101 reasons why OS X is better than Windows

[chesterstu]

by the firefox effect i meant Firefox was considered more secure so people flocked to it as soon as it. Now it is popular early this year, more critical bugs were being discovered in ff than any other browser.

I am not saying that OSX is bad just that it is not the be all and end all. MAny mac users esp the ones posted here seem to think it is the answer to world peace and poverty. Its not!

 

[Al Vallario]

It is,also, clear some people have not used Windows in quite while because i can't remember the last time i needed to install drivers when i plugged in an external hd, usb stick, DVDRW or anything like that. That leads neatly to another point. A few have mentioned how they have plugged in many USB drives, external HD, Digicams etc in and they have all worked, i think these people do not realise all these items use exactly the same massive storage driver, so of course they work.

I've used Windows for many, many years before I got my first mac — I know the low-down on driver support in Windows. What I meant in my original statement was not just that things "work" when plugged in, but that they work well. Sure USB drives use a standard "Mass Storage Device" interface driver, but what about digital cameras? On a standard OS X install (with iLife, which is standard with all macs now), you connect your digital camera, it is mounted as a storage medium, iPhoto loads up, you can import all your photos, edit them, crop them, resize them, touch them up, email them to friends, create an online photo album out of them etc. On a standard Windows installation, plug your digital camera in and you might just get to browse through the files located on the camera through Explorer. If you want to perform some quick edits, well, good luck with Paint. Want to email them to a relative? Well, you'll have to load up Outlook Express, go through an endless email account setup process, then work out how to send an email, attach them, navigate to the storage medium, toy with file names, end up sending pictures of your todler to your boss etc.

Windows biggest problem is it's success. MacOS is no where near as secure as people like to think it's just not popular enough yet to make it target of major virus writers and script kiddies. Windows on the other hand is massively popular and is used by million on n00b users who dont understand internet secruity etc so it is a bigger more lucrative target for malicous people. It's the firefox effect all over again.

No operating system is completely secure, and no one is trying to say OS X is. There are exploits out there, and there are proof-of-concept virii out there (although they are about as menacing as a fluffy toy). However, the way OS X is built makes it inherently more secure than Windows — whilst market share is a factor, it is not the only factor.

*av

 

[chesterstu]

No operating system is completely secure, and no one is trying to say OS X is. There are exploits out there, and there are proof-of-concept virii out there (although they are about as menacing as a fluffy toy). However, the way OS X is built makes it inherently more secure than Windows — whilst market share is a factor, it is not the only factor.

Correct if i am wrong but the new MacOSX is built arrouns a *nix based system so it must only be secure as the system it is built arround and anyone who runs a Linux or Freebsd webserver will tell there are many 1000s of expliots out there in incorrectly patched systems and more being discovered on a daily basis. Even variations of *nix are more appealing to hack than MacOS but i am saying surely OSX must be open to the same exploits

 

[LeoWyatt]

I might be wrong here but when I used Linux, didn't the system keep a track of files on the machine and using the locate command you could find them. For this to work best all you had to do was make sure this was kept up-to-date. Does Spotlight work on a similar vein?

My first machine was a dos machine and I've recently switched to a Mac after wanting one for ages and am really enjoy it. I use Windows for work and have to say something are done better on Windows than the Mac. Each has it's benefits and as I learn more about OSX my opinion will no doubt change.

Thankfully most of my applications are open source so I don't have to worry about having to find alternatives.

 

[JimmyEatWorms]

On a standard OS X install (with iLife, which is standard with all macs now), you connect your digital camera, it is mounted as a storage medium, iPhoto loads up, you can import all your photos, edit them, crop them, resize them, touch them up, email them to friends, create an online photo album out of them etc. On a standard Windows installation, plug your digital camera in and you might just get to browse through the files located on the camera through Explorer. If you want to perform some quick edits, well, good luck with Paint. Want to email them to a relative? Well, you'll have to load up Outlook Express, go through an endless email account setup process, then work out how to send an email, attach them, navigate to the storage medium, toy with file names, end up sending pictures of your todler to your boss etc.

Yes, but that is not a function of the OS but of the applications being shipped with it. Microsft could release a suite of similar apps to iLife and ship it free with every copy of windows but they'd be dragged through the courts and fined billions for doing so. It's hardly a fair comparison.

 

[FirebarUK]

Windows is a networked OS. Since NT, in which saw Windows completely, and I do mean completely, recompiled from scratch to fit such a description.

Kind of, although developed by a hired team it was then systematically butchered in many ways by MS - adding in loads of DOS-type legacy stuff which held it back imo.

 

[Hate]

email them to friends... Well, you'll have to load up Outlook Express, go through an endless email account setup process,

I didn't realise OSX was THAT good it knew your email account settings without you having to tell it

 

[NathanE]

Now that I have made the switch to Mac OS X I have no idea why it isn't more widespread, there are so many reasons why its better, for a start:

• Unicode support at OS level
• No Viruses
• Built from the ground up as a networked OS
• System Tray is used for what it's meant for (volume, time etc) rather than for minimised applications (MSN, Azureus, etc)

There are just so many reasons, feel free to add your own.

Windows NT has had unicode support since 3.51. So about a decade before OSX even existed Unicode is actually NT's mother tongue. Everytime you deal with a ASCII string in NT is converted to Unicode before anything happens.

Not quite sure what you mean by a "networked OS" but some say that "NT" stood for "network technology". Windows has far superior networking support (think Active Directory, Domains) anyway.

The system tray was abused ever since it was added in Windows 95. It was always called the "notification area" in Microsoft documentation but of course just naming it that doesn't stop third parties adding their crap to it.

No viruses? I'll give you that, even if it's not related to OSX in any techical standpoint.

the way OS X is built makes it inherently more secure than Windows

Haha! You're being serious? That simply isn't true. Every OSX fan will always come back to the "It's built on UNIX." line but why? Apple punched some humungous holes in the traditional UNIX security in order to deliver OSX's rich user experience. This is basically the same thing that Microsoft did with NT when they delivered Windows XP. Back then Microsoft was more concerned with backward compatibility with Windows 9x. Thank god Vista finally turns all the NT security back on!

Kind of, although developed by a hired team it was then systematically butchered in many ways by MS - adding in loads of DOS-type legacy stuff which held it back imo.

Yes the DEC team. Microsoft hired them and they all still work there to this day. Dave Cutler included. DEC was going down the pan so they wanted out. Microsoft hasn't butchered NT at all. They certainly didn't just hire them, make them work their arse off for a couple years, produce NT 3.51 and then fire them once the job was done. Their are many video interviews on Channel 9 where you can get into the heads of these very influential guys working at Microsoft.

With every major release they make NT more elegant. Vista for example they've ripped out all the legacy DOS rubbish and also gone back to their original micro kernel design where device drivers run as user-mode processes that cannot crash the system. The only device driver that still needs to remain in the kernel is the graphics driver - for obvious performance/efficiency reasons. But for all those buggy USB devices, sound cards and other peripherals, it's all in user-mode now. This is the same design that NT 3.51 had but unfortunately they had to move to a hybrid kernel in NT 4.0 to keep performance up in those days where every clock cycle counted. Now they are going back to the principles that the first version of NT introduced.