Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Review: Mac Os X Steps Ahead of Windows
Yahoo! News - AP ^ | 4/27/2005 | By MATTHEW FORDAHL, AP Technology Writer

Posted on 04/27/2005 10:11:05 PM PDT by Swordmaker

Tired of waiting while your PC slowly scours its hard drive for a document you stashed somewhere six months ago? Sick of having to change how you work to conform with the computer's rigid way of organizing files? Bored with the flat look of the desktop's graphics?

Microsoft's next-generation operating system for Windows, code-named Longhorn, is supposed to address such digital woes. It may even be released in time for Christmas 2006.

But if you've got a Macintosh computer, or plan to buy one, those issues have been tackled. They're amply addressed in the latest update of Mac OS X, dubbed "Tiger," goes on sale Friday.

Despite a much smaller user base, Mac OS X has been steps ahead of Windows on key fronts since its first release in 2001. It's got more advanced and polished graphics. It's less prone to malicious attacks. And Macs look better than nearly all Windows PCs.

Until recently, Apple has been dogged by a reputation for high prices. Its computers now start at $499, and the number of programs that run on them has grown dramatically. Tiger provides another excellent incentive to switch from Windows.

I've been trying out Tiger on a borrowed an iMac G5 and my own dual-processor Power Mac G4. New Mac users will get it with their systems; existing customers must pay $129 for the upgrade. (The update was simple, taking about an hour.)

Topping the list of 200 or so improvements in Tiger is a built-in search tool that goes a long way toward relieving one of the biggest headaches that's plagued computers.

That is, as hard drive capacity grows and our digital universe broadens to include text, music, video, e-mail, pictures and everything else, information gets lost in the shuffle of folders scattered across gigabytes of hard drive real estate.

Operating systems have been designed to pigeonhole that data into a hierarchy of folders. But what if a document, song or picture fits into five or six different categories, each with its own folder? If you choose one, how will you remember it a year from now?

Tiger addresses both problems with a search technology, called Spotlight, that also enables a new way of organization, called Smart Folders.

Accessed by clicking small magnifying glass icon, search results fill in as you type keywords. Spotlight doesn't just search filenames. It also looks inside files — into a document's text, a picture's caption or tags linked to a music file, for instance.

Spotlight's speed, even on my older Power Mac, is impressive. Results were on target, too.

Like the desktop search tools available on Windows PCs from Yahoo, Google and MSN, Spotlight relies on an index that's created when it's first installed. Instead of having to scour an entire drive in search of something, it just looks it up in the database.

Indexing with Windows add-ons is a more computer-intensive process. Most are smart enough to do their work only when you're not working on something, but that means new information isn't always available. I have also found their range of files to be limited.

After the initial index is built in Tiger, changes are made to it whenever a file is changed — whether it's saved, deleted, moved or modified in another way. I noticed no performance hit and, despite my repeated attempts to trick it, Spotlight never missed a file change.

I actually found myself using Spotlight to launch programs.

And there's more. Searches can be saved and the results turned into folders that run a query each time they're opened, fine-tuned to display only certain types of files. Time variables can also be set.

There is room for some improvement, however.

Spotlight only searches for files on the local computer, not networked hard drives or remote shared folders. Network file searching is something that's expected in Longhorn, and Apple hasn't ruled it out as a future feature.

Tiger — like previous versions of Mac OS X — also sets the bar high in the graphics display area.

In its "Dashboard," small programs called "Widgets" overlay the screen at the punch of a button. They such display information as the weather, stock prices, flight information and calendar info. More can be added, and they pop open with a rippling flourish.

But Tiger is about a lot more than look and feel. It's also about looking at more people than ever on your video screen live.

With Apple's iSight camera ($149) and Tiger's new built-in iChat AV program, you can set up and participate in video conferences with 10 people. It's visually stunning, with each person showing up in a panel, their animated faces reflecting against a black background.

Of course, it's impossible to judge how Tiger will compare with the next-generation of Windows since Longhorn isn't available.

As more details come out, additional complaints of Microsoft copying Mac OS X will surely be heard.

Both Apple and Microsoft are trying to address the same problems: sifting more quickly through more and more data. The onus is now on Bill Gates & Co. to see if it can one-up Steve Jobs' shop.


TOPICS: Computers/Internet
KEYWORDS: apple; osx; windows; xp

1 posted on 04/27/2005 10:11:08 PM PDT by Swordmaker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Bush2000; antiRepublicrat; Action-America; eno_; N3WBI3; zeugma; TechJunkYard; ShorelineMike; ...
Arms merchants for the platform wars, AP and Yahoo! conclude that

"Mac OSX is Steps Ahead of Windows.

PING!!!

If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

2 posted on 04/27/2005 10:13:55 PM PDT by Swordmaker (tagline now open, please ring bell.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Swordmaker
Tired of waiting while your PC slowly scours its hard drive for a document you stashed somewhere six months ago?
Takes all of 1 second using locate.

Sick of having to change how you work to conform with the computer's rigid way of organizing files?
No, not really. I can make them do pretty much whatever I want using ln.

Bored with the flat look of the desktop's graphics? Between the alpha transperency and transparent menus of KDE and GNOME, live desktop backgrounds (think using your screensaver as a desktop), vector based icons, and gdesklets which allow me to add things like realtime system information and collapsable email applets to my desktop, I would say that Linux has me pretty much covered.

3 posted on 04/27/2005 10:19:04 PM PDT by explodingspleen (http://mish-mash.info/)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Swordmaker

Bring back MFS!

;')

That's something else that was weird on the original Mac -- MFS ("Macintosh Filing System", replaced by HFS, "Hierarchical Filing System") had 524 bytes per block, instead of 512. Never have read an explanation for that one...


4 posted on 04/27/2005 10:27:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (FR profiled updated Monday, April 11, 2005. Fewer graphics, faster loading.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: explodingspleen
Between the alpha transperency and transparent menus of KDE and GNOME, live desktop backgrounds (think using your screensaver as a desktop), vector based icons, and gdesklets which allow me to add things like realtime system information and collapsable email applets to my desktop, I would say that Linux has me pretty much covered.

So does OSX...

5 posted on 04/27/2005 10:28:45 PM PDT by Swordmaker (tagline now open, please ring bell.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: explodingspleen

Good for you.


6 posted on 04/27/2005 10:37:05 PM PDT by John Valentine
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Swordmaker
Yes, but Linux is free. :)

I have no grudge against Macs, at least not since they incorporated the Unix backbone. I view them as more or less on an equivalency in terms of OS stability/customization/etc (Apple is now even using gcc 4.0--the renowned linux compiler--to compile their OS).

Still, Linux is slightly better suited to my needs.

7 posted on 04/27/2005 10:38:37 PM PDT by explodingspleen (http://mish-mash.info/)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: explodingspleen
Takes all of 1 second using locate.

Searching on a PC NEVER takes only one second. It does on a Mac. If you've ever used iTunes, imagine a search of every file you have the same way.

I would say that Linux has me pretty much covered.

Linux does have some neat stuff, but it's still not this good. The main reason is at the OS X screen compositing layer, where all the windows on your screen are essentially treated as layers in a Photoshop document. It didn't take any hacks to do the cool stuff because the OS was designed from the ground-up to be able to do it.

8 posted on 04/28/2005 6:20:08 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: explodingspleen
Apple is now even using gcc 4.0--the renowned linux compiler--to compile their OS

Apple has been using that for a while, since 3.x. And I may be picking nits, but gcc isn't the "Linux compiler," it's the GNU open source compiler commonly used on most NIXes.

9 posted on 04/28/2005 6:23:18 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Onyxx

Friday's coming bump


10 posted on 04/28/2005 6:23:33 AM PDT by Unknown Freeper (Doing my part...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: antiRepublicrat
Searching on a PC NEVER takes only one second. It does on a Mac. If you've ever used iTunes, imagine a search of every file you have the same way.
What does running on PC have to do with anything? I have just run locate and, in retrospect, it actually takes a fraction of a second. The chief limitation is not even the search, it is the output to screen. Piping the output of a search for files with "home" in their name or path to a text file, I counted two-mississippis before it completed, with 51269 files having been located and written to the text file.

Linux does have some neat stuff, but it's still not this good. The main reason is at the OS X screen compositing layer, where all the windows on your screen are essentially treated as layers in a Photoshop document. It didn't take any hacks to do the cool stuff because the OS was designed from the ground-up to be able to do it.
That type of alpha compositing should be incorporated into subsequent version of GNOME; I don't know if it's in the next release or not. KDE supports a variation on that which is, you're right, not as seamlessly incorporated into the code as Apple's, but for me is more than enough. I don't really want transparent application windows, personally....

And I may be picking nits, but gcc isn't the "Linux compiler," it's the GNU open source compiler commonly used on most NIXes.
cc was the original *nix compiler, gcc was the non-proprietary derivative which was originally implemented as part of Linux (or GNU\Linux, as you prefer). I refer to it as a Linux compiler in the same sense that I refer to a Volkswagon as a German car, even if it's being used in America by an American. :)

11 posted on 04/28/2005 7:35:56 AM PDT by explodingspleen (http://mish-mash.info/)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: explodingspleen
Piping the output of a search for files with "home" in their name or path to a text file,

Ah, you're talking a UNIX. Still, you have to type the appropriate command and pipe it. With the Mac the results show immediately as you type. If I start typing "Microsoft," the results at the point I type "Micro" will show results such as "Microcomputer," with the results narrowing on the fly as I complete typing my search term. And in the end I can save those results to a virtual folder, and every time I open it I have whatever currently matches my search term.

No other operating system matches this.

I don't really want transparent application windows, personally....

Windows has it too, but I turn it off because I find their implementation annoying.

gcc was the non-proprietary derivative which was originally implemented as part of Linux (or GNU\Linux, as you prefer)

GCC was written years before Linus started creating Linux, and it was the first free C++ compiler. It was just the compiler that Linus decided to use and is packaged with most Linux distros.

12 posted on 04/28/2005 8:24:44 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Swordmaker
....There is room for some improvement, however.

Spotlight only searches for files on the local computer, not networked hard drives or remote shared folders. .....


The author really doesn't really have a clue how computers work. If your machine had to index the universe, it would be kinda' busy.
13 posted on 04/29/2005 11:58:52 AM PDT by Joe_October (Saddam supported Terrorists. Al Qaeda are Terrorists. I can't find the link.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson