OS X certainly not perfect

Yesterday afternoon at just the wrong time, OS X crashed on me.  I was using my MacBook. I had put it to sleep to carry it into another room since we had company coming and my wife wanted the counter I normally use.  Somehow she thought appetizers for the quests were more important than continuous access to my Mac.

I had noticed the fan was running heavily just before it crashed, but other than having about a dozen tabs open on Firefox 2.0.0.1, there was nothing more than normal running on the computer.  I had Photoshop open, Text edit with the character palette, Mail, and NIsus Writer Express were also open.  When I got into the other room, I got one of the ominous messages to hold down the power key to restart.

This is the first time that my MacBook has crashed since coming back from Apple in December so I'm not particularly concerned, but it did make me think about an article that I read recently.  The article from eWeek, "Ubuntu 6.10, OpenSUSE 10.2 Rise to (and in Some Ways Above) Microsoft's Vista Challenge," had this to say.

Ubuntu 6.10, also known as Edgy Eft, is the latest release in the popular line of Linux operating systems from Canonical. Ubuntu is a fairly young distribution, but its roots in Debian give it a solid foundation—both in terms of its code and in its community of users.

This strong foundation is most evident in Ubuntu's excellent software management tools and wide catalog of prepackaged software. Ubuntu's catalog surpasses those of all other Linux distributions we've tested, and its software management tools outclass not only Linux rivals' but also Microsoft Windows' and Apple OS X's.

While it is easy to think that the battle in operating systems is two sided, I don't think that is the case.  OS X needs to continue to compare favorably with both Windows and Linux.

I'm actually a really big fan of Ubuntu Linux. It is probably the most reliable OS that I have ever used.  I haven't installed the latest release, but I fully expect the installation to go as flawlessly as the previous ones that I have done.  Still as I wrote in "My problem with Linux" I end up in some trouble in Linux that I just don't have time to deal with most days.  I did write about solving most of the identified problems in another post, "Some Linux redemption with the HP C6180."  That doesn't change my basic conclusion that Linux is too hard for most people, including me.  It's just not ready to be the the desktop for most people. 

Yet I don't believe Apple or MS can afford to ignore Linux.

OS X and even Windows  XP are currently far more usable Linux.  Still the eWeek article  points  to some improvements in the Linux user interface which I haven't tested yet. 

I have been tracking some platform stats on a website  that gets about half a million hits a month.  Before anyone flips out, let me first say this is one website.  There are all sorts of reasons why different platform usage might change.  This is no worldwide trend.  Still it makes me wonder what is going on the world of operating systems.

Last March this particular site saw 94% Windows visitors, 5.22% Mac visitors, and .63% Linux visitors.  I just checked December and the numbers are now 96.13% Windows visitors, 3.30% Mac visitors, and .54% Linux visitors.  Since the site's total traffic had grown substantially, the total number of Linux visitors was up by 151, but the Mac traffic was down over 5,000.  I had previously noticed a blip in Mac visitors during late summer early fall, but that seems to have disappeared.

I would tend to discount the fluctuation on a single site as not meaning much of anything other than there certainly isn't a big switch to either the Mac or the Linux in spite of what are some very good reasons that people should be looking for alternatives to Windows especially with Vista rapidly approaching. 

It will be very interesting to see how these stats change in the next four months.  Will Vista lead to a splurge in Windows computer buying which still doesn't change the stats?  There is a long way to fall from 96%.  Will challenges with Vista result in more people considering the Mac?  While I might predict an iPhone, I'm not sure that I can see which way the computer market is headed.

There are some factors that I think are important.  The first being how the market reacts to Vista in the consumer world.

A lot of folks are just going to buy new Vista PCs where I expect they will have a pretty good experience.  Since there is little hope of retrieving the Dell laptop that my youngest daughter swiped for business school, I will probably get a new PC laptop later in the spring to deal with my new real estate career which puts me in a very Windows centric PC world. I never been through a major Windows upgrade (SP2 being my only real serious upgrade), but my guess is that most consumers or small businesses won't go to Vista upgrades for a while. 

The second factor we'll need to evaluate in the OS world is whether or not there is enough real value in the operating systems before someone can be convinced to upgrade.  It's easy in the Ubuntu world since it is free. Bill and Steve charge some pretty serious taxes for their works.

I'm not sure Apple did themselves any favor with the hype around Tiger.  Even back in 2005, I did a post, "Tiger perhaps not a critical upgrade for everyone" which suggested some folks might be fine without the latest and greatest Mac OS.  My experience since then confirms that to be the case.  I have been able to go back and forth between 10.3.9 and 10.4.8 with little or no problems. 

Certainly OS X 10.4 has been a very good OS once the kinks got worked out of it.

While not nearly as big a deal in OS world as Vista's early upgrade reputation, the smoothness of the Leopard roll out whenever it happens is also important

When Leopard does come out, I hope the upgrade will be better than the last one.  The jury is still out on whether or not I will fork out the money for Leopard.  When I bought 10.4 for my desktop, I needed it for compatibility with a new cell phone, but I had some serious problems in the upgrade on one machine so I know that I will be waiting a while at the minimum.

I think the burden of proving that anyone should fork out the money for an operating system upgrade is squarely on the backs of Microsoft and Apple.  I'm prepared for a marketing blitz at least from Microsoft. I may just wait until some serious Mac users weigh in on Leopard after the hype died down.

I think most of us just want our operating systems to work with very few problems.  We want to be able to add hardware and software without a lot of pain or expense.  We would like a good selection of software to come with the system, and we don't want it to break whenever we upgrade it.  It would be nice if updates were like the vast majority of Linux ones where you don't even have to reboot.

Experience has taught me that no one operating system meets all of my needs perfectly so I will watch with the interest the operating system landscape as Vista and Leopard meet head-on while Linux continues to make some incremental improvements in the background.

It wouldn't take a lot to convince me and perhaps some other half geeks to move to Linux full time, but I don't see it on the horizon. As I have mentioned in other posts, Steve's digital tools are the biggest hook into the Mac for me right now.

Still from my view point on the mountain, Windows looks like a pretty serious monopoly which I don't see going away.

Charles Arthur has some interesting comments in the Guardian article, "The hands-on revolution," about the iPhone user interface.

Comments

[pauldwaite]

Yeah, I do sometimes wish Apple would take 6 months out from adding new features to the OS (and creating rubbish applications like iWeb), and just focus on fixing existing bugs.

I've encountered 2 horrible audio bugs in iMovie. Really spoils the "it just works" aura.

[BOB WIlson]

i don't know about you but most of my problems lately have stemmed around Firefox 2.x.. Slow loading of the browser to crashing.

Yes, OS X can crash, but sometimes its because of third party apps.

[ocracokewaves]

Well I always thought the theory was that the apps could crash and the OS would be untouched.

I'm not sure Firefox was my problem since it was smart enough to have all the sessions stored. When I rebooted it asked me if I wanted to restore the previous session. I clicked yes and I was back where I had been as far as browsing was concerned.

I can't give up on Firefox because Safari is worthless when it comes to blogging at Typepad or the other similar services that I use.

I can probably live quite happily with an operating system that only crashes once a month. Especially since I didn't lose anything except a few minutes.

[CincyDaddy]

You are completely right about the real estate world being PC-centric. It is driving my sister-in-law crazy. She is not nearly as in love with her iBook as she was when she wasn't in real estate. Would a new Intel Mac be a good answer? Dual-boot, Parallels and all that.

[ocracokewaves]

I have a friend who left Apple recently to do real estate sales. He bought a MacBook Pro and is using Parallels.

I asked him last month if after six months he would recommend a similar Mac solution to someone else, and he said no. He said there were enough things to make it a pain in the rear.

I'm going to buy an extra gig of ram to take my MacBook to 2 gigs and give it a try at least until the next generation of laptops come out in the spring. If I have problems I'll just buy a PC laptop, it won't be my first. I do have a PC desktop at home so I can probably survive, but time will tell.

It also would not mean that I will stop using my Macs.

Two years of living with Linux and Windows XP has made me fairly comfortable outside the Mac world, though I would still rather use a Mac. Actually what I would really like to do is try OS X on a PC laptop.

Who knows what wonders the next OS X release might bring for PC compatibility. Boot camp with an inexpensive OEM version of Vista might be a good solution.

[DWalla]

You should have titled this:
OS X CREATED BY HUMANS... FLAWS FOUND IN OS

It's a no brainer... do you actually expect flawless execution from any piece of software?

[Terrin]

I am in real estate, and yes it is a very Windows' centric world, but only because the multi state data base only supports' Windows. Since, that is the life blood of the real estate industry, it was until recently a very hard world for Macs to live in.

With the new Intel Macs, Bootcamp, and Parallels, this, however, is no longer a problem. I use a Mac exclusively, and run both Windows and Mac OSX. I am interested in why this solution has not worked for others. The experience for me is a pure joy. I also could use Bootcamp, but Parallels works great.

In fact, many other agents, and clients are really impressed by my Mac. I stand out, which in real estate is a good thing. Apple in fact has highlighted a Mac only real estate agency on its website.

By the way, I hate XP, and still use 98 on my Mac.

[Terrin]

>

I in earnest truly am interest in knowing what those things are, as I honestly cannot think of one. If I was relying on Virtual PC sure (which I did for a while), but not using Parallels or Bootcamp.

[Terrin]

>

I use this set up everyday, and I say yes. My Macbook is much faster then the iBook (I have a 800 MHz one I hardly use), and by using Parallels I can access the multi state data base.

I truly am interested in why another Mac user using the same set up would say no. Perhaps setting Parallels did not go flawlessly? I really am struggling to see why that would be the case.

Sure, a Windows users may just feel more comfortable using Windows, but as a Mac user, an Intel Mac with Parallels is the greatest thing that has every happened to me (career wise).