Why do people say that Mac's just work?

[Marc]

Sheep said:

FordSVT said:
It's amazing that a company like MS can go from being so dominant to so threatened by Mac and Linux in so few years.

I'm sure Microsoft is quaking in their boots with their 90% marketshare.

That said, Vista seems utterly useless to me. I think your XP SP3 idea would've been the path to take. If there were any justice in the world, Vista would indeed be a big mistake and Microsoft would actually lose a good chunk of marketshare by trying to force XP with a different skin on it on a market that absolutely didn't need it. However, I don't think that's going to happen.

Did a Trend Micro traing course early last year and the comment from the train who was very familiar with the workings of Vista (to the point of having seen and had access to MS source code) was if you had XP SP2 you had most of what Vista was.

And while SP3 for XP might of been the way to go, service packs don't make money. There's always a continual flow of cash for Microsoft from OEM sales etc but over time that can dry up slightly.

A new release of a application or operating will give a big boast to the revenues as people race out to grab the latest (which can also see a boast to hardware/peripheral sales).

Of course there are still a lot of places out there that haven't upgraded to XP (University Of Adelaide is still only supporting Win2K) let along Vista but Vista isn't going to exactly entice them.

And frankly given the development time for Vista it's a disappointment - for an O/S that was in development for 6 years (XP came in 2001) it offered very little new and driver support is dodgy (can some please explain how the hell Sony can release a brand new 10mega pixel digital camera in April this year and not support Vista?).

 

[Deleted 2]

^ Apple's update policy is probably much smarter. OS X hasn't changed a lot "under the hood" either since its first release, but by releasing regular, mostly cosmetic upgrades, its customers don't fear upgrading half as much as the Windows XP crowd--confronted with a visually radically different system--does.

 

[MacWin]

BCI said:

Zero Hour said:
Clever marketing. Statements like "they just work" don't even stand up to logical scrutiny (they just work and do what?)

Macs indeed work and do nothing, because all the software is only available for Windows.

, but they sound good, and project an image of lack of complication that attracts the technophobic.

Consumers don't want products, they want emotions and solutions.

Yeah Macs can't run all that neat software like Blaster and I Love You

 

[Robert Maxwell]

For anyone curious about what, exactly, the purpose of Windows Vista is (from Microsoft's perspective), I have two words for you: Win32 deprecation.

Many of the problems with Windows development stem from the antiquated programming API. Microsoft's goal is to get everyone off of Win32 and onto an entirely .NET-based platform. Vista is a stepping stone in that direction, as it includes the new .NET 3.0 framework and a lot of the operating system itself is written in .NET.

I use Vista with some regularity (it's on my wife's laptop). It definitely has some kinks to work out--sluggish performance, poor legacy support, etc. But I've also noticed it has a fair amount of user-oriented features that are quite powerful and useful. The Parental Control system is quite sophisticated, for instance. Does that matter much to power users like most of us here? Probably not. Does it matter to the average user? You bet.

I think Vista could have a been a breakthrough for Microsoft, if they'd taken another 6-12 months to polish it and made an effort to ease the transition from XP. As it is, it will probably take a service pack or two to bring it up to par. That seems to be typical of Microsoft's development cycle, anyway.

Vista definitely has its problems, but to call it "Millennium Edition II" is a stretch. ME was a hideous rush-job that looked like Windows 2000 but was about as crash prone as the original Windows 95 release. Vista, as far as I've seen, recovers very gracefully from errors, and most of its features are very complete, even if they were not designed well.

I do think "Vistaphobia" will earn some converts to the Mac, though, and that's just a risk Microsoft runs every time they make a major upgrade to their operating system.

 

[Marc]

Robert Maxwell said:
Vista definitely has its problems, but to call it "Millennium Edition II" is a stretch. ME was a hideous rush-job that looked like Windows 2000 but was about as crash prone as the original Windows 95 release. Vista, as far as I've seen, recovers very gracefully from errors, and most of its features are very complete, even if they were not designed well.

I do think "Vistaphobia" will earn some converts to the Mac, though, and that's just a risk Microsoft runs every time they make a major upgrade to their operating system.

My theory on ME (mongrel edition) was it was a cash grab by Microosft - they wanted a little bit of extra cash for the Millennium and served the users a shit sandwich.

Sure they bolted on the Win2K interface but underneath it was pure 98 and it's annoying features (reboots for changing IP addressess ffs).

 

[BCI]

MacWin said:

BCI said:

Zero Hour said:
Clever marketing. Statements like "they just work" don't even stand up to logical scrutiny (they just work and do what?)

Macs indeed work and do nothing, because all the software is only available for Windows.

, but they sound good, and project an image of lack of complication that attracts the technophobic.

Consumers don't want products, they want emotions and solutions.

Yeah Macs can't run all that neat software like Blaster and I Love You

I'd be happy with something that works like IrfanView. Show pics fullscreen, rotate with a single keypress.

 

[Guartho]

It's true that Macs don't "just work." Just last month I had to unexpectedly restart one of the 3 in my office. I think I had to do it to one of the others some time last spring too.