Posted on 04/11/2008 6:50:11 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
If you’re emailing, web surfing, looking at and editing photos, or playing games, most probably, you would do better to max out your RAM rather than get the faster CPU.
If you’re doing video editing, transcoding, simulations, etc. You want to get the quad core *and* max out your RAM.
So, what is the magic number, Slapshot68? At what number will the hackers start writing viable and spreadable malware for OS X? Right now there are more than 30,000,000 OS X users. And there are still ZERO viruses, ZERO spyware, and ZERO adware in the wild. There are about ten proof-of-concept Worms and Trojans. . . Which don't work and were based on already closed vulnerabilities.There have been two widely publicized break-ins by hackers using vulnerabilities in third party apps (which, incidentally, were also vulnerabilities in Vista) but both required user psrtcipation to be successful. OS X has been in the wild and exposed for seven years and OS X Server for nine. When are they going to start appearing?
You'd think that with that all time and those large numbers of vulnerable, and mostly unprotected users that we Mac users would be getting our unfair share of the over 300,000 malware apps that are out there. We aren't. Why?
"Security by Obscurity" is NOT the reason Macs (it's not MAC) are secure. It's design.
Just try starting off with a standard windows install from an OEM and try to go for a week without being Admin. You'll quickly see that Windows was never designed to run in low powered accounts.
Interesting. It is expected in a few years that most internet browsing will be done on Cell phones. Now, this does not mean an IE problem, since it is already being hurt by Firefox, etc. The problem is that people will not be using their computers - typically with windows - to do it. As software becomes more generic and less platform specific, there will be no need to get the os everyone else has. When that happens, Microsoft may go the way of another once giant. Sears...
If we're looking at the same thing: The Dell has a slightly slower processor, and a little bigger screen. You need to upgrade the Dell to Vista Ultimate to equal OS X ($150). The Dell also has a bigger hard drive. It has 2 GB of memory, but Vista will render that meaningless (OS X runs just fine on 1 GB). OTOH, the Mac is a lot smaller than the Dell, and you pay for size, or lack thereof, in the notebook market. Competitive, definitely, but neither is an absolute better value, it depends on what you're looking for.
I wouldn't suggest doing that with a Mac Pro. We haven't been able to find the parts as cheap as Apple sells that machine.
If you’ve got all your stuff installed you can easily run for months without admin privileges. Really unless you’re installing or cleaning up (deleting) you can run as guest all of the time.
Windows Administrator == OS X root.
OS X Administrator == sort-of like the old Windows Power User, except it's actually useful.
The standard out-of-the-box on a Mac and PC have you running as Administrator. On the PC this means full control to destroy the box. On the Mac you still need root to destroy it, and almost nobody runs root normally (it's actually disabled by default).
We now know from court documents that Microsoft knew integrated graphics wouldn't run Vista completely at launch time.
Mac has a larger user base than in the late 90s. This larger user base includes a lot of newbies. In the late 90s Macs had around 100 viruses in the wild. None now.
The difference? New operating system.
“Using the RAM Americans won’t use”?
Singularity is an ongoing MS project you may find interesting.
DOS rode on the coat-tails of the market power of the IBM PC, making it a must-have. When clones arrived, you ran DOS to be compatible with the IBM PC ecosystem. DOS became dominant. When Windows came out it was compatible with DOS (actually ran on top of it), making an easy transition for the DOS users. Their new OS, NT, even used the old Windows API to be compatible. Once Microsoft had a 90%+ marketshare, it could ensure that no others could compete. Contracts with OEMs said every computer shipped must come with a Windows license. OEMs needed to sell Windows to survive, but couldn't sell anything else at a competitive price. If you wanted OS/2, you had to buy a copy of Windows and then pay for OS/2 on top of that.
There were other things, but that's the basic picture of Windows' rise to dominance. During this time there were other more stable and more usable operating systems out there.
Yet, before MS Windows, there existed the McIntosh with its very nice and potent graphical interface?
Why didn’t the apple OS take the lead or overtake the Windows systems?
There actually was competition, but the competitors didn’t know how to compete. And, even with that competition, the PC was able to do basically what the people needed, quite simply for the time, and for the right price.
Because only Apple sold the Apple. It might have been a different story if Compaq had not reverse-engineered the PC.
True, only Apple had the Apple. But, Apple could’ve been the dominant PC or API if it had done things right back when it had the chance.
Vista sucks.
My MacBook Pro is the best computer I have ever owned.
I am still getting started with it.”
I’ve been using Ubuntu for three years. I used to have to load some programs and drivers, like Nvidia, from the command linebut when I upgraded to Gutsy it took care of everything.
The ease of MS?, the security of Linux.
I think MS’s server products keep getting better, but Vista is a huge step backwards. Odd that the same company that releases Windows 2003 Server can cough up a hairball like Vista. Perhaps when Vista Sp2 comes out it won’t suck - that’s what it took to make XP bearable.
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