Why do people say that Mac's just work?

[Arrqh]

David cgc said:
It mentions a fair few stupid things Windows does that affect the end-user directly.

Macs Really Do Run Windows Better

I've only skimmed that, but it appears to be complaining about things that Sony is doing with their VIAO line. Especially when you look at the last sentence:

XP on my Mac though? Smooth sailing. *smacks lips* Is that the delicious taste of irony? I think it is!

His problem is pretty clearly not with Windows, and very clearly to do with the crap that vendors put on their boxes. Those are two entirely different issues.

 

[TerriO]

Macs do work nicely. It's AppleCare that sucks like a Hoover on steroids.

Not that I just got a $3,000 paperweight back via DHL or anything. They actually sent it back in worse shape than it was sent to them. Fortunately, I have an old laptop PC as backup until I can afford a new machine (this time, a PC, I've had enough of AppleCare). I've had more hardware trouble with that Mac laptop than I ever had with a PC.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ I do have to give Apple props on this one service issue: When I had an iMac G5, it started shutting down randomly. I found that this was a common problem - overheating - with that model of iMac. Not only was my machine repaired for free, it was ready *the next day*.

I credit this as much to Apple as to CompUSA (who actually did the repair work), because the repair program itself was sponsored by Apple.

 

[Saturn0660]

I've had my iMac a year now and I love it.. I don't know if i'll ever buy another PC again... Vista sucks ass.. And you have to pay out the ass if you still want XP on a machine.. But here's why it "just works"... My dig camera won't work in any of my PC's without putting in there software.(so much for pulg and play).. I plug it into m mac and bang is know what it is/offers to copy it all for me/then wants to know if it should format it after it's done copying it.. My printer was the same way... Sure.... I could plug my HP into my PC's and yaaaa it might work... But, once again, in the mac bang there she works.. even know it could print in extra high res mode...

Now, all that being said, is it the computer or the software the computer uses?? I dunno, but i love my Mac better then my PC's

 

[Marc]

saturn0660 said:
I've had my iMac a year now and I love it.. I don't know if i'll ever buy another PC again... Vista sucks ass.. And you have to pay out the ass if you still want XP on a machine.. But here's why it "just works"... My dig camera won't work in any of my PC's without putting in there software.(so much for pulg and play).. I plug it into m mac and bang is know what it is/offers to copy it all for me/then wants to know if it should format it after it's done copying it.. My printer was the same way... Sure.... I could plug my HP into my PC's and yaaaa it might work... But, once again, in the mac bang there she works.. even know it could print in extra high res mode...

Now, all that being said, is it the computer or the software the computer uses?? I dunno, but i love my Mac better then my PC's

Was talking with a client of mine the on Thursday. When the y need do the change over for computers (sometimes next year) he's thinking of going with iMacs. They'll probably end up running Vista rather than OS X (unless some they change some of the apps which are currently Windows only).

Also while OS X can access Windows Server shares it's not an overly tight integration and I'm not sure they go as far an Xserver (though if they did I wouldn't complain - never had the chance to play with one).

 

[Newtype_A]

Lindley said:
Ever try to close an Explorer window, only to have the system stall for twenty seconds while it spools back the window-control code to RAM? That's silly. The code needed to control one single Explorer window shouldn't be big enough that there's any reason to swap it to disk if you aren't using most of your RAM; and since what you're trying to do is close it anyway, why pull the code off the disk in the first place just to get rid of it?

ARGGHHHHH!!! This happens to me so often it's like Chinese water torture now. And not just on my computer; any given week I use about nine different PCs in my school's computer lab and it happens on every freaking one of them!

 

[farmkid]

Arrghman said:

David cgc said:
It mentions a fair few stupid things Windows does that affect the end-user directly.

Macs Really Do Run Windows Better

I've only skimmed that, but it appears to be complaining about things that Sony is doing with their VIAO line. Especially when you look at the last sentence:

XP on my Mac though? Smooth sailing. *smacks lips* Is that the delicious taste of irony? I think it is!

His problem is pretty clearly not with Windows, and very clearly to do with the crap that vendors put on their boxes. Those are two entirely different issues.

Yeah, I read it too. ALL The problems he talked about were from Sony, not MS, and had nothing to do with Windows. He could have all the same problems with his precious Mac if Apple were the "giant corporate whores" that Sony is. One can get a more "pure" Windows experience without all the extra crap by buying a PC from a local shop or a smaller builder, or by building a PC (which can lead to it's own headaches).

However, I'm sure he is exaggerating somewhat. He needs 50 drivers for his machine?? What PC has 50 pieces of hardware that need separate drivers? I looked at the Sony site, picking a model with lots of extras. There were 10 hardware drivers available. The rest of the files he mentioned were earlier versions of the drivers, or were things like AOL and Sony Applications (the stuff he was trying to get rid of).

The advantage of Macs here is that the hardware variations are so minimal that Apple can package all the drivers together and call it Bootcamp. A similar approach would be impossible for PCs because there are so many more hardware options. The "Windows Bootcamp" would be several DVDs and have thousands of driver files in it. Not to mention that it would be out of date immediately as new hardware is constantly being released for PCs. I guess it's a trade-off. Hardware-wise, you can have the simplicity of a Mac with drivers that work, or you can have the versatility and customization a PC offers along with the occasional headache.

 

[BCI]

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.

 

[Lindley]

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

What are you trying to accomplish by making blatantly false statements?

 

[D Man]

TerriO said:
Macs do work nicely. It's AppleCare that sucks like a Hoover on steroids.

Not that I just got a $3,000 paperweight back via DHL or anything. They actually sent it back in worse shape than it was sent to them.

DHL LOST my PowerBook when I sent it in to get the screen fixed. My AppleCare page said the repairs were complete, but then it was in transit for weeks...so I called DHL, and they said that they "couldn't find it." How does a major shipping company LOSE an entire computer?

To their credit, Apple ended up sending me a new and slightly more powerful laptop, but a few things I didn't have backed up (my fault, I know.) I'm thinking Apple should switch to UPS.

 

[TerriO]

^I wish I'd been that lucky and DHL had lost mine.

The vast problems with DHL are the subject of another forum, though.

UPS has lost packages I've sent, too, though.

 

[Newtype_A]

D Jazzy Man said:
I'm thinking Apple should switch to UPS.

And Steve Jobs should switch to decaff, but we both know THAT's not gonna happen.

 

[BCI]

Lindley said:

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

What are you trying to accomplish by making blatantly false statements?

I just stated my perception, but let's not debate opinions, please. The mouse on my fathers Mac is so horrible inaccurate, it's a real pain to use that machine.

 

[Daedalus12]

Macs do have shite mice. I have never used one that live up to my expectation then again I am using a $50 Logitech mouse. Of course the generic mouse that come with any Dell Box is also crap so it's even. If OSX can be installed onto other architectures without some evasive methods then I think its popularity would grow by quite a bit but of course Apple would lose their tight control over it and also a large portion of their hardware sales.

 

[farmkid]

Daedalus12 said:
Macs do have shite mice. I have never used one that live up to my expectation then again I am using a $50 Logitech mouse. Of course the generic mouse that come with any Dell Box is also crap so it's even. If OSX can be installed onto other architectures without some evasive methods then I think its popularity would grow by quite a bit but of course Apple would lose their tight control over it and also a large portion of their hardware sales.

If Apple allowe OSX to be installed on other architectures, I think we would see many of the same issues Windows deals with, and it would probably be much worse, at least at first since Apple hasn't had the time and experience to make it work yet. Let's face it, a major reason for Windows' problems is because it has to be able to run on a wide range of hardware. It has to be written to interface with 3rd party drivers written by any one of hundreds of companies to run all the different hardware an installation may encounter. As I said before, it's a trade-off: more hardware options or fewer headaches.

 

[Lindley]

BCI said:

Lindley said:

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

What are you trying to accomplish by making blatantly false statements?

I just stated my perception, but let's not debate opinions, please.

It's not an opinion, it's wrong. There's lots of software available for Macs.

Some stuff isn't, sure. Mostly games, although even those are often ported these days. But there's a lot that is. More than enough for anyone's actual needs.

The mouse on my fathers Mac is so horrible inaccurate, it's a real pain to use that machine.

I've encountered some bad mice. I find the out-of-the-box opticals that come with new Macs to be excellent, though.

I mostly just use the trackpad on my TiBook, though. Back when that was a new technology I had some issues with mouse control via the trackpad, but it's perfectly fine these days. Even good enough for some FPS games.

 

[Deleted 2]

Lindley said:
An example. When a program wants to create a new process, on Windows it must call the CreateProcess function, which takes about 10 arguments. Most of them are NULL 99% of the time, but they're there anyway. Furthermore, you have to set up a structure to pass as one of the nonoptional arguments, even though it usually doesn't contain any useful information either.

To do the same thing on a Unix-based system like OSX, you call the fork() function. No arguments, no nothing. So much simpler it's a bit ridiculous. It even gives you the option of continuing the same program in two processes-----Windows *forces* you to start an external program when you call CreateProcess.

I could contrast this with the ineptly designed UNIX socket API, where underspecification has imposed a large number of confusing and non-obvious 'side-effects' on system calls. For example, you can only reliably detect a connection close by calling recv() on a socket. Which barely makes sense for TCP/IP, but the socket api is not supposed to be tied to a single transport layer. Let's not even speak about how these things work across different platforms.

I could use this as a contrast, except... Windows uses it too

 

[FordSVT]

Perhaps this is BS but it is true that Vista (or the project that became Vista) was actually supposed to be an all-new OS but they scrapped the idea in order to get their next OS out more quickly? If that's the case, they should have stuck it out for a couple of years, released XP SP3 to tidy things up and then brought out a real kick-ass OS that can go head to head with Leopard. 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.

Not that they aren't still the dominant OS company, they certainly are for all our talk. If they ever get their mojo back and make a truly great OS again like DOS or Windows 3.0, watch out! Make that 3.1, it came with Minesweeper.

 

[Sheep]

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.

 

[Deleted 2]

FordSVT said:
Perhaps this is BS but it is true that Vista (or the project that became Vista) was actually supposed to be an all-new OS but they scrapped the idea in order to get their next OS out more quickly?

No. Certain, more experimental parts of the operating system were scrapped, however, because they couldn't be made to work as well as MS wanted them to.

If that's the case, they should have stuck it out for a couple of years, released XP SP3 to tidy things up and then brought out a real kick-ass OS that can go head to head with Leopard.

There is little, if anything that needs to be improved in the OS for Windows XP to go head to head with Leopard. The paging strategy described by Lindley sounds annoying, even though I've never observed it myself, but changing that wouldn't be a major change.

OS development has reached a 'dead end', somewhat. There haven't been major changes to the way they are made since the 1980s or so.

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.

They aren't threatened by the Mac in the consumer PC market, and Linux only presents a threat in the (much, much smaller) server market and the third world.