Why doesn't Apple try to make Windows as seamless as OS X?

[Tallest Skil]

Why should Apple help their competitor?

Let them flounder.

Oh, but Apple IS trying to make the Boot Camp experience better, and in Snow Leopard, we're reportedly getting HFS+ read/write support to read/write the OS X partition from within Windows.

 

[windywoo]

Apple aren't competing with Microsoft on any sort of scale that matters. Fact is, they are dependent on Windows users since they represent the majority of their iPhone and iPod users.

If Apple pride themselves on delivering high performance goods and their goods are not performing they should be addressing that. Microsoft can't' be blamed in this situation; they provide the OS, its up to Apple to provide decent drivers.

 

[andiwm2003]

i haven't read all of the thread so sorry if it has been answered: don't parallels and other virtualization apps solve those problems?

 

[jaw04005]

Why should Apple help their competitor?

Let them flounder.

Your comment makes little sense considering Apple is the OEM. It's Apple's responsibility to maintain the driver catalog for its hardware.

Most of the Boot Camp drivers are provided by Apple's third-party suppliers anyway (ATI, Nvidia, Realtek, Intel, etc). It would take minimal work on Apple's part to release a Boot Camp driver update every three or so months.

Oh, but Apple IS trying to make the Boot Camp experience better, and in Snow Leopard, we're reportedly getting HFS+ read/write support to read/write the OS X partition from within Windows.

We're getting read, not write, support in Snow Leopard as already mentioned above.

HFS+ read support in Boot Camp.
Boot Camp now includes HFS+ read support that enables you to access the files on your Mac OS X partition from Windows. It’s read-only to prevent PC viruses from affecting Mac OS X, but you can easily save your work to your Windows partition and access it later from Mac OS X.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/enhancements-refinements.html

 

[Anuba]

i haven't read all of the thread so sorry if it has been answered: don't parallels and other virtualization apps solve those problems?

Sure, but virtualization is slow as molasses and provides a crippled Windows experience without Aero and without access to the better part of the hardware resources (RAM, CPU cores). It's about as slow and jerky as screen sharing between two Macs. Parallels is great if you need to do some quick lightweight work and can't be arsed to reboot into Windows, but it's not a functional working environment, more like a Windows simulator.

Tab to click on pc is there because
- pc use very tiny trackpads which won't be hit accidentially by user's hand, but also means it lacks accuracy due to small size
- very tiny trackpads = very tiny buttons, hard to use, thus need to use the trackpad to tab

Right, and tap-to-click is available in OS X because the idiot who designed the trackpad to act as a mega-button made it so hard to press (and uneven) that it makes a clicking noise so loud it wakes the neighbors. When I was on a PC I was able to work late at night without waking my girlfriend... then I got a Mac with its awful startup BINGGGGG!!!! that I had to hush with third party sysprefs, and a trackpad that goes CLICK CLACK THUMP no matter how softly you try to press it. Multitouch works as advertised, but clicking is awful -- I enabled tap-to-click 2 minutes after unboxing my MBP.

You need to update the nvidia drivers. Just because you don't know how to update video drivers (defaults to the more power hungry discreet card) you shouldn't blame it on apple. Nvidia does the GPU drivers in windows. Apple has nothing to do with it.

Apple has tweaked the way the hardware is wired which is why standard Windows drivers don't work in some cases, and the iSight is proprietary and couldn't possibly work in Windows without Apple's assistance. Windows 7 has installed on every single PC I've tried without needing to download drivers from third parties, until I tried on the MBP 17". The horrible Realtek soundchip that Apple uses (worst S/N ratio ever, constant popping and glitching in both OS X and Windows) can normally use the default HD Audio Codec, but on Macs that doesn't work. So yeah, it's perfectly reasonable to blame Apple. It's a PC with custom Apple tweaks (no BIOS etc) and if Apple advertises Windows compatibility then it's their responsibility to make sure that compatibility goes all the way.

 

[Eidorian]

It's quite annoying to have to go out of my way to get a disc image of a newer version of Boot Camp online because my MacBook didn't ship with 64-bit drivers.

The Boot Camp driver package and how Apple is handling deployment is miserable. You'd have to keep buying new hardware just to get the latest package.

 

[stainlessliquid]

When you open My Computer, you'll see your NTFS formatted partition (the Windows drives) and the HFS+ partitions (the OS X drives), but you'll only be able to read them. Which honestly is a good thing.

Its not a good thing when you want to share a data partition between them without using useless fat32.

You have to wonder though, maybe the reason the 9600 is forced instead of the 9400 is because Apple doesnt want OSX to look bad since Windows can switch video cards on the fly. It wouldnt be the first time they do something like that.

 

[blackhand1001]

You mean like that Alienware crap that weighs 20 pounds and has a 10 minute battery life and cost 4 grand? Yeah, totally mobile. But I'm glad to read your in-depth explanation of why it was "a bunch of bull****".

I am not talking about the alienware system (I mentioned quadro eg. professional machines) and am not saying that the macbook pro is a bad product. What i am saying is that their were much faster laptops out at the time and that the whole thing was not true. Any of dell precision line was faster as was many thinkpads and HP elitebooks. The macbook pro at that time either used the radeon 1600xt or the 8600m gt. There were other laptops with the quadro 3600m. That card is 3 times as fast as the 8600m gt and probably 4-5 times as fast as the radeon. And if your doing anything in maya its probably 8-10 times as fast than cpu rendering. And if your worried about battery life these cards have REAL powermizer and are much more agressive at saving power.

 

[andiwm2003]

Sure, but virtualization is slow as molasses and provides a crippled Windows experience without Aero and without access to the better part of the hardware resources (RAM, CPU cores). It's about as slow and jerky as screen sharing between two Macs. Parallels is great if you need to do some quick lightweight work and can't be arsed to reboot into Windows, but it's not a functional working environment, more like a Windows simulator.

................................................

Well, i have parallels from a macheist bundle. i might give it a try if i have some spare time. i thought it was 80% as fast as bootcamp (not including gaming) and allows file transfers and runs all hardware (camera, FW, USB) and such. I thought for office use and email, surfing, Picasa it would be fine.

 

[CrazyLexx]

Huh? Tap to click works fine in Windows, you just have to enable it in the Boot Camp settings.

Nope, those drivers only work on MB/Ps with a multitouch touchpad on it.

 

[Hugh]

Install Windows on a Mac? That's crazy talk!

My roommate has my Mac Mini Solo and he as XP home on it ONLY. It has no Mac OS X installed. Although we had to use the drives from the DVD.

And just for a side note: He says this is the best computer he had. He hardly get any crashes, BSOD and so on.... He's have had a lot of computers over the years. They just didn't hold up compared to Mac Mini.

Now he wishes that he could use a Mac and sat goodbye to Windows. He can't because he is blind that force him to use a screen reader. The one he likes is JAWS. I don't know why there can't be a good screen reader for the Mac.

Yes I know in some screen reading build into Mac OS X, but it's not good enough to:

To move around the computer you still need a mouse.

::: Looks at what he just wrote ::::

Sorry for going off topic there, I just like to tell people that my roommate is using my Mac Mini for a Win Home...........

Hugh

 

[Nohg]

Anyone looking to make their video drivers more up to date should look into:

http://laptopvideo2go.com/


Bit hard to understand their modded INF system at first, but I eventually got it sorted, and can update Nvidia drivers.


Most of you already know of this, but for those that don't....there you are.

 

[Eidorian]

Anyone looking to make their video drivers more up to date should look into:

http://laptopvideo2go.com/


Bit hard to understand their modded INF system at first, but I eventually got it sorted, and can update Nvidia drivers.


Most of you already know of this, but for those that don't....there you are.

nVidia now provides mobile drivers now on their website.

 

[dotdotdot]

I would like to add that I just downloaded the Boot Camp 3.0 drivers that will come with Snow Leopard, and on the older MacBooks that used to not have Tap to Click, tap to click (and 2 finger tap to right click) now works. Two finger scrolling is also better on these laptops.

So finally, in mid-2009, two years after my mid-2007 MacBook was purchased, Windows runs well.

There doesn't seem to be any power changing settings however. I really hope the new MacBooks and Unibody MacBook Pros will see improvements in Snow Leopard as well.

 

[Eidorian]

Was this in Windows 7? The two finger scroll drivers in 2.1 are terrible in 7.

 

[dotdotdot]

Was this in Windows 7? The two finger scroll drivers in 2.1 are terrible in 7.

Yeah, this is Windows 7, and the new 3.0 drivers are much better in this release for the trackpad.

----------

On a side note, just today I encountered a scenario where my friend was fully prepared to buy a 17" MacBook Pro but needs Windows for some college classes, but really wanted a Mac as well for editing video, and thanks to Apple's shoddy Windows drivers, particularly his concern that a $3,000 laptop would have a shortened lifespan due to overheating, he chose to buy a PC (the Dell Studio XPS 16) instead.

Just an example of how Apple making Windows perfect on their hardware would lead to more people using OS X as well.

 

[Eidorian]

The Dell Studio XPS 16 is a nice machine. Did you take a look at Apple's refurbished MacBook Pros though? The 9600M GT models are starting at $1,349.

 

[Gyrferret]

Only works on the unibody Macbooks and Macbook Pros. Older models are just SOL.

My "tap to click" is weird. Tap to click works. To right click, however, I have to use THREE fingers and physically CLICK the trackpad. It's a weird thing...



That's the reason I enabled it. I HATED being in my college class and having to hear myself clicking every couple of seconds. So friggin' loud..... seriously.....

 

[spinedoc77]

Any links?

I would like to add that I just downloaded the Boot Camp 3.0 drivers that will come with Snow Leopard, and on the older MacBooks that used to not have Tap to Click, tap to click (and 2 finger tap to right click) now works. Two finger scrolling is also better on these laptops.

So finally, in mid-2009, two years after my mid-2007 MacBook was purchased, Windows runs well.

There doesn't seem to be any power changing settings however. I really hope the new MacBooks and Unibody MacBook Pros will see improvements in Snow Leopard as well.

 

[w00t951]

Apple's Boot Camp Drivers are all terrible. However, you should update all of the ones that are not completely Apple hardware. One of the major ones is the NVIDIA drivers, and I am still waiting for updated Intel drivers. Everything else except for the trackpad works pretty well.

 

[Mackan]

Thanks for the laugh.

Windows is windows. It's buggy, poorly designed, and inefficient. Apple hardware is not going to make windows, a poorly put together knockoff, run like OSX.



Tab to click on pc is there because
- pc use very tiny trackpads which won't be hit accidentially by user's hand, but also means it lacks accuracy due to small size
- very tiny trackpads = very tiny buttons, hard to use, thus need to use the trackpad to tab

Macs have
- Large trackpads that ignores accidental input
- Much larger button
so there is no need for the pc tiny trackpad workaround, but it's there if you want it.



Ever use a pc laptop? Same behavior as any laptops running windows. Apple does not advertise boot camp will equal to osx at all.

You need to update the nvidia drivers. Just because you don't know how to update video drivers (defaults to the more power hungry discreet card) you shouldn't blame it on apple. Nvidia does the GPU drivers in windows. Apple has nothing to do with it.

You are one of those clueless Apple fanboys. A shame.

 

[Infrared]

Why should Apple help their competitor?

Let them flounder.

Oh, but Apple IS trying to make the Boot Camp experience better, and in Snow Leopard, we're reportedly getting HFS+ read/write support to read/write the OS X partition from within Windows.

While that isn't such a bad idea, Apple ought to concentrate
on the fundamentals first and get those done right.

 

[DataCabbitKSW]

I bought a new laptop for my ex about 6 months back, and it had a gaming level graphics card, running a core 2 Duo 2.6Ghz, 64-bit Vista (we will switch this to Windows 7 when it comes out on October 22nd) and 4GB of RAM. DVD-RW, good networking, bluetooth, large hard drive (250GB is large for a laptop) and a decent built in web-cam. It cost US$750 before tax/shipping. Besides a snazzy case, the multitouch trackpad, and the backlit keys, it features darn near all the _HARDWARE_ capabilities you could get in a MacBookPro. Mind you I own a bit older MBP (and dual-boot 10.5 and Windows 7). I'll need to try out the new 3.0 beta BootCamp driver set. There are some tweaked and proprietary devices in Apple's equipment that could work wonderfully in Windows (and linux) if they put in the effort. I applaud that they are getting some of it to work passably, but they could do so much more. I will have to agree that Windows has never been really good for low-latency audio work. They have improved the audio interfaces as far as usability and mixer issues in Windows 7, but I really can't say as I don't do music authoring on a level any farther than amateur, and haven't installed my sequencing software on my Windows 7 RC box, nor the dual-boot section of my MBP. I would be really surprised if they enabled real multi-touch capability with the newer touchpads under Windows 7. Right now the multi-touch is really designed to work for touchscreen style. Still, being able to adapt it to a smaller pad would be nice. I currently do stuff with a Wacom tablet for pen-input things, as I don't have a touchscreenmachine, let alone a multi-touch capable.

Enough with my rambling though. The basic point I have to make is that Windows 7 runs pretty well as-is on Apple hardware, but it could run a lot better given proper support for Apple's proprietary modifications. There are laptops that are cheaper and just as capable hardware-wise as Apple's MB and MBP. They may not be as sexy externally, but they certainly fill all the different portions more than adequately and at a lesser price. For those of us who do have MB/MBP, we would certainly appreciate it if we could get the full usage of the hardware. We almost can, but there are specific, noticeable things lacking. Hopefully this will change.

 

[Leo72]

I hope that SL will support NTFS completely, because i don't want to use a third party software, i need a good performance .

 

[ajpl]

Thanks for the laugh.

Windows is windows. It's buggy, poorly designed, and inefficient. Apple hardware is not going to make windows, a poorly put together knockoff, run like OSX.

Leopard is very buggy, I'm on the 6th bug fix [10.5.7] and considering Finder is part of OSX how on earth can you think it efficient. First thing I do with a new mac install is make sure Finder is used as little as possible or modified to work less badly. PathFinder and Default FolderX help a lot, without them, I would not bother with OSX.
I use both OSs, side by side. Both are better at some things than the other. But Apple software is often simplistic, not simple and at times really difficult to use as a result. You will probably laugh at me for saying such a heinous thing, but i came across an interesting article a few days ago which basically said exactly the same thing, though it was phrased slightly differently. As this article was written by someone who worked at Apple for a long time and was responsible for lots of their fundamental UI stuff, maybe his view may count for more, despite being fundamentally the same as mine.
http://www.asktog.com/columns/075AppleFlatlandPart1.html

Tab to click on pc is there because ...[

It's very useful.

- pc use very tiny trackpads which won't be hit accidentially by user's hand, but also means it lacks accuracy due to small size
- very tiny trackpads = very tiny buttons, hard to use, thus need to use the trackpad to tab

bigger is not necessarily better and having separate buttons is easier for some work. mouse gestures are a pain to do with the Apple no button trackpad, a doddle on any other. Also to underline what you say is fanboi bollox, there's a PC on desk here next to me with massive buttons. In fact they are slightly more than a third of the size of the current Mac trackpad. I find I rarely make mistakes with PC trackpads, even ones with small buttons, but often do with the new MacBook design.

Macs have
- Large trackpads that ignores accidental input

After a lot of complaining how dreadful it was otherwise. It's still very easy to right click by accident. And the tap click is very, very temperamental in use.

- Much larger button
so there is no need for the pc tiny trackpad workaround, but it's there if you want it.

It's not a workaround, it was simply a good idea first used on PCs and ignored by Apple for a long time as they are too up themselves to ever admit MS did things first/better. Just like the idiocy regarding single button mice despite how clumsy they are in comparison to multibutton mice with scroll wheels. Besides Apple only recently had big trackpads and can only do that by using a crappy compromised keyboard with buttons missing. I have a 13" PC with much better ergonomics than my MBP 17" and no sharp abrasive edges to irritate one's forearms like the new MBP has. Which is a remarkable dreadful design and shows how little function plays a part in designing Apple kit compared to looks.
I also use tap click as it's sooooo much easier than actually clicking with the Apple trackpad and also I don't annoy others with it's loud click.