AARoads Forum

This thread probably existed a long time ago, but what is your stance on computing? Mac or PC?
I'm personally more of a Mac person, and as they all say, "Once you go Mac, you never go back."  :happy:

I've never owned a Mac, but I see them commonly at school. I've looked at them myself, but I doubt I'll get one in the near future.

Windows is doing it's damnedest to make me a Mac customer.  But their shit is so much more expensive.

I've been regularly using both OS's for a decade and over most of that time, I can say good and bad things about each.  But in recent years, I find myself grumbling about Windows more.
I associate Mac with work and Windows with home, which is the reverse of most people.

I have been using both since 2007. My first Mac was running Leopard, which was a huge jump from the Mac OS before that. Damndest thing is, I still have that computer. And while it has slowed down since those first years, it's still a really good web browser. If I didn't play games, I'd use a Mac. But, since I do, Windows 10 is my choice at the moment.

Both. My work laptop is Windows 7. My personal laptop is a MacBook. I bought the MacBook because I passionately hated Windows 8. My desktop PC runs Windows 10 because games and my Oculus Rift work better on Windows. I also have a macmini that I use as a server.

Windows is better for games; there are more of them, and there is much better hardware support. I do like Windows 7 and Windows 10. I prefer OSX for everyday use though, largely because it's UNIX-based and has a full featured terminal.

I use Linux also both for work and personally. Mint is my favorite distro lately. It's not my main OS though because it's not as polished as Windows or OSX. I find myself spending much more time mucking around with OS configuration on Linux than I do with OSX or Windows.

Neither. I use Linux Mint as my primary OS, mostly because it runs smoother and is more configurable than either Windows or OSX. Plus, it makes a few programming - related tasks such as using the Android SDK much easier to accomplish, and comes with a reduced threat of viruses. I'll admit that it's far less polished than W10 or OSX, and that it requires much more finagling in the command line than should be necessary. However, I also have a Surface 3 running Windows 10 that I use for school stuff.

Nexus 7

This should be a choose-all-that-apply poll.

My laptop is a Windows, but I don't really use it as much as my desktop. I basically really only use it for driving trains. :spin:

My desktop runs Ubuntu with i3wm. It's just much more comfortable for me, and is nicer to program in than Windows. :)

PC.  I have both, but I definitely prefer the PC, if only because of how much broader the software market is for PCs.

Have a friend who's a filmmaker and she is always touting Mac's abilities in that regard.  However, I can't tell you how many times that she's set up her fancy-schmancy rig to do a render and having the wheel of death cause her to do the Darth Vader "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Quote from: sammi on February 12, 2016, 01:19:42 AM
This should be a choose-all-that-apply poll.

I haven't seen the option in the 'edit form' panel to make it this way. Is there a way to modify it that I don't know about?

PC, but iPhone.  There's a limit to which I'm willing to surrender control.  Macs are fun, but after a few decades of PC use (with a five-year affair with a Mac) I just find PCs more fixable and affordable.

I do a lot of coding, writing and research (and almost no gaming), so the SSD MacBook with 16GB RAM is it. There's a Win7 VM that I sometimes have to use, and I always get annoyed when I have to go fix AD or Windows-based vCenter, etc.

Linux distro of choice is Ubuntu, probably out of inertia/familiarity/laziness. There might be better options out there.

Funny you should ask that, as I'm just swearing at Windows because this supposedly managed update process is demanding that I reboot it, when it's supposed to do its update processes at night when no one is using the damned thing.  This is at work, I wouldn't use Windows voluntarily.

At home, PCBSD.  That's FreeBSD with a desktop environment.  However, I may switch to Mac or some Linux distribution, PCBSD's rough edges are a little too rough for me.

First computer I ever used was a Mac Plus, with a 20 MB external hard drive. That was back in 1987.

When it came time for me to buy a home computer, I went with a Mac because that was what I was familiar with (and also had access to a bunch of fonts, software, etc.)

First time I ever used Windows was in 1995, and Windows 3.1. That was when I started a new job where the PC culture dominated. Wasn't long before they upgraded to Windows NT.

Currently, I'm using a older white MacBook (because my MacBook Pro bit the dust last year and I can't afford to replace it) and I also own a little netbook that runs Windows XP. My work machine is a Dell PC that runs Windows 7 Professional.

I prefer Mac for the interface, but there's a lot more software available for the PC, most definitely.

Quote from: kurumi on February 12, 2016, 11:17:40 AM
I do a lot of coding, writing and research (and almost no gaming), so the SSD MacBook with 16GB RAM is it. There's a Win7 VM that I sometimes have to use, and I always get annoyed when I have to go fix AD or Windows-based vCenter, etc.

Linux distro of choice is Ubuntu, probably out of inertia/familiarity/laziness. There might be better options out there.

I stopped using Ubuntu when they introduced that stupid Unity desktop. Mint, which is my current distro of choice, is basically Ubuntu with a much better GUI front end. The ISO download is a live boot. You should give it a look sometime.

I'm not a fan of the way you worded the poll. I use a PC with Linux installed. Windows is not my primary OS (though I do have it for when I need it). Obviously I voted Linux in the poll, but the poll is a bit odd. You could also say the same thing about Mac. A Mac is a PC made by Apple with OS X preinstalled. I blame Apple's "Mac vs. PC" ads for all this nonsense, so I'm not mad at the OP.

Quote from: doorknob60 on February 13, 2016, 03:32:48 AM
I'm not a fan of the way you worded the poll. I use a PC with Linux installed. Windows is not my primary OS (though I do have it for when I need it). Obviously I voted Linux in the poll, but the poll is a bit odd. You could also say the same thing about Mac. A Mac is a PC made by Apple with OS X preinstalled. I blame Apple's "Mac vs. PC" ads for all this nonsense, so I'm not mad at the OP.

Once upon a time we may have said "IBM" instead of "PC," but IBM ceased to be a significant player in that market a long time ago. The term "PC" in this case is derived from the 1980s, though, and the original IBM Personal Computer (quickly shortened to "PC" in popular usage). You had the PC and "clones" on the one hand and the Macintosh on the other. The term "PC-compatible" endured after IBM introduced the PS/2 line, which was largely perceived as a flop even though it sold really well.  You can be forgiven on this one due to your youth!  :-D

To answer the poll, I've always been in the PC camp, but if I need to buy a new machine it'll likely be a Mac because they can now run all the PC software. Last weekend my PC got bricked by the Windows 10 "upgrade." A major item on my to-do list this weekend is to install a new boot drive and do a clean install of Windows 7. If it doesn't work, I may be computer shopping, but I want to avoid that if I can. I'm really down on Microsoft after this experience.

Quote from: 1995hoo on February 13, 2016, 07:38:17 AM

Quote from: doorknob60 on February 13, 2016, 03:32:48 AM
I'm not a fan of the way you worded the poll. I use a PC with Linux installed. Windows is not my primary OS (though I do have it for when I need it). Obviously I voted Linux in the poll, but the poll is a bit odd. You could also say the same thing about Mac. A Mac is a PC made by Apple with OS X preinstalled. I blame Apple's "Mac vs. PC" ads for all this nonsense, so I'm not mad at the OP.

Once upon a time we may have said "IBM" instead of "PC," but IBM ceased to be a significant player in that market a long time ago. The term "PC" in this case is derived from the 1980s, though, and the original IBM Personal Computer (quickly shortened to "PC" in popular usage). You had the PC and "clones" on the one hand and the Macintosh on the other. The term "PC-compatible" endured after IBM introduced the PS/2 line, which was largely perceived as a flop even though it sold really well.  You can be forgiven on this one due to your youth!  :-D

To answer the poll, I've always been in the PC camp, but if I need to buy a new machine it'll likely be a Mac because they can now run all the PC software. Last weekend my PC got bricked by the Windows 10 "upgrade." A major item on my to-do list this weekend is to install a new boot drive and do a clean install of Windows 7. If it doesn't work, I may be computer shopping, but I want to avoid that if I can. I'm really down on Microsoft after this experience.

But how well can they run "PC software" if that software is for windows?  I've known a few folks to try and have far less than stellar performance.

I've always been a Windows guy, though I do own an iPhone.

I've had my windows 7 desktop for about 5 years and it still works fairly well.  It does crash once in a bloom moon every now and again which it never did when it was newer.  However, I do push it to its limit from time to time with photography stuff.

I also have an HP laptop that I upgraded to Windows 10 back in the fall.  At first I wasn't that much of a fan of Windows 10, compared to 7, but the more I've used it, the more the operating system has grown on me.  Since upgrading, I've never had any stability issues with Windows 10 on my laptop.

I've never been a big Apple fan. I prefer Windows 7 over the newer Windows models, because I don't use all that other junk anyways.

I got a new hp Notebook 15-F211WM for Christmas and I would have to give it a 1.5 out 5 stars. It works fine for a while and then the mouse pad quits working (it will zoom in and do nothing else). The only way to fix it is to shut it off and turn it back on which gets old. I guess it is a $300 laptop. It makes me wonder how much a "good" laptop costs. 

Quote from: US 41 on February 13, 2016, 10:54:29 AM
It makes me wonder how much a "good" laptop costs.

A minimum of $899 for an 11-inch MacBook Air with a 1.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of PCIe-based flash storage, all of which are soldered to the logic board and not upgradable. People often ask me why I'm such a Mac fan and tell me that I'm an Apple sheep, but I really just appreciate the fit and finish they put into their products, and, in a way, it helps to justify the heavy price tag on most of their products. I've invested myself so heavily into the Apple world that it's kind of hard to even think about going to Windows or a Linux distro.

I'm usually a pretty platform agnostic person. I have no problem using Windows or Linux - I'm not a heavy gamer, nor am I an industrial worker or an architect who uses Autodesk Revit all day long - I'm a designer and a filmmaker, not for a living (I'm 14), but for school and mostly for fun. And Macs are usually better in that aspect than other machines running Windows or Linux.

Quote from: doorknob60 on February 13, 2016, 03:32:48 AM
I'm not a fan of the way you worded the poll. I use a PC with Linux installed. Windows is not my primary OS (though I do have it for when I need it). Obviously I voted Linux in the poll, but the poll is a bit odd. You could also say the same thing about Mac. A Mac is a PC made by Apple with OS X preinstalled. I blame Apple's "Mac vs. PC" ads for all this nonsense, so I'm not mad at the OP.

Yes, I probably should have worded it a bit better. Apple's "Mac vs. PC" ads have given me many a laugh over the years. I'll amend the poll; you need not vote again, however.

Quote from: Pete from Boston on February 13, 2016, 09:21:02 AM

Quote from: 1995hoo on February 13, 2016, 07:38:17 AM

Quote from: doorknob60 on February 13, 2016, 03:32:48 AM
I'm not a fan of the way you worded the poll. I use a PC with Linux installed. Windows is not my primary OS (though I do have it for when I need it). Obviously I voted Linux in the poll, but the poll is a bit odd. You could also say the same thing about Mac. A Mac is a PC made by Apple with OS X preinstalled. I blame Apple's "Mac vs. PC" ads for all this nonsense, so I'm not mad at the OP.

Once upon a time we may have said "IBM" instead of "PC," but IBM ceased to be a significant player in that market a long time ago. The term "PC" in this case is derived from the 1980s, though, and the original IBM Personal Computer (quickly shortened to "PC" in popular usage). You had the PC and "clones" on the one hand and the Macintosh on the other. The term "PC-compatible" endured after IBM introduced the PS/2 line, which was largely perceived as a flop even though it sold really well.  You can be forgiven on this one due to your youth!  :-D

To answer the poll, I've always been in the PC camp, but if I need to buy a new machine it'll likely be a Mac because they can now run all the PC software. Last weekend my PC got bricked by the Windows 10 "upgrade." A major item on my to-do list this weekend is to install a new boot drive and do a clean install of Windows 7. If it doesn't work, I may be computer shopping, but I want to avoid that if I can. I'm really down on Microsoft after this experience.

But how well can they run "PC software" if that software is for windows?  I've known a few folks to try and have far less than stellar performance.

From what I understand, since I don't have a Mac, you install software that lets you dual-boot to either the Mac OS or Windows, and you run PC software in the Windows box. So it essentially runs natively, though I have no idea how it is performance-wise. This wasn't an option in the 1980s and 1990s.

My clean install of Windows 7 on the new drive is working fine so far. Hardware driver downloads were simple enough. Next comes the long process of software updates and reinstalling, or repurchasing, applications. Pain in the butt, but less expensive than buying a new computer, whether it be a Mac or a PC.

Quote from: 1995hoo on February 13, 2016, 12:34:20 PM

Quote from: Pete from Boston on February 13, 2016, 09:21:02 AM

Quote from: 1995hoo on February 13, 2016, 07:38:17 AM

Quote from: doorknob60 on February 13, 2016, 03:32:48 AM
I'm not a fan of the way you worded the poll. I use a PC with Linux installed. Windows is not my primary OS (though I do have it for when I need it). Obviously I voted Linux in the poll, but the poll is a bit odd. You could also say the same thing about Mac. A Mac is a PC made by Apple with OS X preinstalled. I blame Apple's "Mac vs. PC" ads for all this nonsense, so I'm not mad at the OP.

Once upon a time we may have said "IBM" instead of "PC," but IBM ceased to be a significant player in that market a long time ago. The term "PC" in this case is derived from the 1980s, though, and the original IBM Personal Computer (quickly shortened to "PC" in popular usage). You had the PC and "clones" on the one hand and the Macintosh on the other. The term "PC-compatible" endured after IBM introduced the PS/2 line, which was largely perceived as a flop even though it sold really well.  You can be forgiven on this one due to your youth!  :-D

To answer the poll, I've always been in the PC camp, but if I need to buy a new machine it'll likely be a Mac because they can now run all the PC software. Last weekend my PC got bricked by the Windows 10 "upgrade." A major item on my to-do list this weekend is to install a new boot drive and do a clean install of Windows 7. If it doesn't work, I may be computer shopping, but I want to avoid that if I can. I'm really down on Microsoft after this experience.

But how well can they run "PC software" if that software is for windows?  I've known a few folks to try and have far less than stellar performance.

From what I understand, since I don't have a Mac, you install software that lets you dual-boot to either the Mac OS or Windows, and you run PC software in the Windows box. So it essentially runs natively, though I have no idea how it is performance-wise. This wasn't an option in the 1980s and 1990s.

My clean install of Windows 7 on the new drive is working fine so far. Hardware driver downloads were simple enough. Next comes the long process of software updates and reinstalling, or repurchasing, applications. Pain in the butt, but less expensive than buying a new computer, whether it be a Mac or a PC.

Bootcamp is the name of the tool that ships with OSX. It helps you partition your HD and install Windows on the second partition for dual booting. Since you're booting Windows natively it runs just as well as on any other laptop. It's actually faster than OSX for anything involving 3D graphics.

Parallels is a tool that lets you run Windows and OS X at the same time. It creates a virtual machine that you install Windows into and run on top of OSX. Since newer Intel processors support virtualization natively it runs surprisingly well, but not as fast as using Bootcamp to boot natively.

Whatever works I'm fine with, although the Mac fanboys acting like they're some kind of superior people puts me off from Macs for that reason.

Quote from: realjd on February 13, 2016, 01:03:07 PM
Bootcamp is the name of the tool that ships with OSX. It helps you partition your HD and install Windows on the second partition for dual booting. Since you're booting Windows natively it runs just as well as on any other laptop. It's actually faster than OSX for anything involving 3D graphics.

Boot Camp Assistant is very useful for running Windows on a Mac and it runs faster than it does on most non-Mac PCs. I'm currently dual booting OS X and Windows, OS X getting the larger partition, on my Mid-2011 iMac. On my Early 2014 MacBook Air I'm running OS X only, as it only has a 128 GB SSD.

Quote from: realjd on February 13, 2016, 01:03:07 PM[/font]
Parallels is a tool that lets you run Windows and OS X at the same time. It creates a virtual machine that you install Windows into and run on top of OSX. Since newer Intel processors support virtualization natively it runs surprisingly well, but not as fast as using Bootcamp to boot natively.

While Parallels gets a lot of fame, I actually think that Oracle's free VirtualBox is a much better alternative, as it allows you to customize nearly every aspect of the virtual machine's settings. On my iMac I've got several virtual machines running different Linux distros. On my MacBook Air I have only one relatively small virtual machine running Windows 10 Pro, which I use for engineering/tech at my school, as we're working with Autodesk Revit and Inventor, programs only available on Windows.

Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on February 13, 2016, 02:09:46 PM
Whatever works I'm fine with, although the Mac fanboys acting like they're some kind of superior people puts me off from Macs for that reason.

Yes, I hate that too. Even though I use Mac, I don't believe it's something to be pompous and stuck up about. Wake up people; it's a PREFERENCE.

Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on February 13, 2016, 02:09:46 PM
Whatever works I'm fine with, although the Mac fanboys acting like they're some kind of superior people puts me off from Macs for that reason.

Yeah. Same thing is true when people talk about their mobile phones.

Quote from: 1995hoo on February 13, 2016, 07:02:03 PM

Quote from: TheHighwayMan394 on February 13, 2016, 02:09:46 PM
Whatever works I'm fine with, although the Mac fanboys acting like they're some kind of superior people puts me off from Macs for that reason.

Yeah. Same thing is true when people talk about their mobile phones.

It embarrasses me a little to see folks get all hot about what they paid for vs. what someone else paid for.  Hints at an unrealistic idea of personal achievement via purchase.

Technically, running both*.  Went with a MacBook for my laptop because I got tired of Windows and their near constant "security upgrades".  Viruses played a factor too.

Sure, one pays an arm and a leg for a MacBook, and yeah, there are some stuck-up Mac users out there.  But Apple's customer support is by far the best in the business.  I have no regrets over switching to Mac.

* running Parallels and Windows 7 in order to run ArcGIS.

I'm Windows at home, but that's more by default than anything else.  I started with Windows and I don't have the know-how/strength/patience to try switching to a Mac.  I don't play video games and hear that maybe Linux would work for my purposes, but installing and running that?  You might as well tell me to build my own spaceship and fly to Jupiter. 

I'm strictly a user and know nothing about the technical side.  (I used to be really good with a Commodore 64, but that was many moons ago.)  I wouldn't have clue one what I would need to do to port all my documents from Windows to Mac.  Listening to some oh-so-superior geek at the Apple store talking technobabble over my head is not an experience I need.  As it is, any software install or update I run never works correctly.  Example:  Just before typing this post, I spent the better part of an hour trying to install a Garmin GPS map update three times -- the installer says "You're Updated!" but when I take the thing outside and turn it on, it says "no detailed maps are installed" -- which is a major step backward from where I started.  I'll try again later.  This is the norm for me and software. 

I don't have a definitive opinion on Windows 10's spying and reporting back to Big Brother Central.  It shouldn't be anyone's business what I do, but then again what I do is no big deal.  It's interesting listening to the outrage from some of the same people who tweet and text their every move, down to going to the bathroom to take a dump, to their "friends" and "followers."

I've been using Linux as my primary OS for 10 years now. It's come such a long way since then. I like it because it does what an OS should–runs applications and gets the hell out of my way. Any time I use a Windows computer I feel like I have to fight the OS to let me do what I want. I've never actually used a computer with OS X but I've gotten into a few such fights with iOS, so I don't have much hope that it would be much better.

Quote from: wanderer2575 on February 14, 2016, 11:00:57 AM
I don't have a definitive opinion on Windows 10's spying and reporting back to Big Brother Central.  It shouldn't be anyone's business what I do, but then again what I do is no big deal.  It's interesting listening to the outrage from some of the same people who tweet and text their every move, down to going to the bathroom to take a dump, to their "friends" and "followers."

The difference there is that they are choosing to share that information with people they care about, rather than being forced to share it with a corporation who could benefit financially from the information.

I have nothing to hide either but I don't have a glass door on my bathroom.

Quote from: froggie on February 14, 2016, 07:07:40 AM
Technically, running both*.  Went with a MacBook for my laptop because I got tired of Windows and their near constant "security upgrades".  Viruses played a factor too.

Sure, one pays an arm and a leg for a MacBook, and yeah, there are some stuck-up Mac users out there.  But Apple's customer support is by far the best in the business.  I have no regrets over switching to Mac.

* running Parallels and Windows 7 in order to run ArcGIS.

The Windows updates are what have me in a pickle this week. Our desktop PC in the home office was running Windows 7 Home Premium, but last week it downloaded Windows 10 (shame on me, I guess, for not double-checking the "Optional Updates" screen when installing updates) and then it kept nagging me and interfering with things so much that I finally allowed the installation. It seemed to go fine until after I was logged back in with the new OS running, at which point it told me to reboot. It then bricked the system. Went to a BSOD every time with an error message. None of the info I could find online about how to fix it worked (due in no small part to most of the "solutions" requiring you to be able to start Windows 10, which I couldn't do–the BSOD was an endless loop). All I could do was use recovery media to get to a DOS prompt. Couldn't even do a "repair" installation because it always wanted to reboot first, which took me to the BSOD. Thankfully, I had backed up almost all of my data, and the stuff that was new and not backed up was on a separate physical drive from the boot drive. So I haven't lost any data, and just to be safe I did some extra copying to a flash drive via the DOS prompt. A couple of friends who work in IT confirmed I was out of luck on the Windows 10 installation, and one of them said in her experience it's very dangerous to try to go directly from 7 to 10 rather than from 7 to 8.1 to 10. That's nice, but the underhanded way in which the 10 download was pushed through kind of screwed me over there.

Hence why I've spent this weekend installing and partitioning a new boot drive and then doing a clean installation of a new copy of Windows 7 (the "Professional" version this time because it's what Micro Center had). You want to talk about OS updates, though....I knew there were bound to be a lot of them. Started the process running last night shortly before 7:00. It says it finished searching for updates at 4:24 this morning and, as I type this, it's installed 230 of 241 updates so far. Wow!

For obvious reasons I'm doing all the configuring, installing drivers, downloading updates, etc., before I put that data drive back into the machine. Paranoia? Maybe, but given what happened last Sunday, it feels like justifiable paranoia. I'll probably wind up re-purchasing some software, but I guess that's life because I probably would have had to do so had I bought a new computer. If the solution of buying a new boot drive and a clean copy of Windows 7 hadn't worked, I was probably going to buy a Mac. But I didn't want to spend that much money right at this particular time. Among other reasons, we have a guy coming tomorrow to give us an estimate on replacing our roof. There's no damage up there, but the roof is 23 years old and on borrowed time, so I want to replace it as a preventive measure.

Quote from: Scott5114 on February 14, 2016, 11:07:36 AM

Quote from: wanderer2575 on February 14, 2016, 11:00:57 AM
I don't have a definitive opinion on Windows 10's spying and reporting back to Big Brother Central.  It shouldn't be anyone's business what I do, but then again what I do is no big deal.  It's interesting listening to the outrage from some of the same people who tweet and text their every move, down to going to the bathroom to take a dump, to their "friends" and "followers."

The difference there is that they are choosing to share that information with people they care about, rather than being forced to share it with a corporation who could benefit financially from the information.

I have nothing to hide either but I don't have a glass door on my bathroom.

Point taken.  Of course, you have no choice on what "the people (you) care about" do with that information after you share it with them, which has led to more than one awkward situation, but people still don't get it. 

Quote from: wanderer2575 on February 14, 2016, 12:26:50 PM

Quote from: Scott5114 on February 14, 2016, 11:07:36 AM

Quote from: wanderer2575 on February 14, 2016, 11:00:57 AM
I don't have a definitive opinion on Windows 10's spying and reporting back to Big Brother Central.  It shouldn't be anyone's business what I do, but then again what I do is no big deal.  It's interesting listening to the outrage from some of the same people who tweet and text their every move, down to going to the bathroom to take a dump, to their "friends" and "followers."

The difference there is that they are choosing to share that information with people they care about, rather than being forced to share it with a corporation who could benefit financially from the information.

I have nothing to hide either but I don't have a glass door on my bathroom.

Point taken.  Of course, you have no choice on what "the people (you) care about" do with that information after you share it with them, which has led to more than one awkward situation, but people still don't get it. 

This is one reason I'm thankful I was a kid when I was and not nowadays. Kids have always had a remarkable ability to be cruel to each other and to make each other the subject of ridicule, but in the 1970s and 1980s you had to do something pretty damn remarkable for the whole school to find out about it. (I'm thinking of, for example, the time when I was in high school and the student body president for some inexplicable reason chose to use a mild profanity over the PA when giving the morning announcements.) Of our relatives' kids in Florida, the oldest one is 12, and he's said nowadays anything embarrassing almost invariably gets blasted to the whole school within minutes due to the ubiquity of mobile phones and the like.

Obviously that's not quite the same thing as people who stupidly post everything they ever do on the Internet and then complain when they lose control of the information, but it's somewhat related in the sense that it's dangerous to trust even the people you consider your closest friends.

I'm astonished by the way kids these days think information they put online isn't "supposed to be" used by potential employers or the like. Who are the kids to decide that? The dumbest example I can think of was former UVA quarterback Peter Lalich getting busted for underage drinking and being put on probation conditional on his not consuming alcohol. He then posted Facebook pictures of himself, while on probation, drinking beer with other players after practice. Obviously the judge was not amused.

Quote from: wanderer2575 on February 14, 2016, 12:26:50 PM

Quote from: Scott5114 on February 14, 2016, 11:07:36 AM

Quote from: wanderer2575 on February 14, 2016, 11:00:57 AM
I don't have a definitive opinion on Windows 10's spying and reporting back to Big Brother Central.  It shouldn't be anyone's business what I do, but then again what I do is no big deal.  It's interesting listening to the outrage from some of the same people who tweet and text their every move, down to going to the bathroom to take a dump, to their "friends" and "followers."

The difference there is that they are choosing to share that information with people they care about, rather than being forced to share it with a corporation who could benefit financially from the information.

I have nothing to hide either but I don't have a glass door on my bathroom.

Point taken.  Of course, you have no choice on what "the people (you) care about" do with that information after you share it with them, which has led to more than one awkward situation, but people still don't get it.

In all of those cases, you are sharing even info kept "private" with a close circle of people that includes the Facebook Corporation or whoever it is in your case.  It is safe to assume they never actually "get rid" of any of it.  This is one of the reasons I hesitate to join Facebook, despite considering myself a fairly sociable person.

Quote from: 1995hoo on February 14, 2016, 12:51:26 PM

Quote from: wanderer2575 on February 14, 2016, 12:26:50 PM

Quote from: Scott5114 on February 14, 2016, 11:07:36 AM

Quote from: wanderer2575 on February 14, 2016, 11:00:57 AM
I don't have a definitive opinion on Windows 10's spying and reporting back to Big Brother Central.  It shouldn't be anyone's business what I do, but then again what I do is no big deal.  It's interesting listening to the outrage from some of the same people who tweet and text their every move, down to going to the bathroom to take a dump, to their "friends" and "followers."

The difference there is that they are choosing to share that information with people they care about, rather than being forced to share it with a corporation who could benefit financially from the information.

I have nothing to hide either but I don't have a glass door on my bathroom.

Point taken.  Of course, you have no choice on what "the people (you) care about" do with that information after you share it with them, which has led to more than one awkward situation, but people still don't get it. 

This is one reason I'm thankful I was a kid when I was and not nowadays. Kids have always had a remarkable ability to be cruel to each other and to make each other the subject of ridicule, but in the 1970s and 1980s you had to do something pretty damn remarkable for the whole school to find out about it. (I'm thinking of, for example, the time when I was in high school and the student body president for some inexplicable reason chose to use a mild profanity over the PA when giving the morning announcements.) Of our relatives' kids in Florida, the oldest one is 12, and he's said nowadays anything embarrassing almost invariably gets blasted to the whole school within minutes due to the ubiquity of mobile phones and the like.

Obviously that's not quite the same thing as people who stupidly post everything they ever do on the Internet and then complain when they lose control of the information, but it's somewhat related in the sense that it's dangerous to trust even the people you consider your closest friends.

I'm astonished by the way kids these days think information they put online isn't "supposed to be" used by potential employers or the like. Who are the kids to decide that? The dumbest example I can think of was former UVA quarterback Peter Lalich getting busted for underage drinking and being put on probation conditional on his not consuming alcohol. He then posted Facebook pictures of himself, while on probation, drinking beer with other players after practice. Obviously the judge was not amused.

Alternatively, when the old-fart Gen Xers and Baby Boomers retire and us hedonistic millennials run the world, perhaps social and professional norms will have changed to the point where it is understood that a large segment of the general public will have regrettable dirty laundry in internet-land.

Quote from: AlexandriaVA on February 14, 2016, 01:05:34 PM

Quote from: 1995hoo on February 14, 2016, 12:51:26 PM

Quote from: wanderer2575 on February 14, 2016, 12:26:50 PM

Quote from: Scott5114 on February 14, 2016, 11:07:36 AM

Quote from: wanderer2575 on February 14, 2016, 11:00:57 AM
I don't have a definitive opinion on Windows 10's spying and reporting back to Big Brother Central.  It shouldn't be anyone's business what I do, but then again what I do is no big deal.  It's interesting listening to the outrage from some of the same people who tweet and text their every move, down to going to the bathroom to take a dump, to their "friends" and "followers."

The difference there is that they are choosing to share that information with people they care about, rather than being forced to share it with a corporation who could benefit financially from the information.

I have nothing to hide either but I don't have a glass door on my bathroom.

Point taken.  Of course, you have no choice on what "the people (you) care about" do with that information after you share it with them, which has led to more than one awkward situation, but people still don't get it. 

This is one reason I'm thankful I was a kid when I was and not nowadays. Kids have always had a remarkable ability to be cruel to each other and to make each other the subject of ridicule, but in the 1970s and 1980s you had to do something pretty damn remarkable for the whole school to find out about it. (I'm thinking of, for example, the time when I was in high school and the student body president for some inexplicable reason chose to use a mild profanity over the PA when giving the morning announcements.) Of our relatives' kids in Florida, the oldest one is 12, and he's said nowadays anything embarrassing almost invariably gets blasted to the whole school within minutes due to the ubiquity of mobile phones and the like.

Obviously that's not quite the same thing as people who stupidly post everything they ever do on the Internet and then complain when they lose control of the information, but it's somewhat related in the sense that it's dangerous to trust even the people you consider your closest friends.

I'm astonished by the way kids these days think information they put online isn't "supposed to be" used by potential employers or the like. Who are the kids to decide that? The dumbest example I can think of was former UVA quarterback Peter Lalich getting busted for underage drinking and being put on probation conditional on his not consuming alcohol. He then posted Facebook pictures of himself, while on probation, drinking beer with other players after practice. Obviously the judge was not amused.

Alternatively, when the old-fart Gen Xers and Baby Boomers retire and us hedonistic millennials run the world, perhaps social and professional norms will have changed to the point where it is understood that a large segment of the general public will have regrettable dirty laundry in internet-land.

Didn't Idiocracy flesh out that slippery slope for us?

It's funny to me that you think a bias against bad judgement must be a generational thing.  It's not dirty laundry that screws you.  Everyone has dirty laundry.  It's going out of your way to advertise your stupidity to people whose trust you're trying to gain that's the issue.  If the insinuation is that someday it won't be a problem because millennials are too dumb to get that, I will not argue.

I hope I'm in the minority in saying that I'm going hire the person that doesn't post photos of a keg party while on alcohol probation.  That way I'll have people with much better judgement working for me than other people will.

I recall the same arguments being made with Jews and homosexuals...that if your prospective employer knew, you were out of the running.

Just saying.

Quote from: AlexandriaVA on February 14, 2016, 01:55:36 PM
I recall the same arguments being made with Jews and homosexuals...that if your prospective employer knew, you were out of the running.

Just saying.

How did Godwin's Law come into this so fast?

People with bad judgement are not an oppressed minority, and it's pretty disrespectful to those who are to make that comparison.

Quote from: Pete from Boston on February 14, 2016, 02:41:28 PM

Quote from: AlexandriaVA on February 14, 2016, 01:55:36 PM
I recall the same arguments being made with Jews and homosexuals...that if your prospective employer knew, you were out of the running.

Just saying.

How did Godwin's Law come into this so fast?

People with bad judgement are not an oppressed minority, and it's pretty disrespectful to those who are to make that comparison.

Wasn't making references to the Hitler government of Germany...was referring to implicit quotas or gentlemen's agreements about not hiring the "wrong kinds of people".

Basically, employers will use social media evidence to validate what they already want to believe. I highly doubt that many graduates of elite business schools have had careers disqualified due to social media hijinks ("he's just good old boy, boys will be boys"). Likewise, you're kidding yourself if employers haven't used social media information to come up with a plausible reason for not hiring or firing someone, when the real reason was something else.

When you've hired people whose work has an impact on your reputation and bottom line, who then lie about why they're not coming to work but forget that they posted pictures the night before while they were drunk, then let's talk.

Quote from: Pete from Boston on February 14, 2016, 03:42:23 PM
When you've hired people those work has an impact on your reputation and bottom line, who then lie about why they're not coming to work but forget that they posted pictures the night before while they were drunk, then let's talk.

Bingo. The same sort of thing used to happen prior to social media, of course; I knew someone who almost lost her job because she lied about her arrival time at work (she claimed she was late due to an elevator problem) and the security footage of the lobby showed she was lying (it didn't help her that she was easy to spot on the tape due to being very obese).

Fraud is a different issue, and I wouldn't begrudge an employer to use all available evidence to prove a case of such fraud occurring. That is, in many regards, a pretty objective determination - the employee either did or did not defraud the employer.

My concern is with qualitative classification employees based on social media trends. That is, an employer firing an employee that he or she does not like, or is bigoted against, using the cover story of "their social media patterns" as a pretext for termination.

For example, should a bakery be able to fire me if they saw my Facebook page "liking" a gay rights organization? It seems like a digital equivalent to the days that the Carnegies and Rockefellers of the world would employ private detective agencies, like the Pinkertons, to keep an eye on their workforces.

Egregious civil rights violations fall outside the scope of "regrettable dirty laundry," as you put it, responding to a discussion of someone being judged for really bad decision-making concerning drinking.

Yes, bad people will use against you all kinds of things.  But that was not what we (or you) were talking about.

Quote from: wolfiefrick on February 13, 2016, 12:13:53 PM

Quote from: US 41 on February 13, 2016, 10:54:29 AM
It makes me wonder how much a "good" laptop costs.

A minimum of $899 for an 11-inch MacBook Air with a 1.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of PCIe-based flash storage, all of which are soldered to the logic board and not upgradable.

BACK ON TOPIC... This is why I can't go Mac.  More money, less ability to stretch out that investment down the road.  I've also heard too many stories of "Software requires me to upgrade the OS, which makes the machine nearly grind to a halt," something also common to iPhones.

The form and design is great, but I can forgive not having it when decent PC laptops are cheap and upgradable.

Going back to the Mac v. PC topic....

What's a reasonable configuration for a Mac these days? I was thinking about that the other day when I was trying to get a rough idea of pricing before starting the rebuild process on my PC. I think I have a reasonable sense for what sort of configuration I would want were I to buy a new IBM-compatible (to use the traditional term), based in large part on how my current PC (it's an HP, for whatever that's worth) was configured prior to its crash. But I have no sense for what sort of RAM requirements, hard drive space, etc., are reasonable in the Mac world. I'd kind of like to know even if I don't want to buy something new any time soon, just because I like to have a sense of what the market is if something were to happen.

Quote from: 1995hoo on February 14, 2016, 09:05:55 PM
Going back to the Mac v. PC topic....

What's a reasonable configuration for a Mac these days? I was thinking about that the other day when I was trying to get a rough idea of pricing before starting the rebuild process on my PC. I think I have a reasonable sense for what sort of configuration I would want were I to buy a new IBM-compatible (to use the traditional term), based in large part on how my current PC (it's an HP, for whatever that's worth) was configured prior to its crash. But I have no sense for what sort of RAM requirements, hard drive space, etc., are reasonable in the Mac world. I'd kind of like to know even if I don't want to buy something new any time soon, just because I like to have a sense of what the market is if something were to happen.

I haven't ever really looked at getting a Mac, but based upon experiences of others, I can tell you that the lowest-priced models are generally not worth buying, largely due to cheapness on the components (e.g. The entry-level MBP having a 5400 rpm mechanical drive, despite the rest of the line having Fusion drives)

You'll spend some buckage to upgrade, but it's worth it.

Since you ask about RAM, I've survived on 8GB (which, unfortunately for my MacBook model, is not upgradeable), but if you have the opportunity for 16, I'd take it.

I am kicking around the idea of an Imac.  Gorgeous 27" display.  But a pain in the butt to get fixed if the hard drive, motherboard, or power supply goes out, and not only is it hard to change them but you'd lose the beautiful display at the same time.  Stupid design.  Okay, it's supposed to be the Ferrari of computers or something.  But even a Ferrari doesn't make you pull the engine in order to change the oil.

Quote from: kkt on February 14, 2016, 11:03:47 PM
I am kicking around the idea of an Imac.  Gorgeous 27" display.  But a pain in the butt to get fixed if the hard drive, motherboard, or power supply goes out, and not only is it hard to change them but you'd lose the beautiful display at the same time.  Stupid design.  Okay, it's supposed to be the Ferrari of computers or something.  But even a Ferrari doesn't make you pull the engine in order to change the oil.

Why would you "lose the beautiful display"?

Quote from: kkt on February 14, 2016, 11:03:47 PM
But a pain in the butt to get fixed if the hard drive, motherboard, or power supply goes out ...

I've owned a Mac for almost five years and used it very heavily and put it near and above its paces, and nothing has managed to break yet. I bet the stock hard drive inside of it has been formatted probably upwards of twenty times.

Quote from: wolfiefrick on February 14, 2016, 11:52:14 PM

Quote from: kkt on February 14, 2016, 11:03:47 PM
But a pain in the butt to get fixed if the hard drive, motherboard, or power supply goes out ...

I've owned a Mac for almost five years and used it very heavily and put it near and above its paces, and nothing has managed to break yet. I bet the stock hard drive inside of it has been formatted probably upwards of twenty times.

It's not about parts breaking, it's about being able to upgrade a component without having to replace the entire unit. To me, a $1000+ computer without the ability to upgrade the RAM or Hard Drive is completely unacceptable, and is the main reason why I don't use Macs.

Quote from: Thing 342 on February 15, 2016, 12:21:43 AM

Quote from: wolfiefrick on February 14, 2016, 11:52:14 PM

Quote from: kkt on February 14, 2016, 11:03:47 PM
But a pain in the butt to get fixed if the hard drive, motherboard, or power supply goes out ...

I've owned a Mac for almost five years and used it very heavily and put it near and above its paces, and nothing has managed to break yet. I bet the stock hard drive inside of it has been formatted probably upwards of twenty times.

It's not about parts breaking, it's about being able to upgrade a component without having to replace the entire unit. To me, a $1000+ computer without the ability to upgrade the RAM or Hard Drive is completely unacceptable, and is the main reason why I don't use Macs.

kkt's original comment included the words "get fixed" and "goes out", so "parts breaking" probably was his concern. As long as you have AppleCare, Apple will gladly replace any broken parts. But that's pretty rare, I've been told. Apple computers can last ten years, easy, without upgrading any parts (Apple does a really good job optimizing hardware).

Apple Care lasts 3 years, right?  I would hope an expensive computer would last a lot longer than that.  I buy a computer new, about 3-4 years in, I upgrade the memory and hard drive and maybe video card, then the computer can last another 4 years or so.  Even then the case and display can be reused with a new motherboard and CPU.  And meantime if any parts fail it's a quick and easy job to replace them.  Not a couple of hours with specialized tools, or several hundred dollars in labor plus parts that are priced 50% higher than comparable market.  An Imac is built more like a laptop, expected to be thrown away after 3-4 years.

Quote from: kkt on February 15, 2016, 12:26:50 PM
Apple Care lasts 3 years, right?  ....

I think they offer different amounts of time for different amounts of money, though that might not be the case for all products.

I use Windows, both at home and at school.
At home I use Windows 7 and at school I use Windows 8.1.

I don't like that "PC" = Windows.  If you mean "Microsoft Windows", say "Windows" because PC = "Personal Computer" which is a blanket term for literally every home computer.  A Mac is a personal computer.  An iPad is a personal computer.  You're DVR is a personal computer.  Your smart TV is a personal computer.  Your game console is a personal computer.
We are talking about operating systems as Windows vs. MacOS.  "PC" is an irrelevant term, not just in my opinion, but as a grammatical fact. /rant

Quote from: triplemultiplex on February 16, 2016, 10:33:10 PM
I don't like that "PC" = Windows.  If you mean "Microsoft Windows", say "Windows" because PC = "Personal Computer" which is a blanket term for literally every home computer.  A Mac is a personal computer.  An iPad is a personal computer.  You're DVR is a personal computer.  Your smart TV is a personal computer.  Your game console is a personal computer.
We are talking about operating systems as Windows vs. MacOS.  "PC" is an irrelevant term, not just in my opinion, but as a grammatical fact. /rant

But "PC" has strong historical association with the Wintel (IBM, DOS) world that literal meaning is what's irrelevant.  Commodore was making personal computers in the 1980s.  They weren't making PCs, in the way that anyone that cared understood the term. 

Quote from: Pete from Boston on February 16, 2016, 10:56:08 PM

Quote from: triplemultiplex on February 16, 2016, 10:33:10 PM
I don't like that "PC" = Windows.  If you mean "Microsoft Windows", say "Windows" because PC = "Personal Computer" which is a blanket term for literally every home computer.  A Mac is a personal computer.  An iPad is a personal computer.  You're DVR is a personal computer.  Your smart TV is a personal computer.  Your game console is a personal computer.
We are talking about operating systems as Windows vs. MacOS.  "PC" is an irrelevant term, not just in my opinion, but as a grammatical fact. /rant

But "PC" has strong historical association with the Wintel (IBM, DOS) world that literal meaning is what's irrelevant.  Commodore was making personal computers in the 1980s.  They weren't making PCs, in the way that anyone that cared understood the term. 

Plus, Apple ran those "Mac Vs. PC" adds to give the advantages Macs had over Windows, which probably helped associate the term "PC" with Windows even more, when referring to computers, that is.

Quote from: jakeroot on February 15, 2016, 02:21:49 AM
Apple computers can last ten years, easy, without upgrading any parts (Apple does a really good job optimizing hardware).

I am the proud owner of a Macintosh SE with a 40 MB hard drive and a few megabytes of RAM from the year 1988, making it a good thirty years old. My father purchased it from the company he worked at before I was born and later gave it to me. Stock hard drive, stock RAM, stock 512x342 9" monochrome CRT display, never been serviced, original keyboard and mouse, and it still works beautifully. The one thing that was ever changed was the operating system, it's now running System 7.0, the latest version of the System Software that will run on that model.

Quote from: wolfiefrick on February 17, 2016, 02:16:57 PM

Quote from: jakeroot on February 15, 2016, 02:21:49 AM
Apple computers can last ten years, easy, without upgrading any parts (Apple does a really good job optimizing hardware).

I am the proud owner of a Macintosh SE with a 40 MB hard drive and a few megabytes of RAM from the year 1988, making it a good thirty years old. My father purchased it from the company he worked at before I was born and later gave it to me. Stock hard drive, stock RAM, stock 512x342 9" monochrome CRT display, never been serviced, original keyboard and mouse, and it still works beautifully. The one thing that was ever changed was the operating system, it's now running System 7.0, the latest version of the System Software that will run on that model.

You have given me the terrible idea of unpacking the PCjr in my basement (from its original box) and seeing if the dampness hasn't bricked it, and the good idea of immediately then putting the thing on eBay.

Quote from: triplemultiplex on February 16, 2016, 10:33:10 PM
I don't like that "PC" = Windows.  If you mean "Microsoft Windows", say "Windows" because PC = "Personal Computer" which is a blanket term for literally every home computer.  A Mac is a personal computer.  An iPad is a personal computer.  You're DVR is a personal computer.  Your smart TV is a personal computer.  Your game console is a personal computer.
We are talking about operating systems as Windows vs. MacOS.  "PC" is an irrelevant term, not just in my opinion, but as a grammatical fact. /rant

Slight disagreement. I would consider the iPad to be a tablet, not a personal computer.

Quote from: Thing 342 on February 15, 2016, 12:21:43 AM

Quote from: wolfiefrick on February 14, 2016, 11:52:14 PM

Quote from: kkt on February 14, 2016, 11:03:47 PM
But a pain in the butt to get fixed if the hard drive, motherboard, or power supply goes out ...

I've owned a Mac for almost five years and used it very heavily and put it near and above its paces, and nothing has managed to break yet. I bet the stock hard drive inside of it has been formatted probably upwards of twenty times.

It's not about parts breaking, it's about being able to upgrade a component without having to replace the entire unit. To me, a $1000+ computer without the ability to upgrade the RAM or Hard Drive is completely unacceptable, and is the main reason why I don't use Macs.

If we're talking laptops, they're not always user serviceable even for non-Apple brands. And while the new Apple MacBooks do solder the RAM to the motherboard (they didn't always), the HD is easily upgradable. I just put a bigger SSD HD in my MacBook Pro just a few months ago.

With iMacs, stuff like RAM and HDs are replaceable. I'm not sure about the MacMini.

Quote from: realjd on February 22, 2016, 08:48:51 PM
With iMacs, stuff like RAM and HDs are replaceable. I'm not sure about the MacMini.

The iMacs are technically upgradable, but it takes a little workaround to get to the insides. As for the Mac mini, the older models were much more upgradable than the new model from 2014.

Quote from: triplemultiplex on February 16, 2016, 10:33:10 PM
I don't like that "PC" = Windows.  If you mean "Microsoft Windows", say "Windows" because PC = "Personal Computer" which is a blanket term for literally every home computer.  A Mac is a personal computer.  An iPad is a personal computer.  You're DVR is a personal computer.  Your smart TV is a personal computer.  Your game console is a personal computer.
We are talking about operating systems as Windows vs. MacOS.  "PC" is an irrelevant term, not just in my opinion, but as a grammatical fact. /rant

PC meaning Windows/Intel is just a marketing term and I agree completely about Macs being PCs. I disagree about the others being personal computers though. The iPad is a tablet. The DVR is a DVR. The smart TV is a TV. A game console is a game console. They may all have microprocessors at their core, but that doesn't make them PCs any more than my car or my thermostat are.

PC (and "computer" more generally) describes a type of product designed to allow users to run a variety of programs that do a variety of things. They're general purpose. Things like you mentioned aren't general purpose computing devices. They're designed to perform a small number of functions. From an engineering standpoint, even if they have similar hardware to a PC (which they usually don't), the system and software design is very different.

Tablets could be argued either way IMO.

Edit: grammatically, the dictionary also disagrees: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/personal-computer?s=t

Windows, for sure...although I do remember Macs from my school days. What I wouldn't give to play Oregon Trail again...

Quote from: Henry on February 23, 2016, 10:35:25 AM
Windows, for sure...although I do remember Macs from my school days. What I wouldn't give to play Oregon Trail again...

*ahem*

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_The_1990

I've only owned PCs, but my schools have had Macs in the past. I tend to watch a lot of tech videos, and I think I prefer Windows. And yes, i even like Windows 8, 8.1, and 10.

If I had a Mac, I would probably use it sometimes though.

I've been in the PC camp since the mid 1980's, no reason for me to switch now, no matter how hard Microsoft tries to make me want to, LOL.

Prefer Windows PC for the most part, but occasionally use my dad's old Mac.

What I find so dumb about the OS X vs Windows war is that if someone is found to prefer OS X, they're likely to be bashed on for being a biased subject to Apple's reality distortion field who blindly fell into the traps Apple lays within their fine art of product marketing, simply because people have been told that Apple's tech is overpriced and insane. I disagree because I would much rather pay more for higher quality better made technology than pay for cheap electronics that will have to be tediously replaced every time it breaks. I'd be much better off buying a Mac with AppleCare because I get support for three years paying only a small deductible to get something replaced in the highly unlikely event that something breaks in my Mac then I would if I built a PC myself. If the video card breaks, you don't pay a small deductible to the company that made the computer to replace it for you because a company didn't build the computer - you did. So, the money to buy a new video card comes out of your pocket.


Windows has made leaps in bounds in terms of stability, but systemwide crashes are far less common in OS X. It has a rock sold UNIX core, and if something is to crash it's usually just the app you're running that is faulty. But, in Windows, if a program starts having trouble in terms of stability, the entire system becomes a lot more prone to a full crash; or the dreaded blue screen of death. This is because in Windows, the DLLs and remnants of the program are scattered throughout the system files manageable through the registry, a crazy convoluted mess that is supposed to manage the fine details of your computer and the programs installed on it - so if one app crashes, the faulty DLL or remnant is out in the open mixed with other files that pertain to other apps, and in certain cases, the system. On OS X, all the app files are contained within the app itself, labeled with the ever so clever file extension of ".app", so if anything goes wrong, the app will crash, but the faulty file cannot access any other system files because it is contained within the app itself.

Of course if you want Unix, there's a way to do that without paying for the overpriced Apple hardware...

Linux also has no central registry. Configuration data is mostly stored in text files. If the program breaks you can edit the config to fix it. Or you can usually delete it and the program, upon not finding the config file there, will generate a new one with the default values.

I can't say I've ever had a PC component other than a hard drive outright fail on me. Last hard drive I had managed to fail so gracefully that I kept it hobbling along for six months. Only symptom was that certain sectors of the hard drive were unreadable and would cause the drive to make a loud clacking noise whenever you tried to access those sectors. One happened to be the one that Firefox's config file lived in; whenever I started the browser it would take about a minute to start up and then it would start with default settings. I'm guessing that had that drive been in a Windows system it would have taken down the whole OS.

Quote from: wolfiefrick on February 27, 2016, 11:06:54 PM
What I find so dumb about the OS X vs Windows war is that if someone is found to prefer OS X, they're likely to be bashed on for being a biased subject to Apple's reality distortion field who blindly fell into the traps Apple lays within their fine art of product marketing, simply because people have been told that Apple's tech is overpriced and insane. I disagree because I would much rather pay more for higher quality better made technology than pay for cheap electronics that will have to be tediously replaced every time it breaks. I'd be much better off buying a Mac with AppleCare because I get support for three years paying only a small deductible to get something replaced in the highly unlikely event that something breaks in my Mac then I would if I built a PC myself. If the video card breaks, you don't pay a small deductible to the company that made the computer to replace it for you because a company didn't build the computer - you did. So, the money to buy a new video card comes out of your pocket.


Windows has made leaps in bounds in terms of stability, but systemwide crashes are far less common in OS X. It has a rock sold UNIX core, and if something is to crash it's usually just the app you're running that is faulty. But, in Windows, if a program starts having trouble in terms of stability, the entire system becomes a lot more prone to a full crash; or the dreaded blue screen of death. This is because in Windows, the DLLs and remnants of the program are scattered throughout the system files manageable through the registry, a crazy convoluted mess that is supposed to manage the fine details of your computer and the programs installed on it - so if one app crashes, the faulty DLL or remnant is out in the open mixed with other files that pertain to other apps, and in certain cases, the system. On OS X, all the app files are contained within the app itself, labeled with the ever so clever file extension of ".app", so if anything goes wrong, the app will crash, but the faulty file cannot access any other system files because it is contained within the app itself.

Go take a peek in your /var/lib folder on OSX. See all of those .dylib and .so files? Both are formats for dynamically loaded libraries, exactly like a Windows DLL. You'll find .so (shared objects) on Linux and UNIX also. Plenty of applications use them on Macs.

In the Windows registry, each application generally stores its own settings in its own area. What ends up bloating the registry are things like file associations, GUID types, and Explorer extensions, not general application use.