*PC*Mag.com reviewer loves OS X "Leopard"

[Darren Dirt]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2207556,00.asp

After three months with Apple's Mac OS X Leopard Version 10.5, I have three main things to say about it. First: Despite minor problems, it's by far the best operating system ever written for the vast majority of consumers, with dozens of new features that have real practical value?like truly automated backups, document and spreadsheet preview images in folders, and notes and to-do lists integrated into the mail program. Propeller-heads with IT know-how will no doubt hold up Linux as the better choice, and Vista has its devotees as well (and will probably have more when SP1 is widely available), but, for the average user, Leopard is the most polished and easiest to use OS I've tested. Second: Leopard started out with a generous share of first-version glitches, but almost all of them have now been resolved by the second of two automated updates, which brings Leopard up to version 10.5.2. Finally, Leopard is extravagantly overdressed for the jobs that it's designed to do, and its pervasive eye-candy starts out looking dazzling but soon becomes distracting. Fortunately, from the beginning, the OS started out with options that let you put it on a low-eye-sugar diet, and the latest update has even more.

...

Leopard again raises the question of whether to switch from Windows to a Mac. I've found Vista to be a major disappointment that tends to look worse the more I use it. I still use Windows XP for getting serious work done in long, complicated documents. But OS X is easier to manage and maintain and I vastly prefer OS X to Windows for Web-browsing, mail, and especially for any task that involves graphics, music, or video. Leopard performs all such tasks even better than previous versions did?and Leopard is the only OS on the planet that works effortlessly and intuitively in today's world of networked computers and peripherals. Leopard is far from perfect, but it's better than any alternative, and it's getting harder and harder to find good reasons to use anything else.

(Watch the Mac OS X Leopard Video Review)

[Cova]

Uhh..., is there a reason for this thread though?  Did you have some opinion on Leopard or on this article that you wanted to share?  Or maybe you're just trolling for a Mac VS PC religious battle?  I dunno..., so I'm just gonna give my quick opinion on the part of the article that was posted here (which happens to be my standard opinion on anything Mac related)

Going on the basis that virtually everyone is currently a windows user (if you're not, then you're probably also not considering switching OS's anyways) there's really only two options that you can consider moving to - Mac or Linux.  Given those options, it seems to me that Linux is by FAR the superior choice for the following reasons:

1. Cost of switching - besides linux being free, it'll also run on your current hardware.
2. Flexibility - again, linux will run on anything, MacOS runs on Apple hardware only (yes, linux will run on the apple hardware too, including the PowerPC stuff)
3. Software availability - Far more software available for linux than MacOS, and almost all of that software is free on the linux side too.  And with wine you can run most windows software.  (note: virtualization layers to run windows software on windows eg. parallels or vmware is identical between MacOS and linux, and also doesn't solve the problem of getting rid of windows)
4. Ease of use - coming from a windows environment, linux works the same way (right down to the same shortcut keys working if you tell the KDE first-time wizard to make it windows-like), but MacOS is very un-windows-like.  MacOS may be easy to use for apple people, but it's a big change (hence hard to use) from windows.  Or if you like MacOS, you can make linux work like that too.
5. Customizability - Everything in linux seems to have more options for customizing/skinning than most commerical software.  And for advanced users, you can just edit the code if needed.
6. Security - I believe 100% that the only reason Mac's don't have more security problems is because they don't have a big enough market-share to be a target.  I'll take an open-source and well-audited piece of software over a closed-source "the vendor says its secure" piece of software any day.
7. Ease of switching - to just try MacOS, you have to go buy a mac.  To try linux, you download an ubuntu (or other) LiveCD, and reboot - and if you don't like it you take the disk out and boot back to windows.
8. Freedom - I just don't trust commercial OS's to let me be in control of my own computer anymore.  The MPAA/RIAA/etc. all have far too much influence on Apple and MS, and DRM is being pushed down to the roots of their OSs.


I can probably think of more if I wanted to sit here and ponder it - but I think thats enuf for now.

[Darren Dirt]

not trolling or flamebaiting, just sharing. It's PCMag.com, not AppleFanboy.com, so I thought it was noteable. I linked to the full multi-page review for anyone interested, anyone not interested can /ignore.

[Thorin]

not trolling or flamebaiting, just sharing. It's PCMag.com, not AppleFanboy.com, so I thought it was noteable. I linked to the full multi-page review for anyone interested, anyone not interested can /ignore.

PC Magazine has been reviewing Macs for quite a while.  Truthy, because Wikipedia says so:

Today, the magazine runs about 150 pages an issue. It has adapted to the new realities of the 21st century by reducing its once-standard emphasis on massive comparative reviews of computer systems, hardware peripherals, and software packages to focus more on the broader consumer-electronics market (including cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, digital cameras, and so on). Since the late 1990s, the magazine has taken to reviewing Mac software and hardware, which at one time would have been unthinkable.

On PC Magazine's website the review archive shows they've been reviewing Macs *at least* since 2000.  Basically, they realized that PC stands for Personal Computer not Microsoft Windows, and a Macintosh is as much a Personal Computer as an IBM PC clone.

Did you not know that?  If you didn't and thought PC Magazine was all about Intel-based desktops running Windows, then I understand why you posted this thread.  But if you did know that, then I hope you understand why Cova would consider it trolling...

[Darren Dirt]

Did you not know that?  If you didn't and thought PC Magazine was all about Intel-based desktops running Windows, then I understand why you posted this thread.

DING! We have a winner. *half-serious shame-triggered head-hanging*

[Darren Dirt]

In advance, no offense intended for Cova or anyone else, but the following is what my brother emailed me in response to this discussion, and it offers an ideal perspective, i.e. an old "hardcore" Windows fish who somehow got hooked into the Apple culture net, and is now very glad he did...

The whole point of the article is that there is less and less of a reason to stick with Windows.  For the average user, any form of Linux is far from being easy to use and figure out.  It is not even close to prime time.

OS X is fully Unix certified... any X11 / Unix app will run on it including Big Iron apps.  Linux is a hodgepodge of various distros that end up being a very messy patchwork quilt.

I believe OS X brings the best of both worlds.  A well-designed custom GUI shell on top of a solid, stable, and open source base -- the Darwin Project.

http://developer.apple.com/opensource/overview.html
http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html

Based on what I've seen... it is the ultimate solution for the vast majority of people as the applications (especially the iLife suite and the Pro Tools) are designed from the user's point of view and work very well.  The underlying OS is rock solid as well -- the lack of viruses and spyware is not because of a small user base but a well-designed tried and true security model.

Windows share is dropping.. OS X share is growing at unheard of rates... Linux is stagnant -- strong on server-side apps, but weak deskside.

I switched to the Mac platform after dabbling with Linux and suffering with Windows for many years.  I will never go back to PCs.

<Rant mode off>

Post this if you wish.

7. Ease of switching - to just try MacOS, you have to go buy a mac.  To try linux, you download an ubuntu (or other) LiveCD, and reboot - and if you don't like it you take the disk out and boot back to windows.

I suggest people have an open mind and maybe spend an hour or two at WestWorld before making blanket statements such as Cova's response.

PS: if anything he said is factually incorrect, a news article or two might be useful for his education, but beyond that don't expect me to defend/interpret anything he said above... I'm stuck with Windoze and I try not to let that reality bubble to my conscious awareness too often.

[Thorin]

Maybe he should've posted that himself, then?  If he bothers to read these threads, then why not get an account so he can post?

And I'm pretty sure that if you're going to post something like that, you gotta be willing to defend it.  Otherwise you're as bad as a politician.

[Darren Dirt]

Dirtman bored. Thread completed. Sorry for any inconvenience.

[Cova]

not trolling or flamebaiting, just sharing. It's PCMag.com, not AppleFanboy.com, so I thought it was noteable. I linked to the full multi-page review for anyone interested, anyone not interested can /ignore.

Actually the source of the article had nothing at all to do with my trolling comment - I started my post that way because I really did have NO IDEA why you started the thread.  You didn't type a single word of your own in it, not even a "You should check this out" or "For people considering switching..." or anything at the top.

And since no-one except Darren's brother really responded to my post, I'll respond to his e-mail.  Though I agree with Thorin that if he wants to participate in the discussion, he should register himself an account.

The whole point of the article is that there is less and less of a reason to stick with Windows.  For the average user, any form of Linux is far from being easy to use and figure out.  It is not even close to prime time.

Significantly out-dated information - for non-computer people clicking the menu-button in the bottom-left corner, clicking the Firefox icon, and typing facebook.com into the address bar (if its not already set as homepage) is pretty much identically easy to do.

OS X is fully Unix certified... any X11 / Unix app will run on it including Big Iron apps.  Linux is a hodgepodge of various distros that end up being a very messy patchwork quilt.

Uhh..., lots of errors there, I don't even know where to start.  I'll just leave it at many linux apps simply won't run on MacOS, I've heard it's not even easy to get X configured on MacOS.  And while there are many linux distros out there, only a few are commonly used for desktop usage, and those that are targeted for desktops are all converging on a single set of standards - www.freedesktop.org.

I believe OS X brings the best of both worlds.  A well-designed custom GUI shell on top of a solid, stable, and open source base -- the Darwin Project.

http://developer.apple.com/opensource/overview.html
http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html

Based on what I've seen... it is the ultimate solution for the vast majority of people as the applications (especially the iLife suite and the Pro Tools) are designed from the user's point of view and work very well.  The underlying OS is rock solid as well -- the lack of viruses and spyware is not because of a small user base but a well-designed tried and true security model.

Uhh..., i wouldn't consider the security model to be "tried and true" due to the fact that they've never had to handle a major attack.  And the lack of attack isn't due to the lack of security holes, as Apple does release many security updates for their OS on a pretty regular basis.

Windows share is dropping.. OS X share is growing at unheard of rates... Linux is stagnant -- strong on server-side apps, but weak deskside.

I switched to the Mac platform after dabbling with Linux and suffering with Windows for many years.  I will never go back to PCs.

<Rant mode off>

Post this if you wish.

Got data to back up those market-share rates.  Yes, Apple's profits have been doing very well lately, and it's due mostly to iPod's and the iTunes music store.  Since Vista turned out so horribly some people have started switching to Mac, but I wouldn't call the changover an "unheard of rate", nor would I say Linux is stagnant on the desktop - Dell has been doing quite well with their Ubuntu PC's and is continually expanding their line of linux-based computers.

7. Ease of switching - to just try MacOS, you have to go buy a mac.  To try linux, you download an ubuntu (or other) LiveCD, and reboot - and if you don't like it you take the disk out and boot back to windows.

I suggest people have an open mind and maybe spend an hour or two at WestWorld before making blanket statements such as Cova's response.

And I would counter that it takes a lot more than an hour or two to compare OS's.  A person who's only ever used windows before won't even be used to the Mac UI in that amount of time, let alone have been able to try any serious work/play with it, or test compatibility with any existing hardware they have (digital camera, printer, scanner, etc. since obviously the in-the-case hardware has to be Mac specific).

[Lazybones]

1. Cost of switching - besides linux being free, it'll also run on your current hardware.

- Other than numerous periferals such as some multi function printers, webcams, etc that do not have linux drivers or complete drivers. Not to mention the complete lack of support from the manufature if you are not running on a supported OS.

2. Flexibility - again, linux will run on anything, MacOS runs on Apple hardware only (yes, linux will run on the apple hardware too, including the PowerPC stuff)

It also runs on toasters and PDAs, that doesn't make it great as a desktop os.

3. Software availability - Far more software available for linux than MacOS, and almost all of that software is free on the linux side too.  And with wine you can run most windows software.  (note: virtualization layers to run windows software on windows eg. parallels or vmware is identical between MacOS and linux, and also doesn't solve the problem of getting rid of windows)

Finding QUALITY feature complete equivalent native apps to those on Windows / Mac OS is hard. Find me a linux IM client that supports any of the video or audio features MSN messenger or google Talk.. I don't remember if there is a working AIM client. Most linux clients support the text protocol and nothing more.

4. Ease of use - coming from a windows environment, linux works the same way (right down to the same shortcut keys working if you tell the KDE first-time wizard to make it windows-like), but MacOS is very un-windows-like.  MacOS may be easy to use for apple people, but it's a big change (hence hard to use) from windows.  Or if you like MacOS, you can make linux work like that too.

Although less common now linux apps suffer from inconstant UI dialogs and standards depending on what GUI library they where made with.. It isn't too bad if you stick with all Gnome apps or all KDE apps, but when you mix them it gets a little inconstant.

5. Customizability - Everything in linux seems to have more options for customizing/skinning than most commerical software.  And for advanced users, you can just edit the code if needed.

Customizations in is one of the issues for UI inconsistency. Supporting users with different window managers could be a nightmare.

6. Security - I believe 100% that the only reason Mac's don't have more security problems is because they don't have a big enough market-share to be a target.  I'll take an open-source and well-audited piece of software over a closed-source "the vendor says its secure" piece of software any day.

True

7. Ease of switching - to just try MacOS, you have to go buy a mac.  To try linux, you download an ubuntu (or other) LiveCD, and reboot - and if you don't like it you take the disk out and boot back to windows.

True, however if you get a mac and don't like Mac OS you can still run windows or linux on the same hardware.

8. Freedom - I just don't trust commercial OS's to let me be in control of my own computer anymore.  The MPAA/RIAA/etc. all have far too much influence on Apple and MS, and DRM is being pushed down to the roots of their OSs.

True

[Cova]

Ok - foreseeing that this nested quoting is going to be a mess while I reply here, I'm snipping everything that isn't needed as I go.

1. Cost of switching - besides linux being free, it'll also run on your current hardware.

- Other than numerous periferals such as some multi function printers, webcams, etc that do not have linux drivers or complete drivers. Not to mention the complete lack of support from the manufature if you are not running on a supported OS.

I meant that as the hardware inside the case - not peripherals.  Your MFP, webcam, etc. is just as likely to break moving to mac as to linux, and for that matter, is also likely to break just moving from XP to Vista.  But I find generally with linux, if the peripheral is popular, someone's written a linux driver for it.  If its not a popular peripheral, it probably works with XP and nothing else.

3. Software availability - Far more software available for linux than MacOS, and almost all of that software is free on the linux side too.  And with wine you can run most windows software.  (note: virtualization layers to run windows software on windows eg. parallels or vmware is identical between MacOS and linux, and also doesn't solve the problem of getting rid of windows)

Finding QUALITY feature complete equivalent native apps to those on Windows / Mac OS is hard. Find me a linux IM client that supports any of the video or audio features MSN messenger or google Talk.. I don't remember if there is a working AIM client. Most linux clients support the text protocol and nothing more.

Well I don't know if it supports any of the audio/video features as I don't use them, but I opened Kopete quick (the IM app included with KDE, which I do use on a daily basis) and it does have AIM support.  I suppose it depends on what type of app you're looking for - lots of audio/video stuff is written for Mac, Widows definitely has the advantage if you're looking for games, and linux typically does very well with server or development stuff.  For 90% of users though, Firefox + OpenOffice fills their needs.

4. Ease of use - coming from a windows environment, linux works the same way (right down to the same shortcut keys working if you tell the KDE first-time wizard to make it windows-like), but MacOS is very un-windows-like.  MacOS may be easy to use for apple people, but it's a big change (hence hard to use) from windows.  Or if you like MacOS, you can make linux work like that too.

Although less common now linux apps suffer from inconstant UI dialogs and standards depending on what GUI library they where made with.. It isn't too bad if you stick with all Gnome apps or all KDE apps, but when you mix them it gets a little inconstant.

Since the beginning of the freedesktop.org project, this has been getting much better.

5. Customizability - Everything in linux seems to have more options for customizing/skinning than most commerical software.  And for advanced users, you can just edit the code if needed.

Customizations in is one of the issues for UI inconsistency. Supporting users with different window managers could be a nightmare.

Anything skinnable on any OS typically has UI inconsistencies - and it bothers me a lot more on windows where I'm used to better consistency.  Besides which, the point of customizing is usually to be inconsistent (aka to be unique), and so I don't really consider inconsistency to be an argument against customizability - being unique isn't for everyone, and no-ones forcing you to customize.

[Tom]

If you're wondering about kopete, it does AIM, Jabber, MSN, IRC, ICQ, Yahoo and others. And it supports video chat.