Since it has been about six days since we have had an OS flame war, let me state that one thing I hate about Apple is that no matter what program I want to use, whether it be firefox, itunes, office, photoshop, dreamweaver, or acrobat, any time I try to use a program I have to install critical updates for five minutes first.
Now you can say this is not Apple’s fault, per se, but I do not run into these issues on Windows Seven. They just install themselves at night. I swear to God Itunes updates more than Drudge.
ruemara
Dammit man, that’s throwdown talk!
Actually, thats the one thing I admire about Windows, but I’ll keep my Macbook, ty. It’s darned near perfect otherwise.
dmsilev
Sounds like you should be blaming Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Adobe, and Adobe, rather than just Apple.
And frankly, I prefer updaters to ask for permission before changing things.
-dms
Mnemosyne
You can set your Mac to update automatically, you know. It’s probably the default setting on your Windows machine but you need to manually set it from Software Update on your Mac.
RememberNovember
dem’s fightin words, sir…
lol actually Apple is more judicial in their updates- I would rather be aware of an update- be able to look at what’s getting patched while I’m conscious rather than have little gnomes “fix” my system while I sleep.
You also have the option of going to the Apple site and downloading the package installers manually ( recommended for any pro apps user, as delta updates off a server can suffer packet loss)
Jesse
Huh? I don’t have that experience. And I use many of the programs on your list.
Are you sure that updates happen overnight on Windows 7? That actually seems intrusive to me. I suppose that policy is to counter the years and years of people running around with their Toshiba ShitBooks, constantly dismissing the window that says “You’ve got 10 critical updates to install”, thereby working with buggy and insecure and wondering why the hell their computer is popping up gazillions of pointless screens and dragging its heels doing even the simplest of task.
How’s that for flame war for you? :->
DaddyJ
My experience with Mac vs. Windows (I use both at work simultaneously) is the opposite; Windows is the nagging update harpy that drives me crazy. Of course that’s XP; I’m sure Vista is better.
But as far as Apple-branded software goes, go to System Prefs > Software Update and you can set the notification frequency to monthly if you want.
I think you can do the same with the Adobe apps.
jibeaux
Lord, yes.
I click the “do not ask me again dammit” if I want to upgrade to this afternoon’s version but I swear it keeps asking.
The Moar You Know
iTunes for Windows may possibly be the most miserable user experience a computer user can have.
I say “possibly” because anything made by Adobe can give it a run for its money in the “suck” department – I hate Adobe with the fire of a thousand burning suns, and unfortunately for me, have to use their shitty products a lot more than I have to use iTunes.
Jesse
@jibeaux: I don’t get it. You would think, judging form you experience and John’s, that iTunes is like actually a covert developer’s cutting edge product, rather than a bedrock Apple application that is rarely updated. What planet are you guys living on?
Keith
I hate Apple for many reasons, but my latest can be summarized by searching for “iTunes synch deletes files”. Let’s just say Apple and Microsoft have vastly different algorithms for sync’ing files.
Existenz
Well, you could change your Software Update settings so you only have to do updates once a month. Do you have it set to check daily or something?
I use all the programs you mention, and I don’t think there are constant updates at all. Even when there is an update mentioned, I can just ignore it until I feel like dealing with it.
And while automatic updating at night would be convenient, it’s also the kind of thing that opens you up to nasty viruses and malware. It’s always better that you actually approve of the software added to your computer.
jibeaux
I’m no technical person — yes, I did once seek tech support for a video issue on this website, and yes, it may have involved me informing the person of the information on the sticker on the back of the monitor, but anyway, why shouldn’t the default setting be that updates that are necessary for the smooth functioning and the anti-virus and the critical whatnot install automatically, while the iTunes thing (“New! Improved! We Changed the Color Of This Button From Yesterday’s button and Added this Aggravating, Useless Thing called “Genius” That’ll Really Slow You Down”) should have to ask you.
Stoic
As Johnny Storm always says, “Flame On!”
Existenz
I do agree that Acrobat requires way too many updates. Not clear why that is Apple’s fault though.
anticontrarian
every once in a while i get annoyed with my apple for that same reason. then i talk with my family, who are all pc users, whose computers get all bugged out and crash all the time, and i think to myself, ‘you know, this is not so bad, really.’ at least i know my laptop will work when i open it up.
srv
I remember meeting Warnock back in the day. There is a special circle in hell for that genius.
jibeaux
@Jesse:
RARELY updated? What planet are you on? “A new version of iTunes is available, do you want to update it now?” I can practically HEAR IT IN MY HEAD when I launch the stupid program.
RememberNovember
@srv:
I once gave John Nack a lift from the train station.
Tonal Crow
OT: What’s the site update schedule? We can’tn’t haz edit button for over a month now.
Zifnab
@anticontrarian:
Wow, so funny story, my PCs have had long and illustrious histories of not bugging out and crashing all the time unless I was hit with malware or running a program way outside my system’s specs.
So to your family, I would recommend a simple bit of advice. STOP DL PRON
CrazyNewfie
Firstly, Adobe software is obnoxious on either platform. That isn’t Apple or Microsoft’s fault.
For the windows folk who would like to be rid of Acrobat, I strongly recommend foxit reader: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/
Far, far faster and less unpleasant. Just be very careful during installation not to install the toolbar garbage that it defaults to.
cleek
iTunes is a huge disappointment, top to bottom. it could have been a great player. but now it’s so slow and bloated and clunky and buggy and filled with annoyances great and small that i often curse myself for getting trapped into using it by buying all those songs off the iTunes store.
jibeaux
Rarely, my buttock. November ’08 to March ’09, though, those were good times.
Male Man
Hey, John, consider yourself lucky: those same updates would take 25 minutes on Windows.
;)
Jesse
@jibeaux: Check it out for yourself: iTunes version history. Tell me that this is a program that’s constantly being updated.
John S.
Fuck iTunes.
I just stream Pandora to my iPhone anywhere I go. At work, in the car via Bluetooth, while I’m out jogging…I have absolutely no use for iTunes or satellite radio whatsoever.
J in WA
Woo hoo! It’s about time we have another raging OS war.
Last night I moved my mom’s 1999-vintage printer from her Windows XP box to her iMac because she uses the Mac exclusively now. I plugged it in, turned it on, and the Mac saw it right away. Printed a test page and I was done. Two minutes total.
I then sat back and remembered what it was like trying to install ancient hardware like that on a Windows box: try the “Printer Wizard,” only to have it claim that it can’t find a driver; search on the web for an hour looking for the right driver, try to download it, discover that it doesn’t work; search newsgroups for anyone else that had the same printer and discover that there are N different versions of the driver and only #7 actually works; search for version #7 for another 30 minutes before finally finding it; download and install, with the result that either (a) it crashes the machine, or (b) doesn’t work. After half a day of this nonsense, just buy mom a new printer.
So yeah, I guess I’ll stick with the Mac.
Davebo
I’ve always found it amazing that despite the obvious and incontrovertible fact that Windows is the worst OS every dreamed of on this or any other planet we still have almost 89% of computers running windows.
It’s simply amazing that we get anything done at all!
Eric
Oh my FSM, yes! Every single day, with the iTunes! Also, there needs to be an option on that update dialog for “No, I do not wish to download Safari now or at any point in the future.”
jibeaux
@cleek:
I haven’t bought much from it because I don’t want that stupid .mp4 format, so most of my music not ripped from CDs is from eMusic or lala, but I do use it a lot for podcasts. I don’t like iTunes. Is there another player I could use that would have podcasts all in one place, or would I have to go traipsing about the internets downloading from the original sites?
Shinobi
I never update iTunes because every time I do they add some feature that I HATE. What’s that about? Maybe there are settings to make it look the way I don’t hate, but I don’t want to have to set a program to not annoy me.
Fortunately I think the only thing I will be doing with my computer for the foreseeable future will be playing Dragon Age.
Jesse
@jibeaux: I think we agree on the facts. I somehow have a different experience. Not sure how we got on to this…oh wait, John’s flamebait throwdown. I am weak.
El Cruzado
@srv:
Can’t say I know the guy but it’s been a while since Warnock has had much to do with what Adobe gets out and how it updates.
It seems clear that many of Adobe’s product have grown too big and too complacent (that’s what happens when you have no competition). I dunno if it’s any worse in the Great Land of Autocad, to put an easy example.
As for iTunes for Windows, I’d rather not use it. That’s why I have macs.
Davebo
J in WA
Wow, you are correct, you should definitely stick with the Mac!
Seriously, half a day attempting to install a printer?
Ripley
I refuse to buy a Mac for the simple reason that, thus far, Apple has declined to offer me a free Mac to replace my PC.
A brother can only take so much disrespect, amirite?
jibeaux
@Jesse:
Yes! Good Grief, taste the rainbow. And if you don’t want their crappy update it just keeps asking until your will is sapped and you give in, fine, whatever, if this new thing is so wonderful and revolutionary, fine, put it on there, maybe it won’t be so all-fired slow next time I start it up so here goes, and then holy hand grenades, guess what, a new version of iTunes is available….NO DAMMIT I just uploaded the new version you pestered me about relentlessly and
/repeat
Sly
Make a foolproof machine and only fools will use it.
/runsandhides
Joshua Norton
Firefox is the same thing and it drives me nuts. You just can’t start the browser and use it anymore. First it hangs there. Then it looks for updates. Then it asks to install them. Then it installs them then it asks to start the program. Then it hangs again while it opens the old links and new links to all the crap it just installed. So 10 minutes later you might be on line with a sluggish browser.
They seem to be taking the Windows course of development and making something that was easy to use into so much bloat ware and it’s maddening when you want to get on line in a hurry. Especially since there’s updates 2 and 3 times a day. A lot of times for the same add-ons.
Corpsicle
You might tell iTunes not to check for updates automatically, which takes care of one problem. Adobe does make incredibly shitty software, but that is their problem. Isn’t their stuff just as shitty under Windows? I don’t quite get why Adobe’s general incompetence is Apple’s fault.
thomas Levenson
Not really off topic, but a white shoe law firm IP partner I know is a never-recovered Georgia Tech EE guy — and we’ve become good enough friends that finally this weekend he took me down to his basement sanctum: a museum to almost every Mac (it seemed) since since 512K was but a gleam in Jobs/Woz’s eyes.
My favorite — he had an old Duo 200, with doc and all. I once owned the 230, a simply great machine, and have to say that over the years, and for all the duds, Macs got and get more things right that I actually use than the competition.
That said — I’m about to buy one of those 3-400 buck 11″ netbook jobbies — but I’m going to dump the Windows off that sucker and install Linux, like the FSM intended. I’ve done the experiment once before, and I found that Open Office and Word for the Mac talk to each other seemlessly, and I don’t need to haul many pounds and 2K bucks worth of computer around when I bounce to Phoenix for one afternoon’s talk no more.
thomas Levenson
that would, of course, be “seamlessly.” Can I haz edit pleeze?
gex
@The Moar You Know: A thousand times yes on Adobe. My work got me Acrobat Professional for me, which we couldn’t really make use of at first because it would keep shutting down saying the software wasn’t authorized.
That was happening because their software validation process uses the serial number from your hard drive to uniquely identify you. Which seems great, until you run the software on a machine with mirrored drives. Then Adobe randomly queries for the SN and if it asks the wrong drive in the mirror, you have to fidget with authorization and deauthorization until you can get it running again.
I think we actually took out the mirror drive. What shitty, shitty software development. But as with iTunes, the shitty parts of the software are really all about piracy prevention. And like all piracy prevention, the legal purchasers are punished by FBI warnings and authorization nightmares, while the pirates just lop out the protections and use the software unencumbered.
cleek
OT: Tea Bagging your kids!
Jesse
@Joshua Norton: Hear hear. Even vanilla firefox — no addons — is as slow as molasses. I don’t understand how anyone can stand it anymore. I thought I read that in recent times they’ve pushed to make it faster, but that doesn’t seem true to me at all.
kommrade reproductive vigor
I usually charge my iPod in the player to avoid the constant updates that I feel impelled to read just in case they try to pull a fast one (and the warning not to use the system to operate things like planes and nuclear facilities is a hoot). Since the dawn of the iPhone it seems that the majority of updates are for non-iPoddy issues.
Here’s a question: Shouldn’t the all seeing folks at iTunes be able to look at what’s loaded on my computer and now I don’t need an update for an iPhone or an iTouch because I don’t have one and leave me alone?
And another: When will they realize that requiring someone to install another damn update before they can complete their purchase is – from a profit making standpoint – a really bad idea? That is a Oh-shit-my-mom’s-home-early! level of mood killing.
Of course, if I had waited a year or so, Pandora would have made its deal with Amazon and I wouldn’t have needed to buy an iPod. I bet Amazon has the complete Panorama. Also. Pfffft!
jibeaux
@Jesse:
I’ve got no real opinion on Mac v. PC other than I can’t afford a Mac, so I have a PC. When Mac can sell me a basic computer meeting my internet, photo, video, and music needs for less than my mortgage and considerably closer to the $449 I paid for a perfectly functional new Asus, then maybe I’ll flame on, until then y’all can scrap it out. But iTunes pisses me off. Moving my iTunes library from my old computer to the Asus was the biggest headache of that entire experience.
Kyle
I work in an IT shop that supports both Apple and Windows, and everyone hates working on Apple. Windows crashes more, but thanks to Steve Jobs’ “we’re perfect, nothing ever breaks” conceit, the Apple OS gives you no fucking useful information on the details of the problem when it crashes or hiccups.
tripletee
Only Windows updates do this (and Office if you have that turned on). All of the other programs you listed have their own update routines, ranging from the annoyingly frequent “There is a new iTunes available…” to the infuriating Adobe Updater, which requires you to shut down every program you’re running, kill any non-essential processes, throw salt over your shoulder and recite your serial number translated into binary backwards before it will install the fucking update.
kommrade reproductive vigor
now = know.
Bleah.
GReynoldsCT00
I get it, but as relatively new Mac user, who was fed up with the bloated mess my PC would become — I love the fact that you have to enter a password and authorize the updates. Takes a few minutes but it’s worth it to me to keep applications under control.
The Moar You Know
@gex: For what Acrobat Pro costs, the least Adobe could do would be to let me install it on every goddamn machine we have here in the shop. “Fiscal sodomy” should be the term for Adobe’s business model. Damn.
Jesse
@cleek: Wow, creepy. It seems a bit like child abuse to me to involve children in the horrible, poisonous world of contemporary American politics, but maybe that’s just me. What mother could take pride in her 5-year-old repeating “Dick Armey will save us all”, after she read it to him?
Tonal Crow
Having used both Macs and Windows-based computers — primarily for software development — I much prefer Windows. It’s easier to customize, I don’t have to use that blasted “Finder”, and the spectrum of utilities (e.g., Clipmate) is much broader. That said, Macs are easier to setup, primarily because OS/X supports a much-smaller variety of hardware than does Windows.
CalD
@dmsilev:
I beg to differ. Other than under the most extenuating of paradigm changes, e.g., migrating to a new processor, OS updates shouldn’t break software. Best practices demand preserving the stability of any API’s used by third parties across updates to maintain compatibility with applications written to earlier versions. Otherwise it’s just anarchy out there.
Say what you want about Microsoft (and to anyone who believes you hate them now, I would just say that no one who has never developed software for Windows could possibly imagine how much more you could hate them if you did), but version 1.0 of our flagship software product — a 16-bit, Windows 3.1 application originally released in 1996 — still runs without modification on 32-bit versions of Vista and Windows 7. I find that pretty impressive even before considering that in the 4 or 5 years since we started developing for jointly for Mac and Windows, Apple has yet to release any major updates to OS X that did not break our Mac version somehow — usually fairly catastrophically. Sorry, but that’s just sloppy work. You do Apple no favors by defending them on it.
Mark S.
Since I don’t have a Mac, I usually just walk on by these threads like Peggy Noonan, but this is the goddamn truth.
itsbenj
my experience is vastly the opposite. tons of windows updates needed, tons of compatibility issues, my Mac takes care of itself pretty much, Windows needs much more maintenance. but I don’t use Windows 7 on my work machine, so maybe it’s better. but anyhow, I never experience this need for “critical updates” before using a program. like, never. what kind of late 90’s G3 Mac are you using?
Zach
If you steal your software you’ll be too paranoid to use the auto update features. Problem solved. Just pay for another copy and keep it shrinkwrapped to assuage any moral qualms.
Seriously though until my Macbook bricked itself (out of applecare and refuse to pay that price for a “logic board” that has the same problem it had under warranty) I never had this problem… I guess I had auto updates on or something? Talking about everything other than iTunes, anyway… but that updates just as often on Windows (ditto for Adobe stuff).
Google does updates exceptionally well for their desktop products.
tripletee
@Kyle: @Davebo:
Have you installed an HP printer recently?
jibeaux
@Mark S.:
I am winning hearts and minds, too, Jesse. :)
Kevin Phillips Bong
@srv: In other Warnock news, his son Chris started a fight with me when we were in grade school in Los Altos. I believe there was a sucker punch involved.
gex
@The Moar You Know: You just reminded me of one of my favorite Apple features: less expensive software with a Family licensing option. Three Macs in our house, one Snow Leopard purchase good for up to 5 machines. Seeing as how we got a Family license for iWork and iLife too, and the whole thing cost $250, it’s a heck of a deal.
What would Windows 7 and a Home/Student version of Office cost for 3 machines? I’m too lazy to do the math since outfitting Windows machines at home is no longer my problem.
licensed to kill time
I wish I could afford a Mac.
@CrazyNewfie: I second the use of Foxit in place of AdobeBloatandSecurityHoles.
joes527
@anticontrarian:
This is one that has me scratching my head. I’ve run Windows on the home computer going back to Window 286.
I have seen the BSOD of course, but not constantly, In a former life I ran a lab of old school macs and I saw the sad mac with about the same frequency) In any case, it has never been a constant thing in my experience and has _almost_ always been associated with hardware going south.
As far a viruses … I’ve never had one. I can count the times that the virus checker jumped up and say “Ohh Ohhh!! don’t do that!” on a couple of hands. (maybe just one hand)
But then I go to other folks’ Windows boxes, and they are so thoroughly owned there are barely any CPU cycles allocated for the person sitting at console. Any attempt to clean up is met with a robust defence, and I’m left shaking my head and giving the advice: “First, you need a really strong magnet….”
I know that folks get their Windows boxes tied in knots. I’ve seen it. But god as my witness I don’t understand HOW they do it. I suspect folks that need adult supervision on a Windows box would need adult supervision on a Mac. (and yes, giving your parents a guest account on their own computer while only you know the Administrator’s password is a high maintenance approach, but it works)
gex
@CalD: Excellent point that I love to see on MS vs. Apple wars. Raymond Chen has an excellent blog — and many of his posts on the efforts he and his team had to go through to make Win 95 work with pre-existing software really should get MS more love than they get.
However, it is the old IT maxim. When it works, IT is invisible. When it doesn’t work, IT is a goat.
jibeaux
@cleek:
Because what every little tyke wants for Christmas is a cartoon screed about the Ninth Circuit. They write these hokey “good people are Democrats” children’s books, too. Personally, I’m trying to teach my kids to think for themselves and enjoy their childhood, I’ll find some other way to warp them. Such as if they don’t pick up the toys I have already asked them to pick up, off they go to be donated to someone who might appreciate them more. Mommie Dearest, that’s me.
Eric U.
@Keith: I recently did a spyware scan of my son’s computer, and there were 10000 files in the sync folder. I know it’s not doing anything useful in his case. Interesting that it causes problems.
Jesse
@jibeaux: Yeah, I concede. I’m just gonna have to noonan this flame war because I think y’all are nuts.
tripletee
@The Moar You Know:
Fixed. Adobe can’t die fast enough. Where is the hungry new company that will do to them what Google is doing to, well, everybody else?
The Grand Panjandrum
Manual typewriter. Abacus. Rotary dial phone. Problem solved. These devices have worked for decades and NEVER ONCE did you need to go through the annoying process of clicking on an icon. Holy Sweet FSM in the morning THOSE were the days. Now get off my lawn!
srv
@Kevin Phillips Bong: May we all live our update angst vicariously through you.
tripletee
@joes527:
I can haz p0rn and warez?
dmsilev
@tripletee:
It’s the lack of real competition. They can do better if pushed. I’m convinced that one of the main reasons why Lightroom works so well is that Adobe took one look at the early versions of Aperture and uttered a long “oh shit, that’ll take away a large chunk of our Photoshop $$$ unless we get off our asses”.
-dms
Kevin Phillips Bong
@srv: Would love to help out with the angst, alas, I got my young ass kicked. Which seems about par for the course in this arena.
NutellaonToast
Apple doesn’t sell you a product. It sells you a life. A life for which you have to pay 20 dollars for the privilege of using the iToilet.
iGofuckyourself
cleek
OMG. HP is the king of bloatware.
i used to work in a building with one of their development departments. every time the elevator stopped on the 5th floor i wanted to grab one of those guys and make him apologize for writing such crap.
Sarcastro
As one who formerly had to support Quark, I laugh – laugh I say, HAHA! – at those who think Adobe is an epic level PITA.
Adobe is annoying, Quark was malicious.
Now back to trying to make Pidgin stable on a Jabber network… mmmm, open source documentation.
Darkrose
I use a Mac at work, with Parallels running Windows 7–and I could go on for days about how much Parallels sucks–and a Dell with Vista. Both the Mac and the Dell lock up hard with about the same frequency: rarely. Windows has more updates, but neither OS compares to DivX. Even iTunes doesn’t update as often as DivX, which seems to have a new version every single time I open it.
In conclusion, as Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie pointed out: every OS crashes, because every OS sucks.
Davebo
Don’t get me started! Remember when drivers for every printer manufactured would fit on a 10″ floppy?
But then I’m banging my head against a Zebra RFID label printer right now.
Joshua Norton
Quark was malicious.
So true. So true. Do they still make Quark? I have some old files I want to access.
jeffreyw
@tripletee: Yes, yes I have. I was about to toss an old HP deskjet when I decided just for kicks to plug it into this Vista laptop with a USB cable. It installed right away and ran a test page. Aside from the fact that the color ink cartridge was dry, it worked fine. Now the included software CD was another matter.
MikeJ
@Sarcastro:
Damn straight. Quark would not only bomb the mac you were on, it would go across the lan and crash others too.
The place I had to deal with it we used Windows, Macs and SGIs. Irix had it’s quirks but at least those boxes just worked. Of course the users of those boxes already knew how to fix everything themselves and didn’t require hand holding if anything did break.
BombIranForChrist
iTunes updates more than Drudge and it is still a slow and buggy POS software. Browsing the apple store is appallingly sluggish. Incompetent.
Cain
I hate you people. Here I am, working hard on creating a good desktop on linux and none of you bastards are using it. I mean.. really? Can you at least try out GNOME? We don’t get any crashes and it’s damn fast. GNOME 3 is coming! It will be hot.
love,
gnome developers from across the globe
MikeJ
@Cain: We’re using it, we’re just not bitching about it.
R-Jud
@BombIranForChrist:
This. It’s gotten to the point where I get nervous when I boot up and there *isn’t* an iTunes update waiting for me.
MarkJ
I’ve never used a Mac but have never had trouble with a Windows machine crashing (knock on wood). I’ve had a Vista machine for 3 years and my antivirus and windows stuff updates automatically and seamlessly. Adobe is another issue but I can’t blame Windows for that.
I could afford a Mac, I guess, but they are really expensive for what you get in terms of computing power. Maybe everything works even more seamlessly than with Windows but you have to pay $1,200 for a laptop that has the same computing power as a PC that costs nearly half the price. Installing a printer may be more of a pain but is it $500 more of a pain, especially when chances are you’ll do it only once or twice?
Also – too many people who consider themselves nonconformists define themselves by the fact that they worship all things Apple. I find that really annoying.
As for iTunes – there are new updates available every frickin time I start it up and it is frustrating.
Caladan
You can set your software update to automatically check and install updates at anytime you wish it to.
Calouste
@jeffreyw:
Never, ever install the software from the CD that comes with a printer or other piece of hardware.
Mr Furious
@Sarcastro:
Pretty much what I was going to say…
I hear all this Adobe-bashing, and I live in those programs 24/7 and don’t have too many problems OR complaints.
InDesign eats Quark for lunch. Rarely crashes, and when it does, it restores to exactly where I was without losing anything.
Photoshop is stable as hell, Bridge rocks and the flake of the bunch, Illustrator, is the one I spend the least time in, so I grin and bear it.
Yes, Quark is still around (the last version I have is 7.31), still expensive as hell and still not as good as InDesign. And that company has the worst customer serve/tech support known to man.
Seanly
I sneer at all those smug Mac ads. Little smarty-pants Mac. [shakes fist]
I would love to get rid of some stupid itunes related crap that pops up whenever I re-start my Vista 64bit. Of course, itunes isn’t alone as windows messenger also always starts up. Made wife think I was carrying on messenging with someone else…
Sun microstations for all! I still remember those 2 hour Abaqus finite element model runs and the Chinese grad student who printed out 400 pages of his local newspaper. Wonder if he still does that with webpages…
Molly
Jeez, dear ones, if you’re worried about expense, go open source. Ubuntu and OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird, and I’ve got all of the things I need to live just fine.
I’ve said this before…I run Windows and Ubuntu at work, a Mac at home. I have a soft spot for the Mac, but I’ve also got Karmic Koala loaded on my old Wintel box at home. I’m trying to talk myself into loading xUbunu on my dad’s old, old i386, but it’s going to take some good tequila to get me to do it. No one is stuck paying money to Microsoft or Apple. :)
And in the convenience vs. being asked debate, I don’t want a single thing installing on any of my computers without my express permission, period.
Onward.
BrYan
Sir,
I can assure you that there is no problem with the Mac. The problem is with you for not appreciating the beauty of its design.
NovShmozKaPop
Verily I say unto thee: there will be plenty of other issues. However pretty the front end (and Microsoft is really good at making entry-level look sexy) Windows is a rats’ nest underneath; OS X is a UNIX-alike with a human face. After writing software for over 20 years it didn’t take me long to decide which one I want at home or at work when the time came to choose.
Ash
The only way, in my experience, to keep a computer running Windows fast and virus free, is to know bajillions of things about computers. This reminds of that thread we had when John was installing Windows 7, and people kept telling him to do all this techy shit that made absolutely no sense whatsoever to me. People shouldn’t HAVE to know what all that means just to run their own freaking computer.
Every PC my family has owned in the last 10 years or so has become a malware infested POS.
My MacBook has been going on 5 years now perfect and problem free. AND I can still look at all the pr0n I want. HAH!
marjo
For the longest time, I refused to update my iTunes on my pc because I was wary of that fine print about what I could and could do with my purchased music. Finally, tantalized by some new video or cd, I succumbed. I clicked “yes” to update iTunes.
Well, it snagged mid-install on my firewall, and now anytime I open it, I get an error message about the last update being incomplete, and everything freezes until I click past it, even if I am just playing a video or clip that defaults to iTunes.
I tried on the so-called “help” forums to figure out how to fix, to no avail. I don’t understand what the hot deal is with Apple. Sure, windows sucks, but I think I feel better financing a benign dictator like Bill Gates over an a-hole like Steve Jobs. so there, I said it.
MikeJ
@Molly:
It could still be useful without X. I don’t think I’ve installed linux on anything slower than a 486-50, but Clinton ’92 ran xenix on a 386 with terminals around the office and a dedicated 56k line back to Little Rock where they had a similar setup.
Demo Woman
Gee, No Sarah open thread? I think Andrew is live blogging. I already counted a lie.. She never heard about Oprah’s snubbing her because she was to busy campaigning.
Ed Drone
@Sly:
Ed
Cain
@MikeJ:
Well said!
cain
Sloegin
iTunes wouldn’t be nearly as annoying if:
1. A new version wasn’t required everytime Apple releases a new color ipod.
2. Quicktime was free on the Windows side like it is now with Snow Leopard.
Oh and Firefox can DIAF for it’s nearly weekly updates and the constant “lucky you! uprgrading to the new version of FF webpage” that constantly pops up after you update.
Demo Woman
Sarah quoted Barack Obama telling reporters that “kids” were off limits during the campaign and how unfair that the media left his children alone but not hers. Oprah mentioned that Obama was actually talking about her family at the time and she then said “I so appreciated that”
PanAmerican
The QuickTime install that comes chained to the Windows ITunes updates is great. I like to have my default file extension settings zonked every fucking time.
Christian Norton
Ok you’re joking right? I update my Mac about once a month, yet there is a constant barrage of ‘update required’ balloons in the bottom right corner of my PC. If Window 7 solves this problem that’s great, however I’ve seen a couple different PCs wreaked by a Window’s system update. There was a time (admittedly a couple years ago) I strongly recommended NOT updating a PC with anything but the critical updates. I do honestly hope Windows 7 is actually stable, I hate having to try and fix my friends broken PCs or explain to people that the reason their computer doesn’t work is simply because not working is a ‘feature’ of PCs, and nothing can be done about it. But having used Windows (and Macs) since the Windows 3.1 days they’ll have to prove they’ve changed, and I’m not going to be easy to convince.
Dork
Plus Apple sucks. Also, therein.
Paris
@Molly: I have to agree. Linux is to the point where I prefer it over Win and Mac. iTunes has always struck me as ugly and confusing. Plus I see no reason to pay Steve Jobs for permission to listen to my own music. And yes, you do – at least with your time. You need access to their god awful website and create user accounts and all kinds of horseshit, just for a music player. And a sucky confusing one at that.
joes527
@Davebo:
I believe it is a hard and fast internet tradition that any post that mentions 10″ floppies must end:
… and get off my lawn!
Jesse
Already, I’m fuming again (thanks, alcohol!) and want to issue a rejoinder to those who say that iTunes requires tons of updates. It starts like this:
How many times per month would you say you start iTunes?
If the answer is “less than twice, on average”, than I can see how, in recent months, you would get the impression that iTunes updates “every time it starts up”.
If the answer is “more than twice, on average”, then I’ll say it again: I don’t know where in the world you get the impression that iTunes has updates available “every time it starts up”. Unless you’re deleting iTunes, reinstalling it, reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling the OS, working with multiple out-of-sync computers, or whatever.
OK, now I’m noonan’ing this for real.
Simonee
OT, but Sully’s head is exploding as he’s live-blogging the Oprah-Palin interview.
Nutella
@joes527:
There were 10″ floppies? I remember 3 1/2″, 5 1/4″, and 8″ (from pre-PC days) but what were 10″ floppies?
Jesse
@Demo Woman: Nice spot. I bet Sarahcuda’s fans were grinning and nodding at that little bit of grace. “She’s so class!”
chuck
I wouldn’t quite call Windows a “rats nest underneath”.
More like a super-slick elegant small and fast kernel, festering piles of rotting feces making up crufty, buggy, slow APIs, then nice new APIs like .NET papering over all that.
Basically a shit sandwich with artisan bread.
OSX actually has Mach underneath, which is also a small kernel with an elegant API, but so slow and bureaucratic that it gave microkernels a bad name to this day, and one that Apple basically completely plastered over with a monolithic BSD kernel personality in order to try to fix.
jh
Dear Steve Jobs,
I don’t want to install your crappy Safari on my machine so please stop asking.
Signed,
A happy Chrome user.
That being said, in the Apple v. PC wars, I always come down on the side of PCs because they are basically commodities at this point.
I just finished watching my graphic designer buddy go through a six month slog of saving, scrimping, and selling his sperm and blood, just to be able to afford his new Mac.
I just bought a brand new PC laptop for under $500 bucks.
Sure apples are more integrated from a design standpoint than PCs, and they are definitely harder to fuck up (unless you get root access, then all bets are off) but they are harldly worth the premium they cost over PCs, unless you count the smugness of Applelistas as a benefit.
J. Michael Neal
Oh, look! There are updates for my computer!
inkadu
@Cain: XFCE. Sorry. But if you want to buy me a faster computer, I’ll be happy to try gnome.
@cleek: HP is horrible. It loaded up about three programs on startup, one of which checked for updates, which were depressingly frequent. Why does a printer need updates? I don’t understand. The computer gives it information, and it prints that information. What needs to be updated in that process?
Anyway, next time I buy a printer I’m going to do some research and figure out what the standard protocol is, which printer conforms to it, and get that one.
Ash
@Jesse: This.
However, I have iTunes up and running basically 24/7, so I might be in the minority of user experiences.
Ash
@chuck:
Is this English?
joes527
@Nutella:
You know, I was wondering about that myself. The largest floppy I’ve ever touched was 8″. I used to have one tacked up on my cubicle wall with a push pin.
I just assumed that the reference to a 10″ floppy in the original post was from someone older and more curmudgeonly than I.
Jesse
@MarkJ:
Well, I see your point. Apple does garner strong brand loyalty. What annoys me equally is the implicit “brand loyalty” that pervades a lot of the corporate world, in which it is simply assumed that one has Windows, because, well, duh. That’s kind of like brand loyalty, but really really dumb.
MikeJ
Just the other day someone on here was raving about how great apple support is. Just buy the extended three year warranty for $350 and if if breaks they’ll ship you a new one.
Or buy a PC and three years from now buy a new one for $350 that’s twice as fast as the one you have today.
soonergrunt
@tripletee:
There. FIFY.
Whats the fastest way to accelerate your MAC?
….at 9.81 m/s squared!
I thought about buying a Mac. But then I decided I wanted a computer.
For the last few years, there has been a contest at the DEFCON hackers conference, in which fully patched computers (a linux box and a windows box) and a fully patched Macintosh are attacked by conference attendees. Each year for the last four years, the Mac was compromised to root within an hour, and the linux box within a day. The windows box finally fell, each year, after more than two days, to a third-party exploit. The last couple of years that TPE has been an Adobe product.
Apple is legendary for its inattention to known security flaws.
Macs are only safe because nobody uses a mac for anything a real hacker would care about.
Jesse
OT but related: from the bullshit blog: http://bullshit.tumblr.com/post/221057330/hi-if-you-are-coming-to-this-site-via-internet.
Nutella
@joes527:
Wikipedia never heard of 10″ floppies either. I guess the person who mentioned that is so old (and possibly curmudgeonly) that the memory is beginning to go!
cleek
@inkadu:
my HP all-in-one came with a service that would help me shop for HP supplies, in case i needed them but couldn’t figure out how to drive 2 miles to Office Max. how thoughtful!
then there’s the service that looks for the printer and tells me whenever the printer’s connected/disconnected. even if i’m not using the printer. it’s always there to tell me! if i click the balloon it shows me, a whole suite of HP crapware starts up so i can manage, print, order, etc. all these wonderful family photos it implies i’m supposed to have.
then there’s the HP service that gets confused and starts consuming 100% of my CPU.
all i wanted was a printer/scanner/fax machine. i didn’t want a motherfucking media suite / sweet memories and happy times manager !
Jesse
@soonergrunt:
I’d like to attend DEFCON one day. Do you have a link about these contests?
Paris
I don’t mind Apple as much as I hate its cult members (I’m talking to you Dad, daughter, other daughter, and work colleagues). Shut up about your stupid computer already. And you know that part time job at the Apple store that you go to each evening? Minimum wage is closer to zero than to your normal hourly wage. Most people volunteer for non-profits! They don’t leave their salaried engineering position and then spend the evening making minimum wage because they ‘love the product’. They contribute constructively to their communities.
I swear I could get rich if I charged for interventions.
inkadu
@Molly: I switched my mom over to Ubuntu because I couldn’t figure out wtf was wrong with Windows XP and couldn’t reinstall it because my dad lost the actual OS install disk (though he has a thousand copies of Office and Microsoft Plus!). My mother’s only requirement was that I load solitaire, which, fortunately, Linux has.
I’m running Xubuntu on my old machine and it works well, except when it doesn’t — mostly problems with the graphics card and Dell’s power saving thingies. I’ve been really impressed with Linux’s progress over the last few years, especially ease of installation. I tried it, on-and-off, in the past, but have been with this installation for long enough that it feels like home. Plus it looks all modern and jazzy, which makes me feel a lot richer than I am.
Demo Woman
@Jesse: I had to turn it off. She is a paranoid whiner and twenty minutes was enough.
bystander
Via boing boing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/business/15digi.html?_r=3&ref=business
Apologies if redundant.
Er, can Microsoft be far behind?
soonergrunt
@soonergrunt: It’s actually the CanSecWest conference’s pwn2own contest at which Apple keeps getting slaughtered.
bystander
I’ll figure out blockquotes on this site yet. Sure I will…
These should have been blockquoted as well…
Sorry about that. :-(
Joshua Norton
Oh my yes. But it loses a little of its humor in translation from the original Klingon.
inkadu
@cleek: This!
Joshua Norton
@Demo Woman:
Wonkette is live blogging. The comments are hysterical.
WereBear
I remember when PC owners had a black screen with green lettering.
They would say, “Who needs graphics? Who needs sound? Who needs a mouse? I get along fine with my CPM software… etc, etc etc.”
And, apparently, they are still like that.
Martin
@jibeaux:
Just to be clear – every 6 weeks is what you consider ‘every time you turn it on’? That’s been the average iTunes update schedule.
And Adobe has the worst updaters I can think of. Half the time they don’t seem to do a damn thing and just ask you the next day to run the same updater all over again.
Nylund
I think I’ve had to update iTunes about 4 times this week so far. Its getting quite annoying. Especially since iTunes doesn’t actually “update” it does a full reinstall.
I’ve gone back and forth between PC’s and Mac’s my whole life, but my career of the last two years has made me exclusively PC again. My laptop hasn’t given me a single error message, a single freeze, or anything in nearly two years and I abuse the hell out of it. I’m quite happy with my Toshiba “shitbook’ as someone called it earlier in the thread. Meanwhile, my wife’s Macbook that I used to envy like nothing else annoys me more and more every day. I’m happy with either, but in reality, a lot of the old (and valid) Windows criticisms are quite moot at this point. Meanwhile, Apple products seem to get more bloated and problematic. In my book, which is better is now a complete toss up. For the kind of work I do, I love (and require) the vast number of programs that Windows affords me. I simply could not do what I do on a Mac (unless I boot to Windows on my iMac).
inkadu
@bystander:
The Vogons would also be interested in this technology. “Attention, Eathlings! Your planet will be destroyed to make way for a new hyperspace bypass!”
Hulu had a new advertising trick. They’d play an advertisement and then make you wait eight seconds while giving you the option to watch another advertisement. I had to restrain my ADD, but it was a huge effort, only aided by the fact that I could switch tabs to Balloon-Juice.
@cleek: Oh, you might also want to try HiJackThis! (aka HJT) which makes short work of all those annoying apps that load at start up. You can still start them manually if you want, or go back to the backupped initialization file; but I’ve found that the operating system knows how to handle most peripherals without any help from those annoying programs eating space on the bottom right of your screen.
gex
What is the deal with you people who don’t like Apple because of WHO BUYS APPLE? That’s as much marketing and stereotype as it is an accurate description of who is using Apple. You aren’t given a hipster to take home with you when you buy a Macbook.
cleek
anecdote: in my life, i’ve read, met or heard more people bitching about Mac fans proselytizing than i’ve read, met or heard actual Mac fans proselytizing.
Ash
@gex: This is like hating moose meat because of who eats moose meat. Moose is REALLY GOOD PEOPLE. :(
Martin
Average selling price for PCs is now $505. A full install of Windows 7 costs almost $200. How long do people think this relationship can last?
There’s some hurt coming to the PC marketplace over the next few years.
Lee
We are a mixed home. I game/work on a WinPC and my wife has her Mac. My PC is home built.
Macs have problems, they are just different than PC problems. I can usually diagnose and fix a PC problem myself. For the Mac I have to call support every time.
I’ve had probably 3 problems to fix on either machine in the past 2 years.
I’ve yet had a Mac hardware problem and I shudder when I think about how much it is going to cost me to fix it.
I’ve got the ‘Update at night’ option turned on my PC. Works like a charm. Never a problem.
Jesse
@soonergrunt: YouTube about the apple hack: Apple Mac Hacked in Two Minutes.
gex
@MikeJ: True. Who cares about the toxic manufacturing process, the mining of the minerals, and the landfill space?
gex
@cleek: Don’t forget the service that tells you the cartridge is empty after you’ve used 1/3 of it! Or was that Lexmark?
WereBear
@cleek: I think it ticks off certain PC fans that someone could be happy with a computer.
That’s not right, dammit! Computing is PAIN!
cleek
@inkadu:
i’m pretty fastidious about keeping junk off my PCs. i regularly go through them all and kill anything that looks unnecessary.
now if i could apply that same philosophy to my CD and book shelves, and to the garage, and to the stuff in the crawl-space…. my wife would be all kinds of happy.
dude
@Jesse: http://lmgtfy.com/
rudedude
@Jesse: http://lmgtfy.com/
soonergrunt
@Jesse: Jesse,
The particular conference here is CanSecWest, but you can easily find information about these conferences by googling
“DEFCON conference”
“CanSecWest”
“Black Hat conference”
I’ve never been to any of them, but I’d go in a heartbeat (and be completely in over my head in seconds) at any one of them.
itsbenj
why do so many people complain about the price of Macs? for like, $100-200 more you get years of hassle-free computing, and you don’t have to spend jack on anti-virus software. my Mac mini works with regular monitors, keyboards, mice, etc, cost like $600 and came with a duo-core processor and 2G of RAM – totally fine for my home needs, enough to edit music & video, etc. what is unaffordable about that? I don’t get it, except that some people just like to complain…
BullwinkleMoose
@Ash:
Hey, wait just a damned minute!
joes527
@WereBear:
I remember when Macs couldn’t even do that puh-thetic “cooperative multitasking” hack that Windoze was using to make their OS sometimes work OK.
I was at an apple conference at the time and sat in a session where it was explained to me by the presenter that NO ONE wants multitasking on a home computer. All they want is fast process switching and background printing.
The “I’m happy with the crap I have” ethos is not specific to any of the major OS religions.
lojasmo
Control panel>updates>install updates in the background.
Done.
Joshua Norton
@cleek: Every once in a while I’ll make a point to find 25 things I can get rid of and it keeps the pile manageable.
That is until I somehow manage to bring in 26 things to take their place.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Geh. The last emerge I did on the Gentoo box buggered the fuck out of the entire system; even the video driver got munged to the point where the console was unreadable. So I decided to install Ubuntu (which I’ve been using on the laptop). Everything went well (I was even able to save my home directory), except that now there’s no driver for the wireless network card. No big deal, it’s just one of those little annoying things that makes me question my entire existence.
And Sony is rapidly moving up on my shit list. A firmware update (that gets applied whether you want it or not) apparently buggered the PS3 to where it will randomly freeze up while reading Blu-Ray disks, but we have to pay $150 to send it in for service because of a “hardware problem”. Note that the “hardware problem” doesn’t prevent it from playing regular DVDs or PS2 games. Just as we buy a ton of BD movies and games.
I’m having more and more of those moments where I look at all the expensive electronics I have that are suffering one form of lossage or another and thinking “what the fuck am I doing with all this shit?!”
Martin
@bystander:
Can anyone point to an instance where Apple puts advertising in front of their paying customers – anywhere? Apple doesn’t even do the Intel Inside badges. They don’t do payola for iTMS. Other outfits like AdMob do embedded advertising on the iPhone, but not Apple.
I know it’s tempting to blame Apple for something here, but I cannot see a situation where Apple would do this. Maybe in a new product category like a set-top box where advertising is already pervasive, but I don’t see it happening in their current lineup. More likely, Apple is cutting off a potential revenue stream for everyone else on the race to the bottom of the PC/handset market by getting the patent and then refusing to license it to anyone.
YellowJournalism
@Demo Woman: Unbelievable whiner! I was feeding my son and my toddler had stolen the remote, so I was stuck watching it until the part where they played happy family on Halloween.
My favorite part was her explanation for messing up in the Couric interview. First it was because she was being attacked, then it was because she was annoyed with Couric’s questions, and finally it was all about how she was so pumped at the rally she’d just attended that it was an annoying letdown to talk to yet another reporter, as if Couric was just some local news gal who’d wandered up to Palin and stuck a mic in her face.
I also liked how she described abortion as the “easy way” out of a pregnancy. For one brief moment, it looked like she was going to be honest about her feelings about her own pregnancy, then suddenly she changed her tune and started speaking wingnut.
The only time I agreed with her was when she seemed a little pissed at the question of how she would handle the VP spot as a mother of five children. She said she would have handled it the same way a male candidate would have, and then Oprah goes, “But they have wives.” WTF? Way to empower women, Oprah. Palin has a husband…and would probably have had a nanny, just like those other candidates’ wives most likely have.
Gus
@srv:
Do tell! Was he a self-regarding douchebag?
scav
yeah, sometimes going galt for the tech crowd is going amish.
Martin
@itsbenj:
People have no sense of value, only of bargain with computers. It doesn’t matter what the product is worth, only if you can get it for less. If Macs cost $3, someone would bitch that they’re 50% overpriced because you can get a PC for $2.
I mean, Hondas suck and are overpriced because their cheapest Fit is $15K, but you can get a Versa for $10K. They both get you to work, right? Where are these arguments? Why do people see value in cars that they don’t see in computers?
inkadu
@Grumpy Code Monkey: I’ve noticed that some forms of hardware are getting worse. New features and styles throw everything off, and it takes a while for developers to learn the best way to do things again. My cell phones have almost all gotten worse as usable phones. The best thing to happen to technology is if we stopped innovating all the time and actually focused on how to deliver the best user experience given the technology we have.
Anyone remember the Donkey Kong Country for Nintendo64? Absolutely amazing, practically next generation, but all done with the same hardware as much less advanced games. Knowing how to use the hardware makes a big difference.
@Martin: Netbooks are going to be kicking the ass out of home pc’s — they actually already are. Most people already have computers to do what they need done — heck, I’ve got three in the garage. Except for graphics applications, you don’t need a new PC (and console games are taking a chunk of the game market, too).
@cleek: I have do admit I get perverse pleasure out of pruning all the extraneous crap off Windows. It’s like gardening, only with less sunlight.
inkadu
@Martin:
… And Brick Oven Bob would tell you he built a Linux box with $1.23.
Davebo
https://balloon-juice.com/?p=29923#comment-1444743
I was thinking of the Xerox 860 but low and behold it did use 8″ floppies.
Xerox 860
Molly
@MarkJ: “Also – too many people who consider themselves nonconformists define themselves by the fact that they worship all things Apple. I find that really annoying.”
Some of us had our first computing experience on a Mac 128K, playing Lemonade Stand, and it was love at first sight. :)
Last year I bought the first Mac I’ve owned since I was 12 years old (I’m 36). Plugging it in, seeing the familiar “Mac” things from when I was a kid, was wonderful.
Some people go Mac because they don’t like Windows and it’s a “I hate M$” thing. OK, Apple is just as corporate as Microsoft. So, either go open-source and screw all of the corporations, or just admit you LIKE one more than the other. To each his own.
Demo Woman
@YellowJournalism: I turned it off. When she complained about her poor pregnant child being attacked while Obama’s children weren’t that bothered me. President Obama had enough sense to keep his children in school and not drag them around the campaign trail day in and day out. The quote she used from President Obama about the media and families was directed at her as Oprah pointed out. I watched enough that I have already showered and poured myself a glass of wine.
Gus
Is there anything more fucking tedious that an OS flame war?
MikeJ
@Gus: Only the people that whine about others discussing things they don’t like.
inkadu
@MikeJ: If you don’t like what Gus is saying, why don’t you keep it to yourself?
Heh.
Martin
@inkadu:
I agree, but at what cost? When the PC costs $300, and has an operating margin of about 6%, how much future R&D do you think the PC sector is going to get out of that $18? And how long do you think they’ll be willing to send 10% of the costs to Microsoft for Windows should Google come out with a PC OS? 10% is a really attractive target when your primary competitive advantage is price.
I know that’s not the consumers question to answer, but it’s a trend that will have consequences. For a moment, consider that Apple, which has 7% and 2.5% of the PC and handset market pulls in well over 50% and about 30% of the sector profits, respectively. The two sectors, Apple aside, are steadily running themselves out of business, mainly because Apple owns the high end of both markets. Apple has 95% of the >$1000 PC marketshare. Now, we can take that as evidence that Apple is overpriced, but they’ve been consistently outpacing the sector on sales – so there are more and more people moving to the overpriced product in a recession. No, I think Apple is the only vendor making computers that consumers see as being worth the money.
Everyone but Apple either needs to move to a new revenue model beyond crapware and trying to out-marketshare their competitors, or PC prices need to come back up. This is not a stable market situation.
J in WA
Heh. My dad used to be an R&D engineer for HP’s oscilloscope division (designing the hardware), and even 20 years later I can still remember him ranting about HP’s software engineers. His classic story was his manager telling him to double the amount of nonvolatile memory in a new product because the software engineers couldn’t figure out how to take out old features without breaking the system, so they just left them in (but disabled) and added the new functionality on top.
Bloatware, indeed!
Jacob Davies
Both PCs and Macs sucked balls up until XP and OS X. Previous versions of both were buggy, painful pieces of shit, because that’s the natural state of software until many billions of dollars have been spent making it nice and shiny. Both sides in the OS war are traumatized by their painful experience in the days when operating systems sucked, and conversion experiences from back then tend to be more like aversion responses – the main effect of switching being to rid yourself of some particularly traumatic misfeature of the other OS, rather than objectively reducing the amount of hassle encountered.
What Mac heads tend not to understand is that many Windows users had the same traumatizing experience trying to use Macs in the pre-OS X days, whether in an attempt to switch or using someone else’s machine or whatever. I used a friend’s Mac running OS 8 or 9 for a summer and that thing fucking froze up every time I clicked some wrong number of times or in some wrong place and I swear that was just as mindblowingly frustrating as any Mac user’s attempt to install printer drivers on a PC.
In other words, some people’s aversion reaction to Macs comes from exactly the same place as many people’s aversion reaction to PCs, and is no more or less rational.
What happened around 2000-2002 is that both Windows and the Mac OS got much, much, much better. A well-managed XP installation on a PC with reliable hardware is a reliable, stable, boring, efficient operating system. OS X is pretty reliable too. So if you had a switch experience from pre-XP Windows to OS X, or you had a switch experience from pre-OS X Macs to Windows XP, you had this experience of a tremendous improvement in reliability and usability and, well, it’s no wonder there are so many evangelists.
Neither one is perfect, and in my experience the annoyances of OS X amount to the same level of hassle as the annoyances of Windows XP – and since I’m much more experienced with the latter I find it a much easier environment to work in.
It may be true that a Mac is a better choice for the clueless computer-averse relative, although my experience there is still mixed. But when those of us that are happy with XP (and I hear Windows 7 is decent too) say we’re happy we aren’t necessarily suffering from Stockholm syndrome, most of us aren’t clueless about the capabilities of modern Macs, and we aren’t about to have a religious conversion experience if we just spend 5 minutes with a Mac. We’ve found a system that works and don’t find the alternatives significantly less frustrating. And posts like this one illustrate the reasons why: no OS is immune to the annoyances of software updates, for instance.
Personally as someone who gets crippling carpal tunnel from too much mouse use and prefers to keep their hands over the keyboard, the lack of keyboard shortcuts in OS X is literally a physiological barrier to adoption. It quite apparently does not apply to a lot of other people, but it does for me. (Yes, I know there are some programs for OS X that can bring its keyboard navigation abilities up to those available by default in Windows. That’s not really a selling point – “Yeah, the other car is faster, but if you take this one apart and add a turbocharger, this one is just as fast!” Uh, yay?
International Playboy
Apple is teh suck. Total loser bait.
Molly
@Gus: “Is there anything more fucking tedious that an OS flame war?”
I, unfortunately, totally geek out on these OS debates. Like a moth to a flame. I cannot help it.
More tedious? How about when the tribe gets into proper word usage or punctuation debates? I love you guys, but those nits can pick and pick….
And when threads descend into begging for the edit function back, or griping about it…
Yes, there are things more tedious. But in the midst of the tedium, there’s always a pony somewhere.
Martin
Actually OS X allows you to map any menu item from any application to your preferred keyboard shortcut from the System Preferences – it’s built-in. Further, you can turn on full keyboard access to any control in windows and dialogs – buttons, tabs, etc. It’s been steadily added over the last few versions.
Another thing people don’t know – the iPhone has a mode for the visually impaired that gives physical/auditory feedback with a hybrid voice/touch interface. I think you can fully drive the phone using voice commands as well.
Accessibility stuff can advance pretty rapidly, so it’s worth regularly following up on all the players.
inkadu
@Martin: Wow. I never thought of it that way. Very interesting. I guess it depends on if that smaller market share will be profitable enough to match Microsofts lower cost but higher volume; Microsoft has really significant volume on its side.
If Google takes over from MSN, I’m not really sure I’d care. All I know is that when a new game comes out for PC, I think to myself, “I’m really going to enjoy playing that when I buy a new PC in five years.”
As an aside, a lot of countries run on pirated Microsoft software. When I asked a tech in South America why they didn’t run Linux, he shrugged and said, “People are used to Windows, and Windows is free anyway.” Proprietary software might be what is the unsustainable model.
John T
I have a Mac, I haven’t downloaded updates to my iTunes in years, and it still plays my MP3s and burns CDs just fine. Try clicking the “skip this update” button, it’s easy!
Kendor
I’ve owned several Macs, but have mostly been a PC guy since 1988 (CP/M before that). I’ve had disasters with both. As a person I favor agnosticism… I’ve known a lot of folks who were quite religous about their preference for Apple. Power too them… although I’m usually very concerned about religious fanatics of any kind.
The interesting thing is that we are really venturing into the post-OS world, where the cloud rules more than anything else. More and more of what we do is in a browser, and OS (and hardware that you run it on means a lot less than it once did). Sh*t, I’m writing this post using Firefox inside of a Windows XP virtual machine, that’s running as a guest off of my Linux Ubuntu 9.04 install. So regarding the flames, for all of you on either side, it really is beginning to not matter.
I will say this about Apple, Jobs has created some pretty heavy duty sex appeal/panache for his products… it’s powerful stuff. The “Think Different” thing certainly meant a lot in the 80s, but even then it was a manipulation…
The thing that bugs me about the whole debate is the “I’m better than you” elitism that it dredges up.
The Pale Scot
Printers:
HP and Lexmark will someday merge to become the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation, Known as “a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.”
Canon has the best drivers, I’ve installed them all on pc and mac, and I can put Tiger on an old mac before the HP installation completes on a newer XP machine.
As has been noted, programs have update options in their control panes. I don’t update “just because” except for security updates, Adobe updates I download off the website.
@Kyle
Keep a retail copy of leopard/tiger on an external drive with Tech Tool and boot from it, use TT to test the hardware. If it checks out, DiskWarrior the boot drive and clone to an external, Boot from that and see if it works. If so, zero out the HD and clone back over. That will cover most Mac problems.
Michael D.
I swear you formulated this entire post just so you could say that. Ha!
Jacob Davies
@Martin – fair enough, I will take a look at the accessibility stuff when my wife next upgrades her Mac.
Mike
My wife and I have been Macheads forever, but recently she was ill and got
into games. The Mac is pretty lame in the game department so we installed
XP on another disc in her Intel MacPro and now she happily switches from
one OS to the other. (She only uses the Windows side for games.)
I guess for basic computing, there’s really no appreciable difference between
the two, the mac is prettier and the PC is cheaper, but I use my Mac in
my recording studio, and for high end music software the Mac wins hands down.
Martin
@Mike:
Actually, you just made the best case for the Mac – you can do both. That’s why it’s so popular with web developers – you can design a page and test it against every browser out there without needing a 2nd computer.
tripletee
What’s really fun is trying to get one of those fucking pieces of shit to work in an Active Directory environment. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to having a literal Office Space moment with a printer. (In fairness, it’s the all-in-ones that seem to be the biggest offenders – stand-alone drivers that actually work seem to be much easier to come by for most of their business products).
Re: Mac vs PC – meh, boring. What we need is a good smartphone OS flamewar. Suck it, you stupid S60 fanboys.
Paris
@Kendor: “Sh*t, I’m writing this post using Firefox inside of a Windows XP virtual machine, that’s running as a guest off of my Linux Ubuntu 9.04 install.”
That’s just wrong. For so many reasons.
Paris
@Mike: “(She only uses the Windows side for games.)”
Keep telling yourself that.
Martin
@inkadu:
That’s really what people don’t understand about Apple. The whole market is obsessed with marketshare, even at the expense of the health of the company. Apple is obsessed with profitability – particularly long-term profitability (as any company should be).
Look at Dell today. Dell has about 25% of PC marketshare but Apple could buy them with cash on hand. If Apple really wanted bigger marketshare, it’s only a check away. The problem is that Dell’s market is barely worth having. Who wants to fill their customer base with people who only value price? There is no loyalty there, there is no appreciable value to R&D, they just want another $4 off the hardware. That’s too fragile of a market because it’s just too easy for some company in mainland China to swoop in with the same commodity hardware that everyone uses and destroy you solely on the basis of $3/day labor. Who wants that market? Who wants those customers?
debbie
No time to read all of the posts here, but in case it hasn’t been mentioned yet, I know that for Acrobat specifically, you can set your preferences (Acrobat>Preferences>Updates) on checking for updates (mine is set for “do not check”). I’m sure there’s something similar for your other programs.
Martin
@tripletee:
Is there anything to argue now that the iPhone is out there?
Shell
Knocking on wood as I type this, but my HP all-in-one is lovely.
My previous machine however, a Lexmark, was cursed. Had to have two shipped replacements before I finally got one to work, and it was still dodgy after that.
inkadu
@Martin: Apple certainly wouldn’t want me as a customer. I look at Dell and think, “Jeez, I could save $100 by having an asian assemble my computer at the next computer fair. Plus with standard, non-Dell motherboard, I can reuse my power supply.”
My dad, on the other hand, is a good Dell customer. He isn’t aware that you can even buy a computer without buying Windows on it (I was suggesting he buy Windows 7 outright instead of getting the
upgrade). My dad is also convinced that Firefox makes Vista run slower. There’s some money to be chiseled out of the old man yet.
J. Michael Neal
@Martin: That’s a pretty interesting statement, given that Apple’s net income was about $3.5 billion last year and Dell’s was about $2.5 billion. Dell has higher revenues, and makes almost as much money, despite being in a much narrower field, without a high margin software component. Yes, what Dell produces is a commodity without much brand loyalty, and they’re very, very good at it.
As an investor, Apple’s business model would worry me a bit more than Dell’s, and their P/E would positively terrify me. Dell is priced based upon the assumption that they can keep churning out machines at a low cost. Apple is priced on the assumption that they can keep creating megahits, and also upon the assumption that Steve Jobs will live forever.
One thing you don’t seem to consider is that Microsoft is dependent upon the PC market. They’ll cut their profit margin before letting all of the hardware manufacturers go belly up.
inthewoods
The thing I hate about iTunes is that they require you download the whole friggin’ application – ever heard of a differential install Apple? Huh? And then a reboot. You’ve got to be kidding me.
inkadu
@Martin: I’d go with the iPhone. I unfortunately picked a smart phone thinking I could pirate apps on it. It’s apparently very difficult to do, even though it runs java…
Anyway, the smart phone war would be over. But it looks like ‘droid’ is coming out that has a different design philosophy.
inthewoods
@Martin: Easy – people expect cars to last for 4-10 years. People expect their laptop to last for 2 years before becoming hopelessly outdated.
Little Macayla's Friend
@tripletee:
Not much of a flame war around here, far too reasonable.
Can I have an antivirus program flame war for Xmas?
inkadu
@Martin: I’d also get an iphone, but AT&T rapes you on the data plan… about twice as much for the same plan on any other smart phone. Cutting-edge technology is all about gouging.
Wile E. Quixote
My pet hate with Apple at the moment is Safari. I don’t know if it’s leaking memory or what but at times Safari will go comatose and give me the spinning beach ball of death. Since I’ve always got a browser window open this is as annoying as Hell and I’ve largely switched over to FireFox these days because I’m tired of this nonsense and need to use the ElasticFox and S3Fox plugins for Amazon EC2.
Eventually Safari will come back from whatever it is it’s doing (garbage collection, sending all of my keychain info to the Russian mob?) but it seems noticeably slower after doing so, forcing me to quit and restart. I realize that FireFox has problems of its own, but it’s not as annoying as Safari is and has lots of cool features (plugins) that Safari doesn’t.
tripletee
@Martin:
Six months ago I would have said no, but there’s finally some Android devices coming out that are backed with decent hardware, and the Android OS itself has made huge strides (though it still has some fit and finish issues). And while the Palm Pre hasn’t exactly set the world on fire, webOS has a gorgeous interface that beats Apple at its own game. And then there’s the Storm 2 – ha ha! Just kidding, that thing sucks.
There’s still nothing compelling enough to make me give up my iPhone, but the competition has gotten a lot more interesting. To keep pace, I think Apple is really going to have to pull out all the stops and make next year’s model a major upgrade – and that’s the first time I’ve thought that since the original iPhone was released two years ago.
tripletee
@Wile E. Quixote:
Are you running Snow Leopard, and if so have you updated to 10.6.2 yet? Seemed to fix a lot of Safari issues for me. (Though sadly, it wasn’t able to repair the bottomless pit of suck that is the Flash plugin for Mac.)
tripletee
@Little Macayla’s Friend:
I’m not sure – is there an antivirus program that people actually like enough to defend?
Steeplejack
@thomas Levenson:
I used OpenOffice quite a bit over the last few months (on Windows, though) and found it generally pretty good. I did find that the spreadsheet component would hang up occasionally in one large spreadsheet that I use daily. I was always able to get back into the spreadsheet without loss of data, but it was a bit of a nuisance and slightly disconcerting.
Just letting you know in case you’re a big sheet-spreading person.
The Pale Scot
@Wile E. Quixote:
You have to disarm the Top Sites function, sorry I can’t find where I did now that it’s off. and you need to use the Reset Safari thing too to clean it out. If you do that, Safari runs quicker than any other browser, but you’ll still need to use reset at least the , webpage preview and top site frequently.
The Pale Scot
… to use the reset for at least the webpage preview and top site function frequently.
Ruckus
@tripletee:
Trend Micro doesn’t seem to be too bad.
Have tried a lot of free anti-virus and found the only way to get good is to pay for it.
Use Trend on this machine PC -xp and on a netbook – xp
Use AVG free on another machine, PC also xp and it seems OK. Didn’t do well on the most used desktop. Got a virus that I had to reformat hd because of.
tripletee
@Ruckus:
Actually Microsoft’s new Security Essentials is supposed to be quite good (saw a comparison test recently but I don’t remember where), and it’s free.
Man, antivirus flamewars are boring.
Lee
As a gamer I hated Trend Micro. There was ZERO way to disable the popups dropping you out of a game at seriously bad times. Other than that it seemed like a pretty good suite.
AVG does a really good job and I’m using the free version on mine and my kids machines. Have not gotten a virus yet. But everyone in the house mostly uses Opera as browser.
Martin
@J. Michael Neal:
Last quarter Apple earned $1.7B on sales of $9.9B compared to Dell’s $472M on sales of $12.8B. And a huge chunk of Apple’s revenues are reported on subscription, so there’s another $1.2B of earnings not yet reported on $2.8B in sales.
Even if Apple closed their doors today, they’d have about $5B in earnings to report over the next 7 quarters. Much of that P/E is baked in, but it’s a point taken – Apple is massively valued.
Apple doesn’t need to keep turning out hits. The iPhone was partially assured success simply because Apple built out on two existing foundations – iPhone OS is basically a stripped Mac OS so the development platform is very mature, and the iPod dock connector meant that the iPhone had more accessories and support by cars than any other phone ever had on the day it launched. Yeah, the iPhone launched well, but let’s not think that Apple didn’t have a shitload of incremental work put into it to help assure that success. Ultimately, the success of the phone came by rewriting the rules of the marketplace. The iPhone was the first modern phone launched that the carrier had no say in. AT&T had to take Apple’s phone as-is. No feature lock-outs, no upcharges for features, and so on. Apple dictated how voice mail would work, because everyone else sucks at it. Now, AT&T is otherwise a terrible partner and they’d be in a world of hurt without Apple given that 2/3 of their new customers are only there because of iPhone, but when that exclusivity ends, Apple will have no problem finding other carriers.
By comparison, iPod was hardly a hit – it launched fairly slowly. It took the iTMS, then iTunes for Windows, and then the iPod mini before it really took off. That was almost 4 years of pounding away at the market before everything came together – but again, Apple rewrote the rules of the marketplace with the music store and everything that has come from it – including the iPhone app store.
Anyone who thinks that Apple is just serendipitously hitting the right notes really doesn’t understand Apple or their relationship with the market.
As for Microsoft, how much do they cut profits before that starts to affect their ability to move the platform forward? I know they have a lot of headroom there, but that’s a very dangerous direction for a tech company to go in, especially if it’s happening with new competition arriving. Windows Mobile is on the brink of death now that Android has arrived – they’ve lost 30% of their marketshare just this year, and are losing Samsung as a handset maker and HTC (who I think will be the last major Windows Mobile licensee) is moving on to Android as well for at least part of the product line. If Google does the same thing with a free netbook OS, well, I think MS has some real problems on their hands. MS can’t cut margins to zero.
To MSs credit, they’ve finally started addressing one of the bigger problems in the PC market. In their new stores, you can order a PC (HP, Dell, Sony, whatever) and they’ll unbox it and install a clean, crapware free version of Windows 7 and give you the installer DVD so you can fix the damn thing later. I don’t know how much of a premium you need to pay for that, but that’s precisely the kind of things they need to be doing. I just don’t know if they can afford to be doing that for $300 systems when they’re shipping most of the profits off to someone else.
Wile E. Quixote
@tripletee
On my laptop I’m running 10.5.9. This brings up another pet hate with Apple, they keep fucking with the innards of mail every time they upgrade the system and don’t document any of the changes. This breaks MacGPG, and the developers of the program said “fuck it, we’ve got better things to do than fix this every time Apple ‘upgrades’ mail without documenting any of their changes”.
I use MacGPG because I need to send encrypted e-mails. You can get around this by building a 32 bit version of Mail, which is annoying. I can either give up using Mail.app, which is annoying because I like Mail.app. Or I can use another program to send encrypted e-mails, which is annoying because it forces me to jump back and forth between e-mail programs when I get encrypted e-mails from clients and my partners.
I’ve pretty much given up on Safari. It’s easier now to use Firefox all the time because of the work I do with S3 and EC2. Safari is increasingly come to resemble IE. You get it with the OS, it has some goodies related to the fact that it’s so intimately tied to the OS and if you need any thing more than those goodies then you’re going to have to use Firefox.
Martin
@tripletee:
Yeah, the Droid will shake things up a bit, not because I think it offers any real advantages over the iPhone, but because it’s close enough for people to say ‘fuck AT&T’.
Once people really start using it, they’re finding the Droid still has some work to do. There are interface inconsistencies from what Google has done to what Motorola/Verizon have done. The accessory universe isn’t there – none of the hardware add-ons that the iPhone has, the auto support, etc. Yes, you can install any app on it, but most people aren’t making their own apps, or wishing for apps that don’t exist – they just want to pick the one they want, so Droid needs to get that marketplace working.
Droid’s window of opportunity is probably about 9 months. That’s around when LTE is expected to launch by both Verizon and AT&T and is probably when the iPhone will branch out to other carriers.
handy
I still remember being one of the “first on the block” kids with an iPod, and this was as late as 2003, taking it to the gym or generally walking about town. In fact, I had to actually explain what the damn thing was and what it did to a friend of mine.
Which is all to say, in real time I wasn’t quite sure what would become of the iPod, and actually felt a little guilty owning what felt like this little electronic indulgence, not this ubiquitous portable-lifestyle accessory people take for granted today.
joe in oklahoma
I am on OSX Tiger, and have used safari until shortly after Snow Leopard came out, and my Safari on Tiger started doing weird draggy things, and after a few more updates, my Mail is a mess. I have gone to Firefox about 70% of the time.
curiously, Webkit w/ its nightlies works better on my machine than the staid Safari, so I use it the other 30%.
on another topic, I use google for everything on my mac, so when it’s time to upgrade my phone, I will be moving to Droid or Droid Eris, I suspect.
Dream On
“But as far as Apple-branded software goes, go to System Prefs > Software Update and you can set the notification frequency to monthly if you want.”
————-
I read that and went to my System Pref folder – I did it in 10 seconds flat. Thanks for the advice!
Try doing the same on a Windows and see how long it takes you.
Cervantes
@Nylund: Re: “I think I’ve had to update iTunes about 4 times this week so far.”
On one machine? If so, I’m guessing there’s something wrong with your set-up, your download connection, your sense of time, or your memory!
iLarynx
APPLE > System Preferences > Software Update
You set the frequency of system (and Apple applications) updates: Daily; Weekly; Monthly. Sounds like your preference would be “Monthly.”
MS OFFICE
You can similarly adjust the frequency of updates through their AutoUpdater program.
FireFox is annoying in the frequency of updates and while you can tell it to automatically check for updates or not, it doesn’t give you the flexibility of MS or Apple.
The Apple updating system requires your password whenever you accept the update for system or Apple applications. This is a welcome security measure. Just wait until somebody spoofs your system into thinking their virus is an Adobe update an see how much you like those auto-overnight updates then.