Macs and PCs Which do you like better and why?

Anthony · Post by **Anthony** » Fri Jan 17, 2003 11:15 pm

Did you know Xerox invented both the system that Windows is based on, and the mouse, and thought both were not worth their time/money?

Timelessblur · Post by **Timelessblur** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 12:00 am

Where do you think Steve Jobs (Apple fonder) got the idea for apples' interface. Xerox choose not to prosue it be oned the proto type because it would cost $10,000 for the cosumer to buy them.

jester22c · Post by **jester22c** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 12:06 am

Xerox came up with the GUI (graphical user interface). That is what you were thinking of.

Even though Microsoft might have put alot into R&D (Rip off and Duplicate) they also put alot into some very impressive coding for it's day. I always hear MS getting the slack because they stole this or that idea... well they may have, but they still have put forth a good bit of ingenuity and have lead the OS market for the past twenty years because of it. I accept that they've done some poor business deals before, but I tend to see both the good and the bad. They have been very productive and made quite an advancement in software that is (perhaps unfortunately) become the standard in many ways.

Timelessblur · Post by **Timelessblur** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 12:06 am

Michael wrote:
Timelessblur wrote: One thing I noticed the Mac copied from PC is the tool bar.
Actually, Apple technically has more of a right to use the taskbar than Microsoft. Microsoft copied the taskbar from the NeXTStep Operating System, made by NeXT computers in the early 90s. Since Apple bought NeXT a few years ago, the taskbar is technically their property now.

So other words Apple stoll the idea from another compainy to. They did not come up with it.

Michael wrote:
Timelessblur wrote:Also I think the stabilty factor bettween the 2 is going stop becoming an agurment soon because of how stable XP and OSX are.
I have both XP Pro and OS X, and I have found that OS X is far more stable. There really is no comparision between the two. Besides, OS X has preemptive multitasking and protected memory, two features XP absolutely should have (instead of all the glossy, wasteful features) but doesn't.

Give you that but the stabilty factor is not a big as it used to be both OS are fairly stable (yes I know OSX is more stable)

Michael wrote:
Timelessblur wrote:yeah know bout the win emulator on Macs but I heard they truely suck because they are nearly as fast or powerful as windows is on PCs
That's because an emulator has to process most everything in software instead of hardware.

Ummmmm... hate to break it two you but M$ Windows is ALL SOFTWARE RUN.................so it as I said before the emulttor not good enough.

jester22c · Post by **jester22c** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 12:13 am

Timelessblur wrote:Ummmmm... hate to break it two you but M$ Windows is ALL SOFTWARE RUN.................so it as I said before the emulttor not good enough.

Windows logically divides program tasks into threads to be queued and processed through memory by the cpu. When you run an emulator on a Mac system the software (emulator) has to process and parse all of the information and translate the machine code and then pass this on to the logic processor. This puts a huge performance bottleneck on the sytem and significantly slows things down. If you ran the same program on both a mac and a pc each with their own correct machine code (meaning that one does NOT have to be translated) the mac would significantly outperform the pc. It's RISC processor is much more efficient than a PCs CISC cpu..

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 12:24 am

Timelessblur wrote:So other words Apple stoll the idea from another compainy to. They did not come up with it.

No, notice I said Apple bought NeXT, so all of NeXT's property now belongs to Apple. The reason they bought NeXT was to legally acquire property to use in OS X -- unlike Microsoft, which just steals its ideas. Besides that, NeXT was actually started by the same guy who started Apple and is now CEO (Steve Jobs), so it's not even close to stealing at all.

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 12:25 am

Timelessblur wrote:Ummmmm... hate to break it two you but M$ Windows is ALL SOFTWARE RUN.................so it as I said before the emulttor not good enough.

Um, yeah. I don't know what the hell you are getting at, but no, commands are ultimately processed using hardware... Come back to the discussion when you understand how computers work.

Michael · Post by **Michael** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 12:28 am

Timelessblur wrote:Where do you think Steve Jobs (Apple fonder) got the idea for apples' interface. Xerox choose not to prosue it be oned the proto type because it would cost $10,000 for the cosumer to buy them.

Steve Jobs got the inspiration for a GUI from Xerox, yes, when he toured their labs in the late 70s, but the Macintosh OS was created from scratch by Apple. However, Microsoft helped Apple design that OS and then took many of the exact same ideas and used them. There is a big difference between inspiration and outright theft.

DADINK13 · Post by **DADINK13** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 12:37 am

Timelessblur wrote:
Michael wrote:
Timelessblur wrote: One thing I noticed the Mac copied from PC is the tool bar.
Actually, Apple technically has more of a right to use the taskbar than Microsoft. Microsoft copied the taskbar from the NeXTStep Operating System, made by NeXT computers in the early 90s. Since Apple bought NeXT a few years ago, the taskbar is technically their property now.
So other words Apple stoll the idea from another compainy to. They did not come up with it.

No. When you buy a company, you also aquire all their patents and legal what-not. So in essence, Apple Computer owns that patent and claims ownership of everything NeXT did.

collegegrrl · Post by **collegegrrl** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 5:19 am

i think most people can say in general that a lot of microsoft's ideas have been stolen from other people/organizations/companies.

too bad they're the developers of the most commonly-used operating system on the planet, so imho it's kind of a moot point, but that's just me.

Anthony · Post by **Anthony** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 9:41 am

Let me clear this up. Just because I live in Rochester (Original home of Xerox), does not mean that I am bashing the other companies, I was attempting to bash Xerox for being so stupid (and possible one of the reasons Xerox is now in Standford, yet has all their (in use) building still in Webster (Small suburb(sp) of Rochester)).

Timelessblur · Post by **Timelessblur** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 11:09 am

yes it true the m$ is the biggest OS out there. Not because it better than Mac (yes the mac OS it better) but Gate knew how to market he product which saddly to say apple just learning how to do. But marketing is what made Micro big also there so much more upgrades and modding you can do to a PC

Anthony · Post by **Anthony** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 11:17 am

I would not say it was poor marketing by Apple, rather they are the only ones that make the computers the OS uses. I bet if they made Mac OS X work on PCs more people would buy that OS (maybe not enough to overthrow Microsoft, but more neverless).

jester22c · Post by **jester22c** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 11:20 am

I would like to briefly touch on the proprietary factor of Macs.

Many people complain about how proprietary Macs are and how uncustomizable or unupgradable their hardware is. There is, to a degree, a reason to complain. However what most people don't realize is that much of the remarkable stability of a Mac is due to its specific hardware. The Unix kernel does a great deal to help as well, but with specific hardware Apple knows exactly what is going into their systems so they can program and optimize drivers for the hardware much better than Windows can. Microsoft knows that there is no telling what is going to be thrown into machines running Windows, so they have to try and make everything compatible with each other. They have done an excellent job with what they have to work with, but that is a huge contributing factor to a PC's unstability. Third party hardware using less than satisfactory and compatible drivers can cause a world of trouble. Cards end up arguing over IRQs and trying to allocate the same memory addresses. On a Mac, each piece of hardware that is added was expected so to speak and everything is made to work together. So while the semi-limited hardware choices of a Mac may be a hinderance in some circumstances, it is also wonderful for stability. Just keep that in mind.

Anthony · Post by **Anthony** » Sat Jan 18, 2003 11:51 am

I never thought of it that way, but it makes complete sence if you think about it. Maybe if Apple made their OS for PCs too... um...

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