Apple's model customer is one who upgrades often. If you want solid support for old products, stick with Microsoft, and accept that their products can be clunkier because of deliberate choices to maintain backwards-compatibility.
Just because something is free doesn't make it better.
And now this crap. Ugh.
While "upgrading" to 10.10.3, my computer failed to reboot itself. It just sat there, black screen, with a little spinner, for about 2 hours. Hard reboot, everything is back to normal. For now.
I fully expect 10.10.4 to actually destroy my hard drive at this point, as well as cause my monitor to spontaneously get 30-40 dead pixels.
Sucky part is, I feel I have no alternative.
Windows is out of the question after seeing what a factory OEM image comes with nowadays. I'm not giving them money and spending 2 days formatting/reinstalling/seeking out drivers on slow Taiwanese servers just to make a half-usable computer. And then, after all that, spend another 2 days installing various adware infested shitware to get a fricking PDF viewer. And don't get me started on getting a half-decent dev environment going. Ugh.
Linux is almost there. It's a crap shoot for me, unless it's running in a VM. I never know which kernel update will fix my trackpad/break my sound/wifi and which will fix the wifi, break suspend, fix sound, but break xrandr or some other archaic XWindows-related technology.
So, OS X it is, for the time being.
Microsoft Signature PCs solve this problem. :)
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Signatur...
I'm never buying a Windows laptop, so it doesn't affect me, but I'm still the resident "family IT specialist". And I know, I just know I'm going to be asked lots of questions I don't have the patience for, as these poor bastards wonder why their computers are slow, all because the shitty OEM wanted to make a few cents off pre-installed shitware.
It doesn't affect me directly, I don't touch Windows laptops unless I'm wearing gloves, but the principle of the thing pisses me off. You're being treated without respect, basically.
It's like a car manufacturer selling you a car with a "feature" that takes away 50 HP to play a jingle every time you turn on your headlights, all because the got paid $7.34 by the jingle manufacturer.
Not that bad, but my car does come with what amounts for an advertisement for Sirius Radio built in.
:(
I was also offered a TON of extra add-ons when I bought my car. I'd say it was roughly equivalent to the process of setting up a new low-end PC in regards to the number of ad requests I got.
On the PC side, this is all typically mitigated by not buying the cheapest PC possible. In my experience (and this is not universally true!) the higher end SKUs are more customer centric, since at that point the customer is the one paying the entire cost of the device!
(See also, Nexus devices versus carrier branded phone models!)
I know what I am doing, and I still budget a good couple hours worst case to get all the drivers up and running again.
Just get Ubuntu Certified Hardware. They have over 500 models of laptops they certify. I have never had a kernel update break wifi. I don't know about all the other stuff, but most distributions store old kernels and allow you to boot back into the old kernel pretty easily. Don't know if this is an option on OS X.
Most of the upgrade pain I've had has been caused either by the migration to systemd or by the decision to unify /usr/bin, /bin, /usr/sbin and /sbin into one folder.
Fair play. Research the manufacturer's policy if you're buying pre-built. If you build your own desktops, this is not an issue.
>I'm not giving them money and spending 2 days formatting/reinstalling/seeking out drivers on slow Taiwanese servers just to make a half-usable computer.
When's the last time you actually installed drivers on a fresh Windows install? I will concede this used to be the case, but nowadays the whole process is much more streamlined. Microsoft has made progress on supporting a lot of hardware drivers via Windows Update. Intel also has a great driver update tool that will scan your system and make recommendations.
>And then, after all that, spend another 2 days installing various adware infested shitware to get a fricking PDF viewer.
2 days is rather exaggerated. Most browsers display PDF. If you absolutely need to read a PDF, Foxit Reader is free, as in beer. Yes, you'll have to uncheck some boxes to avoid their bundled software. Big deal.
>And don't get me started on getting a half-decent dev environment going. Ugh.
Yeah, windows isn't great for a lot of developers' needs. You really could have just left your argument at this rather than spouting off the rest of that FUD.
I use Linux, OS X, and Windows all on a regular basis. They have their strengths and weaknesses, like any other products.
I can build my own desktop, but I can't build my own laptop. I use laptops exclusively for work.
>When's the last time you actually installed drivers on a fresh Windows install?
Less than year ago on my girlfriend's VAIO laptop, actually. Windows 7.
>Microsoft has made progress on supporting a lot of hardware drivers via Windows Update. Intel also has a great driver update tool that will scan your system and make recommendations.
Yes, it mostly works, and I'm aware of it, which is why I boldly told my girlfriend I'd take me "an hour or so" to "fix" her laptop issues. Famous last words. And I wasn't exaggerating about "slow Taiwanese servers" - I'm talking less than 100kb/sec transfer speeds. Welcome to 1996.
>2 days is rather exaggerated. Most browsers display PDF. If you absolutely need to read a PDF, Foxit Reader is free, as in beer. Yes, you'll have to uncheck some boxes to avoid their bundled software. Big deal.
It is a big deal, to me. I don't like being treated like an idiot, being on the look-out for hidden toolbars and spyware every time I double-click "setup.exe". Am I capable of doing it? Yes. Do I want to bother, for a fricking PDF viewer or a java runtime? Absolutely no way, never again. BTW, 19/20 people seem to just leave the default check-boxes checked, since they don't understand what they're being asked and just want a fricking PDF viewer.
And Foxit IMO is a PITA. Comes with its own auto-updater too. I have never seen a PDF viewer needing so many automatic updates, so often; big ones, too.
Why can OS X come with a nice, bundled, PDF viewer, and the capability to export to PDF from everywhere, and in Windows-land, I'm forced to install either spyware or shit-ware? Why? Why is Windows still stuck in 1997 in this regard?
>Yeah, windows isn't great for a lot of developers' needs. You really could have just left your argument at this rather than spouting off the rest of that FUD.
FUD? I deal with Windows issues from relatives on a weekly basis. What FUD? Am I imagining all of these issues? Spyware and adware infested boxes that come to a crawl as soon as the poor sap has more than 2 Chrome windows open because the OEM decided that 2 GB is enough for Windows 7 and also installed their own "Media Center Experience" which starts up on boot and is written in .NET WPF, eating whatever RAM there's left? That one wasn't on the VAIO, it was on her previous HP laptop, but point still stands.
Yeah, maybe for a power user who built their own computer from scratch and did a clean install and carefully vetted every package as it was installed, sure, yeah nice experience. I have a Windows gaming box that is super lean and mean and it took a lot of effort to get it to this state.
But I still find myself scratching my head in disbelief every time a windows user tells me they need a new computer cause their existing one "just got real slow lately" even though they never touched the OS. And I know why it's slow too, I know before I even open it, dreading what I'm going to see in the notification area.
P.S. She's a very happy OS X user now, FWIW. One HP and one VAIO laptop later and another Microsoft ex-customer never coming back.
As for PDFs, Windows 8 and up come with a PDF viewer since, y'know, two and a half years ago when it was released. Did you miss that? Granted the default PDF viewer is a Modern App, but it works, and it works reasonably well. I use it regularly to dock a PDF on half of my monitor while I work on something else on the other side. Office, by the way, will read and write PDFs just fine, if you're after a more solid office-like product to do it. In case you're about to complain that Office is too pricey, LibreOffice will do the same. If an office-suite is not your speed, Sumatra PDF exists, and is free, open, has no bundling, and is available in a portable flavour.
Again, this is not Microsoft's fault. It is yours. No one is stuck in 1997 but you. You know what it requires to not be stuck in 1997? Any sort of intellectual curiosity at all.
> FUD? I deal with Windows issues from relatives on a weekly basis. What FUD? Am I imagining all of these issues? Spyware and adware infested boxes
See, you're doing it again. You're not dealing with "Windows issues", you're dealing with issues on Windows boxes, caused by non-Windows problems. These problems involve things like "my computer illiterate family really believed there was a Nigerian prince sending them email," they're not problems that Microsoft has introduced, and they're not problems that Microsoft CAN solve. Stupid people do stupid things, and one of those things is double-click PORNVIAGRA.EXE.
This annoys me so much because you are essentially arguing that problems caused by refusing to read are problems caused by operating systems, and this really isn't the case. This isn't something Apple has done a better job with either, it's just that the marketshare for Apple wasn't high enough for the malware vendors to bother with them. Notice how reports of Apple-specific shitware have increased in the past couple years with their marketshare? This should probably point out to you that it's not something that's solved by changing OS, it's solved by teaching your friends and family to be more tech-literate. You are arguing that the problem of pedestrians being hit by cars when they cross without looking will be solved if we just pad bumper of the cars enough. You want to try to find a technical solution to a human issue, which computers really aren't up to solving yet.
Don't get met wrong, there's stopgaps. There's services like http://unchecky.com/ which just uncheck all the checkboxes for you. Now you have checkboxes unchecked that you really need checked, and stuff doesn't get installed properly. There's still some reading required.
The point here, though, is that you're not an idiot. Your family aren't idiots. You're just all too lazy for your own good.
(As an aside, there's also valuable lesson in your post that Vaios are among the worst OEMs around. Don't buy Vaio.)
[1] http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/category...
From the software developer angle, Windows is a FANTASTIC system when you need to get down to the nuts and bolts. People really need to educate themselves about the registry and the various ways the OS can be tweaked; as well as the various tools available (at a bare minimum those from Sysinternals).
Some other examples - the extensible kernel-level instrumentation that you get from ETW; the excellent crash and hang analysis tools provided by the likes of WinDbg (supported by the excellent debugging support in the Windows kernel -- yes, you can enable a keyboard shortcut that will memory dump your machine if it's hung and then it's a few commands to see what crashed); the commandline environment provided by PowerShell (I haven't used it much but really need to get into it more). Not to mention Application Verfier.
I could keep going on and on but it'd probably cloud my point if I haven't done so already :)
Not saying it's perfect or the be-all-and-end-all either; I also use all three major OSs, though primarily develop .NET software on Windows. Just frustrating that many of the complaints can be boiled down to "Windows doesn't work just like Linux/Unix does".
This is partially because linux is the dominant platform for Python developers, but developing/using Python libraries on Windows is really difficult. Many people simply overlook it.
The default command prompt is really really bad. There are alternatives, but none of them come close to the gnome shell. The Batch scripting language is terrible compared to Bash. Powershell is way too verbose and API-heavy. You can use Javascript, but then you are using Javascript... Then there are stability issues. I have left my home Linux computer on and online for months sometimes and never had any issues. Try the same thing on Windows... It will crash on the first week for sure.
The things Windows is great at is Office productivity software, gaming, design, and some other GPU-intensive tasks.
Desktop Linux is great at automation scripts, prototyping apps, temporary services for others (ssh and copy files), and virus-free internet browsing.
OSX is somewhere in the middle.
What is this, 1998?
Stability-wise my machines have actually been very good. I don't reboot much at all and mainly put the machine into suspend instead of turning it off. My first instinct/fear with a spontaneous BSOD now is that my RAM or HDD or something has gone bad.
Agree with you about development with things such as Python (though in that specific case I remember the Python Tools for Visual Studio being okay), or for that matter any new and upcoming language. My first thought when i want to try something like that out is to drop into Linux. It's just better supported for that kind of thing.
I love how you point at "unchecky" as a great service when it is a piece of software you use to deal with problems that shouldn't exist in other software.
How manu Windows users wailed and gnashed their teeth over iTunes insisting on installing Quicktime? Is that because Windows users are lazy or that they didn't want Quicktime installed just to use iTunes?
"You are all too lazy for your own good," is classic victim blaming.
Is it perhaps possible that Sony, Dell, Toshiba et al have poisoned the well?
If you have to carefully uncheck a bunch of options to avoid killing your computer with malware, then yes, the operating system is at fault. These sort of dark design patterns shouldn't exist, and the OS should be designed so that it's harder to implement shady things like this.
Yes, there is Mac malware out there, but Mac apps tend to have no installer at all, which is where most of the malware and crapware come from. It's harder to install some OS daemon when "installing" is just copying a file into your Applications folder. Mac apps almost never ask for permissions so I think users are more wary when the OS is asking weird stuff.
And Malware is practically unheard of in the Linux/Free Software world. I trust "apt-get install" implicitly when dealing with the main Debian archives.
> See, you're doing it again. You're not dealing with "Windows issues", you're dealing with issues on Windows boxes, caused by non-Windows problems.
That's a reasonable distinction, I suppose. How about this: The Windows software community sucks. The product may be fine if you know your way around the horrible alleys where malware and crapware lie in wait, but for normal people, the whole external environment is designed to screw you and mangle your computer.
Windows itself may be great, but the whole ecosystem is a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
I mostly agree, but there's still the fact that unlike in Windows I have to trust a randomer's ppa (or build from source, but that's sometimes pita and no-go for mortals) if I want to install the newest version of libreoffice or whatever, unlike in Windows where I can run binaries directly from the first party source.
I don't use Windows on my laptop, but I don't "hate" it, I totally concur on your point about people hating the platform for the wrong reasons, historically the maretshare of Windows has been high and that is the reason for malware stuff.
What irritates me more than people hating windows for no reason is they don't realize that they are not using the platform properly, for eg when I tell fellow developers to switch to or use Linux for development they "stick" to windows even if they can't change the brightness of the screen! Yes some stupid driver error, they say they are "comfortable" with Windows, but irnonically they can't even give folder permission to users, this basic thing!
I feel people are too resistant to change and they want to blame something/someone and that is the problem with the hate stuff that spreads like a flu over the Internet
You can't separate windows from its ecosystem - it's allegedly the choice of vendors and the availability of commodity hardware that makes windows at all appealing for most computer users. And the windows ecosystem sucks - it's full of weeds and parasites. Windows can't be examined in the abstract - if 99 out of 100 randomly chosen configurations in the marketplace are just terrible, then that's just Windows. It's the incredible leeway that Microsoft gives IHVs that makes Windows as popular and at the same time as terrible as it is. That's what characterizes Windows. As an operating system, it isn't half bad (it's architecture is quite good, actually) . As a platform, it's terrible.
See, you're doing it again. You're not dealing with "Windows issues", you're dealing with issues on Windows boxes, caused by non-Windows problems
What exactly is it that you're arguing? It seems like you and the parent are largely in agreement and you're trying to generate friction.
I would contend that you're right that it's absolutely true that with enough research and with constant vigilance, you can bring a retail Windows system into an acceptable configuration, have all of your hardware enumerating properly, and avoid malware.
I would contend that the parent is right that maintaining a Windows system is just barely worth it if it's your own machine and is a hopeless time-sink if you're doing it for free for anyone else, like family.
Are you two really just arguing past each other?
The point here, though, is that you're not an idiot. Your family aren't idiots. You're just all too lazy for your own good.
Please see the posting guidelines. Personal attacks are not acceptable.
He couldn't print his stuff for work. He called me up. After over an hour I gave up. Windows 8 couldn't figure out which drivers to use. The CDs attached with printer didn't help too. I mean the installation went smoothly, but then nothing was printed. Check your cables, etc. messages like we are still in 1996.
I don't have time for this BS. Drove back home, got my macbook pro. Came back to my Dad's home and did THIS: 1. connect printer to the mac 2. driver installs after clicking 'OK' or 'install', dont even remember at this point 3. print
that's it! Welcome back to 2015!
TL;DR: Printers still suck.
Or perhaps some form of scripting language that you could post, perhaps they could even call it PostScript?
You're actually proving his point : on Windows something as basic as reading PDFs (yes you "absolutely" need that in 2015) requires specific knowledge of obscure names like "Foxit Reader".
I'm not even going into annotating that PDF or adding your signature to it then.
The same goes for : an office suite, a file manager with decent previewing+smart search capabilities, something that quickly resizes/converts your pictures, great photo editing/cataloging software, video editing software, music editing software, e-mail client, a comprehensive development environment (1)
All of the above, which covers almost all areas of what people actually use computers for, comes as standard on OS X
(1) Pages/Numbers/Keynote, Finder+Spotlight, Preview (also your answer for annotating PDFs btw), iPhoto/Photos, iMovie, Garageband, Mail, Unix CLI/XCode
> Yes, you'll have to uncheck some boxes to avoid their bundled software. Big deal.
Hate to say it in troll-ish way but : everyone but lifelong Windows users has higher standards than this.
Hopefully the package manager in Windows 10 will offer up a happy medium between expected software being easily available, and 3rd parties not being pushed out of the market place.
Except that bundling itself is not what got Microsoft in trouble. Having a monopoly, and then taking a coordinated series of actions relating to conditions of sale, bundling, and other steps to extend that monopoly into other markets and to eliminate threats to the monopoly -- with evidence, including fairly explicit documentary evidence from senior decision-makers at Microsoft -- that that was the intent of the action is what got Microsoft in trouble.
They got in trouble under anti-monopoly laws, not anti-bundling laws.
I do agree that Microsoft did a whole boat load of other, really down right despicable, business practices as well. But in the MSN Messenger and Defender cases it was purely about shipping their own products preinstalled in Windows when competitors weren't included.
I guess you're right that my wording was perhaps a little too vague though. But my point was that when it comes to software bundling, Microsoft are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Yes, if "bundling" is equivalent to threatening to "cut off Netscape's air supply", then, yes, "bundling" is exactly what got Microsoft into trouble.
Otherwise, no, "bundling" doesn't properly describe what happened.
Heck, do Chrome or Firefox actually register with the system to handle PDFs? Wouldn't surprise me if they did.
Don't forget about the 4 hours, 10 reboots, 3 blue screens, and reinstalling your video card drivers twice of windows updates!
On this very box, I bought a 8.1 pro license, and had to install drivers for my GPU (ATI r9), along with various other tidbits, which I've now forgotten. Oh, yeah, my usb sound card.
Granted, I needed to install the closed source drivers on the Linux side, but it was easier (enable non-free, aptitude install ...) -- and the soundcard worked out of the box.
At least the network card worked this time around on Windows (at least as far as I remember). So the only real hassle was that I needed a windows install from which to build the usb install stick. Thankfully I still dual-boot my laptop, so I could make the install image there.
This christmas. Building a new desktop for the first time in years. Bought high quality everything - Asus MB, Intel Quad core CPU, corsair memories etc. a fun and smooth experience.
I also bought Win 8.1 Pro, setup the machine for dual boot and then proceeded to install Win followed by Xubuntu. Gave me a good perspective on the state of the OSes.
Win install took much longer time, did not detect the AMD Radeon R9 card nor the Intel Eth interface on th MB. Or a lot of the peripherals. Using the supplied driver CD from Asus solved most of these, but not the GPU. To this day Win complains about some peripheral that it can't detect.
Xubuntu install was faster, smooth and did automatically detect all peripherals including Eth and GPU. And SW install using SW Center and Synaptic just works.
The Just Works used to be the perceived advantage of Win, and that Linux meant issues with drivers and fiddling with downloads from weird sites and manual builds.
It seems the world has flipped, mainly due to Linux progressing while Win really hasn't. Apart from the Metro/Modern interface that is there as well as the classic and you (read: I) end up being transferred between them.
FWIW the Signature series Wintel laptops sold through the Microsoft store are base Windows+driver builds, no crapware allowed.
Apple could easily write fully functional Linux drivers for their hardware if they wanted to, but they choose not to.
"Dude, get a Dell!"[1] Seriously, one of the selling points of a Dell system is rock solid components, and a centralized place to find drivers (at least for the business line of systems). Keep in mind, Dell sells hundreds of thousands (or more?) systems to corporate America, all with support contracts. Everything they can streamline and make more stable and reliable is money in their pocket. I mean, they wrote their own RAID drivers for the AMI and LSI Megaraid chipsets which they resold under the PERC brand, and in my experience, they were better than the manufacturer drivers. That takes dedication.
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Curtis_%28actor%29#The_Dell...
Maybe I've waited long enough before moving. Especially now that this vuln is known about.
- My battery lasts longer, maybe 2-3 hours more per charge. I nearly never see < 50%, she's hitting 10% at the end of the day. (Note that both are good enough, but they're way different) - Mail search sucks on Yosemite. Today, we were searching for subjects that I know are there because I'm looking right at them, and nothing is coming up. - Safari does something funky with process per tab that manages to orphan process that take a bunch of cpu/memory. - Time machine is really touchy about backing up to the server over wifi. The last few times, it's had to make a new backup on the Yosemite machine. Mine misses a backup every day or so, but that's just an hourly miss, not a full rebuild.
We're considering blowing away her machine and pushing it back to mavericks with Time Machine/fresh install.
OS X has many merits on this front, but since 10.3 I've found that the first few dot releases of OS X have the same caveats often enough (both in terms of bugs/hazards and in terms of gratuitous UI "progress") that it usually seems better to wait past .x.4/5.
Now there's this, of course.
Since the problem showed up in 2011, maybe I should go back to Snow Leopard; I can't think of a single valuable change to OS X since then...
My reply to that has always been that Windows is only $300 if you don't value your time. (Preserving archaic cost of Windows to match JWZ quote.)
The implication that the one system is free and time-consuming and the other moderately in price but not time-consuming is entirely false. At the time, for many requirements, configuring and administering a Windows machine would have been more time-consuming than for Linux. It's also glossing over the fact that you can't horizontally scale your $-per-cpu/server solution once you do have the configuration worked out, without going back to the well for more money.
This amusing and glib quote also deliberately glosses over the "freedom" part of free software, which is essential. For example, I wonder if Google would exist today if not for a free unix workalike.
The sad truth is that most software sucks, regardless of the license, there's just a lower barrier to entry, use, and discoverability with OSS so it's more visible. At least with OSS we can fix the issues instead of just accepting the suckage.
After a year I find the only advantage of OSX are browser with touchpad gesture experience and windows edge handling. Haven't tried any distro ever since switching to MBP, wayland might have a better chance of replicating the experience. Hoping for the camera driver to be done.
In Linux everything else is better, fuller implementation of base tools, customizability, no crap like /var/folders..
This is entirely subjective; it is not a wise comment to make because it is better FOR YOU, not for everyone. For me, I liked the configurability in Linux desktop land but there comes a time when you want to sit in your office and get stuff done instead of spending all the time moving the furniture around and decorating; OSX doesn't let you do any decorating or move the furniture, so you're forced to do work (to some extent).
I daily use Linux, yet my day-job is to write software on OSX and Windows, so I get to use every system every day. They're all pretty much a muchness.
Great for servers.
Basically, each to their own. None is "better".
Haven't found that to be the case. And I'm an old UNIX hat, using SUN OS, HP UX et al in the early nineties and Linux from around 1998. My two observations:
1) Linux, even the most modern distro like Ubuntu, is a huge time sync for anyone that's not just content to browse the web and check mail in a system setup for them.
2) More users that we think are in that category (besides the proverbial "grandparents" perhaps).
You got a video from your wedding you need to edit? Might or might not work. You got a hobby that requires you to use a specific peripheral (like a soundcard) or software? Do you feel lucky? You got a new phone you need to sync? Prepare for an adventure...
1. "I need to do X in Linux." Web search for software.
2. Try to install it. Find out I need Gnome 3.44 and I'm not running Gnome at all.
3. Find something else. This doesn't seen Gnome.
4. I try to install it. Wait, I need a newer version of a library.
5. I grab the latest version of that library. Wait, idiot, that version is TOO NEW!
6. So I find the exact version and install it and oh son of a cow now everything is broken.
And at each step there's a different sub-community telling me I'm a complete idiot. ("Why don't you use Gnome?" "Why don't you use package manager X?" "Why the fuck are you using that package manager???!")
Yeah, like installing drivers for all your peripherals on Windows never takes time, right?
I wish I had that option, but I'm an iOS developer, so I upgrade when Apple forces me to, and right now their forcing Mavericks and up.
> Linux is only free if you don't value your time.
Amazing how the largest server farms on earth are all run by administrators who don't value their time...
But yes, the CLI is a requirement.
Actually, Windows isn't free for the companies who hire them. And you need to hire a lot more Windows admins than Linux admins if you want to keep your server farm running. But Windows admins are cheaper than Linux/Unix admins, so the phb can crow about that.
Used to say? How long ago was that?
Ubuntu and many other distros are incredibly easy and effortless to use. I know devs using apple products who spend more time mucking about with brew and other tools trying to accomplish things that are very easy to do on the most popular linux distros.
My point is that Ubuntu is complex [as is Windows] and when something doesn't run quite right, the right answer is usually hard to find and hard to recognize because it will be embedded in a culture of highly technical cross referencing. The tradeoff for going down the rabbit hole is that Linux is really powerful and flexible.
I'm loving me some Xmonad this week, but I had to root around in xkb and xmodmap and write a little haskell and read about out how to switch layout engines in Ubuntu [and then translate that into xfce based Ubuntu Studio]. It's non-trivial and requires reading stuff on the Arch Linux Wiki. Ubuntu isn't really self contained in the way Windows is.
Knowing that information about Ubuntu goes out of date and that changing the search criteria helps: [1] doesn't make Ubuntu less complex [2] prevents it from being as user friendly as Windows for a broad audience.
I don't use Ubuntu.
I have a USB disk with Snow Leopard on it that I can boot on my work's 2008 Mac Pro but that kernel panics on my 2012 MacBook Pro due to the i7 "from the future" according to Snow Leopard. It's a pity because it'd make a really great test system (I would like to check that my software runs on 10.6 OK).
Does anyone know of a way of booting Snow Leopard from disk inside a VM without many kernel kext kerfuffles? Parallels tells me that I stink if I try and install OSX inside it (I have the regular DVD, not the server edition)
Pity I can't actually boot it on my 2012 i7 (kernel panics ahoy).
If anyone knows how to get around this, I would appreciate it as it would be truly marvellous to be able to test software that I've written under it.
I was surprised just how well it's working tbh.
For us IT Shops, its almost exclusively about ensuring support for the hundreds of other software programs.
I see a lot of folks arguing otherwise, and I'm not sure they realize this.
Sure, it works fine for the 'isolated single user', but it's totally different in a large deployment model.
I generally put off doing a major Mac OS update for as long as possible.
Only 50% on Windows 7 or 8: https://analytics.usa.gov
Oh, wait, Windows 7 is from 2009. Only 10% use a Windows younger than two years.
Microsoft would not be able to get away with the shenanigans that Apple are pulling here.
The government is largely Windows PC's (mostly XP and Win7).
Unless your hardware has been made "incompatible" by Apple (not for any technical reason, but simply because they wish you'd buy new hardware).
It has a quad-core Xeon processor.
[update]
I am wrong. It is the late 2008 X-Serve that won't upgrade ...
Specs: https://support.apple.com/kb/SP10?locale=en_US
Supported H/W:
iMac (Mid 2007 or newer)
MacBook (Late 2008 Aluminum, or Early 2009 or newer)
MacBook Pro (Mid/Late 2007 or newer)
MacBook Air (Late 2008 or newer)
Mac mini (Early 2009 or newer)
Mac Pro (Early 2008 or newer)
Xserve (Early 2009)
At my last office we had older macs, a mix of laptops and desktops. They all ran slow, with one user's mac pro using all 4GB RAM on a fresh boot with nothing loaded. These folks were normal users, not power users. When a new OSX release would come out, a few people would upgrade, have a ton of problems, and warn everyone else.
I ran linux myself, and was occasionally called over to help with an OSX problem, and I could never understand how my colleagues could stand to work on such slow computers. In my experience, older macs do not usually run well on newer OSX.
My late 2011 13-in MacBook Pro became unbearably slow after doing a clean upgrade to Mavericks. Only upgrading the memory to 8GB (which was not supported by Apple for that model) fixed the issue. Yosemite works, but looks like crap on anything without a retina display. Newer versions of iOS have a habit of making older phones become sluggish when compared with the same phone model running an older version of iOS.
I'm not expecting Microsoft-level backwards compatibility, but as someone that has a somewhat complex development environment having to get everything to work on a new version of the OS can take up to a week of tweaking.
I've had little bugs and fiddly bugs with Safari and a few other things, but I really thinks it has worked fine for years and years on the machine. It noticeably improved when they added RAM compression (was that Mavericks?).
I don't find the graphics a problem at all, although they do look better on my Retina iMac. I got used to them pretty quickly.
I've been happy with most OS updates as they sped Safari up or fixed small bugs in it. Photos for OS X is a MASSIVE speed improvement over iPhoto.
I know some people run into pretty catastrophic bugs from time to time, I haven't had that experience personally. The idea that the OS doesn't run well on five-year-old hardware is bunk. I have no need to replace my MacBook Pro, The only thing it's not good at is 3D (and it was never very good at that).
If you have enough RAM and replace the spinning disk old Macs feel fantastic with a if you have enough RAM and replace the spinning hard drive old Mac still feel fantastic with a recent OS.
If you're on a 5400rpm drive with 2GB I'm sure it's painful. But I know even 4GB machines fair very well. SSDs just make an insanely big difference.
Upgrade was an easy drive pull and replace, and I just restored from Time Machine to get all my data back. No fuss.
But I don't have a windows partition or anything else special. I imagine it will be a bit more work for you since you'll need to backup the Windows partition and restore it.
It's not only about support for "old" products, it's also about having a roadmap to begin with. It used to be common wisdom that Apple releases major updates for the current version of OS X, and security fixes for the last two versions. Well, that common wisdom is outdated now.
Also, backwards compatibility and security fixes are not really the same, and I'd say that the correlation between backwards compatibility and software quality is completely overrated. I know I'd rather trust my life to Windows 7 (the epitome of conservative OS design) than to OS X 10.10 or iOS 8 (speaking as an iOS developer).
In raw numbers, 45% of OS X users are now vulnerable (and probably don't even know about it), and Apple doesn't care. That's an insane number. And I thought not patching the ~10% iPhone 4 in the wild was dangerous!
I don't know any tech company that doesn't have that idea of a model customer :)
To their credit, I can run the latest on a pretty old Mac Mini at home. It's not as fast as it used to be, but it is supported long after the form factor of the Mini has undergone big changes. I don't consider myself being squeezed to upgrade.
Was it usable, speedwise, as a machine?
It worked with very little of the modern web, however.
Most developers don't bother, as Apple has successfully made it quite difficult.
We're talking about a security issue!