Predict-the-Patch

[ancestral]

ancestral, thanks for the great post. I appreciate it a lot.

You're welcome.

Just for record, Dell's is excellent here, I have had no problems with them. (see www.instapundit.com : June 27, 2006

Dell has good support. I think they're tied for #2. (Sounds like they've got a large center over in India.) Apple is far and away #1 from CR and guys like Walt Mossberg from The Wall Street Journal will attest to that. Honestly having the retail stores around helps considerably. The Genius Bar is free technical support, and ProCare gets you one-on-one training on pretty much anything about your computer. I'm confident there is nothing like this at any electronics store in the world. Nothing.

Apple underclocks its Macbook video cards to make them produce less heat. This troubles me. But design is obviously in their favor.

It's a notebook. Those suckers can get really hot as it is.

... But anyway, I am curious about what you say about "who needs the Add hardware wizard." True plug and play does exist in windows; over the past week I have installed a USB joystick and wireless optical mouse just by plugging them in.

Can't tell you how many times I've had people have problems with their CD-ROM, wireless mouse, and other devices. The recommended path is to go to the Hardware wizard, remove, restart, hopefully it recognizes and works. If not, maybe you have to install drivers...

You know, hard drives crashing seems to happen to many of my PC friends. I don't understand this. Why would hard drives be so fragile? I don't recall ever having a hard drive crash of mine on the Mac.

What does OSX have here that XP doesn't?

Spotlight is very fast. I haven't used Google Desktop, but I assure you, Spotlight finds things very quickly, and you can access all sorts of metadata from picture size to EXIF data. (Spotlight)

Exposé lets you see all the windows on your computer when you press a button. Very powerful window management tool. (Exposé)

PDF support is integrated. You can make a PDF from anything without buying a distiller or trying to install GhostScript. (PDF)

Migration Assistant allows you to pick and choose files to move from an old computer to a new one over a Firewire connection.

Free developer tools. Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, GCC - just a few tools that are installed by default. Built-in terminal and X-Window support giving you the ability to run UNIX programs and use the command line interface. Interface Builder is probably the quickest and easiest way to make a graphical interface for an application, and often without having to add much programming at all.

This is true, though a product more of apple's marketshare than its design.

I think most people don't know about the OS X security. BSD is one of the most secure operating systems in existence, and OS X is pretty much built atop of FreeBSD. Honestly, just the fact that the other pieces of the operating system were written about 7 years ago is a testament to its safety. The reason that Windows is so exploitable is because of old code. Vista is a re-write and may solve many issues.

Do you regularly use Garageband?

No, not every day. (I do use iTunes and iPhoto probably every day though.) Maybe once a week for fun. But I did make this. That whole mini-site was done with iWeb too.

I can see video editors or sound editors picking mac. Out of curiosity are you a film maker?

No, but I know a lot about the software they use. It sounds like fun, to get into video production, but I'm more interested in using web technologies than using video.

I don't have anti virus software and have never needed repairs

Really? May I ask, how do you keep clean from all that garbage? Do you run a spyware sweeper? I think people who get viruses are mostly opening or downloading things they shouldn't, but there's still a lot of cruft that can get through. I'm curious to know how you stay clean.

 

[bio_hazard]

A few unrelated observations-

While I love the powerbooks- they are *TOO* thin. I've had keyboard/screen etching problems with both of mine. Somehow I always loose the little foam sheet that you're supposed to keep inbetween there...

I don't know if google desktop can search text in .pdfs- but this makes Spotlight a HUGE timesaver for me. I download hundreds of .pdf journal articles in a year, and they always come out with completely non-referential, 30 character names and end up in different places on my HD depending on whether I got them from Safari, save through acrobat, or from email. I can search these based on their content and pull up anything relating to a subject without remembering the title or who wrote the article.

XP may have somthing like this, but Automator is pretty freakin great. I used this extensively this spring. Digital Performer creates these nonsensical audio file names that I had to rename in specific ways to pass on to later sound analysis programs. I could batch rename with incremental numbers really easily with a simple workflow. I know you can make macros on windows machines, but I can't imagine it can be as flexible and intuitive as Automator.

In terms of the hardware wizard-type issues... we had to install external HD's for both macs and pc's this spring. For the mac- installation meant, um, plugging it in. For the PC- I had to read the instruction manual to figure out what I was supposed to do.

I'll also say that in my maybe not so random sample of watching people at a couple of universities, networking, printing, and compatability were superior on the mac. About every 4th seminar someone's PC wouldn't work with the projector- the only problem macs ever had was when someone didn't have their dongle for the ibooks/powerbooks to hook up with the video cable, and we had to run and borrow someones. Finding printers and getting on LAN's and wireless were virtually problem free, but I frequently had to try to help some get their pc networked...

 

[AlanH]

networking, printing, and compatability were superior on the mac

I do network and general IT support work for a local charity. It's wall-to-wall XP on two LANs with a combined total of about 35 PCs, but I've been trialling adding a MacOS X server running on a Mac Mini, with a view to doing some inter-site networking.

Recently we bought a standalone ethernet networked HP printer and plugged it into the LAN. After about 30 minutes of kicking and cussing and trial and error I managed to get an XP system to print a test page, and decommissioned the previous networked printer.

Later the same day I fired up the Mac Mini and needed to print some reference info I'd picked up on the web. Without any action on my part, I found that the new HP printer was already an option in the Mac's Print dialog, selected it and printed. It "just worked".

 

[ejday]

...Without any action on my part, I found that the new HP printer was already an option in the Mac's Print dialog, selected it and printed. It "just worked".

Almost painfully fun, isn't it?

I bring my laptop in to one of my occasional gigs and jump on their wireless for the downtime. No sweat there. At one point, I needed to print off a local HP printer. Found it navigating on my – through one of XP stations – chose it and printed. Only caveat: no model driver. However, choosing (IIRC) an HP 900-something and it printed just as built.

Nice!

 

[ainwood]

I don't have anti virus software and have never needed repairs

Do you have a firewall? Do you keep your OS updated with windows update?

If you don't have anti-virus software, then its very likely that you have a number of viruses that you don't even know about.

A while back, I reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled XP Pro (SP1). I hadn't installed the firewall, and went on the internet to download it. I then downloaded the antivirus software. Guess what? I had about a dozen trojans infesting my newly-reformatted system - after being connected to the internet for only 10 minutes, and only going to two websites.

SP2 fixed many of these issues - but connecting an XP machine to the internet without a firewall and/or antivirus is almost guaranteed to get you infected.

 

[wiglaff]

Thanks everyone for the very informative posts (and the garageband song, which was neat).

My concern with Macs is mostly with the hardware, but I'm glad to learn that the operating system is more competent than XP. It is difficult for me to respond to the XP horror stories ("hardware was never recognized" or "ten viruses in two minutes") because I have had no such experiences in 5 years of using XP on six different machines. But if they have happened to you on pcs, and have not occured on macs, then I understand your concern.

When Vista comes out, more direct comparisons will be possible between the two OS's. Hopefully it'll be one click to delete a shortcut, as it is now on XP

Really? May I ask, how do you keep clean from all that garbage? Do you run a spyware sweeper? I think people who get viruses are mostly opening or downloading things they shouldn't, but there's still a lot of cruft that can get through. I'm curious to know how you stay clean.

Hm. I use the Windows firewall on SP2 with Firefox and occassionally (once a month) Adaware, which removes spyware. It still hasn't found anything that could compromise the system. Usually it picks up cookies or trackers. Admittedly I know a couple people who have been affected by viruses, but as you said they usually are the ones downloading haphazardly.

I don't know if google desktop can search text in .pdfs- but this makes Spotlight a HUGE timesaver for me. I download hundreds of .pdf journal articles in a year, and they always come out with completely non-referential, 30 character names and end up in different places on my HD depending on whether I got them from Safari, save through acrobat, or from email. I can search these based on their content and pull up anything relating to a subject without remembering the title or who wrote the article.

Google Desktop does indeed search PDFs. Its interface is identical to the internet search, so it's not quite as pretty to look at. But you can place it on the taskbar so it's just as accessable as Spotlight. Some of these advanced features that Spotlight appears to have (such as the type of resolution in a photo or whatever) are not available, but honestly I wouldn't use them anyway.

 

[The WAB]

Depends on what you do. For me XP has never crashed, but obviously both will break depending on how hard you push them. But anyway, I am curious about what you say about "who needs the Add hardware wizard." True plug and play does exist in windows; over the past week I have installed a USB joystick and wireless optical mouse just by plugging them in.

Wow, amazing!!!! NOT.

Now try that with a camera, a moble phone, a printer, ...

 

[ancestral]

At my college they use Samba windows printing, and only that, since they collect printing information through it. You can setup a Samba printer in Mac OS X, but need the password. But since the printer passwords could change every month or so, I had to run a script to create them on the fly, in the lab environment. We used to use PAS Controller, though I think the company who made it was bought out and who knows where that product is.

It was a headache, and although I think having a box running OS X Server or using Apple Remote Desktop would help with maintaining the lab environment, for my small school, as a student, I knew more about this than anyone else, and there were some situations where stuff happened and I had to fervently find my own answers or give up.

I quickly found out people don't bother doing any extra research necessary for anything. I think often there are solutions but it just takes a little time to find them and time to test them too.

 

[wiglaff]

Wow, amazing!!!! NOT.

Now try that with a camera, a moble phone, a printer, ...

Cameres work fine, especially if you use the included software. It works okay without software too.

Printers in my experience require an install CD and you're set. I'm not sure what the deal is here. ?

 

[AlanH]

Printers in my experience require an install CD and you're set. I'm not sure what the deal is here. ?

My situation was a networked printer, not attached to a specific computer.

- XP required an installation disk to be run. OS X needed none.
- I had to work out what IP address the printer had invented for itself, and then fight my way through the printer setup wizard to explain to XP where to find the printer and how to talk to it. OS X just found it and configured itself to use it.
- There was a complicated Java/Tomcat utility to install for communicating with the printer to define its settings. This crashed XP to a BSoD the first time I ran it, and I never did get it to work on that PC. It "just worked" on the Mac.

This may be a rogue example from HP, but those are the events that stick in your memory, and I don't have comparable nightmares about my Mac.

 

[wiglaff]

My situation was a networked printer, not attached to a specific computer.

- XP required an installation disk to be run. OS X needed none.
- I had to work out what IP address the printer had invented for itself, and then fight my way through the printer setup wizard to explain to XP where to find the printer and how to talk to it. OS X just found it and configured itself to use it.
- There was a complicated Java/Tomcat utility to install for communicating with the printer to define its settings. This crashed XP to a BSoD the first time I ran it, and I never did get it to work on that PC. It "just worked" on the Mac.

This may be a rogue example from HP, but those are the events that stick in your memory, and I don't have comparable nightmares about my Mac.

Interesting. Well I have never personally networked printers so I can't dispute any of that. Sounds like a big plus for mac, if virtually all of your hardware experiences with them are positive.

Ironically, I just sent an email attachment via gmail and apparently it contained a virus (according to the recipient, but I guess he has no reason to lie..). How odd. Well, anyway if that's a problem on my end it'd be quite suspicious.

 

[spekkio]

Well, I don't want to get into another Mac vs. Windows fight (and besides, to come into a Mac forum to try to pick fights with Mac users is pretty juvenile), but I will state when i believe the patch will be:

June 13, 2056. That is the thirteenth day of the six hundred sixty-sixth month of the new millenium. It's a Tuesday!

 

[ejday]

...Ironically, I just sent an email attachment via gmail and apparently it contained a virus...

The Mac crowd has been relatively lucky in regard to viruses... but this is a great opportunity to browbeat my fellow MacHeads on lax security. We've been resting on our laurels (me included).

I don't think we'll ever have the same volume of problems that Windows has simply because we're a smaller crowd –*but the crowd is growing and we can't afford to be lax anymore.

Mac folk: don't take it for granted: start running security software! One evil virus can ruin your whole day.

 

[ejday]

Well, I don't want to get into another Mac vs. Windows fight (and besides, to come into a Mac forum to try to pick fights with Mac users is pretty juvenile), but I will state when i believe the patch will be:

June 13, 2056. That is the thirteenth day of the six hundred sixty-sixth month of the new millenium. It's a Tuesday!

Aim low, avoid disappointment...?

 

[The WAB]

Ironically, I just sent an email attachment via gmail and apparently it contained a virus (according to the recipient, but I guess he has no reason to lie..). How odd. Well, anyway if that's a problem on my end it'd be quite suspicious.

The Paranoid world of windows "Am I infected or is Windows just buggy?"

Actually it's a very safe feeling knowing that Mac OSX has no virusses at all so I know 100% when something is buggy when something goes wrong. You for the other hand are now in doubt.

apple.com/getamac/

 

[gfeier]

Well, I don't want to get into another Mac vs. Windows fight (and besides, to come into a Mac forum to try to pick fights with Mac users is pretty juvenile), but I will state when i believe the patch will be:

June 13, 2056. That is the thirteenth day of the six hundred sixty-sixth month of the new millenium. It's a Tuesday!

Why are you using this thread to predict the patch? Don't you know it's a Mac vs Windows thread?

P.S. Still standing by my 1 Aug prediction. It's also a Tuesday.

 

[JoAT]

According to Inside Mac Games, Aspyr released a beta patch today.

So, who had the 14th?

JoAT

 

[ejday]

I was gonna ask the same thing...

But do we give prediction credit for a beta patch? Half credit?

Tell ya, though: I give double credit to Aspyr for cranking that sucker out before the weekend!

 

[gfeier]

Saturday, July 15th, 2006.

Looks like he won!

 

[Skippy_Kangaroo]

Last week of July - 24-28 July

While the beta patch was out earlier - can I have some points for a correct prediction of the actual patch?

(And when I have 100,000 don't you think I won't be trading them in for the set of steak knives.)