So should we consider Apple a cult yet?

[Trifikas]

Well, I'm on my fifth Mac and my second iPad. Never had and don't feel any need whatsoever for antivirus or malware software. ferd

I feel the need to point out that this would also mean you have no idea if you're infected or not...

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

I feel the need to point out that this would also mean you have no idea if you're infected or not...

All his email chums are riddled with them, and they bought protection software. So that goes to prove it's a waste of money.

 

[Vic Vega]

Honestly I would have possibly felt more of a lure from all this "it just works!' malarkey before Win7 came out. Win7 is great to use and I have no complaints, so myeh.

My wife's laptop has Windows 7. Certainly an improvement over XP, but still far behind Apple's OS, in my opinion.

 

[Rat]

Since this has predictably already become a Mac vs PC thread, I must say:

What they are is much faster,

By what metric? They use largely the same components as many PCs. You think if I spend, say, £1500 on a computer, the £1500 Mac is going to be faster than the £1500 PC? I would beg to differ.

considerably more stable,

I'm beginning to think you're working off too small a sample size. I can't think how a Mac could be more stable than any of my last, say, three PCs, aside from when the PSU failed in one of them. And I have come across unstable Mac systems, although I'm sure that when a Mac is unstable, as with PCs, it as often as not is because of third-party software.

and far more bug-free than PCs.

Why? What sort of bugs are we talking about? If we're talking 'far more', can you give a handful of bugs that affect PCs?

Overall, just a much better operating system.

I disagree. I'm glad Mac OS does what you need it to. It doesn't do what I need. Windows does do what I need, and is therefore (to me) a better OS. I would love to know by what objective criteria one OS is better than another. Aside from your trivial example -- you didn't say what was running; just switching users on my work PC takes a similar amount of time -- I can't think of anything obvious that isn't just a matter of user preference.

 

[Rat]

Oh, and I'm another one who should probably add that I run only MSE, and managed previously to run for years with no AV and have never (unintentionally) had a virus.

 

[not daSkeptic]

... I can't think of anything obvious that isn't just a matter of user preference.

Suitability-to-task is another factor, but it's equally subjective.

 

[Rat]

Exactly. And I have no quarrel with anyone who says that they prefer to use a Mac. Or even those who say that a Mac is better for them, although in my experience they're often comparing apples with...erm...PCs. Only when someone says that Macs are superior, faster, or similar objective claims with no evidence, and when these claims run counter to all of my experience, only then do I begin to get a little annoyed. Well, not so much annoyed as bemused.

 

[fls]

Exactly. And I have no quarrel with anyone who says that they prefer to use a Mac. Or even those who say that a Mac is better for them, although in my experience they're often comparing apples with...erm...PCs. Only when someone says that Macs are superior, faster, or similar objective claims with no evidence, and when these claims run counter to all of my experience, only then do I begin to get a little annoyed. Well, not so much annoyed as bemused.

That makes sense.

Linda

 

[westprog]

I think Neal Stephenson (sp?) wrote a neat, if long, essay on the mindsets behind the different operating systems and what they said about those that use them.



ETA: Here it is. If you have an hour or two to read it I recommend it.

Clearly, Apple isn't a cult. Apple fans don't vote according to what Steve Jobs tells them, or change their diet, or wear certain clothes. However, there is certainly a cult-like quality in their behaviour. The same applies to the Linux community, for different reasons.

This is not to say that there are considerable practical and technical benefits to both Apple and Linux. The sign of the cult-like behaviour lies in the insistence that one or other system is better in every imaginable way that all others - in particular, Microsoft Windows.

Thus even when Mac's had a highly limited range of certain kinds of software, its supporters would still insist that Windows users were crazy to run a particular program that suited their needs even though it wasn't available on the Mac. Linux/Unix users would insist that a command line was a far more productive way to interact with a computer than a GUI, right up until the time when most programs on Linux had GUI interfaces.

There doesn't seem to be the same kind of attachment to Windows. Windows users tend to say - "Well, it does the job I need doing" but there's certainly no common belief that Windows is any kind of technological masterpiece, and certainly not The One True Way.

This might stem from the original Microsoft inferiority complex. Gates never quite had the confidence to innovate, in spite of hiring the pick of Software Engineers over many years. When Windows 1.0 was being written, some smart programmer made the size of scroll bars reflect the proportion of the document on the screen. He was ordered to remove the feature because it wasn't on the Mac. It took many years for it to resurface. Now, with Gates gone, Microsoft seem paralysed with fear. They've had massive resources for a long, long time, but each operating system or version of Office seems progressively worse. Each time they get a genius in to design something for them, whether it's the architect of VMS to build WNT, or the man behind Delphi to create .NET, there's a spurt of excitement and growth, and then it's destroyed by bad decisions and a lack of clear vision.

What's served Apple well is Jobs sense of absurd self-confidence and entitlement. He has little engineering skill himself, and is therefore quite happy to make unreasonable demands. The reality-distortion field is still going strong. He has the whole world convinced that the GUI, the MP3 player and the tablet computer are Apple innovations. In a few years from now, he might have people convinced that Apple invented the mobile phone.

These cultural differences have had genuine consequences. Apple aren't smarter than Microsoft - but they've managed to win by believing in themselves, even when they have no particular reason to do so. That's why this thread does, in fact, belong R&P. It's worldview that counts in this case, not brains, money or clever ideas.

 

[Vic Vega]

Since this has predictably already become a Mac vs PC thread, I must say:By what metric? They use largely the same components as many PCs. You think if I spend, say, £1500 on a computer, the £1500 Mac is going to be faster than the £1500 PC? I would beg to differ.

I'm beginning to think you're working off too small a sample size. I can't think how a Mac could be more stable than any of my last, say, three PCs, aside from when the PSU failed in one of them. And I have come across unstable Mac systems, although I'm sure that when a Mac is unstable, as with PCs, it as often as not is because of third-party software.
Why? What sort of bugs are we talking about? If we're talking 'far more', can you give a handful of bugs that affect PCs?
I disagree. I'm glad Mac OS does what you need it to. It doesn't do what I need. Windows does do what I need, and is therefore (to me) a better OS. I would love to know by what objective criteria one OS is better than another. Aside from your trivial example -- you didn't say what was running; just switching users on my work PC takes a similar amount of time -- I can't think of anything obvious that isn't just a matter of user preference.

FWIW, I'm an engineer at a high tech company and I've spent every workday during the last 12 years working on Enterprise-class computer systems. I work primarily on Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Linux, and Windows, so I have a considerable amount of experience with a variety of operating systems. I see the positives and negatives in all of them. Out of all of them, when it comes to the stability and overall reliability of the operating system, Windows is a very, very distant 5th.

Here are some of the differences I see. I could come up with many, many more, but this is off the top of my head in about a minute:

1) My Mac boots in about 10 seconds.

2) It takes about 5 seconds to log on when the Mac is already up.

3) It takes about 5 seconds to log off.

4) In the time I've had the Mac, I haven't had a single instance of the kind of little, annoying things you see all the time on Windows: Unresponsive and dissapearing cursors, windows that don't refresh themselves properly, windows that stay open but blank or that show an underlying window or the desktop, programs that can't be closed without using the task manager, programs that don't start properly and have to be killed and restarted. There are a million little things like this that you simply never see on the Mac.

5) Ridiculous design choices such as needing to confirm every program you want to run and every change you want to make, not matter how trivial. Yet despite this, if you click shut down, the PC shuts down without any warning or without a timer.

6) My worst ever problem with windows was a couple of years ago when the OS automatic updates loaded a service pack and rebooted. It never came back up forcing me to reload the OS and restore from backup. That was the last straw.

I could come up with many, many more.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that Macs are better in every way. There are many things that I like better about windows, but unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, the most important things to me are the ones that Macs do far better.

 

[Jekyll's Guest]

FWIW, I'm an engineer at a high tech company and I've spent every workday during the last 12 years working on Enterprise-class computer systems.

Well that's not very impressive.

Most of the time it's just saying "Computer, extrapolate the weak point in the Bird Of Prey's shield!" and it does all the work for you. You never even get dirty, worse case you need to open a panel and run a blinking light over some crystal wafers.

 

[EdipisReks]

I think Neal Stephenson (sp?) wrote a neat, if long, essay on the mindsets behind the different operating systems and what they said about those that use them.



ETA: Here it is. If you have an hour or two to read it I recommend it.

while a great essay, it's obsolete now. he has been an OS X user since shortly after it came out.

 

[not daSkeptic]

There doesn't seem to be the same kind of attachment to Windows. Windows users tend to say - "Well, it does the job I need doing" but there's certainly no common belief that Windows is any kind of technological masterpiece, and certainly not The One True Way.

On the contrary, I've encountered many who believe Windows' marketplace dominance is a sign of overall superiority. I've had people ask me, "When are you going to get a real computer?"

 

[Vic Vega]

Most of the time it's just saying "Computer, extrapolate the weak point in the Bird Of Prey's shield!" and it does all the work for you. You never even get dirty, worse case you need to open a panel and run a blinking light over some crystal wafers.

Hey! You must do the same job as me!

All this time I thought these were trade secrets.

 

[Rat]

On the contrary, I've encountered many who believe Windows' marketplace dominance is a sign of overall superiority. I've had people ask me, "When are you going to get a real computer?"

This is most odd. I can only imagine that when you have a Mac, you hear anti-Mac things from Windows users, and vice versa. I have certainly never heard anyone state such a thing (although a case can be made that there is some advantage, as well as disadvantage, to having the biggest-selling type of computer), and I don't think I know anyone who believes it. Conversely, most of the anti-Windows arguments I hear (not so much from people here) are based on complete misunderstandings and massively outdated knowledge. For the perfect example, I have genuinely heard the old "32 bit shell on a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system..." canard within the last couple of years, from someone who meant it quite seriously and believed he was making a clever point. I guess there are idiots on both 'sides'.

 

[fls]

On the contrary, I've encountered many who believe Windows' marketplace dominance is a sign of overall superiority. I've had people ask me, "When are you going to get a real computer?"

Yup. I used that line on my husband.

In my defense, it was three kids ago.

Linda

 

[Rat]

FWIW, I'm an engineer at a high tech company and I've spent every workday during the last 12 years working on Enterprise-class computer systems. I work primarily on Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Linux, and Windows, so I have a considerable amount of experience with a variety of operating systems. I see the positives and negatives in all of them. Out of all of them, when it comes to the stability and overall reliability of the operating system, Windows is a very, very distant 5th.

I still disagree, and still think we've just had different experiences of them. I would concede that I have little or no experience of your first three named systems, but I use Linux and Macs from time to time, and I just don't find them more stable when comparing like for like. I will admit that since PC users are often paranoid about viruses, they will install behemoth AV suites that reduce the speed and stability of their systems massively (I'm chiefly looking at Norton here, but many others too), but a clean install of Windows with everyday games/office software/and so on has no cause to be unstable or unreliable.

Here are some of the differences I see. I could come up with many, many more, but this is off the top of my head in about a minute:

1) My Mac boots in about 10 seconds.

2) It takes about 5 seconds to log on when the Mac is already up.

3) It takes about 5 seconds to log off.

And PCs do indeed not usually boot in 10 seconds, although neither do most Macs I've used by a long way. It doesn't take much longer than five seconds to log on, though, unless you have a lot of things set to run at logon. And it doesn't normally take more than 5 seconds to log off.

4) In the time I've had the Mac, I haven't had a single instance of the kind of little, annoying things you see all the time on Windows: Unresponsive and dissapearing cursors, windows that don't refresh themselves properly, windows that stay open but blank or that show an underlying window or the desktop, programs that can't be closed without using the task manager, programs that don't start properly and have to be killed and restarted. There are a million little things like this that you simply never see on the Mac.

But that's exactly the problem; I don't see these things all the time on Windows. The only application I see all the time that fails to refresh itself properly with any frequency is Filemaker, an Apple program. Most of these annoying things are also things I never see, or at least only see with particular badly written apps.

5) Ridiculous design choices such as needing to confirm every program you want to run and every change you want to make, not matter how trivial. Yet despite this, if you click shut down, the PC shuts down without any warning or without a timer.

What? I don't recognize this at all. If you mean UAC, which can be turned off if you really want, it certainly doesn't prompt for confirmation of every program you want to run, nor for every change. It will prompt if you want to install something, or if you want to make system changes. Most people see this as a good thing, but, as I say, you can turn it off. I also find the ability to have the computer shut down when I ask it to shut down a good thing, but out of interest, I googled "confirm shutdown windows 7" and found dozens of results of how to enable the confirmation if you want it.

6) My worst ever problem with windows was a couple of years ago when the OS automatic updates loaded a service pack and rebooted. It never came back up forcing me to reload the OS and restore from backup. That was the last straw.

I will also concede that I've had a service pack fail catasrophically once or twice, out of hundreds that I've applied. One of them was certainly a hardware problem, but the other I never did track down. Anyway, a system restore fixed it. OTOH, I have exactly one machine running Linux. Yesterday I let it upgrade Ubuntu from 10.4 to 10.10, and now it fails to boot and just gives me a black screen with an unresponsive cursor.

I could come up with many, many more.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that Macs are better in every way. There are many things that I like better about windows, but unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, the most important things to me are the ones that Macs do far better.

No, you're not saying that they're better in every way, but you are saying that the Mac is "Overall, just a much better operating system. I get constant reminders about why it's better." It may seem pedantic to insist that you should instead say that you prefer it, but I think it's an important difference.

 

[Dr. Keith]

Honestly I would have possibly felt more of a lure from all this "it just works!' malarkey before Win7 came out. Win7 is great to use and I have no complaints, so myeh.

Yeah, I hear it is almost as good as OSX was five years ago.

Apple has earned the reputation as overpriced but more user friendly.

 

[not daSkeptic]

I guess there are idiots on both 'sides'.

There are idiots on all sides, and it's generally due to simple ignorance. People frequently forget that not everyone values the same things. For some, an abundance of compatible retail software and peripherals is important. Others couldn't care less.

 

[Rat]

Yeah, I hear it is almost as good as OSX was five years ago.

Apple has earned the reputation as overpriced but more user friendly.

No, I'd say that they have that reputation, but they've earned the reputation for glib, supercilious users with a misplaced smugness. I honestly don't see how Windows is unfriendly to users in itself. Mac advocates have often, for example, said that it's ridiculous to click Start in order to shut down; I disagree, but even if it were the case, I would present to counter the time I spent five minutes trying to work out how to get the CD out of the drive, before somebody told me I needed to drag the CD icon on the desktop into the bin.

If you buy a Windows PC (and this has been true for certainly more than 5 years) and want to use it for browsing the web and writing emails, playing popular games, and maybe doing some simple office work, I can see no hurdles that a non-imbecilic user would have trouble with, and this covers 99% of what the vast majority of users use their computers for. More complex uses of a computer have a different learning curve, but that only seems right to me, as long as you're learning how to use software more productively, rather than fighting against it.