Lately I've been seeing a lot of commercials on TV with IT/Business professionals telling their horror stories with PC's and Windows. They then go into how they found the Mac, plugged everything in and it just worked. Is the Macintosh OS getting better and more accepted, or is it just a clever advertising scheme?
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What's up with Macintosh?
- Thread starter cderow
- Start date
ThomasJSmart
Programmer
- Sep 16, 2002
- 634
i think it was, i recently saw pirates of silicon vally i think they said m$ owns 49% of apple
I learned a bit yesterday, today i learned a lot, imagine what i'll learn tomorrow!
I learned a bit yesterday, today i learned a lot, imagine what i'll learn tomorrow!
I don't know the actual statistic but I don't think it's that high. I also believe the stock is non-voting stock. As far as I've heard it, MS propped up Apple in such a way that it could not be said that they had a monopoly. Again, I don't have the speciffics, maybe someone else does.
Yes, Microsoft owns a chunk of Apple. It's one of Apple's blackest secrets that MS helped them out buy buying non-voting stock at a time when they (Apple) would have gone bankrupt except for that infusion of money.
I believe it's closer to 25% than 49, but it's a major chunk.
As to OSX, from what I've seen with an ex-colleague (been a while, maybe things have improved) it's indeed very cumbersome and heavy on the hardware.
His version was also quite unstable.
Those factors combined with the higher cost of hardware and software both (plus the higher support cost, less support engineers available thus higher rates) makes sticking with Intel/Microsoft a safer and cheaper proposition.
The current crop of MS operating systems is quite stable (haven't had a crash that wasn't related directly to Windows 2000 rather than a fatal error in a 3rd party application or hardware in well over a year now).
I believe it's closer to 25% than 49, but it's a major chunk.
As to OSX, from what I've seen with an ex-colleague (been a while, maybe things have improved) it's indeed very cumbersome and heavy on the hardware.
His version was also quite unstable.
Those factors combined with the higher cost of hardware and software both (plus the higher support cost, less support engineers available thus higher rates) makes sticking with Intel/Microsoft a safer and cheaper proposition.
The current crop of MS operating systems is quite stable (haven't had a crash that wasn't related directly to Windows 2000 rather than a fatal error in a 3rd party application or hardware in well over a year now).
Stevehewitt
IS-IT--Management
If we are starting to talk about stablilty here - as it is an issue to be discussed when talking about OS comparisions then Windows is getting much, much better. At one clients office they run 6 Win2k Servers and they all run fine. Only real problems I have had to dealt with is 3rd party apps and dodgey hardware drives. (Should of check the HCL!!)
Steve Hewitt
Systems Manager
Steve Hewitt
Systems Manager
Hey Steve,
I agree with you on stability, but based on my desktop experience with Windows XP, Linux, and OS X, Windows XP still has some serious performance issues. There still appears to be the Windows "half-life" that was so widely mentioned in relation to Windows 95. case and point: my roomate bought a 2.4GHz Dell 3 months ago and runs Windows XP Home on it. I bought a 1 GHz Dell (the last PC I will ever by for myself pre-assembled) about 2 years ago, and I've been running 8.0 linux on it, since it came out (I think it was about 6 months ago?). While my roomates PC far outpaced mine when he started it up the first time, it has gotten slower and slower, especially after software installs, to the point that it now runs roughly the same speed as my linux box for normal operations like booting, opening and running various smaller applications (like web browsers, word processors, and file sharing programs). Also, the OS X machine, which has been running roughly the same amount of time as my linux box, has shown no noticeable decrease in performance, despite many software installs and uninstalls as well as adding and removing various hardware peripherals.
Through discussions with pro-Microsoft people, I've come to believe that the registry is the root of 90% of the evil in Windows itself (no comment on the rest of Microsoft). I've been told it allows a lot more standardization and intercomunnication within Windows. However, it appears that this causes significant performance decreases as the number of installs and uninstalls of software increase, making the system fairly unusable for someone like me, who likes to install, play with, and then uninstall several new shareware/open source apps a day (what can I say, I used to be an SQA engineer). Even for someone like my roomate who installed about a half dozen programs since he got his PC (3 or 4 games + printer software + camera software + MS Office) there is a noticeable performance loss.
-Venkman
I agree with you on stability, but based on my desktop experience with Windows XP, Linux, and OS X, Windows XP still has some serious performance issues. There still appears to be the Windows "half-life" that was so widely mentioned in relation to Windows 95. case and point: my roomate bought a 2.4GHz Dell 3 months ago and runs Windows XP Home on it. I bought a 1 GHz Dell (the last PC I will ever by for myself pre-assembled) about 2 years ago, and I've been running 8.0 linux on it, since it came out (I think it was about 6 months ago?). While my roomates PC far outpaced mine when he started it up the first time, it has gotten slower and slower, especially after software installs, to the point that it now runs roughly the same speed as my linux box for normal operations like booting, opening and running various smaller applications (like web browsers, word processors, and file sharing programs). Also, the OS X machine, which has been running roughly the same amount of time as my linux box, has shown no noticeable decrease in performance, despite many software installs and uninstalls as well as adding and removing various hardware peripherals.
Through discussions with pro-Microsoft people, I've come to believe that the registry is the root of 90% of the evil in Windows itself (no comment on the rest of Microsoft). I've been told it allows a lot more standardization and intercomunnication within Windows. However, it appears that this causes significant performance decreases as the number of installs and uninstalls of software increase, making the system fairly unusable for someone like me, who likes to install, play with, and then uninstall several new shareware/open source apps a day (what can I say, I used to be an SQA engineer). Even for someone like my roomate who installed about a half dozen programs since he got his PC (3 or 4 games + printer software + camera software + MS Office) there is a noticeable performance loss.
-Venkman
As a more specific note on XP and slowing down performance (and sorry for being off-topic) I've noticed these two things...
Don't dual boot your system and move XP around, it will seriously slow down NTFS.
Dell does something wrong with those 2-2.4GhZ machines, I haven't gotten my finger on it yet, I'm sure part of it is the fact I've seen them ship with 128 megs of ram.... that's silly for that kinda horsepower. But I've had significant luck in seriously speeding up those dells by managing the page files by hand, you might suggest to your roommate the same idea. I was helping out a place which bought 7 or 8 of those machines, and half ran just fine for the last six months or so, but a couple just started bogging down and accessing the hard drive non-stop.
Back on topic
Anyone else read up on the new Mac processors? I just read some of the rumors posted on slashdot, but if they're true, it looks like the mac hardware might catch up to the PC hardware again, before Intel starts on another round of horsepower improvements. Personally, I think that's always been one of the things holding mac back, regardless of how it performs in benchmarks of what people use, Intel did a fine job of convincing the masses that megaHertz matter.
-Rob
Don't dual boot your system and move XP around, it will seriously slow down NTFS.
Dell does something wrong with those 2-2.4GhZ machines, I haven't gotten my finger on it yet, I'm sure part of it is the fact I've seen them ship with 128 megs of ram.... that's silly for that kinda horsepower. But I've had significant luck in seriously speeding up those dells by managing the page files by hand, you might suggest to your roommate the same idea. I was helping out a place which bought 7 or 8 of those machines, and half ran just fine for the last six months or so, but a couple just started bogging down and accessing the hard drive non-stop.
Back on topic
Anyone else read up on the new Mac processors? I just read some of the rumors posted on slashdot, but if they're true, it looks like the mac hardware might catch up to the PC hardware again, before Intel starts on another round of horsepower improvements. Personally, I think that's always been one of the things holding mac back, regardless of how it performs in benchmarks of what people use, Intel did a fine job of convincing the masses that megaHertz matter.
-Rob
AIXSPadmin
MIS
"...I'm sure part of it is the fact I've seen them ship with 128 megs of ram.... that's silly for that kinda horsepower."
HAHAHAHAHAHAH... that much on a *nix OS on a PC would have absolutely no problem! MS needs to get their act together and develop ONE good product that is stable before moving onto the newest marketing gimmick.
HAHAHAHAHAHAH... that much on a *nix OS on a PC would have absolutely no problem! MS needs to get their act together and develop ONE good product that is stable before moving onto the newest marketing gimmick.
On a command line only *nix OS that would be true. I've tried running RedHat 9.0 with a graphical interface and 128 megs of ram is actually at least as unbearable as it is on XP, if not moreso. Other installs I can't speak to as much.
My point about it being ridiculous for the horsepower isn't that simple though... once you're getting a processor in that price range, it should be the default option to spend the extra 40$ and get 256 megs of RAM. But Dell loves being able to advertise the x99.99 machines, and that 40 bucks would throw off the advertising.
I agree machines should be able to do fine with 128, but I disagree that all *nix OS's are a whole lot better, they seem to have gotten just as bloated over the last few releases as the MS products.
Mind you, I've also dealt with Compaq, Toshiba, and Dell machines of other speeds which are running XP just fine on similar specs, but something about those 2.0 and 2.4 machines that seems to be hit or miss.
-Rob
My point about it being ridiculous for the horsepower isn't that simple though... once you're getting a processor in that price range, it should be the default option to spend the extra 40$ and get 256 megs of RAM. But Dell loves being able to advertise the x99.99 machines, and that 40 bucks would throw off the advertising.
I agree machines should be able to do fine with 128, but I disagree that all *nix OS's are a whole lot better, they seem to have gotten just as bloated over the last few releases as the MS products.
Mind you, I've also dealt with Compaq, Toshiba, and Dell machines of other speeds which are running XP just fine on similar specs, but something about those 2.0 and 2.4 machines that seems to be hit or miss.
-Rob
AIXSPadmin
MIS
I do agree that 128 is skimpy with that processor. But a BSD kernel is certainly NOT bloated.
I can be running X-Windows and running 2 or 3 compiles, downloading and still have other apps running, and I have no noticable slowdown running with 128MB mem.
A long time ago (in a galaxy far away![[bigcheeks]](/data/assets/smilies/bigcheeks.gif "[bigcheeks] [bigcheeks]")
) I had a 486 with 8MB mem and ran Windows vs Slackware. No comparison, the Winblows machine barely ran and Linux ran sufficiently.
A while ago I remember reading that MS had something like 60 million lines of code in Winbloat (not sure if that is a true number), but the fact is BSD is not even close to that. But then MS includes drivers for almost every piece of hardware available so it does run out of the box and so if you install new hardware via plug-and-pray it will find it. This adds to bloat that BSD has not been to yet, and may not because more develop for Windows than any other PC OS.
I can be running X-Windows and running 2 or 3 compiles, downloading and still have other apps running, and I have no noticable slowdown running with 128MB mem.
A long time ago (in a galaxy far away
) I had a 486 with 8MB mem and ran Windows vs Slackware. No comparison, the Winblows machine barely ran and Linux ran sufficiently.A while ago I remember reading that MS had something like 60 million lines of code in Winbloat (not sure if that is a true number), but the fact is BSD is not even close to that. But then MS includes drivers for almost every piece of hardware available so it does run out of the box and so if you install new hardware via plug-and-pray it will find it. This adds to bloat that BSD has not been to yet, and may not because more develop for Windows than any other PC OS.
I wish I knew more about Linux, I've setup a few boxes, and mostly tinkered... all I know is that something happened to me personally between Redhat 7.3 and up such that all the skimpy boxes I usta run Linux simply because I could, became garbage if I upgraded them to 8.0 or higher.
Like I said, I don't know much of what I'm talking about, I'm 95% convinced though it has nothing to do with the kernel and it's all about the Gnome and KDE desktops... the equivalent of which of course is not optional in the Windows World.
-Rob
Like I said, I don't know much of what I'm talking about, I'm 95% convinced though it has nothing to do with the kernel and it's all about the Gnome and KDE desktops... the equivalent of which of course is not optional in the Windows World.
-Rob
AIXSPadmin
MIS
WindowMaker is better than Gnome or KDE because of speed and size!
Gnome and KDE have more apps available, but for sheer size and speed - WindowMaker!
Gnome and KDE have more apps available, but for sheer size and speed - WindowMaker!
Windowmaker maybe faster than gnome and kde, but it is not easier to use for gui-oriented end users. As far as I know if you really want to use kde to it's fullest you will need more than 128MB. Rob (skiflyer), I totally agree with your sentiment about an end-user linux box's memory needs vs. a windows box. However, I'm still not convinced there is not a half life associated with Windows XP, but I don't really have enough experience with the OS to say for sure one way or the other.
Back to these bad dells, you mentioned something about managing page size. What do you suggest for that? Do you mean adjust the size of the Virtual Memory file that windows creates? I'd like to try it out. Also, do you have any more info on these bad Dells, or just a hunch?
I believe my roomate has 256 MB of RAM (assuming he listened to my recommendations when he purchased it), so that shouldn't be the problem.
-Venkman
Back to these bad dells, you mentioned something about managing page size. What do you suggest for that? Do you mean adjust the size of the Virtual Memory file that windows creates? I'd like to try it out. Also, do you have any more info on these bad Dells, or just a hunch?
I believe my roomate has 256 MB of RAM (assuming he listened to my recommendations when he purchased it), so that shouldn't be the problem.
-Venkman
Well, the old adage for windows page files was 1.5-2x.
It was either Win2k or XP that suggested 1x was enough, I've personally found that this doesn't work well for me.
Here're the steps I use with mixed success (and yes, it's just a hunch, the one that it's worked the best on so far also had 256 megs of ram btw)
Hit Window-Break (or use Control panel to go to system properties)
Choose the advanced tab, click settings under the performance section, again choose the advance tab.
In the virtual memory section click change.
I believe those dells are all set to have a system managed size, change this to Custom Size, set the initial size to 1.5x the amount of memory in the box, and the Max size to 2x the amount of memory in the box. Click Set, and OK your way out. Reboot for good measure, and then give it some time it works better right away, but honestly it seems to be much closer to normal an hour or so later.
And yes, I'm afraid most of this is just a hunch, and all completely anecdotal. But whenever a disk spins and spins the first thing I do is make sure it's not a hyperactive virus protection program, and the second is look at the memory swapping.
Hope it helps, on the plus side it certainlly can't hurt anything.
-Rob
It was either Win2k or XP that suggested 1x was enough, I've personally found that this doesn't work well for me.
Here're the steps I use with mixed success (and yes, it's just a hunch, the one that it's worked the best on so far also had 256 megs of ram btw)
Hit Window-Break (or use Control panel to go to system properties)
Choose the advanced tab, click settings under the performance section, again choose the advance tab.
In the virtual memory section click change.
I believe those dells are all set to have a system managed size, change this to Custom Size, set the initial size to 1.5x the amount of memory in the box, and the Max size to 2x the amount of memory in the box. Click Set, and OK your way out. Reboot for good measure, and then give it some time it works better right away, but honestly it seems to be much closer to normal an hour or so later.
And yes, I'm afraid most of this is just a hunch, and all completely anecdotal. But whenever a disk spins and spins the first thing I do is make sure it's not a hyperactive virus protection program, and the second is look at the memory swapping.
Hope it helps, on the plus side it certainlly can't hurt anything.
-Rob
You lose disk-space, but in this case we're probably talking about 100-200 megs.
I've never seen a system write too often because it gets too big, I've heard rumors that by eliminating it altogether on a system with sufficient ram (I've heard 1 gig for 2k and XP machines) you can speed things up by avoiding writes altogether though. Obviouslly the flaw there is that if the RAM does fill you're going straight to disk at godawful slow speeds.
I wish I payed more attention in my OS classes so I could properly discuss why, but in short the answer is, if you stick between 1.5 and 3 times the amount of RAM in your system you should be good (On MS boxes, it's not as if it's a general rule of OS's).
-Rob
I've never seen a system write too often because it gets too big, I've heard rumors that by eliminating it altogether on a system with sufficient ram (I've heard 1 gig for 2k and XP machines) you can speed things up by avoiding writes altogether though. Obviouslly the flaw there is that if the RAM does fill you're going straight to disk at godawful slow speeds.
I wish I payed more attention in my OS classes so I could properly discuss why, but in short the answer is, if you stick between 1.5 and 3 times the amount of RAM in your system you should be good (On MS boxes, it's not as if it's a general rule of OS's).
-Rob
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