Windows is getting disgusting

[Sigmoid]

That seems to be the case, a lot of FUD about computer security.  The only times I've had any problems personally was from landing on hostile web sites when I was running IE up until a few years ago.  The browser seems to be the entry point for malware you really have to be concerned about.  After I went to a more secure browser with a good IP filter (Chrome with uBlock Origin), I haven't had more any trouble. 

I think MS likes to motivate people by using FUD about computer security.  It's really just a marketing ploy.  There's probably some improvement in security from one OS to the next, but I don't think it's enough to warrant running out to buy the next version as soon as it releases.  In fact there may be security issues with a new version because unknown issues may exist.  I'd be surprised if someone can genuinely show a difference in security between win7 and win10.  As for winXP its only failing in my mind is that it's no longer supported.  I think it was the best product MS ever made.

Whether the lack of security updates is an issue or not is entirely dependent of the user and what the machine is used for. And users who need to reinstall Windows every few months are not prepared to run a system with dozens of well-known unfixed vulnerabilities.

Yes, the most obvious vector of attack on a desktop is the web browser. Not the only one. You need to actively lock down the whole system, disable all the file sharing and network discovery capability, disarm the ipv6 tunneling stack, the whole activation / "E.T. phone home" component, all the little convenience utilities that have some kind of network footprint... even when you have every service shut down, all incoming ports blocked, there is the chance that someone finds an exploit in the TCP/IP stack, in which case if you log onto wifi in a coffee shop, and someone there has "brand new malware no. 699" running on their machine, which happens to contain this exploit, well, welcome to the zombie DDoS army of the Russian Federation.

Security is not what it used to be when you learned computers on MS DOS or CP/M or whatever.

[Kilrah]

The thing that made makes Apple computers "superior" is the build quality. They aren't "the best", but they are really good, and that's probably enough. The first time I've seen the mainboard of an iMac, I threw a backflip; the board layout was a literal work of art

The boards are a work of art for sure esthetically... but don't speak too loud about "build quality" to all those who had graphics card failures on their Macbooks, display and battery failures on iPhones etc.
The fact they have a small catalog casues issues to plague a parge portion of their offering. They're pretty good at taming down the reports though.

[Sigmoid]

The boards are a work of art for sure esthetically... but don't speak too loud about "build quality" to all those who had graphics card failures on their Macbooks, display and battery failures on iPhones etc.
The fact they have a small catalog casues issues to plague a parge portion of their offering. They're pretty good at taming down the reports though.

If by "taming down the reports", you mean "immediately replacing the defective product while apologizing", then sure... Sure I've also heard of the horror stories - but neither I, nor anyone else I know or anyone the people I know know has ever actually experienced anything like that.

Anyway, defects, and even customer service mistakes are simply inevitable in tech, especially when a company is as big as Apple... and getting people citing up every tiny mistake as a world-ending debacle is inevitable if a company has as many haters as Apple...

And I used to build my own PCs in the 90s and early 2000s, and reliability meant something completely different then... Not "one in a hundred thousand iPhones experience inexplicable battery failure", rather "generic VGA card refuses to work in generic motherboard regardless of nominal compatibility... let's try another VESA slot... wow now it's booting, let's sacrifice that black rooster quickly".

[Cerebus]

... but don't speak too loud about "build quality" to all those who had graphics card failures on their Macbooks, display and battery failures on iPhones etc.

Plenty of people other than Apple had problems with fine pitch BGA chips (the cause of the video processor failures) when they were first being used in mass produced hardware, Xbox for instance.

[Howardlong]

Apple seem to have an interesting concept in thermal management. Until today, I've been using i7 quad core Mac Minis as my daily desktop drivers for four or five years, but run them in Windows natively 99% of the time. The hardware has been totally reliable, but wow do they run hot.

A few months ago I noticed on one of them the fan was blowing hard 24x7 so assumed it needed a clean out. In the end it turned out to be a crap bit of software, but since then I regularly monitored the temps. It turns out these machines routinely run into thermal throttling as a matter of course, by design. This happens at 100C. While I never saw any bad effects, it left me with an uneasy feeling.

This, together with the fact that Apple don't offer i7 quad cores anymore, plus that there are no upgrade paths anymore, I've now gone back to building my own machines, after about seven years of buying off the shelf. They're not quite as neat, but upgrade opportunities are far better.

[eugenenine]

I worked for a reseller in the GEM market (Government, Education, Military).  We could sell 100 Dell/HP/etc business machines and have 1-2 problems.  We'd sell 10 Apples and have 1-2 problems.  I had one customer when I'd go to their site he would tell me how much better Apples were than anything else.  His fancy Apple was shipped back to Apple 6 times in two years for warranty work yet he continued to sing their praise.  Thats why they get rated so much higher than what they really are in all the surveys.
Then you look at each year someone has a big recall.  One year its Sony, another HP, another Dell.  Apple had a recall every year.  So one year its Sony and Apple for batteries.  They next year its HP and Apple for video cards, the next year its Dell and Apple for power supplies.

Thats not even getting started on the legal games, copy Palm's swipe and then sue everyone else who copied palm's.

[Kilrah]

Apple seem to have an interesting concept in thermal management. Until today, I've been using i7 quad core Mac Minis as my daily desktop drivers for four or five years, but run them in Windows natively 99% of the time. The hardware has been totally reliable, but wow do they run hot.

My experience is that they pretty heavily rely on their fine tweaking of power usage, dynamic clock settings etc in OSX that causes a machine running on light/normal loads to be significantly more power-efficient. Once you load Windows none of that anymore, it just runs with very basic and unoptimized defaults.
On a Macbook you'll typically have half he battery life on Windows than on OSX, so that's that amount of heat that isn't released on OSX, most likely same on their desktop siblings.

And yes Apple seem to often design throttling as being normal when running at full load extensively unfortunately... gotta squeeze tht extra mm of design thinness whatever the cost

[eugenenine]

Windows is inefficient.  Any system I've ever setup as a dual boot, windows runs the cpu hotter then whatever Linux distro I was dual booting.

[avrishuvorlaz]

EDIT: A MAC was superior to all of the other computers while they still were PowerPCs, but after they degraded their system to Intel X86_64 architecture MACs are just PCs. :-)

Just must be joking. Windows 3.11 already had protected memory so a misbehaving program didn't take the whole system down unlike what would happen on a MAC: total crash.

A rouge program could still easily cause the Windows 3.11 to crash though because it allowed ordinary programs direct access to much of the hardware.

A RED program?



 

[rsjsouza]

EDIT: A MAC was superior to all of the other computers while they still were PowerPCs, but after they degraded their system to Intel X86_64 architecture MACs are just PCs. :-)

Just must be joking. Windows 3.11 already had protected memory so a misbehaving program didn't take the whole system down unlike what would happen on a MAC: total crash.

Despite your assertive is correct on both accounts, Windows 3.11 had huge holes in HW management and multitasking (the then called cooperative multitasking). Applications brought a system down by holding on to the CPU without yielding to the kernel, either because they simply crashed or because they were waiting on a HW resource.
Macs, as you said, were simply too reckless with memory and the lack of true multitasking never allowed a fair comparison with Windows - it was always a heavy conjecture a Mac system outperformed Windows until they migrated to Intel processors. By then, it was evident the claims of higher performance were only marginal and the only tangible benefit was a much more streamlined integration with hardware and ease of use.

I think rsjsouza is understanding what I meant, the rest of you have just stuck on the OS itself. I talk about the whole system. Mac was more superior in the days of PowerPC just like the Amiga was superior to any computer during that time. Today there's no difference between a Mac and a Windows PC, buy either one and you get same crap, just with different software.

A few months ago I got for free a Mac Mini from 2007 and it is running on my desk. I can tell its integration with Bluetooth and Wireless LAN was years ahead XP and its quirky settings (especially Bluetooth). It is also quite snappy given its age, although it runs terribly hot. Therefore the perception is probably triggered by the fact that Microsoft simply caught up and cleared most of the horrible quirks of its pre-7 releases. 

That said, I wouldn't go as far as saying that Mac was superior in all aspects to a PC at that time - the convergence came earlier than the processor migration itself, most probably due to economies of scale, which evidenced the aging of the architecture. Early PPC Macintosh systems came standard with a faster disk subsystem (SCSI) and a series of dedicated slots for specific functions, which brought clear superiority for audio and graphics, while most PCs had the slower ATA, the beeper and the more standard ISA bus. During the 1990s this gap was severely reduced by the adoption of a faster bus (the short-lived Vesa and later PCI) together with the inclusion of sound and accelerated 2D (and later 3D) graphics cards. The Power Macintosh removed the SCSI drive, while the iMac G3 added support for USB in favor of firewire and the only breakthrough feature was to remove the floppy disk.
With all this, the PPC was clearly lagging behind x86 in clock speed as well. With Pentium III reaching 1GHz 2~3 years earlier than the G5, it started to become evident Apple was cornered.

[timb]

Yeah if you're going to get a mac, which is closed and proprietary like Windows, may as well just go Linux, you'll run into the same set of compatibility issues but at least it's an open platform backed by a large community that will run on commodity hardware.  A mac is a closed black box more or less.

Yeah, it's not like macOS is based on a completely open source components or anything... Oh, wait... Plus the hardware is totally proprietary, I mean, it's not like it's build on commodity Intel hardware or anything... Oh, wait...

With macOS, I can run pretty much any software that runs on Linux (including X11 stuff) plus thousands of Mac specific apps, all in a very nice GUI *and* I can do it all without having to spend weeks digging through config files to make it work!

[BradC]

I love it how these threads always degenerate into "My OS is better than yours" pissing contests.

I use all 3 becuase there is no right tool for every job. Additionally, if all you have is a hammer, every fastener begins to look like a nail.

I predominantly use Linux on the desktop/laptop, with Windows in VMs. Occassionally where warranted I boot into OSX. I choose to use Macs for my Desktop/Laptop hardware. I always enjoy the constant fanboy hate directed at users of "insert whatever hardware/software" here as if they know what does and doesn't work for me or what I value in my hardware. Always a waste of time, but a great indicator of the quality of the person on the end of the keyboard.

Use whatever works best for you. I use what works best for me.

Back on topic, yes I'm not a fan of what Microsoft has become. Having said that, the apparent nastiness has always been boiling below the surface. They just needed other companies to show them how little the average person values their privacy before they had the balls to go and do it themselves.

[avrishuvorlaz]

I love it how these threads always degenerate into "My OS is better than yours" pissing contests.

I use all 3 becuase there is no right tool for every job. Additionally, if all you have is a hammer, every fastener begins to look like a nail.

I predominantly use Linux on the desktop/laptop, with Windows in VMs. Occassionally where warranted I boot into OSX. I choose to use Macs for my Desktop/Laptop hardware. I always enjoy the constant fanboy hate directed at users of "insert whatever hardware/software" here as if they know what does and doesn't work for me or what I value in my hardware. Always a waste of time, but a great indicator of the quality of the person on the end of the keyboard.

Use whatever works best for you. I use what works best for me.

Back on topic, yes I'm not a fan of what Microsoft has become. Having said that, the apparent nastiness has always been boiling below the surface. They just needed other companies to show them how little the average person values their privacy before they had the balls to go and do it themselves.

"I love it how these threads always degenerate into "My OS is better than yours" p*****g contests."

For intelligent engineers, these people can be awfully stupid at times. It's like saying "my screwdriver is better than your hammer"


-_-

[slicendice]

That said, I wouldn't go as far as saying that Mac was superior in all aspects to a PC at that time - the convergence came earlier than the processor migration itself, most probably due to economies of scale, which evidenced the aging of the architecture. Early PPC Macintosh systems came standard with a faster disk subsystem (SCSI) and a series of dedicated slots for specific functions, which brought clear superiority for audio and graphics, while most PCs had the slower ATA, the beeper and the more standard ISA bus. During the 1990s this gap was severely reduced by the adoption of a faster bus (the short-lived Vesa and later PCI) together with the inclusion of sound and accelerated 2D (and later 3D) graphics cards. The Power Macintosh removed the SCSI drive, while the iMac G3 added support for USB in favor of firewire and the only breakthrough feature was to remove the floppy disk.
With all this, the PPC was clearly lagging behind x86 in clock speed as well. With Pentium III reaching 1GHz 2~3 years earlier than the G5, it started to become evident Apple was cornered.

Exactly! But one can not make a direct connection between overall performance and clockspeed when comparing a x86, with PPC or even ARM. There is so much more to it than just how many clock cycles a CPU can make within a second.

The best hardware, software and software tech has disappeared from the markets because of company mistakes and bad marketing. If the best stuff would have survived the 80s and 90s our computers including the software would look very different compared to what we have today. It's a shame so much great stuff is gone, or never got the support it deserved.

Microsoft has always been a good copycat and excellent at marketing, that is why they survived. In the early days they had nothing that was of their own creation. Everything was more or less copied or bought. Today it's a bit different, though they still buy good companies with great software and ruin the original software architecture when they try to add MS specific features into them.

I must admit that while MS software is quite good, it still has a lot of room for improvement, including latest Windows (which is the original topic here).

[timb]

I love it how these threads always degenerate into "My OS is better than yours" pissing contests.

If that's directed at me, I wasn't saying macOS was better than anything else, just refuting the statement it's completely closed.

I setup and managed servers professionally for over ten years, so by no means do I dislike Linux (though personally I preferred FreeBSD).

[BradC]

I love it how these threads always degenerate into "My OS is better than yours" pissing contests.

If that's directed at me, I wasn't saying macOS was better than anything else, just refuting the statement it's completely closed.

No, honestly it was just an observation. It just happens _every_ time os or hardware platform is mentioned. Mostly it seems to be people ragging on Mac users, but it does go in all directions.

[madires]

Microsoft has always been a good copycat and excellent at marketing, that is why they survived. In the early days they had nothing that was of their own creation. Everything was more or less copied or bought. Today it's a bit different, though they still buy good companies with great software and ruin the original software architecture when they try to add MS specific features into them.

They are also very good on MS-ofying standards. Domains and Active Directory are modified versions of Kerberos and LDAP.

[Sigmoid]

The best hardware, software and software tech has disappeared from the markets because of company mistakes and bad marketing. If the best stuff would have survived the 80s and 90s our computers including the software would look very different compared to what we have today. It's a shame so much great stuff is gone, or never got the support it deserved.

But how do we define "the best"?

There indeed were many "beautiful" architectures that eventually dropped out of mainstream or disappeared entirely. They were, without exception, closed platforms, owned by companies that were often mismanaged (post-Tramiel Commodore for example, not to say that the old man didn't make mistakes in his day). The PC architecture won out because of openness, while being "good enough".

How would the world be different if the PC didn't happen? We'd probably still have completely incompatible architectures, with software houses having to develop separately for Amiga, for Atari, for DEC, for Sun, for NeXT, for whatever else... By choosing a computer you'd probably be choosing an entire ecosystem. We probably wouldn't have USB and SATA - instead there would be Amiga external HDDs, Atari external HDDs, DEC external HDDs, Sun external HDDs, NeXT external HDDs...

Coding assembly would probably be nicer than it is for the x64 architecture... But nobody would be coding assembly anyway because I doubt the laziness of coders would have evolved differently - and you'd probably see massive feature withholding in software, as everyone would be coding in a way that can be compiled for each architecture with minimal code changes.

Machines would probably be marginally faster per clock cycle, but definitely not per US dollar, as closed architectures would have prevented the commoditization of hardware as it happened with the advent of the PC.

So... I guess the PC was probably the right choice in the end.

[james_s]

Almost all of those systems you mentioned, Amiga, Atari, DEC, SUN, NeXT, etc used SCSI hard drives, the PC was the oddball back in that era, using the cheap but proprietary AT Attachment interface that evolved into IDE.

I think without the PC it is still inevitable that one or two platforms would have become dominant with perhaps a couple stragglers hanging on just as has happened with mobile devices. Android and iOS dominate the market and are the only real competitors, Blackberry hung on for a long time and now Windows Mobile is the straggler. Evolving hardware would have spelled the end for all of the fancy custom chipsets as CPUs and programmable GPUs got powerful enough to make custom silicon uneconomical.

[Cerebus]

... using the cheap but proprietary AT Attachment interface that evolved into IDE.

Other way around. IDE came first, preceded by ST-506 and similar semi-proprietary interfaces.

[eugenenine]

I love it how these threads always degenerate into "My OS is better than yours" pissing contests.

If that's directed at me, I wasn't saying macOS was better than anything else, just refuting the statement it's completely closed.

No, honestly it was just an observation. It just happens _every_ time os or hardware platform is mentioned. Mostly it seems to be people ragging on Mac users, but it does go in all directions.

I just wait for someone to say 'mac is better' and then give my best 'nuh-uh' 

[eugenenine]

The best hardware, software and software tech has disappeared from the markets because of company mistakes and bad marketing. If the best stuff would have survived the 80s and 90s our computers including the software would look very different compared to what we have today. It's a shame so much great stuff is gone, or never got the support it deserved.

But how do we define "the best"?

There indeed were many "beautiful" architectures that eventually dropped out of mainstream or disappeared entirely. They were, without exception, closed platforms, owned by companies that were often mismanaged (post-Tramiel Commodore for example, not to say that the old man didn't make mistakes in his day). The PC architecture won out because of openness, while being "good enough".

How would the world be different if the PC didn't happen? We'd probably still have completely incompatible architectures, with software houses having to develop separately for Amiga, for Atari, for DEC, for Sun, for NeXT, for whatever else... By choosing a computer you'd probably be choosing an entire ecosystem. We probably wouldn't have USB and SATA - instead there would be Amiga external HDDs, Atari external HDDs, DEC external HDDs, Sun external HDDs, NeXT external HDDs...

Coding assembly would probably be nicer than it is for the x64 architecture... But nobody would be coding assembly anyway because I doubt the laziness of coders would have evolved differently - and you'd probably see massive feature withholding in software, as everyone would be coding in a way that can be compiled for each architecture with minimal code changes.

Machines would probably be marginally faster per clock cycle, but definitely not per US dollar, as closed architectures would have prevented the commoditization of hardware as it happened with the advent of the PC.

So... I guess the PC was probably the right choice in the end.

All the last of the Amiga's, etc had USB and many of the other industry standards, it wasn't openenss that allowed IBM (PC) to win.   

Part of it was .gov contracts which required second supplier so the Intel/AMD/etc partnership was formed to have a second supplier for the main chips.
Software was the real big win, Microsoft software.  The first question over any Amiga/Atari, etc sale was can it run MSOffice/excel/word.

Developing for multiple platforms isn't that big of a deal, look at firefox, chrome, thunderbird, ApacheOpen/LibreOffice, KiCad, etc.  Running parallel versions for win/mac/linux isn't much work that running parallel for win/mac/linux/amiga.

[james_s]

... using the cheap but proprietary AT Attachment interface that evolved into IDE.

Other way around. IDE came first, preceded by ST-506 and similar semi-proprietary interfaces.

IDE came out in 1986, SCSI was released initially in 1981 and evolved from the earlier SASI interface that I believe appeared in the mid 70s.

[Cerebus]

... using the cheap but proprietary AT Attachment interface that evolved into IDE.

Other way around. IDE came first, preceded by ST-506 and similar semi-proprietary interfaces.

IDE came out in 1986, SCSI was released initially in 1981 and evolved from the earlier SASI interface that I believe appeared in the mid 70s.

Yes, but your assertion was that ATA come before IDE. ATA was the series of industry standards that followed on from (Compaq) Integrated Drive Electronics. Integrated as opposed to, in the PC-XT and PC-AT, the ST-506 interface and friends which left the controller with real work to do (timing sectors etc.) whereas IDE, ATA, SCSI and the Shugart Associates Serial Interface all use(d) Host Bus Adapters and just ship data and commands back and forth.

[pbendel]

Somebody beyond the legal reach of Microsoft should make their own version of Windows to keep the ecosystem healthy.  I'd be happy to pay for a non morally bankrupt current version of Windows.  Maybe others would too...