The last two Practical Mac articles (Mac
Challenge Results and Mac Challenge Follow
Up) detailing the results of The Mac Challenge, have produced an
unprecedented response from our readers. I have received over 100
emails on this subject. The responses run the gamut from users sharing
their own PC vs. Mac experiences to suggestions for making the
platforms more stable.
There is one glaring omission from all of the email I have received,
however. Not one single response questioned the results. Not a single
reader tried to tell me that my experience with Windows XP or Mac
OS X was atypical. In fact, a great many responses essentially
said, "Me, too."
Now, it's time to open up the ol' mailbag!
John Cate offered some affirmation of my observation that Windows
2000 seemed to be more stable than XP:
- Having used both XP and 2000, I can tell you that Windows 2000 is
more stable than Windows XP. It wasn't your imagination. I run an
Athlon 1.4 GHz at 1.52 on Windows 2000, and it is almost, I say almost,
as stable as the most recent Mac OS X. Windows XP, with all that
extra eye candy on it, is less stable.
Is Windows really less stable than OS X, or was my experience a
fluke? Let's see what you had to say:
Wil Nelson:
- My experiences are very similar. In the last 5 days my two Macs
running OS X have not had a restart or any problems save one
forced quit and an immediate relaunch of the [offending] program. On
the other hand, my Wintel 1.6 gig/256 megs/40 gig HD/CD-RW is restarted
at least 3 times per day. According to the documentation, this occurs
due to "system faults." I have had a few hangs using Windows help. Some
of the programs I am trying out seem to be less than optimized for
Windows XP Professional and produce error messages, hangs, and general
non-responsiveness, in that clicking on a "task" item results in no
action on the computer's part. Windows XP also does not seem to be able
to handle successive and rapid mouse clicks like OS X can, which
results in system slowdown. Also, the things make lots of noise with
all the fans, etc.
George Gunderson:
- The only time I've used Windows in the past 5 years was for a C++
programming class I took in college. I had more problems with the 1-2
hours a day I spent on the PCs than my 6-10 hours a day on my
Macs.
Alvin offers this observation of both OS X as well
OS 9:
- Apple is the best; even OS 9.2.2 is very durable. You don't have to
reinstall it every time a major crash happens, compared to Windows 98
SE.
Martin Sorensen:
- At home, I am running OS X and only reboot on system updates and if
I go on holiday. I have had one kernel panic since September [a 9-month
time period].
Ian Foster:
- I have been running my Pismo (G3, FireWire) for over 6 months, only
rebooting for major software updates. It sleeps or works, is never off,
and is running 10.1.x.
David Jackson offers this enlightening story:
- I do support for 300+ Windows 2000 boxes at work and 14 servers.
The servers are all either NT4 and in the process of heading to 2K or
already there with 2000 Server installed. I had a user on Wednesday of
this week ask me about a problem he was having in Windows. In Windows
it's very easy to "right-click" a file and then use the context menu
"send to" copy the file to a floppy, mail it to a friend, or do almost
anything else you can imagine if you can put a shortcut into your "send
to" folder. It's a neat little time saver, I admit, though I've never
used it much. This user though had grown to depend on it and was coming
unglued because he had done "something" to Windows, and now those
shortcuts were no longer working.
Honestly, I don't know what he did. I don't even think he did anything.
It's just one of those things Windows does from time to time. Anyway,
his idea after I had sat there banging away at the problem for a while
was to suggest we "reinstall Windows on top of itself."
I know this guy pretty well, and we get along okay, so I told him
(without fear of angering him), "No, that's a stupid idea." And it is a
stupid idea, except that I was talking about the "on top of itself"
part and not the whole idea.
The thing is, having to reinstall your entire OS to fix a small little
annoyance is what's stupid, but all of us Windows users are so
conditioned to the idea that it seems perfectly reasonable at this
point. The only thing I knew that he didn't (despite my MCSE, which
makes my salary slightly bigger but me no more or less effective) was
that when Windows goes bad, save none of it. Kill it all. Only way to
be sure.
Every Windows user knows the he or she is going to have to reinstall
after x number of rounds with "Mr. Reset." The funny thing is that
Windows' immense popularity sprung initially from the simple fact that
it was available preinstalled on IBM compatible computers in a time
when most computers arrived from their manufacturer with little more
than a low level format and some OS disks.
"Good luck, you're on your own!" was the order of the day. People
buying early Windows machines though didn't have to do this. Their
machine booted up to Windows right out of the box (for what that was
worth), and they got to bypass the messy details of installing the OS.
In trade, they bought into an OS that would have them reinstalling for
the rest of their days. See what they got for being lazy?
Another observation from David Jackson:
- The one thing that really stuns me is how OS X comes back
stable even after a trip to the reset button. I always seemed to be
able to watch my Windows installation grow worse over time as the
crashes and restarts added up. OS X seems unfazed by it. Outside
of gaming, I have yet to see anything crash that didn't come right back
without a problem, and I've yet to see anything go down that made
OS X so much as blink.
Ian Foster offers a most plausible explanation for the "stability
gap" between Windows and the Mac OS:
- I think that you can achieve a level of stability with Windows, but
it takes a lot of tweaking. With the Mac, stability is there from day
one, and some tweaking just makes things better. Microsoft insists on
intertwining/tangling all their programs with the OS in order to
support their illegal monopoly position - this is what may be causing a
lot of the instability. Apple has made a brilliant OS with X - when you
add the programs, they aren't intertwined with the OS. Eventually the
desire for total control proves to be insane, unstable and
unworkable.
For the record, I agree with Ian's assessment. A system registry!?!
DLLs overwriting one another with every new program installed (thus
breaking already-installed programs)? No thanks.
Wil Nelson also offers the following thoughts on usability:
- XP is much less intuitive than OS X or even OS 9, and
some OS X functions are much simpler to implement, such as
networking.
David Jackson has also hit on an area of OS X that could use some
improvement:
- If I have any single type of application that can send me to the
reset button, it's got to be a Carbon version of a game . . .
I have spent years gaming on the Windows platform, and there were some
rough spots there as well, but I suspect strongly that the problems
I've had with gaming under OS X are completely related to the
porting of those games to OS X. I'm positive that this is a
situation that will clear itself up in time when more games are written
from the start with OS X in mind . . . I believe that if
you were conducting you comparison with a stronger bent towards gaming,
you would have almost a dead tie, but that if you did the same
comparison a year or so from now using only games written specifically
for OS X on the Mac side, your results would be as good or
better.
For now, games are still a weak spot, but this time it's not the OS
that's at fault. It's the games.
John Moylan struck a similar chord:
- It's a good thing that you did not do raw speed comparisons of
graphics apps, as they tend to be MMX optimized on x86, while most are
just stupid brain-dead ports to the Mac with little/no AltiVec
optimizations.
The lone lockup I have had with OS X in well over a year of use
came while playing a Carbon game. In the last few weeks, I have noticed
several ads looking for Mac OS X programmers. Prior to this, I
don't recall seeing an ad for a Mac programmer in years. Hopefully this
is a good sign that the quality (and quantity) of applications
available for OS X will continue to grow.
