Help convince me to go Mac...

[JBroll]

Interesting concept - I'm completely unsurprised by the fact that outsiders can rebuild XP better than Microsoft can, but a few things bug me...

The 'flexibility and modularity of XP': say 'GUI in the kernel' five times fast and you'll both break out laughing and realize that you've just given everyone else in the room a truly horrible idea - five times fast. Oh, did I mention that they thought printer drivers should go there too? Flexible and modular, my ass - and the fact that he tried to slide in

rather like troubleshooting every Linux distro in existence.

as if nobody would notice, even though Linux supports more hardware than Windows, period, end of discussion (and is far less likely than Windows to think that suggesting an internet search for networking drivers isn't downright stupid), and (at least in my not-so-limited experience) comes in dozens of distributions whose hardware detection beats the balls off anything Windows has ever done.

All in all, it's interesting - but Linux comments and honest criticism of Windows coming out of the guy whose title is "Windows Warrior" ... forget about it.

Jeff

 

[Mulder]

Interesting concept - I'm completely unsurprised by the fact that outsiders can rebuild XP better than Microsoft can, but a few things bug me...
-snip-

All in all, it's interesting - but Linux comments and honest criticism of Windows coming out of the guy whose title is "Windows Warrior" ... forget about it.

Jeff

Once there was this official plan from Emagic that Logic Audio would run on BeOS, it got me so excited that I bought a dual cpu just to be ready for the first beta.. Well, then Apple bought it and killed the idea ofcourse, but I'm still hoping for a DAW -and plugins- running on its own recoded OS.

I'm gonna try TinyXP, see if it gives any speedups. Don't need it for stability, hadn't had a BSOD in a long while.

Talking about 'searching the internet for ethernetdrivers':

"Windows has not found a mouse connected to this computer. Click 'ok' to continue" or words alike during an installation of Win98SE.

I ran BeOS for a short while, just nosing around. Very tiny footprint, and everything very, very fast. Shame it died..

 

[Ermz]

Regarding TinyXP: It's ace. The ability to rip IE, WMP & a ton of other stuff and replace it with Firefox and whichever media applications float your boat is great. It's rather scalable as you can choose how much functionality you want stripped back in favor of overall performance.

My only issue with it so far is that it refuses to shut down my machine via the shut down prompt. The system hangs on the 'windows is now shutting down...' screen. But only AFTER I've been using the system for more than 10 minutes or so. Something to do with machine group policies, or some other feature set I have no idea about.

 

[Mulder]

Regarding TinyXP: It's ace. The ability to rip IE, WMP & a ton of other stuff and replace it with Firefox and whichever media applications float your boat is great. It's rather scalable as you can choose how much functionality you want stripped back in favor of overall performance.

..its at 73% right now... Curious if it will run X58, i7 and ICH10R.. Got the '2008 christmas edition'. And it has the MCE looks. How nice.

Acronis build-in, I love it already.

This is what I like about XP. Smartasses editing an OS so it runs better.

 

[Kazrog]

Once there was this official plan from Emagic that Logic Audio would run on BeOS, it got me so excited that I bought a dual cpu just to be ready for the first beta.. Well, then Apple bought it and killed the idea ofcourse, but I'm still hoping for a DAW -and plugins- running on its own recoded OS.

I ran BeOS for a short while, just nosing around. Very tiny footprint, and everything very, very fast. Shame it died..

I loved BeOS also. I wish Palm hadn't killed it. I hate them for it actually. I would be running BeOS, not Mac OS X, if it existed still and if there were great music and graphics programs available for it. Mac OS X is a very stable OS but nowhere near as efficient or elegant as BeOS.

BeOS almost became the Mac OS actually - but if they had chosen that route, they wouldn't have gotten Steve Jobs back. Steve saved Apple, but now he's killing them off. He's clearly the right guy when things are going badly, and the wrong guy when things are going well IMO.

The only lure of Windows or hacked Windows distros like TinyXP is the software/hardware compatibility with virtually everything out there. The OS itself is pure crap compared to almost anything else (Linux, BeOS, Mac OS X, BSD, etc...)

 

[JBroll]

Well, he's dying of cancer, global warming, and worldwide turtleneck shortage anyway, so maybe when they release Australian Spotted Werekitten they'll throw you a bone...

Jeff

 

[Ermz]

Agreed. Microsoft OS' are absolute turd, but their saving grace comes in the form of being somewhat modular and adaptable. 3rd parties turn them into something usable even when they are not.

I've been praying for years that the mainstream would adopt Linux, even more so after the dismal failure that was Vista.

 

[Metaltastic]

Thread has become nerdy pie-in-the-sky dreams and flights of fancy, ABANDON SHIP

 

[abyssofdreams]

Marcus, what are you doing here then

 

[Ermz]

But if we abandon ship we'll only land on the deck of gearslutz, and I know which company I'd rather keep...

 

[James Murphy]

Cos TDM runs on DSPcards. Duh.

final cut pro doesn't... i use that too;... no problems there either....of course, i have a quad 2.5 G5 with 8GB ECC ram... so i'd be as pissed as you are at apple if i did have any.

again though, i've never found the mac community at large to be snooty or unwilling to help... and i've never met any mac users that look like the guy in the current TV ads... i'm sure they exist, but that stereotype is far from representative of the professional mac community. in fact, the snobbiest, most conceited computers users ive met for years are windows/pc people who went to computer camp as kids. they know more than you and they want you to know it. how's that for a generalization?

 

[xFkx]

Uhm, i have a PC as my main workstation and a macbook for my live electronica stuff, so i've kinda chosen both worlds. The tool that binds these two machines together is ableton live. And while I manage to freeze live on my pc (and yes, it's a quality pc with a asus board, i've put lots of expertise into putting it together) I have yet to freeze it on the macbook, not happend even once yet.

On the flipside, given the same amount of money as a mac pro you can build an insanely powerfull pc, even if it does have it's stability issues.

Oh, and have any of you guys tried installing mac os on a pc system ? I think i will choose this option when building my new main workstation next year, can't wait to switch from cubase to logic

 

[JBroll]

An installation of OS X on a non-Mac box is referred to as a 'Hackintosh', and it's been done quite well by a few people here. Hopefully they'll PM you, or you can PM me and we can talk about the basics of fooling the system. Also, properly-built PCs don't have 'inherent stability issues' that Macs don't have (recall that Apple now uses Intel processors and a lot of big-name PC hardware) so you should be fine there.

Jeff

 

[xFkx]

Hey JBroll, huge thanks for the info. I guess i'll manage to install it, and it's not anytime soon that i'll be doing it, got to save up the cash for the new pc first.

Just one question though, have there been any audio related issues with the hackintosh ? Any unwanted conflicts/latency/firewire issues that would make a windows operated pc better than a mac os operated ?

Anyway, maybe the issue is that core drivers run better with my firewire audio interface (alesis io14) then asio do.

I remember playing my first (and only) live electronica act with my old acer laptop, ableton live, 2 backing tracks and one vst synth. I had to set the highest latency and still would get dropouts from time to time (very very humiliating), now with the macbook i can throw 3 guitar rigs, some softsamplers and vstsynths, lowest latency, and cpu it doesn't peak past 40%. That's why i'm kinda biased for mac's when it comes to playing live shows.

 

[JBroll]

I haven't done it, hopefully someone who has will contact you shortly...

As for the new PC, I've walked a few people through new boxes for Hackintoshes, so let me know if you need help putting stuff together.

Jeff

 

[Mulder]

final cut pro doesn't... i use that too;... no problems there either....of course, i have a quad 2.5 G5 with 8GB ECC ram... so i'd be as pissed as you are at apple if i did have any.

again though, i've never found the mac community at large to be snooty or unwilling to help... and i've never met any mac users that look like the guy in the current TV ads... i'm sure they exist, but that stereotype is far from representative of the professional mac community. in fact, the snobbiest, most conceited computers users ive met for years are windows/pc people who went to computer camp as kids. they know more than you and they want you to know it. how's that for a generalization?

Well, I'm glad for you you didn't encounter the shit I did. I realize its more than ten year ago, but it made me highly allergic for evangelism of those kinds besides the intersocial ones.

At the moment at work and among friends I meet about 15% Appleusers, the base has thinned out here. The AVguys I work for: Avid on winXP dual Xeons, put together according to Avidspecs. The 3D renderfarms they hire, no Mac to be found. At school: Two obligatory Macs with PTHD, almost all audiostudents XP.

Bands I do: XP on laptops. Movieguys: XP (Ok. One of them bought a Macbook and smiles mysteriously at me when we meet).

The one guy I know working on a BA 8 core Xeon Apple had finally the proper drivers for his Apogee Big Ben Ensemble thingie to hook it up to his DDA, only took'em fourteen months to make it work...

Anyways, I'm still hoping to be able to run a DAW as I once ran two Kurzweils on stage. Spot on reliable, if something was wrong with them I could call day & night, and nobody told me I didn't understand it or used a wrong scsithing or whatever. They even implemented some code for me so I could use the sampleinputs as drumtriggers.

The Maccommunity I encountered around here those years ago simply refused to believe anything could go wrong with their machines, so they didn't became vocal when it hit the fan, they made excuses for their computer. And were ashamed of their ignorance, and expected me to be too.

That's my experience as someone eating and living from this trade. Not lying here as you suggested, what's pretty insulting too btw. No offence taken, since that's exactly the behaviour I became to expect. The simple notion that something can go awfully wrong in Appleland is too large to comprehend for some of its inhabitants.

Give me a userbase with a bunch of assholes that say "this can be done better" and are able to explain that in detail. Both from experience as from common knowledge.

Ok, last rant. I spent way too much $$ at Steve Jobs to ever be able to forgive him. Maybe I should attend some Apple Anonymous weekend or something, to heal my inner nerd...

 

[JBroll]

Murphy, your inbox is full, so I thought I'd just post this here.

(Loud noises, indeed...)

Is it just me, or have the Mac vs. PC threads gotten weirder since people realized they could put OS X on other computers? I guess people realize they can't complain about money, so they have to find other things...

"Windows crashes give me time to furiously masturbate into the wind!"
"OS X has icons that get bigger when you play with them!"
"Macs can't get the same shade of blue that Windows gives me when it goes down!"
"Yeah, but does Windows come with iLife, iTunes, iChat, and iWipe personal bathroom assistant?"

Wish I could find the Mac/PC GIF from Dodgeball... oh well.

Jeff

 

[James Murphy]

"LOUD NOISES!!!"​

 

[Mulder]

http://gizmodo.com/390269/apple-perceived-as-gay+friendly-samsung-not

 

[JBroll]

I've actually had much better experience with Mac 'communities' than Windows, for what it's worth - but I still think the 'Genius Bar' is a little pretentious.

Mulder, that's... probably one of the most useless surveys ever conducted on computers.

Jeff