I was wondering the same thing. How can you use the phrase “scientifically better” in the post title without at least a link to some supporting research? Are they more reliable? I could take that on faith I suppose. Not having much recent experience with macs I wouldn’t know for certain, but my Windows machine is rock-steady.
I’m with KB on this one - whence the horror stories about Mac Extended JFS meltdowns?
That said, I agree with the sentiment - I’ve not once questioned the stability of this MacBook in the absence of a ticketed bug (specifically the fact that a recent update refused to play nicely with the most recent update to the Flash player)… but even on a Windows XP system with adequate RAM, crap goes sideways all the time… even badly enough to justify a reboot.
Reliability measured how? My Windows x64 machine has been on for quite a few weeks now without a glitch, I only have to restart it after downloading an upgrade and the last time that happened was about five weeks ago.
Even my Vista machine rarely causes trouble anymore, sure it’s not 100% there yet, games in particular give it some trouble (could be the nvidia drivers), but I’ve had it on for days while throwing some heavy work at it and has taken it all in stride; with even a session of Crysis or Medieval II thrown in between video renders, just for a break.
Oh, and look Ma! No antivirus, no firewall, no viruses! Really, just some basic precautions and common sense. No viruses in almost 15 years.
It’s hard to compare the combination of Mac OS X and Mac hardware with Windows and the world of windows-compatible hardware.
Here are a couple of alternative titles:
“Why Apples are Scientifically better than Oranges”
“Why OS X on Homogeneous Hardware A is Scientifically better than OS W on Varied Hardware B through Z”
That said, I think my personal alliances will eventually (and sooner than later) lie with one of the open OSes, (my prefs are a Debian-based distro such as Ubuntu for flexibility and ubiquity or OpenBSD for maximum reliability and security) which increasingly work exceptionally well on a wide range of hardware, some very well proven and reliable, thereby not locking me into either hardware OR software closed hegemonies.
I think its not necessarily (even though it can be) the inherit unreliability, but more so the potential it provides for its users/developers to make it unreliable. Be it via clean software & APIs or controlled base hardware, Mac’s provide a much better playground where you spend more time playing than upkeep.
Titling it that is ignorant. Its like your comparing apples and fish. Windows is just an operating system, Mac is not. In fact Macs can run windows, so how does that fit in to your equation?
The fact is Mac will never be able to gain as a substantial piece of the market as Microsoft until they can support cheaper 3rd party hardware. America’s economy is slowing going down, and more expensive machines that have no noticeable advantages to the average user will never become norm.
I always liked to put Windows down for being buggy and unstable. At the moment though, my home computer, a Windows PC, is much more stable/reliable than the $1800 mac I have at work.
I actually don’t agree, but would like to note that there is no such thing as a “Windows machine”, but rather a machine that can run Windows. Almost all hardware that can run Windows can also run Linux, which is a darn sight better than running Windows. Unless you are playing games or running bloated ‘enterprise’ apps or have an Internet Explorer fetish, there’s really no reason to use Windows any more.
Sheeesh! I have a dilemma. I didn’t take the post seriously as it seemed tongue-in-cheek. But now I don’t know whether to take the responses seriously as some of them appear to be serious. Ha! I’m confuzzled!!!
In 2006, I bought a brand new, fully loaded Dell Inspiron with XP. Three months and 4 OS reinstalls later, I sold it on ebay for a fraction of the price (with full warranty). In July of 2007, I bought a brand new, fully loaded MacBook. On September 14th, I got the cerulean blue screen of death and had to have the hard drive replaced at the Apple store. I lost everything.
PCs, Macs, Linux, whatever. They are all electronic tools that can fail. The moral? Don’t believe the hype. And back up often.
I note this one is tagged “religion” but not “science”
Mac fans simply have faith. They feel “the presence of steve” in their lives. It fills them with warmth and joy. They don’t understand how anyone could feel differently. They forgive all Mac failures so completely they forget about them, which is how they claim “100% reliability” with a straight face. The Mac didn’t lose their data, it was their fault for not making enough backups and reading the hard drive a story every night. It’s cool that iTunes reformatted their iPod again, it probably needed it and they can live without all the usage data that made it fun. It’s not Macs that are incompatible with PCs, PCs are incompatible with Macs. Mac fans have found the One True Way. They feel it is their duty to bring others into the fold.
Meanwhile PC users have finished their work and are playing games.
Every time I have used a mac, it has crashed in one way or another.
I personally own 5 PC’s of varying quality, and not once has any of them crashed, gotten a virus, spyware, or anything else.
I can also guaruntee that the virus part is not for lack of trying. I download plenty of things online that could contain viruses.
Everyone with a mac should throw it out a window and shoot it with a shotgun.
everyone with a PC, whether running windows or linux, i applaud you.
Have a great day.
Well if you do more work type jobs Windows is better. But stick with XP because Vista has way to many problems. But If you want power and fun together you woukd get MAC because it has windows office on it but it also has iphoto and fun things like that. Over all I have a new Toshiba XP ( I downgraded) and a New MACBOOK PRO. And they both work great!
I’ve been working on computers for 22 years (I started on an IBM XT). I’ve used dozens of operating systems from Windows to Mac, OS/2 to *nix, and countless hardware configurations. I program in multiple languages, I’ve even soldered new parts to bring a dead motherboard back to life. The only thing I can say for 100% sure about computers is: If you unplug it, it will turn off.
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May 14th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
What?! Seriously, Mols. Where’s the science?
May 14th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
I was wondering the same thing. How can you use the phrase “scientifically better” in the post title without at least a link to some supporting research? Are they more reliable? I could take that on faith I suppose. Not having much recent experience with macs I wouldn’t know for certain, but my Windows machine is rock-steady.
At least throw in a pretty graph. Pie please
May 14th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
I’m with KB on this one - whence the horror stories about Mac Extended JFS meltdowns?
That said, I agree with the sentiment - I’ve not once questioned the stability of this MacBook in the absence of a ticketed bug (specifically the fact that a recent update refused to play nicely with the most recent update to the Flash player)… but even on a Windows XP system with adequate RAM, crap goes sideways all the time… even badly enough to justify a reboot.
Two words: memory management.
May 14th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I’d love to love Apple / but I don’t / Commit to Vista, that I won’t / stability isn’t Apple’s strength per se / I just need the best OS / day to day
May 14th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Reliability measured how? My Windows x64 machine has been on for quite a few weeks now without a glitch, I only have to restart it after downloading an upgrade and the last time that happened was about five weeks ago.
Even my Vista machine rarely causes trouble anymore, sure it’s not 100% there yet, games in particular give it some trouble (could be the nvidia drivers), but I’ve had it on for days while throwing some heavy work at it and has taken it all in stride; with even a session of Crysis or Medieval II thrown in between video renders, just for a break.
Oh, and look Ma! No antivirus, no firewall, no viruses! Really, just some basic precautions and common sense. No viruses in almost 15 years.
May 14th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Need the best operating system day to day? Possibly look into Microsoft Windows Vista Ultra Secure Black Box Edition.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
AGREED!
May 14th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Btw, loved how you filed the post under “religion”.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Undeniably.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Judging by the amount of Mac hardware issues I’ve seen here, I would say that Windows machines are more reliable
May 14th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Hi Molly!
It’s hard to compare the combination of Mac OS X and Mac hardware with Windows and the world of windows-compatible hardware.
Here are a couple of alternative titles:
“Why Apples are Scientifically better than Oranges”
“Why OS X on Homogeneous Hardware A is Scientifically better than OS W on Varied Hardware B through Z”
That said, I think my personal alliances will eventually (and sooner than later) lie with one of the open OSes, (my prefs are a Debian-based distro such as Ubuntu for flexibility and ubiquity or OpenBSD for maximum reliability and security) which increasingly work exceptionally well on a wide range of hardware, some very well proven and reliable, thereby not locking me into either hardware OR software closed hegemonies.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
I think its not necessarily (even though it can be) the inherit unreliability, but more so the potential it provides for its users/developers to make it unreliable. Be it via clean software & APIs or controlled base hardware, Mac’s provide a much better playground where you spend more time playing than upkeep.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Muhehe.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Titling it that is ignorant. Its like your comparing apples and fish. Windows is just an operating system, Mac is not. In fact Macs can run windows, so how does that fit in to your equation?
The fact is Mac will never be able to gain as a substantial piece of the market as Microsoft until they can support cheaper 3rd party hardware. America’s economy is slowing going down, and more expensive machines that have no noticeable advantages to the average user will never become norm.
May 15th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Dear Windows users, Molly is right!
I can say that because I’m an ex Windows user…
May 15th, 2008 at 12:58 am
it never fails to surprise me when people actually take me seriously!
May 15th, 2008 at 1:17 am
I always liked to put Windows down for being buggy and unstable. At the moment though, my home computer, a Windows PC, is much more stable/reliable than the $1800 mac I have at work.
May 15th, 2008 at 1:20 am
I actually don’t agree, but would like to note that there is no such thing as a “Windows machine”, but rather a machine that can run Windows. Almost all hardware that can run Windows can also run Linux, which is a darn sight better than running Windows. Unless you are playing games or running bloated ‘enterprise’ apps or have an Internet Explorer fetish, there’s really no reason to use Windows any more.
Okay, sermon over.
May 15th, 2008 at 1:21 am
hehe - how to start a comments fight in one easy step…
May 15th, 2008 at 2:13 am
Sheeesh! I have a dilemma. I didn’t take the post seriously as it seemed tongue-in-cheek. But now I don’t know whether to take the responses seriously as some of them appear to be serious. Ha! I’m confuzzled!!!
May 15th, 2008 at 2:31 am
“it never fails to surprise me when people actually take me seriously!”
*smiles*
This is a religious/fundamentalist/emotive issue for most of us… ;-p
May 15th, 2008 at 3:26 am
That made me smile
Thanks Molly.
May 15th, 2008 at 4:07 am
“it never fails to surprise me when people actually take me seriously!”
So you were kidding then, cool.
May 15th, 2008 at 4:17 am
I’m not sure why people get irritated by this kind of thing. They seem to have difficulty with the fact that people can have strong opinions.
May 15th, 2008 at 7:26 am
In 2006, I bought a brand new, fully loaded Dell Inspiron with XP. Three months and 4 OS reinstalls later, I sold it on ebay for a fraction of the price (with full warranty). In July of 2007, I bought a brand new, fully loaded MacBook. On September 14th, I got the cerulean blue screen of death and had to have the hard drive replaced at the Apple store. I lost everything.
PCs, Macs, Linux, whatever. They are all electronic tools that can fail. The moral? Don’t believe the hype. And back up often.
May 15th, 2008 at 8:52 am
This always reminds me of the “are you a Ford or a Chevy man?” argument…
May 16th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
The best operating system in the world…
mmm…
has 2 hands, two feet… probably not my operating system but i’m sure one’s out there that can do it all… Bollywood maybe?
Best operating system in the world scientifically proven? Mmmm still not me.
OK here’s where we all get beaten half to death by semi-gay Mac fanboys lol… ha ha.
May 18th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
I note this one is tagged “religion” but not “science”
Mac fans simply have faith. They feel “the presence of steve” in their lives. It fills them with warmth and joy. They don’t understand how anyone could feel differently. They forgive all Mac failures so completely they forget about them, which is how they claim “100% reliability” with a straight face. The Mac didn’t lose their data, it was their fault for not making enough backups and reading the hard drive a story every night. It’s cool that iTunes reformatted their iPod again, it probably needed it and they can live without all the usage data that made it fun. It’s not Macs that are incompatible with PCs, PCs are incompatible with Macs. Mac fans have found the One True Way. They feel it is their duty to bring others into the fold.
Meanwhile PC users have finished their work and are playing games.
;)
May 29th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
boot camp?
windows did not make an effort putting mac osx on there system.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Every time I have used a mac, it has crashed in one way or another.
I personally own 5 PC’s of varying quality, and not once has any of them crashed, gotten a virus, spyware, or anything else.
I can also guaruntee that the virus part is not for lack of trying. I download plenty of things online that could contain viruses.
Everyone with a mac should throw it out a window and shoot it with a shotgun.
everyone with a PC, whether running windows or linux, i applaud you.
Have a great day.
June 5th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Well if you do more work type jobs Windows is better. But stick with XP because Vista has way to many problems. But If you want power and fun together you woukd get MAC because it has windows office on it but it also has iphoto and fun things like that. Over all I have a new Toshiba XP ( I downgraded) and a New MACBOOK PRO. And they both work great!
June 16th, 2008 at 10:30 am
I’ve been working on computers for 22 years (I started on an IBM XT). I’ve used dozens of operating systems from Windows to Mac, OS/2 to *nix, and countless hardware configurations. I program in multiple languages, I’ve even soldered new parts to bring a dead motherboard back to life. The only thing I can say for 100% sure about computers is: If you unplug it, it will turn off.
June 18th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I just unplugged my MacBook Pro. It’s still on!
June 18th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Hmm.. attempted sarcasm is sometimes a good excuse for making blanket statements.
June 20th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
thank you