In article ,
"Larry Hodges" wrote:
Regarding which OS is more stable, just go to your local Kinkos and ask the guy behind the counter which crashes more. I’ll give you one guess which OS is the biggest pain for them.
People prefer whichever OS they are most familiar with, and tend to believe that the unfamiliar OS "crashes more." For this experiment to have any validity, they would have to keep an accurate, written log.
My experience is that Mac users are Mac users not because it’s a better platform, but because they despise Bill Gates and his success. Not the best reason to select an OS.
How many Mac users is your experience based on?
I am a Mac user. I amalso a Windows user, a Linux user, and a Solaris user. As I type this message on my Mac laptop, I have a Windows XP systemsitting to my left, a Linux machine behind me, a Sun SPARCstation-20 on the other side of me, and a Mac desktop on the other side of that. At my office, I have a Mac desktop and a Windows XP desktop.
I began using IBM PC systems in 1992, and programming them in 1993. I began using Mac systems in 1984, and programming them in 1985. I have used every single version of Windows since Windows 3.1, including Windows NT Advanced Server for RISC on DEC Alpha systems. I have used every version of Mac OS since System 1.1, including OS X Server.
In my experience, prior to OS X and Windows XP, both were unstable. Since Windows XP and OS X, both have become much more stable. Of the two, I prefer OS X, even though I have more experience with Windows XP, because OS X has what I find to be the better user interface once I got used to it. I will also say, however, that it took me longer to get used to the OS X interface than it took to get used to the XP interface.
A lot of people on this thread have pooh-poohed the problem of viruses and worms on Windows, saying things like "Oh, *I* don’t have any viruses!" That may be true, or it may not be true (my bet is that some people are infected and simply don’t know about it), but either way it’s irrelevant; with CERT saying that 90% of all home consumer Windows systems being compromised by at least one virus, Trojan, or other piece of malware, and with viruses on Windows systems so common that most spam is now relayed through compromised home systems (and, more and more often, spamvertised Web sites are now being hosted on compromised PCs as well), the threat of malware is a genuine and legitimate concern for Windows users.
I have Photohop on both my Mac and Windows boxes. In my experience, Photoshop’s performance is better on a high-end Mac than on a similarly high-end PC, though the gap is so narrow it’s likely to be completely irrelevant to almost all users. I’m sure a properly tweaked PC can give equivalent performance to a properly tweaked Mac; performance is no longer a reason to choose one over the other, except perhaps for Photoshop CS2, whose brushes can be sluggish on PC systems.
In terms of cost, Macs are no longer more expensive than PCs; in fact, the reverse is true. I have an accountant for my business, and I bought a high-end Mac system and a high-end Windows system at the same time a few years back. The Mac system cost me a little bit more (not much; the difference in cost was only about 2%); but over the last four years, the Mac’s productivity has consistently been higher, and the Mac’s total cost of ownership, which factors such things as downtime, hardware failures, and other expenses, has been lower. For a home user most concerned about up-front costs, Macs are still a little bit more expensive; for people who make money from their computers, this is not the case.
In the end, these things are tools, not religions. I am always amused when I see the fanatic worshippers of His Most Royal Gates or His Most Holy Jobs start going at it; it quickly becomes clear that each prefers His Most Sacred Computer simply because he has no experience with the other. It’s like the idiots who babble about Dodge vs Chevy or whatever the hell it is they get so worked up about. One of these days I’m going to make a bumper sticker for my Del Sol that reads "I’d rather push a Honda than drive a Toyota," just to illustrate how ridiculous it all is.
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