“Apple recently released its second update to OS X ‘Leopard,’ and the latest version of its shiny operating system is now numbered 10.5.2. When I reviewed Leopard two days after its initial release I called it the best operating system ever made for the vast majority of users. I think that’s even more true now that 10.5.2 fixes some of the first-release glitches that annoyed me in 10.5 and in Apple’s first, quick, bug-fix update 10.5.1,” Edward Mendelson reports for PC Magazine.
“The biggest change in Leopard is that the Stacks features finally works the way it should—with custom folder icons and an option to display a list of files,” Mendelson reports.
“I buy a computer to run programs, not an operating system, so for me the most useful operating system is the one that runs the programs I need to use. The Mac has the advantage over Windows in just about every software category except word processing and spreadsheets. Word for Windows is smoother and more powerful than Word for the Mac, and for the times I need WordPerfect, Windows has that, too. The same applies to Excel: The Windows version outclasses the latest Mac version, which loses support for Visual Basic for Applications macro. If you’re a Windows user who doesn’t care much about word-crunching or number-crunching, though, it may be time to switch,” Mendelson reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “klapka” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: It’s been time to switch for quite some time now. If you need a certain Window application, you can always slum it and run Windows on your Mac either natively or via fast virtualization. No other PC sold today offers what an Apple Mac can offer.
theloniousMac and Cubert, I have felt and said for years that Apple IS OS X and OS X IS Apple.
What you’re buying when you buy a Mac versus what you’re buying when you buy a PC is the user experience. The user experience is NOT the pretty hardware (although that’s nice, too; just look at PCs). The second thing you’re buying with a Mac versus a PC is capability, which is an offshoot of the user experience. The third thing you’re buying in a Mac versus a PC is security. Because of it’s (now certified) Unix underpinnings, any Mac is inherently more secure than any PC, period.
User experience, capability, and security are all functions of the OS which, for our purposes, means OS X. For those reasons and more, just like Cubert, I don’t see Apple licensing all of that functionality to ANYone.
If you’ve noticed the last few years, the players on the other side have been dropping like flies: Compaq got swallowed whole by HP, Gateway is a shadow of its former self, IBM sold out of the PC game altogether to Lenovo, Dell should just STFU, shut down the company and give the money back to the shareholders, and M$ is rearranging deck chairs as we speak, even as they prepare to hit the sunken iceberg called a hostile Yahoo takeover.
Give it another year or two and who would be left for Apple to even license OS X to?!?
Food for thought.
Peace.
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Olmecmystic
I received the following email from our IT department in response to my request to be allowed to use my 15″ MBP as my primary system at work.
I Encourage you to pick holes in it for me so I can draft a response.
“In relation to you email seeking approval to use your Mac OSX laptop on the network I would like to inform you of the following:
· Currently QR’s Standard Operating Environment platform is Windows XP SP2. This has been customized to suit the needs of the QR business and has been branded as SOE version 7.
· A major component of the SOE is the backend server infrastructure that is used to support and maintain this SOE. Such services include patch management, File and folder redirection to name a few.
· I also agree that MAC OS X is a more secure operating system than windows XP SP2 in un-patched form. I disagree with you statement that no virus’s or malware have been seen for OS X at all. Currently there are at least 16 major vulnerabilities and exploits circulating the internet at this point in time. This is primarily due to the increased usage of OS X. By that I mean, as more users start using this platform the exploit writers start to take more of an interest in finding vulnerabilities and then developing exploits.
· QR has invested heavily in protections for the SOE and to this date network outages with this platform has been significantly lower than what other corporations of our size have experienced. (In the last 6 years we have only experienced 4 small outages due to security exploits with the greatest outage being a MS exchange outage of 5 hours)
· The work that you are performing on your Mac is QR work. All QR work should be performed on QR supplied equipment.
So based on the above I regret to inform yourself that your request to use you Mac laptop on the network is denied. Should you continue to use this laptop for QR work purposes and connect this to the network and it is detected actions such as disabling your user account will be performed.”
Why would the average consumer buy a Mac Pro & Photoshop Elements when an iMac w/iPhoto will handle 99% of what a consumer would want?
I just did that about a month ago and I don’t regret dropping my PC a bit. The iLife suite is amazing consumer-level software. Since getting the iMac my wife and I have uploaded tons of photos to flickr & done a bunch of editing & organizing with iPhoto, recorded & edited video in iMovie that we then uploaded to YouTube & made several DVDs for family members using iDVD. Which they were amazed by.
I don’t know of a single PCwith that capability out of the box.
When I bought my current Intel iMac (last November) I paid to have the machine downgraded to Tiger because I can’t afford the time and hassle while Apple gets a new operating system optimally running. So I actually still have the Leopard installation disc(s) that came with the computer.
Now over the last three months I’ve been waiting for a time to upgrade to Leopard. At this stage I still don’t think the time is quite right. Maybe a little longer to see how this latest upgrade pans out. And that’s the advice I’ve given yo my half a dozen switchers. They’re all running Tiger (as I am) and the last thing they need is any operating system led instabilities. That’s what they had with Windows and they don’t need any reminders of that situation.
Most pro guys don’t upgrade as long as what they have works.
Our designers run G5 towers with Tiger and will do until the benefits of upgrading justifies the cost. Their systems run Ps CS2 on PPC just fine. I did the Leopard thing myself because I have 3 systems worth of backup.
If you are a pro, you first ensure that everything is supported and usable before making a move up. Small case in point, I have 3 wedding albums to design, I’m not about to touch 10.5.2 until I get the all clear. Ps CS3e is 100% stable on 10.5.1.
@Walter Chillum
wait awhile longer if that suits you
But the vast majority of people , doing normal things , have no problem with leopard.
with any upgrade, do a full clone back up, so if you encounter problems, you can go back
If you are using a laptop, spaces is great!!
Stuart-
16 exploits, eh?
OOOOOHHHH!
How many windows VIRUSES are there?
200,000 +?
What’s the #?
@HotinPlaya,
I’ve been burned by early adoption of OS 8, and OS 9 and I’ll only recommend a switch when it’s absolutely safe to do so. OS 10.5.2 looks the goods but it’s still early days. Twice bitten once shy. My apologies for the misquote.
Stuart:
If you’re still checking this thread, good luck with this. I.T. people, in my experience, are inflexible powertrippers.
•Customization of the operating environment is irrelevant; they can optimize your computer to work within it as they would any other computer they would add to the environment if they know how (they probably don’t and won’t admit it) and aren’t too busy chasing viruses and crashes and other Widows issues.
•This is I.T. speak for setting up the network drives and so on. They make it sound like magic, but it’s just what I.T. people do. See the point above.
•There may be 16 exploits and vulnerabilites for OSX; there is actually only one known piece of malware, and it’s a trojan that the user has to actively load and approve. Your I.T. person is being disingenuous or is ignorant. An exploit or vulnerability does not equal a virus the way a match does not equal a forest fire. Mac OSX is inherently more secure than Windows; it’s not just that there are fewer users. Unix in not invulnerable but it is difficult to crack and even harder to hide malicious code in because it’s folder structure is transparent. Everything that runs in it has to be in a folder the administrator can easily see. Mac OSX ships completely closed and is invisible and virtually impenetrable on the net unless the user opens it or someone uses one of the aforementioned exploits. Meanwhile, there are constant new threats to XP SP2 despite the many patches to its spaghetti string of code. According to wildlist.org there are typically about 600 pieces of malicious code for Windows in any given month. These are fresh, updated pieces of malware and don’t count the tens of thousands that are old but still floating around.
•The fact that the company has spent a lot on the infrastructure is irrelevant to the discussion. If a Mac can work on it, and that’s the tool you want to use, you should be allowed to use it. Carpenters, bakers, teachers, business people, should be empowered to use the tools that work best for them. In my opinion, a computer is like any other tool in any other industry. Telling employes otherwise is to hinder their work.
•If this is company policy, you’re only hope is to get higher-ups to change the policy. Slip them articles like “Winn’s MacTel Total Cost of Ownership Analysis” or other articles found here at MDN about the superiority of the Mac hardware, OS, and XServe. It’s highly unlikely things will change (they haven’t in my district), but I’m pulling for you.
Chris
word processing? excel? who needs microsoft? google apps is way better, online, and free! if you need an installed version look up “open office”. i’ve tested it for mac. it’s very nice!