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I work at a gigantic Fortune 500 windows-only company, and I haven't seen a VBA macro since like 2001. Even Microsoft has discouraged the use of this (virus magnet) technology, as it's disabled by default in Office 2003 and later. I wish reviewers would quite blathering on about "OMG Office:Mac doesn't support Visual Basic!" as though it's a negative. Even Microsoft barely supports that technology anymore.

Feb 15, 08 - 01:28 pm Comment from: Rich Apple person

Any visit to an Apple store will provide evidence that a lot of people are switching to Mac's. Leopard was late but I bet it didn't cost $5 billion to develop like Vista. Even MS's new OS caled Windows 7 which is due in 2011 is getting rained on already. If Apple can keep innovating in the OS area they are going to pick up major share on MS.

Feb 15, 08 - 01:28 pm Comment from: HMCIV

I can't say I'm head over heals for Leopard the way I was for Tiger. I guess I've just gotten used to things WORKING.

Is NeoOffice a smooth and powerful enough alternative to MS Office for Windows when you need functionality not offered by iWork?

Feb 15, 08 - 01:34 pm Comment from: theloniousMac

The author makes an extremely stupid statement here: "...I buy a computer to run programs, not an operating system, so for me the most useful operating system is the one that runs the programs I need to use. ..."

When you buy a computer, you are buying the OS. There is no reason to purchase a Mac to run Windows. You purchase a Mac to run OS X. OS X IS the Macintosh, not the hardware. The hardware is fluff. If OS X ran supported on Sony VAIOs or DELL laptops, people who use Macintosh would suddenly have a huge variety of systems to choose from.

The silly author says, "...the most useful operating system is the one that runs the programs I need to use..."

Just about anything that runs on a Mac, outside of Apple's great iApplications, will run on Windows. He completely misses the point.

OS X is what makes applications a pleasure to use on the Mac. OS X is what makes the computer secure. OS X is what makes the computer reliable. Again, OS X is the Macintosh.

If he cannot see that not so subtle distinction, he really shouldn't be writing for a computer magazine.

The bottom line is he is most definitely buying the box because that's where OS X lives.

Mark my words, eventually Apple will release OS X to run on other hardware. They may do it slowly, licensing this vendor or that vendor, but they will. When they do, that's when Microsoft will finally get nervous and stop regarding Apple as little more than an annoying insect.

OS X is the foundation upon which Apple is currently built.

@jms1222

Yes. But the interface isn't the best. I am looking forward to trying Lotus Symphony for Mac, or even the Aqua port of OpenOffice.org

Stories like this, and MDN's promotion of them, are going to sink the Mac.

Please put this on the calendar so we can point back to it when the prediction becomes the reality.

Feb 15, 08 - 01:42 pm Comment from: Ferf Muckmeyer

Anyone notice that PC Magazine is getting thinner and thinner each month and Macworld is getting thicker? Just an observation. Obviously not much good to report on the PC side of things.

Feb 15, 08 - 01:44 pm Comment from: theloniousMac

Printing has been my biggest problem with Leopard. I have clients that switched to 10.5 and have to switch back because they have large investments in Canon or Sharp or Xerox or Konico or Minolta or other large color copier/printers and the drivers for these things never keep up with the OS. When they try to print, nothing.

Same thing for lots of smaller printers. There are even issues with HP printer drivers.

Apple changed enough of the underlying print architecture to create all sorts of bug-a-boos.

is this the last chance to buy AAPL below $125... again.

Word? WORD?

A ghastly program that should never have been born – smart enough to interfere, stupid enough to slow you down.

My daughters loathe it as much as me, but have to plod on because their schools run the hideous thing.

Give me Textedit (simple) or Quark (sophisticated) anytime.

;(

Leopard was released neither early, nor late.

Leopard was released precisely when it needed to be.

Feb 15, 08 - 01:53 pm Comment from: Cubert

Upgraded to 10.5.2 a few days ago. No real major improvements. Maybe a little quicker, but I do like being able to display stacks as a folder icon and not the annoying parade of pictures.

Although, a tiny little topless Milla Jovovich staring at me all day sure kept me working.

Feb 15, 08 - 01:57 pm Comment from: Jim - TIV

"Although, a tiny little topless Milla Jovovich staring at me all day sure kept me working."

didn't get that in my update...

I have nothing but good things to say about Leopard, just upgraded and it's working very nicely.

The only bad thing that I can say about Leopard is the damn ugly interface.

PC user reads this story, buys a powerful Mac Pro.

Finds it more different than he thought, but cool.

Installs Photoshop Elements, uploads family photos, starts to improve the washed out complexion of aging Uncle Fred.

A beachball shows up, screen freezes, neither the mouse or keyboard is working any longer.

Calls Apple Care - they tell him to pull the plug from the surge suppressor.

Result: former PC user wonders why he got so excited, logs onto MDN to say he was lied to.

Result: bunch of other PC users considering switching conclude - why go to all the expense and trouble, sounds like the Mac ain't much different from his Dell that he bought at half the cost of a Mac.

Feb 15, 08 - 02:14 pm Comment from: Cubert

@theloniousMac,
I agree 100% with you about the OS. Steve Jobs even said it a few years ago at the end of a keynote - "because it's more than the hardware, it's more than the software, it's the OS that is at the heart of a Mac." Or, something to that effect.

However, I don't think that Apple will ever license the OS. I think they see the potential nightmare it would create. Microsoft will get scared long before Apple would consider it. They're probably scared already.

Feb 15, 08 - 02:14 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

I have personally witnessed more switching in the past 3 months then in all the time I have been using Macs.

What I find more curious about switchers then anything else is how the majority of them become staunch supporters of Apple and it's platforms.

Feb 15, 08 - 02:22 pm Comment from: Mac-nugget

@Typical Scenario

Why would you buy a Mac Pro for Photoshop Elements? If you did, you probably don't have the brain power to use the Mac Pro reliably and much less configure it. Funny, I have been making my living using a Mac for more then 20 years. Sure I have had problems, but since OS X came out, I mostly work productively with no issue. I actually use Photoshop every day, not elements, but its professional big brother, with out a problem. Day in and day out.

Actually you know how we trouble shoot Windows PC output files here, we convert them to a Mac friendly format, then they work.

Feb 15, 08 - 02:22 pm Comment from: Cubert

@Ferf Muckmeyer,

"Anyone notice that PC Magazine is getting thinner and thinner each month and Macworld is getting thicker? Just an observation. Obviously not much good to report on the PC side of things."

I like to look at the articles listed on the covers. All of the PC mags have "How To Wipeout Viruses!" and "Trouble-shooting Vista!". The Mac magazines have articles like "How to Get the Most Out of iLife" , "10 Amazing Things You Never Knew You Could Do With Your Mac!", and "Ridding Yourself of Winblows For Ever!".

Apple. It's Just Snappy.

<< " Result: bunch of other PC users considering switching conclude - why go to all the expense and trouble, sounds like the Mac ain't much different from his Dell that he bought at half the cost of a Mac. " >>

@Scenario
Don't you and your PC boyfriends have some virus & spyware updates to download?

@ ConLib

Love the LOTR reference.

Feb 15, 08 - 03:51 pm Comment from: NeonRed

Photoshop Elements?
Do they still make that puppy?
Pro App. Geez... Is it still the dark ages— darkroom?
Where is the print paper and the gel filters?
Crap i left my fingerprint on the print again!!!?

Feb 15, 08 - 03:56 pm Comment from: Olmecmystic

theloniousMac and Cubert, I have felt and said for years that Apple IS OS X and OS X IS Apple.

What you're buying when you buy a Mac versus what you're buying when you buy a PC is the user experience. The user experience is NOT the pretty hardware (although that's nice, too; just look at PCs). The second thing you're buying with a Mac versus a PC is capability, which is an offshoot of the user experience. The third thing you're buying in a Mac versus a PC is security. Because of it's (now certified) Unix underpinnings, any Mac is inherently more secure than any PC, period.

User experience, capability, and security are all functions of the OS which, for our purposes, means OS X. For those reasons and more, just like Cubert, I don't see Apple licensing all of that functionality to ANYone.

If you've noticed the last few years, the players on the other side have been dropping like flies: Compaq got swallowed whole by HP, Gateway is a shadow of its former self, IBM sold out of the PC game altogether to Lenovo, Dell should just STFU, shut down the company and give the money back to the shareholders, and M$ is rearranging deck chairs as we speak, even as they prepare to hit the sunken iceberg called a hostile Yahoo takeover.

Give it another year or two and who would be left for Apple to even license OS X to?!?

Food for thought.

Peace.
Olmecmystic

I received the following email from our IT department in response to my request to be allowed to use my 15" MBP as my primary system at work.

I Encourage you to pick holes in it for me so I can draft a response.

"In relation to you email seeking approval to use your Mac OSX laptop on the network I would like to inform you of the following:

· Currently QR’s Standard Operating Environment platform is Windows XP SP2. This has been customized to suit the needs of the QR business and has been branded as SOE version 7.
· A major component of the SOE is the backend server infrastructure that is used to support and maintain this SOE. Such services include patch management, File and folder redirection to name a few.
· I also agree that MAC OS X is a more secure operating system than windows XP SP2 in un-patched form. I disagree with you statement that no virus’s or malware have been seen for OS X at all. Currently there are at least 16 major vulnerabilities and exploits circulating the internet at this point in time. This is primarily due to the increased usage of OS X. By that I mean, as more users start using this platform the exploit writers start to take more of an interest in finding vulnerabilities and then developing exploits.
· QR has invested heavily in protections for the SOE and to this date network outages with this platform has been significantly lower than what other corporations of our size have experienced. (In the last 6 years we have only experienced 4 small outages due to security exploits with the greatest outage being a MS exchange outage of 5 hours)
· The work that you are performing on your Mac is QR work. All QR work should be performed on QR supplied equipment.

So based on the above I regret to inform yourself that your request to use you Mac laptop on the network is denied. Should you continue to use this laptop for QR work purposes and connect this to the network and it is detected actions such as disabling your user account will be performed."

Why would the average consumer buy a Mac Pro & Photoshop Elements when an iMac w/iPhoto will handle 99% of what a consumer would want?

I just did that about a month ago and I don't regret dropping my PC a bit. The iLife suite is amazing consumer-level software. Since getting the iMac my wife and I have uploaded tons of photos to flickr & done a bunch of editing & organizing with iPhoto, recorded & edited video in iMovie that we then uploaded to YouTube & made several DVDs for family members using iDVD. Which they were amazed by.

I don't know of a single PCwith that capability out of the box.

When I bought my current Intel iMac (last November) I paid to have the machine downgraded to Tiger because I can't afford the time and hassle while Apple gets a new operating system optimally running. So I actually still have the Leopard installation disc(s) that came with the computer.

Now over the last three months I've been waiting for a time to upgrade to Leopard. At this stage I still don't think the time is quite right. Maybe a little longer to see how this latest upgrade pans out. And that's the advice I've given yo my half a dozen switchers. They're all running Tiger (as I am) and the last thing they need is any operating system led instabilities. That's what they had with Windows and they don't need any reminders of that situation.

Most pro guys don't upgrade as long as what they have works.

Our designers run G5 towers with Tiger and will do until the benefits of upgrading justifies the cost. Their systems run Ps CS2 on PPC just fine. I did the Leopard thing myself because I have 3 systems worth of backup.

If you are a pro, you first ensure that everything is supported and usable before making a move up. Small case in point, I have 3 wedding albums to design, I'm not about to touch 10.5.2 until I get the all clear. Ps CS3e is 100% stable on 10.5.1.

Feb 16, 08 - 12:24 am Comment from: HotinPlaya

@Walter Chillum
wait awhile longer if that suits you

But the vast majority of people , doing normal things , have no problem with leopard.

with any upgrade, do a full clone back up, so if you encounter problems, you can go back

If you are using a laptop, spaces is great!!

Feb 16, 08 - 02:27 am Comment from: Always Right

Stuart-

16 exploits, eh?


OOOOOHHHH!

How many windows VIRUSES are there?

200,000 +?
What's the #?

@HotinPlaya,

I've been burned by early adoption of OS 8, and OS 9 and I'll only recommend a switch when it's absolutely safe to do so. OS 10.5.2 looks the goods but it's still early days. Twice bitten once shy. My apologies for the misquote.

Stuart:

If you're still checking this thread, good luck with this. I.T. people, in my experience, are inflexible powertrippers.

•Customization of the operating environment is irrelevant; they can optimize your computer to work within it as they would any other computer they would add to the environment if they know how (they probably don't and won't admit it) and aren't too busy chasing viruses and crashes and other Widows issues.

•This is I.T. speak for setting up the network drives and so on. They make it sound like magic, but it's just what I.T. people do. See the point above.

•There may be 16 exploits and vulnerabilites for OSX; there is actually only one known piece of malware, and it's a trojan that the user has to actively load and approve. Your I.T. person is being disingenuous or is ignorant. An exploit or vulnerability does not equal a virus the way a match does not equal a forest fire. Mac OSX is inherently more secure than Windows; it's not just that there are fewer users. Unix in not invulnerable but it is difficult to crack and even harder to hide malicious code in because it's folder structure is transparent. Everything that runs in it has to be in a folder the administrator can easily see. Mac OSX ships completely closed and is invisible and virtually impenetrable on the net unless the user opens it or someone uses one of the aforementioned exploits. Meanwhile, there are constant new threats to XP SP2 despite the many patches to its spaghetti string of code. According to wildlist.org there are typically about 600 pieces of malicious code for Windows in any given month. These are fresh, updated pieces of malware and don't count the tens of thousands that are old but still floating around.

•The fact that the company has spent a lot on the infrastructure is irrelevant to the discussion. If a Mac can work on it, and that's the tool you want to use, you should be allowed to use it. Carpenters, bakers, teachers, business people, should be empowered to use the tools that work best for them. In my opinion, a computer is like any other tool in any other industry. Telling employes otherwise is to hinder their work.

•If this is company policy, you're only hope is to get higher-ups to change the policy. Slip them articles like "Winn's MacTel Total Cost of Ownership Analysis" or other articles found here at MDN about the superiority of the Mac hardware, OS, and XServe. It's highly unlikely things will change (they haven't in my district), but I'm pulling for you.

Chris

word processing? excel? who needs microsoft? google apps is way better, online, and free! if you need an installed version look up "open office". i've tested it for mac. it's very nice!