X vs XP
[ rakaur on Sun Apr 09 at 08:54 AM // category: apple, microsoft, software, technology ]
I guess this is kind of interesting.
It’s also totally bogus. I haven’t even viewed the “Final Score” page, but I’m pretty sure Windows wins. Either these people have a bias toward Windows and they lean that way, or they have a bias toward OS X and err on the side of Windows to make it look otherwise.
First off, they leave out all of the iLife applications because “it’s not part of the operating system” but then include seperate downloads for Windows that you can get, and that’s ok. First off, I’m willing to bet that over 90% of computers with 10.3 and up have iLife on them. If not, they’re probably in the education market anyway.
In “Legacy Application Support” Windows vastly outscores OS X because it has “support for 25 year old programs.” No, it depends on 25 year old programs. There’s a difference. I personally commend Apple for trying to phase out legacy garbage that stifles innovation, which is exactly how Microsoft wants it. Apple supported 68k for eleven years after they switched to PPC. They supported OS 9 up until the Intel thing. They’ll support PPC for a long, long time. The site says something like “you could argue that OS X’s support is impressive given the situation,” and pretty much goes on to say “but we don’t give a shit. Windows wins.”
The “Audio Playback” section is retarded. They both score the same, but I swear to god I don’t know a single soul that uses WMP. Everyone and their grandma downloads Winamp or something else because WMP is an atrocious giant retard-friendly massive heap of an application that does absolutely nothing but crash every time I send it to “toolbar mode.” The first thing I do on a Windows install that I expect to be doing audio on is install something other than WMP. iTunes isn’t a fantastic application either, but at least its usable.
The “Video Playback” section’s pretty stupid too. They put Windows way higher because you don’t have to pay for a pro version. Yeah, because Microsoft never bugs you to buy shit. Get real. Again with the WMP thing. QuickTime is far more usable.
“Video Editing” is shit too. They leave out iMovie and iDVD because it’s “not part of the operating system omg.” Neither is WMP, you idiots. In fact, it’s illegal to have it bundled with Windows in some countries. Even without iMovie and iDVD, QuickTime can do far more movie-centric stuff than WMP. iMovie is so ungodly vastly superior to Windows Movie Maker I can’t even go into it.
“Photo Importing.” One word, iPhoto. Yeah, it’s part of iLife. Shut up. Same goes for the rest of the photo stuff.
“Web Browsing.” For some reason they think IE and Safari score the same. Go figure.
“Email, basic.” Somehow Mail only scores one point higher than OE. Go figure.
“HTML Editing.” They call OE a WYSIWYG editor. Need I say more?
“Chat, basic.” Yeah, like MSNM is anywhere comparable to XMPP.
“Advanced Conferencing.” Yeah, because whiteboard is a critical part of IM.
“Games.” I’m sorry that OS X doesn’t provide solitare, and thus a way to throw millions of hours of productivity down the shitter.
The entire “Files & Folders” category isn’t even worth my time. They somehow go on long and forever about Windows Desktop Search, which isn’t even provided in Windows. Right, you can use that but not iLife. Even if they keep it in seperate scores, if they’re going to pull that shit they should include iLife and put it in seperate scores. Like anything in Windows is even remotely comparable to Spotlight.
The entire “Graphical User Interface” category is a complete shitfest too. They only mention Exposé in “Working with Open Windows,” while it should also be in about half of the other categories where they just ignore it. They make a huge deal out of zoom, and that window resizing is only in one spot. They’re obviously used to Windows ideas, and anything else seems foreign. I’ve used about a billion different window managers, and Aqua is far from the worst.
There’s somehow only a three point difference in “Command Line Interface.” Have you people even USED anything other than Windows? There’s an entire separate operating system in OS X’s command line, it’s called Unix. It comes with so many things that Windows can’t do you can’t even compare them. Seriously, this is a huge point they’re just completely oblivious to. People made a living writing shell scripts before there even was a DOS. What in Windows compares to bash, sh, tcsh, perl, python, ruby, ipfw, sed, awk, or anything else in /usr/bin?
Windows wins vastly in “Remote Control” somehow based on the fact that Remote Desktop comes with Windows. What about SSH? Yeah, I know a ton of people that make a living using RD on Windows boxes as compared to people that make a living using SSH. Oh wait, no I don’t.
Yes, I obviously like OS X more. At least I don’t pretend to be unbiased.
-- rakaur // 2006.04.09 @ 08:54 AM
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://mt.ericw.org/mt-tb.cgi/234
