OSX VS Windows VS Linux

General Discussion
41

How did I get pegged as an Apple guy? You know I built my own rig, am an avid AMD supporter and stated in at least 2 threads which you quoted my replies on that I don’t care for Apple.

This is impossible to test except on Mac machines. MacOS depends on a module on the motherboard to be able to run on a system hence why there are Macs or Hackintosh builds which are illegal. Once you’ve paid the premium it doesn’t matter in my opinion.

I’m not a Mac fan specifically because they’re so tightly locked down. If I buy something I want control over it. If I want to overclock my CPU it should be my choice. If I want to swap out my motherboard or graphics card it’s my machine, let me do it. I hate that stupid genius bar and just the idea gets me frustrated.

Linux is alright I’ve had some experience with Linux machines. They’re stable and perform well, the coding is balanced and does not prefer particular components just whatever gets the job done. The problem comes in when drivers fail because then things need to be fixed manually and it’s a pretty big bother. Besides that kudos to the idea, I suppose.

Windows is ok as well. My gripe with Windows is they’re a psuedo-monopoly and because of that they can easily abuse their power which they have and will continue to do. Oh my what a surprise that directX 11.1 is now Windows 7 supported because Mantle was announced. They weren’t forcing the market to be stagnant to force customers into an OS. Legacy support is the only thing keeping them on top, because corporations can’t have all their data go down the tubes because it’s not supported. It’s complete crap when company’s operate that way and the only reason they can and will continue to is because they own such a large share of the market. In fact their operations are not unlike Intel (read up on that if you want corporate abuse history). The reason I say they’re ok is that their product works and there’s nothing we can do about it. Even if I said no more to Windows and went to Linux I’m throwing away 2/3 to 3/4 of my steam library (247 games). That’s not exactly something easy to walk away from. Windows is not perfect it’s just all we have as gamers, and this is why I avoided this thread. Having a rig to me should be about choice.

I want the day to come when I can say I choose my parts, I choose my OS, I choose my games and nobody can fault me for my choices but myself. To recap I don’t care for Apple because of lockdowns, Linux is too involved, and I don’t care for being chained to Microsoft.

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42

My bad.

This is here to fill the character limit.

43

Uh huh. And by what measure is this, processing power, 3G connectivity rates, 4G connectivity rates, what?

If you mean processing, then I know why you might be confused. There is a part in this article that covers an event where CNET claimed it to be twice as fast. However someone challenged this and the S3 turns out to actually be faster.

If you mean 4G, whilst this is difficult to test as 4Gs a bit unreliable, tests have been attempted. Here, looking through about 10 results on speed tests on both devices, the S3 proved to be more consistently good and had a far higher maximum speed. Now I know not to fall into the trap of assuming this therefore makes it faster, but despite not seeing the actual times due to the video not zooming in on them, I do get the gist that the S3 was a better performer.

Of course, having said all that, whilst searching for the speed comparisons for 3G, I stumbled across a different set of results. Downloading the iPhone won marginally, whilst uploading the S3 almost doubled the iPhone’s score. Though download is more frequent and therefore more important, with such a stomping in uploading, I’d argue the two phones were balanced on these results.

In fact, after that I couldn’t find any speed comparisons for 3G anywhere. So I’m doubtful you’ll have done so and been referring to 3G upload/download speed, but I don’t actually know. :stuck_out_tongue:

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44

Ok, just to get this clear…

This is a thread about DESKTOP OSes, not MOBILE OSes. However, feel free to discuss those, too. I’m just sayin’, though.

45

Well, it is aimed more toward desktop OS’s, hence why the title is OSX and not iOS, but I broke that rule myself with my first post at the start. But it was put there to back up my point. But as you said, mobile OS convo is welcome here too.

Either way, being hypocritical is fun.

46

Hypocracy is the hypocritical way of saying that hypocrites are hypocritically hypocritical, hence why they are hypocritically hypocritized as hypocrites.

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47

What the…

48

Please read anything you’re going to reply to, I specifically said that it was free since 10.9, you linked to 10.6 which is several years old and I wasn’t even aware you could still buy it, 10.9 is free.

So your $800 profit, remember as well that they have to pay for things like assembly and the warranty (at least 2-3 years worth of it over here), presumably assembly in particular isn’t that easy given your comments about not being aware how they could even fit the parts in a space that small, it would make it quite hard to judge the actual cost of parts as well, on one hand they’d get them cheaper but on the other they likely need a lot of less standard stuff to make them fit in the tiny space. I’m not sure what tax laws are like in different countries either but here in Australia you’d have around $180 being tax which would lower them to around 35% of every dollar as profit giving some leeway, that’s not that extreme at all, the government has taxes higher than that here.

Stop looking at absolute values as well and start looking at percentages or I’ll have to start drawing up examples of why it’s so moronic and I’d rather not have to care, if you make $100,000 on a $100,000,000 dollar item it’s clearly not much even though $100,000 is a lot but at the same time who cares if someone sells you something for $0.50 that cost $0.005, it’s only 50 cents why’s it matter. Some things just suit better as relatives not absolutes, statistics is one of those, a light year doesn’t mean anything to you in terms of distance but something like 9.8 million years of driving at 110km/h might, of course those numbers are so big a sense of scale is near impossible but hopefully my point was conveyed.

So how exactly did you get from “Apple is changing a slogan about security” as per the article to “Macs are becoming less secure”, they might honestly have just changed the marketing they’re both true and nearly exactly the same so I wouldn’t take that as a sign of bad security because they stopped mentioning it can’t get windows viruses. As for the other thing it mentions, the mass malware attack that got publicity, it was a flaw with third party software not with apple software, unless they’ve been the developers of java for the last couple of years without me realising it.

49

I am detecting a very hostile tone in your response that is not necessary, nor welcome. Now, lets see what we’ve got here.

You are right, the OSX Mavericks version is free, if you are upgrading to it from a system that is CURRENTLY running a version of OSX. If I want to install OSX onto my desktop right now, I need to buy it first. I can’t upgrade something that I don’t own. Also, you act like it is some generous act of them to make an update free. Most updates are usually free if you already payed for the software. Windows 8.1 was a free update, so apparently that means Windows 8 is free? No.

I did remember this, I specifically recall saying:

On the topics of Warranties, lets take a look at their warranty policy:

So, you get one year free warranty, but then after that you pay for the warranties, not apple. As for the 90 days phone service, I find that to be bogus. I have yet to own a product from any company that offers phone service, that will deny me phone service because I am no longer under a coverage plan.

I wasn’t aware that we were looking at percent values here. Sorry to have gotten you so worked up about it. [quote=“Xavion, post:48, topic:3800”]
So how exactly did you get from “Apple is changing a slogan about security” as per the article to “Macs are becoming less secure”
[/quote]

As for that bit, I don’t really know how to respond other than providing a bit more proof. So here you go, just take a look at this link, this link, especially this link, and finally this link. If that wasn’t enough proof for you, then it’s going to be a long night for me.

As for the initial link I posted, I did mention that:

That’s all I got for you.

50

Interesting how nobody has brought up the point that viri are a business. The more you steal the better it is for you. The lack of Mac viruses is directly related to the lack of Mac users. It has nothing to do with security. Hence the lack of Linux viruses too :gasp:.See the PWN2OWN event in which ALL operating systems get schooled by security teams exposing chinks in the armor. An OS is like your house. You can put up whatever amount of defense you want. If you have something someone wants bad enough you will NEVER be safe, end of story. I don’t find the lack of viruses on Mac to be an advantage. There are Mac viruses and they do infect Macs. I would say ask your precious genius bar, but I fear they would just confiscate your Mac for a week and tell you all is fine. @LordNevs apology for this being a reply to your post but I feel it was something that needed to be said.

51

All is well, you provide a good argument. But now we are even for me calling you out as an apple supporter. Haha.

52

Windows wanted to charge me $100.00 for asking where to redownload the Microsoft Office Suite that I already paid for, they didn’t because I was still under “warranty” but they didn’t even tell me I was going to be charged until 40 mins later.

I’m not sure if you need to pay for regular Apple updates. That doesn’t seem right. I’m sure updates are free but someone who owns an OSX machine would need to confirm.

I’m actually curious now does time tick down if Apple has your product for repair? Like if the hold it for a week do I get that week put back on the end? If not we should start a universal movement to get that kind of thing everywhere. Warranty periods should only tic down while you have the device to use. Otherwise it’s in the manufacturer’s hands and OF COURSE if they mess it up they need to fix it. Who’s with me on this? @Xavion @LordNevs @ManOfRet @Valiance @mderond

53

I have absolute doubt to the legitimacy of this. I don’t know where you got customer support from, but it definitely was not microsoft. I not only got phone support, but also remote connection support while I was under no warranty from MS.

54

You can doubt it all you want but that’s what my experience was. I called the support phone number on the Microsoft store for assistance getting a link to download MS Office Suite. We immediately established that yes I did pay for the product and it took 40 minutes for me to get a link to where I can download it where I was informed that because it had still been 6 months since purchase I did not have to pay $100.00 for the phone call. That was 2 months ago. You don’t have to believe it, it happened to me. Besides what motive what I have to lie about something like that? I have shown no deceit in my past and feel that this

is an unwarranted assault on my character. Please read the paragraph under Fees where the price seems to have gone up since my last encounter.

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/profsup/en-au

I expect an apology for such libel sir as I don’t believe I’ve done anything to deserve that remark.

55

OS X is version 10 of MAC OS, however for the past several years they’ve made versions of OS X. The first version of it was released the same year as XP but since then they’ve had versions of it instead of major version numbers like windows has had. 10.9 is the new version just like all the other ones were, Snow Leopard (10.6), Lion (10.7), and Mountain Lion (10.8) were the preceding three. If you’re not running os x on apple hardware you’ve probably screwed somewhere and it violates the eula to run it on non-apple hardware so they shouldn’t need to support you. It is free, the comparison to windows would be if windows 8 was free but it needed to be downloaded with a windows only program, how people would complain do you think that they need a windows computer to run the new version of windows?

56

To start, I said nothing that I could see in there that could be offensive. If you take that much offense to the suggestion that someone doesn’t believe you, welcome to earth, not much I can do for you.

Again, being a little dramatic. All I said was that I didn’t believe you. I shall save my apologies for actual mistakes. Sorry for being so harsh, but this is a little ridiculous, and I honestly hope you are being sarcastic like our good friend Steve often is.

Those fees apply to you if you are setting up a contract. So, if you purchase 500 MS Office copies and want to set up a support plan in case some of your workers have an issue, you pay those fees. But as an individual, no way in hell are you going to be charged that much. Why on earth would MS charge MORE MONEY for customer support for one person than they would charge for the product itself.

I don’t know, people will say crazy things to back an argument up, and unfortunately in a situation like this. Once you are in with a lie, there isn’t any going out.

Don’t take anything personally though, that isn’t the point of anything I am typing. It’s a debate, not a roast. In my book, we are all buds. Except @ManOfRet of course, him and I are worst enemies.

EDIT: Upon further research, I did find that the MS answer desk’s site does a poor job of separating it’s corporate support with it’s single user support. Your agent may have claimed that you may need to be charged if you were working on a business version of the software. But the fact that you were charged makes no sense. They shouldn’t have even had your credit card or bank information.

57

I didn’t say they charged me.

I’d rather do without software I paid for than be charged a fee on top of my purchase. They tried to charge me $100.00 but because it was under “warranty” they claimed they waived the fee. Not that I would have accepted that in the first place.

I’ve never known a 100.00 support fee to be more than a $140.00 product.

No they don’t they apply to ALL Microsoft purchases. follow these steps:

Head to http://support.microsoft.com/
Note all the nice services this blankets (Skype, Windows Phones, Windows, IE, Office)
Head to the bottom and click services agreement in tiny letters towards the center.

Read this:
This Agreement for Microsoft Services (the “agreement”)is entered into by and between the entity ordering the services (“you”, “your” or “customer”) and the closest Microsoft affiliate located in your country or region, unless we designate otherwise in Section 9 below(“we,” “us,” or “our”). “Affiliate” means any legal entity that you or we own, which owns you or us, or which is under common ownership with you or us. “Ownership” means more than 50% ownership.

In this case I am the end user if I purchased Office Home & Student 2013, which is the service. The closest affiliate in this case is the Microsoft Store from which it was purchased located in North America, US my country and region which they have not designated otherwise in Section 9. The Affiliate (Microsoft Store) is more than 50% owned by Microsoft.

These blanket terms and conditions are standard practice. Just because you don’t read them does not mean they only apply to corporate.

You can also read this
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/microsoft-software-license-agreement-FX103576343.aspx

Which if you click the support link sends you right back to where I showed you, and read the Retail Limited Warranty, which only covers support for ONE YEAR. After which you are stuck with paying for support.

I honestly don’t understand why you can’t just admit you were incorrect in your information and accept my experience as true as I’ve done more than enough to back it up. Cover your ears and stomp your feet these terms still apply to you as well, if you’ve purchased any of their services.

Oh my goodness someone who had a similar experience to mine

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook_com/forum/osecurity-osafe/how-can-i-delete-my-hotmail-account-without-being/81664b53-e26e-4908-8cbe-5398d9c20267

but I suppose that was a corporate hotmail account. Yes I am legitimately upset.

58

I’m not sure, but I believe many companies do not extend your warranty after a repair. Often they give you something like 90 days of warranty on the specific repair.

Yeah, OSX updates are now free, after MS announced the 8.1 update would be free. I have a number of creditcard statements proving the previous OSX updates were not free.

To be fair previous versions of Windows were never free. Upgrading from XP to Vista to Windows 7 to Windows 8 would cost money.

In Apple’s favour: I have always found the princing for OS X updates quite fair as opposed to the pricing for Windows, which was more expensive. I guess this is offset by the hardware cost.

EDIT into another Wall of Text

What just struck me, is tha we don’t really get any proper answers to certain honest questions like:

and this:

This is a thing that I notice quite often when discussing OSX vs. Windows (usually not with Linux though). To me it often feels like people defending OSX have issues with real questions and dodge them by giving semi-aggreeive answers to the less important questions.

Maybe we (although I consider myself borderline neutral with a slight tendency towards Windows) are the same and we just don’t see that. If that’s the case please call me out as I truly am interested in the actual differences and not so much in a flame war.

To me there are three points that pull me towards Windows:

  • Usability: for me Windows is easier to use and therefore I am more productive on a Windows machine.
  • Work lock-in: most things I do to make a living require a Windows machine. I could use Mono on a Mac instead of .NET with Visual Studio, but that doe take more effort on my part, and business wise that would not be smart (spend more time and effort to earn the same amount of money).
  • Hardware price and openness: I can build a more powerfull and upgradeable Windows machine for less than a comparable Apple machine. And get to build it myself, which is fun!

I would love to see a couple of honest lists like these from OSX users.

It is not hard to admit that using a system is nothing more than a preference. It is not hard to admit that I simply cannot get used to OSX and therefore it is not efficient for me to work on it. Maybe everyone thinks I’m daft because of it, but I don’t really care.

59

I’ve never held the belief that Apple devices are virus proof, are any software driven devices? However, in my experience of 30 years of computing and working with all manner of devices from Apple to IBM, Microsoft to Google, I’ve never had a virus ever on Apple’s OS.

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60

If only starting up and shutting down was the only thing we had to worry about eh

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