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Shattered Mac illusions
NetworkWorld ^ | 5/23/2005 | By Mark Gibbs

Posted on 05/27/2005 10:53:28 AM PDT by Swordmaker

I have been Macified. After not owning a Macintosh for more than 12 years I finally decided that the undeniable coolness and beauty of the hardware and particularly of OS X meant that it was time to get religion!

The beast, which arrived a couple of weeks ago, is a Power Mac G5 with dual 2-GHz processors and 1.5G bytes of RAM running OS X Tiger. What a gorgeous piece of engineering! It is an elegant design even under the hood: When you need to take off the side to, for example, add extra RAM, one latch frees the panel. And all the subsystems are plug-ins, making it incredibly easy to work on. Heaven.

Then when you run up OS X, again, wow. The operating system has a remarkable polish - just as if someone had thought about the design as a whole rather than finding and assembling a collection of spare parts and forcing them to fly in formation.

Anyway, back to the Macification: First I fooled around checking out all the cool new features. Tiger has a lot of really well-implemented new stuff that makes it significantly more powerful.

Next I decided to load my photographs into iPhoto. My photo collection is fairly large, weighing in at 14,618 files for a total of 18.7G bytes.

I copied the files to the Mac from my Windows desktop, an XP system that is misbehaving to the point where it is time to wipe it and start again. < digression > It is amazing that XP systems can get to a condition where it is easier to erase and re-install everything than diagnose and fix what's wrong. < /digression >

So now that I had the image files on the Mac I could start loading them into iPhoto. All seemed to go well with iPhoto doing its indexing and thumbnailing, then it finished - crash.

I restarted iPhoto. The program ran for a couple of minutes then, thud! I re-imported the photos. IPhoto finished the import, stayed up again for a couple of minutes, then thud. In the middle of this the 10.4.1 release of OS X came out, which apparently included some iPhoto improvements, but nothing I could find mentioned the problems I was seeing. I applied the upgrade and resorted to clearing out about 5,000 pictures and iPhoto seemed to become stable again.

Now, let's review: This was a brand-new machine, the system detected no problems and iPhoto hadn't been used before, but handling just less than 15,000 images made it blow up. And I thought Mac applications were generally considered to be better than Windows applications. Evidently this is not the case.

According to discussions I've had on lists and in Apple forums, there's no obvious explanation for my problems with iPhoto. According to Gary Stock, CTO of Exfacto: "From a Mac perspective, the surprising part is that iPhoto even tried, rather than warning you when you crossed some threshold or advising you to reduce the dataset."

Exactly! Which makes me think the problem is more fundamental than bad error-handling in the application, unless you are willing to believe that Apple's programmers are not very skilled.

From my experiences with Windows and now OS X, maybe when it comes to sophisticated, multimedia applications it doesn't matter what platform we're using. It may be the case that humans are not capable of creating stable software for the level of complexity required.

Maybe there's a sort of code-complexity limit that we have crossed in the latest generations of computer systems that makes software stability probabilistic rather than deterministic. If so, it makes for some interesting implications for systems engineering.

To begin with, managing systems in the future might be more like psychiatry than programming.

Despite these snafus I still love the Mac. It is just that my illusions are shattered.

Condolences to backspin@gibbs.com.


TOPICS: Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: iphoto; macintosh; osxtiger; problem
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To: Swordmaker
I got the super duper deluxe cinema screen thingy and I bought it whenn the first print ad appeared, so even though I got it at a discount electronics store, I paid thru my adorable little nose.

PS: will you marry me? Even if you're a woman or left-handed.

61 posted on 05/28/2005 6:35:04 PM PDT by Deb (Beat him, strip him and bring him to my tent!)
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To: Deb
PS: will you marry me? Even if you're a woman or left-handed.

Well... I am ambidextrous and the last time I looked, definately not a woman... but Mrs. Swordmaker might have a few things to say about your very nice and interesting proposal.

I see you are a Californian, too... and unfortunately, Bigamy is illegal here as well.

Rats. I will have to decline... but I would like to see your adorable little nose.

62 posted on 05/28/2005 10:50:57 PM PDT by Swordmaker (tagline now open, please ring bell.)
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To: Deb

PS, I got one of those "uper duper deluxe cinema screen thingy"s too...


63 posted on 05/28/2005 10:53:10 PM PDT by Swordmaker (tagline now open, please ring bell.)
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To: antiRepublicrat
Sorry to disappoint you but the Dell XPS does have Firewire ports, 2-one front and one in back, plus the Sound Blaster Audigy™ 2 ZS (D) Card w/Dolby 5.1, IEEE 1394 capability for a total of 3 Firewire ports standard.

The simple fact that the only reason for Apple to have dual CPU's is to be competitive with Wintel. In reading in PC world and PC Magazine Apple may lead the pack, but it certainly is not by any more than 5% in most benchmarks. So where is the price advantage? Now if Apple took away that second CPU, the sytem would be a dog.
64 posted on 05/29/2005 6:04:31 AM PDT by SolitaryMan
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To: SolitaryMan
Sorry to disappoint you but the Dell XPS does have Firewire ports, 2-one front and one in back

You're right, they do, but only one in front. You have to pay for the one on the back or get it with the better sound card. The standard sound in the standard audio is also not as good as the Mac's.

The simple fact that the only reason for Apple to have dual CPU's is to be competitive with Wintel. ... So where is the price advantage?

I've heard Apple's margins on PowerMacs are higher than Dell's margins, yet they still manage to put in two processors for the same price. So the consumer doesn't have to care how many processors are in it, since they get about equivalent performance at equivalent price (although they'll get far better system responsiveness with two processors, which adds to perceived speed). However, the Mac will come with much better software and be a more cohesive, stable system.

65 posted on 05/29/2005 10:01:20 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: general_re
Yes - I am sure it has happened to you many times. Perhaps someday you will realize that trying to correct people when they say things like that is like trying to teach a pig to sing - it only serves to annoy the pig. Just tell them they can fix their ( Mac | Windows | Linux | Warp | Whatever ) by using this Fantastic Fuzzy Foto program (or whatever the good one is called) instead of whatever one they are using.

It's the same with cars. The answer to the complaint " My engine is broken." might turn out to be, after a little investigation, "Ask the mechanic to replace the battery, and next time don't leave the lights on overnight."

This is not rocket science. Ordinary people, when dealing with things that they are not expert in, adapt some term for the "whole Enchilada". Often as not, they pick a term by abusing a term that to experts has a more specific meaning, driving overly literal experts up a wall.

Climb down off your wall and deal with it. Or don't. I don't care anymore.

Have a good day.

66 posted on 05/29/2005 12:55:15 PM PDT by ThePythonicCow (To err is human; to moo is bovine.)
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To: ThePythonicCow

Better to light a candle than curse the darkness. CYA.


67 posted on 05/29/2005 1:07:56 PM PDT by general_re ("Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith, but in doubt." - Reinhold Niebuhr)
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To: MarineBrat
Multi desktop addons for windows have been around sense 3.1 Not everybody wants it so it remains an addon where it belongs.

I believe there is a free one in powertools.

68 posted on 05/29/2005 1:17:00 PM PDT by Dinsdale
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To: antiRepublicrat
What's funny is that your trying to compare a low end Dell to your low end Duel CPU Apple. For the same amount of money for the Apple dual 2.0Ghz Power Mac, you can get the top of the line Dell XPS, the Dell will have more Ram, Video Ram, the latest graphic bus. The Sound Blaster sound card is as good as it gets, I couldn't even find specs on the audio system on the Apple. Apple is also still using the previous generation of graphics cards and AGP bus, Dell and most other manufactures have moved to the PCI Express bus. Much faster than the AGP 8x.

Apple always fall back on the benefits of the OS. If MS had absolute control of the Wintel world, then it would probably be Mac like also. I love how Apple introduced OS X. To support legacy software, they included the latest version of the old OS and included dual boot capability. Boy, thats nice, two OS's for the price of one! Windows users would never stand for that, Microsoft designs Windows to support legacy hardware and software making the system much more complicated. With Apple, tough donuts...take it or leave it. Purchase new, upgraded software or don't use OS X. That must have been tough for people to spend $600 to upgrade their PhotoShop to be able to run it on OS X.

Concerning Apples great software applications, they had to develop iLife to appeal to casual users. Apple had nothing to bundle with their computers. In the Windows word, I can choose from dozens of great applications where the competition keeps the developers on their toes and constantly striving to improve their product. With Apple, there are very few choices for third party software. Apple had to fill the gap and introduce their iLife bundle. What other applications are available for Apple that compete with iLife? Windows literally has dozens of apps for managing, viewing and cataloging pictures, capturing video, burning DVD's, making music. Dell has very good software bundle, maybe not the best, but certainly good enough for the casual user. Take a look at http://www.picasa.com. Developed by Google, this is probably the best picture viewer & cataloger available, and it's free.
69 posted on 05/29/2005 4:45:25 PM PDT by SolitaryMan
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To: js1138
I'm the last to tell you that Macs are "trouble free" as I occasionally "fix" Macs for my clients. But I gotta tell ya, I know of no other product that has so many serious security flaws that would not have been completely rejected by the public and possible investigated by the federal government. You can say that it's because Macs have few users, but the evidence points to superior engineering. I'll remind you that it would take 38 years of DAILY Mac viruses to catch up to Windows. Corrupted data? It happens. But a thoroughly corrupted OS is unacceptable. And the fact that the only anti "virus" assistance MS has seriously developed is a spyware product that's still in beta. Windows people have allowed MS to completely sweep its deeply flawed security under the rug and have simply accepted third-party patches as a valid solution.
70 posted on 05/30/2005 9:14:33 AM PDT by Leonard210
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To: Leonard210
But I gotta tell ya, I know of no other product that has so many serious security flaws that would not have been completely rejected by the public and possible investigated by the federal government. You can say that it's because Macs have few users, but the evidence points to superior engineering.

Consider what Secunia has been tracking:
http://secunia.com/product/
MAC OS X - 58 Secunia Advisories/Flaws
Windows XP Home - 81 Secunia Advisories/Flaws
RedHat Linux 9 - 100 Secunia Advisories/Flaws

Considering the scrutiny of Microsoft and Windows XP, I would have to say it doesn't look that bad.

71 posted on 05/30/2005 2:01:49 PM PDT by SolitaryMan
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To: SolitaryMan
My mistake. Windows XP is a veritable fortress. Secunia the bastion of credibility. What was I thinking? FYI, there have been NO reported breaches of OS X...period. You know it, I know it, and Secunia knows it. Have you even read any of these posts or is this the first time you've ventured into a Mac tread. An "advisory" by Secunia does not, for Mac OS X or Windows XP, indicate anything other than a POSSIBLE POTENTIAL breach of the OS. As of this date Secunia says that Max OS X has 1 of 52 "advisories" unpatched. XP home has 20 of 81 unpatched, and XP Pro (which for some reason you left out of your tally) has 23 of 93 unpatched. XP does not look all that secure based on your own figures once the rest of the data is revealed. XP Home and Pro are "currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Highly critical." Max OS X "is currently affected by one or more Secunia advisories rated Not critical." I don't know, but from here, that looks real bad.
72 posted on 05/30/2005 3:04:37 PM PDT by Leonard210
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To: Leonard210

You sound like a liberal, first attack the source, than quote the sourse as proof of your argument and then throwout some unverifiable figure to support of your argument. Who says there has never been a "creditable" breach of OS X? The reason why OS X is so "secure" is that it's a niche player (5% market share). No one bothers attacking it. And just because there hasn't been verifiable breach doesn't mean that it can't be. Anyone that wants to create havoc on the web goes for the maximum punch. That happens to be Windows. If Apple had half the market share of Windows, then they'd be bleeding patches all over the place. But I guess with Apple releasing 4 major "upgrades" to OS X in the last 18 months doesn't mean they aren't patching holes in the OS? They're just hiding their crap under a bed of roses. But of course, Apple users have to purchase their patch's as upgrades.


73 posted on 05/30/2005 5:36:21 PM PDT by SolitaryMan
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To: SolitaryMan
Hey, sorry man. I didn't mean to step on those toes. I suppose you're right. I guess I'm leaning a little left lately. I suppose it's the blue jeans. I don't know, I just like them. And my hair's gettin' a little long. I guess if I put on a tie and got a hair cut I'd feel differently about the whole matter. Thanks man. I was just on my way out to get a latte. You have stiffened my spine. Yes, tomorrow I will burn my sandals, shave this hideous goatee and buy a Dell. Thank you. Thank you so much.
74 posted on 05/30/2005 9:23:31 PM PDT by Leonard210
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To: SolitaryMan
For the same amount of money for the Apple dual 2.0Ghz Power Mac, you can get the top of the line Dell XPS, the Dell will have more Ram, Video Ram, the latest graphic bus.

No, what I quoted was a mid-range Dimension with lots of options added (to get it closer to the Mac's specs, but minus monitor) and the low-end dual processor PowerMac, both for about $2,000. The top of the line Dimension costs more than a step up on the PowerMac. And that Dimension will still only have one processor, and have an 800MHz bus vs. the Mac's 1.15GHz bus. Oh, and if you're doing memory intensive work, how much memory can you put in that top of the line Dimension?

The Sound Blaster sound card is as good as it gets, I couldn't even find specs on the audio system on the Apple

Not the standard one, you have to upgrade. The sound in the PowerMac is high-end, including S/PDIF out.

Apple is also still using the previous generation of graphics cards and AGP bus, Dell and most other manufactures have moved to the PCI Express bus. Much faster than the AGP 8x.

Where do you get your info? AGP is only for the lower-end Macs, just as lower-end PCs still use AGP. Better PowerMacs use PCI-X, although the price-point where start getting PCI-X is higher than that in PCs. Your $2,000 Dimension did have that edge over the low-end PowerMac, but if you go to "top of the line" Dimension price, they'll both be using PCI-X.

If MS had absolute control of the Wintel world, then it would probably be Mac like also.

That would only to to the cohesiveness and stability of the system, not to the general inferiority of Windows. BTW, Microsoft and Dell work closely together to ensure compatibility, and Windows on a Dell still isn't as good.

Boy, thats nice, two OS's for the price of one! Windows users would never stand for that, Microsoft designs Windows to support legacy hardware and software making the system much more complicated.

Which is a reason Windows sucks so badly. It's still based on the old Windows 3.1 API. Apple had the balls to take the leap to a completely new operating system, which is why OS X is so much better. Aside from that, Microsoft rarely shows any innovation. Do they now have an instant search tool? Coming next year, maybe. Do they render the UI multi-layered in the GPU? Nope. Can you offload image and video processing to the GPU for real-time filters? No, you need to buy a separate real-time video editing card for lots of money. Can you, with almost no effort, and out of the box, turn a whole office full of Windows boxes into a distributed computing cluster? Sorry, the only thing that works that well on Windows is bot software for spam and DDOS.

As far as migration, a slight tweaking of most applications to a set of APIs released long before OS X was relased would let them run under OS X instead of using Classic mode. BTW, most applications ran faster under Classic than when the computer was booted directly into the old OS. Oh, and I do have Windows and DOS software that won't run properly under NT-based OSs.

And now support for older hardware. Technically, new versions of Windows will run on older hardware, but each new version is inevitably much more of a resource hog, so much so that the older hardware is basically useless. Each new release of OS X actually runs faster on the same older hardware. I know, it's a strange concept in the Windows world.

With Apple, there are very few choices for third party software.

I know, 10,000+ titles, plus thousands of ported UNIX applications, is just so few. What they're lacking is the junkware so common in the Windows world.

What other applications are available for Apple that compete with iLife?

Loads. Parts of iLife are third-party software titles that Apple purchased and rebranded, kind of like how Microsoft did its new anti-spyware software.

Windows literally has dozens of apps for managing, viewing and cataloging pictures, capturing video, burning DVD's, making music

And most are junk. I should know, since I think I've tried them all.

75 posted on 05/31/2005 7:16:28 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: SolitaryMan
You sound like a liberal, first attack the source, than quote the sourse as proof of your argument and then throwout some unverifiable figure to support of your argument.

Secunia itself is generally fine, it's the cherry-picking of the data by those like you that isn't.

Who says there has never been a "creditable" breach of OS X?

Everybody who knows anything. There has been one known breach, but that was a guy who downloaded what he thought was a pirate copy of MS Office, only to find it wiped his account when he ran it. Notice I said "his account." By default, OS X is set up so that you can do just about anything most people would want to do, but the privileges aren't complete (like Windows' Administrator), so the trojan was only able to wipe his account, not hose the whole system.

The reason why OS X is so "secure" is that it's a niche player (5% market share).

However small percentage-wise, it's still a system with about 20 million users. It is also based on BSD, a system that's been around longer than Windows, and was hooked to (indeed, running) the Internet before Bill even thought of enabling Microsoft machines to talk to each other.

Anyone that wants to create havoc on the web goes for the maximum punch.

For spam and DDOS bots, yes, because those are tools where only volume counts. Otherwise, they go for maximum recognition, to be known as l33t h4x0r among their peers. The first person to produce on OS X the effect of any number of Windows worms will be l33t.

Apple users have to purchase their patch's as upgrades.

As in Windows, security patches are free. The for-sale revisions to OS X usually contain improvements beyond what the upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP was. Besides, you have a choice, buy hardware to make your Mac faster, or just pay for an OS upgrade to make it faster. In the Windows world, you usually have to buy hardware to go along with the OS upgrade you just bought.

76 posted on 05/31/2005 9:29:36 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
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To: Deb
As someone who is sitting with an absolutely gorgeous Mac Cube, which cost over $3000. and is now obsolete, discontinued and unexpandable...I'm thrilled to know it's on display at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

I too have a mac cube, except I upgraded the video card, memory, hard drive, and am going to upgrade the CPU. Where do the "unexpandable" cubes come from?
77 posted on 05/31/2005 10:47:41 AM PDT by Bulwark
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To: Swordmaker

I think your wife is mean.


78 posted on 05/31/2005 8:45:24 PM PDT by Deb (Beat him, strip him and bring him to my tent!)
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To: Bulwark

Apparently a master of lies has led me wrongly down the path of faux unexpandability. He was a Republican too. I feel so used.


79 posted on 05/31/2005 8:47:26 PM PDT by Deb (Beat him, strip him and bring him to my tent!)
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To: antiRepublicrat

That's OK antiRepublicrat, SolitaryMan just stopped by to taunt. I never will understand what it is with Windows junkies, but thanks for your level headed response. I knew nothing of Secunia until SolitaryMan directed me there. First thing I saw was "Secunia Products" and assumed I was dealing with one of those "let's scare them by listing every tiny flaw so they'll buy our stuff" companies. Sophos came to mind. I don't know anymore if these "security" organizations are legit or not. I suppose this stuff is real important in the Windows universe. It just isn't to me. Apple has lulled me to sleep. Bad Apple! Bad! I noticed my lack of understanding when an IT manager and close friend was doing a favor on the Windows boxes at work and looked me right in the eye after I asked about the need for all this anti-everything software and said, "You're a Mac user. This is Windows. Be afraid. Be very afraid." The sentiment was echoed by her husband, also a Windows IT pro. I'll try to play nice from now on.


80 posted on 05/31/2005 10:28:51 PM PDT by Leonard210
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