Windows is getting disgusting

[timb]

For many years, we have used encryption to protect our customers’ personal data because we believe it’s the only way to keep their information safe. We have even put that data out of our own reach, because we believe the contents of your iPhone are none of our business.

Pure PR bullshit. Apple can even push new firmware to your phone over the aether without user intervention. They can target all phones or a particular phone. They have complete control over every bit of data on that phone, past present and future.

And Microsoft is quite late with Win10 doing something similar. So much for ethics and the question about which one is more evil.

Yes but with apple chances are you wouldn't even know they are doing it.

Actually, most of the core of OS X (Darwin) is Open Source and it's not like we can't use LittleSnitch or even WireShark to monitor what's being phoned home. Hint: OS X doesn't spy on you and there are no known back doors. There's a very large crowd of very smart people that tear every new release apart figuring out what every Daemon, Kext, Script and Library does. We'd know if it existed.
(If it did, I'm sure John Gruber's head would literally explode, like a ball of conflagration with bravado, if you will. Heh, that's a little Mac Nerd Humor there.)

[SopaXorzTaker]

I use linux and feel cooler, though. 

[Galenbo]

There's a good reason for that. If Apple should allow to install OSX on whatever hardware you like, then the quality, stability and
user experience will be dependent on drivers and hardware that is beyond the control of Apple.

That's very true, and/but Kim Jong Un couldn't have said it better.

[MrSlack]

Ironically, Apple are terrible at firmware, driver support and kernel reliability. My MacOS X usage was a storm of WiFi problems, sleep issues and filesystem corruption. I'm not sure where the whole controlled platform mystique comes from; they're human and as idiotic as any other software team.

[Karel]

There's a good reason for that. If Apple should allow to install OSX on whatever hardware you like, then the quality, stability and
user experience will be dependent on drivers and hardware that is beyond the control of Apple.

That's very true, and/but Kim Jong Un couldn't have said it better.

I really don't see the connection between a North Korean dictator and Apple. If you really believe that Apple's behaviour is comparable with a communist dictator,
then all discussion will be futile.

[rsjsouza]

There's a good reason for that. If Apple should allow to install OSX on whatever hardware you like, then the quality, stability and
user experience will be dependent on drivers and hardware that is beyond the control of Apple.

That's very true, and/but Kim Jong Un couldn't have said it better.

I really don't see the connection between a North Korean dictator and Apple. If you really believe that Apple's behaviour is comparable with a communist dictator,
then all discussion will be futile.

Let's see... Unwillingness to cooperate with its hardware peers (PCs); unwillingness to share hardware details with the world (no service manuals); uncooperative to expose its internals (ask iFixit), every hardware launch gives headlines across the world...

[Karel]

There's a good reason for that. If Apple should allow to install OSX on whatever hardware you like, then the quality, stability and
user experience will be dependent on drivers and hardware that is beyond the control of Apple.

That's very true, and/but Kim Jong Un couldn't have said it better.

I really don't see the connection between a North Korean dictator and Apple. If you really believe that Apple's behaviour is comparable with a communist dictator,
then all discussion will be futile.

Let's see... Unwillingness to cooperate with its hardware peers (PCs); unwillingness to share hardware details with the world (no service manuals); uncooperative to expose its internals (ask iFixit), every hardware launch gives headlines across the world...

As long as we don't get forced to buy or use Apple stuff and as long as Apple has a minor market share, who cares?
I guess a lot of people in North Korea would like to live in the US, even when forced to use Apple stuff...

[miguelvp]

Having lived in a dictatorship during Franco, I can say that while it's true that some would move out (specially those who just put their freedom of speech before their own well being) the majority would stay because family and even their love for their own town or region would make them accept what it is or even make little changes to make their situation more livable.

Even dictatorships have laws, and those can be changed a little bit at a time.

I wouldn't assume everyone in there is miserable and willing to leave. Poor is not the same as miserable, others have it even worse than North Korean inhabitants.

[XOIIO]

For the same hardware, a PC is usually way cheaper than a Mac.

At one time that was true but every penny extra you spent on a Mac you got back in reliability and engineering quality. I've got two Mac G4 notebooks, one G5 desktop and one G5 dual tower that are still working faultlessly years after Apple dropped support for them. I'm not convinced that recent Macs have kept that quality up to the old ones and may not justify the premium pricing as well as the old ones did.

I used to specify and resell HP PCs (around the late 90's early 00's) where the retail price was on the same order above typical PCs as Apple's are/were. They were superbly build and not one we used or sold went wrong - again the extra price was reflected in the quality you received. This was the old HP though - that made oscilloscopes and PCs and I think was the better for it.

I don't see how hard drives and ram which are built in/glued onto the motherboard are "better engineering".

And I'm pretty sure that as long as apple exists, dollar for dollar you will get more performance out of a PC than you will an apple equivalent.

[MrSlack]

It's clearly not better engineering. 

Neither is a battery you can't remove, something Apple pioneered. Been on the end of a MacBook fire before and it's not pretty.

[eugenenine]

\

I wouldn't assume everyone in there is miserable and willing to leave. Poor is not the same as miserable, others have it even worse than North Korean inhabitants.

Sometimes people just can't understand there is something better.  For years we called it AOL syndrome, despite the overwhelming evidence that anything else was better than AOL just because thats all they knew of.  I've ran into several people who think only Apple can do x even though Apple copied that idea from someone else.  They get stuck believing there is nothing better

[rrinker]

 If you check the prices, a Windows laptop built to the same size and weight specs as a MacBook has: glued in battery, soldered in RAM - because the connectors add too much Z-height. And when they actually use magnesium cases instead of plastic, they cost about the same as the MacBook. Desktops, there's no contest. It's even MORE glaring to me because I never buy a commercial desktop, I always build my own, with higher performance and a lower price point than any of the commercial offerings like Dell, HP, or Lenovo.

 I love my iPhone and iPad, but I will not be switching away from Windows with a side helping of Linux any time soon.

[strangersound]

I have multiple machines for different tasks. An XP machine that has my video editing setup. An XP machine with my audio setup. Both of these are offline machines. I also have a P4 with 512 megs of ram running two drives with a few versions of Linux. I surf the net on this here laptop I'm tying on now that has this steaming pile of Vista on it. Windows has been out to lunch for years, but the latest stuff they've been pulling is too much for my taste. I'll be using Linux for any online use soon enough. This laptop will see Vista go away, likely in favor of Mint (Xfce).

What really irks me more than anything is how memory intensive (ram usage) the web and browsers have gotten. Web page weights are bigger than they used to be, but the latest averages are still around 2.2 megs a page. That's hardly a drop in the bucket. Open Facebook and scroll the wheel a couple of times and you can hit 350megs. I've watched tabs go over a gig. It's insanity. There is so much javascript running in the background, who could even tell what it's all doing. I've been dabbling in html/css/javascript for a long time and I know what it takes to display a webpage and it's not a gig of memory. Can anybody tell me what the deal is with this? What the hell are these browsers and pages doing in the background that can consume so much ram?

Anyway, I'd wager a guess that it will even get to the point, these OS's like Windows and Mac will demand to be online to even run. They can have at it, I'm going to use a system I control, not The Borg.

The solution is for more people to get with the program and start using a Linux distro. Then we will start to see the big names in software (like Photoshop, Games, and the other important tools) port out versions for Linux. They aren't going to bother if their isn't sufficient demand. It's up to us, the consumer, to force these shifts. Otherwise, we will be forced to use what they foist on us, whether we like it or not.

[miguelvp]

Vista is probably the most memory hungry OS out there, upgrade it to at least Windows 7

[FLIP]

my only windows machine is vista, but thats for radio programming. my main machine is debian with wine and dosbox installed

the last few windows  releases imho are way too bloated, and with windows 10 and their spyware is not a selling point for me

[gnavigator1007]

The solution is for more people to get with the program and start using a Linux distro. Then we will start to see the big names in software (like Photoshop, Games, and the other important tools) port out versions for Linux. They aren't going to bother if their isn't sufficient demand. It's up to us, the consumer, to force these shifts. Otherwise, we will be forced to use what they foist on us, whether we like it or not.

I'm interested to see how many follow suit with Steam supporting more and more games on Linux systems.  Gaming is big enough now that it really could lead to a larger software migration.

[Galenbo]

...I really don't see the connection between a North Korean dictator and Apple.

applause for the leader and the system is mandatory !

...If you really believe that Apple's behaviour is comparable with a communist dictator,
then all discussion will be futile.

the big leader of True-Korea is great, don't question that, all discussion about that is futile.

:-)

[Philfreeze]

So this thread turned into "let's compare Apple with a totalitarian dictatorship"...

I had high hopes that this community could compare different operating systems without going completely insane but I was proven wrong.

[strangersound]

So this thread turned into "let's compare Apple with a totalitarian dictatorship"...

I had high hopes that this community could compare different operating systems without going completely insane but I was proven wrong.

Here, I can help bring it back around. North Korea has it's own special Linux distro: Red Star OS

[Galenbo]

North Korea has it's own special Linux distro: Red Star OS

That must be the OS with the least chance to being spied on by NSA/EU
:-)

[suicidaleggroll]

I almost exclusively use Linux, but I do have a few Win 7 VMs around for those programs that need them.

This morning I decided to update one of them, since it had been a while.  In the past I've been burned by trying to do too many updates at once, so I started with one.  Just one update, around 5 MB, some Silverlight security patch.  THREE HOURS LATER it's still running, "0 KB total, 0% complete".  The indicators on the VM show almost constant HD and net activity, and C:\Windows\Software Distribution has increased in size by EIGHT HUNDRED MB, and is STILL GROWING.

Just another of the many reasons I hate Windows.  It tries to hide everything from the user, I guess to make things less "scary", but all it ends up doing is pissing me off because it sits there doing some ungodly mess in the background for HOURS and doesn't tell me a damn thing, just a little sliding "progress" bar that stays at 0%.  And when and why did Microsoft decide to ditch ACTUAL PROGRESS BARS?  What is with this bar that just slides back and forth eternally like a Cylon and doesn't indicate shit?  And when it does error out, it never tells you WHY, it just gives some stupid generic message that doesn't give the user the slightest clue what went wrong or how to fix it.

[Armxnian]

The updates that fail or hang happen on W10 also. The bad part is you can't even refuse to install it. It prompts every time, and never finishes. Had to trash the OS to fix it.

Windows also runs like shit after a few days. Also runs like shit in a VM compared to Linux.

Just use FOSS. I've always found an open source, or at least free alternative that trumps any "enterprise" or "commercial" garbage.

[Lightages]

The updates that fail or hang happen on W10 also. The bad part is you can't even refuse to install it. It prompts every time, and never finishes. Had to trash the OS to fix it.

Windows also runs like shit after a few days. Also runs like shit in a VM compared to Linux.

Just use FOSS. I've always found an open source, or at least free alternative that trumps any "enterprise" or "commercial" garbage.

What FOSS software can you find that does the same as Adobe Creative Cloud, Sony Vegas, AutoDesk Inventor, and not require multiboot configurations so as to not run into dependency conflicts? I am being rather lax on the requirements as there are many other programs I use along with these. Running Win7 in a virtual machine to run these intensive programs is not a good option.

[Armxnian]

What FOSS software can you find that does the same as Adobe Creative Cloud, Sony Vegas, AutoDesk Inventor, and not require multiboot configurations so as to not run into dependency conflicts? I am being rather lax on the requirements as there are many other programs I use along with these. Running Win7 in a virtual machine to run these intensive programs is not a good option.

There are a million of free CAD programs. Gimp replaces adobe and blender replaces sony.
I will admit that once everyone and their dog starts contributing code to an OS project, it becomes crappy. But it's still better than the scam that is paid software.

Running anything in a windows VM is a pain, especially a program that utilizes a GUI. It uses so many resources doing nothing. Biggest limitation is the lack of proper 3D acc. in a VM unless if you get pci passthrough to work. Keyword if. Windows is so complicated and bloated M$FT doesn't even know how it works.

[Lightages]

There are a million of free CAD programs. Gimp replaces adobe and blender replaces sony.
I will admit that once everyone and their dog starts contributing code to an OS project, it becomes crappy. But it's still better than the scam that is paid software.

Gimp doesn't come even close to the same capabilities as Photoshop CC. Blender does many good things, but its user friendliness is horrible compared to Vegas. Cinelerra comes close, but dependency problems made it useless for me. Maybe it is better now. And, even though they might be close, they do don't match the former softwares in capabilities. You are forgetting the many other pieces of software in Adobe CC.

Running anything in a windows VM is a pain, especially a program that utilizes a GUI. It uses so many resources doing nothing. Biggest limitation is the lack of proper 3D acc. in a VM unless if you get pci passthrough to work. Keyword if. Windows is so complicated and bloated M$FT doesn't even know how it works.

Believe me, I would love to dump MS altogether and never have to worry about being locked in to their crap, and not have to worry about what they are doing to me behind my back. The truth is that there is no one Linux distro and collection of software that runs on that one distro without dependency conflicts. I would even be happy to run two distros to make it all work, but I have yet to see it possible.

I need full color calibration on multi monitors, Optimus video card technology support, Wacom support, room acoustic correction support, HP Laserjet CP1025NW support, Brother DC1512 support, Bluetooth audio support, Cinelerra, Gimp or much better, Blender, video and photo noise removal software, Open Office, Thunderbird, Firefox, a powerful 3d modeling CAD, music tacking and production software, DVD and Bluray playback, DVD and Bluray authoring, driver support for Canon EOS, and all on one or at most two distros without any dependency conflicts. Windows can do all of this but I have yet to see one Linux distro handle everything. Like I said I would be happy to have two distros to do it all, but who has time to research and install everything over and over again until you find something that doesn't break?