DISQUS

bdegrande · 1 year ago

I think you will love OS X. It is, as of Leopard, fully certifies Unix, with all of the power that you are used fo. However, unlike any Unix or Linux that I have seen, the GUI is so good that you can avoid using a command line altogether if you chosse to. i have patched operating systems, done assembly language programming, etc. but I don't want to have to do that sort of thing on a routine basis to run a home OS. Leopard is simple and consistent. It has a scripting language and the Automator front end for it built in. The applications work together well, and the quality of the freeware and shareware for the Mac is very high. VMWare Fusion also works well, I run XP, Vista and Ubuntu on my Macbook, but I spend 95% of my time in OS X, which to me is the best thing about the Mac.

John · 1 year ago

Whenever I see these "switch" comments, especially from intelligent people, I cringe. At least you recognized the price premium you paid for the nice exterior but I cannot imagine paying the price premium for an Apple when it is built on commodity hardware.
Oh wait, I forgot the one special piece that always Steve Jobs to restrict OSX to running only on "Aptel" hardware.
Vista may not be perfect but I have always preferred the server iterations (2003 vs XP and now 2008 vs Vista).
But I will concede that no one beats them on packaging and frills. Good luck with the laptop and make sure to compare it to the XPS in the future to see how the two systems fair on similar tasks.

sfoskett · 1 year ago

John,

Great point about the hardware similarities. I recently mentioned the new laptop to a fellow techie who was surprised it could run Vista natively - I had to explain to him that most of the design was off the shelf components using an Intel standard Santa Rosa chipset, NVidia video, Intel CPU, etc. But there are certain differences in the hardware (enough that Apple makes a driver set for Boot Camp) and they do use premium off the shelf components. I'll definitely be following up in the future!

John · 1 year ago

No more premium than Dell's XPS series or the Alienware series or the Acer high end equipment.

I will admit it looks nice but I have always been fond of the ToughBook line of notebooks that can stop a bullet so my tastes may diverge a bit from the mainstream.

Before the new Apple commercials I was always ambivalent about them but they are just fueling this misconception that Vista is terribly broken an OSX is flawless. Good post and have faith that I will keep checking in to see what warts lay beneath that brushed aluminum exterior.