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{size:10px} bluvg wrote: That's a bit of a misdirection, since the point is clearly about relative memory utilization of different OSes, irrespective of personal habits. Memory footprint of an OS is something that can be measured..{size}
Ok, so I'll ask again: how could you know? Have you measured a Mac vs. PC system 1 to 1, with nearly identical processors, the same amount of RAM & GPU, etc? Since the answer is "no", then you don't know either. A good starting point in this case is system requirements, which Vista's is basically double of 10.5's requirements. And from the reviews that I had read, MS' stated requirements are barely enough to keep the beast alive at the bottom end. So unless you have some substantial metric, Leopard's memory use being "not far off" from Vista's is wrong or a theory, at best.
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{size:10px} XP was brought up in the original post... the context was that Macs (or rather OS X, presumably) use "much less" memory than XP or Vista {size}
Ok, I'm guilty of not having completely followed this thread, but I would disagree that Leopard is easier on RAM that XP. But that wouldn't exactly hold true on a comparison with Tiger. There is (or was) and excellent site called Mac OS X vs. XP that very thoroughly rated the two, and though 10.4 is quite a bit more sophisticated in terms of GUI their performance was pretty similar.
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{size:10px}The Windows release cycles are just different than that of the OS X world... a lot larger, more conservative base of users to drag kicking and screaming about compatibility with finicky old DOS-era apps, instead of a user base that is much more flexible, willing to put up with a lot (and much more willing to sacrifice), and eager to upgrade (and pay) for every point release.{size}
First, there really isn't any "sacrifice" when you upgrade your Mac OS. In fact it's been a completely no-brainer for me on the last couple of releases. Second, the "point releases" are misdirection of your own -- that numbering system is Apple's own marketing scheme, and you're really getting a new OS with each version.
Completely lame how ridiculous working with Windows can often be, though. Just yesterday, one of my coworkers spent several hours trying to figure out how to install a certain app on his machine running XP. As it turns out, he had to uninstall a couple of things, then redo the whole process with the conflicting apps in a specific order. Never had that issue on a Mac, ever.
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{size:10px} The same thing happened with XP when it came out--read the comments from that time regarding how users were sticking with 98 over XP, and they are almost identical to what you hear now. And that was even with a couple years of Windows 2000 to shore up the drivers prior to XP... Vista had no such benefit. There's just no changing the perception of it at this point, despite the fact that it has been very solid for quite some time now. Remember when OS X 10.0 came out--what a mess it was?{size}
I wouldn't know about XP/98/2000; I wasn't really following computer news much in those days and at the time my job was an all-Mac environment, anyway. But I will say that the big issue with XP vs. Vista is that not only was Vista extremely flawed (some have even compared it to a beta release), but its requirements were a leap over XP's, and unfortunately the vast majority of machines that were already in the market, homes or offices simply weren't equipped nearly well enough to handle the upgrade. Part of the reason Mac users enjoy pretty straightforward upgrades to the next ".1" is that their hardware line is pretty darn streamlined, so Apple isn't kowtowing to hundreds of configurations; only a half dozen or so. I think Vista's perception is still deserved: by comparison to the current Mac OS, its requirements are pretty stiff.
I do remember OS X's initial release (at least in the news; I didn't touch it). I think it took a real enthusiast to jump on board, because from everything I'd heard it really sounded like a beta release. But I think Apple deserves some credit for fixing the major issues with 10.1's release and doing that fairly quickly -- and for free, to 10.0 users. If people gave Apple slack over that, it might be because Apple did something M$ would never have done, which is admit the flaws and release an OS upgrade for free. I think that's something Microsoft should be doing for future purchasers of Win. 7 who bought a copy of Vista, but they won't.
I didn't get on board until 10.2 myself, and that's largely because at the time I was working exclusively in print and the publishing software I used wasn't available yet. 10.2 was a breath of fresh air from OS 9, though I personally think OS X really came into its own w/ the 10.3 release.
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