What would it take to supplant MS?

[Gesslar]

A very interesting article (link) I read at OS News about what Apple could do to win marketshare and desktopshare of the desktop OS.

[Khirmint]

Interesting article, and while it would definitely put a dent into MS sales I don't think the bulk of the corporate sales would be affected too much. So much other software is tied to MS.

[Gesslar]

It would depend, I think. IMHO, it would be easier for the corporate mindset to go with Apple at present than it would be to go with Linux or BSD because Apple's already -there- in terms of support offerings. And you can definately move client software over to either/or since it is now possible through FS/OSS to connect to Exchange.

As a follow-up, I offer an additional link: Of Course Macs are more Expensive

[Aristotle]

From the first article:

If this scenario occurred the market would truly be shaken, and for 18 months whoever bought a new computer could choose between a brand new MacOS X Tiger, or a 64 bit version of plain old Windows XP (originally released in 2001).

And you, what would you choose?

The author seems to think the answer to this question is MacOS X. He seems to think this is an obvious answer, too.

What the heck do I need a "new" OS for. Honestly, I could care less what the hell my OS is or how new it is. I care what software runs on it- period.

Newness is pretty irrelevant when it comes to software. Software doesn't "wear out", so newness is irrelevant. Hell, I wish I could use Office 97 without having compatibility problems with .doc or.xls files I might receive from others. Office 97 was far less bloated than newer versions.

When it comes to RUNNING software (especially games), Mac is still WAY behind, unfortunately. I would love to see them catch up if they could do it in a way that was transparent to the software developer. The real key is that they have to figure out a way to make it a trivial process for a software developer to port code to work on Mac as well as Windows.

From the second article:
Dell capitalizes on consumer confusion about PC specs too, by providing more choices than you can possibly absorb, or need.

By contrast, at Apple's online store, the choices are pared down to a very reasonable number, and the differences are very clear. There's still room for customizing your selection, but it doesn't take 3 pages like it does on the Dell site!

Does this guy have any clue about computers? No, it is not a good thing to have a pittance of options. Less options usually means you have to pay MORE to get everything you want, because the chance of there being an option for exactly what you want is tiny. Thus, to get everything you actually DO want, you probably have to pick an option that includes things you DO NOT want.

Here's a brief but relevant digression on this type of behavior. I have another PC-using friend who wanted to do some high-end video and audio editing with a new PC. He wandered into a store selling Windows PC's and walked out with a $3,000-plus desktop system with all the bells and whistles. Then it sat in his house for a year, and he still hasn't figured out how to do basic audio and video editing, let alone the advanced stuff. As I told him, what he wanted to do could be done with your average G5 iMac system for half that price, and he would have been almost instantly productive to boot.

I hate absurdly biased Mac zealots. The guy picks ONE type of computer use for which the Mac/Apple is expressly designed to excel, and then treats it like it is a general example. Very disingenuous.

And what if the example was someone who paid $3,000 for a gaming PC? What is your Mac solution to that, eh?

My shopping experiment does take into account something that for some reason a lot of reviewers who attempt this comparison don't think is important: A computer is not just a piece of hardware. It is also software. Apple systems are loaded with high-class, extremely useful software that you just don't get in a Windows system, and I added a few things to my Dell choices to make them roughly comparable to the Apple.

Oh my god. The gross bias continues. So he is going to once again assume the person buying the PC is going to do the things that the Apple is designed for, and assume the PC buyer would purchase exactly the type of software the Apple user gets for free. This guy is a riot.

But clearly, to be comparable, you need to get a PC with Windows XP Professional, which, by the way, Dell loudly recommends throughout your shopping trip.

No you don't. Most people don't need any of the features Professional has that Home doesn't.

Support options at Dell were extremely complicated, but I tried to make selections that corresponded to Apple's much easier-to-understand support options.

Good lord. Couild this jack ass involve any more vagueries to his comparison? He is going out of his way to find tricky ways to add cost to the PC option. Ridiculous.

One last thing. Throughout the week I spent researching and configuring these systems, Dell seemed to change their prices every single day. It was impossible to nail down a consistent price... even the prices of the options seemed to change, and were even sometimes different from system to system. Contrast that with the Apple store, where you know what the prices are and can be sure they will be the same tomorrow as today.

That's a Dell gripe that I certainly agree with. But he was supposedly comparing PCs to Apples, so a vendor specific gripe like this is inappropriate.

Also, the guy's claim that Apple chips are faster per GHZ got debunked in the comments in numerous places. One example:

As others have already mentioned, there are quite some inaccuracies in this article. Statements like "a Dell laptop processor speed of 1.67 is roughly equivalent to an Apple processor speed of 1.0 ghz" are just nonsensical. A Pentium 4 is slower than a G4 per ghz, but a Pentium M or an Athlon are just as fast, if not faster. For a more balanced comparison, consult
http://www.systemshootouts.org/
and see
http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html.
Posting obvious falsehoods just hurts the overall credibility of the article.

Some other places he got busted:

First, there's always a weird discount with our friend Dell, or a free LCD screen. So if you decline the 'free 17" LCD,' then of course that makes the Dell look like a lot more, unless you add $200 to the Mac mini for a crap LCD.

And adding Photoshop Elements? That's $100 right there ... and you can't seriously tell me that iPhoto has the same functionality as Photoshop Elements! There are plenty of freeware Windows progs (like Photoshop Elements Starter Edition) that cover the iPhoto base.

And how can you put a 15-month sub to Norton on the Dell side, but not the Mac? I mean, Norton does make a Mac version. Yeah, I know, I don't actually run antivirus on my Macs either (although I know people who do), but then again, you don't have to run it on your PC either, or you can use excellent freeware antivirus like AVG or clam.

Look, this is extremely flawed, for reasons others have pointed out, but what really gets my damn goat is all the software you added on to the Dell system. All your comparisons, Apple wins at most by 127 dollars. Take away all the added software you put on, the Dell will win every time. And guess what? I dont WANT any of the softare you added on, and neither would most people. There are many FREE anti virus programs for Windows that work better than the crap offered by Norton or McAfee, but instead you chose to add that on to almost every system.

And then you add word perfect... MS money.. etc, without taking into account, who the hell would actually want those and buy them from Dell? Sure, some would. But most wouldnt. I think you just kept adding on software until the Dell was around $100 more expensive to "prove" your point, when in fact you have no idea if anyone would actually want any of that software.

And look at the drivel where this bozo tries to explain why he piles on hundreds of dollars of bullshit software onto the PC:

Oh, and I certainly wouldn't have chosen Photoshop Elements for the Mac Mini if Dell had offered Paint Shop Pro during checkout. But for some reason, Dell didn't. So I took something that was superior (in some ways) to iPhoto. Big deal, the Mac Mini's still got GarageBand, iMovie, and iDVD on its side. Those of you who could care less about making movies, music, or DVD's oought to buy a Mac just for the experience of how easy those programs are to use.

Aha. We should use them just because they are so great to use. It sounds more to me like this guy uses them for fun since his Mac doesn't run any games.

One of the strengths of the PC platform is that you CAN get heaps of software from so many different vendors that you don't need to buy them at checkout from the same company that makes the computer.

I am really psyched that Apple is doing better. I am excited that their next 64 bit OS might have an x86 version.

If an Apple could run everything I want to run on my PC, I would happily switch, regardless of price, just to fight MSFT.

But idiotic Apple zealots are not helping things.

[Gesslar]

Originally posted by karahd
And you can definately move client software over to either/or since it is now possible through FS/OSS to connect to Exchange.

I meant client activities, like Exchange (an example).

[ejda]

When it comes to RUNNING software (especially games), Mac is still WAY behind, unfortunately.

I completely agree, as a matter of fact the ONLY thing connecting me (and probably many others) to windows is games.

[ejda]

Originally posted by Aristotle
Also, the guy's claim that Apple chips are faster per GHZ got debunked in the comments in numerous places. One example:

As others have already mentioned, there are quite some inaccuracies in this article. Statements like "a Dell laptop processor speed of 1.67 is roughly equivalent to an Apple processor speed of 1.0 ghz" are just nonsensical. A Pentium 4 is slower than a G4 per ghz, but a Pentium M or an Athlon are just as fast, if not faster. For a more balanced comparison, consult
http://www.systemshootouts.org/
and see
http://www.systemshootouts.org/processors.html.
Posting obvious falsehoods just hurts the overall credibility of the article.

I don' think their comparison of Pentium M and apple is very accurate. They have not actually tested the two CPU against each other, they are just evaluating them on paper. But anyway, the point is RISC design (aka apple) is SUPERIOR to CISC design (intel). CISC is one of the many *bad* designs which have been survived and pushed through marketing.

[Gesslar]

Need games to bring in userbase...need userbase to prompt game manufacturers to develop for Macs.

This is a silly cycle and it's bullshit. OS X has SDL and OpenGL libraries and has had since OS X came out. SDL and OpenGL are not developed by Apple but are perfectly acceptable game development platforms. In fact, I have a game that until recently I was playing called Vendetta. http://www.vendetta-online.com/. I hesitate to mention it at all since it is an MMPORG, but by the same token it is an EXCELLENT example of what can be done for cross-platform gaming.

BUT! Developers are getting stuck (and i would hazard a bet: voluntarily) in the sink-hole of proprietary DirectX libraries. Don't tell me that Vendetta Online have MORE resources to cross-compile THEIR game for some mysterious reason than any other LONG ESTABLISHED game developer. That's just crap.

ANY argument for any other platform than Windows that involves the lack of games being available is not due to those environments lacking the support for gaming or gaming development libraries. The libraries are there for developers to use, they're not hard libraries and in fact here are the differences that I found between the two:

From: http://www.toymaker.info/Games/html/directx_q_a.html

What are the differences between DirectX and OpenGL?
Firstly let me say that both are very useful to know. DirectX is a collection of APIs including APIs for graphics, music, audio, input, networking and multimedia. OpenGL is dedicated to graphics. So to compare the two makes no sense, we can however (tentatively) compare OpenGL with Direct3D:

• Most people find OpenGL easier to learn to start with
• OpenGL uses standard C interfaces.
• Direct3D has a steeper initial learning curve and is based on C++ interfaces (COM).
• It is more difficult using OpenGL to do lower level operations than Direct3D, however this does mean you are less likely to crash an OpenGL app than a Direct3D one.
• The vast majority of PC games are written using Direct3D.
• OpenGL can run on multiple platforms where as Direct3D is Windows based.
• Direct3D is updated frequently (every 2 months), allowing a standard interface to new features sooner than they appear in core OpenGL. However, OpenGL has an extension mechanism allowing immediate access to new features as graphics manufacturers create them, rather than having to wait for a new API version to appear.
• Direct3D has a lot of helper functions for common game coding issues (the D3DX set of functions)
• In terms of performance there is little difference between the two.

As you can see there are pros and cons for each and really you should just learn both and use whichever is appropriate. You could even, if you wish, use OpenGL for graphics and the other APIs of DirectX for input, networking etc. If you are looking for a career in the games industry I would advise you to learn DirectX.

And that last line is the MOST serious line in that entire quote. I would advise you to learn DirectX, too because otherwise you might get left behind in the gaming world that is reserved for propietary graphics extensions.

So, guys, if the only thing that concerns you is games, then stick with Windows since it's really hard to not buy games from people who don't support cross-platform development: You wouldn't have anything to play.

[Gesslar]

Of course, the above was taken from a MS friendly site. From a different site, you would get slightly less MS slanted characteristics.

http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/openglvs.html

This tutorial gives you the characteristic differences between the two graphics systems in a convenient chart.

He does state that the differences might vary through time, though.

[Aristotle]

All good points, Karahd. I really wish game developers would not hitch their wagons to the Directx star. John Carmack has historically been one of the biggest supporters of OpenGL but one guy can't do it all.