Forum Posts Feed
Fallows Article on Info Managers
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Graham Smith
Nov 19, 2006 at 12:13 PM
Daly,
Daly de Gagne wrote:
>Stephen, I am curious about your comment re OSX—I hadn’t realized it had a problem
>with speed. Tha concerns me since I am thinking of getting back into the Mac world. Am I
>better staying with PCs only?
When I was looking at buying a Mac recently, I spoke to several people (who use Macs and PCs) and asked on a couple of conferences where I again knew people used Macs and PCs.
The concensus was that the Macs were more stable than the WINXP boxes, and that spec for spec the Macs were faster than WinXP.
In the end I bought another WinXP box, but that was because I have several programs that are PC only, and there would have been some considerable addirtonal expense to replace the PC versions of programs with Mac versions, where this was an option.
Graham
Posted by Franz Grieser
Nov 19, 2006 at 12:58 PM
Stephen
>I don’t think Mac users on the whole are objective observers and commentators on
>their computers’ performance.
This may be true of Mac users who never ever looked at other systems.
I do not consider myself a Mac user - I do most of my work on various Windows machines. I would say I am a dissatisfied Windows user who sticks to Windows because he earns a large part of his money writing about Windows computers and apps and training people how to use Windows.
Franz
p.s. I do not think here is the place for ranting and grumbling about operating systems. Let’s get back to discussing outlining tools.
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Nov 19, 2006 at 03:37 PM
Stephen, a couple of points.
First of all, you are admitting that your first post with the comment about Mac’s speed was based on old data.
Second, you question whether “Mac users on the whole are objective observers and commentators on their computers’ performance.”
May one draw the inference that PC users are objective?
Or are you saying that Mac users are as lacking in objectivity as PC users?
Is there a lick of evidence anywhere to suggest that one group or the other is lacking in objectivity?
Rather, it sounds to me like a way of simply discrediting Mac users as a group, having been soundly called on the issue of Mac performance?
Just curious.
Daly
Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>There’s some forthright discussion of speed and reliability issues in Mac OS X at
>http://www.atpm.com/12.08/paradigm.shtml. There seems to be general agreement
>that OS X through 10.3 was plagued by stability and speed problems. I pointed out that
>this had generally not been previously admitted in the Mac literature, as it isn’t
>recognized in your response here. There seems to have been improvement in 2005 and
>some regression in 2006. If the consensus represented in that unusually forthright
>discussion was that OS X just became usable recently, it is unlikely to have become a
>speed demon or to rival Windows XP in stability in the time since.
>
>When I played with
>Omni Outliner on a Mac 6 months to a year ago in the Apple Store in LA, it was painfully
>slow. I don’t think Mac users on the whole are objective observers and commentators on
>their computers’ performance.
Posted by David Dunham
Nov 19, 2006 at 06:04 PM
Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>When I played with
>Omni Outliner on a Mac 6 months to a year ago in the Apple Store in LA, it was painfully
>slow.
So the fact that one program was slow means all Macs are slow?
I’d also point out that there are a very large number of other outliners available for Mac OS X. Most aren’t sold at retail, so you wouldn’t easily find them at an Apple Store.
P.S. Just made a speed optimization last night in my Opal outliner. So don’t use it for comparison until 1.0.3 comes out :-)
Posted by Stephen R. Diamond
Nov 19, 2006 at 11:36 PM
As being a criticism of Fallows’ Mac commentary, Omni is very relevant, because on it, Fallows bestowed the highest praise. Omni, moreover, is a rather core OS X product. If someone got an Apple because of the outlining programs on it, it would very likely be for Omni.
Opal is constructed as a small tight program, and as such is expected to run fast, if anything does. It is more of a challenge to a platform to get a feature-laden behemoth to run reasonably fast. This can be done on Windows XP, but it does not look to me that Mac OS X allows it. I could be wrong, but I am more concerned about the quality of information emanating from the Apple camp, the way that faults seem to be concealed, so that one would not even know that at least the early versions of OS X were unstable and slow. Since Apple is largely responsible for this false impression (what with the Jobs psychopathic reality shield), personally I think consumers should not assume current versions are better without strong proof. Apple’s misinformation in the past creates a reasonable presumption of continued misrepresentation of its products, both by the company and its fans.
I’m not emotionally attached to a platform. If I were convinced that OS X was the superior platform for outlining type activities, I would switch in a minute. If I sound negative about Apple, which I am, it’s because I think it an unethical company, not because its products are inferior, which I could certainly be wrong about but not wilfully.
David Dunham wrote:
>Stephen R. Diamond wrote:
>
>>When I played with
>>Omni Outliner on a Mac 6 months to a
>year ago in the Apple Store in LA, it was painfully
>>slow.
>
>So the fact that one
>program was slow means all Macs are slow?
>