A Steer or a Cat?

woodchip · Post by **woodchip** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 7:00 am

Mac has released it's new O.S. called Tiger. MS is coming out with Longhorn. Never having used a Mac I'm wondering if any of you have a inkling as to how the two O.S. will compare?

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 7:45 am

I beleive TIger will be better just because it's based on UNIX and not Windows. I'll let you know once my buddy installs it on his MAC G4.

Cuda68-2 · Post by **Cuda68-2** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 7:54 am

I support MAC's at work with OS X and it is a modified and solid BSD OS. Really sweet.

Xamindar · Post by **Xamindar** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 11:19 am

Well obviously if the balance of the universe stays how it is and existence how we know it does not change then the Mac OS will definitely be the better one.

What kind of question is this? There has been and probably never will be a comparison.

Stryker · Post by **Stryker** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 11:32 am

The only difference will be that the Windows machine will support 90% of the software on the market, while the mac OS will need another program to run windows programs, which eats up more resources. I'm sticking with Windows, thank you--I might even stay with XP Pro if I don't need/want any of the features longhorn provides.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 3:55 pm

I have a Powerbook G4 titanium on my desk at work. It's really just for checking my work in the predominant Mac broswsers: IE5.2, Firefox/Moz, Opera and Safari.

Tiger is NOT a new operating system. It is simply the next version of OSX. It's a marketing trick, not a major change. Tiger is simply "OSX with less bugs".

OSX is a good OS, but it has a couple of major flaws in my view.

1) It is *NOT* more stable than XP, that is categorical point #1. It crashes just like windows does, and goes unresponsive just like windows does.

2) To run older software you have to start OS9 inside OSX. This is incredibly slow and it therefore limits your choice of applications quite severely.

OSX sure has a pretty UI, and even when the processor is pegged at max, the nice screen effects still work. The icons are very pretty indeed, and scale perfectly with the dock. It's quite impressive. However, the only reason it does this is at the expense of the process it is currently maxed out with. Presumably the UI processes have AbsoluteTop execution priority.

I enjoy the Mac, it's a lovely design, the screen is beautiful, and even though it's over 3 years old, it still kills the form factor of most PC laptops - even if it only runs about 1/4 as fast as the latest batch of windows laptops.

The price of them is totally over the top, and I'd never spend my own money on a Mac laptop.

The browsers for the Mac are a flakey bunch of crap mostly. IE5.2 is the devil's bottom of browsers. It's so broken and bad I'm sure MS crippled it on purpose, sort of like saying "Well, of *COURSE* it looks terrible in IE! YOU'RE ON A MAC FOR GOODNESS SAKE!"

Safari, doesn't support some of the most simple and basic CSS extensions. (Ignore the new version - most people do NOT update browsers like we do). Opera is nice except for the ads.

True to Form, Firefox is THE kickass browser for the mac - and my experience is, that if something works in windows in Firefox, then it works identically in Firefox on Mac.

This, sadly, can not be said for Netscape or IE.

If all you want to do is iTunes, surf, email, edit your DV movies and do other stuff which is well supported by Apple's proprietary software, then by all means, go buy a Mac. But if you like to download and install a wide range of software, then the Mac isn't for you.

Mr. Perfect · Post by **Mr. Perfect** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 4:06 pm

Kind of an apples to oranges comparison, isn't it(no pun intended)?

fliptw · Post by **fliptw** » Sat Apr 30, 2005 4:39 pm

Mr. Perfect wrote:Kind of an apples to oranges comparison, isn't it(no pun intended)?

more like sheep to kiwi fruit. Mobius' post could easily apply to XP-64 or Linux on x86 machines - IE he really hasn't actually said anything worthwhile that relates to the thread.