OS Performance — Snow Leopard, Windows 7, and Ubuntu 9.10 688
BeckySharp writes "With the nearly simultaneous release of Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 'Snow Leopard' (available right now) and Microsoft's Windows 7 (available Oct. 22), you get the inevitable debate: Which is the better operating system, Windows 7 or Snow Leopard? To help determine that, Computerworld's Preston Gralla put both operating systems through their paces, selected categories for a head-to-head competition, and then chose a winner in each category." Relatedly, Phoronix has posted Snow Leopard vs. Ubuntu 9.10 benchmarks. They ran tests from ray tracing to 3D gaming to compilation. Their tests show Ubuntu 9.10 winning a number of the tests, but there are some slowdowns in performance and still multiple wins in favor of Snow Leopard, so the end result is mixed.
Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Informative)
The most thoughtful article I read that truly explains what the technical tradeoffs are with dock/taskbar design: here [arstechnica.com].
On a similar topic, if you want to work on the home page GUI for Android, there is an on-going project [fairsoftware.net] as well.
The good news for consumers is that both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are great-looking OS. Computerworld is just wrong to give a point to Apple on price :-)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The most thoughtful article I read that truly explains what the technical tradeoffs are with dock/taskbar design: here [arstechnica.com].
On a similar topic, if you want to work on the home page GUI for Android, there is an on-going project [fairsoftware.net] as well.
The good news for consumers is that both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are great-looking OS. Computerworld is just wrong to give a point to Apple on price :-)
30 bucks..
a proprietary OS for 30 bucks deserves 5 points on price.
apple releasing a version of osx for 30 bucks is metaphorically equivalent to an 2010 infiniti M slapped with a 20k(US) sticker price.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Insightful)
When Windows 7 settles down a little bit, I may put it on my Mini via boot camp.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Interesting)
Would I recommend it to a friend? Absolutely. Would I suggest that it's actually worth the retail price? I'm not so sure. It may be if you're upgrading from Windows XP, but if you're upgrading form Vista you're getting shafted.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Insightful)
Would I recommend it to a friend? Absolutely. Would I suggest that it's actually worth the retail price? I'm not so sure. It may be if you're upgrading from Windows XP, but if you're upgrading form Vista you're getting shafted.
My opinion: No. If it was just $60 or $70, I'd get it, but $200+ is a bit steep.
And what do I actually get from it, that wasn't available in XP? (either in the core of from third party programs) Just about nothing.
It's plain to see when you actually read the entire article. Most of the points are fawning over GUI elements. Where's the miraculous new features that are supposed to wow me? :P I have preview panes in XP, too - not only that, but I have labels in my taskbar!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You could easily say the same of many of the upgrades in OS X point releases.
But we're not talking about many of point releases of OSX. The article and comments are specifically comparing Snow Leopard and Windows 7.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
New features get added when you go from 10.3 to 10.4 - to which they most certainly do charge for.
I fail to see your point.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:4, Interesting)
So... its a graphical versioning system. Sure, there was nothing quite as good as it before (though I still mostly use iBackup), but it isn't a new or innovative idea. Its a backup... I've been doing that for around 20 years before Time Machine came around, I'll continue doing it years after OS X dies.
It's like SVN, but for all your files. Revision history!
That alone makes it better than "just a backup".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And what do I actually get from it, that wasn't available in XP?
DirectX 11. Also not available on Mac or Linux.
True! DX10/11 are important to me - just not $200 important.
I have preview panes in XP, too - not only that, but I have labels in my taskbar!
W7 has labels too, just not on by default (right-click taskbar -> Properties -> Taskbar buttons: [always combine, hide labels/combine when taskbar is full/never combine]). As for XPs preview panes, I shouldn't have to install a bunch of 3rd party programs just to get previews, jump lists, window transparency, search index from the start menu, media sharing to compatible devices (Windows Mobile, Xbox 360, Media Center PCs etc). These features really make a difference to your regular eye-candy suck.. er, consumer. Not as big a difference for the power users, but I've come to appreciate them and genuinely regard them as worthwhile improvements to the Windows platform.
As for XPs preview panes, I shouldn't have to install a bunch of 3rd party programs just to get previews, jump lists, window transparency, search index from the start menu, media sharing to compatible devices (Windows Mobile, Xbox 360, Media Center PCs etc).
True. But from my point of view, I've already spent time (not money) getting my computer set up this way, and now I'm supposed to pay for what I already had for free? No thanks!
Worse yet, the free stuff isn't compatible anymore, so to get DX11 I have to pony up the cash and live with Microsoft's solutions.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:4, Informative)
The first and foremost thing to mention is that no DirectX 11 class hardware actually exists at retail right now, and might not be for some time. DirectX 11's major new features are new pipeline stages that make it better suited to GPGPU-style processing without trying to make your algorithms fit into the vertex and pixel processing pipelines. CUDA and OpenCL are both existing technologies that allow developers to do this, and (especially recently) integration of GPGPU using CUDA / OpenCL into a graphics application is efficient and relatively easy. DirectX 11's exclusive features are some marginal optimizations and changes to the ROP stage of the pipeline that at least theoretically should make some kind of performance difference (just like DirectX 10 was way faster than 9!), and even these will be available as OpenGL extensions from the get-go.
On top of this I'd say it's a reasonable expectation that driver support, especially initially will be bad for both performance and stability as seen in Vista / DirectX 10, and the new features may end up with an implementation that is so inefficient in the driver it may make them worthless for almost anything but a handful of applications (just like geometry shaders in DirectX 10). On top of that you could list the games that actually have any DirectX 10 exclusive features whatsoever on one-hand and 10 has been around for quite a while already, and 11 will probaby be the same for that or worse.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:4, Interesting)
>>>Win7 may be if you're upgrading from Windows XP
I don't think so. I have XP. It costs about $200 to do the upgrade, but why bother? For just a little more I could walk into Walmart during a sales event, and get a whole new PC with the Win7 OS included "free". Yes that PC would be bottom-line, but it's still better hardware than the single-core P4 I have now.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Interesting)
I just deleted my Win7 partition and went back to my trusty XP Pro Sp3 x86. - mainly because, IMO, Windows 7 _isn't_ a decent upgrade for XP users who (by now should) know what they're doing. However, I would recommend it to Vista users looking for a speed boost, or people new to Windows.
What's nice about 7 is that there's a lot less mucking about in driver control panels when using bog-standard hardware, which makes it a lot easier for beginners to slide in and start working without much fuss. The "find drivers online" function actually works now (at least for popular hardware - obviously stuff like the fingerprint reader and HSDPA adapter on my Thinkpad weren't found off the bat), and things like display drivers are automatically installed with no fuss at all (and actually work right away).
Other advantages over XP include:
-Hooking up an HDMI monitor now automatically enables it too (in XP you'd need to plug in and then activate the secondary display manually in the Display Properties or a program like Ultramon. Little tweaks like this are obviously nice.
-Per-Application volume mixing, just like Vista... I'm still wondering if there's a way to add this to XP - that would pretty much take care of my needs for the next few years or so :)
-Aero Snap - very useful, and the XP addon (AeroSnap) that does this is sadly pretty unstable.
-Mobile Device Center - didn't try it out, but it's GOT to be better than the steaming pile of crap called ActiveSync
Other than that, it was pretty much just filled with annoyances... the interface has become far too user-friendly :)
Disadvantages over Windows XP:
-Audio engine is still laggier with ASIO, at least with my E-Mu interface and with on-board. Latencies are roughly twice as high as in XP, and very unstable (In-Out 7ms in XP, ~10-20ms in Win7).
-Aero drains battery life like crazy, and Aero basic without translucency is the ugliest crap I've ever seen on an OS. Windows 3.11 looked better than that... Sure, you can just switch to a standard XP visual style, but having installed the required DLLs for that on a Vista installation before, I didn't feel like going to the trouble of that...
-Aero causes my graphics chip to run very hot - with power management enabled, or the performance locked to Standard 2D mode, I get about 45 degrees C at idle. Since the CPU and GPU are all cooled by the same big heatsink/fan assembly, the CPU runs nice and cool (30 degrees) when the GPU is under 50 degrees - but when running Vista, the CPU idle temperature climbs to 45+ degrees, because the GPU is idling at almost 60C...
-Once again, driver availability. My laptop is less than half a year old... You'd think that manufacturers would have released working drivers for at least Vista 64-bit by now - at least for hardware that's still on the market today... but it's still the same old problem. I'm assuming 32-bit support is better.
All in all, upgrading from XP isn't worth it, IMO... Causes more problems than it's worth.
New users, on the other hand, or people sick of Vista's crawling speed (although it seemed to me that Win7 just makes certain processes, which used to lock up the system, low priority), should definitely be encouraged to use Windows 7. The benefits (speed, ease of use) are pretty much no-brainers, and the learning curve (as far as I can tell) is far less steep than that of 2K/XP.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Insightful)
Another expense with Apples is the inability to run new OSes on old hardware.
My Windows machine machine is almost 9 years old, but could run Win 7 with a simple RAM upgrade (from 1/2 gig to 1 gig). Try running 10.6 Snow Leopard on nine-year-old hardware. Or even 5-year-old hardware. The OS requirements are designed to force obsolescence so you HAVE to go-out and get new Apple hardware. You can't even "override" to force an install; you just get blocked. This is why I have a perfectly-good G4 PowerMac, but it stopped being supported only 4 years after I got it (with 10.4), while my ancient PC still gots "juice".
Yeah I know you're going to label me "troll" but it's really just my opinion based-upon owning both systems. The PC was the cheaper route.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Obviously your G4 PowerMac will run 10.4.9. (I'm not sure if you were including the 10.4.x updates.)
Is it lower than 867 MHz? If not, it'll run 10.5 and all updates officially.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
>>>the response time for 10.5 leopard was the same on all the machines from the mac pro towers in the media labs to the 1998 imac net nodes tucked away in obscure corners
>>>
I don't believe this story. I don't think you intentionally misled us, but you probably didn't realize you can Not run 10.5 on 1998 iMacs. They don't meet the 866 megahertz minimum requirement. Perhaps they were running 10.4 just like my PowerMac runs, the latest version available for its speed.
Re:whiletrueprintfFUD (Score:4, Informative)
You are aware that the oldest Mac that will run Snow Leopard (the version discussed in this article) was made in 2006...?
No? Well, consider yourself informed [apple.com].
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Like... refurbished G5s that Apple sold in 2007?
I mean, we are talking about an OS sold in 2009 that won't run in hardware that was still being produced in 2006.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Informative)
No. They. Don't.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Insightful)
It depends on your definition of a "service pack". A long-running joke here on Slashdot is that Win7 is "Vista SP3". If you accept that, then, yes, Apple does charge for service packs.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:4, Insightful)
The words don't really matter. You can call them service packs or upgrades or updates or revisions or whatever. None of that matters. What matters is how many times you have to open your wallet to get *paid* releases:
XP-to-Vista-to-Win7 (average) - 4 years
10.1-to-...-to-10.6 (average) - 1.6 years
As you can see the Mac OS will be more costly for you as a user, with more frequent support costs. It's why even though I've been using Macs since the Quadra days (as a replacement for my 68040 Commodore=Amiga), I've decided it's time to move-on. I liked that they used alternative Motorola and PPC architectures, but now that distinction has disappeared. Such alternates only exist in the game consoles.
I suspect this is also why I've seen Macs disappear from Penn State's computer labs. You can still find some, but it used to be a 50-50 PC-to-Mac mix and now the Macs are rare.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What matters is how many times you have to open your wallet to get *paid* releases
You have a strange definition of "have to". Don't upgrade if you don't think it's worth it! Just because Apple puts it up for sale it doesn't mean you have to buy it. Especially considering that Apple continues to offer security patches and support for the previous version of the OS, upgrading every other version seems pretty reasonable.
I suspect this is also why I've seen Macs disappear from Penn State's computer labs. You can still find some, but it used to be a 50-50 PC-to-Mac mix and now the Macs are rare.
I suspect it's due to an IT department with a platform bias. Most universities have seen a vast increase in Macintosh market share in the last 5 years. They're probably
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Informative)
>>>Don't upgrade if you don't think it's worth it!
You can't do that with Macs. They'll stop running the latest software. For example I wouldn't be able to run Firefox 3 or 3.5 on my G4 Mac's original OS (10.1). I had to upgrade.
I'd like to run Office 2008 on WinME... wait, I can't. Not in Win2K either. Oh no!!!! How about that DX10 game on XP? Nope, can't do that either.... Gosh darn it!
FYI - there were major changes in OS APIs between 10.1-10.6. Something designed for 10.6 won't run on 10.3 or before. A little thing about binary compatibility due to physical architecture and system API support.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Snow Leopard may not be a full OS update in terms of what we think a full update should be (hence the lower price point) but it is not a service pack in that it introduces completely new technology. Windows 7 does not do this.
This kind of attitude was precisely my point when I wrote that comment. You simply do not know what you're talking about: Windows 7 introduces some fairly major UI changes, but it also adds a lot of things [wikipedia.org] under the hood - I dare say far more than Snow Leopard does [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What math? You gave me a vague "fully decked out mac pro for $4k" without specifying ANY stats. Which tells me you probably just went to their site found the biggest number and used that as your argument. I can do the same with Dell. Their fully decked out Gaming PC is $3999, on sale for $4832. Did your $600 System include the OS? Case? I'm assuming your components like the power supply and monitor are not crappy no names either?
Are Mac's overpriced? YES. But comparing a $600 computer with a $4000
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
From Apple; A quad core 2.93 GHz Nehalem with 8GB of Ram, 4TB of storage, an ATI Radeon 4870 512mb Graphics card, and a DVD/CD burner is $4,500.
From newegg; a quad core 2.93GHz Nehalem with 12GB of Ram, 4TB of storage, an ATI Radeon 4870 1GB Graphics card, and a A CD/DVD/Bluray burner is $2700.
I think I can get a pretty bad ass case and power supply with that $1800 difference. Plus I get 4GB more ram, twice the video ram and a bluray burner. Oh wait, sorry, $1,700 after the OEM Win7 licen
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
But can you run Final Cut Studio on the machine you buy from new egg?
But anyone who buys high end macs know you don't buy RAM from Apple. You go to Crucial after market. When I bought my last PowerMac (Quad-core G5), I spend about $4500 on the machine and had it shipped with 512MB of ram. Even got a call from Apple making sure that was the config I wanted. Went to Crucial the same day and got 8GB of Ram for around $1800. Apple wanted $4k for the RAM. Don't forget another $2k for the HD Cinema display.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If by $2700, you mean $3,869.99 - sure. Or are you seriously comparing buying parts to a complete system?
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Informative)
The Mac Pro is a Xeon. Your newegg config is almost certainly a Core i7. Nehalem is an architecture codename, not a single product. Intel prices accordingly.
Nice troll though.
The problem is (Score:5, Informative)
Apple doesn't have an in between system. You have their all-in-one, but if you want to go past that, the next thing is a high end workstation. So suppose you want a quad core with a reasonable graphics card. Bare minimum price from Apple is $2700 for a quad with 3GB RAM, a 4870, and a 640MB HD. So if you want a similar thing from Dell you get a Core 2 Quad, 4GB RAM, a 4870 and a 750MB HD for $1150, less than half the price. Now you'd be correct in pointing out that the Mac Pro has hardware the Dell doesn't, like a second CPU slot. Ok, but what if you don't need that? Well too bad, you have to pay for it anyhow.
That is a big problem you get in to with Mac prices. In a very large segment of the market, they have no good offerings. You have to buy much higher end hardware which drives the price way up. You can argue all you like that it isn't "equal" it doesn't matter. If those extra features aren't needed or wanted, then all you are doing is driving the price up.
Re:The problem is (Score:5, Informative)
Apple does have an in-between system, it's the iMac. It may not be your desired in-between system, but in that case Apple really isn't catering to you.
Mac Pro CPUs are Xeons, not Core 2. Spec a Dell w/ Xeons and you've got Mac Pro price. Spec a Dell w/ Core 2 and an LCD, you've got iMac price.
Most people who buy Macs don't want to futz around w/ tweaking or repeatedly adjusting their system - they just want it to work well and reliably. For a high end user, you get that w/ the Mac Pro. Vis a vis, the iMac with it's intermediate audience.
Build a hack if you really want a system that caters exactly to your wants.
Re:The problem is (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when are a Core 2 Duo and Nehalem 3000 series processor anywhere near each other in price or performance? I'm assuming you also didn't account for the difference in price/performance between DDR2 and DDR3.
You're missing the point though... the parent's point is that Apple doesn't let you make the price/performance decision between a Core 2 and a Nehalem, or between DDR2/3.
When I built my system, I was able to look at the cost of DDR2 and DDR3 RAM and decide that the cost of DDR3 wasn't worth it. If you reject the iMac, Apple doesn't let you make that decision. I didn't seriously consider the Xeons, but I was able to choose the Core 2 when I built my computer. If you reject the iMac, Apple doesn't let you make that decision.
Basically if you want a decently upgradable system from Apple, your only choice is the Mac Pro. And for most people, it's going to be very very hard to say that the price/performance tradeoff is in favor of the Nehalem and DDR3.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
fully decked out mac pro (just added hardware bits on their customize section AU country though) comes to $26,199 AU (around $22,100 USD) for that much cash I'd be expecting a shit-tonne better system.
Base mac pro here is $4.5k with one quad core processor. 3gb ram, etc, still a nice machine, but you can make something better for about a grand and a half, and flickiestrife's $600 machine is better than it (includes a monitor even).
30? Try 130. (Score:4, Interesting)
Its only 30 if you forked out 130 for the last one, so you could really call it 160.
The place where I do give them kudos is the family pack, I can upgrade five machines for $50... only have two currently.
OK, so I have a second kudo, they don't have some weird multiple available configurations locked to a DVD like windows, I can install SL on a fresh machine using the same disc as I did for the upgrade without giving it a second thought.
But giving it points for being only $30, look if it is such a minimal upgrade; for some its a total no go as they cannot install it because they run PowerPC; makes me wonder, why didn't it just download and install like the patch it comes across as?
Re:30? Try 130. (Score:5, Informative)
Apple has confirmed that you can install the $30 upgrade version on top of Tiger [appleinsider.com].
Re:30? Try 130. (Score:5, Informative)
At an Apple store I asked if the $30 dollar was an upgrade or a full install disk. I was told it was a full install disk and no copy of leopard or even tiger was required. I installed it successfully on my sisters computer AFTER wiping it clean (Read: no previously purchased OS installed.) It is a full blown OS for only $30 (not an upgrade disk.) They do sell a more expensive copy that comes bundled with iLife and iWork.
Re:30? Try 130. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:30? Try 130. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Informative)
Well, the price of either is a matter of what you already have :).
If I have the immediate previous version of the software:
Leopard-->Snow Leopard: $30.
Vista Home Premium-->Win7 Home Premium: $120 (if you want Ultimate, then $220)
If I have the second-previous version:
Tiger-->Snow Leopard: $170 (bundled with a couple other items)
XP-->Win7 Home Premium: $120 (Ultimate is $220)
Even earlier version (rare):
Mac: you're SOL
Windows: $200 ($320 for Ultimate)
If I have a very recent computer:
Leopard-->Snow Leopard: $10
Vista (any) --> Win7 (same): $0
If you're getting a new computer:
Generally bundled; pricing delta is defined by hardware prices of Apple vs any OEM that will bundle Windows, which in turn depends on your precise needs.
If your current computer is anything other than a Mac: you need to buy a Mac to be legal, or do hackintosh (at which point you could throw in that you can get illegal copies of either OS free, but maybe your personal ethics permit a breach of law in one case but not the other).
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Informative)
Tiger->Snow Leopard does not actually require the bundle- it's been confirmed that the $29 SL upgrade installs just fine.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:4, Insightful)
apple releasing a version of osx for 30 bucks is metaphorically equivalent to an 2010 infiniti M slapped with a 20k(US) sticker price.
To extend the car analogy, it's like getting a 2010 Infiniti M for $20K after you trade in the 2008 Infinity M you bought 18 months ago ... and you got that one after trading in your 2007 M ... and you got that one after trading in your 2006 ...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
30 bucks..
a proprietary OS for 30 bucks deserves 5 points on price.
Sure, $30 isn't much money, but would you pay $30 for the latest release of Debian or Ubuntu? I mean, the use of having a powerful operating system on a new laptop is certainly worth $30 in productivity after only a day or two of work. I don't know if you use or fund FOSS, but it's funny how in general how people are so willing to pay $30 for a proprietary piece of software, and so reticent to donate even $10 to a Free Software project whose program they use every day.
Saying that a proprietary OS for $30 de
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not just that, but doesn't Apple offer a nice discount for families upgrading several machines? Windows 7 is not too expensive (especially since I always get an OEM version), but Microsoft's bulk discount is a joke. If you're a family upgrading 4 computers (or a single basement dwelling geek upgrading 4), you'll be paying 4 times the full price.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Insightful)
30 bucks... Plus you have to put it on a Mac computer, which is marked up at least ten percent compared to a comparable computer from any other manufacturer.
Except of course every respectable analyst who has looked into it disagrees with you. Apple's margins are higher than average in the personal computer industry, but that's not comparing comparable machines, that's counting all the low end crap machines with razor thin margins. If you look at machines with hardware reliability numbers and features similar to Apple, Like Sony, for example, the margins are about the same and so are the prices.
That price tag looks less appealing when you consider those attached strings.
The price tag is certainly less appealing because it's tied to Apple hardware and that severely limits your choices, especially on the low end. You, however, overstated the argument by making statements about their margins that are simply untrue. The lack of choice in hardware will result in higher prices for the average person because they won't be able to select a model that fits their needs as closely, which is a compelling argument without bringing blatantly wrong assertions about pricing into it.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Informative)
I would add that past costs, having been paid, are irrelevant. No matter whether you sunk $1,000, $500, $5,000 into that system, it will cost you $29 to upgrade that Mac and $100 to upgrade that Windows system. Let us not forget that while one may find Wintel pcs that have a lower price than a Mac, one can also find ones that are more expensive. Let's assume that there's an implicit basic satisfaction with the system's value if its owner is considering an upgrade.
That said, here's my bone to pick. I've been using Photoshop CS2 on Leopard. My $29 upgrade will mean either no Photoshop or another few hundred bucks additional cost in order to get CS4. Only Thursday did we start to get reports of incompatible software and, of course, all the reviews overlooked real world considerations in favor of revealing the same features we could have seen on Apple's web site. Nothing was really said with regards to the real reason we run operating systems: so we get stuff done with the software that runs on top. I don't care whether OS X boots faster than Win7 - I've made my choices. But if an upgrade means purchase of hardware or software, than that is a lot more important to me than the interface of QuickTimeX.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. It wasn't a fair fight. QUOTE: "Windows 7 Ultimate.....with 1GB of RAM and Snow Leopard.....with 2GB of RAM." I have no great love for either MS or MAC, but we all know Windows on just 1 gig is going to lots of hard-drive caching and slower performance. He should have either upgraded the Win-PC to 2 gig, or downgraded the Mac to 1 gig, in order to make the test as identical as possible.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Informative)
Win7 actually runs fine on 1Gb - like Vista, it will use the RAM that is there, but unlike Vista, it doesn't insist on it.
Anyway, this is pretty irrelevant here, because the comparison wasn't about performance at all (despite the title of the Slashdot summary). It was just one person's very subjective opinions on certain aspects of OS X and Win7, without any attempt to quantify. There's not a single objective measure in the whole review.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While it startd off as a nice read, it is flat out wrong in a lot of places (at least for Windows). For instance:
Windows needs a window for each application, and this need doesn't go away just because there are no documents open. So, Word has little choice but to display this ugly application window. There's simply nowhere for the application to exist without having a window--the windo
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You're missing the point, you're focusing entirely on the technical side by arguing that a process on Windows can run just fine without a winform, and that just wasn't what the article was about.
The article was about design philosophies and the implications of choosing an application-centric or a document-centric GUI design.
/Mikael
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
>>>the implications of choosing an application-centric or a document-centric GUI design.
The implication is that when I'm using my Mac and I close a window, I think the RAM has been freed, but in reality the application is still running in the background. That's kinda annoying.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:4, Insightful)
Though technically correct, it all still comes down to the UI paradigm. You can have Mac programs that require a window open (CoolBook I'm looking at you), and you can have Windows programs that operate effectively without a main window (IM apps as you suggest). However, these are the outliers of the system, and programs on both systems tend to follow the suggested paradigms pretty well. Consider MS Word:
Windows Version: Double click on the icon, you usually get a blank document window. You decide you really don't want to write that report right now, and close the window, and Word is no longer running.
OS X Version: Open Word from the Dock or from Spotlight, and the menu comes up on the 'menu bar to rule them all', and a blank document opens up. Decide you'd rather not write that same report again, and close the window. In this case word is still happily running, and you could start a new document with a simple Command+n.
Which one you like more, or find more productive is a matter of personal preference. I think that the App-centric model (OS X) allows more control and seems more natural than the Doc-centric model (Windows), but the Doc-centric model keeps you from accidentally leaving a lot of stuff open unnecessarily and might be more efficient. I prefer the app-centric mode, and am very happy using OS X, but of course, thats just me.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Informative)
Then there is this shiny bit:
The common response is to use the notification area (often incorrectly called the "system tray") to provide ready access to these running-but-windowless applications.
Orly? You DO know that the it was called the "system tray" up until Windows XP, don't you? It was even instantiated by a process called systray.exe. Even MSDN is littered with its own references to it being the "system tray", like here [microsoft.com].
That's wrong [msdn.com].
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
While the author of the page you linked to was trying to say that it's not called the tray, one of the commenters fired up spy++ and found that in fact the Microsoft named window classes down there still (as of 2003) have names like "Shell_TrayWnd", "TrayNotifyWnd", and "TrayClockWClass". Microsoft might not like it to be called the tray, but even Microsoft is stuck using the name themselves.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The previous poster's linked article specifically addresses that concern and dismisses it. "systray" was an app that ran in the notification area and displayed a few specific system-related icons, (hence "system" tray) but it wasn't the notification area, which as we know displays both system (MS Windows) and non-system (3rd party) icons.
Re:Dock/Taskbar design (Score:5, Informative)
"An application doesn't need a window AT ALL. For ANY REASON. Windows are used for GUI I/O, and occasionally, message passing."
You write that an application doesn't need a window, at all, for any reason (in all caps yet), then immediately give two reasons why an application needs a window.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I can decipher it if I try. But you're being needlessly dense regarding what the author was getting at too. An app in Windows needs a window for another reason - to display a menu bar. An app in OS X does not - the menu is displayed at the top of the screen. So when you start Word in Windows it pops up an empty window (or a window filled with useless stuff) just so it can give you a File | Open menu. On the Mac it doesn't need to open a window until it's got a document to display in it.
Lets not forget (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah and (Score:5, Insightful)
99.997% of the people using these computers don't care.
But they should, they just don't know it. (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, I think that number is way too high. While it may seem that way sometimes, people do care. Maybe not even a majority of them, but enough that it does make a difference.
Second of all, those who in theory don't care, when explained why it's important, start to care. When you add up the cost of upgrading from Windows 95 to Windows XP to Windows Vista to Windows 7, along with all of its associated applications (I'm looking at you, Microsoft Office), versus the cost of upgrading through the various versions of Ubuntu or any of the other popular distributions and their associated applications, people really start to notice. One of my favorite things to do when I'm showing off Ubuntu to people is to open the package manager application. I tell them it's like the "Add or Remove Programs" applet, except that you can actually add programs. "All this stuff is available to you for no cost. Just click it, and you're good to go."
When you explain to these people how there is absolutely zero technical reason why they can't have a movie or song play on the DVD player in their living room, their iPod, their computer, and anywhere else (and anyway else) they want to play it, but that thanks to DRM systems incorporated into Windows 7 and Mac OS X, they are artificially restricted from doing so because some third party has decided to "manage their digital rights" for them, it definitely gets their attention.
When you explain to these people how honest competition from really smart people doing really smart things just because they can and because they feel that others should benefit from their collective knowledge is one of the reasons why a lot of commercial closed-source software these days that might otherwise cost hundreds or thousands of dollars is sold for really low cost or given away for free because of how hard it is to compete with volunteer work, it also gets their attention.
When I show people my web browser (Firefox with AdBlock) and how I don't see particularly onerous ads on web sites because the person who wrote my browser isn't beholden to financial interest or corporate mandates, it has raised a lot of eyebrows.
I could go on, but hopefully you see my point. Free and open source software benefits everyone, even people who don't otherwise care, even people who shun it in favor of commercial and/or closed-source options. And sitting back and saying that people don't care isn't very productive. It's in our best interest to actually educate people so that they will care.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
For some reason, despite the price tag of zero and the hardcore love of a thousand morons, OpenOffice makes every single document I produce or open from any office suite to any office suite look like total and absolute ass. Maybe it's worth $65 to me for my documents not to induce eye strain. Aesthetics are extremely important in the "real world" (see: the desktop usage scenario where most F/OSS does not exist.)
Because we all just -know- how great MS Office is at keeping formatting between versions. Ever had different versions of Office and open up the same document? Take the document from Word 2003 from work and open it on Office XP at home and it looks totally different. Even documents between versions don't show up the same. If you want things to look the exact same, export it as a PDF.
That's absolutely wrong. It's in our best interest to ignore these products until they become worth showing people. Some open source projects have graduated and are worth showing users (ie 7-zip) while others are utterly terrible and only have popularity due to an arbitrary freetard bias (openoffice, koffice, compiz, etc..) so they need to be ignored so the developers don't get the idea into their heads that they've accomplished something worthwhile and (heaven-forbid) stop going back to the drawing board, where they should be firmly planted.
While KOffice isn't really that great, Open Office is perhaps the best office suite save for iLife and MS Office. And yes,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While KOffice isn't really that great, Open Office is perhaps the best office suite save for iLife and MS Office.
That's hilarious. "If you exclude its two main competitors which are better, OpenOffice.org is THE BEST!"
(FWIW, I use iWork, because OpenOffice.org on Mac is ass and Numbers is just perfectly suited to my needs)
Usage matters. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Usage matters. (Score:4, Insightful)
You were duped, bud. This article was definitely *not* a performance metric analysis; it was another shilltastic article from an IT newbie using questionable "facts" and two completely different testbeds that posed as a performance comparison.
Both operating systems are great from technical and aesthetic standpoints, but this article fails to highlight why.
Operating System Name? (Score:5, Insightful)
The first category of their "comparison" is the OS name? Really? That's enough for me to stop reading. The article doesn't even take itself seriously.
Re:Operating System Name? (Score:5, Funny)
On top of that, the article is called "OS deathmatch," yet the author cannot decide who wins. What the hell kind of crap is that? It's like he brings a couple gladiators together and they end up holding hands.
Lame.
Machines arn't even remotely comparable (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Machines arn't even remotely comparable (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, but he gives Snow Leopard a point for doing a 'flawless upgrade' while Windows 7 didn't pick up his video card during installation, but it was rectified immediately afterwards when it pulled it from Windows Update. Then later in the article he goes on about how Apple controls the entire hardware platform and Microsoft has to battle with countless configuration combinations. Why didn't be bring that point up in the installation/upgrade section? Microsoft can't include every possible driver on the disc, but the fact that all his hardware was working as soon as he visited Windows Update is a feather in MS's cap in my opinion. Apple only had to care about a handful of different setups, and they control them all.
It seems the author went out of his way to make sure that the 'test' resulted in a tie, to prevent being flamed from either side. I mean really... giving a point based on the name... that's just ridiculous.
Re:Machines arn't even remotely comparable (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The end-user doesn't see these distinctions; they just know if their computer works or not.
Furthermore, given the *massive* market share that Microsoft has enjoyed, it's fair to partially blame them for the state of consumer hardware drivers.
Re:Machines arn't even remotely comparable (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps the tests should have been done on the same hardware, having two separate hard disks, and installing Vista directly, only using the OS X media for drivers. Vista understands EFI machines and can boot on an x86 Mac without the MBR emulation that BootCamp offers. I wonder if this would make any performance difference, especially on I/O.
Re:Machines arn't even remotely comparable (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To summarize the phoronix benchmark... (Score:3, Informative)
It pretty much shows Ubuntu 9.10 beating Snow Leopard most of the time.
Yay, we've come a long way. Unfortunately Karmic also displays a few significant regressions from Jaunty, hopefully someone is trying to do some profiling for those...
Performance, where? (Score:5, Informative)
The article linked to in the quote block is a terrible little summary of Snow Leopard and Windows 7, split unnecessarily over 5 pages, with nary a benchmark to be seen. Most of the comparisons are subjective, vague, and really not very useful to anyone.
Irrelevant benchmarks (Score:4, Funny)
The only benchmark I care about is porn downloading performance. My porn folder has several thousand files. In Windows, the "Save Image" dialog in Firefox always opens snappily. In Ubuntu, the same dialog somehow takes several seconds when there are many files. This makes porn downloading very painful. Until Ubuntu fixes this bug, I'm afraid I can't use it seriously.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I used to have this problem with Windows XP. Since I started using Mac computers, I just masturbate while looking at them. They're so sexy, no porn is required.
Yes, I DO wear an extra tight turtleneck to get that autoerotic asphyxiation going...
Great time for Computer users (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great time for Computer users (Score:4, Insightful)
I love this quote (Score:5, Insightful)
"Windows 7, on the other hand, remains the corporate standard"
That's fast, considering it was just RTM'd a few weeks ago and won't see a general release until Oct. 22nd.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I love this quote (Score:5, Funny)
It's August, the best of times when you're a space-filler generator in IT journalism, as every other media outlet turns into a gaping void at least as bad as ourselves. This leads to the inevitable debate: which is the best operating system, Windows 7 or Snow Leopard?
To help determine that, I've put both operating systems through their paces, selected categories for a head-to-head competition, and then chosen a winner in each category.
Operating system name: Windows 7 gets lots of page hits and comments from individual Microsoft fans who, it's true, just happen to be employed by Microsoft's PR company, but are completely independent in their thinking. Snow Leopard attracts Apple cultists, freshly charged from reading a novel-length apologia at RoughlyDrafted and all set to refute perceived calumnies and smite the unbeliever. Tie.
Upgrading: Windows 7 has an insanely complicated upgrade graph, whereas Snow Leopard's is: "put the disk in the computer." The former is way better for extended articles on how it's even easier to do a complicated Windows upgrade process by hand than it was going from XP to Vista and saves us lots of work thinking of things to write. Apple just fail to provide us material. Advantage: Windows 7.
Presentation: Windows 7 has the thoroughly reworked taskbar and the beautiful fonts and polish of Vista. Mac OS X has minor variations on the same interface it's had for eight years. Windows 7 looks just way more exciting in screenshots in tech press articles. Advantage: Windows 7.
Improvements: Microsoft made Windows 7 as backwards-compatible with Vista as possible, down to application performance and memory usage. They did dazzling things with the presentation of all this functionality, putting everything you use every day into exciting new places, with helpful new names. Apple, on the other hand, focused largely on internal plumbing and security. It's just dull, boys. How are we supposed to puff this up? C'mon, meet us half way here. Advantage: Windows 7.
Price: The Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade is $120 on Amazon, whereas Snow Leopard is $29. Apple just aren't putting enough value on their products. Do you want people thinking it's just cheap garbage? Advantage: Windows 7.
Enterprise readiness: No-one ever got fired for buying Microsoft. If you get a Mac, however, your co-workers will conspire against you and probably steal it. With Windows 7, you can be sure no-one else will ever want to touch your computer. Advantage: Windows 7.
System configuration: Microsoft gave me this laptop with only eight CPU cores and 16 gigabytes of memory to show just how good Windows 7 was on such low-end hardware. We had to buy a Mac to do this test on, because Apple just didn't understand the promotional advantages of giving me a shiny new 17" MacBook just because I wanted one. So I got a second-hand Mac Mini for a fair comparison. It's clear that Microsoft understand the needs of modern information technology journalism perfectly. They also sent over their PR people Candy, Brandi and Bimbi to help me with my Windows setup all last night. Apple just completely don't get it Advantage: Windows 7.
(just posted [today.com])
Re:I love this quote (Score:4, Informative)
I usually don't respond to AC's but since I did RTFA:
Page 5, under "Conclusion"
"Windows 7, on the other hand, remains the corporate standard, and nothing in Snow Leopard is likely to change that. And it's still a more tweakable operating system (although its critics may say that tweaking is mandatory in order to get it running right)."
douche.
GCC comparison (Score:4, Interesting)
Is Apples GCC 4.3 significantly different from a vanilla GCC 4.3? I know they've been doing a bunch of work on llvm, so they can get a compiler not under the gplv3, is this part of the difference?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Read that section again, 10.6 beat 9.10 on the Apache compile, but lost by as much as it had won on the PHP compile. As with most of the tests they used, its a toss up between OS's.
In reality, both of these "benchmark" articles blow goats. The Computerworld one is extremely subjective and takes a whole lot of artistic license in determining the winners in a few categories. The Phoronix one gets points for being more objective, but in reality it really doesn't tell you anything. Unless you use your computer
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple knows what hardware things will run on, so they can enable a lot more CPU-specific options when they compile.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Since compilers are usually compiled using themselves I'm pretty confident no such sacrifice will be made.
Apple can tweak compiler parameters due to the fixed and well-defined set of hardware. As any Gentoo guru can tell you, this can also be done on Linux, but is not generally the case (I too did not want to optimize too much lest I need to recompile everything due to a motherboard swop-out)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This leads me to wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, with the exception of the gamers that want to run Half Life 7 or Quake 9, are many people really bothering to upgrade anymore? From my vantage point it will be surprising to see Windows 7 do well commercially - not because of vista - because there haven't been great reasons to upgrade from the hardware and software of 5 years ago.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Comparison?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Given that the license terms for OsX force (by the terms, nothing else) the user to run it on Apple hardware, the comparison is really one of hardware. Where we have two camps:
camp 1: Apple hardware; expensive and nice, and able to run all three operating systems as the user needs or desires. This provides the user with the ability to run all software on tidy but expensive hardware. Price is the barrier to entry.
camp 2: Windows vs. Ubuntu on anything other than Apple hardware. This opens up the low end of hardware as well as other form factors and styles of hardware that Apple doesn't think you need.
These articles suck because they assume that you CAN do the same task on other operating systems. For many tasks that just isn't so. I can't do serious CAD on my shiny Apple under Snow leopard or any other non-domesticated cat. There are a TON of applications that don't work or are painful under Linux. I love Linux and use it frequently, and I also love my Mac, but there are and always will be a need for the mainstream OS, and today that is Windows.
Sheldon
so what's your point? (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole point of this test was to show how well Windows, SN, and Linux perform on similar hardware. Talking about old or cheap stuff is kind of...pointless.
Re:Comparison?! (Score:5, Funny)
Given that the license terms for OsX force (by the terms, nothing else) the user to run it on Apple hardware
Thats not strictly accurate.
The OSX EULA specifically states that it must be run on "an Apple labeled computer".
Since the OSX disks come with a sticky "Apple" label one must assume that they intend for the end user to stick this label on the machine that they install OSX onto. And that sticking this label onto that computer is a EULA requirement.
Its when you DON'T stick the label onto the machine which you install OSX on that you violate the EULA.
The EULA does NOT say "Apple *manufactured* computer".
the entire arcticle could be a /. poll (Score:3, Insightful)
It's sole purpose is to spawn comments saying it's flawed and discuss totally off-topic matters. Sounds like your average slashdot poll to me!
Fact checking? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7 article, I ran across this gem:
That's because they're in the Optional section of Windows Updates on Windows 7, bundled as "Windows Live Essentials."
It's not hard to miss, seeing as it's the only entry in the Optional section (because although Virtual PC and XP Mode are also optional, but they're still release candidates [microsoft.com]).
Also, why is Previous Versions not mentioned here? It's not new [lockergnome.com] either, Windows Vista had the Previous Versions functionality.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Previous Versions is THE reason to use Vista (and now 7). No other OS takes delta snapshots of your disk daily (sometimes more often, like when you install software), by default, and exposes them in a user-friendly interface.
Time Machine requires a second disk, which is OK for a desktop but bad for a laptop.
There are versioning filesystems in Linux, but they are more difficult to use
You heard it here first! (Score:4, Funny)
"With the nearly simultaneous release of Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" (available right now) and Microsoft's Windows 7 (available Oct. 22)..."
You heard it here first - August 28th is the new October 22nd. Update your calendars appropriately!
Why are we arguing about hardware prices? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, this is just silly.
How much time do you spend working with a computer during its lifetime? What does that work out to, in dollars?
Now how does that compare to the price of the hardware?
How much of your time will you expend in terms of the price difference in the hardware?
If you think that a better system will save you that much time in the life of the computer, it's a no-brainer.
People who work with their tools every day do NOT go scraping the bottom of the barrel when they shop for their tools. They go for the good stuff.