Is there anyone that DOESN'T like apple OSX?

[shortylickens]

I'll start by saying I purchased an iBook G4. It had Dual boot. OSX and OS9.
After one day I disliked it. Yes its pretty. But I have been told that many of the pretty things rely on OpenGL. If you have a weak video card you'll get sluggish response in day to day use.
Dont know if its true or not but I sure felt it. It always seemed like I was fighting just to get basic tasks done. Options and menus arent as full featured OR intuitive.
It takes many more mouse clicks to get basic and advanced tasks finished. I did a side by side comparison with WinXP (on my computer desk). Using my 5-button MS mouse didnt help very much. (Wasnt supported well either.)
Advanced options seem to be more hidden and difficult to change.
WinXP finds 90% of my USB goodies first try, and installs drivers for them right away.
OSX wouldnt even acknowledge my HP LJ1000 as device, much less actually print something.
Didnt find the Logitech USB mouse at all, but works great with the MS intellimouse explorer (??????)

Then I rebooted into OS9. OH MAI GAAWD!!! Wish I could say I was able to exit fast. No such luck.

This thing did crash on me too. Quite a few times. At least windows will run sluggishly for a minute while I open task-manager and kill the bloated or buggy application. The Mac just froze and died.
(Note to Mac lovers and less experienced Windows lovers: You can kill explorer.exe and then run it again from task-manager. Solves most of the really horrible glitches you may come across. Faster than rebooting.)

If I need a reliable server to take care of many users needs with the rock-solid reliablity of UNIX I'll use............. UNIX!
If I want to run a wide variety of hardware, software, and OS's I'll stick to Windows. I'll even play around with Linux now and again. It can run off a CD/DVD or even a hard drive in my windows system. One distro even found my Cable modem and IP assignment, no questions asked. That didnt happen on my Mac.
On the plus side: the contstruction and display were top notch, with a return department that was on the ball. Such is the burden of the underdog (GO AMD!!).

At the very least I hope I've made some insightful observations concerning the topic, and both sides can appreciate what I've dealt with.

 

[Philippine Mango]

I don't because its made by apple. I have used it and a lot of it was fluff. I cant find a use for the "dock", I just really don't like it. It may look nice but productivity and usability is much more important to me then looks. If looks are a higher priority for you then you shouldn't be using the computer.

 

[halik]

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
I don't because its made by apple. I have used it and a lot of it was fluff. I cant find a use for the "dock", I just really don't like it. It may look nice but productivity and usability is much more important to me then looks. If looks are a higher priority for you then you shouldn't be using the computer.

err you do realize behind the eye candy is mllions of dollars in human-interface reasearch...right?

do you think there is a reason why all the menus (file, edit, help etc) are on top of the screen rather than on top of the window?

or hierarchical pop up menus pop out centered to item that has the expainsion menu?

or special dialog boxes for different events (not just warning or prompt etc)

or when you type in a wrong password in a password dialog box, it shakes from side to side and thats the only response to your input (no reading involved)


you should take a look on apple's adc website, there have a ton of docs about GUI and human interface guidelines.

 

[GoingUp]

i love its look, but not its functionality

 

[halik]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
I'll start by saying I purchased an iBook G4. It had Dual boot. OSX and OS9.
After one day I disliked it. Yes its pretty. But I have been told that many of the pretty things rely on OpenGL. If you have a weak video card you'll get sluggish response in day to day use.
Dont know if its true or not but I sure felt it. It always seemed like I was fighting just to get basic tasks done. Options and menus arent as full featured OR intuitive.
It takes many more mouse clicks to get basic and advanced tasks finished. I did a side by side comparison with WinXP (on my computer desk). Using my 5-button MS mouse didnt help very much. (Wasnt supported well either.)
Advanced options seem to be more hidden and difficult to change.
WinXP finds 90% of my USB goodies first try, and installs drivers for them right away.
OSX wouldnt even acknowledge my HP LJ1000 as device, much less actually print something.
Didnt find the Logitech USB mouse at all, but works great with the MS intellimouse explorer (??????)

Then I rebooted into OS9. OH MAI GAAWD!!! Wish I could say I was able to exit fast. No such luck.

This thing did crash on me too. Quite a few times. At least windows will run sluggishly for a minute while I open task-manager and kill the bloated or buggy application. The Mac just froze and died.
(Note to Mac lovers and less experienced Windows lovers: You can kill explorer.exe and then run it again from task-manager. Solves most of the really horrible glitches you may come across. Faster than rebooting.)

If I need a reliable server to take care of many users needs with the rock-solid reliablity of UNIX I'll use............. UNIX!
If I want to run a wide variety of hardware, software, and OS's I'll stick to Windows. I'll even play around with Linux now and again. It can run off a CD/DVD or even a hard drive in my windows system. One distro even found my Cable modem and IP assignment, no questions asked. That didnt happen on my Mac.
On the plus side: the contstruction and display were top notch, with a return department that was on the ball. Such is the burden of the underdog (GO AMD!!).

At the very least I hope I've made some insightful observations concerning the topic, and both sides can appreciate what I've dealt with.

I hereby raise the BS flag.

first off i had a powerbook 500mhz couple months ago and both 10.1 and 10.2 worked with my navigator duo and mx700 flawlessly (logitech cordless mouse and kbd)

second the mach microkernel runs apps in user-space. It would have to be a kernel-space daemon crashing or a device fvckup for the kernel to panic (i've seen it happen with lowgrade memory on an ibook). There chance of an app bringing down the kernel is slim in none.

finally the notion of dhcp not working on a powerbook is plain bullsh!t. When you install osx, dhcp is enabled by default - i loaded 10.3 on my new ibook the other day and it got an ip from my wifi access point w/o any problems. I dont see how ethernet wouldnt do the same.


oh yeah macos classic is garbage

 

[shortylickens]

I respectfully acknowledge your BS flag and will try to clarify the details of my little adventure.

Let me start by saying I have no idea why most of these things happened. I didnt spend years in the mac life to figure out all the little nuances. After getting used to windows I didnt much feel like it.

I dont know why your powerbook worked flawlessly with the navigator duo under 10.1.
My iBook with 10.0 (or whatever it is) wouldnt find my basic logitech USB mouse. Since the driver disc I had available to me didnt include mac support, I moved to the MS mouse. It worked as soon as I plugged it in.

I have NO knowledge of the Mac or Unix kernals. As far as slim in none goes, it happened to me three times. In each instance I was running several programs at a time and I didnt know how to view the CPU and RAM usage of each. (I had 256MB) If you know of something similar to CTRL-ALT-DELETE to help rescue my system, I would be interested to hear about it.

I have limeted knowledge of dhcp and powerbooks. Although I do respect your right to call bullsh!t on me.
I have never installed osx and dont know where to enable or disable settings like dhcp. With 10.0 on my iBook the cable modem would not establish a connection. USB didn't work either.

Am not sure if you are sarcastic in your statement about 'macos classic is garbage'.
If you are, I can't come up with an intelligent response.
If you are not, and Tiger or 10.3 is really better, I would put serious consideration into looking at a brand new powerbook. It was curiosity that got me before, I may be open to experimenting again.

 

[OulOat]

I like how the OS looks but hate how it operates. Can't get used to the one button mouse. My friend gave me his Mac laptop (better than the ibook, the one with the chrome aluminum finish) to play with; I couldn't even figure out how to get to terminal so I could use Unix commands. I don't see how they can claim that the interface is intuitive.

 

[thirdlegstump]

I don't like the fact that it takes uber hardware to run just the OS smooth and snappy enough for my tastes. I also HATE the way they integrated the dock and also find that preferences get corrupted just way too often requiring me to repair permissions almost twice a week. File sharing between PC's using SMB isn't very consistant either. Printing is still slow. One thing that has made me tolerate the Mac OS though is Firefox. It actually browses about the same speed as a high end PC! WOW! A FIRST for the Mac! A QUICK BROWSER! Without it, I find it almost useless for my needs and I'm not even a gamer. Finalcut Pro is pretty cool but buggy at the same time. Photoshop is very smooth and I like that but it's not as snappy as a solid PC. I use a Logitech scroll optical mouse on it. The Apple Pro keyboard blows. I can't type on it and truly hate it. Bring me back the old Appledesign II ADB keyboards anytime. I use my Athlon/XP rig 99% of the time.

 

[Merlyn3D]

Originally posted by: UglyCasanova

And I also love my momma, cause she's the best momma in the world.

Yeah, I love your momma too

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: halik

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
I don't because its made by apple. I have used it and a lot of it was fluff. I cant find a use for the "dock", I just really don't like it. It may look nice but productivity and usability is much more important to me then looks. If looks are a higher priority for you then you shouldn't be using the computer.

err you do realize behind the eye candy is mllions of dollars in human-interface reasearch...right?

do you think there is a reason why all the menus (file, edit, help etc) are on top of the screen rather than on top of the window?

or hierarchical pop up menus pop out centered to item that has the expainsion menu?

or special dialog boxes for different events (not just warning or prompt etc)

or when you type in a wrong password in a password dialog box, it shakes from side to side and thats the only response to your input (no reading involved)


you should take a look on apple's adc website, there have a ton of docs about GUI and human interface guidelines.

Yes and still that has not helped them in any way to get them into the marketplace. It's agian, a lot of fluff, the interface is retarded. I hate the fact the only way I can open a program is through the HDD. Yes they have a "apple"/startmenu wanna be but those are only for recent applications. The interface is very nice but I don't see the word "functionality" spelled all over the screen like I do with windows. Yes the default XP interface is just a stupid (if not dumber) but luckily you can make it look like windows 2000 which is what I do to every machine I encounter. After making it look like windows 2000, everybody thanks me because nobody likes that eye candy garbage. If the only thing preventing one from getting a mac was because the way OS9 looked and you just purchased a mac because of OS10 then I gotta say you really shouldn't be using a computer. Dock is plain stupid, even the creator said there was no practical use for it.

 

[lobadobadingdong]

Originally posted by: ucdbiendog
not a huge fan. limited use though

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
From the little I've seen it/used it, I like it plenty. But my basis for that opinion is very limited.

 

[daniel1113]

I enjoy the OSX look, but that's it. Hence why I use an OSX Tiger theme on my XP box . It is easy on the eyes and overall pretty well done. However, as many previous posters have already mentioned, there are way too many flaws/hinderances with Macs for me to use one, from the one button mouse to the positions on menus and everything else in between. I'll be the first to admit that there are many goods things about Macs, but there are way to many shortcomings for them to be better than a well built PC, overall.

 

[Dennis Travis]

First, All the 1 Button complainers, PLUG IN A LOGITECH or MICROSOFT mouse in and stop complaining.
OSX 10.0 was the very first version so that maybe why you had problems with your Logitech mouse. Every other version of OSX I have used worked fine with any USB Logitech or Microsoft Mouse I tried. I have never had OSX crash no matter how nasty I have gotten with it in over a year on a G4-500 with 1.12 GB ram. Not even one hicup. It's the Most stable OS I have ever used and probably my favorite for getting WORK done since OS2 way back before 95 even came out. I do like XP and 2k as they are very stable on a good system but for doing a lot of multitasking I find OSX 10.3 a lot smoother than XP on a fast Mac. It's not all that bad even on my old G4. I feel free using OSX to get my work done and not mess around or worry about something going wrong and loosing a video I just spent hours with or some of my Audio work also. I have been using Windows since 3.1 and DOS before that and every version of Windows up to XP. I at the same time played with Mac OS from 6 up to OSX, Red Hat and Slackware Linux since version 2, Suse Linux since 8.1 and now at 9.2 and OS2 2.5, Warp 3 and Warp 4. OSX overall for getting real work done impresses me the most of any OS I have worked with overall. There are plenty of GOOD games for the Mac with more coming daily. Sure there are more for the PC and I use an AMD for my games and the Mac for my fun and work. I also really love Suse Linux. Its my favorite Linux Distro overall.

 

[mobobuff]

I've had extensive use with it, and I hate it. It looks pretty... until you actually try to do anything with it. I guess I shouldn't say hate. Though I really don't like it.

 

[spamsk8r]

I also have had extended use with it and I love it. I end up using it for 95% of my computing. The only thing I don't use it for is games, and not because they don't exist, but they drain the battery on my Powerbook too fast. There are a lot of things in OS X that I miss when I go back to Windows, such as Expose. Application installation is incredibly easy (drag the application to the Applications directory, all done). Also, you can drop to a Terminal for when you need to use some command-line applications, such as grep or find, and it's all part of the OS and not just tacked on like you have to do if you want those commands in Windows. OS X is, I think, what linux should strive to be: a versatile operating system with ease of use, hardware compatibility, and a strong base. Linux provides the strong base (the kernel), but it lacks the hardware compatibility and the ease of use that the Mac provides.

Before I get flamed, I'm not an artist or anything like that either. I use my Powerbook for software development in Java (C++ too, sometimes) and it works great for me. It allows me to be productive without jumping through a bunch of hoops, because everything necessary, from libraries to API specs to documentation, is all built into the operating system. The only thing I wish we had is Java 1.5, and for that I'm kinda pissed at Apple. But I always have linux for development too, and I don't really need the 1.5 features, they're just nice to have.

Also, I have nothing against Windows as an operating system. I think that with 2000 and XP they really entered the modern age of operating systems, moreso with 2000 though. Windows works perfectly fine for most things, its just a little more frustrating to me (and no, it's not lack of experience, since I have worked with x86 machines for 15 years, from DOS to XP). I can do the things I want to do in Windows, and some things are easier, but some things are harder too, and from a software engineering standpoint, I think OS X is a more elegant system, with well thought out libraries (evolved from NextStep) and well defined interfaces between the system and the application software.

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: Spike
OSX

Productivity = Good
Gaming = Bad

WIN XP

Productivity = Mediocore
Gaming = Good

Gaming >>>>>>>>>>>> Productivity

QFMFT!

Edit: yes, I know I'm 8 pages late, but I don't want to read 8 pages of Mac Zealots whining =P

 

i like it

i don't think it's any better than XP though

 

[EGGO]

I love the interface of OSX. I'll be damned if I ever like OS9 (And I have to for work...).

I love the thing on OSX so much I put it on my desktop (http://eggo.us/images/dtop.jpg)

If there's one thing I hate about OSX, and it's mostly for ANYTHING Mac, is the browsers and mouse. I hate the one-click mouse, and if I want to "right-click" I have to press a button on the flat-arse keyboard. And the IE Browser just sucks (Safari is ok, but nothing special other than tabbed surfing and everything fits like they should).

 

[halfadder]

I used to use Macs in college, back when Apple's high end systems used the 350 MHz PowerPC 604e processor (a high end chip before they switched to the lame mid-range PPC 750 "G3"). Back then we used a lot of Adobe apps on Mac OS 7.6 and 8. Performance was just as good or better than the Pentium Pro and Pentium II PCs we had, though Mac OS wasn't as stable as Windows NT 3.5 (though it was just as stable as Windows 95, hehe).

Anyway, until last December, all of my machines were PCs. I bought an Apple PowerBook G4 and use it along side my 3 GHz P4. After a year with Mac OS X 10.3, I can say that I do like it... a lot. But then, I also like Windows XP. If I was in a perfect world, I would combine elements from both OSes to make my perfect personal OS!!

The NeXTisms and Unixisms of Mac OS X are interesting to me. Every day I learn a faster way to do something in the Bash command line shell or with a perl script. The overall GUI of Mac OS X is far far different from the original "Classic" Macintosh GUI that I was used to back in 1996. It's even far different from what I played with in Mac OS 9. The finder (the GUI file manager / graphical shell) is more like that from NeXTSTEP than it is from the older versions of Mac OS.

I don't think Apple should have called their new os "Mac OS X". They probably should have come up with a new name to replace Macintosh, because their new systems and their OS is so much different from the "classic" Mac OS 9 and earlier.

 

[halfadder]

A few other comments to reply to some of the other posts in this thread:

Some of the earliest mouse prototypes in the late 1960s and early 1970s had multiple buttons. 3 to 5 buttons was common. The $40,000 fridge-sized Xerox Alto (that "inspired" Apple to make the $2500 Macintosh) even had a 3 button mouse. And get this, the NeXT Cube, the computer made by Steve Jobs's second computer company, NeXT, in 1988 had a 2 button mouse!! I don't know what's up with Apple and the 1 button mouse... but thankfully my Logitech MX900 Bluetooth mouse works perfectly with my PowerBook. Right clicking brings up menus like it should, scroll wheel works like it should. In fact, even back in the 1998 olden days of the original iMac with Mac OS 8, you could use a program called USB Overdrive to let you use any multi-button scroll mouse for scrolling and right-clicking.

Mac OS X uses the Mach microkernel. Everything else resides outside of kernel space. The Unix userland and networking are based on FreeBSD and bits of OpenBSD. The kernels from FreeBSD and OpenBSD are not used. Also, the low level features (such as CoreAudio, CoreImage, etc) are Apple designed. The HTML engine ("WebKit") used in the Mac OS X help system and in the Safari browser are based on KHTML from the KDE Konqueror project. The opensource bits that Apple uses are re-released back into the community as opensource on Apple's website. The entire bootable and command-line core OS (no GUI) is available in source code form and has even been compiled by BSD geeks to run on PC hardware.

The reason Apple uses large chunks from FreeBSD and bits from OpenBSD is because the grandfather OS, NeXTSTEP, used large amounts of 4.3BSD code. FreeBSD is a modern version of BSD, derrived fro 4.4BSD-LITE.