Rix Bits

I got into a little discussion this week with a couple of guys re: Mac vs Vista. One guy was a Mac owner who claimed Vista was bad, tho I don't think he's used it (see Mojave experiment). The other was a PC owner, tho not necessarily a power user, who had recently been dazzled by a Mac presentation in a store and was now considering buying one.

Then there was me - long time Microsoft-lover as well as Mac-owner. I had to give them my $0.02 because their opinions were starting to be driven by the same factors that seem to drive many folks - Mac's "i" software, Mac's "stability", and Mac's alleged freedom from viruses.

Let's get the easy one out of the way first - we know that viruses are created by crazy & malicious hackers out there that want to cause trouble, right. Historically Mac has never had trouble with viruses. Why? Cuz those hackers didn't bother wasting their time on Mac! Windows machines control the world - why would I waste my development time putting a virus together to affect all seventeen of the Mac users of the world! :- )

okay, i'm exaggerating, but you get my point. Anyway, this security piece is recently being proven now that Mac is starting to get products like the iPhone that are taking a bigger bite out of the market. Check the news - you hear more and more stories about Mac being 'hacked' these days. So yes, you probably will have less trouble with viruses while using a Mac, but please don't assume it's because Mac is somehow superior in its security design - and please remember that the more popular your Mac becomes, the more susceptible it will be - will Mac be ready when the hackers decide they're ready to launch a full-blown attack?

Re: stability, for the most part I usually concede that Mac is more stable. But the reason behind this is what's important to understand:

• Windows is like those 60's hippies - everyone's welcome to join in, love is everywhere, let's all join hands. Mac is like a fraternity - very selective about who gets in, and once you're in, play by our rules.
• Windows is like a wild toga party of 300 people crammed into small house - noisy, wild, people spilling drinks on the floor - but fun. Mac is like 12 people studying in a locked library - yes, you're getting your work done, everything's nice and neat, but you're missing the party.

What the heck am I talking about? I've found over the years that Windows instability for most users comes from the non-Microsoft software they put on it. Vista has been extremely stable for me, and those times that it wasn't ended up being a 3rd party software or driver issue. Is it Vista's fault that it invited another software maker to the toga party that didn't know how to hold his liquor? Meanwhile, Mac doesn't invite quite as many people to library, and when they do, there's a lot of "Quiet, please!" going on.

So yes, normally I'd say Mac is more stable, but for a user like I me, I simply prefer the toga party - I've got more options, and I'm the kind of user that nows how to clean up spilled beer... i mean, troubleshoot stability issues. :) I will point out, however, that mere days into my Mac ownership, I was already having stability issues reminiscent of my Windows experience - could it be that maybe Mac isn't quite as stable as advertised?

Re: software, many people on the web have compared iPhoto vs Windows Photo gallery, iTunes vs Media Player, and iMovie vs Vista's Movie Maker. Here's my comments in a nutshell:

• each side's software essentially gets the same job done. tho there's a different experience for each. whose experience you prefer is up to you, but let's not act like one of them is doing something more remarkably groundbreaking than the other.
• I like to remember that although both are giving me these software tools for free, with Windows OS & hardware being significantly cheaper than Mac, I wonder if Mac is truly free after all???
• Anybody that has traditionally felt Mac's tools were better than Windows needs to try Vista - maybe in the past the argument was true, but Vista pretty much copied a lot of ideas from Mac and put them in Vista.
• I agree with many that Mac's tool take away a lot of freedom - which is why i never could make the jump over to iTunes and iPhoto. They're very specific about how they want you to manage your photos & music, and I don't like them telling me what to do. Maybe my 70-year old grandmother, who doesn't care either way and just wants to store her grandkids' pictures, would like iPhoto, but not me.

In closing, here's a pretty good feature comparison I found. The green boxes essentially mean it's better. However, there's a few points I disagree with it on:

• Find windows - both Expose and Flip 3D are equally useful (or equally useless, depending on your usage)
• Virtual desktop - although Windows doesn't come with it, there is a free virtual desktop tool built by the developer community that does the same thing that Spaces does. Tho I'm one of these guys that has never found a lot of value in the concept. Although I'll many time have a dozen or more windows open, I'm never quite comfortable saying that "these 4 windows can be pushed out to another view" - my mind jumps around to all my windows simultaneously! :)
• Calendar - iCal and Windows Calendar are equally useless. :)
• Remote desktop - VNC is an inferior user experience compare to RDP in Windows. This has been a major issue for me in my Mac adoption.

Alright, i guess I've talked enough. Hope this helps someone. Vive la difference!

There was an interesting article that talked about an 'experiment' that Microsoft did. They took 120 people who previously said "I don't like Vista". They put them in a room and had them try out a brand new operating system called "Mojave". Afterwards, they revealed to them that they were actually using Vista (minus any identifying logos). Those peoples average rating of Vista went from 4.4 (unfavorable) to 8.5 (out of 10).

Most were XP users. About 22% were Mac users (insert devious giggle here).

I've been using Vista for quite a while with very few problems (especially post-SP1), and I prefer it over XP. Perhaps more people should actually TRY it before they dismiss it. :)

Update 8/17/08 - found Microsoft's website for the Mojave experiment.

How do you go about storing your emails?

In the past, I've always used PST files from Outlook. Every year or so, I spit out a huge honking 1 Gig PST file that represents all the emails from the previous year. Store it somewhere nice, do a big, time-consuming Import later if I ever feel I need it again.

Okay, that's getting old. What I really want is to be able to access 60 years worth of emails right at my fingertips without having to do any importing/exporting, and w/o having a huge data file in Outlook that affects performance.

Two options I'm looking at right now - both are "desktop search engines": Vista and Copernic.

Copernic will index and search emails just fine. It pretty much does what I want except for one thing: it wants me to keep those emails in Outlook in order for it to index them. I don't want that. I know that Outlook isn't going to be happy with me keeping tens of thousands of emails in its data file.

What about Vista's search engine? Turns out that yes, Vista will index my emails within normal file folders. Great! So now, instead of PST exports, I can just copy the raw emails to file folders.

The caveat - it doesn't seem to be working right:

See, what did I tell you? Vista ain't so bad after all. :-)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=sPv8PPl7ANU

I read an interesting article talking about the upcoming service pack for Vista and XP. Some of the folks commenting on the article started the standard debate among Windows OS users about how XP is better than Vista (aka "Vista sucks").

I actually upgraded to Vista on my main machine a few months ago. I did it for a few reasons. One, I was doing my personal bi-annual "build myown monster machine" routine, and so I figured I might as well put the latest and greatest on this new machine, especially since I knew my hardware was beefy enough to handle it. Also, I know that Vista will ultimately become the OS of choice, despite what the critics say, and I made the decision that I was ready to deal with the standard headaches of the early-adopter until Vista got nice & stable & popular.

Anyway, I thought some of the comments in the article were both quite ignorant and quite eloquent. Check it out:

• "if XP can perform 5% better than Vista...it means Vista is crap..."
  - I would say it a different way - "Vista has a ton of new features, has a fully-overhauled and visually pleasing graphic interface, and with all that it only performs 5% slower than XP..."
  
• "XP can perform better on older computers and Vista requires some pretty heavy hardware to be useful..."
  - I think it's funny how people still want to be able to use their grandmother's hand-me-down computer for the next 20 years, and if something new comes out that doesn't work well with their hamster-driven machine, they have a problem. Nevertheless, as someone pointed out, if you actually go price a new machine these days, you'll see that you can buy a new machine that is fully Vista-capable, plus some extra memory, for as little as $400 if you shop right. If your money is too funny for that expense right now, then sure, stick with your Hyundai without making fun of our Escalade.
  
• "Notice how few folks are around saying that XP's an abortion and Microsoft should have stopped with Windows 98? The trend is already starting to turn around in exactly that way for Vista versus XP..."
  - Amen, brother.

It's true that we as consumers basically tell folks like Microsoft, thru our behavior, that we want NEW NEW NEW and we want it NOW NOW NOW. So when they speed-push the new stuff to market, it's funny how we then complain when a few bugs got thru in that hurried process. Oh well, I guess we'll all have to wait and see how this new generation of OS's turns out. Tho I have a suspicion that I already know..... ;- )

(originally posted 2/1/08)

I was reflecting on Apple's commercial where they were making fun of Vista for its new security feature, which asks for your permission everytime it wants to do something that could be potentially dangerous.

Well here I am on my MacMini, and lo and behold they have the same thing - every now and then when I try to do something, the Mac confirms that I want to do it. To do that, it asks for my user password (on Vista, you can just hit Continue). I found this very interesting.

Well, let me get back to troubleshooting my Mac printer installation - the very process that one of my friends went on and on about in terms of Mac-simplicity. Perhaps I'll blog later on the details of my printer woes, but the short story is that I installed from disk the drivers to a Mac-compatible Canon printer, but yet now I find it hard to find anything related to the printer driver i just installed. Perhaps the Mac is hiding the details of the installation from me in an attempt to "keep things simple". Yeah, that's working out real well...

(originally posted 1/20/08)