[minderbinder]

"And as I pointed out not if you have Windows 2000 on a 13 year old PC and are using the same Apple software."
So how's the playback of QT movies on a 13 year old PC? I'm dying to know. Again, you seem more interested in theoreticals than practical realities.
"It is about how Apple makes it harder to be on a Mac than a PC."
It would be nice if hardware, OS and software always stayed compatable regardless of upgrades. But in my experience, being on a PC isn't any easier. The latest Media Player only runs on XP. I've seen windows apps that list specific service packs required for compatibility. The experience can vary widely on any platform, it mostly depends on what apps and peripherals you are running. And much of it is timing, it's just been a while since MS had a major OS update. I can't wait to see what Vista brings.
"Mac requirements: 7 year old computer, 11 months old OS.
Windows requirements: 13 year old computer, 6 year old OS.*"
That's one app of thousands. Compatibility is different for every app and every piece of hardware. And that 6 year mark is going to get way smaller when vista ships.
"If you wanted it, as it isn't necessary to actually run anything. 2000 is always the line drawn in the sand."
Not true, there are apps that require XP. MS even lists XP only for the latest version of their media player.

"Bottom line-Integrated Graphics sucks."
You claim this over and over, yet with no real argument to back it up. It sucks because it sucks. At least make a real argument: why is it so bad for 2d graphics performance? Why is it so bad for HD playback? A difficult case to make, since HD performance is pretty good.
Do you have anything to add to the discussion? Or are you just going to parrot the same (not entirely correct) whine endlessly?

[jmincey]

In reply to:

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Let's not get sidetracked by OS names or versions or who creates them. Apple releases software of equal functionality. The one designed for the Mac requires an OSX that must be less than 11 months old. The one for Windows requires an OS from a year before OSX was even released!

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What would you have Apple do? Based on my reading of your foregoing posts, the answer seems to be this:
Apple should upgrade OS X just as it has been doing except that it should also maintain backward compatibility for all the software that runs on OS X as well as on OS 9 if not also OS 8 and 7.
Rubaiyat, what you don't seem to understand is (1) this is not possible because the advances Apple makes in OS X are often mutually exclusive with backward compatibility and (2) it's not up only to Apple to make OS X compatible with software but it's also chiefly up to the developers of third-party software to make their software compatible with OS X.
As a previous poster pointed out, the comparison between Windows and OS X breaks down for two reasons: First, OS X is indeed relatively young compared to Windows -- notwithstanding its UNIX-based heritage. When an OS is young, it stands to reason that the changes in its first several releases will be much more fundeamental and significant, thus making it harder for developers to maintain compatibility across the board. Second, unlike Microsoft, Apple has chosen to bring these fundamental improvements to its customers at a quicker pace than Microsoft has done.
Now in the name of compatibility, maybe you would prefer that Apple have stuck with Jaguar (10.2) until 2008. Or perhaps Apple could have delayed the debut of OS X until 2004 or internally it reached the equivalent of version 10.3.9. But you would be virtually alone in taking that view.
As for Quicktime, this is a horse of a different color because it is essentially a subsystem of the OS itself -- albeit at a high layer. Obviously it lies above the kernel but Quicktime is hardly on a par with, say, a calculator utility. It's an audio and video infrastructure and API for developers, and as a result it's more problematic to make this compatible -- particularly if Apple wants to advance the state of the art.
Finally, Apple itself recognized -- especially at the UNIX level -- that it was making frequent and fundamental changes which made life difficult for developers, so when Tiger came out Apple made a point to say that developers could expect the directory structure and other UNIX-related conventions in OS X to remain stable at least over the next few releases. So the company is not insensitive to these concerns of its developers.
But it's one thing to bring the basic design of OS X to a plateau for the sake of third party developers, it's quite another thing for Apple to actively develop a previous generation OS -- namely OS 9 -- so its legacy customers can continue to use ancient software without having to budge.
Apple is not responsible for the refusal on the part of some customers to upgrade and use modern equipment. And to complain about this as you have been doing is akin to complaining that the first designers and manufacturers of CD players (in the mid to late 1970s) failed to make their players compatible with vinyl LPs -- because, after all, you had lots of LPs to listen to.
You really need to get over this issue. Compatibility is important but if taken too far it becomes an albatross around the neck of innovation.

[NeoX]

In reply to:

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In my opinion, the outsourcing of tech support has really hurt those Indians who already live and work in the U.S., because many people are now hyper-sensitive to the issue for some reason.

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Well said. I was thinking the same thing. At Apple seems to be doing this with 10.5. I think a yearly release, although fun for users is a pain if you are a developer. This is one reason it might be harder to buy hardware peripherals only to find that the company needs to update the drivers for Mac OSX 10.whatever.
Regards,

[NeoX]

Thanks for the apology, no offense taken on my spelling and grammar. It is bad, disability or not and I am the first to admit it. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif I do agree with you on most of these points and hey we all like Mac and we all hate Mac at some points too I am sure.
Like one of the other posters brought out, maybe Apple should slow down the OS release schedule a tad. Although I do admit that I liked the fast release schedule in the past because I like to see all the cool bells and whistles that they always add. I think they have done that to an extent with 10.5 though. Maybe we are on track for a every 2 year release, which seems OK to me.
I also don't think I am a typical Mac user. My defense of the whole mini upgrade thing has nothing to do with Apple, rather has to do with my belief and the evidence I have seen. It would be the same if a similar thing happened with a Microsoft product. I like computers and technology in general, including MS products. So I guess if I was a die hard, say no wrong about Apple, fan then I would have to hate anything that MS makes and I don't. I have also been known to have my messages removed from the apple.com forums for saying too much negative about a Apple product or support problem. Now that really irritates me.
Anyway, it's all good fun and I try not to be too serious, even though it seems like I might be... /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
Regards,
Paul

[Nobody]

Jeff I take on board all you say, particularly as you put it so well and logically, however there are a number of issues which impact on the user experience which if you don't mind I will elaborate. They are what are at the core of my grumbling.
I am extremely happy with many of the good aspects of OSX, but even at the 5th release, and 5 years down the track, there are a very large number of deficiencies that don't even look like they are ever going to be addressed by Apple. It would seem Apple is more interested in trivial cosmetics and flashy "brochure points" like Widgets.
One is the speed issue. It is still slower than OS9 in Finder. Many tasks which are almost instantaneous in OS9, like the reading of CDs/DVDs for the catalog I spoke of, are painfully slow even on a fast machine.
Two is the clumsiness, slowness and continuing bugs in Finder. Particularly in list view. There have been a string of bugs from failure to select items, to vanishing items to the current one which is the inability to cut text in the name of files. I keep reporting this and it is still in OSX 10.4.5.
Three is that the GUI is still not up to par with OS9. The dock is pretty but inefficent and awkward in many ways, from locating software to identifying it when you find it and telling what is running. The parking of minimised files and folders is an improvement on OS9 but even that would be better handled by displaying names rather than indistinguishable minimised views of the file as icons.
Yes I know of all the 3rd party alternatives but none is up to the direct, obvious and extremely productive methods of finding, selecting and marking your place and files etc that were in Classic Mac OS enhanced by Boomerang.
I could go into great depth to what else is wrong with details of the GUI but we don't have room here. TOG's website elaborates some of his concerns. I'd put inconsistency high up in my list. Along with navigation that is obscure and mostly just sucks.
Four is the dramatically worse features. Font handling is dismal and almost on par with Windows. In some aspects even worse because I can still run ATM on Windows. Many tasks have got really bad and need expert guidance to try and resolve, in my case printing and networking. Another is the convoluted, half baked "inspector pallette" method of applying attributes such as fonts, styles etc.
Five is the lack of documentation. Particularly as Apple keeps fiddling with the darn thing and every release rearranges or moves core features.
Six is the churning of versions. Things like QuickTime and Safari and Mail but tying them to system versions. Particularly when we don't see the benefit for all the disruption. Safari still has trouble with core webpages and QuickTime still doesn't handle many file types that are no problem on Windows.
Seven is the complexity. Backing up and ensuring you have everything when changing machines as I recently did is a nightmare. Another part to this is the rigidity but bloodymindedly inconsistent way many apps work. iTunes at least lets you park your music somewhere other than in your boot user library even though it doesn't let you sort them into multiple collections. iPhoto, iDVD, Garageband etc insist on using your boot volume to park their bloated files, eventually resulting in inadequate space for virtual memory which is when OSX can start getting nasty.
If Apple is going to ditch OS9 to the point where you can't even access much of what you produced there, it should adjust its claims for the number of current Mac users and the number of software that runs on the platform. And I know it will never do this, apply a warning label to all the consequences of this dramatic move.
Apple should first fix OSX to the point where it truely replaces OS9 in everyway. Then there would be no need to ever go back.
My 2 cents worth. Actually, adding up all the OSX upgrades I've paid for, its my A$900 worth.

[NeoX]

In reply to:

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One is the speed issue. It is still slower than OS9 in Finder. Many tasks which are almost instantaneous in OS9, like the reading of CDs/DVDs for the catalog I spoke of, are painfully slow even on a fast machine.

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When OS X first came out, I had the same problem. I couldn't believe how much slower it was doing a lot of things. It seemed more like a downgrade then an upgrade. I was not happy with the performance on my G4 400. Of course when 10.1 came out it addressed a bit of this. Not to make excuses for Apple, yet again, but there really is a technical reason why it seems slower on some things. One is because OSX is a true Multi-Tasking Modern OS. This means that any single process or application is not allowed to hog or take over the Hardware like OS9 apps can. This is also one of the reasons a single app crashing doesnt cause one of those oh so common type 11 errors that force a reboot and a lot of lost data. In OS9 and below a single app can cause the whole system to go down. Not so true in OSX, although I have seen kernel panics caused by a misbehaving app.
As to the performance, you don't notice it so much in newer hardware. Many things are actually faster in OS X too. Ever tried the hack that enables the entire window to move, including contents in the finder, like OS X does now when you drag a window? It moved like molasses...

In reply to:

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Two is the clumsiness, slowness and continuing bugs in Finder. Particularly in list view. There have been a string of bugs from failure to select items, to vanishing items to the current one which is the inability to cut text in the name of files. I keep reporting this and it is still in OSX 10.4.5.

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Yeah there are some annoying bugs that I have seen too. I too wish they would fix a lot of these little glitches. Specifically one where there seems to be a graphics refresh problem when you are moving items in a folder by dragging a selection and when moved there still seems to be some remnants of the folder and file name left behind. This really bugs me...

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Three is that the GUI is still not up to par with OS9. The dock is pretty but inefficent and awkward in many ways, from locating software to identifying it when you find it and telling what is running. The parking of minimised files and folders is an improvement on OS9 but even that would be better handled by displaying names rather than indistinguishable minimised views of the file as icons.

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While I do agree with you to a point. I find it is now superior in 10.4 thanks to a lot of the features they have added. Until we got spring loaded folders and labels I was pretty disappointed myself. What I really want to see in OSX finder is the tab folders we had in OS9, I found those quite useful. As for the dock, I find it extremely efficient and prefer it to the OS 9 method, which was the menu bar, any old day.

In reply to:

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Six is the churning of versions. Things like QuickTime and Safari and Mail but tying them to system versions. Particularly when we don't see the benefit for all the disruption. Safari still has trouble with core webpages and QuickTime still doesn't handle many file types that are no problem on Windows.

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They do seem to be slowing down a bit. I very much dislike Apple Mail and I like Safari but was disappointed that they used KHTML as the browser engine instead of the more popular Mozilla. So my guess is we can thank the rendering engine and the Web Site designers for not working correctly in Safari.

Your message is very clear and I too wish Apple would tie up some of the loose ends. But I guess it is all a matter of your personal perspective. For me OS X is far superior in most every way then OS 9 ever was. One thing I do not miss with OS9 and earlier is the lack of stability. The first Mac I bought was a PPC Mac with some version of 7.5 and it was horrendous. The first time I used it I think it froze twice before I could even register the stupid software. I could not believe that this was what all the hype was about. As a matter of fact, it was not until OS 7.6.1 came out that I felt the computer was actually usable, from a stability standpoint. Then they released 8.0 and it started all over again until 8.1. Then it was merely learning how to juggle extensions and control panels to keep your OS stable. No thanks... So you can have the instability of the Classic OS's, I don't want or need them any longer.
Regards,

[Nobody]

In reply to:

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One thing I do not miss with OS9 and earlier is the lack of stability.

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I think that is a given, but even there OS8.6 is rock solid on my kids' machines. Pat asked me one day what had happened to his machine. It was the first time he had seen a bomb in a year and a half of playing an immense number of games and using Apple's software for his homework. I think where Classic got a bad name was from the poorly written apps like Quark XPress.
OS9 was an entirely different story, but it was built by the new shift of programmers that came in with Steve Jobs, I don't think they have ever quite got the hang of the classic Mac OS or its GUI which they tried hard to overturn and remake in the image of NEXTstep.
Still if I switch back into OS9 on my machines, it is like they have suddenly found the missing 5th gear. OSX is still a sloth. As I said my OS9 cataloging software gets the contents of a CD almost as soon as you insert it. In OSX it can take ages to even find and mount the @#$% CD or DVD then the cataloger ponders the contents for what seems an eternity. Not fun when you are having to reconstruct a catalog of 100s of CDs and other media.
We still see the spinning beachball far too often and erratically.
OSX has trouble remembering window positions and states which combined with poor navigation and relevant windows not coming to the fore together leads to lot of clicking and minimising and shuffling around. I know I can hit F9 but whilst that is nice it shouldn't be necessary. Nor is it obvious, it is a very Windowesque shortcut.
The open/save dialogs are a shambles, always opening in the wrong position or view in the hirearchy. "Recent places" seems to be for places other than where I have been in living memory. The column view hides more than it shows and it never remembers if you have resized it to see names more clearly. Most of all it lacks a Find which was part of Boomerang which also remembered your last position in the finder lists. The way it selects or highlights parts of names in the file fields is also erratic and counter productive as you try to reselect or correct errors from mis selections.
Find is not reliable, nor the "Smart folders" and I hate not being able to see the date or even file size to sort out what I have found.
The dock is an aesthetic marketing piece but a lousy navigation tool.
1. It does not contain all your apps.
2. They are not in any predictable order.
3. It relies on the user recognising a software's icon, which is something that must be learnt and is initially unknown. Too many are similar anyway.
4. I have had trouble keeping icons in the Dock for no discernable reason and because it is at the foot of the screen (I have tried other less viable positions) I occassionally accidentally drag icons off when the mouse misclicks when I am trying to grab something at the foot of a window. As this happens by accident I am caught off guard and usually too late to even see what it is I knocked off. What a load of crock! Similar problem only much worse is where misclicks in Finder followed by throwing the item into the trash mean I am scrambling to find what it was. You can't just simply return items to their previous location either from the Trash like you can in OS9.
5. Applications are buried in a folder icon which is slow to open and since it is nested may hide some apps within their own folders.
6. The awful patches to this, such as the recent applications and items off the Apple menu are dangling in a completely different part of the screen real estate and also are unreliable. Some items do not appear in the recent lists, which are too short anyway.
7. The tiny black arrow to indicate an open app is too discrete and does not distinguish which app is to the fore, that is in yet another location on the menubar.
I give the dock a B-
Other deficiencies in the GUI are the awkwardness of grabbing items, opening them or altering their titles. All can accidentally happen and in the wrong order unless the user puts distinct pauses between each step. Moving files has no feedback if the action is fast, leaving uncertainty as to whether it actually happened. Dragging a file from one location to another in list view can render it invisible. This is just the tip of a long string of faults.
I give Finder however an A+ for long file names and the transparent use of Unicode.
Overall it is the smug satisfaction that Apple exudes over this state of affairs that makes me think that that will be that and nothing will change anymore once they totally abandon OS9 and no further embarassing comparisons can be made.

[NeoX]

Again, I agree with some of your points here. Although some of these items can be overcome with prefs settings, like the number of items displayed in recent items and column details in list view.
As for the dock not holding all your applications, well that is up to you. I have a lot of applications on my HD and if they all displayed an icon on the dock the icons would have to be microscopic to display them all in there on one row. Obviously this was meant as somewhat of a launcher of sorts. I find no problems identifying what an icon is. If for some strange reason I don't know what it is, hovering the mouse pointer over it shows me.
As for your performance problems, what system do you have? I have no problems with the performance on my system, a DP G5 1.8 with 1GB RAM. Everything is near instant and applications launch extremely fast.
I find the open and save dialogs a bit annoying at first. There seems to be some logic that tries to figure out the last folder you saved something to in that app, but most of the time it is not correct. I know that developers can alter this ability in their own programs. I find it no more annoying then the common dialogs in XP and I find it as useful as OS9's. I would like more abilities, like what is available in XP, though.

[Nobody]

In reply to:

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what system do you have?

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An iMac G5 2Ghz and Mac G4 1Ghz.
In OS9 I have direct access into my applications folder via aliases on my Apple menu. Anything I add to my Applications folder or Jobs folder or other sub-category is immediately available there. All without
the graphics overhead and delays of the Dock.
I previously managed a real estate magazine studio by having a set structure for all the articles, ads, photos etc and every week just switched one alias on the server that moved what had been the current week to the dated archives. Then made the new week's production the current link without changing anything on anyone's machine. They would just go to the same set of sub-menus hanging off their Apple menu.
Because I was free to put anything anywhere I chose and the MacOS and Boomerang held their positions faithfully and the favorites worked it was very easy to set up and maintain. Very productive too.
Apple has trashed all that.
Playing with prefs won't fix what is broke.

[KurtBigler]

In response to the statement:
> The only thing the mini is good for is as a media center PC. Cheap Windows boxes still have the Mac beat for...
Well this may be the wrong context for such a comment as mine since the original article was about speed, but the above statement taken literally is a bit dogmatic and presumes to know a lot about every possible user's needs.
From my standpoint with basically no room on or below my desk, and needing another PC, size is very much a practical issue. It is also somewhat of a lifestyle issue: even in rooms that are less cluttered I don't want computers taking any room at all if I could help it.
I'm not aware of any Windows PC manufacturer that shows any interest in making anything as wonderfully small as the MacMini. Shuttle.com sometimes indicates an interest in smallness but they fall far short of anything that is impressive to me. (If you know of other possibilities please correct me. I spend a couple weeks asking people about small PCs and got no suggestions except for the small shuttles.)
I'm actually thinking of buying a MacMini to run Windows, which I would run through a window on my Mac via VNC or the like. This will no doubt be better than suffering VirtualPC and might compare favorably to my 5-year old PC with too small of a screen taking up space on this desk next to my apple 30-inch. I don't use Windows much, so I'd rather not have hardware dedicated to it taking up a lot of space.
I'm also thinking of replacing my Dual 2.5 GHz G5 with a MacMini which would no doubt be faster and consume a lot less power. For this Windows won't work at all due to software requirements.
In relation to this, the article was disappointing because it did not include a desktop Mac in the comparison so I'd have some idea just how much I'd be losing by chosing a Mini over a MacPro. The power savings might be significant though, with often several computers on at once in the house having more low-power-consumers is strategically good unless the performance is essential. I'd probably opt for the Mac Mini but it would be good to know just what kind of factor I'd be losing, as basic due diligence. Googling for benchmark results doing comparisons across Minis/MBPs/MacPros has yielded no success so far. I wish the article had done a broader comparison.