CAlvarez, Your response to my post is precisely the reason I was hesitant to reply in the first place. My response was edited to extract a different meaning that could be argued. I will not argue! Squeezing a tiny motherboard into a small box is not engineering. Quality engineering produces a more reliable machine. Period. I have marveled looking inside IBM Servers. I've been impressed with Sun products. I've never been impressed with a Dell, Compaq or even an Alienware!

Yes, even more than I originally thought. First off, it doesn't even take $1 to protect Windows from viruses. Spyware protection is likewise free, though you can *choose* to pay for either (and some paid products, like Norton AV, are inferior to the free ones). Actually the easiest spyware protection is to just not use IE.

When a significant portion of the population uses Macs, then the entire Mac world will be brought to its knees with viruses and spyware, since they aren't ready. As soon as it seems profitable, it will happen. Mac OS isn't immune to this.

If people are too stupid to put virus protection on their Windows machines, then they're going to be too stupid to understand the advantages of a Mac. If they understand both, then the "advantage" isn't much of one because they'll already be running protection.

I do give you something on the spyware; that's a big issue for many people. But again, the problem is in IE, not Windows per se, plus users who willingly click on FREE! FREE! FREE! executable files and infect their own machines. The same can and will happen in Mac OS as soon as there's enough market penetration to make it profitable.

Again, my intention was not to start a holy war. Nobody's minds will be changed. I've used both, I will continue to use both, and I have my fairly rational views toward both. My point is this:

If you're going to preach Mac, try to stick to easily provable things that will get users' attention.

I agree, but you're the one that argued based on visual cues. I don't care what it looks like inside. I've seen beautiful things that have huge performance and reliability problems (Italian motorcycles, British cars...).

This is just a silly discussion and no longer worth my time.

OS X is not immune. But it would/will be a lot harder to infect an OS X machine with viruses & spyware. The need for administrator authentication for system access goes a long way in making it harder. And the openness of the lower levels of the OS makes it easier to detect and remove such (currently hypothetical) malware. The Mac community's attitude and Apple's dedication to prompt security fixes also make malware propagation much harder.

Note that the argument that OS X isn't plagued with viruses merely due to its small market share is a specious one. The Apache web server is the most common web server, yet successful attacks on web servers are far more common with the Microsoft servers that have much smaller market share.

This forum is for Mac OS X experiences, not crossplatform speculation. Knock it off.

Thank you.

CAlvarez, well said.
 

You're right about the smoke-screen of hype that surrounds the benefits of being a mac user, partly due to the crazy devotion us mac-heads (yes, me included) show to our machines.

Since I stopped using Win98 and went up to XP, I generally have a similar number of crashes as on my G4 desktop (Panther). XP is pretty stable, but its security is shocking. That can be sorted out with a free firewall (see zonealarm) and with the help of freeware supplied by www.grc.com/freepopular.htm and firewall checking https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 (a very useful resource for windows and network security).

Oh, and dont forget:
pay for some virus protection....
use firefox instead of IE
and thunderbird instead of Outlook.

And your first post hit the nail on the head - its the multitude of little things that "just work" in OSX that make the difference for me as well. Simple and intermediate things are usually all as easy as drag-and-drop, and the expert things just need a trip into UNIX, which i have enjoyed learning.

In my opinion, the following things keep me using macs:

:cool: they look great (especially the laptops and iMacs) - even on the inside, which in those beige boxes is usually a tangle of ribbon cable

:cool: (basic) security out of the box, so novice (or uncaring) users arent completely exposed

:cool: things like the dock, the ever-present menu bar, well laid out preference panes and drag-and-drop make using it easy (and INTUITIVE)

:cool: EXPOSE - i have a multibutton mouse and have my windows flying around all the time now.

:mad: on windows (95-XP) when i close the last window of an application, the app is closed. bugs the hell out of me. im so used to being able to click the close bar on Mail and the program still be running. I think this is one thing that makes PC users think they need a new computer.... they close a window then open a new file and the whole of office re-loads....

:cool: oh and did i mention expose?

Haha, it makes me insane that the Mac doesn't do that, but I may get used to it. I'm still not using it full-time, so the behavior differences are more glaring.

Say, anyone wanna buy a very nicely loaded Dell notebook...?

Two of your points:

Uptime. You learn a whole new meaning to the word when you start using Unix. I thought the same thing when i went to using OSX and FreeBSD full time about 3 years ago, back when XP had been out at least in beta for over a year, and I think it had recently hit the market.

Windows may have acceptable uptime, but Unix has RIDICULOUS uptime.

My heart broke when I had to reboot one of my mail exchangers that had an uptime of over 18 months. :(

OSX wants you to reboot for security updates, and it's not always REALLY neccessary, so yes, if you reboot every time the OS says so, your uptime won't be that high, but my uptime is usually measure in months on my desktop, and not at all unusual for it to be measured in years on my servers.

I recently had to shut down a Windows 2000 server with just under 3 years of uptime, because it was being moved to a new building. I didn't want to do it, and was going to run it on battery, until I realized the battery was too old and useless.

Uptime is great for servers, but pointless for workstations and especially notebooks.

I don't know what else to say except Where's your data? Here are real world examples
 

CAlvarez, all you are doing is talking. Where is your data? You haven't presented one piece of information to support what you are saying or what you do not want others to say. I am interested in any factual information that you have to present, but you are not providing any. I am not interested in lip service.

This will be the last factual information that I give on this topic. This is a discussion that came from a security expert that deals with these topics every day. I agree with Hayne and I agree with Jay, the security expert, on this point. Essentially that MARKET SHARE DOES NOT EQUATE TO LESS SECURITY!!! The information is FACT, not FICTION and not lip service. Here is the quote from an expert in security.

"
Of course, only time will tell, but I have a *really* hard time buying
this argument. I do not believe that the number of installations for a
given platform really has any significant bearing on the number of virii
or exploits for that platform.

**All else being equal**, this argument might work. However, in the real
world, "all else" is not equal. Platforms (OS, applications, protocols,
whatever) are very different. We can not say that OS X, Windows, Linux,
Solaris, etc... are the "same" from a security perspective except for the
number of virii for each platform. This would be far from the truth. These
platforms are all very different and each has its strengths and
weaknesses. Some are better at security than others.

All else being equal, more market share equals more security problems. Ok,
I will buy that. However, in the real world, that does not seem to hold
up. Here are some non-scientific examples:

* There are dozens of MILLIONS of non-Windows machines in the world.
However, 99.999999% (or some ridiciulous number) of all virii are only
Windows specific. If someone could write an effective UNIX virus, they
would have the potential of hitting 50+ MILLION (a conservative
number) machines. Sounds like a good sized pool of targets to me, but
there are effectively no significant UNIX virii.

* The Apache web server has well over 65% market share, while IIS has
about 20%. However, there are MANY more severe
virii/exploits/vulnerabilities in IIS than there are in Apache. Note: I am
NOT saying Apache does not have any vulnerabilities. I am simply saying
that if the market share argument were accurate in the real world, the
number of Apache exploits should be more than triple the number of IIS
exploits. This is not even close to being the case. Increased market share
does not equal decreased security.

* When we look at DNS servers, it is even better. BIND has over 80%
market share, but it does not have rampant security problems. Think of all
the havoc a little script kiddie could cause by hitting 80% of the world's
DNS servers! However, this has not happened. We do not see tons of new
BIND virii every day. Why? Increased market share does not equal decreased
security.

* Sendmail+Qmail+Postfix account for easily 80% of the world's email
servers. However, compared to Exchange, the share of security problems is
nowhere near proportional to market share. Increased market share does not
equal decreased security.

Again, only time will tell for sure. :)

~Jay"

So you see CAlvarez, in todays world, the statements you are making just don't add up.

thx
RLC

You are right, it is harder to make virii or spyware for the Mac. I've been experimenting with that, since I'm actively looking to improve security on our network. I don't think it's as simple as some of the above quotes, but I have now seen where Mac OS is better at preventing these problems.

I'm now on my third day of using a Powerbook as my primary computer. I haven't touched a Windows machine since Wednesday afternoon (well, other than our servers). So far so good. I'm still short a few apps, and I'm still pressing the wrong keys sometimes.

However, I'm shocked at how quickly I became productive on this computer. I'm even more shocked that in some applications/functions I am MORE productive than I was in Windows. Not that this machine is faster, it's not, but that I'm able to make better use of the UI and keys to work better.

This is with an external KB/mouse though. Unfortunately, the limited internal keyboard and single mouse button are slowing me down. I might get over that eventually.

i find it very annoying that windows DOES quit the software when the last window is closed, then the next time you open a picture or something you have to wait for the entire program to launch again!

Check out the utility SideTrack! This adds what I consider a cool Windows feature to the Mac's Trackpad, plus some. With this utility I have my trackpad setup so the right and bottom edges scroll Vertically and Horizontally respectively and tapping in the upper/left corner acts like a right-click. I swear by it!

I added Sidetrack a couple days ago, and it's been a huge help. I may eventually get used to that method instead of two buttons; I'm fine tuning it as I go along. So far, I've got the button to be right-click as well as a tap in the top right corner (pretty natural-feeling), and the click/drag-hold option on the pad. The vertical scroll helps with another shortcoming of the PB keyboard...no page down key. Pretty stupid. I know, fn-arrow does that, but one-handed paging is important, especially in a cramped airplane seat in coach.

I'll tell you one thing, this is by far the absolute best trackpad I've ever laid a finger on. There's nothing else like it. And the keyboard feel/ergos are top-notch.

Couple of things...

First, the touchpad. It's a Synaptics, and aside from color, identical to the ones Dell uses. Apple just has a different default acceleration setting for their trackpad. Sure is nice though, isn't it? :).

Next, the myth of a 3-year-running Win2k box... just LISTING the number of severe and exploited security holes that Win2k has had over the past 3 years that don't take effect without a reboot would be enough to make my fingers hurt. If you really had the thing running for 3 years, I'd find it close to unbelieveable that it didn't get hit by anything (Sasser or Blaster especially) and you must be one hell of a lazy admin not to patch your 2k server boxes. That said, if the machine wasn't hooked up to the 'net and wasn't doing anything except, say, serving internal web pages to a company... then I'd say whoop-dee-doo. You could have installed linux on the thing and saved your company $300.

I administer a departmental network at a University where it's a mixed environment, about 70% Macs and 30% PCs. It's absolutely true that with proper administration, WinXP/Win2k boxes can be perfectly stable and secure, but it's also true that without that administrator looking out for them, my Windows users would be in panic and turmoil in a heartbeat. I give my Mac users admin access to their machines, because I'm not worried about the security risks or the ad/junk/malware or the registry-clogging programs the user may install. I've thus far only seen one machine that needed a reinstall -- one that trashed their /Applications/Utilities folder... big problem when you can't even open .pkg files off of the OSX disks to restore them! Still, I just copied my own Utilities folder over, and voila... all was well again. The vast majority of the problems the Apple users have simply revolve around getting at windows-minded resources. File sharing and server access is probably #1 -- there are still major bugs with OSX and Win Server 2003, though finally getting great Exchange and Active Directory support were a huge help for a lot of other folks on campus (40,000 students here... it's big. I don't run M$ servers at all).

Home users have no IT support to be looking out for them, and it's for this reason that many people (particularly home users who don't know what it's like to use a well-administered Win2k/XP machine) push the Mac so strongly as a home computing platform -- you don't need anyone to be constantly patching your machine, changing firewall rules to prevent new viruses from getting in, and locking down access to the machine. The Mac home user doesn't need this support, and cite whatever reasons you may, the fact that they can go about their business without it is well worth any disadvantages I've found. (Security by obscurity is arguable, Speed vs. Price is arguable, etc... ) Consumers, rightfully so, don't care about "why," IS is what's important. The Mac IS virus, spyware, malware, adware, and popup free, it IS better equipped for consumer multimedia, and it IS less likely to require reboots.

After all that, I agree that a lot of the Mac rhetoric kept me away from OSX for a long time too... my WinXP boxes are stable, I build them cheap, and I never found Windows "hard to use" or had a real soft spot for sexy computers. The first glance I took was at someone on a powerbook configuring a smb.conf file... and from there out it was sheer love. Still, I hear you. There is too much exxagerated and untrue FUD going around... but I'd say that about politics and religion too. Any real arguable subject has its Full-Of-It, Ignorant sources (Read: Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, PC Magazine, FOX News, Michael Moore... etc.) but it's YOUR responsibility to check out the claims and separate the FUD from the reality yourself. I'm glad you're among the folks who have!

I realize it's the same brand, but disbelieve the "identical" part. For one, I know that Apple has a proprietary ADB connection/circuit/whatever which handles it, not the PS/2 connection of a PC. I don't know what effect that has if any. But the fact remains that the responsiveness of the touchpad is completely different in everything, not just motion. For example, tapping is flaky on the Dell, but solid on the Appple. Same with scrolling. On the other hand, the Apple is much more sensitive, so having a finger hovering close but not touching will also make it jump. Had to re-learn my placement of the fingers that aren't using the pad. I spent hours trying to make the Dell work better, believe me, there is something very different about it. If you look at the Dell user forum, everyone complains about how horrible it is.

I didn't patch that server because the client didn't pay me to, and because of the limited access it had, I didn't feel it was a crucial issue. It's not my civic duty to apply patches for free... Fact is all ports except VPN were closed off in the firewall, and it could not get out to the world, so it was still safe even unpatched. The workstations were tied down to specific sites for net access, all of which were known safe.

Otherwise, the majority of the servers I admin have no more than a year or so of uptime, due to patching as you noted.

Mentioning home users is interesting, since now that I've been at this for a week, I still don't have working printers, scanners, and just finally got an external drive to work. And I'm a network admin (albeit, not on Macs...yet). I've hard-locked the machine twice and had it kernel-dump on me three times. Sure, that's probably normal with a new system setup, but it shows that Mac OS isn't any better at being crash-proof than any other OS.

On a brighter side...my support call to Apple this morning (regarding the problem of the VPN changing the default gateway) went very well. No solution, but I got through fast, got lots of attention, and was moved up in support levels to engineering. They are going to research it and get back to me.

Sigh...I was adding another note to this thread, left the computer for a bit, it went to sleep, and would not wake up. Had to shut it down hard (hold down the power switch). Not only lost what I was typing, but all of my VPN/dialup settings, a lot of data in Eudora, and who knows what else...

Yeah, uptime. :rolleyes:

Sorry... Apple abandoned the ADB interface since the first iMac. The trackpad connects via the USB interface the same way the Dell does. Although, I personally find Apple's accelerating process with the mouse/trackpad more natural feeling. It's all in the driver! :)

OMG! What printers are you trying to connect? OSX has built-in support for most popular USB and PS printers. It should be a breeze.

Scanners are a headache, I agree. Stay away from Epson. The drivers suck (IMO). Stick with HP. They have a great automated daemon and Twain support in Photoshop.

External FW drives are simplest if you just format the thing in Extended format. Trying to keep Windows format on a drive is asking for headaches.

It takes a lot for me to cause a kernel panic. I've never had one on my Powerbook G4. My B/W G3 desktop is another story... I've experimented with it... Boosted the bus speed to 100MHz, overclocked the processor, etc. Of course, I've caused a few panics on it... Those were my doing though. Not that of the OS. Now I've got the G4... I haven't made any hardware upgrades on it yet, so hence no Panics yet!

I think I need one of those nice red buttons that come with the HHGTTG... DON'T PANIC!

I can understand now why you started this thread, before I didn't see the point of your exercise...as a beginner, just give it time, use MacOS X for more than a year, and things will become a bit more clear for you.

I wouldn't consider that normal for any system... those are usually the red flags that something is wrong and needs attention. I've never experienced that many problems on my systems, and only systems where either (a) the hardware was having problems or (b) the user was messing with things they shouldn't have been messing with have ever given me those types of issues. I take care of around 50 Macs running either 10.2 or 10.3, a little less than half those users are home users, and if that was normal my phone would be ringing off the hook.

Well, this old PowerBook Wallstreet of mine is constantly in use (24/7), and I haven't had any problems with it the last two years since moving from Rhapsody 5.6 to Mac OS X 10.2. The last time I restarted it was to take it with me to see a client to show them the work on their site. That was a little over 114 days ago... or at least my uptime currently has my system at:

• 1:25AM up 114 days, 1:25, 3 users, load averages: 0.52, 0.51, 0.32

which was when I started it up last.

Hard-lockups and kernel panics are anything but normal... even for new systems. You might want to have that looked into. Unless you are doing things you shouldn't be doing, those aren't good signs for the health of your system.

My guess... and it is only a guess... is that you are fighting your system. You've posted quite a lot and it sure looks like you are trying to force your Mac to be a Windows system. One of the first things I learned when working with other operating systems is that if you try to make them what they are not, they tend not to work as well. I don't treat my Suns and SGIs like Macs because they aren't Macs. It is nice that you are a Windows Admin... but it sounds like you are totally new to Macs and you have already started trying to do things that may be considered... well, questionable.

When giving advice to Windows users on Macs (and I hate giving Windows users advice because they usually don't take it anyway), I tell them to give the system a chance for a few weeks. Learn how the system works. Learn why things on a Mac work the way they do before you go hacking away to make it more Windows like.

Your Mac is trying to tell you something... you might want to listen.