Before I start I want to say that this has the potential for the start of an Informer article but I wasn't sure if it's something that is relevant to most of you.
As you may or may not know Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6) is due out tomorrow. Windows 7 is due out officially on October 22. both of these operating systems are marketed as "fixing" or "refining" their predecessors. Snow Leopard is introducing new technologies that will propel Mac OS further to 10.7 and possible OS XI. Windows 7 is essentially what Vista should have been and as does Snow Leopard sets Microsoft up to innovate with Windows 8.
Leopard was slower than Tiger but compensated by adding "300 new features" which weren't exactly all that useful. Leopard was also larger than Tiger in terms of disk footprint. Leopard works fine for the most part if you have at least 2GB ram. There were also a few little annoyances dropped in with things like disk ejection and network communication with Windows based PCs (Samba). Prime example being that disk ejection would take a long time and sometimes after a large file copy over the network, the file wouldn't arrive on the other machine. Almost two years later Leopard works for the majority of people and even if there were problems they weren't be heard due to the Mac culture as it exists.
Vista on the other hand was absolutely painful in the beginning if you were upgrading from a Windows XP based computer with old hardware. People who bought new desktops and laptops didn't feel that pain as their hardware had drivers provided. Over the two Windows Vista service packs user experience got progressively better. Vista like Snow Leopard needed 2GB memory to be useful in any "fun" way, sometimes more. Vista also added features and made a radical UI change just like Leopard did. Windows Vista became a marketing nightmare for Microsoft even though it wasn't that bad, hence why we're where we are right now - Windows 7.
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Following from this I've been presented with a great dilemma. Leopard works right now for a good chunk of the stuff I need to do. Some stuff it does perfectly fine others it could do a little bit better. The two things it could do a little bit better that infuriate me daily are MSN, Java, and Flash.
The MSN client is bad, sending a custom emote at random intervals will cause it to crash completely. Another issue it has since the latest release of Live Messenger on Windows is that there are times (also random) when messages won't be delivered. I could go on and use Adium or AMSN but neither of those do custom emotes which I do rely on to a certain extent
.
We're a community based on Runescape which is a prime example of why fast Java is a must. I've talked to other Mac owners (ATi iMac and NVIDIA MacBook Pro) and both have expressed the same concerns. in the case of the NVIDIA based MacBook Pro's they have the option to use a lower end integrated GPU (9400M) or discrete GPU (9600GT). There was no difference in RS performance between either of these cards which when compared with the other cases leads to the conclusion that it's a Java CPU issue. The problem is that Mac OS Java is written by Apple and in the "Father Knows Best" mentality of Apple, Sun isn't allowed to write Mac Java. This leads to the problem that Sun can't write a proper implementation as they can for WIndows and Linux. This is amplified by the fact that Apple won't optimize Java.
Finally Flash, which is becoming very important on the modern web. YouTube and pretty much any other site that hosts video or embeds it uses Flash. Flash is also used in ads by many companies. Just to give you non-Apple owners an idea of how bad the problem is Flash is entirely capable of spiking system load to 100% or more. When playing a YouTube video in Firefox it's not uncommon for Firefox to hit 70% CPU usage (90% is the highest I've noted for Firefox). Safari is slightly worse increasing to an average of 80% (maxing out at 115%). Flash is bearable, it still works, any normal user wouldn't notice this as an issue. This can be traced back to the same cause as the Java issues, poor optimization. In the end poorly designed software that does not work or does not perform well is most annoying to me.
The reverse is entirely true on Windows, MSN, Java, and Flash work exceptionally well. Windows 7 is a good operating system, I would have no problem using it except for a few minor annoyances which I won't bother you with. The reason I simply won't move to Windows is that I enjoy having a Unix based operating system that can run mainstream software (ie. Photoshop).
Some possible solutions that I've outlined (starting as most favourable going to least favourable):
- Use Windows for MSN and Runescape, keep Mac OS for everything else.
- Use Windows for everything and do web development work in a Linux virtual machine.
- Use Windows for everything.
I would have listed finding a solution to the MSN and Java problem but that's not likely. Adium would have to support custom emotes and Java would have to switch to a Sun developed variety or a better optimized version be shipped by Apple.
At the end of the day my MacBook Pro still does what it's supposed to, it's just that I've been spoiled by a
newer Windows system. Suffice to say there's no competition between an aging laptop and a quad core desktop. If you don't play games that are intensive and just play RS and do general browsing a Mac is probably fine for you.
