PC vs Mac

[kermitology]

In the end it's a damn operating system. I have no issues with OS X. I really wish I could try it out. But I already have a nice laptop that I dual boot with ubuntu and XP.

I just get pissed off at Apple for attacking a software company based on their own software that only runs on their hardware platform. It's the attitude that makes me want to freak on Apple fanboy's.

[The Ditch]

Macs are awesome cause I can just run down to my local electronics store buy a new video card or hard drive and easily upgrade it!

Joking aside I have both and I can do anything I want on either one, but PC seems to cost less for the exact same thing hardware wise.

[llama64]

Originally Posted by The Ditch

Macs are awesome cause I can just run down to my local electronics store buy a new video card or hard drive and easily upgrade it!

Joking aside I have both and I can do anything I want on either one, but PC seems to cost less for the exact same thing hardware wise.

Hence why I usually direct desktop buyers to PC's. When it comes to laptops though, Macs are better machines at their price points. Well, the Macbooks are... not convinced the Macbook Pro's are really worth the money...

[underGRADFlame]

Originally Posted by llama64

Hence why I usually direct desktop buyers to PC's. When it comes to laptops though, Macs are better machines at their price points. Well, the Macbooks are... not convinced the Macbook Pro's are really worth the money...

Worth every penny.... I love mine, find the MB just a little undersized for my liking.

[llama64]

Originally Posted by underGRADFlame

Worth every penny.... I love mine, find the MB just a little undersized for my liking.

Problem is, $2200+ is a bit inflated for a machine whose equivalent in PC lands costs $1800. Is OSX and a shiny exterior worth the $400? For me, not so much.

I use my Macbook in conjunction with at 24" monitor so the size doesn't bother me. Plus it's the perfect size to tote around and use on the couch when not plugged into the big monitor.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by llama64

Don't chalk up your own ignorance about the OS as a fault of the system.

I maintain computers from both sides of the OS war. Personally I prefer the OSX style since it's basically a gigantic directory rather then a overly sensitive database (Library vs Registry).

The file system is a big database too, people who bitch about the registry make me laugh. It's the same thing, just a different level of abstraction. Out of all the differences between the two systems, the registry vs. plist files should really be the least of them. Especially since so many solutions to Mac problems are "delete the plist files" - if they were so much better a solution, why are Mac users erasing them whenever they have problems?

[llama64]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

The file system is a big database too, people who bitch about the registry make me laugh. It's the same thing, just a different level of abstraction. Out of all the differences between the two systems, the registry vs. plist files should really be the least of them. Especially since so many solutions to Mac problems are "delete the plist files" - if they were so much better a solution, why are Mac users erasing them whenever they have problems?

Yes, a file system is a database.

But the point that I was implying was that the "Library" is not capable of rendering OSX unbootable. The "Registry" can be corrupted causing all of Windows to become unusable and very near unfixable. I've fought with my XP box too many times to have any respect for the registry system. There is no practical use for it. Just another poor design descision by Microsoft.

Yeah, OSX has it's share of issues (mouse accelleration, file permissions, airport issuse), but in my experience it's much easier to troubleshoot and repair. I don't give that credit over to Apple though. It's more a result of the underlying BSD layer.

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

The file system is a big database too, people who bitch about the registry make me laugh. It's the same thing, just a different level of abstraction. Out of all the differences between the two systems, the registry vs. plist files should really be the least of them. Especially since so many solutions to Mac problems are "delete the plist files" - if they were so much better a solution, why are Mac users erasing them whenever they have problems?

Because we can.

If I have an app that starts acting screwy (I had one — one, mind you — after I upgraded to Leopard) the first guess is to delete the .plist file for that app. Nothing else is affected. It isn't even theoretically possible for me to damage my system; the whole operation is done in userland. Nor will it affect any other apps. In fact, I don't even have to quit my other processes to apply that fix.

If I were trying to do the same on Windows, it would involve firing up regedit, trying to find the correct database entries in an unsorted binary file tens of megabytes in size, deleting them, and hoping to heaven I didn't mess with anything that would destabilize other parts of the system.

There's a reason why step #2 in almost any Windows troubleshooting sequence is 'reinstall Windows'. It's because step #1 established that the Registry is gorked and must be rebuilt from scratch.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

Because we can.


If I were trying to do the same on Windows, it would involve firing up regedit, trying to find the correct database entries in an unsorted binary file tens of megabytes in size, deleting them, and hoping to heaven I didn't mess with anything that would destabilize other parts of the system.

If you can't be trusted to navigate a hierarchal tree in regedit, you can't be trusted to do it in Finder either. Plenty of .plist files live outside your ~/Preferences folder, where you most certainly can do damage.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

Because we can.

If I have an app that starts acting screwy (I had one — one, mind you — after I upgraded to Leopard) the first guess is to delete the .plist file for that app. Nothing else is affected. It isn't even theoretically possible for me to damage my system; the whole operation is done in userland. Nor will it affect any other apps. In fact, I don't even have to quit my other processes to apply that fix.

If I were trying to do the same on Windows, it would involve firing up regedit, trying to find the correct database entries in an unsorted binary file tens of megabytes in size, deleting them, and hoping to heaven I didn't mess with anything that would destabilize other parts of the system.

There's a reason why step #2 in almost any Windows troubleshooting sequence is 'reinstall Windows'. It's because step #1 established that the Registry is gorked and must be rebuilt from scratch.

Interesting. Why dont you just reinstall the application?

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Interesting. Why dont you just reinstall the application?

Because it's not necessary. Deleting the .plist takes as much as a minute if you're searching for the file manually. Reinstalling the app generally takes substantially longer, if only because the app is likely to be on physical media that you have to go and get from the shelf.

In the same spirit, why don't you just replace your car engine instead of changing the oil?

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

If you can't be trusted to navigate a hierarchal tree in regedit, you can't be trusted to do it in Finder either.

The Finder has this wonderful facility called the Trash, so that if you accidentally delete the wrong file, you can restore it. Regedit is not as forgiving, on the whole. Furthermore, there is never any guarantee that the preferences for an application will be stored all in one place in Regedit, or that they will be intelligibly named so that you can tell exactly which ones to delete. Windows programmers, alas, have been known to do some mighty brainless things.

The idea of keeping all your system metadata in one gigantic file is so obviously the Wrong Thing that nobody but Microsoft has ever even considered doing it. Whole volumes have been written on the subject.

Plenty of .plist files live outside your ~/Preferences folder, where you most certainly can do damage.

True. Those, however, are very seldom .plist files for applications in userland. And even if you do trash a .plist in (let us say) /Library, either the app or the OS will automatically write a new one with the default settings.

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

Because it's not necessary. Deleting the .plist takes as much as a minute if you're searching for the file manually. Reinstalling the app generally takes substantially longer, if only because the app is likely to be on physical media that you have to go and get from the shelf.

In the same spirit, why don't you just replace your car engine instead of changing the oil?

Im talkin about PC

[Jay Random]

Originally Posted by MelBridgeman

Im talkin about PC

In that case, the problem is that reinstalling the app often doesn't work. If the problem is that the Registry has been gorked, writing new data to it is unlikely to help.

It's still analogous to replacing the engine to save the trouble of changing the oil, though. And some of the things that cause people to reinstall Windows on their systems are like buying a new car because you ran out of gas.

(Though mind you, with the price of gas these days, that may not be such a lopsided proposition.)

[MelBridgeman]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

In that case, the problem is that reinstalling the app often doesn't work. If the problem is that the Registry has been gorked, writing new data to it is unlikely to help.

It's still analogous to replacing the engine to save the trouble of changing the oil, though. And some of the things that cause people to reinstall Windows on their systems are like buying a new car because you ran out of gas.

(Though mind you, with the price of gas these days, that may not be such a lopsided proposition.)

Well if your registry is "gorked" you have bigger problems...in fact that pretty rare in my experience...

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

In that case, the problem is that reinstalling the app often doesn't work. If the problem is that the Registry has been gorked, writing new data to it is unlikely to help.

It's still analogous to replacing the engine to save the trouble of changing the oil, though. And some of the things that cause people to reinstall Windows on their systems are like buying a new car because you ran out of gas.

(Though mind you, with the price of gas these days, that may not be such a lopsided proposition.)

That is just so much BS and wrong information - "gorked"...it is extermely rare for the registry to experience file corruption, and windows stores backup copies anyways.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Jay Random

The idea of keeping all your system metadata in one gigantic file is so obviously the Wrong Thing that nobody but Microsoft has ever even considered doing it. Whole volumes have been written on the subject.

Wrong idea again. This is no different than storing all your precious metadata in /etc. Blow that away, or mess with it substantially, and you are in as deep trouble, guaranteed, as messing with the registry.

You are also ignoring all the good things about the registry facilitates, such as group policy, remote management and configuration of windows machines via the remote registry service, all kinds of things.

Don't forget also, that the registry came about to solve the problem of inconsistent and unweildy .ini files. Those ini files pre-dated XML, so there was no way to enforce strict data type checking, no standard API calls (well, very few) to parse them, etc. Mac OS X had the benefit of not carrying that particular legacy baggage.

At the end of the day, they both have advantages and disadvantages. I would argue though that the registry has a lot more advantages than most people give it credit for.

[llama64]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Wrong idea again. This is no different than storing all your precious metadata in /etc. Blow that away, or mess with it substantially, and you are in as deep trouble, guaranteed, as messing with the registry.

You are also ignoring all the good things about the registry facilitates, such as group policy, remote management and configuration of windows machines via the remote registry service, all kinds of things.

Don't forget also, that the registry came about to solve the problem of inconsistent and unweildy .ini files. Those ini files pre-dated XML, so there was no way to enforce strict data type checking, no standard API calls (well, very few) to parse them, etc. Mac OS X had the benefit of not carrying that particular legacy baggage.

At the end of the day, they both have advantages and disadvantages. I would argue though that the registry has a lot more advantages than most people give it credit for.

If you blow away the /etc, you might as well hang up your nerd gloves and call it a day. That's about as smart as deleting the /Windows/System32 directory. The thing that you guys are missing is that most application metadata is stored in a "Library" folder under the current users home directory. All changes are made at a user level -- this means no changes are made at a system level.

You cannot say the same thing about a registry (Unless MS wised up with Vista...)

So if you get a rogue program corrupting things, it's not going to do any significant damage to anything else but your user folder.

The question I have to ask is why the group policy, domain information, windows general configuration and program information all located in a singular database that any simple installation program has access to?

Too many times have I had crappy driver installation programs (Creative... ATI....) screw up my registry. Heck, even the backup registry was corrupted. In most cases it's easier to repair windows via re-installation then it is to dig around the file tree trying to repair it with utilities.

OSX is simply easier to maintain.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by llama64

So if you get a rogue program corrupting things, it's not going to do any significant damage to anything else but your user folder.

The question I have to ask is why the group policy, domain information, windows general configuration and program information all located in a singular database that any simple installation program has access to?

Too many times have I had crappy driver installation programs (Creative... ATI....) screw up my registry. Heck, even the backup registry was corrupted. In most cases it's easier to repair windows via re-installation then it is to dig around the file tree trying to repair it with utilities.

OSX is simply easier to maintain.

This is exactly what it boils down to - for the most part, the registry can be abused by bad apps and install programs because users run as administrators (and the apps require administrator access). The registry can have fine grained permissions applied within it using NT ACL's, but nobody uses them. Similarly, apps could, and should, be storing settings in the HKCU (current user) hive, not the computer hive, but that's not what developers have chosen to do.

OS X benefits from the fact that it inherited the Unix mindset for securing things, and running multi-user out of the box. Windows is still behind in this regard.

[Buff]

I chose mac, mostly because the IT manager is a superb salesman and has convinced 4x as many people to go with an iMac. He only wanted to convince me and the harder he tried the more people heard about an option to go with a Mac and they decided to jump on board too. So I decided that, it isn't bad to go Mac and if all these people are going mac then I better learn how to use one in case I get called upon for help... nothing like an IT guy who doesn't know how to help you solve your problem.

Anyways, I got my Mac today and I've been setting it up. I like what I see so far. Mac has so many little options that really aren't necessary to your computing experience, but they go a long way to impress you, no matter how insignicant the feature is.