Why are so many people Anti-microsoft?

Macintosh OS is moving to Intel chips in 2006. The Mac OS has been running on Wintel machines for over five years on the Apple campus in Cupertino CA.

 

Yes but they never were able to create a "clone" market like IBM etc did with x86. I don't know why that never took off, I didn't follow it. Seems like it just died on the vine.

The reason that MS is less secure is NOT because people aren't trying to hack linux. It's because the security model and all of the code is open source. No one can look at MS's security code line by line. They employ security by obfuscation and it doesn't work. Someone always figures out a way in. In the open source model a large number of "good" people look at the code and try to defeat the software. Changes are made and life goes on. You can't operate on that model if you're being proprietary about everything.

 

It depends on which story you listen to; my understanding is that Apple (and not just Jobs) decided that, first and foremost, Apple is a Hardware Company. Their job: sell computers (or mp3 players ), not software.

I agree with you, but I'd also say that the security models themselves -- i.e., of Mac OS X/Unix and Windows -- have a lot to it.

An example:

• When you log in as Administrator in Windows, any application you run -- whether intentionally, accidently, or background (i.e., potential spyware) -- runs with Administrator privileges.
  
  In other words, you're God with no airbags. There are some pretty significant security holes there.
• In OS X, whether you're an Administrator or not, any action that is potentially compromising or damaging -- viewing restricted files, deleting OS kernel directories, etc. -- requires you to re-authenticate.
  
  So if you accidently run a trojan -- say, disguised as a game -- that tries to infect your system with a virus, suddenly you will be presented with a dialog box asking for your Administrator name and password. Something a game should not be doing.

In short, security in OS X is based on what you're trying to do -- not who you are. It's a better model, I think -- though like any system, there are holes. They're just a lot smaller than the ones in Windows -- and a lot of that is due to the open-source basis that tripp pointed out.

 

IBM didn't create a clone market. The clone market was a product of Microsoft's doing, and it destroyed IBM in the PC business.

More than any other company Microsoft has dicked over IBM in their long history...

Apple doesn't want to create clones.. not back in the PowerPC days, not now in the x86 days because they realize that their strength is the whole package, and they can do hardware better, and software better, and get them to work together better...

 

Why is it that Apple has never been able to parlay (sp?) a quality product into market share. They're 2004 stats (for desktops) are really small at 2.88%. Granted it's growing but small considering how nice a package it is. Is it cost? Availability of software?

 

It also created competition and probably drove costs down. IBM not surviving the market wasn't MS's fault (even though MS trashed OS2/Warp publicly ans such). All of these machines were running DOS so that was a constant. IBM failed in that market because they didn't produce a product that anyone wanted. BTW, they still have a bigger market share in the desktop world than Apple according to MacWorld:

http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/03/20/ma...share/index.php

 

But that is the goal of Linus Torval.

The Linux community believes in "world-wide" platform. The problem now is that a lot of companies (knowing that have free programmers) are starting to use those codes and make improvements as "private property". Hence all these Linux related law suits.

 

It funny how you can map the history of GM vs MS. It seems that they are one in the same company in philosophy.

GM killed a lot of American car companies in its early days.
MS killing of their competitors through dirty means to be where they are today.

GM being statisfied as being #1 and innovation stops.
MS is #1 and OS still cannot be as advance as UNIX of 30 years ago. Only when they release their next OS is it a multi-threaded OS. :huh:

GM losing grounds to likes of Honda/Toyota, they have their marketing team spin doctors to put out negative reports about hybrid technologies.
MS losing grounds to Linux in the server market. MS funds research reports to claim how MS is better than Linux. How can your marketing team beat FREE? You lie..... :lol:

 

I'd say inertia, myself: having to learn a new interface (I'd argue it's a better one, but there is a learning curve), and the cost of buying new software for a different platform.

If you're basically happy with your Windows system, there's not much reason to change; and I think that's how a lot of people felt until recently. The amount of work/cost that has to go into virus protection / spyware protection / patching is getting to folks, I belive.

Cost of the machine (vs. a PC) is getting to be less of an issue, with the Mac mini; on the other hand, I think PC gaming is still a big pull for the Mac. How long that lasts, with game consoles plummeting in price, is questionable.

BTW, Mac does better on laptops than desktops; but it's still a minority share.

 

I dislike Microsoft because Bill Gates is the Antichrist.

... But seriously, I think MS software is trash. MS programs will crash Windows. Why should there ever be buffer overflow bugs? Why should any program be able to install itself on your computer without the OS asking you for permission? Why should a malware program be able to get permission to install itself by putting up its own misleading query, where clicking NO means yes? Why should a Sony CD be able to install a rootkit before asking permission, and why does the OS allow it to do so without the OS asking for permission itself? And why should any program be able to alter the code at the core of the OS???

Before DOS there was CP/M from Digital Research. The chaos of Windows platforms was not inevitable. If Digital Research, instead of Microsoft, had gotten the contract to provide the OS for the original IBM PC, the entire world of computing would be different today. CP/M was elegant, and it was clean. Granted, it was a tiny OS that ran in about 4 K on a 64 K machine. But the whole programming philosophy was reliable.

Bill Gates is a marketing genius but a programming imbecil. That's why I hate Microsoft.

I use Windows because so many of the applications I want to run are only available for Windows. And I'll admit that XP is a lot better than its predecessors. But it's still unstable, unreliable, and unsafe.

And what perverted, malevolent, cross-eyed, smelly, scurvey, child-molesting moron invented the Registry? For crying out loud! Bill Gates should be strung up by his heels and forced to eat boiled okra for allowing the Registry into Windows.

 

A rather interesting option will be available to you in about a year: buy an Intel based Mac. Then, run any Windows apps that aren't available in Mac versions within Virtual PC on your Mac... at full speed, because Virtual PC won't be emulating an Intel processor any longer.

And with Windows Vista, Microsoft is ditching the registry... and apparently going back to .ini files. (Though in XML, which is generally good.)

 

Yeah, I was wondering when it was gonna happen. The writing was on the wall when they started talking up the .NET framework. It was funny listening to them talking about the end of dll hell when they're the ones that created the bloody problem in the first place. Good for them. At least they're not clinging to it.

 

I've gone to several MSDN conferences and TechNet conferences here in Winnipeg. I seem to recall the same promise from the .Net spiel. Matter of fact, I still have the Visual Studio 2005 Team System Beta 2 somewhere in my desk at the office.

I mean, come ON, I do embedded development for industrial sensors, valve positioners, things like that. I use RTOS's that I KNOW are reliable and proven. But the conferences are a good excuse to ditch "real" work for a half day or so.

I've said it before, if Microsoft tries to introduce a line of industrial sensors and valves running Windows, I retire. As Daniel suggested, it will be a sure sign of the AntiChrist.

 

Daniel:

R.I.P. Gary Kildall

If there had been no Bill Gates, no Microsoft, and if IBM had been a bit more patient with Digital, the world would have been a far different place now.

On the topic of Digital, remember the VAX? The first 32 bit machine? How about VMS? When I started off in industrial process control and DCS, there was always a VAX in the background running everything.

jay

 

This was back in march. Halo effect anyone?

Moreover, IBM doesn't own their PC business, either desktop or their Thinkpad line... anymore.
Lenovo has a few years with the IBM Thinkpad and Thinkcentre names, but that's it. A far cry from what it used to be and what it used to represent..

 

As they say, "under new management." The mid-90s were an illustration of how utterly incompetent the management of Apple was... but after 1997, all of that was swept away, and not many of those people responsible for all those blunders are still around.

On the software front, the Mac is doing much better right now. Mac OS X gave the whole platform the shot of adrenaline it needed, and it attracted a lot of really great developers to the platform because of the interesting environment...

Now there are really elegant Mac applications now from small developers and big developers alike.

And it ties into open source, once again. Apple has made the Mac a very good platform for open source enthusiasts to jump into...

The whole OS isn't open source, but because of its BSD heritage, it's a familiar UNIX environment that behaves in much the same way... and it has Fink.

Many open source projects have been ported to Mac OS X and run well. I consider mac os x to be a richer development environment than Windows especially for young budding enthusiasts... you don't have to buy a copy of Visual Studio to get started... the xcode IDE comes free with every Mac, and you can download new versions gratis as well.

 

A few friends of mine run a few VAXen servers with (Open)VMS that you can log into to play around. See here

 

Digital Research = CP/M = west coast

Digital Equipment Corp = VAX = east coast

We're talking about two different "Digital" companies here. (And MS still sucks.)

 

And what has Apple desktop share jumped to? I saw a prediction of 5% market share. The rate of change is great, the absolute value leaves something to be desired.

Look I have an Emac running OS X and I've been impressed with it. I love being about to open up a terminal window and run BSD commands. It's a great blend of intuitive/useful GUI and power equipement. Hell, we use the thing as our dev mysql server and juke box. It's great. Plus, we need it to test our HTML against the mac versions of several browsers. It's a nice package. The fact remains that they're a small chuck of the market. I honestly hope that changes. I'd probably have switched to linux by now, frankly, except that I really like Macromedia's stuff (not available in linux) and the games. Gotta have the games. Right now linux and apple just aren't options on that front. :angry: