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Re: Don't much care for Apple either Posted by Justin VanAbrahams [Email]  (#32) [Profile/Gallery]
(more from Justin VanAbrahams) on Tue, 4 Oct 2011 10:06:09
In Reply to: Don't much care for Apple either, JerseySaab  [Profile/Gallery]
, Tue, 4 Oct 2011 06:14:44
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I started out in the business by displacing aging, expensive Novell servers with Windows NT. Novell was *such* a headache by the mid '90s and people had become so comfortable with Windows it wasn't much of a sales pitch. Cheaper + being able to largely manage it yourself was all they needed to hear. I was Windows only from about '93 until 2001, following early, terrible versions of NT until it became pretty darned solid with Windows 2000. Unfortunately, Windows 2000 was clearly not ready to be connected to the internet, but at the time that was of little consequence to most. I checked out of Windows-land from about 2001 until 2006, running an entirely Redhat Linux-based shop. You get used to things you can do in Linux, and coming back in 2006 to a Server 2003 environment was difficult. But, there are some nice aspects of 2003 - not the least of which is that, again, people without much training can actually be useful at the console. I've since upgraded that network to 2008R2, and I have to say it's pretty amazing. It does most everything extremely well, and I think Microsoft has done a pretty good job of hybridizing UNIX-type values and Windows-type expectations. Windows 7 is rock-solid, and while you can't beat OSX's BSD underpinnings Windows 7 has a superior GUI in every sense of the concept. OSX is mired in 20 years of Apple convention, and pinning those conventions on top of a great core didn't solve interface inconsistencies that grate on me every time I see them. OSX also lacks any real ability to customize anything - presumably because Apple believes they did it right the first time.
Windows 7 isn't perfect, but IMHO it is much more X-like in your ability to position/adjust/resize whatever you like to how you like it. Every so often you find a something they missed, but for the most part Win7 behaves exactly the way you expect it to and - to my joy - virtually every convention is obeyed from top to bottom. From what I hear, they are choosing some interesting directions for these aspects of Win8, but at least they are putting real thought into how people of all types are going to use the OS.
In the latter days of XP it was feeling VERY dated, and all of its inconsistencies and poor design decisions were really starting to show - from UI to security to everything. OSX was really a shining star running on truly beautiful hardware. Win7 for all intents and purposes leaves OSX in the dust in terms of usability and capability. Unfortunately, the perception is that Win7 lacks good security. I don't actually believe that's true - it's primarily a victim of its own success. I don't think anyone would say Iceland has a world-class national defense system, yet they are the victims of much fewer physical and virtual attacks than the US is. As a college professor once told me, "security through obscurity is not security at all." Apple benefits from its position in the market place - both as a minority player in the PC world and as a non-compete in the business world. There is little actual reason to target OSX when a large percentage of web servers, database servers, and every other type of server out there is running Windows. That's the meat and potatoes right there. What has been shown, time and time again, is that both Apple and Apple users are not prepared to deal with security issues. Apple has been, at best, lackadaisical about patching their products and IMHO criminal about notifying their customers of potential exploits. Not to excuse Microsoft - they did the same thing, and it's only in the last few years that it seems they've learned their lesson about fixing flaws quickly. It's just something Apple hasn't learned yet, perhaps.
However, if you look at what Apple is doing on the business side I think it's pretty clear that OSX has a limited lifespan. Since the '80s has always sought to sell appliances rather than true computing devices, and I am virtually positive within the next five years we'll see traditional Macs die off entirely. I think it's a fair approach. The success of the iPad as a *replacement* computing device (versus a supplementary one) shows that plenty of folks just want to email and surf the net. Traditional values of computers don't apply to most folks anymore, and I am confident in a short period of time we'll see a variety of iOS devices that let people do the things they need to, without ever exposing them to the underpinnings. Apple can get rich(er) selling proprietary hardware with limited-lifespan software, while taking a percentage from all the software and media people want to put on them. It's brilliant. Under Google or Microsoft calls foul, and they get sued for antitrust. :D
Wow, that was long and pointless.
posted by 12.195.130...
, Tue, 4 Oct 2011 15:01:54, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 11:07:24
, Tue, 4 Oct 2011 10:40:05, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 19:15:07, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 11:46:52, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 14:57:56, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 15:20:21, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 19:44:22, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 16:24:58, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 17:18:35, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 20:15:14, Tue, 4 Oct 2011 06:14:44, Tue, 4 Oct 2011 10:06:09 <-- Viewing This Message, Tue, 4 Oct 2011 11:19:36, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 08:51:48, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 10:12:45
, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 09:54:50, Mon, 3 Oct 2011 06:24:53
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