binaryknight said:
Hamish said:
Yes.. and no to both of you.
Yes Windows exsited before the internet, its got a long pedigree (although its more of a mongrel than a pedigree). However what people consistently fail to grasp is that XP is based on 2k, which is based on NT. OS Xs "internet" advantage is not an "internet" one but a standard *nix multi-user advantage, something that Windows NT was designed for from scratch. The kernel (core of the OS) in NT was radically different than the one used in the existing Windows OSs of the time because it was designed from the ground up to be used in a mutli-user environment. This was carried into 2k, whilst the ordinary, utterly different non-multi user kernek got carried into 95, 98 and ME respectively. ME was a last shot cash cow as it had long been on the plans since '98 to shift the entire platform across to the NT stream of OSs including home PCs given the prevelance of the internet and the need for associated multi-user security.
Its hard to argue that OS X was designed any differently than Windows XP in this regard. OS X is merely a variation on BSD, one of several POSIX compliant operating systems; including QNX, Linux, Unix, AIX et al. POSIX standard requires multi-user, and was arguably born out of the mainframe / dumb terminal era. Multi-user is absolutely critical for the internet PC, something Microsoft soon realised back in the mid 90s, but were slow (for various reasons) to develop into a suitable platform. It really was in everyones best interest for MS to merge the two streams of OS development. A few examples:
* more efficient use of MS programmer labour
* single driver model, meaing hardware providers didn't have to have two different versions of a driver being produced.
* single set of API making it easier for people to write software for the OS
My view on things?
Each to their own.
Every platform has its strengths and its weaknesses. I'm not naive enough, or blinkered enough to start touting one or other OS as better than the other. My preference for Windows on my home PC is purely due to gaming, otherwise I'd go with *nix all the way, like I do with servers. Cedega doesn't cut it for me, too many hassles. OS X has its market and it does it well. My main dislike of OS X is Apple, and its locking down of hardware vendors. I like to do things my way, I don't want to have to do it Steve Job's way. That they finally grasped the concept that people want powerful graphics cards on launch day is something that only recently Apple started to grasp, despite for how long the rest of the world realised this. If Apple relaxed their grip just a tiny bit on the hardware front they'd reap the benefits, IMO; particularly given their advantage of being based on an open source platform which plays firmly into the driver developers hands.
Viruses? Sure, OS X has its viruses, virtually every OS in the world does. The only reason Windows has so many out there comes down to the sheer market penetration of it, makes it a nice big, easy and most importantly profitable target to hit. If OS X had the same penetration as MS enjoys today, I don't doubt there would be just as many Viruses out there for it. Linux, just like OS X still gets away with lower number of viruses. Most people focus on hacking Linux rather than viruses, probably because most Distros that provide apache and the like pre-installed already do so with the box secured to a reasonable level (apache running as a seperate user, blah blah blah). Most *nix boxes that get hacked seem to be suffering from similar issues, mainly being the use of web frontends like webmin, without understanding the implications of the underlying stuff, like all users being created with /bin/bash shell access.
Take your pic, choose your OS for whatever reasons you like. No one is the same in this world, we all have our preferable ways of working. Linux suits mine, Windows suits other peoples, OS X suits yet others still, and so on and so forth.
Also, at least it isn't OS 9.