So here I sit a little over 1 year from getting my shiny “new” PowerBook G4 and I think about what I’ve learnt.
First off, let me say that I’ve been using computers since 1989.
My first computer was a Packard Bell Legend IV with a 286 12MHz with 1Mb of RAM and a 40Mb HDD. It ran MS-DOS 5.0 until like 1999 when I bought PC-DOS 7.0 for it. I still, occasionally, use it.
I built, to replace that between 1998 and 2000 a machine that was an AMD K6-2 400 (later upgraded to a 450) with 128Mb RAM up to 640Mb. This ran OS/2 2.0, MS Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP in roughly that order, and various Linuxes from RedHat 5.2 Deluxe to Debian etch.
I’ve used Amigas, Apple II, and more flavours of PC than I care to count.
Frankly — I have to say from the motley collection of OSes (more than I’m going to bother listing or trying to remember) and hardware configurations I really have to say that Amiga rocks.
Seriously — If they still existed I’d kill for one.
Since they don’t a very very close second place belongs to a PPC based Apple with OSX 10.5.x on it. PC’s just suck. Really. Linux makes them suck less, but I don’t care for their architecture. That said, I will readily admit that while I’m pleased with the Intel Macs, I’d rather they’d stuck with PPC. They may have had good reasons to switch (among them not being able to get the G5 into a notebook, and not being able to break the 3GHz range) but damn it — PPC kicks x86’s ass.
To enumerate the various wonders:
1) Apples have a much enviable life expectancy. Shanny’s Mac is older than that AMD monster I made. Both were made with top shelf parts (Apple is notorious for doing this — a credit to computing as few other manufacturers realise there are computer parts that aren’t bought by the pound) yet the Apple is still running exceptionally and with better visual effects than the AMD ever did (partly due to the fact that PPC vs x86 means that this 333 G3 would amount to a nearly 550 P2). And, while I may have a 1989 286 that still works — let’s face it — go looking for systems as old as a Mac 128k or 512k and about the only thing you’ll find is a Mac 128k or 512k.
2) User-friendlier. I, once, as an experiment sat down and built a custom KDE desktop from the ground up. I figured why not see what the most sensible layout I could imagine for myself would be. I assumed I would wind up with something that didn’t resemble any OS out there and would demonstrate the superiority of getting [insert favourite flavour of *nix] and running KDE 3.x on it. I wound up with something so similar to MacOSX that I fetched the baghira set for it and an Aqua style icon set to finish the damn job. Top that off with the ability to, from one intuitive and logical place being able to do all real system administration and configuration work — System Preferences. The only problem I have using System Preferences is, no lie, that things make TOO MUCH sense… I tend to, out of habit, start trying to hunt for them and looking in tangentially likely places for them instead of the sensible place because between Linux and Windows I didn’t expect to find them there.
3) Tech support. This is what I do for a living — Internet Tech Support. Professionally, let me say that Windows fucking sucks, especially Vista. Most of my day is spent fixing, not internet issue, but rather explaining to people that Windows/Internet Explorer/Outlook/Outlook Express has in some way, shape, or form lost its godsdamned mind. You can try to say that more people use any of those than whatever else you care to name — but the ratios don’t match up. When I get a Mac call, it’s NEVER a software problem (well, twice. Once was probably user error caused and was referred to Apple simply because their issue was something from another planet and they had an internet signal so I didn’t want nor have to speak to them any more, the other was Microsoft Entourage was broken). There are, in fact, whole issues that are EXCLUSIVE to Windows. As in there aren’t troubleshooting steps for the other OSes because it doesn’t happen to them. The closest thing to it is actually a quirk of DOCSIS and cable modems — someone swapped the computer connected to the modem and didn’t reboot the fucking thing (the modem I mean). Windows, on the other hand adds things like forgetting how to actually DO TCP/IP networking or forgetting how to form an DHCP request properly, or spontaneously deciding to turn on ‘Work Offline” in every single MS internet software at once, or totally losing track of the NIC drivers and therefor the NIC and therefore the internet connection, I could go on — but it’s depressing. And don’t get me started on Vista and its special list of eccentricities that include all the ones of prior versions and then ADDS NEW ONES!!! Seriously, for every one thing that a newer version of Windows makes easier from my job’s stand point over the prior version it tends to make at least 3 other things harder.
4) Stability. This is technically more like a 3a, or something, but I don’t fucking care take your OCD meds and get over it. This one is sort of multipart though. Windows, not PCs, gets the first bit of this one. Why the fucking hell is the largest selling OS in the world right now the only one to EVER (to the best of my knowledge and not counting OSes that are in Alpha or Beta stages) actually have as an official troubleshooting item something that is more or less “has it been more then (depending on version) 3, 6 or 12 months (to the best of my knowledge it the highest it’s ever gotten is 1yr) since installing Windows? Then the solution to your trouble is to re-install Windows.” What the mother fuck?! No. Linux, Mac (classic AND X), MS fucking DOS for fuck’s sake, OS/2 you name it and you don’t have to reinstall it unless you or a virus fucks it up or hardware fails and an important file or 200000 get damaged. Why does Windows need this? Well, turns out it has to do with that damnable registry. That cumbersome behemoth of doom. A clean install of Windows 1) can be so unstable as to need reinstalled before it has been used, in fact Windows is the only OS that has ever crashed or locked up DURING THE INSTALLER that I’ve ever seen — and I’ve played with ReactOS which isn’t even to Beta yet. 2) has anywhere from about 100 – 3000 registry errors before you’ve so much as installed a single driver. I’ll admit, to learn that one I HAD had to install the program that was hunting for registry errors but the errors it found were nothing to do with its own install (well… one or two were but you can’t install anything in Windows without some minor errors showing up in the resulting entries. Usually missing characters in a pathname or something). From all the myriad attempts by both Windows detractors AND proponents the issue has something to do with the registry just corrupts over time and with usage. Hence people who almost never use their computers, or install a specific set of softwares on it and never so much as install updates after that can get away with a few years trouble free — but they develop problems at what would work out to around 12months of more regular usage. The damnable OS is that stupid snake that’s biting its own arse off.
PCs themselves I find to be less stable in general. I think this is something that would have been avoided if PC architecture hadn’t become open for anyone and everyone who wanted to make a PC compatible platform. Open Source, is generally a good thing — I rather love some of the results of it. The trouble is that the PC BIOS didn’t get the OSS treatment really, and while some excellent manufactures of motherboard, RAM, GPU, CPU, DSP, etc have come (and in some sad cases gone) the methods they have to use to interact with each other seems to open up a few destabilising points. That aside, you also have the flip side with parts that make someone a profit even sold by the pound (apparently this isn’t much of an exaggeration. some of the more ubiquitous varieties of components are sold in bulk — like those rather nameless SiS graphics cards of the late 90s) and companies looking to make a quick buck off of the guy who just wants a computer or just looks at meaningless numbers (clock speed, and ram may be good for comparing an orange to an orange, but a 100Mhz P2 is likely to out perform a 200Mhz P1 due to architectural differences, and an AMD K6-2 on a SoYo mainboard with 1Mb L2 cache runs like shit compared to one on an ASUS with 512K cache … that last one is a real life example).
Apple, as was mentioned before uses only top shelf parts all the way around. Often using NO SHELF parts, as in they’re using custom ordered items. They’ve apparently got some clever people deciding exactly where things should be placed in relation to each other because the performance is generally clean, reliable, fast, and long lasting.
Meh, I’m getting long winded and tired of typing. Suffice to say, I’ve always thought Macs were neat. Especially when I met the original iMac back in 1998 and fell in love with the only machine (then) capable of rendering Chrome effects, animated reflective water effects, and proper fog effects (all in the same area of the 3d game that was what came with that machine and that I regret never learning the name of) — effects that I understand weren’t EQUALLED in a PC until the Radeon a couple years later. I’ve been impressed with them since they were the first (and to my knowledge only) desktop computer to be a restricted export because it was classified a supercomputer and therefore a weapon by the United States government and military. I’ve been, admittedly, jealous at myriad points during the time I was still plodding along with PCs while my beloved used her 1999 model iMac from right next to me… but I will say that after the past year of having one to use and abuse and tinker with and, yes, at one point break (see previous post back around December when I had to use 10.3 for awhile and go shopping for a 10.5 disc) I am hooked. I’m not a lifelong adherent. I mean, if they do like they did in the 90s after Steve Jobs left and before he came back with the stagnant OS and lack-luster “new” models I will drop them in favour of who or whatever might be along to take their place. Until then, Apple makes the single best modern computer and OS available. They are, today, what the Amiga was when it was still alive.
I’m turning off comments for this entry because, frankly, this isn’t a discussion piece this was just me speaking my mind and I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks about it good or ill.
