Or worse:
Posted on 12/01/2006 7:49:10 PM PST by Zakeet
As he took the stage to usher Windows Vista to market, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week tried to put the software's laborious birth behind him. The company's 71,000 employees -- and the entire PC industry, for that matter -- could be excused for breathing a sigh of relief, too.
"It's an exciting thing to finally be here, and that's probably all I'll say about the past," Ballmer said at the unveiling from Nasdaq's cylindrical high-tech building in New York's Times Square. Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 also were introduced, and 30 more products will follow over the next year, all part of the same technology wave. "This is the biggest launch we've ever done," Ballmer said. Microsoft will spend $450 million marketing it all.
Yet for all the design missteps, overly ambitious plans, and personnel changes that led to a five-year lag between versions of Windows, questions about the future of Microsoft's software are top of mind for customers and partners. Ballmer swears to never let as much time elapse between Windows versions; the question now is how the company can keep churning out innovative products on a compressed timetable.
"Vista is the last of the Big Bang operating system releases from Microsoft," Credit Suisse research analyst Jason Maynard wrote in a report last month.
(Excerpt) Read more at informationweek.com ...
Or worse:
Don't forget that Apple is UNIX. There is an absolutely massive library of free software out there for it, and any that aren't out there for it are an easy port from whatever UNIX flavor they were written for. Plus you have all of the Java apps, since Java is one of the core OS X APIs.
A Mercedes may have a lower TCO than a Cadillac or high line Buick/Olds/Pontiac or a Ford or Mercury... but how many can afford the initial buy-in and expensive service intervals?
In many cases, the Mac is the cheaper initial purchase, and the general experience is that "service intervals" are much longer than for Windows.
I'm granting that more software is available for the PC. My point is that if there's not an app you need that only runs on Windows..
The car analogy is backwards: "how many can afford the initial buy-in and expensive service intervals?"
As I linked earlier, the buy-in is now close to a wash for anything but a self-built or bare-bones system.
And "expensive service intervals" is more likely to occur with PCs than Macs.
Mac hardware also last much longer, so replacement cycle is also longer.
Ongoing maintenance, additional anti-virus/spyware, application installation and removal, etc. are much higher for the PC. Support hours are on the order of twice as high for the PC.
So, again, granting that if a) there's no Windows-only software you need to run and B) you're not a gamer; I still think the Mac comes out with a better TCO.
For the average consumer, the focus of my question, I don't see why a great many put up with having to deal so much with the technology - as evidenced in your post that I initially replied to - when most only want to use the computer for Office applications, email and surfing - and/or photo, music, video.
thanks for your reply...
Let me show you what I'm talking about using my OSX box at work that I'm remoting into using VNC compared with a regular WinXP system. I'll post screenshots to tinypic.com and embed them into this reply.
Here are the clunky steps on how Apple intends the user install a printer driver targeting a host print controller on a different TCP/IP subnet/Appletalk Zone than their client mounting a enterprise-level networked laser printer. Bonjour is not going to find this print controller with it's auto-discovery, is it?:
Macintosh OS X 10.4.8 method:
1. Open Macintosh HD.
2. Open 'Applications'.
3. Open 'Utilities'.
4. Launch 'Printer Setup Utility' (Why this is hidden three folders deep and isn't in the Apple menu by default, I have no idea).
5. Choose 'Add' from the 'Printer List' dialog.
6. Choose 'IP Printer'. Darn. The Apple auto-discovery feature won't work outside it's own Appletalk zone, so we're gonna have to do it ourselves.
7. Choose the correct protocol. Don't know if it's LPD, HP JetDirect, or IP? Call your system administrator helpdesk and hope that they know. Otherwise, walk to the printer yourself, print a config sheet, and locate the correct information if you know what value you need.
8. Good thing you printed that config sheet, because you'll need to know the IP address.
9. Enter the 'Queue' name. You do know the 'Queue' name, don't you? Consult the host controller's user guide since this isn't a multiple choice question. You can leave it blank for the default queue, but what will that do?
10. Name your printer. Optionally, add a location.
11. Now it is time to install the printer driver. Click the 'Print Using' pulldown menu and choose your printer driver from the OEM list. Well, of course it's not there. We haven't installed it yet. Better choose 'Other'.
12. The 'Printer Browser' dialog appears. Choose the network location of the printer driver or your CD/DVD media. I hope you picked the right one. There's no indication from Apple about what sort of printer you're targeting. Why can't we just find out from where we're sitting? If you don't have the printer driver on hand at this point, you're stuck.
13. Assuming you've gotten this far with no hassle, choose your installed options and further configure your printer manually.
14. You're now ready to print.
Win95/Win98/WinME/Win2000/WinXP method:
1. Choose 'START > RUN > (Enter the IP address of your printer/print controller).
2. A new window opens showing all of the print queues and shared folders at that IP address. Double-click the name of the print queue you want. The drivers are automatically installed automatically over the network to your client PC via 'Point and Print'. It's been this way in Windows for ten years.
3. You're now ready to print.
Now let's look at the friendliness of the OS X printer driver GUI:
1. When I choose to print from an application, you'll see the following:
2. Now I'm hunting through a menu list to find the OEM options for my printer:
3. Here they are. Nested two layers deep in the Printer Driver under 'Feature Sets' when you choose 'Printer Features', the option magically appears without any indication that it was available. Interesting to note that Microsoft's WHQL program mandates only one level of nesting for the OEM-level features, but Apple forces you to navigate two and three menus deep just to access the basic features that you may need to use repetetively. Imagine for a moment that you're not a Network administrator and you have to navigate these slowly-repainting nested menus all day long in your job in production printing when your Mac is bogged down grinding on a complex 5Gb PostScript file.
4. Why can't my most commonly-used options be transported to the first panel that appears when 'Print' is chosen like on WinXP? Why are there so many submenus and so few options per panel? Looks like five options is the limit for this pane, which means that I am going to need more menu items and maybe more nested menus:
I'll tell you why: Apple's OS X GUI subsystem is still beholden to an archaic FreeBSD X-Windows X11 shell crossbred with a bastardized NeXT GUI controller. You know, just like how Apple platform zealots used to mock PC users for having the underpinnings of MS-DOS in their Windows machines way back when.
... Of course, that was before Apple boxes lost their SCSI drives, RISC chips, and proprietary hardware/software and became no different internally to the 'inferior' PC architecture. Were you one of those people, Swordmaker? Smugly mocking IDE drives and Intel's VLIW chips back in the day?
I think the picture you had in your head when I said 'Printer Drivers' was something along the lines of a desktop toy printer bought from Best Buy that your office secretary uses to print envelopes. I'm talking about digital publishing of high volume in the production world -- a realm that Apple used to own lock, stock, and barrel.
Take a look at major world market trade shows in the DTP/Production publishing business (Visual Communication, Seybold, DRUPA) and ask where all the Macs are, Swordmaker. Their continually dwindling numbers isn't the fault of the basic problems I highlighted above, but those problems are indicative of the trend that Apple has just given up in this sector. Back in the OS7-OS9 days, DTP production was job number one. Now it's iPods and selling MP3s. Nowadays, my company's customers are barely even concerned about Mac support. Occasionally if our customers have to support a fanatical band of Mac holdouts, we'll accommodate them with a patch of some kind.
Like I said, it's hard to believe that Apple is even the same company anymore.
A well written post, but it is demonstrably true that the architecture WAS superior in Macs "back in the day". While SCSI drives could be a pain with all those adapters and terminators, in an individual computer, they were much more reliable than the IDE drives.
Printing in OS X is something that has always bugged me (since I provide support), but in my opinion, the reliabilty and security of the OS is superior to Windows, and that makes up for the shortcomings in printing and network administration in Apple products.
Besides...in the high end desktop publishing world where 5 GB postcript jobs are being chewed through, are the end users expected (or allowed) to install that particular printer on their box?
Darn, just as I was getting used to XP :)
"In many cases, the Mac is the cheaper initial purchase"
Since when?
ping
Since quite a while. We've even found that you can't build a Mac Pro out of parts for what Apple charges.
That is only a recent development, in my opinion, with the commodization of the mac to more "standard" parts, which are generally of a higher quality nowadays than they used to be.
That's why I have insurance. Or, more particularly, that's why they have insurance. I've been sentimental about cars in the past, but I got over it. If they wreck my car, they can give me a check and I can get another one just like it, maybe even newer and nicer.
Oh, and I use one of those places with a sunken well in the middle, so they're not raising the car. I'm sitting in the waiting room, so they're not racing it around the block. And if they strip the plug-nut, then I guess they just bought me a new one.
I might still change my own oil if I had a carport and could drive up on ramps, but I have a rough driveway on about a 20 degree incline, and that's no fun at all. Actually, if I ever build my own house or my own garage/carport, I plan to put a sunken well in the middle like so many of those quick-lube places have, so I can lower myself rather than raise the car.
Ad hominem will get you no where. I have not been a "lad" for at least 40 years. I am impressed with your effort to obfuscate the issue of printer installation on an OS X Mac. It is nowhere near as complicated as you seem to think.
YOUR Macintosh OS X 10.4.8 method:
1. Open Macintosh HD.
2. Open 'Applications'.
3. Open 'Utilities'.
How about 1. Click on "GO" on the menu and select "Utilities"?
4. Launch 'Printer Setup Utility' (Why this is hidden three folders deep and isn't in the Apple menu by default, I have no idea).
I agree... the Printer Utility should be on the Apple menu.
5. Choose 'Add' from the 'Printer List' dialog.
6. Choose 'IP Printer'. Darn. The Apple auto-discovery feature won't work outside it's own Appletalk zone, so we're gonna have to do it ourselves.
No, Appletalk is turned OFF by default on Macs... besides Bonjour doesn't require Appletalk. Bonjour works on ANY network the Mac is connected to.
. . . And it uses the standard, ubiquitous IP networking protocol for its connections, the same protocol that runs the internet itself. . . . . .Since Apple introduced Bonjour technology in 2002, every major printer manufacturer has adopted the technology so you can add and remove such machines from networks without configuration. When you add your Mac to a network, Mac OS X will then automatically discover and connect to the available Bonjour-enabled printers and you’re ready to print.
7. Choose the correct protocol. Don't know if it's LPD, HP JetDirect, or IP? Call your system administrator helpdesk and hope that they know. Otherwise, walk to the printer yourself, print a config sheet, and locate the correct information if you know what value you need.
However, for 99.9% of Mac users, simply plugging in a USB printer, pairing a Bluetooth printer, or connecting a Network printer to the ethernet network or WIFI, will automatically mount that printer with the correct protocol and make it available for use. It will recognize all of the OEM features automatically as well.
8. Good thing you printed that config sheet, because you'll need to know the IP address.
Ah, no:
. . . you can setup a Bonjour-enabled device without knowing its IP address. You can even print to printers connected over USB to Airport Extreme Base Station or Airport Express.
10. Name your printer. Optionally, add a location.
Not necessary, you can do that later if you need to.
11. Now it is time to install the printer driver. Click the 'Print Using' pulldown menu and choose your printer driver from the OEM list. Well, of course it's not there. We haven't installed it yet. Better choose 'Other'.
Why would it not be there? There are 981 printer drivers and printer definitions from 25 printer manufacturers already installed on OS X.
12. The 'Printer Browser' dialog appears. Choose the network location of the printer driver or your CD/DVD media. I hope you picked the right one. There's no indication from Apple about what sort of printer you're targeting. Why can't we just find out from where we're sitting? If you don't have the printer driver on hand at this point, you're stuck.
Straw man argument. Most printers will already be available on OS X.
13. Assuming you've gotten this far with no hassle, choose your installed options and further configure your printer manually.
Ah, no, for the most part, OS X polls the printer and recognizes its installed options and configures the printer automatically. The manual choices are there for older model printers that don't offer this ability.
14. You're now ready to print.
The WINDOWS version...
1. Choose 'START > RUN > (Enter the IP address of your printer/print controller).
Gee, how did you learn the IP address of your printer/print controller? Did Windows somehow give it to you by Osmosis where above in the Mac section you had to get it from the printer or the controller? Did you:
8. Good thing you printed that config sheet, because you'll need to know the IP address?"
Well you could if you used Apple's technology in Windows:
Now anyone using a Windows PC can take advantage of the effortlessness of Bonjour for free. The Bonjour Setup Wizard makes setting up a printer under Windows as easy as Mac OS X (we can’t make it as beautiful, unfortunately). Bonjour for Windows includes a plug-in for Internet Explorer, so you can setup a Bonjour-enabled device without knowing its IP address.
As for all your neat screen captures trying to show poor User Interface: Did you happen to see the item called "Presets:" next to a drop down menu? Once you set up the printer to the way you want to use it for various jobs, simply save a named preset for each type of job you need. For those infrequent jobs that you haven't set up a preset, you may still need to use the nested menus which are very powerful controls.
Well, sure. That was Apple's big stick. The one they used to beat the hi tech world over the head with when they proclaimed 'Apple is a HARDWARE company, dammit!'.
Now their boxes are nothing but proprietized non-standard PCs. Some of these posters thinking that Apple will capture a large segment of disgruntled consumer and corporate MS Windows users by offering an emancipated OSX OS for Intel PCs ought to stop dreaming. The moment they do that, that's the last Mac they sell.
I won't say Apple wouldn't do something that unwise given their history of rotten business decisions (Remember the Mac clones?) but I think that if it ever does happen it will generate a firestorm of 'Wow-WEE!' columns in the trade journals and then promptly fall flat on it's ass just like Sun's Solaris X86 release did.
I admit that I would snag a copy anyway.
It's okay, you can be right.
Attention everyone. Now hear this: Swordmaker gets to be right.
Mac OS X is a bulletproof, intuitive OS. You turn a Mac on, and it just works...like an appliance.
A Windows machine is like a spoiled cat in comparison...just look at all the MSDOS based vestigial suggestions that have already infested this thread...all in the name of making your Windows PC run better.
Get a Mac and free yourself from such grief forever.
Thank you. With the errors in your post, such as claiming Bonjour only works on Appletalk, it was easy.
LOL...apparently you've never used a Mac. The "future" for the Windows operating system is what Mac users refer to as "the past".
The System Preferences panel has a shortcut to the Printer Setup app.
I believe that the printer setup utility is exposed adequately. The primary user interface should not be cluttered with things that are not needed frequently, like printer setup.
It has never been the hardware that sells the Mac, nor the reason for using one no matter what anyone has said.
It is the OS that makes it worthwhile to many, and I am one of those. In my opinion, the inconvenience of the printing is a small thing.
The industrial design of Apple products is also very good. Granted, they have fallen on their faces in this regard on occasion, but who hasn't. (I used to own a 9500...until you have installed RAM in that box, you don't know what a challenging RAM installation is)
And you can hardly blame Apple for using hardware as their big stick...their interface was being copied and stolen at every turn. As poorly as they sometimes did it, they did have a business to run.
Clones would not work for Apple. If you understand how they make their money you know that they need to sell hardware to make money. Their OS doesn't do that for them. Anyone who understood it knew the clones were bad for Apple. They aren't (and weren't) Microsoft.
The lousy thing about that whole mess was, they had to yank the clone licensure to remain profitable. A bad decision to allow clones was followed by a good (and tough) decision to pull that licensure. That allowed them to live, but they had to stab the clones in the back to do so, and leave those customers who purchased clones stranded. That left a mark on Apple, but they had to do it to survive.
I mock Windows for that because MS-DOS is crippled, old and broken, basically being an inferior knock-off of CP/M. I have no problem with something having BSD underneath.
Their continually dwindling numbers isn't the fault of the basic problems I highlighted above, but those problems are indicative of the trend that Apple has just given up in this sector.
Having worked in publishing, I can attribute it mainly to three things. One is that Quark delayed a lot in coming out with OS X native version of its products. Another is that Windows became capable of decent DTP at a time when Macs were far more expensive. Another is the period in which you could get a faster PC than the fastest Mac for less than the Mac. I know people who worked in video were leaving the Mac in droves before the G5 came out.
In any case, whatever the minor inefficiencies of OS X, there is no way I'd use OS 9, with its cooperative multitasking, no SMP, and no protected memory.
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