Apple trying to steal Windows 7 launch Hype

[DarkOverord]

Windows 7 is sweeping things up with a strange bubble of positive thinking mainly achieved by the fact that it looks pretty. It has a nice gloss on it, but when it comes down to it the UI is obtrusive, which is exactly what OS X has been getting away from over the years, by toning things down and making them more functional. Unfortunately people don't see this, they look at Windows 7 and think "ooh shiny", they look at OS X and think "oh, grey". But when it comes down to it Windows 7's interface is distracting, and frequently annoying, while OS X's you forget it's there until you need it to do something in a couple of clicks. I've yet to find any of my common tasks as easy to achieve on Windows 7 as in OS X, as I find myself have to take all kinds of annoying extra steps.

Just because I like the shininess doesn't mean it was my main reason for upgrading my laptop. And yes there's extra steps. But you know why, because that's the most you can really do to impliment "security" besides patches for the stupid people. And don't start with secureness again, it's been pointed out how easy it is to fuck up a mac.

The underpinnings of Windows 7 are ultimately the same, and are based on the same flawed components that have been there since Windows 95, possibly even earlier! They removed a load of bloat from Vista, and that's great, but really it should never have been there in the first place.

Last I checked Macs and Linux still use the same underpinnings as ages ago "Baw new kernel". Well here's the thing. Windows 7's underpinning isn't Windows 95 but WindowsNT. And yes there is a difference, 95, 98, and Me were not based on NT.

Functionality wise, productivity-wise etc. they have made little to no real progress at all, it's all eye-candy and fluff. What have they done that could really matter in the long-run? Snow Leopard has added great new technologies onto a heap of great new technologies, that Windows, C#, and .NET simply don't have. But what's more, many of these great new technologies are open-source, not proprietary, or anti-competitive.

Little? Well if we go back to your example, Windows 95, seen as that's the same "underpinnings" hmm? There's been vast changes, from Vista? Not really no, as said earlier, it was just a massive fix to Vista. And Baw open-source. In fairness I don't give a shit about open-source, just because Apple are more "open" doesn't mean they're any better than MS. Allowing Open-source just lets a company look good, that's it. Sides, last I checked youcan do open-source on Windows. All you do is right a program and leave it in public domain, isn't that what Firefox is? *Shrugs*

And I don't see how Windows 7 wins on stability, as I've seen it lock-up three or four times on a clean-install, doing nothing really out-of-the-ordinary. That's lock up the entire system, not just a program ceasing to respond (which is the program's fault not the OS). I've also had it randomly crash during start-up!

That's bizarre. No really, not having a dig at you here or anything. From a standpoint of a out of date system (And I mean, out of date, most computers aren't even sold with 1GB of RAM anymore), the only "lock-up" I've encountered was Windows Live Messenger, and we all know how bitchy that particular program is *rolls eyes* And I've been pushing it to the limits of it's RAM, and I've yet to actually experence more than one program not responding.

Unfortunately, it probably will at least bring out people to question SL over Win 7. Those people are generally inept and rely on simple statements like this to make computing decisions. However, if people are smart they'll test both and see what happens you know? 

Smart people also know which system is better for them in the long run. Windows may be "shit" compared to Macs, but it all depends on standpoint. Macs can run better, so what? Unless you're making some extremely precise measurements over a extremely-short time, I somehow doubt the small fractions of difference that 7 and SL have will make much of a difference if you want to type up a document.

Is SL unstable? I don't know. In my limited user experience on three very different machines I have not found SL to be unstable.

*cough*bugthatwipesyourprimaryaccount*cough*

#Windows 7-running computers with problems/# of total computers with Windows 7 installed

Vs.

#Snow Leopard-running computers with problems/# of total computers with Snow Leopard installed

Yes there's a smaller percentage on SL's side, or is there? Hmm. Technically you'd have a smaller number on the 7 side due to the fact it's More/A lot more against Not much/Not much more. That kind of ratio is a bit, biased against macs in some cases.

give your win7 registry a month or two of use and come back here and try to claim that win7 is more stable than OSX. you'll be singing a different tune.

even the best maintained systems fall victim to MS' registry inefficiencies at some point in my experience.

Inefficiency or not, MS' higgledly piggledly Registry doesn't have that huge of an effect, okay sure. There's som slowdown as time goes by. But last I checked, that happens to both Macs and Linux too. Not denying MS has a crap registry, it really does, but don't act like it's MS exclusive.

[Brigado]

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=3666&p=1

To get to the benchmarks, just scroll down and click on the "Article Index" dropdown.

The following quote is from the "Conclusion" page, which you can select in the "Article Index" dropdown.

7 vs. Snow Leopard

We’ll have a proper review of Snow Leopard in the near future, but for now we’ll talk about Snow Leopard as compared to Windows 7.

Snow Leopard (10.6) was a minor release as compared to Leopard (10.5), much like Win7 is compared to Vista. Apple was able to go ahead and charge $30 for it for an upgrade from Leopard while charging $130 for an upgrade from Tiger (10.4), which means that if nothing else, Apple has been able to avoid Microsoft’s pricing problems.

When comparing Windows and Mac OS X, Apple’s strength has been integration and the GUI. Microsoft can’t do anything about the former, but they have about the latter. Apple still has the better GUI, but the advantage is not quite as great as it used to be.

Without getting in to hardware, Snow Leopard has been even more stagnant than Windows has. Win7 brings some definite advantages over Snow Leopard: per-application volume controls, a wide audio/video codec selection (Apple’s the odd man out here; even Linux has them beat)[yay for Linu xD], SuperFetch, TRIM support, and of course all the applications Windows can run. Meanwhile Snow Leopard has its GUI, along with Apple’s gesture system, Exposé, and Time Machine.

Ultimately it’s either that the two aren’t different enough, or that they’re so different that they’re hard to compare. In either case Mac OS X doesn’t have the obvious advantage that it once had against Vista. Windows 7 has brought Windows to the point where it’s going to be Mac OS X’s peer in most cases, and right now it looks like it’s going to skip the teething issues that Snow Leopard is going through. For the time being, it’s going to be hardware that’s the real differentiator.

[Chris]

to come out and state that one is more stable than the other, given presumably nothing more than your own limited personal experience isn't really going to change anyone's opinions one way or the other, is it?

I wasn't making ridiculous claims regarding Snow Leopard's stability. I never once claimed to have used a Mac extensively or enough to have truly experienced what it has to offer. I was making reference to the news articles that you had posted, which provided me with what you claimed to be facts regarding Snow Leopard's performance when placed against Windows 7.

Is SL unstable? I don't know. In my limited user experience on three very different machines I have not found SL to be unstable.

You're missing my point. If one could install both Windows 7 (32bit with the fact that Boot Camp doesn't support 64bit Windows favorably) and Snow Leopard on the same hardware (meaning same components) and tested both, you'd see that if Windows was experiencing errors due to a hardware related issue then under pressure Snow Leopard would experience the same problem. That was my statement, that neither operating system is more solid than the other UNDER THE SAME CIRCUMSTANCES.

Perhaps you might want to validate your argument with the type of pc you are using with the operating systems and the environment you are using them in e.g what workloads and programs. Just a thought to give more substance to your statement.

Gladly. Shall I also provide you with a written document detailing all of my daily chores and my schedule? Geez.

• AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black @ 3.4GHZ, 1.4V (overclocked from 2.8GHZ, 1.3V);
  
• 8GB Corsair DDR2 800MHZ (4 sticks, 2GB each);
  
• Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P Motherboard, AM3 Socket;
  
• eVGA GeForce GTX260 216 (55nm process);
  
• Dual Seagate 640GB hdds;
  
• Coolermaster Mid-Range gaming case with SUPERB air circulation (a perk of being a mechanical engineer with knowledge of CFM);
  

Is that good enough for you? Oh, here's some screenshots of my CPU-Z, AMD OverDrive, and Windows Experience Index:

(Displays 1.3V, but since AMD Cool n' Quiet uses a variable voltage system it's actually using 1.39V right now)

I utilize this system for the following:

• Windows 7 Ultimate x64 (previously Windows Vista x64);
  
• AutoCAD 2009 x64;
  
• Adobe Photoshop CS4 x64;
  
• Microsoft Office 2007;
  
• Firefox;
  
• Thunderbird;
  
• Skype;
  
• Windows Live Messenger;
  
• Steam;
  
• Team Fortress 2;
  
• Left 4 Dead;
  
• Ventrilo x64;
  

.. And so on.

I call "Troll"

I call mega troll.

Why is it every time I get involved in a debate on these forums I get at least one person accuse me of trolling? Fuck, I guess administrators just aren't supposed to enjoy the forums they contribute to.

What the you are saying is

- Your Seven never hangs (or very rarely because of driver .... well it IS a hang IMO)

- Your OSX never hangs

- consequence: Win7 is more stable

I have an OSX rig? News to me!

What I was stating was that I've yet to experience a Vista or 7 related error above and beyond the traditional hardware support related issues. A computer technologist as yourself should be well aware that Windows is designed to run with support for a MUCH wider range of hardware than Apple designs their Macs, and as such it will have a higher chance of crashing due to support or lack thereof. If a version of OSX was unable to utilize it's hardware on the level of Windows if not better then I'd be very dissappointed in Apple's coding team.

If you're working with a very small set of hardware then you will learn it's limitations and be able to code it accordingly to utilize it's strengths. Microsoft's coding team designed Windows Vista with gaming hardware in mind and Windows 7 with netbooks in mind. Vista was aimed directly at newer hardware, while 7 was aimed at the Intel Atom series with Intel GMA's. I was incredibly surprised to boot my netbook to find out that Aero was being emulated on my GMA despite the fact the chip isn't capable of diddly.

Come back with real data and we'll talk. Second the troll comment.

Oh, baby needs her bottle. I'm being torn up for my second small post in this topic, despite the fact I was being much more accepting of Apple's initatives than any other topic like this in the past. (:

I am not a fan of Apple. I never have been, and I doubt I ever will be. I prefer my PC's and I avoid the iPod series like the plague because I dislike iTunes. Although the fact remains that I am looking at this in a lighter heart than I ever have because Apple does indeed make reliable hardware with low maintenance, which allows some of the people I hold dearest whom I cannot directly aid with any computer related issues to do their work without worrying about having their registry or boot orders become corrupted due to external hardware support.

Do you see what I'm getting at here, Foxy? Call me a troll if you'd like, but you're only deluding yourself. If I truly allowed myself to be bothered by such petty comments as what you're making then I'd be a blabbering mental patient by now. Grow up for gods sake.

give your win7 registry a month or two of use and come back here and try to claim that win7 is more stable than OSX. you'll be singing a different tune.

even the best maintained systems fall victim to MS' registry inefficiencies at some point in my experience.

I'd much rather have to reformat once every six months for optimal performance than have to visit the Apple store for every little issue.

[GerbilSoft]

Now, here's something to ponder. For quite a while, I've been planning on porting Gens/GS to run on the PowerPC architecture, since I have access to a bunch of Power Macintoshes that otherwise do nothing. The initial port will be for PowerPC Linux, since I already have the UI infrastructure set up for GTK+. The question is, based on the fanboyism/fangirlism I've seen in this topic, is it worth bothering porting Gens/GS to Mac OS X?

I'm thinking it isn't, largely because I'd get a ton of tl;dr complaints about how Gens/GS on OS X doesn't "fit in" with the Apple philosophy and how it's "a crappy port of a Windows program". So, once I port the 68000 emulator to C (scheduled for Release 8), I plan on supporting the following systems:

- Windows/i386

- Linux/i386

- Linux/amd64

- Linux/powerpc

If anyone would like me to add Mac OS X to this list, please give me some reasons as to why I should bother wasting my time in doing so.

[Foxy]

Michael DeAgonia just published a comprehensive and comparative review of W7 and SL, entitled:

Smackdown: Windows 7 takes on Apple's Snow Leopard

It's worth the read, as it clarifies as well as confirms concerns about the Windows Registry, as well as other underlying issues. This is the conclusion:

Conclusion

"In terms of pure interface, Microsoft has raised the bar for Windows users. Windows 7 is the best-looking OS out of Redmond, Wash., yet. But let's not confuse that with "innovation."

Many of these features aren't new at all, and many have been available on Mac OS X for years. While Windows 7 closes the gap with Snow Leopard, it does so only at a superficial level. At first, I was impressed with the interface changes and got caught up in the beauty of the Aero themes and sleek look. But after a few weeks of use, reality began to set in. After a Registry issue prevented me from installing an app, I realized Windows 7 is still Windows. Prettier, a little snappier than Vista, perhaps more stable. But at some point, you still face many of the underlying issues that have made Windows a pain to use in the past.

Microsoft's main enemies here aren't really Mac OS X or Linux. What Microsoft needs to worry about are the users and sysadmins who think the hardware and OS already on their desks works just fine. If you're still using XP after all these years, the slick interface and modest under-the-hood changes may not tempt you to spend money on Windows 7.

A friend of mine who works in IT for a major corporation explained it this way: The biggest problem Microsoft has is that after all these years, XP still works for many businesses. "What will force us to move [to Windows 7] is when Microsoft stops releasing security updates [for XP]," he told me. I believe that if Windows 7 appears to be solid right out of the gate, companies may move toward adoption quickly. XP is, after all, nearly a decade old.

If you're still using XP or are finally fed up with Vista, by all means check out Windows 7. It's certainly the best version of Windows yet -- just as it's equally true that Snow Leopard is the best version of Mac OS X. That's why you'd be well advised to check out Snow Leopard before shelling out money for Microsoft's latest.

As an IT professional, I support both operating systems at work. But I have Macs at home; after all, who wants to troubleshoot computer problems on their own time?

My final verdict in this smackdown? It's not even close: Snow Leopard is the better OS."

[GerbilSoft]

blah blah blah

Funny how you decided to ignore my post and instead decided to quote a pro-Mac review. Any particular reason as to why you did that?

[Dreadknux]

Hey the "virus" issues in Windows, yeah, that's because most viruses are MADE for Windows. There are so few Mac users, nobody will bother to make a virus for it. It's done easily, but why bother pissing off a few thousand people when you could piss off about half the world?

That's not necessarily true, actually. I think hackers would jump at the chance to get into tens of millions of computers if it was easy enough. Someone in 2007 went out of their way to make a virus for iPods running Linux, which is much more obscure than a Mac in the home computer industry.

And every five minutes the Red Hat conference or whatever its name is has some chancer that says that Macs are crap at security, by creating a virus code in ten minutes or whatever that knackers OSX's security. So, why hasn't this been more widespread? Because the viruses they write either need to be run at administrative level or requires access to the computer itself to function. So I'd say it's possible to hack a Mac - and lord knows people are actually trying as well - but you have to either be inept at computers or willingly let someone into your network/computer space to do so. I wouldn't say that's security by obscurity. I'd call it security by damn good coding.

Thus, trojans are about the only virus that can be weaseled into a Mac OSX system (unless I'm wrong, do correct me if so). And if you're dumb enough to open files that you're unsure of, you frankly deserve the computer wipeout.

Not strictly true. Unix-based OS's are more secure by default partially because Microsoft is unable to tell people who refuse to update their Windows 98-era software/hardware to just fuck off (read: Like Apple did in 2005) without incredible backlash; so they have to keep spaghetti-ing themselves into a hole in order to support legacy stuff.

That and the Windows Registry.

Oh, I thought it was because Apple are money hogs and have design and cost come before functionality. Huh.

lol. Now, now. I know Foxy's acting like an extreme fangirl, but that doesn't mean you have to act like an ignorant dumbarse.

2. Mac users think that having sex is cool. This clearly shows that Mac fans are virgins.

I don't get this last one. Are you saying sex isn't cool? Because from where I'm lying down right now it sure is. ;P

Seriously, I know you meant that as a joke, and I hate to deconstruct, but Apple fans buy into Apple things because they think its cool; meaning if Apple marketed sex, Apple fans wouldn't be virgins would they?

Windows 7 is sweeping things up with a strange bubble of positive thinking mainly achieved by the fact that it looks pretty. It has a nice gloss on it, but when it comes down to it the UI is obtrusive, which is exactly what OS X has been getting away from over the years, by toning things down and making them more functional. Unfortunately people don't see this, they look at Windows 7 and think "ooh shiny", they look at OS X and think "oh, grey". But when it comes down to it Windows 7's interface is distracting, and frequently annoying, while OS X's you forget it's there until you need it to do something in a couple of clicks. I've yet to find any of my common tasks as easy to achieve on Windows 7 as in OS X, as I find myself have to take all kinds of annoying extra steps.

The underpinnings of Windows 7 are ultimately the same, and are based on the same flawed components that have been there since Windows 95, possibly even earlier! They removed a load of bloat from Vista, and that's great, but really it should never have been there in the first place.

Functionality wise, productivity-wise etc. they have made little to no real progress at all, it's all eye-candy and fluff. What have they done that could really matter in the long-run? Snow Leopard has added great new technologies onto a heap of great new technologies, that Windows, C#, and .NET simply don't have. But what's more, many of these great new technologies are open-source, not proprietary, or anti-competitive.

And I don't see how Windows 7 wins on stability, as I've seen it lock-up three or four times on a clean-install, doing nothing really out-of-the-ordinary. That's lock up the entire system, not just a program ceasing to respond (which is the program's fault not the OS). I've also had it randomly crash during start-up!

Look, see Foxy, stuff like this is fine. I don't see why all of your posts can't be like this. Everything else you've written is just pretentious garbage. Yeah, I happen to privately agree with you on most of it, but come on. You're the perfect Mac fangirl stereotype, and it's cringing to see you post like you have been. Just give it a rest eh? Be a bit open-minded. If you want more people to 'join your Mac cult' or whatever, shoving comparison charts and review quotes and all that crap isn't going to help your cause really is it.

What, exactly? apart from half assed 64-bit support?

Snow Leopard's actually got full-assed 64-bit support. Only thing is, most applications aren't running in 64-bit, only the base apps like Mail and Safari and whatever. iLife's not in 64-bit, and I doubt iWork is either (releases usually come in the spring for these two, so I reckon iLife and iWork 10'll be 64-bit). Not even iTunes is running in 64-bit, although I imagine this is coming with iTunes 'X' or whatever they call the next major update. Then you've got Grand Central Dispatch.

It's probably going to take a while before the countless number of Mac software apps turn 64-bit, because I'd imagine the developers think that 32-bit is enough for now. Either way, it's a precautionary update to some great things in OSX 10.7, stuff that wouldn't be happening if it weren't for Snow Leopard's existence.

You're missing my point. If one could install both Windows 7 (32bit with the fact that Boot Camp doesn't support 64bit Windows favorably) and Snow Leopard on the same hardware (meaning same components) and tested both, you'd see that if Windows was experiencing errors due to a hardware related issue then under pressure Snow Leopard would experience the same problem. That was my statement, that neither operating system is more solid than the other UNDER THE SAME CIRCUMSTANCES.

To be fair though, that's a moot point. Because short of getting a Hackintosh, you'll never get to put OSX on the exact same hardware as a Windows PC version. And that's to Apple's benefit, because in ensuring particular components go into specific Mac revisions, you can tune OSX to have little to no hardware failures at all, due to the whole 'perfect harmony' marketing spiel. Windows can never hope to have such a situation, unless Microsoft make their own PCs (which would be corporate suicide). Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if a Mac's components from Intel or whatever were specifically 'Mac-tweaked' for particular use on Apple's systems, so even if you found an off-the-shelf chip it wouldn't be the same specification pound-for-pound.

I'd much rather have to reformat once every six months for optimal performance than have to visit the Apple store for every little issue.

If that was ever a regular occurrence for me, I'd steer clear too. But in the three years since I've had this MacBook, nothing's gone wrong once. Not a one incident. Runs like clockwork, even today. No slowdown, no deprecation of the internals or registry (as it doesn't exist) or whatever over the years, no disk defrag. Snow Leopard's actually made it faster. o_O*

I think problems with a Mac would be similar to those with a PC, or any other electronic device. If you look after it and treat it well, you'll have no need to be going to stores and getting shit fixed. Although in my experience, all of my PCs have kicked the bucket after two years, even with careful looking after. I think they just have a vendetta against me XD.

Now, here's something to ponder. For quite a while, I've been planning on porting Gens/GS to run on the PowerPC architecture, since I have access to a bunch of Power Macintoshes that otherwise do nothing. The initial port will be for PowerPC Linux, since I already have the UI infrastructure set up for GTK+. The question is, based on the fanboyism/fangirlism I've seen in this topic, is it worth bothering porting Gens/GS to Mac OS X?

I'm thinking it isn't, largely because I'd get a ton of tl;dr complaints about how Gens/GS on OS X doesn't "fit in" with the Apple philosophy and how it's "a crappy port of a Windows program". So, once I port the 68000 emulator to C (scheduled for Release 8), I plan on supporting the following systems:

- Windows/i386

- Linux/i386

- Linux/amd64

- Linux/powerpc

If anyone would like me to add Mac OS X to this list, please give me some reasons as to why I should bother wasting my time in doing so.

Most significantly, because not every Mac user is a pompous, turtleneck-sweater wearing freakazoid. I'm not. =) Yeah, I have a Mac. I'd never go back to a PC - personally I think Windows is a horrible nightmare, but I wouldn't push my point on others like some of the vocal Mac fanboys/girls.

Funnily enough, a lot of people who own Macs aren't really interested in why people should buy a Mac over a PC. I'm certainly not. If you want to get a PC, that's great. If you asked me my opinion, I'd recommend a Mac, but I'm not going to drag you over the coals as to what you get. And it's the same with a lot of people who own Mac computers; I liken the whole scenario to fanboyism of video game consoles. PS3 or 360 fanboys are loud, idiotic, irrepressible loudmouths that will just go "Yada yada yada" all day long in someone's face until they make their point known.

The thing is, because the Mac represents a whole computer, and not just an OS or something, you're getting a complete package when you buy into Apple. As a result, an Apple Mac is the closest thing you could probably get to a console in PC form. Which, in turn, explains why the only vocal fanboys that seem to be running around appear to be Mac fans. With a PC - Windows, Linux or otherwise - you're not 'dedicating' yourself to one particular company. With an Apple Mac, you are. Just as you are buying a Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft console. It's a company loyalty thing.

Again, I'd take the loud Mac fanboyism as a vocal minority, although a very loud minority. Consider the gains in market share Apple has had in the home computer market. Whether you want to admit it or not, a lot of people are switching to Macs, either as a first computer or from a PC or whatever. With that in mind, you'd think the proportion of Mac fanboys/fangirls on the Internet would increase or be much bigger than it actually is. That's not strictly the case - hell, even here Foxy's like the only Mac fangirl we've got, and I doubt she and I are the only ones sporting Macs.

There's a dearth of game-related open source shit on a Mac, that much is certain. And I know I can just use Boot Camp or whatever, but my lazy ass doesn't want to do the restart, hold-down Option, load Windows, see XP creak into life after ten minutes of booting, deal with anti-virus update... etc etc etc. And I know that there is definitely a huge number of users who have moved to a Mac that would appreciate the effort as well.

When I moved to a Mac several years ago, it was a difficult transition after being used to PCs. Took me about two weeks to get used to the commands and the keyboard and stuff. But the real kicker was the lack of equivalent software that I was used to on Windows - I had to really, really look for some open source stuff. And of course, a lot of devs see Mac users, realise they paid a lot of money for the computer and thus charge extortion for a fucking MP3 tagger for example. Which makes finding free, honest software solutions much more difficult.

So er, I'd appreciate the effort. And if not for me, then everyone who isn't Foxy. <3

[Tornado]

Which, in turn, explains why the only vocal fanboys that seem to be running around appear to be Mac fans.

I dunno. I've found a lot of Linux users to be pretty crazy. Though the vocal ones in that group typically seem like they also happen to be open source zealots, so it probably isn't Linux itself...

Look at that. I ruined my own joke.

Edited October 29, 2009 by Tornado

[Chris]

Snow Leopard's actually got full-assed 64-bit support. Only thing is, most applications aren't running in 64-bit, only the base apps like Mail and Safari and whatever. iLife's not in 64-bit, and I doubt iWork is either (releases usually come in the spring for these two, so I reckon iLife and iWork 10'll be 64-bit). Not even iTunes is running in 64-bit, although I imagine this is coming with iTunes 'X' or whatever they call the next major update. Then you've got Grand Central Dispatch.

While Snow Leopard does indeed have full 64-bit support, Apple's development kits do not. I remember an Adobe representative making a statement regarding Photoshop CS4's 64-bit support on Windows but not on OSX being because it would have to be a complete recode to take advantage of it on the OSX platform. Of Apple's major two kits, Photoshop was coded on the one which Apple flat out denied supporting 64-bit with.

To be fair though, that's a moot point. Because short of getting a Hackintosh, you'll never get to put OSX on the exact same hardware as a Windows PC version. And that's to Apple's benefit, because in ensuring particular components go into specific Mac revisions, you can tune OSX to have little to no hardware failures at all, due to the whole 'perfect harmony' marketing spiel. Windows can never hope to have such a situation, unless Microsoft make their own PCs (which would be corporate suicide). Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if a Mac's components from Intel or whatever were specifically 'Mac-tweaked' for particular use on Apple's systems, so even if you found an off-the-shelf chip it wouldn't be the same specification pound-for-pound.

Actually my point was geared more towards faulty components. If a CPU will not compute correctly for Windows 7 usage then Snow Leopard will also lock up, and similar situations to these. On the hardware level they both utilize it in the same fashion and as such are only as reliable as the rest of their components allow.

If that was ever a regular occurrence for me, I'd steer clear too. But in the three years since I've had this MacBook, nothing's gone wrong once. Not a one incident. Runs like clockwork, even today. No slowdown, no deprecation of the internals or registry (as it doesn't exist) or whatever over the years, no disk defrag. Snow Leopard's actually made it faster. o_O*

Personally speaking I'd much rather just replace the component I'm having issues with than have to deal with customer service - to my knowledge you are unable to do this at all with a Mac based system, which is why they're not for me. My laptop was enough of a pain in my arse because of design limitations.

If I could crack open a Mac and change the hardware around as I felt fit, it'd be a much better fit for what I use it for. Offering components like the Core i7 are definitely a step in the right direction to attract more hardcore users, but also impose limitations which are not evident in a PC such as cooling customization (for those same hardcore users whom would like to, for example, overclock their rig).

I think problems with a Mac would be similar to those with a PC, or any other electronic device. If you look after it and treat it well, you'll have no need to be going to stores and getting shit fixed. Although in my experience, all of my PCs have kicked the bucket after two years, even with careful looking after. I think they just have a vendetta against me XD.

I've yet to have any real issues with a PC above and beyond the level of one component crapping out. As I've mentioned before, I'm not against replacing the motherboard or another component if it breaks after a fair bit of usage - it's what I'd expect from the design. (:

[pooshoes]

if Apple marketed sex, Apple fans wouldn't be virgins would they?

But they haven't, so they are.

Having sex doesn't make you cool, simply because everyone else is fucking as well.

You fuck.

Your sister fucks.

Your teach fucks.

You wouldn't even be able to fuck if your parents hadn't fucked first.

Everybody in the whole damn world fucks.

So how can fucking be cool?

[Spanner]

No offense, but I think Macs are just overpriced pieces of shit with some ugly designs (except the MacBook, that's okay). All that including the only way you'll get OS X legally. You could build your own PC yourself and it would be cheaper, you could do whatever you want with it.

I'm a Windows user myself, who might eventually switch to Linux.

[GerbilSoft]

Most significantly, because not every Mac user is a pompous, turtleneck-sweater wearing freakazoid. I'm not. =) Yeah, I have a Mac. I'd never go back to a PC - personally I think Windows is a horrible nightmare, but I wouldn't push my point on others like some of the vocal Mac fanboys/girls.

I suppose there are some Mac users who aren't complete idiots. I didn't expect Foxy to respond to my post anyway, because she wouldn't have a valid response. (It'd probably be something like "WELL IF YOU DON'T PORT GENS/GS TO MAC, THEN ALL 10 OF US MAC USERS WON'T BUY A COPY", anyway.)

Edited October 30, 2009 by GerbilSoft

[Indigo Rush]

As long as I can do some word processing, listen to music, browse the web and do some artwork on it, it's a good computer to me. Games I'm not too concerned about, that's what game consoles are for.

[Sarge]

Let people use what they want, I say. If someone wants to splurge on a brand name, let 'em. We don't knock all those crazy fashion people for blowing extra money so just let 'em be.

On a somewhat related note, my Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade somehow still resulted in me keeping all my old files and programs. Um, what XD? At least I don't have to repatch WoW...

[DarkOverord]

Let people use what they want, I say. If someone wants to splurge on a brand name, let 'em. We don't knock all those crazy fashion people for blowing extra money so just let 'em be.

On a somewhat related note, my Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade somehow still resulted in me keeping all my old files and programs. Um, what XD? At least I don't have to repatch WoW...

yeah I noticed that. Windows.Old amirite?

[Sarge]

yeah I noticed that. Windows.Old amirite?

Yeah, except it still kept programs that I left outside the folder (read: CS3, WoW, ect) in my current Window's folder.

Strange but I'm not knocking it. Now I've got some Halo 2 PC goodness to dive into .

[Chris]

Yeah, except it still kept programs that I left outside the folder (read: CS3, WoW, ect) in my current Window's folder.

That's how upgrading Windows has been since Windows XP. The only problem is it leaves your registry and all your information in an unoptimized mess and will cause your computer to slow down much sooner than if you'd done a clean install.

[Sarge]

That's how upgrading Windows has been since Windows XP. The only problem is it leaves your registry and all your information in an unoptimized mess and will cause your computer to slow down much sooner than if you'd done a clean install.

Ah well, this is about to become a glorified media center PC anyway. Soon as I get my bonus I'm using some cash to finish my new machine <3.