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Having had a "I really am starting to dislike Mac OS X, but Windows 8 looks pretty good!" revelation, I started to use Windows 7. I came back after about a week
by Lewisham 15y ago
Having had a "I really am starting to dislike Mac OS X, but Windows 8 looks pretty good!" revelation, I started to use Windows 7. I came back after about a week and told Mac OS X I'd never leave it again. I reinstalled Windows 7 about 2 or 3 times, lots of weird, inexplicable errors, one of which required a Microsoft FixIt program to run as there were some "corrupt registry keys". Gosh, it was not good.
That said, I agree that Mac OS X is not getting better. It needs to change. Everything since about 10.3 to today has been fairly incremental, and OS X is showing its age (ever wonder why Apple never changed to OS XI? It's because they're all the same...).
It's also showing that it doesn't have any real push at Cupertino to get better. No-one is driving OS X. Hardware is being driven by Johny Ive, software was arguably being pushed by Jobs, but it's clear that he was only interested in iOS for years. I'd note that iOS is going the same way as Mac OS X: stagnating in the face of competition that is doing more interesting things (amazingly, that competition is Microsoft!).
I feel like Apple is a company that rests on its laurels until the market practically forces it to change. The change that's coming for Mac OS X is that it will go away altogether. I think Steve hated it, and was waiting for the time when they could sell you iOS only. The only reason they keep Mac OS X around is for developers, and Apple aren't exactly known for making them happy.
Microsoft's dual-paradigm Windows 8 shows it's not that crazy. I think Mac OS X has an expiry date of about 5 years from now.
- sukuriant 15y agoWhat on earth did you do to make Windows start having "weird, inexplicable errors"? And, why do I never have these problems?
- Lewisham 15y agoI was trying to install Star Wars: The Old Republic, and the Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable flat-out refused to install die to "Error 1365" (if I remember my error codes right). Required a Microsoft FixIt to fix the registry keys. And I have no idea how it happened.
- sukuriant 15y agoThat is quite curious... though can you really blame the operating system for a program running on it? (Presumably SW:tOR)
- Lewisham 15y agoI can certainly blame Microsoft for Microsoft libraries that don't install on its own operating system cleanly, and requires a Microsoft-issued fix.
- sukuriant 15y agoI don't know, but maybe SW:tOR didn't do proper checks and so it was trying to install something antiquated, and modified the registry beforehand?
- tedunangst 15y agoPeople like to blame everything on Windows, including "I dropped my laptop down the stairs and now it doesn't work right" type stuff. I think if Microsoft had replaced the blue screen with a message that instead said "Your $PC-MAKER computer is a piece of crap, buy a $OTHER-PC instead." nobody would actually complain about Windows. [a general comment, not directly related to lewisham's problem.]
- barend 15y agoIn some regards, they did. The crash reports from Windows XP indicated that around 20% of all OS crashes originated in the display driver (1). Vista introduced a new display driver model. One of its features is that the OS will now survive a driver crash. The screen just goes blank for a few seconds. 1) http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480220.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480220.aspx
- philwelch 15y agoI've never installed SW:tOR on a Mac, so I can't say for sure, but I've never corrupted my operating system by installing an application before. That kind of bullshit actually is the fault of the OS.
- McP 15y agoYou got unlucky. I suspect that on a different occasion with a different machine you'd never encounter anything that required reinstalling or FixIt or anything like that.