First thoughts on Vista and OSX86
There are a number of versions of Vista and OSX86 "floating around" on the net and a lot of people are probably eager to find how well those are coming out ... the marketing machine from both Microsoft and Apple will promise you amazing things but the reality might not be so impressive ...
Let's start first with Vista - the best words to describe it at this point are "highly unfinished" - it is far, far away from being a final product, it looks like a HUGE (and UGLY) resource hog and I feel like a lot of questionable decisions have been made in a stupid attempt to be even more friendly - already XP was stretching that limit and Vista seems to be going a few steps too much ... (even if in the end it will probably be possible for power and business users to get a more efficient look and feel out of it).
Now about OSX86 - the good news are that it is now possible to boot from a DVD and install a working x86 version of OSX even on non-Apple systems - I was able to do that even on an AMD64 machine and the speed is quite good. (and no, the installation does no longer require incredibly high skills - as long as you have the right DVD image - that is a seriously patched one :) )
The somehow bad news about OSX86 are that now everybody can see that it never was something "special" - it is basically an operating system designed for people that can hardly move their mouse pointer on the screen - that was the original reason why there is only one system-wide menu located on top of the screen - that region can easier be accessed by somebody that is learning how to use a mouse! The entire operating system is full of compromises where efficiency or productivity were sacrificed just for a somehow easier time on first use, and the worse part is that there are also frequent inconsistencies, bad or illogical choices and so on...
Don't get me wrong - I first wanted to use words like "morons" instead of "people" but when I thought twice that intentional design choice was not such an awful thing - after all it might let some old mother or grandmother use a computer - what really IS annoying is how the marketing machine somehow managed to convince a lot of (rich) people that OSX is somehow a major feat of technology when actually it only is a substitute for people that can not handle the real thing ... so the next time when you see somebody who believes that his expensive Powerbook makes him look smart just think of it like the technology for your grandmother or the first steps in technology for a 5 year old - probably easier but definitely something that you would like to quickly outgrow if possible :)
The more technical details will be left for the next post so for the moment I will end this rant with a sad observation - OSX is simply making too many compromises for the less technical users, Linux is probably falling to the other extreme - so, at least for the near future, Windows will continue to conquer the middle position and limit even more our choices and freedoms :(
Let's start first with Vista - the best words to describe it at this point are "highly unfinished" - it is far, far away from being a final product, it looks like a HUGE (and UGLY) resource hog and I feel like a lot of questionable decisions have been made in a stupid attempt to be even more friendly - already XP was stretching that limit and Vista seems to be going a few steps too much ... (even if in the end it will probably be possible for power and business users to get a more efficient look and feel out of it).
Now about OSX86 - the good news are that it is now possible to boot from a DVD and install a working x86 version of OSX even on non-Apple systems - I was able to do that even on an AMD64 machine and the speed is quite good. (and no, the installation does no longer require incredibly high skills - as long as you have the right DVD image - that is a seriously patched one :) )
The somehow bad news about OSX86 are that now everybody can see that it never was something "special" - it is basically an operating system designed for people that can hardly move their mouse pointer on the screen - that was the original reason why there is only one system-wide menu located on top of the screen - that region can easier be accessed by somebody that is learning how to use a mouse! The entire operating system is full of compromises where efficiency or productivity were sacrificed just for a somehow easier time on first use, and the worse part is that there are also frequent inconsistencies, bad or illogical choices and so on...
Don't get me wrong - I first wanted to use words like "morons" instead of "people" but when I thought twice that intentional design choice was not such an awful thing - after all it might let some old mother or grandmother use a computer - what really IS annoying is how the marketing machine somehow managed to convince a lot of (rich) people that OSX is somehow a major feat of technology when actually it only is a substitute for people that can not handle the real thing ... so the next time when you see somebody who believes that his expensive Powerbook makes him look smart just think of it like the technology for your grandmother or the first steps in technology for a 5 year old - probably easier but definitely something that you would like to quickly outgrow if possible :)
The more technical details will be left for the next post so for the moment I will end this rant with a sad observation - OSX is simply making too many compromises for the less technical users, Linux is probably falling to the other extreme - so, at least for the near future, Windows will continue to conquer the middle position and limit even more our choices and freedoms :(
posted by cool_stuff_or_not at 13:48
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