected in XP since its release? Anyone? That being said let's move on to adding new concepts. As of W2K these were some of the "new" features being added to NT:
Disk quotas (UNIX has had them for years, as has Linux)
Mount-points (UNIX has had them forever)
LDAP distributed user and system databases (Linux had them available already)
Kerberos authentication (UNIX has had add-on Kerberos authentication for years).

The Unix-world has not in any way remained static over the last 30-odd years.

***"Saying that UNIX is a real OS, and WinXP(NT) is not, is ridiculous and is grossly misinformed."

I chose to end what I have say on that last comment because, whether you're a fan of MS or not, it's true. NT/W2K/XP are "real" operating systems. They all, however, still have a long way to go to maturity, like most other OS' available today. To contend that one OS/technology is the panacea for all your computing needs is just so much foaming at the mouth. Rarely, will you find, if you really look, that using just one OS is in everybodies best interests.

A place for everything and everything in its place.

What did you say the turn-around time for a bug-fix was again from MS?

I know from personal experience I've gotten one for Linux within 48 hours. 8^)

Couple months ago if you remember, the SNMP bug/security issue came about, Toke MS a week to release a update, The linux version, 24-48 after the fact.

and as fewt and I have debated elsewhere, that's a two edged sword.

Those patches that you got 24-48 hours after the bug was discovered have not had, by definition, and real world system level or intergration level acceptance testing.

This is not an acceptable option for most critical applications. (Unless, as fewt pointed out, it is a security related bug that is more dangerous to leave unpatched than it is to risk of destabilizing the system)

The longer time for Microsoft to issue fixes is , to a great degree, due to the fact that Microsoft does a full set of system and integration tests before releasing them.

Just look at how many fixes have had to be recalled/changed int he linux world because the fix broke somehting else compared to how few times that has happened to Microsoft.

So as I said, it's a two edged sword.
Getting a fix in 48 hours is not necessarily a "good thing".

click "turn off computer" then click "stand by". its one of three choices. when you do your drives shut off, your power suply stops buzzing, your monitor goes blank... all those symptoms of an "off" computer without the fruity restart/shutdown.

P.S. i counted today and it was about 3 seconds from hitting the power button and my browsers where already started so that tears that. ;)

That's a lot of clicks! window key-s (standby) or right click standby. I think it takes about the same amount of time on either OS. If you are at a command prompt apm --standby will do it as well (on Linux).

Sure did.

Microsoft took a week and actually did system leval and integration level testing of their fix.

The Linux community put together a patch and released it with basically NO system level or integration level testing.

One gave you a fix quickly that risked destabilizing critical systems, the other took more time, but stood behind and SUPPORTED their patch.

There's advantages and disadvantages to each.

To be fair, doesn't the security rating of every OS go down significantly when connected to a network?

it powers back up to the command line? i should assume we'll be using lynx as our browser of choice then ;)

Yes, you can standby/suspend to and from the command line. If you want a good text mode browser (There are really good uses for them once you get past the laugh factor lol) I recommend "links".

Alright, I admit it, you caught me on that point. All OS' level of security drop once they are put on a network.

I was just responding to a bit of puffery about NT. The only times I ever hear the C2 'thing' brought up are when someone (usually Microsoft themselves) are trying play up why NT is so great. Mentioning the C2 rating sounds fancy, but without giving an accurate breakdown of what it means, an author is usually just trying to use numbers to impress their readers. It's like the whole clock-speed thing on CPUs, mention that one processor is a 1.8Ghz another is 1.4Ghz, and yet another is only 800Mhz, and the average reader may very well assume that the bigger number must be the fastest, the most efficient, or the best value, but there is way more than clock speed that determines how good a processor is. I was just trying to add a little perspective.

Have you bought a computer recently? Go visit Best Buy and find a computer without an office suite pre-installed and I'll show you a picture of fewt hugging Bill Gates.

Many consumers these days never buy a piece of software separate from those which come with their PC. And thus, for most people any migration costs would be minimal. Corporations on the other hand are a completely different story - but I don't forsee many corporations considering siwtching every employee to iMacs anyway.

IT'S A FAKE HONEST!

oh, it was a joke haha you didn't hear that ^. (LOL!)

Correct.

By definition, no OS can achieve a C2 rating if it is connected to a network.

One of the requirements of the OS C2 rating is that is is a "standalone" system.

There is a separate "network component" C2 rating for networks and or networked OS's.

The main value in a C2 rating is still that a large number of government and defense contractor implementations require a certain minimum level.

The fact that NT 4.0, NT 3.51 and Netware 4.11 are CAPABLE of a C2 rating means that they can be considered for purchase by those organizations. No version of Linux could be even considered for purchase (nor could any Apple product)

CC (common criteria) security (which replaced Orange Book and Red Book security standards) has become a very niche market, however, and neither Microsoft or Apple seems interested in pursuing the OS certifications anymore. (Microsoft never submitted 2000 or XP for testing)

Trusted Application security under the CC is still a hot field for them and Microsoft and Oracle are both quick to submit each new release of their database products for certification.

See the Trusted Products Evaluation Program (TPEP) at the National Computer Security Center (NCSC) for more information.

"No version of Linux could be even considered for purchase " please elaborate.

like surfing for ASCII porn or browsing wireless web sites. ;) moving through the dewy decimal system and such. HAHAHAHa

Hey, don't knock ASCII.. ASCII/ANSI were the "web before the web" :-P

According to some, Apple is "exempt" because they don't have 90% of the market (when they have 100% of the PPC market). I say a computer is a computer, an OS is an OS, and if you make an OS that only runs on YOUR hardware (meaning, you can't just go build a custom system and put an OS on it) you are a monopoly. You can get a PC with Windows OSes, Linux varients and no OS. PPC? Apple/Mac only.

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

This gets into the difference between the logical definition of "monopoly" (which you are using) and the LEGAL definition of "monopoly". (not to mention the Parker Bothers definition)

It is also not illegal to BE a monopoly, but it is illegal to ABUSE your power as a monopoly.

Apple does not meet the legal definition of a "monopoly".

It's a good thing that the legal definition is as strict as it is. Otherwise if I sold you an orange, I could be held liable for my actions because I have a monopoly over the market segment "people who previously bought oranges from me", and if I told you not to buy an orange from anyone else, then I've created a barrier to entry in the "people who previously bought oranges from me" market.

Government agencies and government contractors in the US are often required to only purchase computer products and software that meets a certain minimum security rating. (The UK and some other European nations have similar requirements and ratings)

Any product (like Linux) that has not been submitted, tested, and certified under the NCSC's CC ratings is not allowed for purchase consideration in those cases.

So for example, if the CIA required a minimum of a C2 level in a certain department, then they could consider any OS with a C2 rating (such as NT 3.51 or NT 4.0 for standalone systems and Netware 4.11 for networks), but could not consider Linux or MacOS.

If they required a B3 rating or higher, then none of the above could be considered. (last time I checked, the only OS with a B3 rating was XTS-300 STOP from Wang Government Systems.

If they required an A1 rating (the highest) then they're screwed as no OS has been certified at A1 level.

Gotchya, yes I agree. We won't know what level Linux would gain until someone decides to put up the funding to find out. I believe the same is true with MacOS.

Correct.

It does not mean that Windows NT 4.0 is more secure than either Linux or MacOS.

It simply means that NT4 has been certified and the others either have not been tested (in the case of Linux) or have been and failed (in the case of some versions of MacOS)

I find it unlikely in the current climate though that Microsoft, Apple, or any of the Linux distribution vendors are going to make much of a push for certification of their OS's.

"Secure Computing Environments" that require certification have become so much of a niche market that I suspect there is little value in trying to compete with those that are already established there. (How many people in here even knew that Wang was still an OS vendor/developer?)

Agreed.

I guess the best way to say it about Apple/Mac is "they are a niche, specialty only machine" LOL

James Wheat
http://belprecomputerwizard.com

PPC chips Apple/Mac only? Really? Well don't tell IBM or the other people using a differnt OS with the PPC chip!

Are you on your moms computer again?