What are the real elements that separate a MAC from a PC? (1 Viewer)

[Carlo_M]

Yes excellent point. You are the computer admin in Mac OS, but you do have to put in your password when you want to install/update programs or do anything that messes with sys files. Keep your password short (and if your Mac is secure, i.e. you live alone and no one just powers it up and uses it, leave it blank--not recommended but you be the judge), and it's not a problem.

At first I was like "WTF, password again?!?!" but now that I understand that is a key gateway to preventing spyware, malware, viruses, etc. from unintentionally grabbing hold of your Mac, I'm very content to punch it in. If that's the price I pay not to have to run spyware and virus software (which drains your system performance and potentially creates conflicts), then so be it.

By the way, viruses are written for Mac. Those nasties can get into any OS. The point is that Mac is so low on market share it's not worth it for the virus writers to target Macs. But they do exist and you shouldn't go around willy nilly executing any program or dmg that you come across on the web or in an email. Stick to that, and you'll pretty much be golden

 

[Christian Behrens]

Parallels just released their Release Candidate for the next minor update (the next major one will include the 3D gaming capabilities and Firewire), which supports using the BootCamp partition, as mentioned earlier. No need for two windows installations on the same computer

http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/beta_testing/

Also, I want to point out that it is NOT emulation. It runs at near native speed to a dedicated Windows machine, only losing a minor amount of speed to overhead, but not a speed penalty like actual emulation would cause.

-Christian

 

[JeremyErwin]

The mac's approach to security is taken from a bsd program called sudo.

On a unix system, root is all powerful. You can execute

"rm -rf /" as root

and the machine will happily erase itself, losing more and more functionality as it goes along. Eventually, you will end up with a blank hard drive, and a non-working system.

But on a macosx, the root account is partially disabled. By default you can't login as root. You can, however execute commands as root, if you have the correct permissions.

For instance, I'm running a custom firewall script. To enable it, I type

anyway, apple wrapped this somewhat opaque interface up in a gui, and made it easier to use.

I'm relatively comfortable working with the OS beneath the GUI, so opening up a shell and typing in commands is the quickest way to do certain things. But apple has designed it so that if you don't like unix, you don't have to touch the unix underpinnings.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I'd recommend Avast for your Windows partition. It's free for home use and cheap for commerical use on their website, and it's the most "invisible" virus protection I've used - very little CPU or memory drain, and just two little icons next to the time in the task bar. A little semi-transparent box pops up informing you that a new version of the virus database has been installed when you start up, and that's it. It just runs in the background, doing it's job.

 

[Thomas Newton]

To add to the security conversation:

You can decrease your risk of the "spyware == administrator" problem on a Windows NT/2000/XP system (real or Parallels), with a bit of work.

1. Create TWO accounts for yourself ... the regular Administrator one, and a peon one that has NO privileges. Use different passwords.

2. Log into the Administrator account ONLY when doing Administrator work, like installing programs (no dodgy sources!) or setting file permissions. Do NOT browse the Internet or use mail any more than absolutely needed from this account.

3. Make sure that file permissions are set so that peon users cannot change assorted system and application files. You want to lock things up as tightly as Windows will allow.

4. Do all your work from the peon account (which should preferably contain only documents, not applications). Back up your documents regularly. The viruses and spyware may have a harder time eating up the secured system -- but they will still be able to eat up your documents.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I am going to be hooking up my two external Maxtor One Touch
drives to my Mac Pro via firewire.

You are saying that at this point, under Parallels, Windows will
not recognize those drives as there is currently no firewire driver
support?

 

[Thomas Newton]

I think the way you would access external drives from Parallels is through its shared folder support. That is, Parallels probably has a feature to make a Macintosh volume or folder appear to be a Windows network drive.

If that's the case, Windows wouldn't need to know how to operate FireWire to access a shared folder on a Mac-accessible volume on an external drive.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

Another vote here for Avast under Windows. No need to purchase virus protection.

I've not tried a firewire drive under Parallels yet, I will and get back to you. As mentioned, Parallels is still releasing updates, so even minor incompatibilities (like my USB spectrophotometer) will probably be resolved in the future.

Yes, you can run Parallels for 99 percent of what you need. There is even a "coherence" mode that runs individual programs on the Mac desktop (it is a trick with the graphics that makes the Windows desktop go away. You have a Mac menu across the top of the screen, and the Windows menu across the bottom--very funky!)

Looks like Amazon has a great price on Toast 8, to be released this week.

- Steve

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

I agree that Parallels is constantly improving itself. One of the most useful features in the latest beta build allows you to migrate an existing Windows image into Parallels. This means people that previously had a Windows license that came with VirtualPC and could do nothing with it now are able to use it with Parallels Desktop. Here's a link that describes how it works. I've been out of town the last week, but I intend to play with this when I return to the office.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Michael,

That's incredible! I can take my entire PC as it is set up
now and migrate it over to Parallels to use on my Mac.

Unfortunately, since I'll be installing Windows Vista, I can't
do it as the best install of Vista is a fresh one.

BTW, don't know if it was mentioned on this forum or not,
but I just recently found out that the ONLY versions of
Vista you can run in an emulator is BUSINESS or
ULTIMATE, as they are specifically licensed for
such use.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Interesting what I just discovered...

There is an emulator available to run Mac on a Windows desktop

 

[Christian Behrens]

That's just an emulation of the now obsolete PowerPC architecture, and as such will be incredibly slow compared to an actual PowerPC Mac, let alone an Intel Mac. But certainly decent enough to dabble with it.

For someone who really wants to use it in a serious manner, though, I doubt it would be satisfactory.

-Christian

 

[Nelson Au]

A Mac forum would be very cool. There's one at the AVS forums for Mac HTPC, so one for Macintosh computers on the HTF would be great. Perhaps there's more here then meets the eye?

 

[Andrew Pratt]

I'd be interested in seeing a Mac section as well. On my forum (similar to HTF in content) we cover around 5 percent mac users according to the web traffic reports so 5 percent of HTF's users base would be a significant number.

 

[DeathStar1]

i just did a screen grab picture search for OSX and it looks more or less like Vista in desktop use. And I love the 'Monitor IS the computer' setup, even though it must be tougher to upgrade.

I had to use Macs in Highschool around 1993, and I didn't care for them then. there was just something I didn't like about it. The only reason I would consider getting a mac now is because of the high end video editing capabilities.

 

[Steve Tannehill]

Only the iMac has the CPU, etc., built into the monitor. The Mac Pro (and mini) is a stand-alone computer.

- Steve

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Microsoft really missed the whole point about authenticating to do changes in Vista. In OS X, you need to enter the password. Good way to increase security.

In Vista, you get a pop-up with an ok or cancel on it. All the annoyance factor of a password and none of the security increase. Doh.

Btw, people are running OS X on Windows machines in VMware virtual machines these days, as well as booting bog-standard PC's into Mac OS X. Of course, that's not something that is officially doable, you need a hacked OS X to do it as well, and thus not something we can discuss in any detail here, but even so. The new Macs are not very far removed from your average PC.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

That's the most interesting thing about Vista and the PC in general....

....and this comes from a person that has been a PC user all
his life....

Absolutely, Vista looks like OS X because it's a rip-off of that
operating system. One of the biggest factors that threw me
towards switching to Mac was playing around with Vista. After
all these years you would think Microsoft could come up with
something better. Vista is nothing more than a glorified face-lift
to Windows that is more evolutionary than revolutionary.

I guarantee all of you who will be using Vista in the upcoming
months will greatly appreciate its slick new look, but wonder just
what the heck is so different about the way it works.

On the other hand (to be fair)....and this comes from someone
who has yet to even use OS X.....all I have heard over the years
is how much more stable and functional the Mac operating system
is over Windows. All the things that Windows is incorporating
into VISTA has been available for years with Macintosh.

I'm not slamming the PC platform. It has its purpose and I
will continue to use it within the Mac environment. I just am
growing tired of the staleness associated with Microsoft. I
want to try something different, and when I do, I plan to either
steer people away or towards the Macintosh platform.

 

[MarkHastings]

Ron, I agree with you. Again, I hate to keep saying "I'm not trying to slam PC's", but when Win95 came out and everyone went NUTS, I had a sticker that said "Win 95=Mac 86" - I have noticed that a lot of Mac advances are incorporated into Microsoft, years later. I like how WinXP has evolved, but yes, a lot of these 'advances' were already incorporated into the Mac.

That's the one thing that excites me about the Mac. Everytime they come out with something new, it feels new and exciting. But when anything new comes from Microsoft, it feels like they're trying to get with the times.

Which is great because WinXP is a great system and I love it! but it has lost it's neatness factor due to the fact that I already was in awe when Mac originally did it with their systems.

Again, as a lot of Mac users can attest, the Win95 thing was mind boggling. It was like if everyone was all-of-a-sudden excited about MP3 players coming out today.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

From 1992-3 when Windows NT was released until when Mac OS X was released in 1999, Microsoft had by far the more capable underpinnings of an OS. The memory handling and the pre-emptive instead of cooperative multitasking etc was much better on NT than on Mac OS 9. The UI was probably still nicer on Mac.

XP and OS X both came out around 2001 and are technically comparable, although Apple made better decisions security-wise, I think. Of course, since then, Apple has done a lot to improve on OS X whereas Microsoft seems to have dropped the ball in quite a spectacular fashion. From the original utopian vistas about Longhorn, we now have Vista which is basically XP with a new user interface and DirectX 10.... 5 years for this? Seriously, you could just get Windowblinds for XP and get an Aero Glass-lookalike skin for that and you have most of XP covered.

Microsoft really needs to get their ducks in a row and start developing something jaw-dropping and more in line with what they talked about for this generation of OS'es if they want to keep their comfy leadership position. Right now, as far as I know, the only thing that speaks for running a PC is if you have legacy apps already bought or if you're a computer gamer.

The next Mac OS X, Leopard, will have more new advancements that will make Microsofts OS look dated. Among other things, it will probably have what I have felt was a no-brainer for years now (assuming graphics and processor power is there to support it) - resolution independence. That will open the door towards making massively high resolution displays and having the image just grow crisper and sharper, not smaller and smaller. About time, too.

Being a computer gamer (albeit not a rabid one anymore) I'm chained to a Microsoft OS, but OS X is looking mighty good. Hell, they've even added the greatest file system available to it now, ZFS.