Why does Apple, a hardware company, have a more well liked OS than microsoft (a software company?)

[corrado33]

1 minute ago, CarlBar said:

Drivers tell the OS how to talk to things. Thing of it like a language. All english speaking people from as far back english goes have spoken english. But that doesn't meaning all forms of english have used the same spelling, grammer, or in some cases exact word meanings. US english vs UK English vs Shakespearean English vs X type of English, (take your pick), is full of differences. As humans we can handle these contradictions and subtleties quite well. Computers can't, they need to be told what the differences are and what they mean.

 

Yes, again, that's all well and good. But that makes the assumption that the "compatibility" mode of video cards has "changed language/grammar/spelling" over time. And so my previous question still applies. Doesn't' that defeat the point of the compatibility mode? And how many different compatibility modes have there been? Shouldn't a "compatibility mode" be standardized? 

 

And if it IS standardized, why is it such a big deal that windows supports so many (sticking with GPUs here) GPUs? When in reality windows just provides the very basic driver that lets you install the ACTUAL driver. Has the "compatibility mode" of gpus changed so much that the "basic" driver windows provides is huge? 

[CarlBar]

4 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Yes, again, that's all well and good. But that makes the assumption that the "compatibility" mode of video cards has "changed language/grammar/spelling" over time. And so my previous question still applies. Doesn't' that defeat the point of the compatibility mode? And how many different compatibility modes have there been? Shouldn't a "compatibility mode" be standardized? 

 

And if it IS standardized, why is it such a big deal that windows supports so many (sticking with GPUs here) GPUs? When in reality windows just provides the very basic driver that lets you install the ACTUAL driver. Has the "compatibility mode" of gpus changed so much that the "basic" driver windows provides is huge? 

 

The problem is that for a lot of things for a long time there was no standard way of doing things. Compatibility mode is basically a slightly updated original specification graphics communication protocol. ack then there's was no >640*480 resolution, or 32 bit colour, or Direct X, or Open GL/CL, Vulkan, RT cores, Tensor Cores, CUDA,, hell i don't think there was even 3D graphics back then. There wasn't even VGA, let alone HDMI or Display port. Some forms of some of these have been added on after the fact. But most of the functionality of your graphics card requires commands that aren't included in the compatibility mode. And thats because like most things with the x86 specs it's a hodgepodge of add ons layered on top of workarounds, layered on top of each other in recursive layers, turtles all the way down as it where

 

Since few of them were added in any kind of standardised way for a long time each graphics card manufacturer developed their own variant language to do things. If you think of telling your GPU to do a specific things as being the same as saying a word. Then outside of the small handful of things covered in compatibility mode, the word used for the same function could be different for every GPU manufacturer.

 

Remember it's only about 15 years since we had motherboards with simultaneous support for:

 

PCI-E, AGP, PCI, IDE, Floppy, SATA, and a few others i'm probably forgetting internally, and VGA, PS2, USB 1.0, USB2.0, Firewire, Com ports, and again a few other's i'm forgetting externally, all communicating with the Northbridge via a custom connection standard, which then communicated with the CPU through another standard. The modern way of connecting the CPU to everything but the memory via PCI-E lanes that are then converted at the destination to LAN, USB, SATA, m.2, e.t.c. is a relatively new thing for  x86 computers. It's a god thing and i'm hoping we'll ee M.2+u.2+some form of external U.2 standard ultimately replace most of the existing standards over time, (LAN and Graphics outputs are likly to linger for a while and who knows whats going to happen with memory long term).

[corrado33]

2 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

The problem is that for a lot of things for a long time there was no standard way of doing things. Compatibility mode is basically a slightly updated original specification graphics communication protocol. ack then there's was no >640*480 resolution, or 32 bit colour, or Direct X, or Open GL/CL, Vulkan, RT cores, Tensor Cores, CUDA,, hell i don't think there was even 3D graphics back then. There wasn't even VGA, let alone HDMI or Display port. Some forms of some of these have been added on after the fact. But most of the functionality of your graphics card requires commands that aren't included in the compatibility mode. And thats because like most things with the x86 specs it's a hodgepodge of add ons layered on top of workarounds, layered on top of each other in recursive layers, turtles all the way down as it where

 

Since few of them were added in any kind of standardised way for a long time each graphics card manufacturer developed their own variant language to do things. If you think of telling your GPU to do a specific things as being the same as saying a word. Then outside of the small handful of things covered in compatibility mode, the word used for the same function could be different for every GPU manufacturer.

 

Remember it's only about 15 years since we had motherboards with simultaneous support for:

 

PCI-E, AGP, PCI, IDE, Floppy, SATA, and a few others i'm probably forgetting internally, and VGA, PS2, USB 1.0, USB2.0, Firewire, Com ports, and again a few other's i'm forgetting externally, all communicating with the Northbridge via a custom connection standard, which then communicated with the CPU through another standard. The modern way of connecting the CPU to everything but the memory via PCI-E lanes that are then converted at the destination to LAN, USB, SATA, m.2, e.t.c. is a relatively new thing for  x86 computers. It's a god thing and i'm hoping we'll ee M.2+u.2+some form of external U.2 standard ultimately replace most of the existing standards over time, (LAN and Graphics outputs are likly to linger for a while and who knows whats going to happen with memory long term).

Ah ok. So windows drivers are a big deal because the PC hardware industry is a shit show. Gotcha. Apple just decided to stay out of it. Honestly, I'm not surprised. 

[Guest]

Oh god where should I start... I'll just give an opinion on it first.

When Steve Jobs into the 85' was searching into how to create the best desktop OS, put a lot of effort on this, he found some promising projects, the BSD operating system (which was an unix flavor at the time, an industry-oriented OS, secure, fast and portable), developed by the Berkley university, and the Mach kernel from Carnegie Mellon, then NEXTstep was created, which would then be called "MacOS" we know today.
They only developed a GUI on it and basically you could say "stole" the whole kernel and userland without coding anything, because the license was okay with that, and that's a lot of work done for free. They already built a solid  and stable OS with an easy interface.

On the other hand microsoft develops everything from scratch, and doesn't stole anything other than ideas *wink* 

Just compare it to Windows 1.0



You could say Microsoft ALWAYS had only a purely "business" oriented OS model, just care about making money on the easiest way (who doesn't after all?) and thanks to that that's why most of desktops actually come with Windows, DOS already took over thanks to the collaboration between IBM.
They never focussed particulary on the desktop experience, not even on the kernel or the structure, that is not a priority even now when you have most of the market share. You could start creating other products instead, and they did.
There is nothing evil with Microsoft, they are just doing their businesses in this way.
Linux is built like MacOS from the same "base" and is very stable, but came too late and with no focus for desktops on the other hand so found no luck on the desktop market.

MacOS doesn't even cared about portability, they even used different CPU's, why should they? Even if that code is perfectly portable.

MacOS has always been more stable on the kernel (open source software, also being developed by other people) and software, well built than Windows, people don't even know what a kernel panic is today, I'm not saying Windows is totally cr*p, but it's always been like that with some issues they never solved, they could probably require an entire rewriting, and that could cause massive compatibility problems I suppose. 

As for Microsoft or Apple being or not being a software or hardware company I'm like... Wtf? What's the deal with that? 
It's normal for businesses to make collaborations between, it's in their interests, they do in hardware and sometimes even software, even if normal people see them as rivals. 

Can you imagine a company doing everything from hardware to software? How big should that be? Today microsoft can't even deal with Windows issues with all the things they are doing (Azure, Office, Visual studio, Xbox) they also started making some things open source because of that, a problem which Apple never had since they always released most of their source codes, except their most valuable ones. For companies having open source software it's a strategy microsoft adopted very late than Apple or Google. 

Apple always had a solid and effective business strategy, on every aspect, it's a bit questionable in the last years but whatever... 
 
Maybe toshiba which is an hardware manufacturer can build every piece in a PC (motherboard, storage, etc) but still not the software or the CPU and vice-versa for Intel, even if you had all the money in the world that would be a waste.

Drivers? 
@corrado33 I think you are a bit confused, just relax a bit... Every OS has something called VESA drivers on it for graphics, and every graphics card supports that extensions of functionality, that's why the resolution it's the same on every driver, and so is the performance. 

Hardware manufacturers just make their drivers following the OS api's, and since they know their hardware, it's relatively easy for them to make drivers. Windows has something called NDIS and they could  or not even do that in collaboration with the OS vendor by and/or let them use their drivers, you can't know, but they possibly do that, that's not always the case like in Linux where developers must release their code under the GPL.

MacOS and Apple computers just got a firmware and hardware chips on it that makes it "MacOS" compatible, the reason why hackintosh exists is that functionality can easily be emulated with a custom boot-loader an drivers. 
And the drivers made for Apple computers can run fine on non-apple computers because if there are the same components on them, there are no performance issues, there is also a community of people who ported drivers from Linux to them  (which is easier because they are open source)
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/OSX_Technology_Overview/SystemTechnology/SystemTechnology.html


Also, having only a few systems to support is not that deal, it's all up to hardware manufacturer to release their drivers. 
That could just means MacOS has better API's, Linux has probably the most confusing and always changing ones, but their OS quality is stable.
Windows could be more prone to crashes and BSODs (bad developers, bad apis??) because only god knows what's in Windows source code, unlike MacOS or Linux.
 

[dalekphalm]

20 hours ago, corrado33 said:

But, I mean... microsoft could easily make it easier on themselves. Tell vendors (Dell, HP, etc) to all install 1 type of NIC. Then they only have to write for that one NIC. All other NICS will require their own drivers written by the manufacturer. 

 

Right? Microsoft definitely has the clout to do something like this, why don't they? 

 

I mean hell, when I install windows 10 I have to download gigabytes of drivers just to get everything working on my computer, so what exactly did they write? 

That's incredibly anti-consumer though. You'd be making the OEM's basically subsidiaries of Microsoft, without the benefit of being part of Microsoft.

 

For Microsoft to say "Here's the NIC you need to use" entirely defeats the purpose of using Windows - which is the flexibility of using any hardware you want.

 

If Microsoft was going to dictate specific parts that OEM's have to use, it would make it near impossible for OEM's to differentiate themselves, and at that point, Microsoft would be better served ditching OEM's completely and building hardware themselves.

[CarlBar]

2 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Ah ok. So windows drivers are a big deal because the PC hardware industry is a shit show. Gotcha. Apple just decided to stay out of it. Honestly, I'm not surprised. 

 

The thing you have to understand is everything we, (or apple for that matter), are doing today on our x86 hardware is such a massive hack it makes that recent report of a chinese company hacking Tu106 GOU's to functions as DX video gaming cards look tame. Nothing where doing was either intended or envisaged. But because x86 was the hardware and software that happened to sell well just as personal computing was taking off, when we wanted it to do more we couldn't really outright replace it as that would mean all our old stuff wouldn't work, and no one wanted that consumer side. So they developed hacks involving new hardware specifications to do what consumers wanted. Then a little while later they developed more hacks.

 

By this point x86 isn't really a single standard, it'a a complex itnervowen mesh of hacks and workaround and make do solutions layered over the top of successive layers of the same. And somwhere under all that is the core x86 spec thats all but unused now, but has to be there because eve if the thing in the entirety isn't directly used, a lot of the hacks need that baseline, (and many of the other hacks), to keep working.

 

For graphics cards for example, in the heady days of the 90's Direct X wasn't the standard it is today, there where half a dozen different rendering standards and different GPU and games makers favoured different ones and everyone had to add at least some functionality from each and they had to figure out how to do it on their own for the most part, there was no industry standards for many things back then. Thats why you had such a mess of different connection techs too. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry was presenting their own solution back then. 

 

 

In the modern era any number of pieces of hardware or software might call on any one of those millions of hacks to do somthing, and the OS has to support it.

 

Apple still has to deal with all this. But they know which of the millions of hacks they'll never use in their own software so they flat out don't support it. That means all kinds of things that would work on a x86 processor under windows just fine will flat out refuse to run or crash a Mac because Mac doesn't support them.But it also makes it really easy to write the drivers for MAc's. They also know exactly what hardware is going in. They don't have to worry about someone swapping a GTX770 for a RTX2080Ti on them. Mac OS would crash and burn if you tried that because it just can't handle the change.

[Guest]

I don't understand the whole discussion about drivers... Is there something I did not read? 

- OS developers release their API's for driver functionality
- Hardware vendor makes their hardware, doing what they want, and builds a driver for Windows, Linux, Mac.
- Why the heck should an hardware vendor not make a driver for Windows? There is also a reason they publicly release them on websites

- Generic OS drivers could be wrote by anyone to ensure basic functionality based on open standards except for proprietary ones, that could include, webcams, bluetooth, wifi (because they are more complicated) 
 

[corrado33]

3 minutes ago, Lukyp said:

I don't understand the whole discussion about drivers... Is there something I did not read? 

- OS developers release their API's for driver functionality
- Hardware vendor makes their hardware, doing what they want, and builds a driver for Windows, Linux, Mac.
- Why the heck should an hardware vendor not make a driver for Windows? There is also a reason they publicly release them on websites

- Generic OS drivers could be wrote by anyone to ensure basic functionality based on open standards except for proprietary ones, that could include, webcams, bluetooth, wifi (because they are more complicated) 
 

That's my point. I'm arguing that it's not windows itself that provides the compatibility, it's the people who write the drivers. If those same people would write drivers for mac as well then they could likely get the hardware to work there too. (Taking into account all the "special features" that MacOS may not be programmed to use.)

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

That's my point. I'm arguing that it's not windows itself that provides the compatibility, it's the people who write the drivers. If those same people would write drivers for mac as well then they could likely get the hardware to work there too. (Taking into account all the "special features" that MacOS may not be programmed to use.)

I said in my tl;dr post before how hackintoshing is possible, nothing trivial. Both Windows and MacOS offer driver API's to everyone. There is no special operating system. 
There are companies that develop hardware + drivers only for MacOS, I could say some light technician hardware...

I could just say maybe for an OS like iOS could be more restricted on them, they could give their API's only to hardware vendors, just because in iOS you can't install custom drivers. 

Edited November 30, 2018 by Guest

[CarlBar]

12 minutes ago, Lukyp said:

I don't understand the whole discussion about drivers... Is there something I did not read? 

- OS developers release their API's for driver functionality
- Hardware vendor makes their hardware, doing what they want, and builds a driver for Windows, Linux, Mac.
- Why the heck should an hardware vendor not make a driver for Windows? There is also a reason they publicly release them on websites

- Generic OS drivers could be wrote by anyone to ensure basic functionality based on open standards except for proprietary ones, that could include, webcams, bluetooth, wifi (because they are more complicated) 
 

 

Basically the OP was looking at x86 as if all GPU's, and Lan chips, and Sata chips, and USB controllers, and e.t.c. communicated with the OS using the exact same commands for non-proprietary functions. And this just isn't the case.

 

IMO it should be and i think we're slowly heading that way but right now x86 is still suffering from it's early day teething issues when every hardware limitation got 30 different proprietary standards to fix it, elements of which bled across implementations of other standards to varying degrees depending on the hardware manufacturer in question coupled with layered hacks on top of layered hacks adding endless layers of complexity on the back compatibility side.

[Mihle]

On 11/29/2018 at 5:21 AM, corrado33 said:

Ok then why are internal components NOT standardized when external components ARE standardized? Every single flash drive works with macos. External GPUs work on mac and PC. 

Not all external GPU enclosures work with Mac, some don't, especially some  of the older ones. Basically all work with windows.

 

Thunderbolt adapters or stuff in general on Apple products actually. Basically all work on windows as long as you have thunderbolt port. Except for maybe apple produced ones, I don't know. But there is quite a lot of third party thunderbolt adapters or hubs and stuff that work just fine with windows but don't on Mac's.

[Mihle]

My opinion.

 

Windows > macOS

Every day. Tried used macOS once, was so confusing and weird to me.

[Syntaxvgm]

the one thing I've noticed about osx recently is it doesn't shove updates up my asshole with no lube. 

[MandoPanda]

On 11/30/2018 at 5:51 AM, Pi31415 said:

-snip-

Wow. Chill.

[dalekphalm]

On 11/30/2018 at 5:51 AM, Pi31415 said:

-snip-

I... have no words.

 

Dude. No offense. But this is fanboy attitude.

 

Your argument that Windows is superior is... because... it can open .EXE files? Seriously?

 

There are definitely things about Windows that are great. And there are things about macOS X that could use improvement - but "not being able to launch Windows only programs" isn't one of them.

 

Windows can't launch macOS programs. Nor Linux ones. Does that make Windows garbage? No, because a rational person doesn't measure an OS's worth based on the fact that the OS uses applications made for that OS.

 

You can make an argument about the hardware vs the price they ask, but that's hardly in your argument anyway.

[KuJoe]

There is no "best" Operating System, there is only "best for you". If you mistake your opinions as facts then there's no way a legitimate conversation can take place.

[KuJoe]

On 11/30/2018 at 5:51 AM, Pi31415 said:

-snip-

What about the people running Windows on their Macs? What about the people running MacOS on their PCs? I know you're just trolling to get a laugh, but you gotta put at least a little effort if you want to get the rest of us to chuckle along.

[minervx]

On 11/28/2018 at 10:32 PM, corrado33 said:

MacOS, in my opinion (and many others) is a really good OS. It's fast, secure, has good features, etc etc. Where as windows 10 is... Ok I guess. The whole "spying" thing wasn't cool, but I understand why they did it. And the possibility of ads in their stock programs in the future is terrifying. 

 

So how on earth does apple, a company that makes money selling hardware, have a nicer (or at least equally nice) OS to microsoft, which makes money selling software? 

You answered your own question.

 

A lot of people buy the hardware that Apple offers because of the software on it.  Apple is the only company you can buy a computer with Mac OS from.

[minervx]

4 hours ago, Mihle said:

My opinion.

 

Windows > macOS

Every day. Tried used macOS once, was so confusing and weird to me.

of course the operating system you've used for a while is going to be more familiar and intuitive than one you've only used briefly.  if someone used mac os their entire life, and only used windows once, the same argument could be made.

[AngryBeaver]

Where do you get that Apple is a hardware company? They design the products, but the components and hardware pretty much all come from 3rd parties. Intel, samsung, etc they don't really make much hardware themselves... if any outside of that a mobile chip and even that I think was done by a 3rd party.

[yosarianilives]

Not sure what people are on about, I've used MacOS and it's utter shit as well as getting features behind windows, like snap. Just not very usable or responsive compared to my win10 machines.

[corrado33]

5 minutes ago, yosarianilives said:

Not sure what people are on about, I've used MacOS and it's utter shit as well as getting features behind windows, like snap. Just not very usable or responsive compared to my win10 machines.

Snap is quite literally the only feature that windows has that macos does not, and it's quite easily added via free programs. Mac had "expose" first, mac had multiple desktops first (if you don't include linux). And these features are leaps and bounds better than they are on windows. Not to mention that macOS only requires 12 GB of storage, where as 64 bit windows 10 requires 20 GB. 

[yosarianilives]

I've not had a good experience using any of those features on Mac, plus their version of explorer is complete garbage and the way you browse files is not very useful or easy. And so many little things missing from their OS like the ability to refresh a finder window, etc It's just not a very polished OS even if the graphics are subjectively "pretty"

[corrado33]

3 minutes ago, yosarianilives said:

I've not had a good experience using any of those features on Mac, plus their version of explorer is complete garbage and the way you browse files is not very useful or easy. And so many little things missing from their OS like the ability to refresh a finder window, etc It's just not a very polished OS even if the graphics are subjectively "pretty"

Are you kidding? Really? MacOS isn't polished? Really? 

 

How in the hell is finder not useful? It acts just like any other file browsing utility. Hell, I'd argue that windows 10's "virtual folders" or "libraries" are absolute shit. 

 

You don't NEED to refresh a finder window in MacOS because unlike windows, it happens automatically. 

 

I'm not even going to MENTION trying to search for anything on windows. 

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, yosarianilives said:

I've not had a good experience using any of those features on Mac, plus their version of explorer is complete garbage and the way you browse files is not very useful or easy. And so many little things missing from their OS like the ability to refresh a finder window, etc It's just not a very polished OS even if the graphics are subjectively "pretty"

I'm not a mac user - I happen to prefer using Windows. But it's most definitely a very polished OS.

 

Finder - and by extension the way that macOS manages files - is fundamentally different from Windows. It's not better or worse (though you could argue specific features may be better or worse), just different.

 

For a novice user, Finder is much better. You have all the "main" locations pinned, such as Documents, Applications, Photos, etc. And if you need to find something outside of that, the Search in Finder is quite simply fast and very good.

 

In terms of refreshing the Finder window, how often is that a concern? I'm told that Finder will generally automatically refresh the window pretty quickly, if it's the internal drive. External drives are different, mind you.

 

And aside from that, okay - so that's one, tiny feature, that Apple should maybe add to macOS. Not a deal breaker by any stretch, but sure, let's put that in the "nice to have" category.