Topic: Microsoft: The Vista Bullying Stops Here

[knightstorm]

My sister just bought a Mac with OS X..

For the first 2 weeks, she loved it..

Now that she is realizing that 95% of her software needs emulators to work them and WINE is incompatible with much of her software and Cross Over isn't working correctly as well.. she is considering taking it back and exchanging it for a PC...

Add on top of that, there is hardly any software market for OS X or Linux..

She is going to make her decision in the next 3 days and then she either has to keep the machine or exchange it.. the 30 return policy.. got to love it.

The intel macs are capable of dual booting windows.

[toasty0]

Ha.. I could take you to meet a room full of mainframe programmers who are holding out for Cobol's inevitable return to popularity.

 

[toasty0]

Yes, I can see how the company that holds 95% of the OS market would clearly be bullied by their competitors.  Personally, I think Vista isn't that bad, but the issues it has are largely because M$ screwed up on it.  I couldn't tell you how many IT people I know who would rather cut off their right arm rather than own Vista.  90% of the developer market doesn't want to touch it.  Businesses in general don't want to touch it.

Oh yes, i can totally see why people would want to invest in your crappy OS when the refined version is supposed to be out in 2009.   

Beside the devlopers I personally know, the boards I lurk on (www.codeproject.com) express just the opposite sentiment than you assert.

IT peeps. Bah! By nature they hate change. Vista has nothing to little to do with their unwillingness to accept new technologies.

Perhaps you are right- I read that in a cnet article a couple weeks ago (about 90% of developers not switching).  If my source was erroneous, then so was my statement, but not sure how I can verify it.

As for  IT professionals, yeah, they do resist change, because it increases their workload.  Still though, I don't remember this many IT guys being upset with XP (though I do recall hearing some griping).

Just to be fair to you, it would be easy to skew the numbers when it comes to developers because there so many variables involved in development. They could've asked nothing by unix/linux developers, or asked flash/flex developers who would care less about developing for the Vista platform...

[Dracho]

well, the DX10 developrs for Cyrsis didn't do them any favors.

[Clark Kent]

My sister just bought a Mac with OS X..

For the first 2 weeks, she loved it..

Now that she is realizing that 95% of her software needs emulators to work them and WINE is incompatible with much of her software and Cross Over isn't working correctly as well.. she is considering taking it back and exchanging it for a PC...

Add on top of that, there is hardly any software market for OS X or Linux..

She is going to make her decision in the next 3 days and then she either has to keep the machine or exchange it.. the 30 return policy.. got to love it.

This is a valid concern- I've been primarily Mac for long enough now that I forget about this issue.  The simple fact is that she has two options: install Windows on her Mac (parelles, or bootcamp, or some other incarnation) or she can reinvest in all new software.  In all fairness, this is something she should have thought of prior to her purchase.  There is plenty of softwre out there for her to choose from, but the simple fact of the matter is, it's a completely different OS witha completely different underpinning than any interation of windows. Having to buy softwarre that will work with it is a given.

Just to push the point, the ONLY time I've ever had an issue with finding software is if I'm looking for a specific game (i.e. SFC).  Other than that I've always been able to find a software that did most everything I needed. 

If you like, you can list out the software that she was using on the PC side, and I can throw it out to some mac zealots and try to find solutions for her (no promises if she wants free solutions).  If she returns the mac, I wouldn't blame her, but let her know there is a comunity of mac users out there happy (read: eager) to help her transition to macs full time, and I'd be happy to share info on some good places to start.    If it's not the right system for her, or reinvesting in new software isn't worth it for her though, that makes sense.

[Clark Kent]

As an IT guy of a meager dozen years or so... I can say that from "my" standpoint.  Vista is great as a home OS.  However it doesn't offer enough to make it worth the hassle yet to upgrade in our campus.  However I expect by this time next year it will.  That is how it goes with large institutions... It wouldn't matter at all how good the OS is... anything on this big a scale takes time!

I have had more trouble with OSX 10.5 than I care to relate... and that is on a whopping 8 machines.

GE-Raven

Interesting- my experience with OS X has been nothing g but pleasant.  I would be very interested in hearing the problems you've had.  I suppose that sounds like a taunt, but I promise you it isn't.

He's been brainwashed by that bastard Steve Jobs and his mystical turtleneck sweaters!!

DAMN YOU STEVE JOBS!! DAMN YOU TO HELL!!

I hate turtlenecks, I never did get that hippy bastards fascination with them.  On the up side, they did a good job: my brain has never been so clean.

[Centurus]

As an IT guy of a meager dozen years or so... I can say that from "my" standpoint.  Vista is great as a home OS.  However it doesn't offer enough to make it worth the hassle yet to upgrade in our campus.  However I expect by this time next year it will.  That is how it goes with large institutions... It wouldn't matter at all how good the OS is... anything on this big a scale takes time!

I have had more trouble with OSX 10.5 than I care to relate... and that is on a whopping 8 machines.

GE-Raven

Interesting- my experience with OS X has been nothing g but pleasant.  I would be very interested in hearing the problems you've had.  I suppose that sounds like a taunt, but I promise you it isn't.

He's been brainwashed by that bastard Steve Jobs and his mystical turtleneck sweaters!!

DAMN YOU STEVE JOBS!! DAMN YOU TO HELL!!

I hate turtlenecks, I never did get that hippy bastards fascination with them.  On the up side, they did a good job: my brain has never been so clean.

*inspects Clark's brain and runs it through tests*  99.8% sanitized.  That's pretty damn clean to me.

[GE-Raven]

OSX Problems so far...

General Flaky beahvior with Iprint Client (sometimes it works and other times it wont ask for credentials or worse yet it "thinks" it knows them)

Transfer of user settings.... sure the documents came over but the issue is Apple insists it is best to do this at first boot of the machine.  Yeah... great idea let me transfer all the settings for software that has yet to be loaded on the new machine!!!  End result... Office 08 thinks it is patched when it isn't... and give the brilliance of Mac doing things for you, you can't force it to upgrade without nuking the user settings, then uninstall, reinstall, update, then manually copy back the user settings. 

Keychains... borked on anything that isn't native Apple software (afp shares etc.)  Basically you need to delete them and re do them on every boot.

Adobe Illustrator Disk access... in 10.5 attempting to save crashes the program.... UNLESS you "export" as a pdf then once you have done that once Illustrator saves with no problem... until you reboot, then you must export one file to get it to work again.

This doesn't happen on every machine, but some.  You can also "repair" the disk security before EVERY run of Illustrator, which also fixes it.  Neat!

So yeah... this is just a sample of the fun I have had.  Mind you none of this happened with 10.4

Oh well... Luckily I only support a dozen macs.

GE-Raven

[toasty0]

OSX Problems so far...

General Flaky beahvior with Iprint Client (sometimes it works and other times it wont ask for credentials or worse yet it "thinks" it knows them)

Transfer of user settings.... sure the documents came over but the issue is Apple insists it is best to do this at first boot of the machine.  Yeah... great idea let me transfer all the settings for software that has yet to be loaded on the new machine!!!  End result... Office 08 thinks it is patched when it isn't... and give the brilliance of Mac doing things for you, you can't force it to upgrade without nuking the user settings, then uninstall, reinstall, update, then manually copy back the user settings. 

Keychains... borked on anything that isn't native Apple software (afp shares etc.)  Basically you need to delete them and re do them on every boot.

Adobe Illustrator Disk access... in 10.5 attempting to save crashes the program.... UNLESS you "export" as a pdf then once you have done that once Illustrator saves with no problem... until you reboot, then you must export one file to get it to work again.

This doesn't happen on every machine, but some.  You can also "repair" the disk security before EVERY run of Illustrator, which also fixes it.  Neat!

So yeah... this is just a sample of the fun I have had.  Mind you none of this happened with 10.4

Oh well... Luckily I only support a dozen macs.

GE-Raven

We have 30 Dell Optiplex 645s and 58 Dell Optiplex 620s and we have only two semi-flaky machines. One that appearently is not a big fan of being ghosted/cloned (I think it's the NIC), and another that Excel 03 'enjoys' to freeze on (I think it's a ram issue). As all of these are teaching machines so you can imagine the pounding they take.

[toasty0]

For anyone honestly interested in seeing how the Mojave Experiment was done watch here: http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/