See below:
>
> That said, let's assume you're serious. I have a Mac. It's my "daily
> driver". While it's certainly adequate, I don't find it to be the vastly
> superior product that Apple fanatics claim it to be.
Please answer these two questions honestly: 1. Is your Mac an Intel
Core 2 Duo based Mac? and 2. Is it running Leopard or Tiger?
> And absolutely, from
> a programming perspective, .NET is _fun_ while Mac programming is, at
> least for me, something you do because you have to. A huge part of that
> is the difference between C# and Objective-C, the former being a lovely,
> clean, robust language while the latter is a red-headed stepchild sibling
> to C++, with lots of dangerous pitfalls that offer very little benefit
> over C#.
>
There isn't much to love about Objective-C. Java programming on the
Mac I've found to be nearly as "lovely" as C#. Having turned away from
Java years ago because of it's performance on Windows and now seeing
how it can truely be a jewel in rough under the right circumstances
(i.e. when Sun and the OS vendor actually get along), I begin to
question why I remain programming in C#. A quick job market search on
monster and computerjobs.com shows that, if anything Java is gaining
ground over C# again.
> I mean, really...if I'm going to use a language that encourages me to
> shoot myself in the foot, I'd really much rather be using C++ than
> Objective-C. At least in C++ I can always be sure that my object's
> constructor was executed.
>
I agree about Objective-C, why on earth it was chosen over C++ to be
their choice for native app development beyond me. Having said that,
the XCode tools are 100% free.
> As for your specific points:
>
>
> You have something wrong with your Windows computer then. I have found
> that, if anything, my "day to day" tasks tend to be slower on the Mac.
I would suspect that's because of your familiarity with the software
you have selected to run on Windows and the way you work to keep your
OS tidy. On this budget end $399 Pystar system I was dealing with
fresh installs of Windows and Mac OS, so let's be clear there was
nothing interfering and the overall responsiveness/performance of the
applications I tested Anyone can perform this test to verify the
results:
1. Partion or install two hard drives, Install fresh copies of Mac OS
10.5 Leopard and Windows on a Pystar
2. Install current version of QuickTime for both OSes and the Quake 4
demo on both. Begin opening 720p HD quicktime movie trailer windows
and run Quake 4 in the background.
So this isn't a measured bench-test. It's a real world, practical test
of how well these operating systems handle multi-tasking, let me tell
you Windows seems to struggle, quite a bit. This test circumvents the
driver layer Bootcamp provides and the emulation layer Parallels
provides and just puts the two OSs to the test apples for apples on
the same hardware.
I really wish Tom's Hardware or some other hardware oriented site
would do proper bench test against these two OS, it would be
interesting to say the least.
> Safari has fewer
> features, but at least it always looks nice).
>
I use Google Mail for all personal mail so I wouldn't know about
that.... Have you tried Safari 3? Firefox runs about the same on
Windows on Mac and remains my primary browser. Even given it's
ocassional crash and overall stability issues, it's feature set make
it much more appealing the IE.
>
> It's easy. But "really works"? Nope. I mean, it works fine as long as
> you stick to the tried and true, but my Mac running Windows reboots on a
> semi-regular basis while trying to play video games, and has some sort of
> problem with the audio driver that prevents me from running my games in a
> "limited" user account.
What kind of Mac do you have? If you have a Mac Mini or plan Mac Book
(not Mac Book Pro) for example, you're dealing with a Intel GMA 950
integrated graphics adapter which is not advertised to play games
well. I have a friend who uses Bootcamp entirely for gaming on his
iMac and claims to have no problems whatsoever.
>
> > 3. Two different computing environments, one for work and one for
> > play.
>
You don't need. For those of us who tend to work in our personal time
I'm sudguesting an entirely different OS environment would help create
a distinction between work and play. I believe this has to potential
to make some more productive. If you are incredible good at managing
your time then perhaps not, but my observation is most people aren't
that good at time management and most people waste a lot of time
during work hours on non productive task.
> > This one will contract with a later point, but if you're a .NET only
> > developer, the addition of Mac OS to you life may be exactly what you
> > need to help separate work from play. Ideally most of you play time
> > would be away from a computer, but everyone does e-mail and everyone
> > browses the web, everyone makes a family DVD manges photos (the list
> > goes on). To say Mac OS does these sort of task better would be
> > subjective,
>
> Yes, it definitely would be.
>
> > but what I can tell is fact is that Apple provides
> > exceptional quality software for free to new Mac owners to handle
> > these task. These applications (e.g. iPhoto, iMovie, iChat, iDVD,
> > Garage Band) have no equal in the Windows world.
>
> Absolutely false. There are lots of similar products for Windows.
>
There are similar products for Windows, but they are all from
different vendors and they are not bundled free with the OS as iLife
currently is (let's not get technically on that, iLife 08 comes with
every new Mac available today). If I want to do serious video editing
my favorite app is going to be Sony Vegas, because it's balance of
power and ease of use are perfect for me, but having said that. iMovie
puts an incredible amount of power in your hands right away, it makes
professional features easy and obtainable to a complete novice. Yes,
it does limit you in many aspects, but it allows a novice to create a
professional (albeit canned) product. This is the theme we see with
all of these tools. iDVD, iWeb and Apple's iWork 08 product. They
take a common set of pro-grade features and make them accessible to a
novice and a very intuitive fashion and again all of this is free and
supported by a single video. As with Windows, there are alternatives
out there. But I completely disagree, since Microsoft does not have
counterparts to these applications and since Apple does not publish
these applications on Windows there are no equals in the Windows world
>
>
> You left out an end-paren. In any case, the above is just plain silly.
> .NET has fantastic integration with the native API and is very
> performant. A Windows application in .NET looks like a Windows
> application, and inasmuch as Windows supports video capture through
> DirectShow, you can very easily "in a few hours coding" accomplish the
> same in a .NET application through p/invoke.
Java 6 has been available for Mac X Leopard 10.5 since the end of
April 2008.
http://developer.apple.com/java/
Just scanning some articles it seems part of the blame for the delays
for Java releases on Mac is because of Apple's involvement and
commitment to Java (I suppose they want to subject it to testing and
update their wrapper libraries, etc... that's a guess)
There is no real P/Invoke counterpart in Java to call native APIs on
Mac OS. I'll agree with that, but then again calling native Win32
API's through C# can be a living nightmare and a lot of this
functionality should have native wrappers. Want to play a sound file
in .NET you have to call a native API or go through DirectX, it's
insane. But now we're getting off topic.
Apple has quite elegantly put togeather and documented Java libraries
for a lot of their API functionality.
> > 7. iPhone development tools are free
>
> Um, iPhone SDK is still under NDA. You're not supposed to talk about it.
> Apple's very touchy about their NDAs, no matter how stupid those NDAs
> might be.
>
Well, now it's clear. You're trying to be confrontational or maybe you
mean this in a light hearted way, who knows. Regardless I didn't sign
a NDA and one doesn't have to in order to discover the SDK is free.
>
> Yup. Likewise you have to have iTunes to talk to your iPod. Remind me,
> why is it that Apple's DRM-based technology locking is a _good_ thing?
>
They have DRM locking because the record labels demanded it which
iTunes store pioneered the way, but DRM in general is slowly fading
away. You can already buy some DRM free music through iTunes, this
problem is not specific to Apple and not relevant to someone wanting
to take advantage of a booming market for application development.
iTunes marshalls sync operations with the iPhone/iPod Touch because, I
suspect because these devices were designed as digital music players
and the other features are turning them into PDA like devices.
> > 8. A true next generation operating system capable of running 64-bit
> > and 32-bit code side by side
> > Another little marketing spill that lives up to it's hype. You can use
> > the for mentioned FREE development tools to output 64-bit or 32-bit
> > binaries and test, run, debug them side by side on the current version
> > of Mac OS
>
> This is different from 64-bit Windows how? And tell us again, when did
> the respective 64-bit versions of the operating systems come out?
>
Oh it's much different. 64-bit Windows is a joke and a real pain in
the ass, 32-bit applications take a noticable performance hit on 64-
bit Windows if they run at all. I'm sure Leopard isn't without its
bugs but the fact is Apple unified Leopard as a single product 64-bit/
32-bit OS. 64-bit Windows is far from a mainstream product. IMO this
is one of Microsoft biggest failures with Vista. Absolutely
unforgivable given how long AMD has had reasonable priced 64-bit
processors on the market.
When I have this discussion with a Microsoft zelot (I mean someone who
tends to be negative towards anything non-Microsoft) and this subject
comes up generally the importance of 64-bit gets downplayed and that's
so sad to me. The importance of us moving to 64-bit development can
not be overstated.
>
> You don't seem to have a lot of exposure to "commercial operating systems".
Perhaps not. At this point I can claim to have worked with the
following operating systems in the last ten years:
Sun Solairs, IBM AIX, IBM OS/400, Apple Mac OS, Linux, SGI Irix,
FreeBSD, Windows.
6 of the 8 are Unix or based on Unix. OS/400 and Windows are having
worked for an IBM business partner I know their OS/400 business isn't
so hot anymore.
Just curious, what are some other commerical desktop/server OS's
available that are not Unix or Linux based?
>
> Actually, one thing anyone considering getting a Mac should understand:
> Mac OS X isn't actually Mac OS. It's NeXT with a Mac wrapper.
>
In its day, NeXT was like a super computer a head of its time and is
essentially a shell on top of BSD (Unix). the few that did get sold
went to work on number crunching research at labs sucha s CERT. The
system didn't get the respect it deserved.