Posted on 10/22/2009 10:20:07 PM PDT by Swordmaker
The contenders: Microsoft Windows 7 vs. Apple Snow Leopard
It's not often that the two most popular operating systems get major updates so close to each other, so we couldn't resist throwing them into a cage match together. Already we can hear some of you screaming that Snow Leopard isn't a major update--we know this one's personal! But is Windows 7 nothing more than "Vista done right"?
Microsoft's severe stumble with Vista aside, Windows 7 clearly positions the operating system for the future, with a new look that integrates heavily with the new features. Snow Leopard, too, is geared toward the future, saving you space on your hard drive and including some useful new tricks that Microsoft still lacks.
The judges for this Prizefight hardly shy away from telling you what they think about software, webware, and the operating systems you need to get to all those goodies. Now, everybody's got their opinion on the great Apple versus Microsoft debate, but for a few minutes, suspend your disbelief as they explain which operating system is better and why.
(Excerpt) Read more at reviews.cnet.com ...
I installed Windows 7 this morning. It works well, is quicker, and has better filing features.
I’m still learning, but there’s no doubt that it is the best Windows yet.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.
I run Leopard 10.5.8 and Windows 7 Ultimate on a quad core AMD machine with 4 GB of memory. Both OS’s are very very good. Windows has way more applications available, and networks with all our other machines better. Macs are elegant in design and accomplish most of the tasks I need just as well as the PC. Since I can’t choose between them, I have them both, and run whichever one I feel like using at a given moment.
ah my christmas present from me to me for being such a good boy this year. Windows 7 ultimate, 6 gigs of ram, and a new monitor.
Double+ droll.
Who cares how good Snow Leopard is? What about the two dozen critical programs I use for 3D, animation and video which aren’t even available for OS/X? And don’t say “Boot camp” because that is useless for performance-level requirements.
Windows Vista will be the same old low-quality crap we've come to expect from Microsoft.1 posted on September 23, 2005 12:05:42 AM CDT by HAL9000
Well, that prediction worked out. So here is my next one:
Windows 7 is marginally better than Vista, but it's still low-quality crap compared to Mac OS X. After Windows 7 is installed, it's downhill from there. It will deteriorate over time with the usual bit-rot problems that Microsoft customers are accustomed to.
Toss them in the dumpster and upgrade to RenderMan, Maya and Final Cut Pro.
Um, are you aware of what Boot Camp is? It's disk partitioning software and drivers. When booted in Windows, a Mac is a Windows PC, comparable to any other PC with the same components, only better designed and with cleaner drivers.
I'm not buying that an i7 iMac (coming soon) or an eight-core Nehalem Mac Pro aren't up to your "performance-level requirements."
You don't know what you are talking about. Boot Camp boots the Mac as a Windows machine... it then IS a Windows computer, 100% of the speed. Quite a few computer PC centric reviewers have stated that the Macs run Windows better than dedicated Windows boxes.
Also, given that the Mac is the computer of choice for much of the Hollywood professionals, I sincerely doubt your assertion that the 3D, animation and video applications or their equivalent aren't available for the Mac.
Lots of mud slinging going to happen on this subject. My 2 cents is that 95% of my clients own only Windows machines. As a business man, I go where the action is.
Well, Vista was a huge upgrade to XP. XP was an huge upgrade to 2000. 2000 upgraded NT, NT upgraded 98, and 98 upgraded 95. 95 was an upgrade to 3.1, which was an upgrade to MS-DOS. Ad nauseum. Every time they release an upgrade, they claim it is "as good as Apple" - but it never is.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is institutionally incapable of creating a truly great operating system. If they ever manage create one in the future, it won't be called "Windows".
I purchased my first Microsoft products in 1978. They had very good technology back then. I disassembled some of Bill Gates' code, and it was evident that he was a clever programmer. He had some wild tricks for fitting his code into a small memory space. That was the peak of Microsoft's technical quality, a long time ago when they handcrafted their code to make every byte count.
I wonder how Pixar (CEO Steve Jobs) managed to develop all those 3D animated movies?
The big problems with Windows have been malware — maybe 7 has finally fixed it and if so good for them — and DRM.
For the most part none of the major 3d films are done on either Macs OR PCs.
Also, boot camp is NOT 100% PC with greater performance. That is total nonsense. We have done weeks of testing on that. We do ads for TV and major campaigns. YOU don't know what you're talking about.
Sure...for twice the price. Why would I want that? Macs will never be price/performance competitive. I used them for over a decade. We can spank a Mac on every graphics, ram, disk spec and then some for far less.
We use Maya on PC with various render engines, Modo and 3dsMax for strutural modeling (cityscape flybys, etc). Also Houdini and RealFlow (liquids). I am also an AfterEffects guy and always have been. Maximum control of every concievable detail. We use Edius Pro for edits and Fusion for post.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Pixar used custom Linux worstations running their insanely awesome Marionette with Renderman software to create Wall-E. Not Macs.
If I were out there in weather like that with my feet in the water and only a cat’s fur for a coat, I’d be all snarly, too!
Not blaming you or the effects, but Surrogates still sucked! :-D
Good luck with that posit.
Mind sharing how you are running Leopard and W7 on one machine? Is it a Mac, or have you done magic to get Leopard running on a PC?\
I would VERY much like to have Leopard to run, but not at the expense of buying a Mac.
What a magnificent animal. I have a new desktop now. Thanks.
Glad you liked it. I started doing some searching and found me a new desktop too — I chose this big kitty for now:
http://www.fantom-xp.com/en_20__Big_cats_-_Snow_Leopard.html
Pixar switched to Macs in 2004.
According to today's security alerts, Windows 7 has bugs in COM, cryptoAPI, LSASS, and of course in IE. Some other vulnerabilities in the announcement don't affect windows 7, but there's enough that do to prove they haven't learned how to write bug-free software yet.
That is way old news. Pixar uses Macs and older Silicon Graphics workstations for texture map creation (Photoshop like everyone else), basic grunt modeling, etc. But the high end modeling, animation, inverse kinematics and RenderMan rendering you see on screen is all done on custom Linux workstations running Pixar's Marionette software.
I run highly graphic software in Parallels and have never had a problem so I have no idea what you are talking about? INHO it runs faster on my MacBook Pro than it did on the Dell before it died.
LOL!
True that there are PC programs that don’t have a Mac equivilent, but choosing 3D and video tools as your example has got to be seriously lame considering that the Mac has been the choice of professional artist types for decades.
I’d also like to know how he got an AMD quad core Mac, since they are intel only machines.
Luck? I trust it like I trust MSFT (or should that be MFST, you know "mother ... technology")
I use a Mac. :-)
That's you. And if you need Windows for your specific programs, that's a valid reason to go with Windows. But then a shop doing professional video editing with Final Cut Pro HD will be saying the same thing about Windows not having the applications they use.
And don’t say “Boot camp” because that is useless for performance-level requirements.
Boot Camp isn't a virtual machine. There is no performance hit as it runs natively as it would on any other machine. Boot Camp is just an automated process with drivers to set up Windows on a Mac, plus some stuff to help it operate with EFI instead of BIOS.
Pixar is making their movies on Macs. They are, after all, UNIX just like the old Sun systems they used to use. Last I heard the rendering was on Linux.
Also, boot camp is NOT 100% PC with greater performance.
Hardware-wise, a Mac is a PC, the difference between it and most others being that it uses the more advanced EFI instead of the 80s BIOS. Since EFI is extendable and programmable, Apple built BIOS compatibility into EFI so that Windows can run on it.
Could the real test of operating systems be decided this way?
What if Apple released Snow Leopard for the PC. How many PC users would instantly switch, so they could have the security?
Speaking purely on hardware specs, the high-end workstations are about the only place Macs are cheaper than PCs.
I think Snow Leopard already runs on PC’s with some minor alterations like open firmware. There are also lots of things that PC users can do to improve their security. Microsoft doesn’t make it easy to get completely secure, but it’s not hard to install a more secure browser, avoid adobe, etc. It’s less easy to avoid Office, but possible. With effort a microsoft system could be as secure as a mac.
I should add that my quad core and motherboard cost $119 at Fry's (it was a good sale, it's now over $200), the 4GB memory cost $30, I already had the hard drives and a 512MB graphic card, and I used a case I bought 3 years ago for about $40. I have a 600 watt power supply. The thing runs like a dream.
Installing Mac took some study, but once you do it, it is not too hard to do on subsequent machines. I have it on my laptop and my desktop PCs. If you do it the right way, it is more difficult, because you have to modify some files on your legal Mac OS disk. If you download one of the many Hackintosh disks from the internet, you might be able to install just like you would on a Mac. The only tricky part is making sure you have drivers for all your peripherals. There are drivers for just about every peripheral out there, but you have to seek and find the Mac version. Some, like my Airlink wi-fi card, have drivers from their Taiwanese manufacturer. The web sites I referenced are good places to go to find drivers.
A hint to those of you who have access to a .edu email address: Windows 7 is $30 to students. You can get the Home or Professional edition for that price.
Legally purchased =/= legally used.
/bingo
From what I've experienced, read, and seen, it is.
I like it... Consider it borrowed for use in Mac Pings...
Not necessarily. Apple takes the position that the license allows it to tell you what machine you can put their software on after you buy their software. Others, including a good number of IP attorneys, differ with that position. It is not a settled issue.
You had to... RAM was expensive. In 1980 I programed a Vic-20 in machine language to emulate a roulette wheel, complete with the sound of a decelerating bouncing ball, a whir of the rotating wheel and a display on the screen of the wheel, resolving to an image of the ball in the pocket of a slot on the wheel... with a quasi-random number generator to determine the slot. When I was finished, I had ONE byte of the 3583 Bytes of suser RAM space left. Any changes that used that one byte resulted in a crash. It was the wonder of my Lodge's annual casino night!
BS, Montag.. Nothing "runs" under Boot Camp. Boot Camp is merely a partitioning software that will re-partition the Mac Hard drive and format if for Windows use, and a set of drivers to make certain Mac portions of the hardware—such as the EFI, the multi-touch track pad and Mac keyboard—work under Windows. When the Mac is booted from the Windows partition, it IS a Windows PC.
I think you are right on 3D films, but here are some feature films made with Macs...
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