I’ve been reading about the various problems that Apple users have been having with their upgrades to their newest $129 service pack… er, stupendous, outstanding, super-duuuuuuuuper OSX upgrade – Leopard, or Siamese, or Tabby, or Puddy Tat, or what-the-hell ever kitty cat name they are giving this release to convince their buyers that they are a fierce cat in the computer jungle… feh.
Computers locking up, people having problems with some of the security features (the Apple Firewall is set up to be in “off” mode when you turn it on. I guess it “just works” at being turned off) – and some Apple fan-ites getting the equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death (something that, oddly enough, I haven’t gotten since I bought the completed version of Vista). I fact, I haven’t seen a BSOD in a loooooooooooong time with Microsoft.
Now I know that some Apple fanboys are going to blast me as some anti-Apple, “don’t get it” type of person. I’m glad to tell them that they are totally wrong. One of the first computers I cut my teeth on was an Apple IIc and I still enjoy puttering around on Macs when I get a chance. I’ve even told my fiancee that my next laptop will be an Apple Macbook Pro – once they get the hardware up to the level that my Inspiron E1505 is already at.
But it is nice to be able to tell Apple fans that, with Vista Home Premier, everything seems to “just work” for me.
Video editing software? Check
Audio and music editing software? Check-a-roonie
Web design software? Oh hell yeah
Photoshop? Yeah baby, yeahhhh
Anti-Virus and Firewall? Piece of cake
Video players? Check – and on a sharper screen than an Apple 15″ Macbook Pro
Not to mention, my digital video camera which works perfectly on Vista when I plug it into the Firewire port. You see, on my mom’s iMac, the video camera would not register at all.
Plug it in? Nothing.
Restart the computer? Nothing.
Pick up the iMac and shake it like a British nanny with a 3-year-old? Nada.
And don’t get me started on Apple’s great contribution to the browser wars – Safari (I’m starting to pick up a theme here… I wonder what it is…). Once it was ported to the PC platform it took… one, two days… for bugs and errors to be found? I was really excited to get to use Safari, too. I like they layout of Safari, it’s so pretty. But gosh darn it, it just… what’s the phrase I’m looking for here… “wouldn’t work” on my PC. And the fanboys went into full-on emo mode – doing the digital equivalent of sniffing and looking at their navels while saying “Gee, I don’t know why those mean, nasty Windows people take such pleasure in telling us there are problems with our browser.”
Maybe – since Macs have the opportunity to run Vista via Boot Camp – fanboys can load up Vista while they try to figure out what’s wrong with OSX: Leopa-Tabby-Puddy Tat.
Benson Hendrix - Brain for Hire 
A couple things.
1. Your derogatory comments (i.e. OS X: Leopa-Tabby…) make it clear your a Windows zealot and have some sort of chip on your shoulder regarding the Mac platform. Really, you’d be much better off just sticking to the facts.
2. 99% of the reported issues are for those few people that have installed what is essentially a hack called “Application Enhancer”. Most normal Mac users don’t install crap like this. (Although Logictech has been guilty of bundling it)
3. Try doing a google search under “Vista driver issues” and tell me again how things just work.
Look, I’m not bashing Vista, it’s a fine OS and much improved over XP. But, let’s be honest, there is a reason many people have been “downgrading” to XP and that’s because of Vista compatiblity issues. The fact that customers have been able to force vendors to do this against Microsoft’s will pretty much negates your “Vista just works” claim.
Steve,
It wasn’t meant as much of a derogatory comment towards Apple as it was a little teasing. Just poking a little fun at the fact that Apple apparently has decided to name all of their future OS releases after cats. I thought that any company who would use the BSOD as their icon for non-Apple computers would be able to take it. I’m sorry you took it the wrong way. My Windows zealotry? It isn’t there. Look a few posts past this one to read a quick entry about installing linux on my other laptop – and read below for a repeat of my interest in a Macbook Pro.
I could say that the problems from Vista drivers could come from the fact that MS is running on millions, if not billions, of computers around the world, and was written to work on all sorts of computers using all sorts of hardware. But I won’t.
As for the chip on my shoulder, you must be seeing things that aren’t there. Like I said above in the post:
“Now I know that some Apple fanboys are going to blast me as some anti-Apple, “don’t get it” type of person. I’m glad to tell them that they are totally wrong. One of the first computers I cut my teeth on was an Apple IIc and I still enjoy puttering around on Macs when I get a chance. I’ve even told my fiancee that my next laptop will be an Apple Macbook Pro – once they get the hardware up to the level that my Inspiron E1505 is already at.”
I enjoy messing around with my friend’s macbook pro and think that OS X (I’ll leave out the teasing animal names) is very pretty. In fact, if you’ll look back a few pages on here, you’ll see an appeal from me to Apple to make iLife available to PC users, because I’m willing to bet that a lot of PC users, myself included, would jump all over it. So no, there is no Apple-hate in my little techie-heart.
About the E1505 comment – it has a SXGA widescreen, sharper than a 15″ macbook pro, a 256 MB video card (same as the mid range macbook pro) and 2 gig of RAM. Since I do photo and video editing in addition to blogging, I need these options.
It’s good to know why people are having problems with Leopard. And I’m sure Cupertino is working on them. To the point of having to release support documentation about Apple’s Blue Screen of Death problem. And are you telling me that Apple has released something that won’t work with non-Apple equipment? I’m shocked, shocked I say.
And speaking of reverting back to older operating system versions, I was reading tech news from the UK on MSN and there was a story referencing people talking about going back to 10.4 because of the problems caused by 10.5. (Nope, no cat names here, move along people)
And there is a concern by some Java developers that they are done with Apple and their lack of support and they are going back to running Vista and Linux on their Macbooks. And that Apple isn’t taking the time to respond to their concerns and is censoring posts on the Apple support site – which is a different post for a different time.
As for my “Vista just works” claim… it does just work, for me and thousands of others (And the millions, if not over a billion, computers running other MS OS’s everyday).
Everything I throw on my computer works without problems. It’s that simple. I haven’t had BSOD problems (and I’m not treating this computer with kid gloves either), I don’t have compatibility issues with my hardware and software (from Photoshop and Dreamweaver to ACID, Vegas and Premier, my iPod to my Canon video camera (the same one that won’t register on my family’s iMac) and a number of games that won’t run on a Mac).
I won’t insult either of our intelligence and not say that MS has reaped the ill will of over a decade of releasing software that has been buggy, vulnerable to hacking by my three-year-old nephew, and technically still in beta (Slayn has an old desktop with Win ME on it – remember how horrific that was?) That said, MS has released an OS that is solid, fun to play with – and would be great for social media if they would just come up with an equivalent to iLife. That’s another post that I’m working on.
And onto a completely different subject, I’m interested in studying computer science to become more proficient with computers. Any advice on where I should start?
“I could say that the problems from Vista drivers could come from the fact that MS is running on millions, if not billions, of computers around the world, and was written to work on all sorts of computers using all sorts of hardware. But I won’t.”
Well… you just did. 😉 Anyway, the point of my post is that your experience with Leopard seems to be related to a few sensationalist headlines. As noted, the vast majority of Leopard users are not having the “blue screen” problems. This issue has been tracked down to once specific and Leopard incompatible hack called APE (Application Enhancer). As a percentage, very few Mac users use this. Further, the more intelligent Mac users do a “clean install” which would avoid this issue, even if this hack was installed on their Tiger machines.
Further, you go on to claim how well Vista works for you. Congratulations, I have Vista working for me too. However, I wouldn’t just say “Vista works” because there have been incompatibility issues with Vista and the transition was anything but smooth. There have been serious driver issues. For example, using nVidia drivers on Vista was a recipe for a crash for a while. I’ve run into this problem and it’s well documented. It is for this reason, that I don’t see the point in pretending Vista didn’t have it’s share of issues when it first came out. It did and in many cases, still does.
Also, it really doesn’t matter if we’re talking about 10 million computers or 100 million. In both cases the sample size is big enough in both cases to find problems. As for having other vendors involved, that would be relevant if these vendors did any real engineering on their own. Instead, there are a few common chip sets in use that Microsoft has to be concerned with. Companies like Dell do nothing more than assemble and ship.
As for the backwards migration issue… Let’s face it, there is a reason businesses have not adopted Vista yet. It’s the same reason they wouldn’t adopt Leopard yet. Businesses need stability and reliability. New releases of any operating system are going to have bugs and incompatibility with various third party applications, etc. This is an issue that is common to both Windows and Macs. I have a machine that I play with for Vista and a machine that I play with for Leopard, but wouldn’t update my critical machines with either until the necessary updates (service packs) have been released and things settle down a bit.
As for the Java issue, again you’ve been readinging to many headlines. Apple has never tied their Java releases with their operating system releases. These are independent. Historically, Java gets updated after the OS has been out for a few months. Java is clearly a lower priority for Apple and for good reason. You’d be hard pressed to name a critical application on the Mac that is dependent upon Java. Sure, they exist, but nothing critical to the platform. Apple is pushing Cocoa just as Microsoft is pushing .Net.
“my Canon video camera (the same one that won’t register on my family’s iMac) ”
Let’s be honest here. There is no known issue between Canon video cameras and Apple’s iMacs. I’ve done a fair amount of video editing on Macs using various brands without issues. My wife is a teacher and similarly uses Macs with various cameras including various Canon models without issue. Perhaps your iMac has a hardware problem of some sort, or perhaps something wasn’t installed properly. Either way, this certainly isn’t a wide spread issue.
“And onto a completely different subject, I’m interested in studying computer science to become more proficient with computers. Any advice on where I should start?”
Yikes! Why would you want to do that? (just kidding). Are you interested in a career in the IT field? I have a degree in Computer Science. I’ve spent many years as a developer and currently work as an IT Manager. It can be a good field, but it’s not easily and your career doesn’t always take you in the direction you might like. For example, in an ideal world, I’d love to be develop for a game company. If that were the most important thing to me, I could probably make that happen, but that would involve picking up the family and moving, etc. In the real world, most companies need IT work for their ERP (enterprise resource planning functions like Human Resources, Finance, Supply Chain, etc.). Unfortunately, in this world, you have to deal with all sort of things like SOX audits, etc. and various other change management procedures which have nothing to do with coding but take up lots of time. The, if you’re in the US and working for a big company, there is always the concern of outsourcing to other countries where labor is cheaper. For example, at my last company, half of the team I managed was in India.
Did I scare you out of an IT career yet? 😉 Anyway, you need to decide what you want to do first, then apply a curriculum around that. If you’re not sure, learn as much about databases as you can. Most IT jobs involve retrieving data, manipulating it and storing it in some way. Most companies use Oracle, but SQL server would be an okay second choice. Good luck!
All right, after much thought, I will take your criticism of my criticism of the criticism of… where were we? Oh yeah, to heart and rethink my opinion (even though it was meant in teasing jest to Apple people).
Besides, me arguing computers with an IT guy is like… like… well it’s like something really bad! 😉 You’re right, Vista does seem to work for me, which was the basis for this post.
As for the Canon/iMac problem, I really don’t know what the problem could be. I’m not saying there is a widespread problem, just that I can’t get it to work.
And thanks for the info about computer science! I’m pretty locked into my career path currently, but I’d like to know more about computers (they’ve always interested me) and I’d like to be able to code in something more than HTML. Thanks for the advice! I’ve already started to examine databases more!
WdW