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Yet Another Rave Review for OSX

January 7, 2007 at 10:12 | Print This Post Print This Post

It’s not a surprise to see YARRFO (yet another rave review for OSX), though it is unexpected in the pages of Information Week. It’s a great way to start a flame war, but from my perspective IW is just telling it like it is. As I never get tired of saying, I switched a few months ago after (what seemed like) several lifetimes on Windows. The turning point for me came when I decided it was finally time to get the OS to work for me, rather than vice versa. I suppose I had just gotten tired of working for Bill Gates. And the result has been a dramatic reduction in the time I need to spend to keep our systems running.

Well done, Apple.

My latest OSX discovery is the new Mac Mini plugged into the family room TV, and how well Front Row works as an interface for home entertainment. It’s a joy to use, and funny thing - it works. After weeks of frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful efforts to get my XP box to display properly on a high-def screen, OSX and the Mini worked right out of the box. And Front Row is a delightfully elegant way to interact with our media.

Well done, indeed.

Update: Larry seems to be on the same page.


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5 Responses to “Yet Another Rave Review for OSX”


  1. Michael Webster (5 comments.)
    January 7th, 2007 at 17:24

    I have used both Apple and Windows for many years- home office and business office.

    Generally, I prefer Apple for largely asethetic reasons. OS X looks nicer.

    So, I am interested in why you say OS X has reduced the time it takes to keep your systems running.


  2. Rob Hyndman (319 comments.)
    January 7th, 2007 at 22:40

    I now spend much less time (i) recovering from application crashes; (ii) recovering from OS crashes: and (iii) fixing system problems (replacing drivers, figuring out application problems - the list is endless). I could count on several hours a month of this on Windows. Those days are (very happily) over.


  3. Michael Webster (5 comments.)
    January 9th, 2007 at 22:50

    Rob;

    I think that you will find that OS X will crash, or applications stall, in roughly the same proportion to Windows. You have a lot of applications open sucking memory, bad things happen.

    What you don’t need to do as much of is: defrag, registery maintenance -none, backup, when leopard comes out.

    But there are other issues: corrupt plists, annoying preferences, and a host of unix problems.

    In addition, I have found that OS X takes more time to kill applications, unless you are very comfortable with the unix command line and the kill command.

    Drivers are not so much of an issue, but OS X is not perfect either in this regard. You will find that you have keep up to date on the periphals.

    However, all in all, I vastly prefer OS X to Windows XP sp2, but for largely asthetic reasons.

    There was an excellent review of Tiger on Ars Techincal which you may also want to read.


  4. Rob Hyndman (319 comments.)
    January 10th, 2007 at 05:47

    Hi Michael,

    Thanks for the comment, but the Mini is my second Mac - I’ve been using OSX for months now on another mac and I have not found any of that, at all. I’m not saying that bad things don’t happen - they clearly do. But **much** less frequently than Windows. Hence my comment about spending far less time maintaining systems - I was actually speaking from my own personal experience.

    Also, if I need to force quit an app, it happens almost immediately, which almost *never* happened with Windows. The “other issues” you mention haven’t been a problem for me.

    And backup isn’t an issue for me. An outboard drive and a simple autobackup app takes care of everything.