windows vista, page 2

That's an obvious reason for why Steve Jobs in the last WWDC started the Leopard presentation saying that there are some TOP SECRET features which Apple would never reveal now and added "“We don’t want our friends to start their photocopiers any sooner than they have to.”

Now let's take it as a real comparison .. Logical and very simple one (Thanks to Paul Thurrott)

Design & GUI

Windows Vista RC1 in a matter of how closes the gap, though I don't think the beta Aero GUI we're seeing now is quite as nice looking as Tiger's Aqua. In Vista, Microsoft has added a number of visual effects that Mac users have enjoyed for four years :), including translucencies, high-resolution icons, and animation effects that are both attractive and functional.
Because Apple has had four "major" OS X revisions to fine tune the GUI So Logically, the OS X Finder is cleaner looking and better implemented than is Aero in Vista. For example, while Apple has fixed problems with the display from underlying windows bleeding through to the windows above them, Microsoft is clearly suffering from some growing pains. In Vista RC1, underlying windows can often cause a muddy-looking display that is distracting and sometimes even ugly.
Icons in Windows XP are generally rendered at 32 x 32 pixels or 64 x 64 pixels in some cases, but the 128 x 128 pixel icons in OS X Tiger are much nicer. they said, Vista RC1 utilizes some 256 x 256 pixel icons, offering four times the resolution of the icons in Tiger (I dont know if 128 x 4 = 256, maybe I have to restudy some mathematics). Anyway we'll have to wait and see whether the icons in the final Vista version are true resolution-independent vector graphics as promised. This would offer even better quality and would be better suited to the high-DPI displays of the future.

Both Tiger and Vista RC1 offer various animations in the shell. For example, Tiger includes a "genie" effect when you minimize windows and a "poof of smoke" when you delete an icon from the Dock. These animations are visually attractive, but they're not just eye candy. Instead, the point of these animations is to provide visual feedback to the user that something has happened. When you minimize a window, the genie effect shows you "where" the minimized window went so you can more easily find it later. RC1 offers similar animations. When you animate a window, it visually appears to minimize to the appropriate taskbar button.

In short, though there are many bizarre inconsistencies in the Tiger UI, it is far more elegant looking than Aero in Vista RC1. That makes sense, as Vista is still in a very early beta version and will likely be improved dramatically in future releases.

So honestly and as a Judge, I say the Vista RC1 design is not bad but still got much to do, but personally I believe that Bill Gates can only design a bag to carry my Mac in :)

Security

Microsoft claims that Windows XP and, by extension, Windows Vista, were architected for security, thanks to their NT roots. That claim is, however Windows NT was designed in the pre-Internet days, and though the system's architecture is extensible, modern Windows versions are further screwed by the inclusion of the buggy and insecure IE Web browser and other design mistakes. In short, Windows is a house of cards that seems increasingly incapable of handling today's demands.

Mac OS X, meanwhile, was truly designed for excellent security, thanks to its wonderful UNIX roots and clean architecture. And OS X, for whatever its worth, benefits from its relatively small market share, compared to Windows; because the OS X user base is so small, so few hackers ever bother to try and attack the system. Windows, meanwhile, is a minefield of constant hacks and attacks.

Therefore, OS X is, in many ways, more secure than Windows is today. But Microsoft has spent the last several years re-engineering its operating systems and applications to be more secure, and that ongoing work will ultimately result in a system that is quite secure and more easily securable than any of the competition.

So how does the security of OS X Tiger really compare with that of Vista RC1 and the subsequent Community Technical Previews (CTPs)? It's a tough call. The RC1 adds some security features that OS X has had for years, and it does have a few nice stuff that OS X lacks. But it's hard to vote against OS X here. The Vista RC1, after all, is still Windows. And though it's unlikely that present and coming Betas of Vista will be targeted by a wide range of hackers, future releases most certainly will be, so in some ways, any discussion of security now is somewhat academic. we'll have to see how Windows Vista fares in the real world when it's released.

but anyways here are 10 reasons for how OS X is the most secured:

01. Secure Foundation: Open Source and heavily reviewed BSD/Mach and Security Architecture - CDSA
02. Conservative Configuration: Services OFF, ports CLOSED, Root Account DISABLED
03. Stay Protected: Software Update Servers, Security Web portal, Security Email Notifications
04. Strong Authentication: Smart Cards, Biometrics, PAM, Kerberos, Open Directory (AD, LDAP, NIS, BSD)
05. HSPD-12: Smart Cards (CAC, GSCIS, PIV), Built-in operating system support for PIV / FIPS-201
06. Secure Data Storage: FileVault, Encrypted Disk Images (AES-128), FIPS 140-2 (In-Process)
07. Network Security: FireWall, VPN (PPTP, LT2P), 802.1x (TLS, TTLS, LEAP, PEAP), SSL, SSH
08. Product Certifications: Common Criteria (CAPP/EAL3), FIPS 140-2 (In-Process), Certificate of Authorization
09. Application/Attachment Integrity Checks: Safe Mail Attachment Handling, Access Control to Secure Credentials
10. Easy-to-Manage Security: Usable and Configurable for Personal, Workgroup, or Enterprise

yeah...ure right windows in not secure enought but thats not the biggest problem for me...
some people say that Bill Gates has made the perfect windows BUT there is no deal for him to realese it coz he cant make a  better windows...and money bla-bla...i dont believe that...but...dunno  
everything is money  

All this talk about which is better or worse..its all good as long as you know what your doin. Mac is for advanced users and alot of ppl use for audio and video editing. And i want a mac but ill keep my pc too. Just want the best of both worlds.  

this is non sense .. there is NO operating system which is 100% secured .. but the point is which is better reliable, secured and stable (using an OS just because it's more decent or good looking is just like when you build a very nice and wonderful house on a non-solid edge of a deep valley, you might disappear with your house in one second) :) ... Basically, we have two kinds of any software .. Open Source and Closed Source .. Logically, when you think about it, it's very easy to realise that open source code softwares have more chances to get its bugs closed, errors fixed, improvements added....etc ....  as the main source code is available to everyone wants it and the very obvious example is UNIX which was created firstly by Dennis Ritchie & Ken Thompson in late 60's at AT&T Bell Labs .. in June 1972 there were more than 10 different distributions for UNIX .. on the other hand, the closed source code software like Windows has no available source code, Bill Gates think he is the only genius on earth so his software needs no improvements .. but everyday, he sees a new proof for his stupidity .. yes I know that windows is dominating the market share, but for what? Personal Computers? ..

UNIX has the ability to run a wide variety of machines including main-frame computers, supercomputers and micro-computers.

UNIX gives you the most security and the least chances to get hacked (depends on humans *system admins* basically)

UNIX gives you the most reliability, the most preformance because it gets deep into every tiny part of the machine's hardware it uses and manage everything systematically

I saw SUN workstations running Solaris, they were powered on for more than 3 years with no crashes, no power failure, no shutdown, not even a reboot which Windows requires constantly

UNIX possesses much greater processing power than Windows  

Enough to say 90% of the Internet relies on UNIX operating systems running on Apache, the world's most widely used Web server

Software upgrades from Microsoft often require the user to purchase new or more hardware or prerequisite software. That is not the case with Unix

Unix offers more performance at 256MB RAM than Windows NT offers at 512MB. Unix is usually more proficient in the use of its memory, especially when dealing with network services. Because Unix requires less memory and processor time than Windows NT, a Unix based system has more memory and processor power for other computer functions besides UNIX can address up to more than 128GB of RAM, Windows NT limit is 4GB

With Unix and Windows NT running on a slow 133MHz PC's, Unix ran 27% faster than Windows NT when reading static HTML content, and with API generated content, Unix is between 47% and 197% faster. For CGI contents, Unix is 77% faster than Windows NT

With the Unix server's cost at approximately 1/4 that of the Windows NT, it provides you with a more cost effective and powerful way to be on the Internet

Microsoft themselves migrated their Hotmail servers from Windows NT to FreeBSD after the famous Hotmail Attack, they realised that Windows is unable to handle the enomrous traffic of their mail servers besides the servers have been Hacked

both Windows and UNIX operating systems are written in C which is the only programming language capable of creating a huge software like an Operating System .. but what a big difference between both !!


and the easiest known UNIX-Based operating system starting from its 5 clicks installation ending to network configuration is Mac OS X .. in OS X you need no drivers after installation, no cd key....etc ... you really enjoy "Plug & Play" .. in Windows, I call it "Plug & Pray"

come on now i should of known i was diggin myself a hole the point is you commissar know way more bout os's than i do...so i believe what you say..but ill have to wait on a mac..until i can afford it....fast response too.  

just check it, using a simple example. 2x2=4. 4x4=16

using those numbers:
128x128=16384
256x256=65536

btw, i'd like to clear again (if it wasn't clear enough before :)): i'm not a fan of ms win, and i haven't tried mac before, but maybe i'll in the near future. but that article is dated as July 31, 2005. Older than a year...

btw, i think i'd have only one problem with mac, just like with unix/linux systems for the desktop... what level of compatibility do they have? i mean it's ok to use photoshop, quicktime, browse the net.... but it seems it has the same problem like linux now: does it have a wide spread of applications? games? (office is available as i know)

only one question: why does apple offer ms win on his platform if os x is better? what would make a mac (with an intel x86 cpu) different from any pc?

I was just kidding :) but I dont believe that Vista will be able to utilize 256x256 icons






you can find the same games you see for PC coming out for Mac but unlike PC, you cant download and crack it, you have to buy it


Apple didnt and will never offer Windows on its Platform .. the story that Apple used to use an IBM/Motorolla processor called PowerPC in the past, and they had a deal with them to do a fast new processor in a specific time, but a delay happened, and stayed for long, so Apple decided to move to another compnay, they had talking with Intel & AMD .. AMD had some probs too, Intel was just ready and willing .. so the big Apple move to Intel just happened ... and just by coinsedence when Apple used Intel processors, their computers became able to run Windows, and they offered the Bootcamp for that, they considered it as a chance to attract more users to Apple .. but they never supported or even admitted Windows as an operating system (if you saw the presentation which I posted its link many times here,you would know the difference and you would laugh about how they make fun of Windows Vista), also Apple always get the candy first, Apple invented many technologies we all cant live without like USB, FireWire and Bluetooth, they got their own Graphics processing and system buses, and now they use a wide range of Intel processors, Intel Core Duo, Intel Core 2 Duo and Intel Xeon for all desktops, Laptops, workstations and servers .. and what makes them different is the whole out-of-the-box package, you get out your iMac or MacBookPro for example from its box and open it to find it just ready, system Mac OS X installed with all its applications and tools, and as I said before and as you know for sure that not only the hardware that counts, the operating system running this hardware and managing it is the main point, and as I said too UNIX can make use of 256MB Memory better than Windows make use of 512MB !! .. this is a simple example ... Mac OS X is a powerful system, offers you a very attractive, easy and fabolous interface with a strong solid UNIX foundation (Darwin/Mach built on FreeBSD) lying under the hood, you dont have to use or even see it but definately, you really feel its power





a very simple example if you really wanna know the difference between Apple & PC .. open a very high resolution image in Photoshop on a PC, make a close Zoom, then scroll down, you will find the page going down in frames (going in a slow hard shitty way, pixeling) .. do the same in Photoshop on Apple .. you will find it going smoothly just like you are scrolling a text page





about Mac Hardware & Software Compatibility

There are more than 12,000 applications, including Microsoft Office, America Online, and Quicken

You can Open, edit, save, and print documents in their native file formats

You canAccess files on Windows file servers or make files on a Mac available to Windows users

Exchange email (including attachments) with Windows users

AOL Instant Messenger

You can share the same network with Windows PCs using dial-up, Ethernet, or 802.11b/g (Wi-Fi, AirPort Extreme) wireless connections

You can Print to a Windows network printer or share a Mac printer with Windows users

You can Work with popular digital devices such as printers, scanners, cameras, camcorders, PDAs, multibutton scrolling mice, and more

You can even Integrate Mac systems into Windows networks that use Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange, and Kerberos


and here are words coming out of Bill Gates:


“To create a new standard, it takes something that’s not just a little bit different, it takes something that’s really new and really captures people’s imagination and the Macintosh, of all the machines I’ve ever seen, is the only one that meets that standard.” — Bill Gates

"The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the IBM PC." --Bill Gates




so, again I say to all people who claim that transition from windows to Mac is very hard and blah blah... NO, it's just you act as lazy ducks :) .. it's not that hard at all, but it's just a kind of culture got spread all over the world, and you know what If Jobs had marketed his Apple operating system in the same way as Gates, few people would know the name Microsoft today

ps: viktor, you need to try Mac because who get in Mac, never go back :)

wow, i thought os x runs only on intel processors... now i've googled, and some users managed to run it on amd processors too, the only requirement is the sse2 capability. so maybe i'll give it a try in vmware or something... i'm quite familiar with win/unix systems, so maybe it'll be a little strange to have an os that i haven't seen before :)

btw, are there big differences comparing to win or unix systems?

Apple had started moving to Intel in April 2006 and finished the big move (Mac Pro and Xserve) in August 2006 :) .. so now,  you got two kinds of softwares for Apple, PowerPC software (from OS to smallest programs) and Universal software which is able to run natively on both PowerPC and Intel :)





Well .. First I'd just highlight on the history of Mac OS X .. as my personal opinion, Steve Jobs just did the best Operating System by combining the simplicity, easy & attractive interface of Windows with the power and enoumrous features of UNIX .. after Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak invented the first Personal Computer ever in a garage and created that name and logo (Apple), Wozniak left early to Hewlett Packard and after some years, Steve Jobs left Apple in 1982 to NeXT, he wanted to create the best Operating System, so after researches, he found that nothing is better than UNIX to start with as a core for his new system due to the decades UNIX had seen and its great reputation, later Apple bought this software from NeXT with the return of Steve Jobs to Apple as the CEO .. and from here came Mac OS X :)

Second, your question is about things which exist in Mac OS X and doesnt exist neither in Windows nor in UNIX .. well, i'll try to mention some of the best

Like Microsoft, Apple develops its wares in secret, giving new products code names to throw outsiders off the scent. Apple's code names for Mac OS X and its descendants all refer to big cats: Mac OS X was Cheetah, 10.1 was Puma, 10.2 was Jaguar, 10.3 was Panther, and 10.4 is Tiger. Apple has also announced and revealed some of the new Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard)

The interactive easy and very eye attracting Interface which I dont think that any other UNIX system has  

With the simplest way ever, in Mac OS X, nothing can be installed behind your back, as it can in Windows, the system insists on getting your permission before anything gets installed

You and your Mac may go for years without ever witnessing a system crash

a very powerful built-in Firewall, the easiest to cinfigure and virtually it turns your Mac to a machine which is impossible to hack

Most applications in Mac OS X show up as a single icon. All of the support files are hidden away inside, where you don't have to look at them .. in general, you can remove a program from your Mac just by dragging that one application icon to the Trash, without having to worry that you're leaving scraps behind; there is no Add/Remove Programs program on the Macintosh. because no application is allowed to mess with system files like in Windows and also you dont have to run any commands

Like most of good UNIX distributions, Mac OS X comes with several dozen useful programs, from Mail (for email) to a 3-D Chess game .. The most famous programs, though, are the famous Apple "i-Apps": iTunes for working with audio files, iMovie for editing videos and movies, iPhoto for managing your digital photos, iDVD is a complete DVD creation studio, iWeb is really the easiest software I ever see for creating complex web pages in nearly no time .. you also get iChat, an AOL-compatible instant messaging program that also offers video conferencing and iCal, a calendar program

What Mac programmers really get excited about is the set of advanced graphics technologies called Quartz (for two-dimensional graphics) and OpenGL (for three-dimensional graphics) .. for any user, these technologies translate into an elegant beautiful and translucent look for the desktop (a design scheme Apple calls Aqua) .. smooth-looking (antialiased) onscreen lettering .. and the ability to turn any document on the screen into an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file. .. and also there are those slick animations that permeate every aspect of Mac OS X like for examples, the rotating-cube effect when you switch from one logged-in user to another, the "Genie" effect when you minimize a window to the Dock.....etc

Network compatibility with all other machines and platforms, even it offers advanced features called multihoming, which lets your laptop switch automatically from its cable modem or dial-up modem settings to its wireless settings when you take it on the road

Mac can also read aloud any text in any program, including Web pages, email, your novel, you name it .. you can even turn the Mac's spoken performance into an MP3 file

Read any article about Mac OS X and you must see those technical expressions that were once exclusively the domain of computer engineers like preemptive multitasking, multithreading, symmetrical multiprocessing, dynamic memory allocation, and memory protection

Mac OS X is more than stable .. a crashy program can't crash the whole machine .. Mac can exploit multiple processors, and also Mac can easily do more than one thing at oncedownloading files like simultaneously playing music, and opening a program, moving a file you are working on.....etc

Terminal utility is included for those pros UNIX people who want to leave that beautiful Mac skin and dive deep into the UNIX command line world :)

Root account is disabled by default in Mac OS X, so is SSH and all other alike services

When you can't find a software you used to use in Windows or any other OS, you can easily find a replacement to it and there are some sites on the web dedicated for that issue

Xcode is a very powerful programming tool comes with Mac OS X enables you to write codes in most of the known global programming languages

a great feature in Mac called the Automator which really can make a normal user with poor programming knowledge simply turn to a professional who can write some codes and automate some actions to do specific jobs according to his needs

another Unique feature in Mac is the Dashboard, this is a feature you can bring with a keystroke and dismiss with the same key or a mouse click, it includes many nice and handy tools like calculator, clock, weather cast, stock monitor, international flight tracker, global language translator and much more, many new "widgets" are created everyday and be available to download

You install Mac OS X in  just 5-8 mouse clicks, you dont write even a letter :)

In Vista, Microsoft is working on features which are our past in Apple, so what's Apple working on? In the next release of Mac OS X (Leopard) there are many new wonderful features:

** 64-Bit: full native 64-bit support from top to bottom that allows applications to take complete advantage of 64-bit processing while maintaining full performance and compatibility for existing 32-bit Mac OS X applications and drivers

** Windows: enhancements to Boot Camp, Apple's innovative technology that was previewed as a public beta in April 2006, making it possible to run Windows natively on Intel-based Macs

** Spotlight: improved searching that's even faster, provides richer previews, and lets users search across network mounted folders on other machines

** Spaces: I dont consider this one as a new idea cause Linux introduced it before .. but sure here its more beautiful and flexiable, you have four desktops which you can run from one to another, specify everyone for a specific kind of application, like a space for Mail & Safari, a space for video editing application and so on

** Time Machine: every Mac user can say goodbye to any mistakes he does because now with Time Machine, time is a dimension and you can go back in time to any day you want even through years and pick only what you want then come back to the present

** iChat: Now, all PhotoBooth effects are available in iChat, so you can appear in a very funny shapes to your friends via iChat using iSight .. also you can use iChat in Business like viewing a photo slide show or a presentation to your collegue or partner .. ever more, I can put any image or video in the background


(this guy was actually a room away from Steve Jobs appearing at the bottom infront of the Apple Cinema Display)


(and this with an effect)

** Dashboard: a new feature called Web Clip which you can easily snap a shot of a specific part of a web page and everytime you bring the dashboard, you will be able to see that part of the web page with all changes happening, even more they included a new tool subset of Xcode named it DashCode that will give you the ability to create widgets for your needs with many ready template codes and other stuff

** Mail & iCal: witnessed a bunch of improvements, iCal 3 with group calendaring capabilities, event drop box, and standards-based CalDAV support .. (this how Mail will look like)

** Core Animation: this is the real revolution and this is what really developers will love so much .. after Apple introduced Core Image, Core Audio and Core Video before .. now Core Animation will be out .. when a developer modifies an attribute of a layer, Core Animation automatically interpolates the intermediate steps (color, opacity, etc.) between the changes, visually enhancing these applications and reducing the amount of source code that would have been required using traditional Cocoa animation techniques .. simply Core Animation is a new graphics technology that makes it easy to create stunning visual effects and animations  .. Time Machine and Spaces were created using Core Animation