The Apple Mac Cost Misconception

[eodeo]

This is so funny, I'm not even a Mac user let alone a 'fan boy'. I just happen to have one for writing cross platform code and find it overwhelmingly better in so many aspects.

That sounds unbiased. I am intrigued. I cannt really trust Mac fanboys when they say its better. But you... I do trust. Would you mind sharing some of the things? Maybe something original article writer neglected, or did so poorly?

I said this before in these coments, and I just love how i captured the way i feel about macs:

who cares that you pay more for less and that less cant do much... or most... but it looks dang good while doing it... or... erm... what's left of it.

Am I wrong in thinking this?

My only point is that Microsoft produces substandard code. Look at what they did to Softimage when it turned into Microsoft's Softimage. It actually got better when they sold it again.

Honestly, I haven’t been tracking Softimage and its history so I cant tell you much of its MS history- in fact its news to me that MS owned them at one point. However, I’d like to make another, somewhat unrelated. My favorite 3d software 3ds Max is in the hands of AutoDesk. Ever since it got in their hands it has been slowly fading, like when you leave a creature to starve. I just hate seeing my software of choice slip into nothingness.

Didn't I just say that? Again, my point being that Mac goes out of there way to make sure it works.

You did. I’m sorry. I didn’t read the whole document once and than proceed to replying I just replied as I was reading- much like I am now. Are you saying that OpenGL is not crippled on gaming cards on Mac? That would be really good news, especially more so in light of OGL 3.

Dying? I think Poser is in their 10th generation and now has a beautiful interface to Maya and 3DS. Bryce is living strong under Daz3D and works beautifully under OpenGL. Caligari is now Microsoft Caligari, work great on OpenGL (if you can afford the cards for it) and just as nice under D3D (optimizations thanks to Intel, not M$). Microsoft bought trueSpace which was one of the first and only (at the time) 3D real time design view environments. It rocked on Amiga and it rocks on PC. It is unfortunatley too idealistic with its cutting edge features that go un noticed. Now that M$ has aquired them, it'll be a sad ending to something formerly great. For Microsoft's focus is about sticking it to Google's Sketchup (which shouldn't be that hard), but given M$ past with Softimage, I won't be suprised that they'll actually stick it to Caligari -unlike Softimage though, Caligari's assets aren't there to recover. So Roman Normandy's flagship product might not survive the Microsoft's deathbite. Just like Microsoft's copying/supposed merger with Sybase (a.k.a. Microsoft SQL Server), once they get there hands on source code (and steal it) they'll back out of the aquisition and kill the rest of the honest, and hardwork the founding company produced.

No arguments. I get irritated when I hear some of the noobie software like poser/bryce. In fact I have plenty of good memories with these programs. It’s just that when you get seriously into 3D, you’re looked down upon just by mentioning use of these programs, let alone actually using them.

As for truespace, what I presume you mean by caligari, I don’t know much about it. I’ve seen that it supports VRay as of lately, so that suggests that its either good enough or has wide enough public.

 

[Steveorevo]

Yes, OpenGL is highly optimized on Mac. Its fine tuned for it. Thats why even the lowly Intel GMA processor allows it to do its desktop 'magic' what I was saying earlier that Window's Areo couldn't muster -which resulted in a class action lawsuite for false advertising. Upgraders and new hardware purchases that got the Vista label were sore when they found out Aero wasn't supported.

Not that I would ever suggest using anything 3D on anything less then ATI/NVidia, but it just goes to show you how much 'effort' was actually put into Mac's window manager from the get go.

I just tried Safari 3.1 (not 3.0 -that sucks) for Windows and it really does rock. Slow the very first time you launch it, but after that it starts up in a heartbeat (1 sec. on my system). Way faster then IE7, smaller foot print, and the fonts are a tribute to what Apple knows best. Their typography engine is amazing. Also supports ICC color profiling for jpegs on the web that support it (as if anyone keeps up with print work these days).

As for trueSpace, it was the first 3D application to offer realtime solid rendering via Intel Optimized Direct 3D as well as a 1/4 view 'natural' sculpting environment. It also featured a realtime 3D paint with a paintbrush and javascrip/python code embedded within the objects themselves allowing for complex interaction and physics effects. It was ahead of its time. It now has quirky features, a 'party mode' for multiple users to sculpt vastly huge environments together in realtime. Picture if 3DS had a mode that kicked it into 'second life'(http://secondlife.com/) only with realtime shadows, blooms and caustics. Other users/3D sculpters appear as avatars... its wickedly wierd, and again... too ahead of its time. The only saving grace I can see with their recent M$ merger is that if your a fan of DirectX, nothing rocks DirectX quite like it. I just wish they could merge it with Unity3D as I'm still more of software developer then 3D designer.

 

[eodeo]

Upgraders and new hardware purchases that got the Vista label were sore when they found out Aero wasn't supported.

That just proves that Aero is not optimized very well. Try “window blinds” if you haven’t already. I’m having my super compatible/rock stable XP with Vista look. In fact, if for any weird reason, you prefer Mac Aqua look over Vista, you can get that too as a skin for window blinds. It skins everything and I didn’t notice much if any additional memory usage or slowdowns.

Only downside is that you might have to pay for the program itself to get the full features like true transparency with soft blurring and such. So.. It’s not exactly completely free. I’m using the full version since I liked it so much, so I can’t tell what the restrictions of the free version are, but I know that they are there. It’s less than 20$, i think.

Most of the skins, including Vista/Mac are free too.

Not that I would ever suggest using anything 3D on anything less then ATI/NVidia, but it just goes to show you how much 'effort' was actually put into Mac's window manager from the get go.

Fair enough.

I just tried Safari 3.1 (not 3.0 -that sucks) for Windows and it really does rock. Slow the very first time you launch it, but after that it starts up in a heartbeat (1 sec. on my system). Way faster then IE7, smaller foot print, and the fonts are a tribute to what Apple knows best. Their typography engine is amazing. Also supports ICC color profiling for jpegs on the web that support it (as if anyone keeps up with print work these days).

I’ll try it later today.

It now has quirky features, a 'party mode' for multiple users to sculpt vastly huge environments together in realtime.

Sweet. I’d like to try that party

Picture if 3DS had a mode that kicked it into 'second life'(http://secondlife.com/)

You can visit my modeling of 17th century fortress in second life at “serbia island”. It’s on top of the mountain. I did everything double: once in Max to get the coordinates and other numbers and than just replicate that in SL, as it’s just a game and not a modeling tool. Sadly it does not allow user to import things, so I had to do everything 2x.

Other users/3D sculpters appear as avatars... its wickedly wierd, and again... too ahead of its time.

You lost me. Are you talking about truespace, 3DS Max or SecondLife here?

the only saving grace I can see with their recent M$ merger is that if your a fan of DirectX, nothing rocks DirectX quite like it. I just wish they could merge it with Unity3D as I'm still more of software developer then 3D designer.

Still confused. Unity 3d? DX rocks what?

 

[eodeo]

I installed safari and tried it. Obviously it’s been too short time to test anything but the surface, but I’d like to share my initial feel about it.

First 19mb for a browser? I’m not sure what all stuff they’ve put into that, or is it just horrible Mac compression at work (again), but that’s what it is. For comparison, the latest firefox is 7mb and Opera is 6.7mb. On contrast to all that, my preferred browser, k-meleon is ~5mb. To top that off, it’s k-meleon that is the fastest and the most versatile of all browsers mentioned here. Firefox and Safari are close to in speed, no there yet, but very close. Opera is the closest one in functionality, but still lacking too many other things – voice not included- nice one Opera

That’s about it from the negatives of installation. It started super fast, it’s very responsive and while overall look reminds of Mac, I wound necessarily call it a negative, as apparently there are people who like this. I am not one of them. Maybe it’s better than the 2001 XP default look, but compared to Aero I am using now, it’s just dated and it shows it.

The first other thing I’ve noticed is that most text is bordering unreadibility. I figured it must be the infamous quartz smoothing at work, and I was right. Unfortunately, in preferences at most I could do is lower it to “light or CRT”. While this improves text viewing dramatically, it’s still far worse than your typical win IE and I really don’t like that one.

Text aside, opening a new tab opens a blank tab and there is no way to set it to open the home page instead- none that i have found anyway.

Next on to browsing itself- back and forward buttons on my Logitech mx 400 mouse do not work here by default. They “just work” everywhere else without me fiddling in the drivers, but not in Safari. Why? If I had to guess, I’d say it’s just another incompatibility borrowed from the Mac home it comes from.

As bad as all of this might seam, it’s not the worst of it. Joining in the Firefox 3 here, Safari does not have mouse gestures on by default, and I haven’t found any plugins for PC that enable it- again much like firefox 3 and unlike forefox 2- that actually had mouse gestures plug in.
Personally, I’m spoiled with how good k-meleon implements them, and I just can’t get myself to browse without the mouse gestures. I use them to cycle between the opened layers, and I usually have tons of open layers and quick navigation is just ‘a must’ to me. Spoiled on my part, but there is no reason why a “modern” web shouldn’t have mouse gestures by default. Opera is the best “name” browser here, simply by supporting them. Its timing and more importantly, the recognition of gestures themselves, is miles off that of k-meleon’s, but like I said, at least it has them.

On to the good things of safari- unlike other Apple applications that just love to start random crap services and spawn all over your OS and HDD, safari did not. As far as I can tell, aside from adding nearly 2k registry entries and offering “bonjur” or some such random crap to install, it installed where I told it to, and did no other malware like behavior things. I have followed its installation with “total uninstall” so when I’m done poking it I will likely uninstall it and tell you here what, if any, leftovers are still present after its gone.

Curent verdict: Safari is Firefox 3 for the Mac users- with a Mac skin to prove it. If you like the Mac look, Safari is the Firefox 3 for you.

Still the best browser out there is none of the named ones, but k-meleon. And I have to add that unlike other web browsers, k-meleon has a simple checkbox that blocks all flash animations from loading. As we all know, most of them are ads that do nothing but slow down your computer and the page loading. It does it so elegantly that it saves a space for any/all flash animations in actual size and ads a “F” in the middle, and when you mouse-over it turns into play button, that once clicked loads the animation as if it wasn’t blocked.

This is just one random thing that k-meleon just excels at.

Ooohh, I just remembered another one that pisses me off in other browsers- say when you want to save a picture and its name is “01.jpg” and the server that hosts it is “RelevantName.com” you can just 2x click on the ”RelevantName” and highlight only it. In Opera, only other serious browser here (since it supports mouse gestures) this is not the case. 2x clicking selects the whole line “http://www.RelevantName.com/xyz/01.jpg”.

I’d like to say that Safari does it right, much like its PC twin- Firefox 3.- this is a good thing.

.

I tried to log into my gmail account to find the location of this thread in one of my email responses- so I went there using safari:

I typed- what i always type to get there “mail.google.com” (when i have to type-ie- not using k-melon- that is just god-like browser if you didn’t pick that up by now- in k-meleon i have a “mail” button that gets configured the first time you click it to open your web mail and log you in- its just super nice.)

Anyway, as i typed “mail.google.com” for the first time ever i was greeted with:

This domain is not valid.

Hosted by Network Solutions.

Typing www.gmail.com, corrected this error and allowed me to log in my gmail.

What i couldn’t help but notice is how barely readable text is all around my gmail. How, unfortunate it is that there is no way to disable this poor text smoothing.

I just tried Safari 3.1 (not 3.0 -that sucks) for Windows and it really does rock.

As you can see, from my point of view it does not rock, it’s really barely adequate. It’s more like your average firefox 3 with a Mac skin at best. Did Apple not try this smoothing before shipping the program? Web browsing in my book means 85% text and 15% multimedia. Being unable to navigate smoothly 85% of content is just bad. Very bad. I bash Apple here and there, but common!!! This is just ridiculous. There must be something wrong with my copy of Safari. Surely 6% of world web users that use Safari can’t be enduring this- let alone liking it. I’d like to post a screen grab just so someone can verify that it’s how it was intended to look like. My copy must be broken... Than again knowing Apple.. it probably isn’t..

Way faster then IE7, smaller foot print, and the fonts are a tribute to what Apple knows best.

Hehe. I agree- Apple knows ? - and their smoothing just proves it one more time

Seriously though, maybe it’s my monitor, but I have professional Hansol 19” CRT. Not your bleeding edge latest, but hardly obsolete either. Maybe they designed their smoothing only to work on TFT monitors... it’s weird, since there is a setting for “standard – best for CRT” in particular, but that one is no better or worse than “light” setting. I don’t have a TFT monitor nearby to test, but if its anything like the “clear type” shitty setting that MS offers, it will be as bad on TFTs. Really bad call on Apple’s part not allowing to disable this smoothing- I like my text clear and sharp and not smudgy and blurry. Anti-aliasing is fine, but smudgy isn’t.

I don’t have IE7 to compare, but Safari has 2x bigger memory usage than k-meleon.

Here are all my browsers opening the same page- google suggest:

http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

17mb IE 6
21mb k-meleon 1.1.5
37mb firefox 3.0.1
40mb opera 9.51
41mb safari 3.1.2

Out of all of them IE 6 is the most useless one and its memory reflects that. K-meleon, on the other hand, is nearly 2x smaller than any of the others, while being at least that much better overall (that would make its memory efficiency about 4x better compared to the other browsers here!)

Their typography engine is amazing.

I hope you didn’t mean the smudgy/blurry text by this. Even if Safari was as good as k-meleon overall, it would still be unusable for text purposes “a priori”, just because of the smudgy smoothing- and its not as good- its nowhere near as good as k-meleon.

If anyone cares, I’ll post more about safari as I figure it out.

Add: the text box that is ridiculously small for posting comments @ thg (just look at the size of my text army ) can be nicely resized in Safari. I didn’t see this feature in any other browser before. Wow. Very nice. A first win for out contender.

Thank you for reading. I don’t know how to cut down the info and still be considered a reliable source…

 

[Steveorevo]

Gee, I think you've mentioned you're not a fan of their typography engine! I have a 30 inch Gallery and it looks sweet. I've uploaded a comparison at http://www.themeartist.com/browsers.jpg. The first image is Safari. On my display text looks 'heavy' like a printed book. Next is IE7, a little jagged, note the curvature on the 'S', and lastly FF, which looks (on my display) like chicken scratch. I run at extremely high resolution so I'm sure that might have somthing to do with it too. FF is just unreadable at that res.

There are lots of issues using a new browser like Safari too, as somesites sniff and if they see something other then IE or 'mozilla' compatible they just won't load (like the old Citibank).

I personally like the look and feel as refreshing. Cntrl+F for find is nice as it dims the page and highlights keywords your looking for. but again, these are just preferences. You can also drag hyperlinks from the toolbar into the display, create new tabs instantly, etc. I don't like the missing icons in the tabs however as that makes for a more intuitive approach as to what page is what.

 

[Steveorevo]

My argument here though is more about Apple's overall quality software design and compliance (at a price). Although Safari is free it does top out as being the most compliant:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080324-safari-3-1-on-windows-a-true-competitor-arrives.html

Support for CSS3 and alot of usability features definately make it a better alternative browser.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2278107,00.asp

But again, its just preference, for work I still use FF as a developer it has many debugging tools.

 

[eodeo]

I personally like the look and feel as refreshing. Cntrl+F for find is nice as it dims the page and highlights keywords your looking for. but again, these are just preferences

I agree. It didn’t occur to me to “find” things. I love the way it looks. Also the way it loads the page over the link. Pretty neat look. I think it’s the best way to search for things. Altho.. I have to say that k-melons way is pretty neat too. You can just start typing and it will find results

You can also drag hyperlinks from the toolbar into the display, create new tabs instantly, etc. I don't like the missing icons in the tabs however as that makes for a more intuitive approach as to what page is what.

I love the way you can drag links into a new tab, but I didn’t notice missing icons. What I don’t like is that the close button for the individual tab is on the left, even though this is a windows version and the big “x” is on the “correct” right hand side.

As unbelievable as it sounds, mouse gestures update plug-in just got available for firefox 3. What I really like about that is that I had them installed in FF2 and when i upgraded they were just deactivated saying that they were incompatible. I tried to manually download update, but it didn’t work, saying that there aren’t any. Starting it to try something it popped up the question at startup saying how update to mouse gestures is available and would I like to download them. So i did. 132kb later its done and working. I have only 3 mouse gestures that i use all the time so I programmed FF2 gestures to do them. This update didn’t mess it up. FF3 is working beautifully now. Now, only if new tab opened home page instead of a blank one…

What I actually wanted to try is see if 2x clicking on open tab name closes it, like it does on k-meleon. Nope, only in k-meleon and nicely enough, if you don’t like to close your tab on an accidental double click (who accidentally double clicks on tabs?) you can change the what happens to nothing or open a new tab. Although, personally, clicking 2x on free tab space opening a new tab is way more logical- just the way k-meleon does it This last one apparently isn’t exclusive to k-melon, but still

Gee, I think you've mentioned you're not a fan of their typography engine!

Did I?
A friend of mine came over so I asked him which one he prefers: k-melon fonts (imho same as in ff3/ opera) or aa in safari. He said definitely safari. His remark was that it increases the contrast so it’s easier to read. Obviously, I disagree, but I said that I will post his opinion here as well. Just because I think so doesn’t make it so. Still, if I was ever going to seriously consider safari, I think it wouldn’t kill Apple to allow users to disable the smoothing if they(like me) don’t like it.

I've uploaded a comparison at http://www.themeartist.com/browsers.jpg.

I definitely prefer the middle-one, and the right one. It appears that the right one has no AA whatsoever. The middle seams to have some amount, and while the left one is readable its bolding letters needlessly. Still I can see how my friend reacted with saying that it increases the contrast. It is more logical to say that that increases readability, but somehow, it doesn’t agree with me.

Look at the bottom link in your example- its best when not anit-aliased at all. It’s barely readable in the left picture, and somewhat readable in the middle. Am I wrong here?

For me, it’s a tossup between right and middle for the best quality. The “gray” central text looks best in the middle pic, while the headlines look better on the right one. Imho, left is just too blurry, even if it creates a bigger contrast.

Thanks for taking the time to assemble it.

I see that Safari is left. IE 7, that i don’t have is mid and ff3 on the right. And its confirmed, opera 9.5, ff3 and k-melon use almost identical aa. And they definitely use aa. As you can turn it off (in k-meleon anyway) for a really jagged letters. Maybe, I’m just getting old and I prefer what I’ve come to know. Habit does that to people.

 

[eodeo]

mouse gestures plugin for ff2 didn’t work in ff3, but as soon as the upgrade that made them compatible was available, (couple of minutes ago coincidentally) ff3 notified me and installed them. the 3 gestures i always use:

right click(rc)+ mose left- previous tab.
rc+ mouse right - next tab.
rc + mouse down - close tab.

simplifies navigation like you wouldn’t believe

 

[Guest]

Come on guys. You expected a die hard Apple enthusiast to engage in logical discourse?

lol...

 

[Steveorevo]

You can visit my modeling of 17th century fortress in second life at “serbia island”. It’s on top of the mountain. I did everything double: once in Max to get the coordinates and other numbers and than just replicate that in SL, as it’s just a game and not a modeling tool. Sadly it does not allow user to import things, so I had to do everything 2x.

Quote :
Other users/3D sculpters appear as avatars... its wickedly wierd, and again... too ahead of its time.

You lost me. Are you talking about truespace, 3DS Max or SecondLife here?

Quote :
the only saving grace I can see with their recent M$ merger is that if your a fan of DirectX, nothing rocks DirectX quite like it. I just wish they could merge it with Unity3D as I'm still more of software developer then 3D designer.

Still confused. Unity 3d? DX rocks what?

Just commenting that Unity3D is a development (programming) enviroment to create games. Its very advanced and very nice but only runs on Mac, but the games you create deploy on PC, Nintendo WII, etc.

trueSpace supports avatars so that you can your co-workers can work together in realtime -not unlike SL. Haven't logged into SL myself in a while but I'll look into your sculpting, sounds cool!

simplifies navigation like you wouldn’t believe

I've worked with mouse gestures before. It is nice to have.

...I am intrigued. I cannt really trust Mac fanboys when they say its better. But you... I do trust. Would you mind sharing some of the things? Maybe something original article writer neglected, or did so poorly?

Right now I spend about 50% of my time on my Dell XPS and 50% on my Mac Mini. Its curious, the top of the line Dell still performs well but the Mac Mini, from a user perspective still amazes me and 'appears' more productive.

The font handling on Mac makes things more readable. Window's ClearType does help on the XPS, but most fonts still look like Mac OS7 circa the 1980s (joking...weren't those fonts awful!?). If you're a Windows user (like me) this is normal and not something you'd notice (the jaggies)unitl you use a Mac running OSX on a large hi-res display.

I've also started playing with Expose, Mac's exclusive window manager features and I do have to say that it is much nice then XP. I haven't played with Vista enough to justify a proper comparison but everything on the Mac appears to gear towards multitasking with a minimum of clutter. You can access Windows network drives, remote desktops, FTP, WebDAV, and naturally native Apple shares from Finder by just clicking the "Go->Connect To Server" pull down menu. Type the service you want like ftp://mysite.com or vnc://mydesktop.com and viola! Its on your desktop.

Minimizing applications to OSX's dock leaves a dynamic icon that shows you the state of the application as a thumbnail. This is a really snazzy feature as you can tell when files are done copying or an application has prompted you for input, even if the application is minimized. The thumbnail will update dynamically (the icon will also bounce on the dock if an alert box appears from the application). This allows you to focus on the task at hand with a more subtle interruption. Windows does not do this nearly as well. Instead, in Windows XP, all you get is a flashing icon on your taskbar which somehow manages to be unnoticeable yet annoying (if that was actually possible). Or worse, alert dialogs in XP stop what your currently doing by coming to the surface, demanding your attention (even when not necessary) or manage to get lost under other windows should you try to ignore them. OSX has features to group an application’s child windows to be more manageable (see Exposé). If you’re familiar with your application in OSX, you can simply look at the thumbnail on the dock to determine whether you even need to maximize it and give the prompting application your attention.

Exposé has hot keys to quickly move application windows out the way or arrange windows on the display with resizing so that you can get an overall glance at your task at hand. Think Window's tile and cascade windows feature, only more graceful and with native multi-desktop support (see M$ unsupported Virtual Desktop Manager at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/Downloads/powertoys/Xppowertoys.mspx).

Unlike Microsoft, these features are actually supported by Apple. Time Machine is a real kicker too. When you want to rollback your file system or view a backup of copy of your files, your entire desktop drops down morphs into a blackhole that you can thumb through like index cards and simply 'see' previous versions of your desktop. Powerful, intuitive, and beautiful.

One thing that took getting used to is the application menu bar at the top of the screen in OSX (and all Macs for that matter). I used to despise the idea of every application not having its own pull down menu bar. Now that I’ve used it, I understand some distinct advantages as it promotes effective multitasking. In windows when you close an application with the ‘X’ on the application titlebar, the application leaves memory. In OSX, you have to explicitly tell it to close on the menu bar. Otherwise, the windows hide and if you switch away to another application the menu bar is switched out too. It also hides from the dock. What happens is that your application essentially becomes a ‘service’ running in the background but not consuming precious desktop space. This is great for say iTunes, when you don’t a window to clutter your desktop but want the application to do its thing (i.e. play music).

WindowsXP tries to address this issue on a per application basis by introducing an even more cluttered taskbar. For instance, you can minimize iTunes or Windows Media Player in XP and have it consume a tiny section near your system tray or you can create more taskbar menus in XP by right-clicking your XP taskbar and selecting the ‘toolbars’ option. You can then use it to access most common menu functions. This basically equates to OSX’s unified menu bar only XP’s implementation is uglier, wasting space on your taskbar and less useful as its not dynamic like in OSX. Its also up the application developer to support it in XP.

OSX also supports right clicking for common functions. I’m not sure how long it took for Steve Jobs to finally give in on this one. As research from Xerox Parc (the inventor of the window manger that Steve and Billy gates essentially stole) determined that one mouse button isn’t enough, three are too confusing and prone to errors but that two are just perfect. I’d say the lack of a second mouse button on Macs prior were definitely an inhibiting factor and source of reluctance for me to even consider using one. Its nice to see that they’ve actually implemented it quite well.

Overall, the ‘feel’ of OSX on my weak and what I’d consider (and have stated above) ‘crappy’ hardware (Intel GMA graphics) in comparison to my high end NVidia based Dell XPS has actually been surprisingly well. As I’ve concluded above, its about the software. Apple’s hard work and optimization in software (and M$ lack of and notorious bloatware) really extends the life and usefulness of Macs. This explains Macs ability to hold their value longer (which I was frankly surprised at). I’m also quite surprised at how productive my Mac Mini has been in contrast to my Dell XPS. Although I haven’t been doing anything 3D (nor would suggest it) on a Mini –the lowest of Macs. File management, workflow, and the overall snappy feel of OSX definitely rivals my high end XPS running WindowsXP. Next, I’m going to try VMware Fusion to run some popular Windows only programs (http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/screens.html). I’m curious to see how well this ‘weak’ mini can hold up.

 

[eodeo]

unnoticeable yet annoying (if that was actually possible)

it is. I know exactly what you mean.

Or worse, alert dialogs in XP stop what your currently doing by coming to the surface, demanding your attention (even when not necessary) or manage to get lost under other windows should you try to ignore them.

I know it too. Annoying. I haven’t used Vista enough to tell if this behavior is gone, but I sure wouldn’t mind is MS took the time to improve this.

Time Machine is a real kicker too. When you want to rollback your file system or view a backup of copy of your files, your entire desktop drops down morphs into a blackhole that you can thumb through like index cards and simply 'see' previous versions of your desktop. Powerful, intuitive, and beautiful.

I wanted to know more about macs so I went to apple.com and found a promo for OS leopard. Not many things looked all that different, save better, but time machine did get stuck to my eye.

As you’ve said its innovative and beautiful. I know you can get undelete for windows, but those are almost 100% text based programs that don’t look nowhere near as good.

One thing bothered me by the end of time machine presentation. The program uses external or just different hdd, much like raid 0, but unlike raid 0 it remembers all files and times they were where. It struck me as a hugely inefficient design, even if more user friendly. I’d imagine, that one would need to change those time machine hdd-s every few weeks or so. Obviously the presentation was skin-deep one so there maybe tech stuff I should know before making the assumption, but from what I’ve seen of it- it’s a thing I’d like to show to my friends, but not keep it running if I value my hdd space- and I do.

All that said, it looks more useful feature on a Mac- like the “John” said in the video “I don’t know what I’ve done, but the files are gone”. How many times has that happened to you? I’ve been using PC for ~15 years now and I still didn’t have that happen to me. Maybe because I started with 20mb hdd and I couldn’t afford to be reckless and disorganized. It’s nice that apple has found a way to please even the stupidest of its costumers, which numbers count is high, I’d imagine. It almost like a Mensa, reversed.

A very interesting notes about quicktime>
http://blog.duber.cz/opinions/installing-quicktime-is-one-of-the-biggest-mistakes-you-can-make#comment-449

 

[Steveorevo]

I played around with Time Machine a bit more and examined the files it generates. It looks like it does some delta compression and the actual bytes on disk look less then one's actual drive contents. I suspect that it’s using a compression very similar to when one checks off the 'compress contents' checkmark on a windows folder that turns the title blue. My Time Machine drive is an external HDD I just plugged into my Mini's USB port that happened to have the NTFS file system from my XPS with that very compression option on several folders. The Mac didn't appear to have any issues reading it which was nice. I've re-read this article and Nguyen has confirmed that OpenGL is completely optimized for OSX's effects which explains why everything runs so smooth without taxing the processor. I wouldn't have suspected the Mini as having an Intel GMA at 1990x1200 running this smooth at all. If this was a Windows system, as I've witnessed dual cores with the Intel GMA prior... it would crawl. I've made many clients return boxes or supplement graphic cards to run some of the games I've written when they've given me hardware specs that lack a real 3D processor and list an Intel as the sole graphics chip. It just can't keep up. But because OSX is so fine tuned, I’m really curious to see how a 64bit engine like the new PoserPro would stand up. Are there really 64 bit benefits using true 64bit 3D Apps like Poser? It claims that any 64bit processor under OSX (G5 or Intel Dual Cores that support 64bit) will work fine, as well as the special 64bit version of Vista. Running the Universal binary of Bryce and Bryce Lightning appear to work very well. I’ll have to test some OpenGL scenes with Daz3D.

On another note, there are several things I don't like about OSX that has to do with familiarity with the keyboard. Namely copy, cut, paste is with the Windows/OpenApple key instead of Cntrl, one uses arrow keys in combo with Shift vs. End/Home with Windows and I haven't figured out how to move vs. copy a file.

I just discovered the native preview in OSX by just hitting the space bar with any file and it comes up lightning fast like Window's preview but with more file support for PDFs, etc. It appears to be full featured and very very quick.

 

[Steveorevo]

A very interesting notes about quicktime>
http://blog.duber.cz/opinions/inst [...] omment-449

LOL. Yeah, read that guys articals. I don't think he's even tried a Mac though. Which is pretty biased because in the beginning he sounds like a long time Mac user but in the end he continues to say 'Can't speak for Mac'. Quicktime was never my favorite on Windows period. Video for Windows was a poor rip off of QT as well and notorious for sync issues. When he rants about 64 bit I suspect he's talking about Vista or XP64bit and that QT doesn't work on 64bit Win-anything. What does? I know Adobe didn't play well and even now runs slowing under WOW32. I have clients complaining left and right about how my games won't even run on 64bit windows and a few won't even start! I'm not suprised that QT doesn't fly on 64bit windows or when he mentions touching the frame on a dual monitor setup. This is a notorious problem with DirectX not so much QT as the DirectX library favors acceleration on one monitor at a time and really various by how the manufactorer implements their driver. NVidia seems to do marginally better at this then ATI. Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center does the same thing on my 7950GTX (yes there was a 7950). You have to stop and restart the executable (eHome, wmplayer.exe, etc. ) and ensure that you launch on the appropiate monitor. Doubt this is an issue for Apple as that hardware/software integration is much tighter then the boys between Taiwan and Redmond.

 

[sweatlaserxp]

Tuan,

"it's" is a contraction of "it is". E.G., "It's a beautiful day outside."

"its" is a possessive. E.G., "That is its purpose".

E.G., "It's a happy dog that wags its tail."

 

[Guest]

You forgot to mention all the suprise "features" your brand new Dell/HP shows you when it's first turn it on.

 

[T-Bone]

And that's the end of that!
PC 2, Mac 0.

 

[KyleSTL]

And that's the end of that!
PC 2, Mac 0.

Does that mean this melee of a thread is getting closed/locked?

 

[Guest]

You forget to mention big difference betweed LCD LED in Macs and poor quality screens in Dell laptops. This is one of the key aspects... and you can have 1440x resolution LED screen which is not common on the market and was only produced by Apple for a long time.

 

[Steveorevo]

The one drawback is the cutting edge hardware that can't be optimized with software. Although I'm really liking OSX more and more, my DELL XPS laptop definately has a nice 1920x display... I'd find it hard to go back to 1400x.

 

[Guest]

EFI V8 and 129 dollars for leopard from apple will allow you to run the apple operating system. I am writing this from a so called hackintosh laptop (dual core intel 2gb ram 7900 nvidea) (check your access logs). I just purchase another hard drive for my laptop and swap drives to the system I am running.

Even though I purchased Leopard it is not on apple hardware and one reason to remain anonymous.

In order for windows to address the apple bios, you need boot camp to address the differences. Therefore I do not need boot camp for this machine.

BTW, I personally love Vista Ultimate, and run it on my home system with VM for Windows 95 98 Millennium
madriva linux, and tiger.

Leopard 10.5.2 does have so nice features, but so does Vista.

 

[Steveorevo]

How's the stability with unsupported hardware? Are you able to get Quartz (the DirectX of the Mac world) engine to run on NVidia, or are you just in standard OSX mode?

 

[nukemaster]

How's the stability with unsupported hardware? Are you able to get Quartz (the DirectX of the Mac world) engine to run on NVidia, or are you just in standard OSX mode?

Quartz is more like the Aero(but more advanced) of OSX. It uses OpenGL.

 

[Steveorevo]

I believe he is pointing out that it’s just been around longer and has had time to mature and ‘advance’. OpenGL optimized drivers and hardware existed in Apple computers for OSX's window manager long before Windows even had an accelerated Window manager. It wasn't until Aero did Windows's window manager start to utilize hardware acceleration in its everyday desktop manager. And when it finally did in Vista, it required users to upgrade to capable cards leading to a very sour and bitter pill for users who upgraded expecting to see something new. Instead ‘Vista capable’ resulted in a class action lawsuit of false advertising (google it).

In other words, Aero doesn't fly very well or at all on a basic GPU. Where as with Apple certified hardware, even the crappy Intel GMA in the Mac Mini does Quartz really well. Its not the latest hardware out of the silicon oven, but its been tested and optimized. This is what you pay for through the nose with Apple.

G5 users on old PowerPC hardware were delighted to see all the OSX bells and whistles by merely upgrading their software. Transparent windows, morphing, etc. And in theory with the next OSX release it gets even faster with EXISTING hardware. This is the trend of really well written software. It gets more advanced as opposed to fatter and slower. Can't say that about M$ Vista, the pockets are too deep with hardware manufacturers. New M$ OS = new hardware requirements or experience less then substandard performance. In the developer community we call this ‘bloatware’ or ‘fatware’, it’s synonymous with anything Microsoft and its ‘ok’ because its just good enough… Not great, just good enough. For the majority of business users ok computing is good enough especially to line Microsoft’s pockets. Why write really optimized code when a few more bucks and newer hardware which is cheap can compensate for it? It’s just the users that have to pay for it in the end and that’s more then alright in M$ and hardware manufacturer’s books.

 

[nukemaster]

Why is it more advanced? Looking at their basics bells and whistle's they seem pretty comparable to me, online arguments seem to break down along fanboi lines and I don't see much of an upper hand for either side. OpenGL support seems irrelevant since Aero uses Direct3D (along with most other Windows apps requiring 3d support)... and OpenGL is simply a different way of skinning the cat.

By advanced, I mean the program makers have some control over it as well(that is the "advanced" part). It would make no sense for MS to not use DX as its there own API(and OpenGL drivers where very underpowered at release) and it does do a great job. For me the only thing I care about is that the desktop has vertical synchronization and that the performance is good. Vista works just fine for me and I can't care less how it looks as long as it works.

I think ID Software would disagree with your comments on OpenGL. It consider it to be as good as DX when used right.

 

[Steveorevo]

I'm a Windows user and developer so I don't think of myself as "biased". I think you need to read my prior posts here as I've talked about these issues. What you 'hear' is definitely different from what you 'know'. You'll just have to try it. But you are completely correct that Apple machines are a few years behind on the hardware curve. As I've stated before their machines are ALWAYS old news with hardware. You can always get the latest unstable (and in my opinion, less usefull) latest bells and whistles on Windows PCs. You'll always find DirectX cards cheaper then their OpenGL equivalents even though they are the same cards because the DirectX version has OpenGL crippled in firmware because it is considered a premium cost to be compliant. That said, you have to pay quite a high price to really take advantage of Apple PCs because the software again is superior. You will have to shell out and pay through the nose of Final Cut vs. Adobe Premier. Expect everything to be cheaper Windows wise with stability, ease of use, and 'ok' design being the big factor on Windows. For the most part and the majority of users Windows is 'just good enough'. But then again, so is running Bootcamp... Want great performance and cutting edge hardware? Buy a PC every 18 months (or sooner) as moores law states (and has held true).