Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

VulchR

macrumors 68040
Jun 8, 2009
3,508
14,459
Scotland
...
OS X is not a "toy" operating system. It's just really overrated. I switched from OS X to Windows 7 and 8.1, and I just feel like Apple doesn't really give 10 cents about the Mac side of things.

I get that sense too sometimes, and it is frustrating. Apple's A-team is getting stretched quite a lot these days it seems (iOS, watchOS, OS X, and dealing with new hardware), and while Apple might get most of its profits from iOS, the moment they drop the ball on the Mac and OS X they'll lose the ecosystem. They're sailing close to the wind now in my opinion...
 
  • Like
Reactions: Cole Slaw

Suckfest 9001

Suspended
May 31, 2015
1,748
2,482
Canada
Yes, among other things. In fact I'd say the Mac/OS X/Windows VM setup is one of the best ways of experiencing Windows. The whole Windows HD becomes one file that can be easily backed up, there is no speed penalty, and, for the few instances in which a Windows program has not been ported to OS X, the virtual machine suffices. I run a fairly heavy duty data acquisition and analysis system using a Windows Virtual machine on my Mac in OS X. Being able to use UNIX tools is also useful in OS X, but I have yet to see a good solution for doing that in Windows (perhaps there is one).

Keep in mind that any modern PC is a Turing machine and therefore infinitely flexible, no matter the OS on which it runs. Thus, judging the utility of the OS depends on the given user's priorities. I prefer the flexibility of being able to use 3 separate OS's on one computer, if need be simultaneously. In any case, calling OS X a 'toy' operating system is a bit silly.
Lol so OS X is not a toy OS because at least you can dual-boot/VM Windows.

ok then
 

macrem

macrumors 65816
Mar 11, 2008
1,438
102
I don't understand what you mean (wrt the bolded part), could you elaborate?
Under the hood there's usual Windows file system fragmentation, frequent need for updates that require reboots, less reliability, less stability, less efficiency, legacy issues, registry problems, command line horrors, laborious process of installing software dependencies, redundant mediocre software, etc.
 

Lloydbm41

Suspended
Oct 17, 2013
4,019
1,456
Central California
I bought a 2014 Mac Mini to work in conjunction with my 27" iMac and the Mac Mini is an utter piece of sh.. This has been the worst computer experience since Dell decided to move manufacturing to SE Asia in 2006 and their PC's went from great to terrible. Talk about slow, laggy, no way to upgrade RAM or the HDD, and Yosemite didn't help matters.

Been using Windows 10 Dev Preview since it was released and loaded up the official version yesterday after doing a clean install. Oh thank god Microsoft got this one pretty much right on. I was afraid it would be another Beta release pretending to be an RTM. It is good. Real good. I've already wiped the Mac Mini and reinstalled the OS to sell this POS. If you are going to buy a desktop computer, don't ever buy a Mac Mini. As for Yosemite vs Win 10. I think Win10 is looking like the better option.
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,682
43,740
Under the hood there's usual Windows file system fragmentation, frequent need for updates that require reboots, less reliability, less stability, less efficiency, legacy issues, registry problems, command line horrors, laborious process of installing software dependencies, redundant mediocre software, etc.
I haven't had registry issues since, I don't know Windows 95.

OS X needs to be rebooted when it gets updated (unless I'm misunderstanding your point). Yes there are times I have to reboot windows for simple application installs which is baffling and a bit frustrating.

I've not seen any stability issues with the past few versions of Windows.

Can you define what you mean by Command line horrors, while its not a unix shell, the cmd shell is quite handy.

The install process is extremely simp, just click through a wizard, I'm not sure how laborious that is. I found install Office, and Adobe products to be the same level of laborious effort on Windows as OS X.

I think both platforms offer a high level of redundant and mediocre software.

What I see is an old argument against windows, that is lacking in specifics, and some of those points as noted are not even relevant anymore or particular to the Windows, i.e., its the same in OSX.
 

Surface3User

macrumors newbie
Jun 23, 2015
24
18
I haven't had registry issues since, I don't know Windows 95.

I've not seen any stability issues with the past few versions of Windows....

What I see is an old argument against windows, that is lacking in specifics, and some of those points as noted are not even relevant anymore or particular to the Windows, i.e., its the same in OSX.

I would actually say Windows is generally more stable than OS X. I would be waiting on more beach balls and experience more crashes just doing general surfing on the Mac than I ever did with my Windows machines. I pretty much was a Mac user and only a Mac user for decades too.
 

Robstevo

macrumors 6502
Jun 7, 2014
472
722
Windows 10 looks amazing if I'm honest, very fresh and modern looming with modern features and the whole continuity feature looks amazing and looks like the future.

Where as apples direction of having two different operating systems for tablet and computer looks like they won't last the next 3 years
 

diamond.g

macrumors G4
Mar 20, 2007
11,444
2,673
OBX
Windows 10 looks amazing if I'm honest, very fresh and modern looming with modern features and the whole continuity feature looks amazing and looks like the future.

Where as apples direction of having two different operating systems for tablet and computer looks like they won't last the next 3 years
What I find most interesting about the tablet mode is how they basically get rid of the desktop and all your apps run full screen. On my SP3 I have allowed it to automatically choose the mode based on my keyboard.
 

VulchR

macrumors 68040
Jun 8, 2009
3,508
14,459
Scotland
Lol so OS X is not a toy OS because at least you can dual-boot/VM Windows.

ok then

How do you define a 'toy' OS? Honestly I haven't heard that accusation about Mac OS's since the late 1980's, and back then it was mostly from people who had a vested interest in Windows, such as the army of people required to support Windows in large organisations.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dec.

Frisco

macrumors 68020
Sep 24, 2002
2,475
69
Utopia
I have to agree--Windows is far better than OS X. Google and Apple are in for a big surprise!

Apple conceded the desktop OS war years ago, but they keep it around to placate the fan boys and they still make a decent profit on overpriced outdated Macs.

If you have Apple stock sell now--all of their eggs are in one iPhone basket. Once that starts to recede its only downhill from there.

When I think of OS X the first two things that comes to mind are beach balls and bouncing icons.

Now that Windows has multiple desktops and Expose--it's perfect!
 

tkermit

macrumors 68040
Feb 20, 2004
3,586
2,921
Now that Windows has multiple desktops and Expose--it's perfect!
Honestly, I appreciate what MS has done with Windows 10 and the new features they copied from OS X. But underneath it's still very much Windows. The best Windows yet, but still... They've added a nice coat of paint and somewhat more modern if apparently a bit limited touch-friendly UI frameworks. The Win32 part of it on the other hand pretty much hasn't changed a bit. Microsoft seems to have abandoned the development of its legacy apps yet the new universal apps are extremely rough around the edges. Win 10 may be impressive considering it's still a Windows OS, but OS X and its developer ecosystem continues to plays in a different league as far as usability is concerned. To each their own of course. Just my opinion.
 

Renzatic

Suspended
Honestly, I appreciate what MS has done with Windows 10 and the new features they copied from OS X. But underneath it's still very much Windows. The best Windows yet, but still... They've added a nice coat of paint and somewhat more modern if apparently a bit limited touch-friendly UI frameworks. The Win32 part of it on the other hand pretty much hasn't changed a bit. Microsoft seems to have abandoned the development of its legacy apps yet the new universal apps are extremely rough around the edges. Win 10 may be impressive considering it's still a Windows OS, but OS X and its developer ecosystem continues to plays in a different league as far as usability is concerned. To each their own of course. Just my opinion.

Mothballing the Win32 API is really what Win10 is all about. the new universal app API is primed to take over the job, it just can't be done yet because, obviously, there aren't many universal apps out there yet. Ditching it entirely for the latest and greatest would relegate Win10 to the same dustbin WinRT ended up in.

It all ultimately depends on how successful Win10 is, and whether developers want to use the new APIs for their applications. If it ends up taking off, we'll Win32 slowly replaced both on the desktop itself (which is a mix of UA and Win32 at the moment), and in applications, until it's nothing more than a background API, lurking around for those rare moments when you want to run some old legacy programs.
 
  • Like
Reactions: tkermit

macrem

macrumors 65816
Mar 11, 2008
1,438
102
I haven't had registry issues since, I don't know Windows 95
That's great for your use case apparently. I develop/customize web applications and when the server is running on Linux or OS X, all the settings are neatly stored within the apps. With Windows settings could be in Registry and difficult to find, others are in the app, sometimes in both and people can't figure out why their setting is not working... the syntax can be weird and if you mess it up all hell breaks loose. I think you need Admin rights to work in Registry (which is another risky but standard way of working on Windows machines, everyone is Admin), but on unix everything can be neatly isolated.

OS X needs to be rebooted when it gets updated (unless I'm misunderstanding your point). Yes there are times I have to reboot windows for simple application installs which is baffling and a bit frustrating.
Far, far less and for a lot fewer reasons. With OS X, I often go several months without rebooting, only ever need to because of a major system software update. Some of the Linux servers I work with have been up literally for years and are running strong. If you don't update your Windows machines subsequently don't have to reboot frequently, eventually the systems creep to a crawl or start having memory faults in my experiences.

I've not seen any stability issues with the past few versions of Windows.
Probably depends on how often you reboot. At least due to frequent updates that require reboots, you probably reboot enough already. OS X and Linux can stay up for very long periods without needing reboots while remaining stable.

Can you define what you mean by Command line horrors, while its not a unix shell, the cmd shell is quite handy.
"while its not a unix shell" I hear you! With a unix shell you do not even need a remote desktop. It's night and day.

The install process is extremely simp, just click through a wizard, I'm not sure how laborious that is. I found install Office, and Adobe products to be the same level of laborious effort on Windows as OS X.
Apple's office apps are in the App Store and free. Just "install"! It works like the iOS or Android play store. You can install your (paid) apps on several machines. With Linux it's even way better than OS X or Windows except that OS X has a better consumer experience for purchasing software and sharing the same license across all your machines. With Linux (debian), let's say you need to step up LAMP, you just run a command like "sudo apt-get install lamp-server^" and it does everything for you handling all the dependencies and shared libraries efficiently.

By contrast, just try to install MSSQL and it might fail because you're missing the right version of .NET, then you have to go download that and come back and start over.
 
Last edited:

Renzatic

Suspended
Probably depends on how often you reboot. At least due to frequent updates that require reboots, you probably reboot enough already. OS X and Linux can stay up for very long periods without needing reboots while remaining stable.

I've had Windows 7 and 8 up for at least a couple of months before without issue. While it is kind of annoying when you get an update that requires a reboot, and they do come fast and furious when MS release a new OS. But once the OS matures a bit, those updates become relatively rare things. Usually only coming along about 3-4 times a year.
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,682
43,740
With Windows settings could be in Registry and difficult to find, others are in the app, sometimes in both and people can't figure out why their setting is not working...
I support multiple enterprise applications on desktops and servers and to be honest, its a rarity that I need to go into the registry to make a change. Additionally supporting the applications with the end user, I've never needed to deal with a registry problem.

Far, far less and for a lot fewer reasons.
Agreed, OS X needs to be reboot less often then windows.

Probably depends on how often you reboot. At least due to frequent updates that require reboots, you probably reboot enough already. OS X and Linux can stay up for very long periods without needing reboots while remaining stable.
Typically windows machines at my work and even home are reboot monthly thanks to patch tuesday. I don't have an issue with that.

"while its not a unix shell" I hear you! With a unix shell you do not even need a remote desktop. It's night and say, could be a novel. One simple example, show me the command in Windows to copy a file to several remote Windows servers ;-)
I'd write a VB script, which in a sense, I'd do for the unix shell, i.e., shell script so again the cmd shell is fine.

In OS X apps like this are in the App Store. Just "install" and they are free too!
some MAS apps are free, many are not. As for Linux apps, I don't use Linux and so I'm largely not contesting nor am I commenting on that aspect.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jamezr

macrem

macrumors 65816
Mar 11, 2008
1,438
102
I have to agree--Windows is far better than OS X. Google and Apple are in for a big surprise!

Apple conceded the desktop OS war years ago, but they keep it around to placate the fan boys and they still make a decent profit on overpriced outdated Macs.

If you have Apple stock sell now--all of their eggs are in one iPhone basket. Once that starts to recede its only downhill from there.

When I think of OS X the first two things that comes to mind are beach balls and virtually bouncing icons, but when it does it's useful feedback.

Now that Windows has multiple desktops and Expose--it's perfect!
Even if you don't use OS X, I think you should be grateful it exists. If it weren't for OS X, you would not have multiple desktops, exposé nor lots of other improvements Microsoft is copying to try to keep up with features OS X has had for years. Perhaps in 5-10 years you'll get hand off features too. It looks like you'll never get the excellent tight hardware/software integration features Apple has.

I don't know where you get your news, in reality the PC market has been sinking for years while Macs are doing spectacularly well. Icons bounce during app launch but with new machines they launch so fast there is no bouncing. Beach balls are from ****** apps. I have seen neither for years.

Windows perfect? I have not used 10 yet. It will probably be 5 more years before major companies start using it. We just got a few server equivalents of 8. Just to log out, you click in the bottom left of the screen to bring up another screen where the log off button is hidden behind another icon at the opposite top-right side of the screen and not even on the edge of the screen mind you, or you can right click and see a totally different style of menu... It's seriously a joke compared to the OS X experience. This is just 1 of 1000s of examples.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: OttawaGuy

gotluck

macrumors 603
Dec 8, 2011
5,717
1,260
East Central Florida
Even if you don't use OS X, I think you should be grateful it exists. If it weren't for OS X, you would not have multiple desktops, exposé nor lots of other improvements Microsoft is copying to try to keep up with features OS X has had for years. Perhaps in 5-10 years you'll get hand off features too. It looks like you'll never get the excellent tight hardware/software integration features Apple has.

I don't know where you get your news, in reality the PC market has been sinking for years while Macs are doing spectacularly well. Icons bounce during app launch but with new machines they launch so fast there is no bouncing. Beach balls are from ****** apps. I have seen neither for years.

Windows perfect? I have not used 10 yet. It will probably be 5 more years before major companies start using it. We just got a few server equivalents of 8. Just to log out, you click in the bottom left of the screen to bring up another screen where the log off button is hidden behind another icon at the opposite top-right side of the screen and not even on the edge of the screen mind you, or you can right click and see a totally different style of menu... It's seriously a joke compared to the OS X experience. This is just 1 of 1000s of examples.
The logout experience has been fixed. Yes I agree horrible on 8 and server 2012. From a usability standpoint I think there is no difference BTW windows 7 (10 too from first impressions) and osx personally.
 

Suckfest 9001

Suspended
May 31, 2015
1,748
2,482
Canada
Honestly, I appreciate what MS has done with Windows 10 and the new features they copied from OS X. But underneath it's still very much Windows. The best Windows yet, but still... They've added a nice coat of paint and somewhat more modern if apparently a bit limited touch-friendly UI frameworks. The Win32 part of it on the other hand pretty much hasn't changed a bit. Microsoft seems to have abandoned the development of its legacy apps yet the new universal apps are extremely rough around the edges. Win 10 may be impressive considering it's still a Windows OS, but OS X and its developer ecosystem continues to plays in a different league as far as usability is concerned. To each their own of course. Just my opinion.
Wow thank you for your insight I had no idea you were a computer engineer and had reverse engineered system files and looked at the kernel code.

lol
 

ozaz

macrumors 68000
Feb 27, 2011
1,615
577
Windows gets some (strikingly similar) features OS X and Linux variants have had for many years. Too bad underneath it's not Unix. Once you see the beauty of Unix, you realize what a mess Windows is at its core & the 10 release looks like piling more makeup on a pig. It would be nice to have either *nix underneath or something new built from the ground up that takes OSes to the next level.

Under the hood there's usual Windows file system fragmentation, frequent need for updates that require reboots, less reliability, less stability, less efficiency, legacy issues, registry problems, command line horrors, laborious process of installing software dependencies, redundant mediocre software, etc.

How do you reconcile this (bold comments) with modern versions of Windows running reasonably well on low spec hardware such as tablets with only 1GB RAM and 16GB HDD? Furthermore, in my experience running old hardware, I find that modern Windows runs far better on old PC hardware than modern OS X on old Mac hardware.

I haven't had any performance or stability issues with Windows since XP & Vista. Seems to me something a lot more than slapping lipstick on a pig must have happened.

I do agree, the need for more frequent reboots, compared to OS X, can be a bit annoying. But it's not like it's every week.
 

Surface3User

macrumors newbie
Jun 23, 2015
24
18
How do you reconcile this (bold comments) with modern versions of Windows running reasonably well on low spec hardware such as tablets with only 1GB RAM and 16GB HDD? Furthermore, in my experience running old hardware, I find that modern Windows runs far better on old PC hardware than modern OS X on old Mac hardware.

He can't. Windows is more efficient than OS X and has been for years. OS X is a nice operating system. Most average users can pretty much use anything and be fine since services and use is so Internet centric. Regardless, OS X has been getting by on reputation more than anything else of late.

My five year old laptop is running Windows 10 perfectly and as fast and stable as it was under Windows 7. You are exactly right in that modern Windows, including Windows Mobile (which is clearly a market failure), runs much more efficiently on lower spec'd hardware.
 

Surface3User

macrumors newbie
Jun 23, 2015
24
18
Even if you don't use OS X, I think you should be grateful it exists. If it weren't for OS X, you would not have multiple desktops, exposé nor lots of other improvements Microsoft is copying to try to keep up with features OS X has had for years. Perhaps in 5-10 years you'll get hand off features too. It looks like you'll never get the excellent tight hardware/software integration features Apple has.

Grateful that it exists? I could care less about either company since in reality they care less about me. I just think Microsoft makes an overall better OS, and the PC side is better for non-mobile computing.

OS X has been copying just as many features from Windows for years. The Dock? That's just a watered down Task Bar. The new snap feature in El Capitan? That's obviously been taken from Windows RT/8 of all OSes.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.