Why UNIX and Mac OS X Beat Windows

[Ardacer]

Spec sheet warriors need to be educated, not hated, but as with you, me, or anyone else, that comes in time and experience. I always wanted a mac to play with it, try that software, be amazed at how pretty that aluminum unibody is, I'm not afraid to say I'm interested in it, Iphones that I used for a while were great (they do freeze and crash like any other os though, might be just my case) but there's just something about building PC-s on your own and configuring them for your own needs that always prevailed. Besides, the best selling software for osx is ms office if I'm not mistaken, so lul there

 

I might actually try to compile "my own osx" from that apple repo that builder linked, that seems nice. Probably will take some time to figure out, and from my limited knoweledge about it I think my issues will be with chipset, graphics and sound drivers most likely..

[Builder]

Do I have to remove that sentence or something? It's not meant to be taken THAT seriously, it's pulled from their fucking marketing material. I just thought it sounded nice to put at the end after being so serious and pedantic the rest of the post.

[Opcode]

#OpenGLMasterRace

Seriously. I'm pretty certain quite a lot of people would switch to Linux or Unix if gaming was there. Hopefully the industry slowly moves over to OpenGL or some other API in the near future. 

The game development market is already taking sail on Linux waters. Quite a few triple-a titles have landed in the past couple of months for Linux. It's only a matter of time until other major developers jump on board. They will once the Linux market share rises, which will bring more potential customers for that platform. That's the only reason why Linux barely had good games, which was due to a majority of game buyers running a Windows platform. Linux is getting quite mature and really stable and solid now, with SteamOS and other gaming distro's being brought forward. In a few years we may see big titles like GTA VI land for the Linux platform.

[bradscoolio]

Good read My boss said to me some time ago that OS X is running GNU/Linux base at this point, I don't see where he's getting that from.

[LukeTim]

Good read My boss said to me some time ago that OS X is running GNU/Linux base at this point, I don't see where he's getting that from.

 

His arse.

[MrSuperb]

You'll not get much sympathy from me for attacking Linux, Linux is really quite miraculous and it definitely has a place that OS X doesn't, specifically servers and supercomputing.

 

lol, what is the matter with you? where did I attack Linux.

You know the biggest thing that makes linux better for servers?

It can be compiled and installed on pretty much any hardware, which really can't be said about OS X.

Nevertheless I was under the impression, that we talk about pro/consumer desktop OSs here.

[Hikaru12]

Highly optimized? At what, being impossible to use?

 

Windows 8.1 is bloated as hell, a 64-bit install requires nearly 20GB of install space ALONE. The user interface sucks, badly. It just doesn't make sense, (inb4 GoodBytes says it does), especially not compared to the other Windows OSes. I've used Windows for awhile, I would know. Windows also uses a file system that requires defragmentation, and doesn't support RAM compression. Along with that it contains no open source components and is not designed for modularity the way any UNIX-derived system is. In OS X, I can change the windowing system, window manager, file system, and a host of other core system utilities to suit my liking. This is even more true for GNU/Linux in which almost anything can be exchanged for something else. 

 

Windows is a black box that doesn't even have the redeeming quality of being familiar anymore. Who knows, maybe Windows 9 will introduce some open source components, make the install size under 5GB, support RAM compression, alternate filesystems, and suddenly become modular. But Microsoft has shown that they can't even make minimal let alone radical changes to system internals in three years, so I strongly doubt the above will happen.

 

Really the only reason to use Windows these days is if you're a AAA gamer, because most other games have been ported to Mac and Linux. Humble Bundle, for instance, insists on multi platform support.

 

Well the kernel has been optimized for performance. Boot times have been dramatically decreased. Everything just seems snappier in general. Drive pooling is also pretty cool and the ability to move your Windows setting profiles among computers is also pretty cool. I don't see the ability to change your windowing system and customization as that important if you're going online or playing games. Perhaps if you're doing actual work being able to change the file system and window manager becomes more important. Install size shouldn't really be that big a deal anyway because not many people are installing their OS on 60GB HDD/SSD anyway. With the rise of cloud storage/exteneral HDD's/NAS's is that even a valid argument? I do agree that Windows should support more than just NTFS but then again that could introduce a whole host of other issues with compatibility.

 

The modularity debate starts to get even more one sided against Apple who strictly controls things like their App Store for Mac and forces iTunes on you. However, I can't really say much to the effect of OSX because I haven't used it. I am planning on getting a Mac Mini soon so I can begin to delve in further.

 

Anyway, great article. I knew most of this from Wikipedia but always good to clear misconceptions.

[Builder]

Install size shouldn't really be that big a deal anyway because not many people are installing their OS on 60GB HDD/SSD anyway. With the rise of cloud storage/exteneral HDD's/NAS's is that even a valid argument? I do agree that Windows should support more than just NTFS but then again that could introduce a whole host of other issues with compatibility.

 

The modularity debate starts to get even more one sided against Apple who strictly controls things like their App Store for Mac and forces iTunes on you. However, I can't really say much to the effect of OSX because I haven't used it. I am planning on getting a Mac Mini soon so I can begin to delve in further.

 

Anyway, great article. I knew most of this from Wikipedia but always good to clear misconceptions.

But that's the problem with asking "why not." You ask why Windows shouldn't take up 20GB of space, I ask why it should. It has no need to because there are plenty of other OSes that do more with less. (ahem)

 

The App Store is indeed curated. If that's not for you you can always download your own apps. I'm not sure what "forcing iTunes on you" means anymore because unless your phone gets bricked you never even need connect it to your computer.

[Hikaru12]

But that's the problem with asking "why not." You ask why Windows shouldn't take up 20GB of space, I ask why it should. It has no need to because there are plenty of other OSes that do more with less. (ahem)

 

The App Store is indeed curated. If that's not for you you can always download your own apps. I'm not sure what "forcing iTunes on you" means anymore because unless your phone gets bricked you never even need connect it to your computer.

 

It takes up that size because of system restore, the paging file, etc. Those will easily add another 6-10GB to your installs. If there is adequate RAM then you can actually decrease the size. I guess my question then is how is it that Mac can run only lower specs? What makes it's architecture so different that it can do more with less?

 

There is a program called Linky which allows you to analyze what takes up the most system space. I do agree that Windows is kind of bloated but I think it's because Microsoft realizes that most people wouldn't notice and it doesn't have to be as conservative on space because most people are installing on larger drives anyway. Although, the Surface with it's 60GB/80GB? SSD on the i3 version kind of really makes no sense.

 

Yes, but to transfer things to your phone there is no easy way to do without iTunes unless you involve some sort of FTP protocol. And really, why shouldn't it be as easy as drag and drop? My big issue with Apple is it did have great beginnings and started humbly but the fact that they take the credit for a lot of technologies and innovations they have no business taking credit for. Have you seen this video already? www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFeC25BM9E0. It discusses how Apple has never really invented much of anything and yet still claims to do it first.

[Builder]

It takes up that size because of system restore, the paging file, etc. Those will easily add another 6-10GB to your installs. If there is adequate RAM then you can actually decrease the size. I guess my question then is how is it that Mac can run only lower specs? What makes it's architecture so different that it can do more with less?

 

Yes, but to transfer things to your phone there is no easy way to do without iTunes unless you involve some sort of FTP protocol. And really, why shouldn't it be as easy as drag and drop? My big issue with Apple is it did have great beginnings and started humbly but the fact that they take the credit for a lot of technologies and innovations they have no business taking credit for. Have you seen this video already? www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFeC25BM9E0. It discusses how Apple has never really invented much of anything and yet still claims to do it first.

OS X can do more with less because the open source software it's based off of is designed to run at minimal system requirements. Unix itself (as you'd know if you'd have read the OP) has been around for nearly 40 years, a good portion of which you would be lucky to have more than a few KB of RAM. This mentality of "make it as small and efficient as possible" is maintained in spirit by the Linux community. Conservative Linux operating systems typically take up less than a single GB of disk space and having it take more than 300MB of your RAM at idle is considered inefficiency. OS X and Windows are fundamentally different operating systems at their core. Windows has become bloated in recent years. OS X has grown but not nearly as much as Windows has.

 

Yes, of course I've seen that video. By their definition of invention nobody has ever invented anything because everything that they shot down they did for the reason that it used some technology that hadn't been applied in the right way before. News flash. That's what invention is. Invention is applied engineering and design just as engineering is applied science. By their standards I can shoot down any product that you say was invented by another company. Notice they didn't compare what other companies have invented though, because they didn't really set out to do a fair comparison. They setup a double standard for Apple products and then only told one side of the story. Also since then I'd like to see what they'd say about the new Mac Pro.

[lutewan]

SO @Builder tell me this why is it that the only time i use a mac it didnt work

so i try to help a friend of mine who dosent know a whole lot about window or mac i was trying to just turn the wi-if on i go setting see a butten that says turn wi-fi on im like oh that was easy click it dosent work

[Builder]

Except OS X isn't open source software at all and the UNIX it was based off of has been on its own for over a decade.

 

You can't tie UNIX's name to OS X as if it was an apples-to-apples comparison - right now OS X holds a license for the UNIX branding and is about as much of a waste of time and pain in the neck as any Windows release after 2006.

OS X is very much open source. There's a whole kernel development kit. The software is open source up to the GUI and application framework, (Cocoa) which was at one point open source too. Have you read the OP at all? Like, at all?

 

How is it a waste of time and a pain of the neck? I switched to OS X from Windows Vista around 2007 (Leopard) and haven't looked back since.

 

SO @Builder tell me this why is it that the only time i use a mac it didnt work

so i try to help a friend of mine who dosent know a whole lot about window or mac i was trying to just turn the wi-if on i go setting see a butten that says turn wi-fi on im like oh that was easy click it dosent work

What do you want me to say here? Am I supposed to say that Macs are bad because one guy didn't know how to turn Wi-Fi on with Macs? You still have to connect to a network after you click that button but the shape should change from an empty cone to a little greyed out radio symbol until you connect to a network when it starts doing a little animation and then turns black.

[Builder]

If it was Open Source then there would be many derivatives and forks of it, and since there's next to none (unlike other UNIX OSes) it really doesn't fall into that. I'm on a derivative of Debian atm called CrunchBang, and it's a rather nice OS. Mac is clunky in the software department.

If you think it's actually closed source I urge you to look at http://opensource.apple.com

 

The only closed source components it contains are Aqua GUI/Quartz Compositor and the Cocoa API. There aren't next to none derivatives, it's just BSD is nowhere near as popular as Linux is so there aren't as many variants. The fully open source version is known as Darwin. OS X is Darwin with Quartz instead of xorg and the Cocoa API included. You'd know this if you had read the OP.

 

I'm a #! fan as well. Glad to meet some more fans.

[Builder]

I'm sure Apple is very unbiased as to the nature of their own software. Have you looked at a Unix-live derivative tree before? Nothing has forked from OS X.

 

And say, sharing the source under a proprietary license agreement doesn't sound like open source, does it? It's just the source, isn't it? When normal people talk about "open source" they're usually referring to software licensed under free licenses such as with the Creative Commons or under the GPL, since those licenses legitimize the word "open". Possibly the lack of development by normal users with Darwin is that it's licensing terms are too restrictive to make a fork worthwhile. Then again, it may just be software that's a pain to work with anyway because of how it was written... who knows? Either way, not seeing much.

I have looked at several Unix-like derivative trees. I'm a certified Apache committer.

 

You're just pulling out bullshit left and right. Apple does support open, public development: http://www.macosforge.org

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

 

OpenDarwin and PureDarwin are forks.

 

Darwin code is released under the Apple Public Source license, (APSL) verified by the OSI as a suitable open source license. The FSF verified it too. It's even copylefted! It's basically LGPL that Apple wrote custom for their software.

[Builder]

Except, you know, this is about OS X. Not Darwin, not OpenDarwin, not PureDarwin. Wikipedia says OS X uses a closed source model with open source components. Since you want to pull out horse shit I'd thought you should know that.

I never said it was completely open source! I've said from the beginning that it has closed source components! OS X is based off of Darwin which is updated frequently. Darwin is completely open source. OS X is mostly composed of open source components. This remains true.

 

You've now resorted to moving the goalposts. You said they used a proprietary license. Debunked. You said there weren't any forks. Debunked. You said they don't support community inclusive development. Debunked.

 

What more do you want?

[Builder]

OS X is mostly composed of closed source components. This remains true.

NO IT'S NOT! THE ONLY CLOSED SOURCE OPERATING SYSTEM COMPONENTS ARE QUARTZ, AQUA, AND COCOA!

[Midnight]

NO IT'S NOT! THE ONLY CLOSED SOURCE OPERATING SYSTEM COMPONENTS ARE QUARTZ, AQUA, AND COCOA!

 

Let's just say it's closed source with some open source components... because I really can't see OS X as "open source" software as a whole, while the kernel it uses is open source.

[Builder]

Let's just say it's closed source with some open source components... because I really can't see OS X as "open source" software as a whole, while the kernel it uses is open source.

Yeah but almost the entire thing is open source...there's maybe 20-30% closed source components in it.

[Builder]

Would you like to cite that for us nay-sayers? I'm not seeing it, truly.

Do you understand what an operating system is composed of? I assumed a Linux user would, but perhaps not.

 

The GUI and application API are minor, minor parts of the OS. The biggest pieces of it are the kernel and the stack with user land utilities above that. These are all open source on OS X. The kernel is open, there's a kernel dev kit. The networking stack is taken from FreeBSD. The kernel is a hybrid microkernel composed of the BSD kernel and Mach kernel, known as XNU. 

 

http://superuser.com/questions/19492/is-mac-os-x-open-source

 

The underlying components are nearly all open source. Darwin is a complete operating system that forms the core of OS X. To cook up a yummy batch of OS X cookies, Apple takes their latest (open) Darwin release, puts their latest (proprietary) versions of the Cocoa API, Aqua, and Quartz Compositor/Quicktime into it. 

No, it's not completely open source. It takes the best parts of open source development and puts a nice GUI and API on top of them. It's far more open than Windows is and while it's not all the way to being Linux, it's still mostly open source. The fact that you can fork Darwin means it's very open. It runs off an open source core that has been forked and that anyone can use. Very few people who know what they're talking about would consider the GUI to be any large part of the operating system as a whole. Darwin, however, is.

[Midnight]

Yeah but almost the entire thing is open source...there's maybe 20-30% closed source components in it.

 

 How can you classify 70-80% as "almost the entire thing"? I would expect at least 90% or more. And how did you come up with that anyway?

[Builder]

I think you're having trouble understanding how an operating system actually works. Either that, or you're knowingly full of yourself because this is garbage.

 

Try writing a GUI application in C and you'll be whining for the old days of console programming. Everyone does.

Yeah no shit it's tough writing a GUI application in C. Why do you think GNOME exists?

 

I know how operating systems work. I was grossly oversimplifying it so you could understand because so far saying "open source kernel" and "open source core" hasn't meant anything to you.

[Builder]

I honestly didn't even read the trash in the majority of your post, because it's neither here nor there. Mac OS X is an overrestrictive plaything and Windows only wins by default because businesses. It's a lot more straightforward writing for UNIX-like OSes because... I dunno, it's not ass-backwards?

 

I'm so frightened by your moonspeak, oooh... okay. Apple bends the phrase "open source" so fanboys like you have a leg to stand on and babble about. Cool.

 

I've written a kernel before, isn't that cool? Aren't I special? Working with assembly and making drivers for everything under the sun sure did take some effort. You can't plug GNOME into that, lol.

OS X is UNIX-like. It's SUS compliant FFS. 

 

I never even claimed that OS X is open source, only that it's composed of mostly open source components. I've proven this several times over to you so if you can't recognize that at this point it's your fault. Frankly you're not much of a UNIX user if you'd prefer Windows to OS X. 

 

Good for you, writing a kernel. What's your point here? It sounds like you're trying to make an appeal to authority.

[NeoZeon]

Windows and OSX are just as closed: OSX used to require different hardware (made by apple/Motorola) but now that they use the same components as  windows machines they are pretty much equal in terms of being open. There are still very low level stuff that developers aren't allowed to play with on OSX or Windows.

 

Stop acting like monkeys. 

[Midnight]

OS X is very much open source. There's a whole kernel development kit. The software is open source up to the GUI and application framework, (Cocoa) which was at one point open source too. Have you read the OP at all? Like, at all?

OS X is UNIX-like. It's SUS compliant FFS. 

 

I never even claimed that OS X is open source, only that it's composed of mostly open source components. I've proven this several times over to you so if you can't recognize that at this point it's your fault. Frankly you're not much of a UNIX user if you'd prefer Windows to OS X. 

 

Good for you, writing a kernel. What's your point here? It sounds like you're trying to make an appeal to authority.

 

Yes, you did say OS X is open source...

[Builder]

Yes, you did say OS X is open source...

What does "very much" mean to you? To me it means mostly...