Java v. iPhone v. Windows Mobile v. Amiga Anywhere

[adolescent]

@Trev

I haven't watched the town hall speech, but where does the 28% market share come from?  Surely not the iPhone, MacOS 10, or Apple hardware.  (And, I'd think that the iPod still had more than 28% of the personal music player market...)

[adolescent]

bloodline wrote:
-Edit- Does your device have hardware accelerated OpenGL support? The iPhone does... watch the last apple event to see what the iPhone can do with Games!!

Some (maybe all?) of the new HTC phones have an ATI Imageon hardware 2D/3D graphics accelerator.  Although, the Windows driver hasn't been finalised/released yet.  (Since the Apple games haven't been released either this is probably a draw...)

I've been looking at the HTC Kaiser.  They can be had for as low as $50 and have all the features adonay mentioned.

[adolescent]

Trev wrote:
The smart phone competition isn't much cheaper, really. The Moto Q is $440. Nokia's least expensive is $300 (most is $1100!!!). I suppose you can get a BlackBerry (meh) for $100. The iPhone does need GPS, though. Its location awareness via cell and WiFi databases isn't very reliable.

You're looking at non-subsidized prices.  Since you can't buy an iPhone without a contract there's no way of knowing how much it is.  For instance, the Moto Q Global is $499, but with plan it's $249 (or less, it's usually ~$150).

[adolescent]

bloodline wrote:

The HTC Kaiser is the size of a small family car and the aesthetics of a particularly ugly coldwar Russian tank...

Sure, the device has to be bigger to fit the "real" GPS, usable camera, 3G capability, SD slot, and full qwerty keyboard.  Add these to the iPhone and it will be a couple of mm bigger also.  I'll take a slightly larger package to save >$300 and have a more functional device.

[adolescent]

Hattig wrote:
Compared to the main competition - Windows - there's no competition. Mac OS X is head and shoulders above,
technically.

Ok, lets talk "technically".  OS 10 is head and shoulders above in:

Running on proprietary Apple hardware?  Yes.
Running Mac specific software? Yes.
Ummm, that's all I can think of.

Can you explain how else it's technically superior?  And, while you're at it explain why you have to use boot camp to run XP or Vista to run applications, games, etc.

[adolescent]

@Bloodline

How about a "real" technical issue that can be backed up with fact, not just your subjective opinion.  Latency and "crash on me after 3 songs" sounds like a compatibility issue or operator error.  Even OS 10 isn't crash proof, and can have driver issues.

[adolescent]

@bloodline

That's fine that you consider the audio system mission critical for your work.  What I am looking for is an objective reason that MacOSX is technically better than Windows XP/Vista.  You said latency which is subjective, and crashes which sound like operator error, a bad computer, or just FUD (every OS can crash..).  If you had proof that the same audio hardware on like systems, one running Windows and one running OSX, ran differently then I might take it a bit more serious.  The "99% of all professional musicians use MacOSX" falls in the same category.   It sounds too made up to be true.  Care to site a source?

Regarding your security comment, you don't really know Windows.  Windows 9x had a single user security model.  NT and later all have separate roles for user and administrator.  In the end, if the operator chooses to run as root they can do so just like they can in OSX.  Vista has the UAC which is similar to the OSX prompt when root access is required.

 

[adolescent]

Trev wrote:

It's also a bit more complicated than "separate roles," since administrator != root on a Windows system. An appropriate analogy might be system == root, but the system account is not meant to be used interactively. The default object (file system, registry, devices, etc.) permissons on Windows also complicate things--they're more open than they should be, particularly with respect to the Power Users group. There are certain privileges as well, e.g. process debugging, that are as good as administrator access if you know what you're doing.

But, the default object permissions shouldn't be a problem if you're not running as administrator/power user.  For instance, a normal user can't write in system directories, Program Files, etc.  Therefore, any process launched by a normal user can't either.  

The permission changes, plus the UAC, are really similar in Vista to what OSX does.  The main difference is it doesn't use a sudo type login, it just prompts you for confirmation.  (Even as administrator you'll get UAC alerts if you're doing things like writing to a system directory...)