Forwarding Address: OS X

Sunday, July 17, 2005

Irrational Exuberance?

Don't get me wrong...I get a kick out of reading anecdotes about people "dumping" Microsoft as much as the next geek. But sometimes they're a bit over the top, in my mind at least.

Today, the Web is where the action is. It's the new OS. This means I can safely return to my old flame - the Mac - and yet still experience most, if not all of the hot new applications that are being built on AJAX on my new 15" G4 PowerBook. In addition, I don't have to put up with patches, viruses, spyware, slowdowns, bloated registries anymore.

Patches for OS X come out all the time. I would be worried a bit if they didn't, because I accept that software is made by humans and humans are, if nothing else, fallible. Slowdowns? Two words: Spinning Beachball of Death. I've taken to never allowing Safari to "remember" form information about a site since my last reset (which solved my Safari slowdowns). Bloated registries? No, but you should check out all the detritus in ~/Library/Preferences sometime.

Viruses and spyware are much, much less common. But I wouldn't say they were non-existent...although I don't have any anti-virus software installed.

Would I pick OS X over XP? Any day of the week, no contest. Is OS X free from the flaws that seem to plague Windows? Yes and no, as I've hopefully shown. All I ask for is some rational exuberance. That being said, welcome to club Steve, we have jackets.

posted by Patrick at 9:28 AM  

4 Comments:

  • Bloated registries? No, but you should check out all the detritus in ~/Library/Preferences sometime.

    Its not the same thing. When was the alst time your machine crashed because you had files scattered in your Prefs directory? When was the last time you had a server refuse to store cookies because of those same files? Ever have a machine become unstable or unable to work because of too many files in a Prefs directory?

    Certainly the poster in question is going a bit too far but you're really comparing apples to oranges when you compare the Windows registry to the Prefs directory

    By Zac, at 10:14 AM  

  • Of course they aren't the same thing...but Preferences detritus is annoying and "corrupted" files are often pointed to as a potential cause of problems...

    While I agree they are not the same fruit, the effects can often be similar. That was the only point I was trying to make.

    By Patrick, at 10:35 AM  

  • "Of course they aren't the same thing...but Preferences detritus is annoying and "corrupted" files are often pointed to as a potential cause of problems..."

    But at least when an app corrupts its own prefs, it doesn't corrupt everything else, too.

    By Anonymous, at 11:34 AM  

  • Oh come on, guys. Let a new Mac owner have his moment of exuberance. Haven't we all gone through that? It's part of the appeal, part of the culture.

    And he's right to have it. It's not a perfect world but from XP to Mac OS X has to be like getting sprung from jail. Still have to get a job but hey, sky! Trees!

    By Dave, at 6:22 AM  

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