Is Windows really as evil as its made out to be?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I used to be a windows user three years ago, then I bought a PowerBook G4/550 and have used that ever since, however more and more I see myself heading right back for the Windows world. The fact is that there is just too much that should be possible on the Mac that just isn't and won't be any time soon if ever, and it isn't just affecting the "big business" type applications it affects. Even in industries where the Mac traditionally has a stronghold (entertainments e.g. audio and visual) there is a declining support for the Mac.



Visited the PLASA show in London this week, and many of the newly designed products for professional lighting and sound in concert situations in some way integrate with computers either for offline programming or even to aid in the running of the show. However 9 out of 10 companies told me that they had no intention of creating a Mac version of their software as they either didn't have the time or didn't have the user interest to warrant the development.



So why is it that Mac users feel so strongly that windows is the root of all evil and should be removed from the earth. Mac OS.X is a brilliant operating system, but it lacks the acceptance to allow "everything" to be done.



Not only that but I want to be able to:



- Sync my Palm/Pocket PC and Mobile via Wireless or Bluetooth to the Entourage address book/mail store - this is perfectly possible on the PC, syncing both to Outlook is fine, but on the Mac I have to first sync to Address Book/Mail and then use another app to sync to Entourage.



- Keep all my copious amounts of email in a place where I can access it from anywhere in the world, and keep a sufficient quantity of email that IMAP hosting on .Mac is not a sensible proposition, an Exchange server or similar is looking necessary



- Use engineering software such as Solidworks or Rhino to design products that integrate with other people's work, alternates like VectorWorks are just not suitable to integrate



- Conduct IM conversations using proper facilities such as Web Cams, sharing applications and using a communal "white board", and before anyone says "grrrr iChat AV" that isn't a lot of help when the rest of the world involved wishes to operate using MSN/Windows Messenger



not only that but Windows XP is considerably more responsive than OS.X in terms of the UI, XP pauses occassionally where X keeps going, but just simple things like dragging scroll bars and so on are smoother under XP.



Oh and PowerPoint v.X couldn't read all the features of a Powerpoint 2003 (Windows) file correctly, haven't tried the same file in PowerPoint 2004 as I don't have the file any longer, it got integrated into another presentation and the original removed.



I think the key issue is the lack of synchronisation as increasingly having one set of contacts in three places and keeping them all up to date manually is an irritation.



btw the hardware I am comparing the responsiveness on is:



P.III 500MHz/128Mb RAM/Windows XP SP2 Pro



and



Ti550 G4/512Mb RAM/OS.X 10.2.8



XP isn't particularly slow on that old hardware (by Windows standards) and as stated, the UI is by and large quicker and more responsive than X, though X remains consistent with more programs open.



Fair enough I'm only one person, but its all those "only one person" users that make up the user base, though I have persuaded three others to buy Macs since I bought mine. What is it that people truly dislike about Windows? Even stability of XP is up there with X, I've had programs crash under both but nothing has totally taken down either system.



Chris
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 22
    bungebunge Posts: 7,329member
    You could try Panther (10.3) to see if speed and compatibility improve. Even if you don't, I usually get my XP machine to crawl long before my Mac. I guess it's what you're using the machine for that has an effect. Plus, my XP machines crash far far far more often than my Mac OS X machines, even if those haven't been perfect either.



    Why do I hate Windows? I've worked with it for years and it's simply terrible in a lot of ways. It certainly doesn't work as advertised.



    I'm not sure how your client software effects your ability to have lots of email off site. It's the same for a PC or Mac. If you have a server willing to hold it either machine should be able to see it.



    Just today I had to help a coworker sync a Palm with Exchange and it's a not-free third party application. I'm going to guess there's something similar for OS X like there is (or used to be) for PocketPCs.



    This is just stuff straight off the top of my head.
  • Reply 2 of 22
    Yes.
  • Reply 3 of 22
    This is my first post to the forum. I've been browsing for a while, trying to decide when and what type of Mac I'm going to purchase.



    Even though I've seen support for Mac drop in some areas (like Avid being _forced_ onto Windows by Steve Jobs -- he didn't want to include enough slots for Avid cards), the core audience of creative types continues to be there. It was the constant exposure to OSX that has me paying attention to forums like this, newsgroups and industry news and reviews. It's a matter of time before I move to a Mac.



    XP, Linux, FreeBSD and OSX are all stable. Individual user experiences will push the order of stability around, but pretty much they all boot-up and run as expected. Unfortunately, XP suffers from the exploit du-jour and this was driven home today as I spent 2 hours removing malware and junk from an XP machine running Sony video editing software. Certainly all operating systems suffer from these types of bugs, but Microsoft seems to be making these problems a profit center.



    Worse, Windows continues to have annoying issues like how open files are handled, resources released after use and the whole concept of driver installation and conflicts.



    Yes, you may have individual software application compatibility problems, but I think just about every application under Windows has a reasonable counterpart under OSX and other operating systems. Some are free OSS applications.



    I really think that I'll continue to use the XP laptop I have, but it'll be a whole lot less. I have tired of the practices, predation and general second-rate products of Wintel.
  • Reply 5 of 22
    Clearly, Microsoft is responsible for the world's wars, diseases, droughts and ennui. I should know. I'm typing this from a Windows PC.



    There's a certain amount of chauvanism in a lot of people when they first become Mac owners. Most usually find the balance, and realize they prefer Macs, not that they're the One True Way.
  • Reply 6 of 22
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chris Hinds

    So why is it that Mac users feel so strongly that windows is the root of all evil and should be removed from the earth.



    For the following reasons (among many others):



    Quote:

    - Sync my Palm/Pocket PC and Mobile via Wireless or Bluetooth to the Entourage address book/mail store - this is perfectly possible on the PC, syncing both to Outlook is fine, but on the Mac I have to first sync to Address Book/Mail and then use another app to sync to Entourage.



    - Keep all my copious amounts of email in a place where I can access it from anywhere in the world, and keep a sufficient quantity of email that IMAP hosting on .Mac is not a sensible proposition, an Exchange server or similar is looking necessary



    - Conduct IM conversations using proper facilities such as Web Cams, sharing applications and using a communal "white board", and before anyone says "grrrr iChat AV" that isn't a lot of help when the rest of the world involved wishes to operate using MSN/Windows Messenger




    Nearly all of these are due to MS in general and Windows in particular not playing well with others. It's not iChat AV's fault that it can't interface with MSN. MSN is a closed system, and MS will destroy anyone who tries to open it. If you want into their system with iChat AV, bug MS. Ditto Exchange, which (with Outlook) is the very last of the old, early '90s proprietary electronic mail client/server solutions, kept alive in the face of internet standards by monopoly power and brute force. And ditto PocketPC. If you want to sync your PocketPC with a non-Windows system, bug MS. It's their fault they use proprietary protocols instead of standard ones.



    Basically, your problem is that you think MS can do whatever they want, and put up as many obstacles as possible, and it's everyone else's fault for not overcoming those obstacles and keeping up with MS. Sorry, that's not acceptable to me. Once you get out of MS' little corral, the world opens up. It doesn't look open to you because you're still stuck in their little corral, blaming all the companies on the other side of the electrified, razor-wire fence for not leaping over.



    Quote:

    not only that but Windows XP is considerably more responsive than OS.X in terms of the UI, XP pauses occassionally where X keeps going, but just simple things like dragging scroll bars and so on are smoother under XP.



    The tradeoff is that it's a hopelessly primitive windowing system. It's true that archaic software runs blazingly fast on modern hardware, but it's not particularly interesting.



    Quote:

    Oh and PowerPoint v.X couldn't read all the features of a Powerpoint 2003 (Windows) file correctly, haven't tried the same file in PowerPoint 2004 as I don't have the file any longer, it got integrated into another presentation and the original removed.



    And this is... MS' fault, right? One more reason why they're evil. They've never gotten this right. Partly because they want to keep you in their little corral, and partly because they've changed the format of .DOC files so many times in order to frustrate companies that try to be compatible that even they can't keep track of everything they've done. In other words, they've seriously compromised both the compatibility and reliability of a bedrock application in order to crush competition. Is this acceptable to you, as the person who gets inconvenienced by all this tactical maneuvering?



    Quote:

    I think the key issue is the lack of synchronisation as increasingly having one set of contacts in three places and keeping them all up to date manually is an irritation.



    And the blame for this belongs squarely at Microsoft's feet. They've been pulling this kind of crap, and far worse, for over a decade. That's why they're evil. If they had any concern for your needs, or for the general health of the technological ecology, they'd have adhered to standards and concerned themselves with interoperability.
  • Reply 7 of 22
    Amorph said it best, and I have little to add except this; use the right tool for the job. If its easier to get the job done in XP, so be it. It all depends on the job at hand and the person behind the gear.



    Windows isn't evil, per say. After switching back in 2001 its taken time to break old habits and grow into things. Now my preference is Mac and I make that heavily apparent to people around me and co-workers. Where am I going with this... ?
  • Reply 8 of 22
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Amorph

    Nearly all of these are due to MS in general and Windows in particular not playing well with others. It's not iChat AV's fault that it can't interface with MSN. MSN is a closed system, and MS will destroy anyone who tries to open it. If you want into their system with iChat AV, bug MS. Ditto Exchange, which (with Outlook) is the very last of the old, early '90s proprietary electronic mail client/server solutions, kept alive in the face of internet standards by monopoly power and brute force. And ditto PocketPC. If you want to sync your PocketPC with a non-Windows system, bug MS. It's their fault they use proprietary protocols instead of standard ones.



    Basically, your problem is that you think MS can do whatever they want, and put up as many obstacles as possible, and it's everyone else's fault for not overcoming those obstacles and keeping up with MS. Sorry, that's not acceptable to me. Once you get out of MS' little corral, the world opens up. It doesn't look open to you because you're still stuck in their little corral, blaming all the companies on the other side of the electrified, razor-wire fence for not leaping over.




    The problem is not that one person is stuck on the wrong side of the fence, it is that it is almost impossible to break industry to the other side. How can a person who has to be able to integrate with their employers systems begin to use open standards when their company utilises what has been the "standard" for so long. The difficulty is that when MS Word/Excel etc were in their early stages there was no real competition to them and so companies adopted those programs, and now they can't leave. Logic dictates that to maintain compatibility with earlier work, the same programs must continue to be used.



    Quote:

    The tradeoff is that it's a hopelessly primitive windowing system. It's true that archaic software runs blazingly fast on modern hardware, but it's not particularly interesting.



    I will take your word for it that the windows system is primitive, I don't do coding. However to the majority of end users that doesn't matter, all they care about is the computer working on boot.



    Quote:

    And this is... MS' fault, right? One more reason why they're evil. They've never gotten this right. Partly because they want to keep you in their little corral, and partly because they've changed the format of .DOC files so many times in order to frustrate companies that try to be compatible that even they can't keep track of everything they've done. In other words, they've seriously compromised both the compatibility and reliability of a bedrock application in order to crush competition. Is this acceptable to you, as the person who gets inconvenienced by all this tactical maneuvering?



    And the blame for this belongs squarely at Microsoft's feet. They've been pulling this kind of crap, and far worse, for over a decade. That's why they're evil. If they had any concern for your needs, or for the general health of the technological ecology, they'd have adhered to standards and concerned themselves with interoperability.




    Again the same things are undeniably Microsoft's fault. What Microsoft does offer is a total connection and integration from the smallest Pocket PC right up to the Servers running an organisation. No its not open standard, its not perfect but it is fully integrated. The Apple alternate is not as fully featured, Mail can't send automatic responses to messages as Outlook can, iChatAV does not allow the sharing of programs as Windows Messenger does, if I wish to share an engineering design with another colleague in Solidworks and discuss it I can over WM, but not over iChat, which I might add is locked in to another proprietory format, AIM. MS have also announced a server that will communicate with AIM, MSN and Yahoo! messenger protocols.



    Microsoft aren't blameless and yeah they are trying to keep people's business, but so does every other company in business today. If you don't have a good business model you don't survive. Apple certainly innovate in a way that MS do not, but Apple don't offer a complete solution to everything like MS do in terms of a corporation, until that changes Apple's market share and markets in which they have strength will not change. Even Steve Job's is claiming iLife to be "Office for the rest of your life" so if that isn't acknowledging Office as being dominant then what is. A standard isn't just made by being open, it is made by acceptance and user base too.



    Regards



    Chris
  • Reply 9 of 22
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chris Hinds

    The problem is not that one person is stuck on the wrong side of the fence, it is that it is almost impossible to break industry to the other side. How can a person who has to be able to integrate with their employers systems begin to use open standards when their company utilises what has been the "standard" for so long. The difficulty is that when MS Word/Excel etc were in their early stages there was no real competition to them and so companies adopted those programs, and now they can't leave. Logic dictates that to maintain compatibility with earlier work, the same programs must continue to be used.





    I send people PDFs instead of .doc's, and when I get .doc's, I turn them into PDF's, and send out the PDF. Generally speaking, I've found that people prefer to read the PDFs anyway, and generally speaking, I do most of the documenting for the engineering side of things. (I use Quark)



    Excel, on the otherhand, isn't that bad at all. It seems like there's a fair degree of cross-platform and cross-version compatibility. Plus, in Excel it doesn't really matter that PC's always botch font sizes, making the file look different on different computers. (Big problem with Word)
  • Reply 10 of 22
    ionyzionyz Posts: 491member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chris Hinds

    I will take your word for it that the windows system is primitive, I don't do coding. However to the majority of end users that doesn't matter, all they care about is the computer working on boot.



    Nor do I (application code at least) but it is primitive on the backend. The Windows GUI has remained virtually unchanged since it was introduced back in '95. While Apple radically changed all aspects of their operating system, something Microsoft can't even begin to fathom thanks to the cruft of the current system, lack of effort and user complacence.



    Users would be happy with Win 3.1 today too if nothing better came along. You have to drag most people kicking and screaming.



    Windows isn't evil, but comparing it to others and the effort put forth they are dead last. More interesting stuff is coming out on Mac OS and Linux then it is on Microsoft. With all the capital and manpower not to mention marketshare shouldn't it be the other way around?
  • Reply 11 of 22
    ionyzionyz Posts: 491member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Splinemodel

    I send people PDFs instead of .doc's, and when I get .doc's, I turn them into PDF's, and send out the PDF. Generally speaking, I've found that people prefer to read the PDFs anyway, and generally speaking, I do most of the documenting for the engineering side of things. (I use Quark)



    For final delivery I love PDF but when editing needs to be done back and forth documents have to remain in Word DOC format. Erm, unless I'm missing something.
  • Reply 12 of 22
    Quote:

    Originally posted by IonYz

    For final delivery I love PDF but when editing needs to be done back and forth documents have to remain in Word DOC format. Erm, unless I'm missing something.



    I do all the editing anyway. Furthermore, for anything longer than 5 pages, it's Quark Time.? an RTF works great for anything less than 5 pages. MS Word wedges itself into the no-man's land between these formats, and in my opinion it's a piece of junk. So if the file is on the small side, I convert it to RTF. For people with windows, Word will read the rtf's anyway, so the pointy-haired people out there won't even know that it's not Word.



    But I digress. It is very possible to edit PDF's in Acrobat, though it's not the more enriching experience to do so. Even so, when you're sending documentation to people, it's not for editing, but for reading.
  • Reply 13 of 22
    Quote:

    Originally posted by IonYz

    While Apple radically changed all aspects of their operating system, something Microsoft can't even begin to fathom thanks to the cruft of the current system, lack of effort and user complacence.



    With all the capital and manpower not to mention marketshare shouldn't it be the other way around?




    Well realistically Apple hadn't changed their OS from System 7 through to 9.2.2, and they had to do something to replace OS9's somewhat archaic memory management and bring the UI up to date with the impending launch of Windows XP. Using Steve Job's (NeXT's) code work on BSD was the most logical step to take. Innovations such as Expose and iLife are what put OS.X above windows, and you are quite correct with Microsoft's resources Windows SHOULD have much better integration of features like that, just as the Mac should have better tools for the enterprise. Windows is still, even under XP a technical operating system, and if you know how to you can customise it to suit, just as you can OS.X using Terminal. The difference is X never asks you to get under the bonnet and do things by command line.



    OS.X is superior from the usability and functionality aspect, but the integration of the system for an enterprise has a way to go yet. Microsoft's Active Directory is actually a very good way of organising a network, but if you don't need AD, then a Mac OS.X server is a better replacement to NT4 Server. Trouble is how do you sell your boss on a £2200 XServe when a Dell PowerEdge is £700?





    Chris
  • Reply 14 of 22
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chris Hinds

    I will take your word for it that the windows system is primitive, I don't do coding. However to the majority of end users that doesn't matter, all they care about is the computer working on boot.



    Hope this isn't too much of a digression, but the reason this is important for users is apparent when you start doing graphic work, especially video. Certainly, Windows handles graphics at a fair level too, it is a GUI after all. But aside from a handful of features that Apple's Keynote doesn't have (none of which are deal breakers for most people), when compared to Powerpoint, the only thing that Microsoft's software has over Apple's is ubiquity. Get into video, and see how Motion and the development of advanced CoreImage and CoreVideo APIs allow editing in real time where they used to require a separate rendering environment or even a linear UI. That's a major productivity and creativity boost, one that even Adobe can't claim. Once Apple can put that technology from their future OS and professional-grade software and into consumer software like iMovie, iPhoto, Keynote, and so forth, the benefits of this far outweigh the original disadvantage of a >slightly< less responsive UI.



    It's not unlikely that around the time Longhorn ships (or maybe a little later, to be realistic), Macs will have a resolution independent display model too. After that, high dpi displays can be introduced for Macs, meaning truer WYSIWYG experience, and more UI advancements that take advantage of this technology. I mean, this display stuff is not just for pro video folks and "Creative" types; the technology will make a real difference in the bottom line for people, even if they're typing in Word.



    We had a member some time ago when Mac OS X first came out who couldn't get over why a new imaging model was needed in the OS. (I think they still occasionally lurk here and post in the MacNN forums.) They firgured that what Macs and Windows had until then was good enough for anything. It was hard to imagine what could be done with this tech for a lot of people, but we're finally seeing this tech used to a bigger advantage, beyond writing PDFs and scaling pictures in iPhoto.
  • Reply 15 of 22
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chris Hinds

    OS.X is superior from the usability and functionality aspect, but the integration of the system for an enterprise has a way to go yet. Microsoft's Active Directory is actually a very good way of organising a network, but if you don't need AD, then a Mac OS.X server is a better replacement to NT4 Server. Trouble is how do you sell your boss on a £2200 XServe when a Dell PowerEdge is £700?



    Then sell them on an iMac, if that's all the power you need. Really, that PowerEdge is nowhere near the capabilities of that Xserve, and MacOS X Server will run on anything Apple sells. Heck, I have it running on an old RevA B/W 350MHz G3. Works great.



    Also, MacOS X Server does have AD tools. Slick, eh? They're not as polished as the MS tools of course, but it's included as part of Open Directory, the umbrella that unifies AD, NetInfo, flat files, AppleTalk, Rendezvous and NIS into one API. If you already have an AD system in place, then you can migrate to MacOS X Server and have the AD info brought over as well.
  • Reply 16 of 22
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kickaha

    Then sell them on an iMac, if that's all the power you need. Really, that PowerEdge is nowhere near the capabilities of that Xserve, and MacOS X Server will run on anything Apple sells. Heck, I have it running on an old RevA B/W 350MHz G3. Works great.





    Power isn't everything, data integrity is. £700 will buy you a rack mount PowerEdge with a dual hard drive RAID-1 internally, unfortunately the iMac isn't rack mountable and can't take 2 HDDs. Though I do confess to making an error in that the PowerEdge is £700 but still needs a copy of Windows server to make it work. My apologies for the confusion



    Chris
  • Reply 17 of 22
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Don't forget the per-client licensing fees on top of that...
  • Reply 18 of 22
    How does RAID-1 give you data integrity? I would think you would really need RAID-5 and at least 3 HD's.



    ...and Windows Server 2003 lists at $3000, no? (...or $700, via less "official" sources)
  • Reply 19 of 22
    dobbydobby Posts: 797member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chris Hinds

    Well realistically Apple hadn't changed their OS from System 7 through to 9.2.2, and they had to do something to replace OS9's somewhat archaic memory management and bring the UI up to date with the impending launch of Windows XP. Using Steve Job's (NeXT's) code work on BSD was the most logical step to take. Chris



    It wasn't anything to do with XP, OS X was a replacement for Rhapsody back in April 1998. I was a tester for some code of theirs.



    Dobby.
  • Reply 20 of 22
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Randycat99

    How does RAID-1 give you data integrity? I would think you would really need RAID-5 and at least 3 HD's.



    ...and Windows Server 2003 lists at $3000, no? (...or $700, via less "official" sources)




    Fair enough 3 HDDs, I still can put 3 HDD into the Dell PowerEdge 1u Server, while the only Mac that allows 3 is the X-Serve. Over here a copy of Windows Server 2003 is £395 (about $700) from most sources, with an additional £50 ($75) per 5 seats. RAID-1 is more redundant than no RAID at all and a hell of a way ahead of the much misused IMO RAID-0.



    Regards





    Chris
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