** Reply to message from Harry Binswanger on
Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:20:21 -0400
> The biggest thing in Mac's favor is that it doesn't use a Registry!!!
But to the extent that system and application
information/configuration is personalized or individualized, it
needs to be stored somewhere, and Macs are littered with INI
files (or their equivalent) buried all over the place. There's
an argument for having a central container for that kind of info
-- and that's what the Windows Registry is. If you spend most
of your Mac time SUDOing at a Terminal command prompt, you
quickly realize that the underlying OS Ten structure is far from
simple. People seem to think that DMG (disk image) bundles and
"apps" are somehow different than Windows apps (MSIs etc) -- but
if you examine the structure, they're just root directories with
a subdirectory hierarchy. Where's the difference? Seems more a
matter of perception/presentation than reality.
VMware, incidentally, is not an emulator (Wine and Crossover are
emulators). VMware creates virtual machines -- the "VM" in
VMware. VMs are totally isolated from the host machine
(although you can mount host resources, i.e. drives and
peripherals, if you want). You can take "snapshots" of a VM at
any point (make a copy of it), then experiment with the VM to
your heart's content, and finally revert to any in a series of
these snapshots. Under VMware Workstation, I run Tiger 10.4.8
and Leopard 10.5.2 on several of my Windows boxes -- also, just
for the fun of thumbing my nose at Apple's insistence that I use
their hardware, I installed Tiger (which is a LOT less
resource-hungry than Leopard) as the base OS on a three year old
Thinkpad T60 (after wiping Windows). It runs fine.
I really fail to see the virtue of trading one proprietary OpSys
for another -- especially a hybrid like OS X
(Mach/FreeBSD-NEXT). It is supremely irritating to be able to
run *nix packages on a Mac, but not be able to run Mac packages
on *nix. Totally ticks me off, and seems insane too. Because
it is a hardware company as much as a software company, Apple is
far more restrictive in its EULAs and practices, and the great
burden of innovation rests on Apple, alone. Windows doesn't
give a hot damn what hardware you use, and that's important --
it encourages competition. When Apple freezes out every other
hardware manufacturer (and their legions of software engineers),
Apple shoves them smack into the Windows camp! How smart is
that?
Finally, there is just more software choice and variety
available for Windows. More development going on. More
aggregate brainpower being applied. And a LOT more freeware --
maybe I'm not looking in the right places, but almost all
attractive Mac software seems to carry a big price tag.
Hardware and peripherals are seriously overpriced. Mac is
gaining, but Windows still has an 88% market share. Windows 7
(Vista version 2) is pretty good, BTW.
One more point: when I look for (Google) sophisticated
technical insight and how-to hackery, I am generally discouraged
by the paucity and shallowness of Mac results. Lots of people
asking questions, and darn few who really know the answers at a
deep level.
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Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
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