Apple's OS X passes Windows Vista in worldwide usage - Page 3

Agreed.  For example, I have a 2002 Dell with XP running a Shimadzu high performance liquid chromatography system.  The Shimadzu HPLC requires Windoze and a 32 pin serial connector.  I didn't want to buy a new computer so I just used my old Dell.  To make it run faster, I don't have anti-virus software running.  To avoid getting viruses, I don't connect it to a network.  I know others that have a similar setup.

 

By the way, if anyone is interested in writing OSX compatible control software for an HPLC system, let me know.  It won't be hard to make improvements.  The Shimadzu software was obviously written using 1990's technology.  Shimadzu thinks we should appreciate the fact that the software is in color. 

I have always had Macs and PCs since Mac Plus and IBM PC 8086. As I said before, and it is just a technicality, I upgraded to Linux by formatting the drive and installing it on the same machine that was previously running Vista. If you threw out your Vista computer and bought a Mac, you did not really upgrade, you replaced your computer. I know it sounds cute to say you upgraded but then it blurs the meaning of the conversation when people speak of upgrading from Win 7 to Win 8. Did they buy a new machine or just a new OS for their current machine? Perhaps if you turned your Windows  PC into a Hackintosh you could say you upgraded it to OS X.

Honestly, that's not saying much.

The vulnerability of Windows XP is was what made it successful. Everyone needed anti-virus software and an IT department to deploy it.  From Windows XP was  born the modern IT department where fear drives everything and avoiding catastrophic infections was the ultimate objective of their existence.  There was a band-aid to fix everything and all the band-aids created a fragile system that requires an army of IT people.  If anything went wrong, the IT department could always blame the problem on hackers and purveyors of porn. In the meantime all business software was written for this unstable system and installing that software required the same army of IT people to maintain it.  Now that the software is paid for and the army of IT people are running it, it would cost more to replace it than to just stay the course.  

 

The irony here is that Microsoft entrenched itself by selling an inferior product.  I don't think MS intended to do this.  It was just dumb luck.

Who made you the arbiter of lexicography?

It is perfectly fine for me and others in this forum to metaphorically refer to "upgrading to OSX" when we toss a PC and buy a Mac.  I saw your earlier posts and despite your comments I intentionally chose the word "upgrade."   I and others on this forum know what that means in this context.  At the end of the day, language is a means of communicating.  Adapting words to new situations is quite useful and is the reason there are multiple definitions in the dictionary. There's nothing wrong with that.

 

Preach, brother. The public image of Wintel is that that it is the platform of computer nerds. The truth is the diametric opposite. Wintel is the platform of wage slaves. The throngs of IT staff act as overseers on the cubicle plantation. IT is not particularly competent. So, they hold on to their power by keeping the wage slaves ignorant and their bosses in the dark.

 

 

Lets also not forget the changing needs of applications. Applications require more and more juice as time goes on - Prime example is Photoshop. I've still got Photoshop 7 installed on my HP Slate 2 and it runs like a charm (since the software is from about, what, 2002?) but CS5 just murders the little Atom CPU in that tablet that it becomes unusable for sketching.

 

 

I did have a good run with Linux in the mid 2000s when I started college. We had a shared family computer at the time and I could never get a moments peace on it - even when I was actually busy working on papers and reports. I shoved Linux on an old P3 with 384MB of RAM and it worked like a charm and I used it for a solid few years. But after getting a Mac and using Windows 7 I can now can't stand being in-front of a Linux desktop machine - especially Ubuntu.

 

Have you see the most recent version of Ubuntu? Its a horrid mash-up of different UI elements and paradigms. We have a large app drawer ala Android/iOS, the GUI elements ripped directly from Mac OS X (from the left hand aligned rounded window buttons to the slider toggle buttons in the system preferences) and a menu bar that looks like its from OS X but functions like a Commodore AMIGA circa 1990 in that it hides itself when not in use. Its a mess.

 

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Windows XP Mode is Windows XP Professional running in a Virtual Machine. We use it at work to test websites in IE8.

Win32 code extends even further back than 1995 - Windows NT 3.5 is where it all started I believe. Very old code from the Win9x days is not guaranteed to run on modern operating systems due to the reliance on DOS and the [dot]COM interface. I have some older Win32 games (such as Roller Coaster Tycoon) and they need a patch to work on XP - on Vista and 7 they have some crazy glitches or instability.

That is just a tired old joke that wasn't even funny a decade ago when it first showed up. Using the phrase upgrading my Windows computer to a Mac is just dumb and too clever by half in my opinion, but feel free to use it if it makes you feel good about yourself. After reading about your abhorrence of Windows I can understand how this makes sense to you. There is nothing like a fresh convert to really energize the fandom. Welcome to the RDF.

Edited by mstone - 9/3/12 at 6:19pm

More like an old shoe. Comfy, and one doesn't have to spend money on new one if one sticks with it

I'll try NOT to be impolite here... but in my eyes, it only means you are not too familiar with Windows, at least not in the last 5 years or so.

XP is that popular because it was around longer than any other OS. Basically 6 years between XP and first replacement (Vista). And then, we all know how Vista was received, so that gave XP another 3 years of "exclusivity".

Give Win 7 same conditions - which might happen, if Win 8 turns another Vista in consumers' eyes - and it will be as popular, or more, after maturing for 6+ years.

I had Vista on both my work and home PC. After SP1, there was nothing wrong with it. When I moved to Win 7, I haven't noticed any huge improvements in performance - maybe a tiny bit shorter boot times, but nothing to writhe home about. I'm not talking about benchmarks, but about everyday usage... And I'm not saying Win 7 was performing bad, I'm saying Vista (with SP2 at the time) was performing really good.

Sure 7 brought UI improvements - new taskbar, snap-to-edge etc., but my apps and games were running (perceivably) same on both OS, and I haven't seen BSOD on either.

You Windows Apologists really hate people being happy, don't you? UPGRADING my computing experience to the Mac was the single best thing I have ever done in my 25-year career. I did it after Windows XP destroyed my entire setup with a known fatal issue which Microsoft was incapable of fixing and which STILL occurs in Windows 7. And in the six years that have followed I have not had one single issue with OS X, still using the same environment I set up in 2006. I know that really galls you, and you'll have some tired old comeback about how I've been brainwashed by Jobs' minions of doom (hey, why not throw in the old RDF one again, you Microsoft shills always like that one), but those are the facts.

So yes, I UPGRADED to OS X. Sorry you're too bitter and twisted to accept that - I know, why not restart your PC? The ensuing 30-minute wait for the latest truckload of major security patches to be installed should give you some badly-needed chill-out time. I'm off to get some work done.

XP mode is basically running any incompatible app seamlessly thru a virtualized XP SP3 OS. I doubt people are using it to run their current browser and surf the web.

Care to tell us which 'known fatal issue' you are claiming about? I can't wait.

You are exactly right.  The management at my company is like 50-65 years old and they just don't have any experience with tinkering in the computer arts.  They have no experience setting up their own networks, setting up a RAID, setting up a home server, etc.  When it comes to IT, they give total control to the IT guy who has them fooled into thinking he is necessary and competent.  I am by no means a computer guy.  My training is in chemistry.  However, there are plenty of us non-computer types at work (in our mid 30s) that understand computers.  We joke around about how incompetent our IT department is and how the "old guard" thinks they walk on water.  I could write pages about the brain dead IT staff we have.....

This gig won't last forever.  MS has built their castle on a pillar of sand.  It may be 1 year, 5 years, or 10 years, but eventually the sand castle will fall.  Eventually the 30-40 year old will be in management and the investment in legacy software will have been recouped.  Shitty MS products and brain dead IT groups will join Adobe Flash in the trash bin where they belong.  

I wasn't using "upgrading" as a joke and it doesn't make me feel better or clever to use it.  The fact is, many people that switch to Mac call it an "upgrade".    I think it has caught on because of its accuracy in meaning.  The word "upgrade" connotes an improvement (i.e., a grade above), which is exactly what switching from Windoze to Mac is.  It has nothing to do with "fandom" or being a "fresh convert" or "abhorrence of Windows".  The word "upgrade" is simply a particularly good word to describe the experience of switching from PC to Mac.

 

If you were twenty years older, you probably would have been bitching about the use of "upgrade" in reference to the next version of an OS.  I can see your 1970s blog saying something like "upgrade is technically incorrect".  "the word should be 'newgrade' because the word 'up' suggests something orthogonal to the surface of the earth and clearly software has nothing to do with direction."  

Nice....LOL

 

My distain for MS products comes from using Vista.  About once or twice a month my computer screen would start flashing and 5 seconds latter the screen would turn blue and then text would appear that said "Dumping RAM" and then the computer would crash.  I scoured the internet for solutions and hounded my IT guys, but nothing worked.  Eventually I figured out that if I hit control save in the 5 seconds before the RAM got dumped my work would get saved and I could just restart my computer and go on.  (People that use MS products learn to accomodate minor flaws like this).  One day the crash happened and the series of flashing burned out the backlight on my monitor.  You can imagine how pissed I was.  I decided I'd had it.

 

I have moved on and I'm never going back.

Yeah, some of them don't see the need to upgrade until they are told that their OS is OLD and out of date because they don't use any whiz bang features.

 

I personally never really liked Windows much, even though I was forced to use it with various jobs i've had.

 

What's an unavoidable shame is that Apple has to use their business model because their system is tied to the hardware and as a result, we get better support and customer satisfaction?

 

Each method has it's drawbacks. Spotty support and hardware vendors coming out with literally crap systems running Windows.  The only problem with Apple's OS is that it is getting more GPU hungry with the whiz bang features and Intels integrated GPU doesn't cut it for certain things.

If Apple did the licensing route a la Windows, they would have charge a decent amount of money for the licensing to make it worthwhile doing, plus we would have to have better motherboards with all of the standard I/O ports, which is happening.

 

I get a headache trying to compare an HP or Dell box to a Mac, because they have crappy websites with too many different models to sift through.  So I'm getting frustrated even talking to PC geeks because they think that a fair comparison is a DYI PC with a cheap monitor is a fair comparison.  God I wish those guys would get a hint that they are mentally incapable of understanding the importance of the benefits of an actual company that brings hardware and software together rather than the hobbyist trying to be Mr. Expert because they put together their own systems like it's some special feat.

1.34% ?? LOLL at anyone who tried to spin that as positive. The fact that the iPad has twice the market share is a negative for Apple. Any douche who wants to question that should go and and look at margins.

Shrinking margins at the expense of market share will bring down revenue, profit and eventually valuation. 

 

I still use XP Pro, it's still updated and can sign on to active directory domains, I was surprised to learn here how many people still use it, but considering it meets most people's needs especially in the managed corporate-setting, why change something that's already paid for and is managed properly? (I don't agree with MSFT removing steady state for XP from the downloads section however, despite still being useful).  Many companies also find their considerable investments in Office 2003, 2007 still adequate.

 

Apple OS X is $19.99 now, which I get totally, but MSFT following suit with a low-price upgrade for Metro?  That may not be such a good idea for a software-only company.

 

MSFT aren't f-ups at all IMHO, it's just a different business with different products, there's plenty of room but I think Gates was known for borderline-illegal business tactics to gain marketshare.

It's not about being afraid, it's about not having a reason to upgrade. If your not obsessed with technology then why spend money to have the latest when what you've got still does the job?

For instance my parents still have a iMac g5, which essentially does what they want. It's a bit slow now, won't run any of the latest software from apple and also therefore won't sync with there iPads (ironically there older xp laptops will). But is that a good enough reason to go and buy a new machine or even upgrade its os from tiger? It still after all does 95% of what they want it to do.

So xp may not be the greatest but, it still runs the latest version of chrome, Skype and the copy of word people have still works. So for most it's still good enough.