Plaupius said:
Senlis said:
@ Domicinator & Plaupuis
Plaupuis is right, anyone can develop software for Mac. I at least know that Macintosh runs java, and even I can make a program that will run in java.
Domicinator is right in the aspect that Mac OSX is not impervious to viruses. I once again note that Mac OSX runs java, which always has security holes they are patching. However, Mac OSX is more secure 1) because it does not use extensions to tell the operating system how to run programs and 2) because of the lower user base, virus makers don't bother half the time. There are probably other reasons, but I don't know them.
As to Vista being a good OS, go do a little research. theinquirer.org recently published an article about Windows Vista being like Windows ME. I don't know if Vista is that bad, but the fact that people are comparing it to ME is not a good sign. Microsoft themselves admit that Vista wasn't up to par. The keep pushing back the deadline for "no more XP" and keep pushing forward the deadline for Windows 7 (which is basically a reworked Vista)
Look at my occupation under my profile. |
Not only Java, every copy of OS X ships with the full SDK, for free. Signing up for the Apple Developer Connection is free. Apple provides all OS X core technologies for you to use, for free. What does Microsoft have to offer for me that could compete with Apple's offering? The downside of OS X development is that it's done in Objective-C, and it's not used much outside of OS X. Not that it would be hard to pick up, on the contrary, but it's a hurdle nonetheless.
Unfortunately, no system is impervious to viruses and/or malware. There are always ways to get through even the most secure systems, most often through the weakest link: the user. All Unix-based systems have safeguards against stupid users in the form of root vs. normal users and different access rights. Vista made the right move and adopted a similar approach, enforcing the proper use of administrator privileges. It's just too bad for Microsoft that the reputation of Windows is so tarnished because of the earlier versions and their open-doors-for-malware. I know I might get a virus on my Mac, though to be honest, the chances are pretty slim. I have a HW firewall, in addition to the OS X SW firewall, and I use Opera. That combination pretty much guarantees my safety, along with my own experience: don't trust people you don't know, don't open attachments you're not expecting, don't click links received in spam etc. Basic stuff, but it keeps me safe 99.99% of the time, and for the rest is the HW/SW combination. I even have a freeware virus scanner, but TBH I don't regularily check my system. I've never had a virus run rampant in my computer, and I intend to keep it that way.
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The Inquirer is not a good source of information. Them saying Vista is like ME in my opinion is just like Joe Schmoe on a web forum saying it. ME was unstable. Most people around here seem to think that unstable means something has incompatibilities. Unstable means an OS crashes a lot and throws up a lot of error messages. ME did that for pretty much its entire lifespan.
Vista, on the other hand, is almost built NOT to crash. If a driver has a conflict or stops working, 99% of the time Vista can actually just stop and restart the driver without a full system reboot or BSoD. In fact, I've never had a BSoD in Vista once! I can count on one hand how many times Vista has locked up on my on both my Vista machines combined. The same could definitely not be said for XP. That's not to say that XP was bad. I love XP. But it's not as stable as Vista by a long shot.
If the Inquirer is talking about drivers, I wonder how old their information is and I wonder how much of this is being blamed on MS. Nvidia, ATi, HP, etc. had plenty of time to get launch Vista drivers ready to go and fully operational. They dropped the ball and it took them about 2 months to get caught up. After about 2 months of bad ForceWare drivers, my gaming performance in Vista, at least to my naked eye, was similar if not close to identical to what I was getting in XP. Granted, I had just built myself a quad core machine with 2 gigs of RAM and an 8800GTS, so that's plenty of power to do what I need to do on Vista.
This is, of course, all anecdotal and only unique to me. But on my Pentium Dual Core (budget line dual core) laptop with 1 GB of RAM and a run of the mill stock Intel video card, I'm having the same experience with Vista. It boots up slower than my gaming tower and definitely can't run the high end games, but Vista-wise, it runs just fine with Aero Glass turned on and everything.
I consider my own experiences a lot more reliable than the Inquirer. They have been considered kind of a joke for quite some time now. Their outlandish predictions and "news" about video cards alone has made them kind of a pariah in some circles. So I'll go ahead and trust my own experiences.
BTW, my own experiences include my wife's G4 Macbook that crashes about every 5 minutes.
