Thanks. But does that easiness of setup, administering and use translates to real-life scenarios where networks are at best mixed and infrastructure (servers) are much more likely to be Windows based..?
The fact of the matter is that OS X does support SMB. I don't know why your clients are having problems, but if they've only got one Mac on a network full of Windows machines, the likelihood is that they just don't know how to set up OS X properly. Another possibility is that there is something wrong with that particular Mac.
I think your use of the phrase "real-life" is disingenuous. Surely a network full of Macs is just as much "real-life"? Sure, businesses on the whole use Windows more than OS X, but that doesn't eliminate the possibility of having a Mac-only network.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nikon133
How does OSX deal with Exchange
Entourage (part of Microsoft Office for Mac) supports Exchange, and in the next version of OS X, there will be "native" support.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nikon133
VPN
Yup, no problem. There's native support for L2TP over IPsec and PPTP, and Cisco provide an OS X VPN client.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nikon133
remote connections
As in remote desktop? There's a free Microsoft remote desktop client for connecting to Windows machines, and OS X has a built-in VNC server and client.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nikon133
terminal servers..?
Not sure about that one. Probably.
If you'd like to know more about advanced OS X networking capabilities, check out the details of OS X server here. (I've linked to the features page; note that there are other links across the top of the page to "Technology", "Resources" and "Tech Specs".)
If you'd like to know more about OS X in general, I strongly suggest that you take the time (and it would be a considerable amount of time) to read all of the arstechnicha reviews of OS X from 10.0 onwards (if you get bored, read just the 10.4 and 10.5 ones; if you've more time available you could even go further back and start at the DP (developer preview) 2 review):
I would expect big chunk of windows awkwardness should be due to demands for compatibility with existing infrastructure, which is a must for business. There is a price you pay for everything, including compatibility.
SMB and Exchange (amongst other things) are Microsoft's own dreadful creations, forced upon everyone via Microsoft's illegal abuse of their monopoly position in operating systems. A big chunk of Windows' awkwardness is due to Microsoft's nefarious elimination of legitimate competition in the market which reduced the requirement for them to innovate or even be competent.
But what about video conversion, DVD ripping..? Is it all covered?
There's QuickTime Pro, whose features you can mostly access for free via MPEG streamclip (also available for Windows), and then there's Handbrake (which will rip DVDs with the aid of VLC)
The fact of the matter is that OS X does support SMB. I don't know why your clients are having problems, but if they've only got one Mac on a network full of Windows machines, the likelihood is that they just don't know how to set up OS X properly. Another possibility is that there is something wrong with that particular Mac.
They might also be using Tiger, Panther, or earlier. Networking wasn't so seamless. In Leopard, it's entirely transparent. I spent a lot more time getting our windows machines to work on the network than our Macs. In fact with the PCs, I had to find IP addresses just to get them to connect to the printer. The Macs found them like they were hooked up to a USB port.
They might also be using Tiger, Panther, or earlier. Networking wasn't so seamless. In Leopard, it's entirely transparent.
I'm not so sure. In respect of SMB, the main thing Leopard did was move where things are kept in the GUI. Yes, the version of Samba that OS X uses goes up with each major OS revision, so Leopard's is more recent than Tiger's, which is more recent than Panther's etc.
Yes, there could be some obscure Samba bug that's provoked by their specific SMB setup, but if they knew the intricate ins and outs of the network and how OS X implements SMB, they could probably work around it. Because they are Windows experts, if a Windows machine has a problem, they know how to fix it and don't think twice - in fact fixing such a problem may be so automatic that they don't even classify it as a problem. If OS X has a problem though, they aren't OS X experts so immediately fixing the problem is impossible.
I think your use of the phrase "real-life" is disingenuous. Surely a network full of Macs is just as much "real-life"? Sure, businesses on the whole use Windows more than OS X, but that doesn't eliminate the possibility of having a Mac-only network.
I think I wasn't disingenuous. Chance of encountering Windows-dominant networks in real life is much greater than OSX-dominant network. Like I said, it is a bit like with languages - Esperanto is considered very easy to learn (setup?) but in real life, where much more people talk English, it doesn't help much.
As an example, SonicWALL's SSL VPN did not work on Mac until recently. Now they do have Netextender for OSX but I still see a lot of people complaining about it's functionality (or lack of it) so I wonder if technology is still bugged and limited; maybe just some people don't know how to set it up, hard to tell. Unfortunately none of our clients using SSL VPN wanted to use OSX machine for that so far, so we could not give it a go ourselves.
We're talking OS X vs. Windows, not about set-top boxes. Windows Media Center beats the shit out of Front Row. If you want to build an HTPC, Windows is the only way to go.
But if you don't want to build an HTPC, and instead want to buy something that works out of the box so you don't have to spend hours building it then you can have the apple TV for 300 bucks.
Argue all you like, but in Windows you can play back blu-ray and in OS X you can't. Therefore a redeeming quality of Windows relative to OS X is that it can play back Blu-ray. End of story.
People argue about the lack of bluray as if it were a big deal. Sorry but the offering for bluray is minuscule (400 or so titles) and I would not be surprised of bluray dies soon due to preference for encoded video. So the lack of bluray is a very minor consideration for me, if at all.
You can't dismiss this argument so easily just because you found out that for you the best keyboard is an Apple keyboard. There's more to external hardware than keyboards. It's a sad fact that due to its ubiquity, the Windows platform has a much larger range of supported hardware. It's not due to Windows being inherently superior, it's due to its massive market share; but the means don't change the ends: bigger range of 3rd party hardware.
If you only use left handed trackballs with 8 buttons then maybe you are screwed with a mac. Sorry if I am not getting worried by your lack of input choices.
Well, I did not have chance to use iWorks so I had to settle down for some Googling on that topic. Every compare I saw (I stopped at 5th) claimed iWorks set of features is nowhere close to MS Office. Not only Word, but Excel, PowerPoint... Even crappy Mac version of Office seem to be much more feature rich than iWorks, and it is nowhere close to Office for Windows.
Of course, if you are using only most basic features, you might find out WordPad is better than iWorks and Office word processing put together. Hardly relevant.
Sorry but you are wrong but let me explain why because this is very important and it goes to the core of the PC versus Mac discussion:
PC products all focus on features. The more the merrier even though you wont be using 80% of them.
That would be ok, really. Problem is that where is DOES matter: intuitive and homogenous user interface, and, most of all, SPEED AND STABILITY, which are things that are difficult to cast as FEATURES, mac completely and absolutely blows PC to kingdom come.
Take iworks: it runs like a bat out of hell, but has only mostly basic features. You will use 90% of the features it does have and miss perhaps a few features that are coming up in version 2.
MS Office? you will use 20% of it and spend a ton of time trying to navigate is stupid interface, trying to find commands you need, cursing its slow-ass execution and recovering corrupt files from backup.
Sorry but you are wrong but let me explain why because this is very important and it goes to the core of the PC versus Mac discussion:
PC products all focus on features. The more the merrier even though you wont be using 80% of them.
That would be ok, really. Problem is that where is DOES matter: intuitive and homogenous user interface, and, most of all, SPEED AND STABILITY, which are things that are difficult to cast as FEATURES, mac completely and absolutely blows PC to kingdom come.
Take iworks: it runs like a bat out of hell, but has only mostly basic features. You will use 90% of the features it does have and miss perhaps a few features that are coming up in version 2.
MS Office? you will use 20% of it and spend a ton of time trying to navigate is stupid interface, trying to find commands you need, cursing its slow-ass execution and recovering corrupt files from backup.
No idea where that is coming from. Office for Mac, maybe? Comes to Windows Office... I'm working for company providing - among the other things - general IT support to it's customers, some of them being big domains (for New Zealand standards). For last two years - much as I'm working there - I can't recall any logged support ticket related to MS Office problem(s).
True lots of people were bi*ching with interface changes Office 2007 introduced, but that is common thing for Enterprise segment anyway - employees are usually lacking enthusiasm to learn new things, they just want to get done with the job. From my personal point of view, there's nothing wrong with 2007 interface - in fact I like it a lot - but one does have to get into philosophy different from what Office was offering previous 10+ years. New users don't have such problems, which makes sense.
If your word processing, spreadsheet and presentation requirements are so basic, I understand you can prefer simple and colourful. It still does not make it better in general.It's like saying Picasa, GIMP and Photo.NET are better image editing programs because they are much cheaper (in fact free), faster, simpler, have cute colourful GUI and much less features than Photoshop.
People argue about the lack of bluray as if it were a big deal. Sorry but the offering for bluray is minuscule (400 or so titles) and I would not be surprised of bluray dies soon due to preference for encoded video. So the lack of bluray is a very minor consideration for me, if at all.
Yeah, I'm sure people were saying the same when DVD was introduced...
SMB and Exchange (amongst other things) are Microsoft's own dreadful creations, forced upon everyone via Microsoft's illegal abuse of their monopoly position in operating systems. A big chunk of Windows' awkwardness is due to Microsoft's nefarious elimination of legitimate competition in the market which reduced the requirement for them to innovate or even be competent.
In all fairness, SMB was designed by IBM, not Microsoft. Microsoft did implement it and also did good share of modifications and improvements, particularly with Vista/Server 2008... but I don't know much about Unix/OSX networking so I haven't got a clue how they compare. I will take a look at that - thanks for the links.
Monopoly, well... I'm not going to defend MS, they are dastardly bunch... but so is anyone else. I'm far from happy I can't legally install OSX on my HP notebook which should - hardware wise - be perfectly able to run it. I'd like to try it before I decide to invest in Mac computer or not. However...
Sorry but you are wrong but let me explain why because this is very important and it goes to the core of the PC versus Mac discussion:
PC products all focus on features. The more the merrier even though you wont be using 80% of them.
So was Apple before your kind stole the platform. And what if you do use those features? You rnd up with an iMac that doesn't do what you need it to do. Apple used to cater to the most demanding customers and let the less demanding customers sort it out. Now they cater to the typical consumer who wants something that looks cool and lets the above average user choose between a very high end workstation or a very mediocre iMac.
Quote:
That would be ok, really. Problem is that where is DOES matter: intuitive and homogenous user interface, and, most of all, SPEED AND STABILITY, which are things that are difficult to cast as FEATURES, mac completely and absolutely blows PC to kingdom come.
Yes, they do. Mac OS X is Apple's greatest asset.
Quote:
Take iworks: it runs like a bat out of hell, but has only mostly basic features. You will use 90% of the features it does have and miss perhaps a few features that are coming up in version 2.
You mean version 4. Its a great consumer suite. The only real changes I would make is to put the export options in the save dialog and add the option to save in office formats by default.
Quote:
MS Office? you will use 20% of it and spend a ton of time trying to navigate is stupid interface, trying to find commands you need, cursing its slow-ass execution and recovering corrupt files from backup.
If you're in that 20% you at least have that option (which is more than I can say for the computer choices on the platform). iWork may be the better choice, but 90% of the Mac users I know can't read a pages, numbers, or keynote file let alone the rest of the world. If you're going to be in an office or school environment seamless integration with office is key. You accidentally send the wrong file time, you could be out of job. As of iWork '08 integration isn't so seamless.
In all fairness, SMB was designed by IBM, not Microsoft. Microsoft did implement it and also did good share of modifications and improvements, particularly with Vista/Server 2008... but I don't know much about Unix/OSX networking so I haven't got a clue how they compare. I will take a look at that - thanks for the links.
Monopoly, well... I'm not going to defend MS, they are dastardly bunch... but so is anyone else. I'm far from happy I can't legally install OSX on my HP notebook which should - hardware wise - be perfectly able to run it. I'd like to try it before I decide to invest in Mac computer or not. However...
I would normally agree with you except for one thing, BIOS. OS X should support more options, but those options should also be running EFI firmware instead of that 80s dinosaur.
Yeah, I'm sure people were saying the same when DVD was introduced...
Well the big difference this time around is that blu-ray did not get a huge leg up from the PlayStation, as the PS3 is pretty far behind the 360 and Wii... the PS2 is the best selling console ever and to this day comes pretty close to the PS3 week after week.. and it was released in 2000. And up until recently, the PS3 had configurations with backwards compatibility.
Well the big difference this time around is that blu-ray did not get a huge leg up from the PlayStation, as the PS3 is pretty far behind the 360 and Wii... the PS2 is the best selling console ever and to this day comes pretty close to the PS3 week after week.. and it was released in 2000. And up until recently, the PS3 had configurations with backwards compatibility.
True, PS3 failed to repeat PS2 success (so far at least). However, BR did win HD war and is at this point supported by all the big names in movies industry. I think it is already beyond PS3 success or failure. Plus, even in developed world there are still too many homes with limited Internet access, be it speed or quota wise; I don't see downloadable HD content being easily available to majority of consumers that soon, and in the meantime BR will be forced upon consumers one way or another.
Plus, many individuals have "collection bug" and will prefer to own hard copy to data stream. It also does make decent present for so many situations - again, something downloads can't replace. I don't know if BR will - and when - become as popular as DVD, but it will play strong role for the following 5 or more years before new standard emerges (or downloads really go mainstream).
True, PS3 failed to repeat PS2 success (so far at least). However, BR did win HD war and is at this point supported by all the big names in movies industry. I think it is already beyond PS3 success or failure. Plus, even in developed world there are still too many homes with limited Internet access, be it speed or quota wise; I don't see downloadable HD content being easily available to majority of consumers that soon, and in the meantime BR will be forced upon consumers one way or another.
Plus, many individuals have "collection bug" and will prefer to own hard copy to data stream. It also does make decent present for so many situations - again, something downloads can't replace. I don't know if BR will - and when - become as popular as DVD, but it will play strong role for the following 5 or more years before new standard emerges (or downloads really go mainstream).
It is "conventional wisdom" to say that BD "won the HD war", but did it really? I think not. It merely eliminated one competitor in the "war". It remains to be seen whether BD ever achieves any substantial degree of commercial success.
It has been said that many consumers view the current generation of DVDs as being "good enough", particularly when played on an upscaling DVD player. This seems to be an accurate and succinct description of the BD quandry. The benefits of BD are simply not worth the price in the minds of most consumers. By the way, what ever gave the manufacturers the idea that consumers would run out and replace their existing libraries of DVDs with BDs? That entirely unrealistic expectation has further contributed to the "decline" of the BD market in the assessment of the manufacturers.
Oh, and did I mention the price?
The net result has been that BD has simply been a non-starter technology. A solution in search of a problem. Might this situation change? Most observers doubt it, certainly without a complete change of pricing for both player and discs.
Yeah I have to agree the prices are still pretty crazy. If I had bought a PS3 instead of the 360, I'd probably be renting blu-rays through Netflix, but I wouldn't be buying them. As it is now, I can stream anything that's on "instantly view" through the 360, and some of it is in HD quality. I was able to watch the first four seasons of The Office that way. I've thought for a while that everything will eventually be on hard drives (or probably SSDs), and with products like Apple TV and that Western Digital HD player, things do seem to be moving that way.
It is "conventional wisdom" to say that BD "won the HD war", but did it really? I think not. It merely eliminated one competitor in the "war". It remains to be seen whether BD ever achieves any substantial degree of commercial success.
It has been said that many consumers view the current generation of DVDs as being "good enough", particularly when played on an upscaling DVD player. This seems to be an accurate and succinct description of the BD quandry. The benefits of BD are simply not worth the price in the minds of most consumers. By the way, what ever gave the manufacturers the idea that consumers would run out and replace their existing libraries of DVDs with BDs? That entirely unrealistic expectation has further contributed to the "decline" of the BD market in the assessment of the manufacturers.
Oh, and did I mention the price?
The net result has been that BD has simply been a non-starter technology. A solution in search of a problem. Might this situation change? Most observers doubt it, certainly without a complete change of pricing for both player and discs.
Yeah, well... I do remember when DVD was expensive technology, movies were just a handful (compared to VHS) and - how can read-only media replace good old versatile VHS when people want to record shows they have missed live..?
The way I see it, BR is repeating exact DVD steps. I personally have no doubts it will be dominant media in a few years. I have nothing BR in my house yet (matter of fact my wife's Toshiba notebook has HD-DVD... so funny), so I'm not just trying to justify my purchase - much as I am concerned, BR will become interesting when I manage to bend it to suit my needs. I'm collecting DVDs but, since I'm carrying notebook with me on my travels, I'll spare an afternoon before travel to rip and convert handful of then to DivX and carry them with me. I don't want to carry physical DVDs and risk damaging or loosing them. So my criteria for adopting BR is - cheap enough BR reader and technology (software?) that will let me backup and convert my BR movies.
But no matter what some of us think, it will get on top, simply because so much money and big names are lined behind it, and they will force it upon us one way or another.
It is "conventional wisdom" to say that BD "won the HD war", but did it really? I think not. It merely eliminated one competitor in the "war". It remains to be seen whether BD ever achieves any substantial degree of commercial success.
It has been said that many consumers view the current generation of DVDs as being "good enough", particularly when played on an upscaling DVD player. This seems to be an accurate and succinct description of the BD quandry. The benefits of BD are simply not worth the price in the minds of most consumers. By the way, what ever gave the manufacturers the idea that consumers would run out and replace their existing libraries of DVDs with BDs? That entirely unrealistic expectation has further contributed to the "decline" of the BD market in the assessment of the manufacturers.
Oh, and did I mention the price?
The net result has been that BD has simply been a non-starter technology. A solution in search of a problem. Might this situation change? Most observers doubt it, certainly without a complete change of pricing for both player and discs.
Alas, somebody in these forums has a brain.
Not only people are very happy with DVDs thank you very much, there is another option.
I can very easily download a 1080p resolution movie for free and load it on my apple TV as I have done many times. The playback (according to experts) is a little worse than bluray. Honestly I can't tell the difference. It is so good. And yes, all for the price of an apple tv: $300.
With bluray you have to pay $300+ for the player and the price of the movie and still have to deal with an extra box in your media center and the annoyance of loading/unloading small discs.
No thank you. I won't buy bluray until the player price drops $300 and over 10000 titles are available for the price of a regular DVD.
Comments
Thanks. But does that easiness of setup, administering and use translates to real-life scenarios where networks are at best mixed and infrastructure (servers) are much more likely to be Windows based..?
The fact of the matter is that OS X does support SMB. I don't know why your clients are having problems, but if they've only got one Mac on a network full of Windows machines, the likelihood is that they just don't know how to set up OS X properly. Another possibility is that there is something wrong with that particular Mac.
I think your use of the phrase "real-life" is disingenuous. Surely a network full of Macs is just as much "real-life"? Sure, businesses on the whole use Windows more than OS X, but that doesn't eliminate the possibility of having a Mac-only network.
How does OSX deal with Exchange
Entourage (part of Microsoft Office for Mac) supports Exchange, and in the next version of OS X, there will be "native" support.
VPN
Yup, no problem. There's native support for L2TP over IPsec and PPTP, and Cisco provide an OS X VPN client.
remote connections
As in remote desktop? There's a free Microsoft remote desktop client for connecting to Windows machines, and OS X has a built-in VNC server and client.
terminal servers..?
Not sure about that one. Probably.
If you'd like to know more about advanced OS X networking capabilities, check out the details of OS X server here. (I've linked to the features page; note that there are other links across the top of the page to "Technology", "Resources" and "Tech Specs".)
If you'd like to know more about OS X in general, I strongly suggest that you take the time (and it would be a considerable amount of time) to read all of the arstechnicha reviews of OS X from 10.0 onwards (if you get bored, read just the 10.4 and 10.5 ones; if you've more time available you could even go further back and start at the DP (developer preview) 2 review):
Mac OS X 10.0
Mac OS X 10.1
Mac OS X 10.2
Mac OS X 10.3
Mac OS X 10.4
Mac OS X 10.5
I would expect big chunk of windows awkwardness should be due to demands for compatibility with existing infrastructure, which is a must for business. There is a price you pay for everything, including compatibility.
SMB and Exchange (amongst other things) are Microsoft's own dreadful creations, forced upon everyone via Microsoft's illegal abuse of their monopoly position in operating systems. A big chunk of Windows' awkwardness is due to Microsoft's nefarious elimination of legitimate competition in the market which reduced the requirement for them to innovate or even be competent.
I presume VLC for Mac is same as Windows one..?
Yes, it is.
But what about video conversion, DVD ripping..? Is it all covered?
There's QuickTime Pro, whose features you can mostly access for free via MPEG streamclip (also available for Windows), and then there's Handbrake (which will rip DVDs with the aid of VLC)
The fact of the matter is that OS X does support SMB. I don't know why your clients are having problems, but if they've only got one Mac on a network full of Windows machines, the likelihood is that they just don't know how to set up OS X properly. Another possibility is that there is something wrong with that particular Mac.
They might also be using Tiger, Panther, or earlier. Networking wasn't so seamless. In Leopard, it's entirely transparent. I spent a lot more time getting our windows machines to work on the network than our Macs. In fact with the PCs, I had to find IP addresses just to get them to connect to the printer. The Macs found them like they were hooked up to a USB port.
They might also be using Tiger, Panther, or earlier. Networking wasn't so seamless. In Leopard, it's entirely transparent.
I'm not so sure. In respect of SMB, the main thing Leopard did was move where things are kept in the GUI. Yes, the version of Samba that OS X uses goes up with each major OS revision, so Leopard's is more recent than Tiger's, which is more recent than Panther's etc.
Yes, there could be some obscure Samba bug that's provoked by their specific SMB setup, but if they knew the intricate ins and outs of the network and how OS X implements SMB, they could probably work around it. Because they are Windows experts, if a Windows machine has a problem, they know how to fix it and don't think twice - in fact fixing such a problem may be so automatic that they don't even classify it as a problem. If OS X has a problem though, they aren't OS X experts so immediately fixing the problem is impossible.
I think your use of the phrase "real-life" is disingenuous. Surely a network full of Macs is just as much "real-life"? Sure, businesses on the whole use Windows more than OS X, but that doesn't eliminate the possibility of having a Mac-only network.
I think I wasn't disingenuous. Chance of encountering Windows-dominant networks in real life is much greater than OSX-dominant network. Like I said, it is a bit like with languages - Esperanto is considered very easy to learn (setup?) but in real life, where much more people talk English, it doesn't help much.
As an example, SonicWALL's SSL VPN did not work on Mac until recently. Now they do have Netextender for OSX but I still see a lot of people complaining about it's functionality (or lack of it) so I wonder if technology is still bugged and limited; maybe just some people don't know how to set it up, hard to tell. Unfortunately none of our clients using SSL VPN wanted to use OSX machine for that so far, so we could not give it a go ourselves.
We're talking OS X vs. Windows, not about set-top boxes. Windows Media Center beats the shit out of Front Row. If you want to build an HTPC, Windows is the only way to go.
But if you don't want to build an HTPC, and instead want to buy something that works out of the box so you don't have to spend hours building it then you can have the apple TV for 300 bucks.
Argue all you like, but in Windows you can play back blu-ray and in OS X you can't. Therefore a redeeming quality of Windows relative to OS X is that it can play back Blu-ray. End of story.
People argue about the lack of bluray as if it were a big deal. Sorry but the offering for bluray is minuscule (400 or so titles) and I would not be surprised of bluray dies soon due to preference for encoded video. So the lack of bluray is a very minor consideration for me, if at all.
You can't dismiss this argument so easily just because you found out that for you the best keyboard is an Apple keyboard. There's more to external hardware than keyboards. It's a sad fact that due to its ubiquity, the Windows platform has a much larger range of supported hardware. It's not due to Windows being inherently superior, it's due to its massive market share; but the means don't change the ends: bigger range of 3rd party hardware.
If you only use left handed trackballs with 8 buttons then maybe you are screwed with a mac. Sorry if I am not getting worried by your lack of input choices.
Well, I did not have chance to use iWorks so I had to settle down for some Googling on that topic. Every compare I saw (I stopped at 5th) claimed iWorks set of features is nowhere close to MS Office. Not only Word, but Excel, PowerPoint... Even crappy Mac version of Office seem to be much more feature rich than iWorks, and it is nowhere close to Office for Windows.
Of course, if you are using only most basic features, you might find out WordPad is better than iWorks and Office word processing put together. Hardly relevant.
Sorry but you are wrong but let me explain why because this is very important and it goes to the core of the PC versus Mac discussion:
PC products all focus on features. The more the merrier even though you wont be using 80% of them.
That would be ok, really. Problem is that where is DOES matter: intuitive and homogenous user interface, and, most of all, SPEED AND STABILITY, which are things that are difficult to cast as FEATURES, mac completely and absolutely blows PC to kingdom come.
Take iworks: it runs like a bat out of hell, but has only mostly basic features. You will use 90% of the features it does have and miss perhaps a few features that are coming up in version 2.
MS Office? you will use 20% of it and spend a ton of time trying to navigate is stupid interface, trying to find commands you need, cursing its slow-ass execution and recovering corrupt files from backup.
Sorry but you are wrong but let me explain why because this is very important and it goes to the core of the PC versus Mac discussion:
PC products all focus on features. The more the merrier even though you wont be using 80% of them.
That would be ok, really. Problem is that where is DOES matter: intuitive and homogenous user interface, and, most of all, SPEED AND STABILITY, which are things that are difficult to cast as FEATURES, mac completely and absolutely blows PC to kingdom come.
Take iworks: it runs like a bat out of hell, but has only mostly basic features. You will use 90% of the features it does have and miss perhaps a few features that are coming up in version 2.
MS Office? you will use 20% of it and spend a ton of time trying to navigate is stupid interface, trying to find commands you need, cursing its slow-ass execution and recovering corrupt files from backup.
No idea where that is coming from. Office for Mac, maybe? Comes to Windows Office... I'm working for company providing - among the other things - general IT support to it's customers, some of them being big domains (for New Zealand standards). For last two years - much as I'm working there - I can't recall any logged support ticket related to MS Office problem(s).
True lots of people were bi*ching with interface changes Office 2007 introduced, but that is common thing for Enterprise segment anyway - employees are usually lacking enthusiasm to learn new things, they just want to get done with the job. From my personal point of view, there's nothing wrong with 2007 interface - in fact I like it a lot - but one does have to get into philosophy different from what Office was offering previous 10+ years. New users don't have such problems, which makes sense.
If your word processing, spreadsheet and presentation requirements are so basic, I understand you can prefer simple and colourful. It still does not make it better in general.It's like saying Picasa, GIMP and Photo.NET are better image editing programs because they are much cheaper (in fact free), faster, simpler, have cute colourful GUI and much less features than Photoshop.
People argue about the lack of bluray as if it were a big deal. Sorry but the offering for bluray is minuscule (400 or so titles) and I would not be surprised of bluray dies soon due to preference for encoded video. So the lack of bluray is a very minor consideration for me, if at all.
Yeah, I'm sure people were saying the same when DVD was introduced...
SMB and Exchange (amongst other things) are Microsoft's own dreadful creations, forced upon everyone via Microsoft's illegal abuse of their monopoly position in operating systems. A big chunk of Windows' awkwardness is due to Microsoft's nefarious elimination of legitimate competition in the market which reduced the requirement for them to innovate or even be competent.
In all fairness, SMB was designed by IBM, not Microsoft. Microsoft did implement it and also did good share of modifications and improvements, particularly with Vista/Server 2008... but I don't know much about Unix/OSX networking so I haven't got a clue how they compare. I will take a look at that - thanks for the links.
Monopoly, well... I'm not going to defend MS, they are dastardly bunch... but so is anyone else. I'm far from happy I can't legally install OSX on my HP notebook which should - hardware wise - be perfectly able to run it. I'd like to try it before I decide to invest in Mac computer or not. However...
Sorry but you are wrong but let me explain why because this is very important and it goes to the core of the PC versus Mac discussion:
PC products all focus on features. The more the merrier even though you wont be using 80% of them.
So was Apple before your kind stole the platform. And what if you do use those features? You rnd up with an iMac that doesn't do what you need it to do. Apple used to cater to the most demanding customers and let the less demanding customers sort it out. Now they cater to the typical consumer who wants something that looks cool and lets the above average user choose between a very high end workstation or a very mediocre iMac.
That would be ok, really. Problem is that where is DOES matter: intuitive and homogenous user interface, and, most of all, SPEED AND STABILITY, which are things that are difficult to cast as FEATURES, mac completely and absolutely blows PC to kingdom come.
Yes, they do. Mac OS X is Apple's greatest asset.
Take iworks: it runs like a bat out of hell, but has only mostly basic features. You will use 90% of the features it does have and miss perhaps a few features that are coming up in version 2.
You mean version 4. Its a great consumer suite. The only real changes I would make is to put the export options in the save dialog and add the option to save in office formats by default.
MS Office? you will use 20% of it and spend a ton of time trying to navigate is stupid interface, trying to find commands you need, cursing its slow-ass execution and recovering corrupt files from backup.
If you're in that 20% you at least have that option (which is more than I can say for the computer choices on the platform). iWork may be the better choice, but 90% of the Mac users I know can't read a pages, numbers, or keynote file let alone the rest of the world. If you're going to be in an office or school environment seamless integration with office is key. You accidentally send the wrong file time, you could be out of job. As of iWork '08 integration isn't so seamless.
In all fairness, SMB was designed by IBM, not Microsoft. Microsoft did implement it and also did good share of modifications and improvements, particularly with Vista/Server 2008... but I don't know much about Unix/OSX networking so I haven't got a clue how they compare. I will take a look at that - thanks for the links.
Monopoly, well... I'm not going to defend MS, they are dastardly bunch... but so is anyone else. I'm far from happy I can't legally install OSX on my HP notebook which should - hardware wise - be perfectly able to run it. I'd like to try it before I decide to invest in Mac computer or not. However...
I would normally agree with you except for one thing, BIOS. OS X should support more options, but those options should also be running EFI firmware instead of that 80s dinosaur.
Yeah, I'm sure people were saying the same when DVD was introduced...
Well the big difference this time around is that blu-ray did not get a huge leg up from the PlayStation, as the PS3 is pretty far behind the 360 and Wii... the PS2 is the best selling console ever and to this day comes pretty close to the PS3 week after week.. and it was released in 2000. And up until recently, the PS3 had configurations with backwards compatibility.
Well the big difference this time around is that blu-ray did not get a huge leg up from the PlayStation, as the PS3 is pretty far behind the 360 and Wii... the PS2 is the best selling console ever and to this day comes pretty close to the PS3 week after week.. and it was released in 2000. And up until recently, the PS3 had configurations with backwards compatibility.
True, PS3 failed to repeat PS2 success (so far at least). However, BR did win HD war and is at this point supported by all the big names in movies industry. I think it is already beyond PS3 success or failure. Plus, even in developed world there are still too many homes with limited Internet access, be it speed or quota wise; I don't see downloadable HD content being easily available to majority of consumers that soon, and in the meantime BR will be forced upon consumers one way or another.
Plus, many individuals have "collection bug" and will prefer to own hard copy to data stream. It also does make decent present for so many situations - again, something downloads can't replace. I don't know if BR will - and when - become as popular as DVD, but it will play strong role for the following 5 or more years before new standard emerges (or downloads really go mainstream).
True, PS3 failed to repeat PS2 success (so far at least). However, BR did win HD war and is at this point supported by all the big names in movies industry. I think it is already beyond PS3 success or failure. Plus, even in developed world there are still too many homes with limited Internet access, be it speed or quota wise; I don't see downloadable HD content being easily available to majority of consumers that soon, and in the meantime BR will be forced upon consumers one way or another.
Plus, many individuals have "collection bug" and will prefer to own hard copy to data stream. It also does make decent present for so many situations - again, something downloads can't replace. I don't know if BR will - and when - become as popular as DVD, but it will play strong role for the following 5 or more years before new standard emerges (or downloads really go mainstream).
It is "conventional wisdom" to say that BD "won the HD war", but did it really? I think not. It merely eliminated one competitor in the "war". It remains to be seen whether BD ever achieves any substantial degree of commercial success.
It has been said that many consumers view the current generation of DVDs as being "good enough", particularly when played on an upscaling DVD player. This seems to be an accurate and succinct description of the BD quandry. The benefits of BD are simply not worth the price in the minds of most consumers. By the way, what ever gave the manufacturers the idea that consumers would run out and replace their existing libraries of DVDs with BDs? That entirely unrealistic expectation has further contributed to the "decline" of the BD market in the assessment of the manufacturers.
Oh, and did I mention the price?
The net result has been that BD has simply been a non-starter technology. A solution in search of a problem. Might this situation change? Most observers doubt it, certainly without a complete change of pricing for both player and discs.
It is "conventional wisdom" to say that BD "won the HD war", but did it really? I think not. It merely eliminated one competitor in the "war". It remains to be seen whether BD ever achieves any substantial degree of commercial success.
It has been said that many consumers view the current generation of DVDs as being "good enough", particularly when played on an upscaling DVD player. This seems to be an accurate and succinct description of the BD quandry. The benefits of BD are simply not worth the price in the minds of most consumers. By the way, what ever gave the manufacturers the idea that consumers would run out and replace their existing libraries of DVDs with BDs? That entirely unrealistic expectation has further contributed to the "decline" of the BD market in the assessment of the manufacturers.
Oh, and did I mention the price?
The net result has been that BD has simply been a non-starter technology. A solution in search of a problem. Might this situation change? Most observers doubt it, certainly without a complete change of pricing for both player and discs.
Yeah, well... I do remember when DVD was expensive technology, movies were just a handful (compared to VHS) and - how can read-only media replace good old versatile VHS when people want to record shows they have missed live..?
The way I see it, BR is repeating exact DVD steps. I personally have no doubts it will be dominant media in a few years. I have nothing BR in my house yet (matter of fact my wife's Toshiba notebook has HD-DVD... so funny), so I'm not just trying to justify my purchase - much as I am concerned, BR will become interesting when I manage to bend it to suit my needs. I'm collecting DVDs but, since I'm carrying notebook with me on my travels, I'll spare an afternoon before travel to rip and convert handful of then to DivX and carry them with me. I don't want to carry physical DVDs and risk damaging or loosing them. So my criteria for adopting BR is - cheap enough BR reader and technology (software?) that will let me backup and convert my BR movies.
But no matter what some of us think, it will get on top, simply because so much money and big names are lined behind it, and they will force it upon us one way or another.
It is "conventional wisdom" to say that BD "won the HD war", but did it really? I think not. It merely eliminated one competitor in the "war". It remains to be seen whether BD ever achieves any substantial degree of commercial success.
It has been said that many consumers view the current generation of DVDs as being "good enough", particularly when played on an upscaling DVD player. This seems to be an accurate and succinct description of the BD quandry. The benefits of BD are simply not worth the price in the minds of most consumers. By the way, what ever gave the manufacturers the idea that consumers would run out and replace their existing libraries of DVDs with BDs? That entirely unrealistic expectation has further contributed to the "decline" of the BD market in the assessment of the manufacturers.
Oh, and did I mention the price?
The net result has been that BD has simply been a non-starter technology. A solution in search of a problem. Might this situation change? Most observers doubt it, certainly without a complete change of pricing for both player and discs.
Alas, somebody in these forums has a brain.
Not only people are very happy with DVDs thank you very much, there is another option.
I can very easily download a 1080p resolution movie for free and load it on my apple TV as I have done many times. The playback (according to experts) is a little worse than bluray. Honestly I can't tell the difference. It is so good. And yes, all for the price of an apple tv: $300.
With bluray you have to pay $300+ for the player and the price of the movie and still have to deal with an extra box in your media center and the annoyance of loading/unloading small discs.
No thank you. I won't buy bluray until the player price drops $300 and over 10000 titles are available for the price of a regular DVD.