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A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User's Perspective

 by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 8, 2004 12:05 AM EST
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  • Mac
215 Comments | Add A Comment
215 Comments

Stability

Now, it's time for the hot button issue, the one issue that Mac users use against PC users (and vice versa) all the time: stability. To put a few misconceptions to rest, I will resort to the timely bulleted list. I hope by this point, I've shown that I can definitely appreciate both a Mac and a PC platform, and thus, readers will view the following statements as pretty darn impartial:
  • OS X crashes
  • Windows XP crashes
  • My G5 machine crashes a bit less than any of my Windows XP machines
Now, let me qualify those three statements - I'll start at the bottom. Apple has it very easy. They have complete control over the hardware and drivers that go into every machine they build, they don't have to deal with multiple chipsets for a particular platform, and they don't even have to deal with multiple video card vendors. Apple controls every aspect of the hardware and software that goes into their computers. There are no strange driver or BIOS revisions out of Taiwan that don't play well with some configurations, and there are no worries about memory timings set too aggressively causing even the slightest bit of instability (without the appropriate timings, DDR400 will not boot in a G5). The PC world is much, much different; everything that Apple doesn't have to worry about or deal with, PC users may not worry about, but they definitely do have to deal with. How many times have you bought a cheaper piece of hardware from a no-name manufacturer because it fit your budget? It's not as common now because prices have gone down so much, but a few years ago, it was definitely very popular - I know. I did it. Sometimes you'd luck out, and other times, you'd have one component in your system that would always cause compatibility problems or stability issues. For me, it was an old Opti sound card; then, it was a no-name 430VX motherboard. And tracking down those kinds of problems can be very difficult because the symptoms don't always point to the culprit. I've always said that if you use the right hardware, a Windows box can be just as stable as any other machine out there - and my systems have supported that. I wouldn't reboot my system for months if it didn't have any problems. It was always a bad driver install, power outage or a program gone awry that forced a restart. People used to complain about Windows NT/2000 as a server platform because of stability; we've actually had more outages on our Linux servers than on our Windows servers. Not saying that Linux is a bad OS, but we know our Windows servers, and we know what hardware works best under them, and thus, once assembled and properly maintained, we had no real issues with them. >br?
OS X is built on a very solid core and it does handle individual applications crashing much better than Windows does. I've never had to reboot the entire system because one application crashed. It's also much better about restarting Finder (the equivalent of Explorer) if it crashes. It is things like these that make OS X a bit more "stable" of a platform than Windows, but also, remember that the tight quality control that Apple has over the components that go into their systems does also play a very large part in assuring stability.

The end result is that my Mac is a bit more stable than my PCs. It's not night and day, and the Mac does crash, just like my PCs do - it just crashes a little less frequently.

As far as hardware stability and failures go, I've heard horror stories about dead/dying G5s on Apple's support boards. I was honestly worried when I started reading through the threads; thankfully, I have yet to encounter any hardware issues with the G5, but I do recognize that there are users out there that have had serious issues with their systems. Unfortunately (or fortunately?) without much experience in this regard, there's not much I can say to Apple's hardware quality control, but I view Apple just like any other hardware vendor - there's no way that everything to come out of a company is going to be perfect. It's how they minimize the imperfections and deal with them when they occur that matter the most.

OS X Bottlenecks and Caching Applications under OS X
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  • dmr9748 - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link

    You again failed to provide proof. The first site is a bunch of pictures. I have been to that campus and have met some of the people in those pictures. This is how funding works, if someone gives you money and says that you can only spend it on x, are you going to give up that funding? NO

    Now, let's take a look at comparing 2 exact same items. They will never perform the same. Do you know why? There is about a billion reasons why. The mos striaght and to the point example is the movie "Timeline." Look at post #97.

    The only one that came close to proving me wrong was the linuxsinder.com post. Problem is, he doesnt tell me what vendor he is going to except for dell and the things is I just did a price comparison on both those items. I have given the direct links to the vendors.

    With some of the last links you posted, go back to post #112.

  • rxmz - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link

    Azkman has already answered #112 very well, but just a quick look at the Dell shows it only has 2 HD bays, neither front accessible nor hot swappable. It's not 64-bit, and doesn't have a 1GHz front-side bus. I'd guess there are other reasons it's not in the same comparison class as the Xserve G5, but I think that's plenty already.

  • azkman - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link

    Hard evidence for #112 (none from pro-apple sources):

    http://www.tcf.vt.edu/systemX.html
    http://www.colsa.com/cover_page/news_front/news_de...
    http://www.top500.org/list/2003/11/
    http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/36120.html
    http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/36964.html
    http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke%5C6133.html
    http://www.pcmag.com/review/0%2C2491%2Cs%3D1564&am...
    http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1369037,00.as...

    Specs do not equal performance. I haven't heard of any Dell supercomputers being built at breakthrough prices. I'd believe the jugdement and results of VT and the US Army over an arbitrary price comparison any day.

  • dmr9748 - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link

    I just did a price comparison of my own between an xserve and a dell server.

    Here is the xserve for $2898.99

    http://www.ctistore.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Scr...

    I priced a rackmount server with the same specs on dell.com for $2021

    http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx...

    #95 Don't post an article that explains one system and then say it is more cost effective for what you get compared to another system when the article doesn't even mention a price for the system they are describing. Do not attack my post unless you have some hard evidence.

  • kmmatney - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link

    reading all these comments from (most) the mac users that have posted makes me want a mac less and less.

    -- I second that one. $2500 for a computer with no monitor and a crap video card. That's the "uncomfortable" part to me.

  • victorpanlilio - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link

    #109 dextrous wrote: reading all these comments from (most) the mac users that have posted makes me want a mac less and less.

    Care to elaborate? Using this same sort of reasoning, then all of the positive comments a people might happen to make about their own country should dissuade foreign tourists from visiting. And of course, such people should not object if their country is portrayed in a bad light by foreigners who know little or nothing about the country. What's more, the foreigners are afraid that a learning experience might actually force them to rethink their prejudices. To bring this discussion back on topic, what Anand has done is the equivalent of visiting a foreign country, sampling its cuisine, experiencing something of its culture, and so on. His "travelogue" describes his impressions. The forum participants chime in with their own dispatches from the field -- and those who have visited and perhaps lived in the foreign country for some time are in a better position to comment knowledgeably.

  • dextrous - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link

    reading all these comments from (most) the mac users that have posted makes me want a mac less and less.

  • victorpanlilio - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link

    In #107 topcat903 wrote: "Basically, this article describes the "uncomfortable" feeling we get when we switch to something we are not used to."

    And if that's all it was, then the remedy is simple -- learn. But in the article, as well as in the comments, uncalled-for remarks about price etc. detract from the overall message that it is quite possible for a diehard but open-minded Windows PC user to discover genuinely superior things about MacOS X even without delving into applications that make best use of the platform.

  • topcat903 - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link

    I don't think this article was to compare which system (hardware or software wise) is better. It was written to describe the "experience" one would feel when switching to another OS (heck, the same thing could be said about switching girlfriends or boyfriends).

    I started my computing days using the Apple IIe, then the first Mac...eventually I switched to the Windows platform, and recently since my wife got an iBook, I had to switch back to OS X.

    Basically, this article describles the "uncomfortable" feeling we get when we switch to something we are not used to...A feeling I experienced many times over. All the speed, power, and storage of a system could mean nothing to me if I don't know all the ins and outs of what I'm using to get what I needed done.

    Overall, the article was a good and interesting read...just wish there was more on the audio/video apps (where Apple truly excel), however I assume it's not what the author's primary use of the G5...but hopefully a start towards many more articles.

  • rxmz - Saturday, October 9, 2004 - link

    A quick FYI semi-related to Mac OS X scroll speed. Clicking in the empty area of a scroll bar jumps by a page, but clicking while holding down the "option" key jumps straight to that point (reversible via a system preference). This comes in very handy for long documents (or file listings), when you know about where you're trying to go.

    As an aside, the only app I have seen where this does NOT work is MS Word....
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