A follow-up to ?��Ǩ��How much abuse is an Apple user willing to take??��Ǩ�Ѣ

Wow, this was a popular one. I would like to respond to a few comments left in yesterdays post. I think that either we have a lot of zealots or I’m completely on the wrong page… Or maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Let me restate my transition gripe a bit differently. My problem is that Apple seems to be throwing darts at a board and just choosing the processor flavor of the hour. 32 bit to 64 bit PPC. Now back to 32 bit x86. Do we get 64 bit back any time soon? Will that require developers to recompile again? How many different universal versions of an application will I need to wait for? Maybe they already thought this through and the current UB distributions are 64 bit enabled out the doors. I can honestly say that I don’t know. How many times will I get a hot, new and sexy Apple Laptop only to have to wait for 6 months for Apple to work the kinks out. While I was going to post on how my Fujitsu TabNote was stable the first day I got it and has yet to have issues, and as I was writing this article the ‘delete’ key broke… So, uh, yeah… Guess that killed that argument.

I love Mac OS X and would not trade it for Windows. I think it’s a beautiful blend of Unix and a usable GUI. Linux is nice, but they have a very long way to catch up to Apple on the user interface front. Mac OS X is the best OS out there today, but how many more times do we need to transition? A lot of users commented stating that I’m the only one experiencing these problems, Mac OS X 10.2 and on is rock solid. Other users state that I’m upgrading too fast and I should just keep my legacy machines. Yet others state that I must not be an average user and doing more than just Internet browsing, E-mail and word processing. Lets break some of these down a bit:

I’m upgrading too fast, just keep my old machines
I could not disagree with this more. My wife’s iBook just died (motherboard failed) and I would like to replace it with a system that will last her another 4 years. Would an informed consumer buy a PPC based system or an Intel based system? Maybe a user is required to upgrade due to dead hardware. I also needed a media center for my HDTV, and Apple only offers the MacMini in the Intel form. I’m sure I can find an older PPC model, but why would I do that when I can get better HDTV performance out of the Intel model? Remember, sometimes the user does not have a choice. I’m not the only user in this position. I’m going to buy the best long-term box, and that’s the Intel platform. Suggesting that I buy a PPC box is just a silly move with the exceptions of some specialty areas (Quark users for example).

I’m not the average user, I must be asking my box to do too much
I’ll openly admit that I am not an average user. I ask my computers to do a lot… all of them. On my Macs I run a lot of video editing, photo editing and audio manipulation. One of the applications I use the most is Final Cut Pro. On my Windows boxes I also run photo editing tools, a bunch of server apps, monitoring systems and compression software. I consistently push my processors to maximum usage while working on my systems. My views of system stability come from pushing my boxes as hard as I can. The argument goes that most users are just going to check e-mail and browse the web, but I would argue that Macintosh users are a cut above the rest. A lot of other users do what I do, video editing, audio editing, page layout, some 3D animation or just about anything creative. Many of the problems I have been having with the Intel Macs are not limited to the high-end apps, rather, a lot of issues come in the form of standard everyday tasks. Front Row locks, I have had the slideshow panic on me, I have had Safari unexpectedly quit more times than I care to admit along with Firefox. These problems are not limited to one machine. The PPC counterparts to these systems run fine, the Intel versions do not. I’m being a bit broad here, but to put it simply the Intel build of Mac OS X and its associated applications are nowhere near as stable as the PPC counterpart. I fully expect this to change over the next couple of months. I do see a lot more system problems simply because I push my box hard, and that’s on any platform that I work on. I’m not counting those issues.

I’m the only user with issues
I don’t buy it. The transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X was painful. Lets be really honest here. Classic was slow and unstable. Some applications simply would not run in classic at all. Over time these issues were resolved and it became much more solid than as it first started out. Just because Apple did eventually fix the issues does not mean that there were never there. A couple people pointed out that the transition from the G4 to the G5 hardly broke any software at all, and as I thought about it, I must admit that they are right. While VirtualPC died, most of my everyday apps continued to function just fine. I think the posters have a valid point here. Moving from a 32 bit architecture to a 64 bit architecture was not nearly as bad as it sounded in the original article, I think I was being a little too dramatic there. In fact I’ll go one step further… I have thought a lot about this and started comparing the Mac OS X 32/64 bit transition to the Windows 32/64 bit transition. Windows 2003 server x64 is horrid with huge screen drawing issues (with the video cards I’m using at least), and the Windows XP x64 versions are still unstable. Apple did an honorable job here, and I screwed up. I apologize to Apple and to the readers. The transition to Intel was not as smooth though. To this day I still have Safari issues on Web 2.0 based sites (read: crashes), Front Row is really finicky and I have seen just as many kernel panics as I did when Mac OS X 10.0 first came out (and I have even swapped memory just to be sure). The PPC emulation is slow, and Apple never said it would be fast, but my Photoshop work has taken a 1/3 hit in time performance. Time translates to dollars. I know it will be fixed, and I know I’ll be able to buy a Universal Binary of Photoshop, but it’s still slow and unstable. Rosetta is unstable, I have those apps crash a lot more than any Universal Binary application.

Final Thoughts
You can agree with me or disagree, and that’s fine. I don’t hate Apple and I’m not saying that no one should buy a box… but I also refuse to drink Apple’s KoolAid on this one. These are my experiences, and I’m not a novice computer user or beginner Apple user. I respect that users who only run e-mail and a web browser may not see these issues, but frankly I am seeing these problems. I accept that version 1.0 software may have a few bugs, but what I would love to see Apple do is slow down. Pick a roadmap and stick with it. Rather than moving to the G5, it would have been nice to skip that cycle and go straight to x86. Rather than moving to PPC at all it would have been nice to skip that and just use x86… All I’m saying is that it would be nice to have a solid platform that’s not a moving target every 2 years. By doing that Apple will be able to release updated versions of the OS and applications that will fix a lot of the problems I and other users are seeing today.

Maybe I’m crazy and am the only person on the face of the planet with any of these issues. I can’t say. I think it’s worth everyone taking a step back and just looking at the last 6 years or so. I think you’ll find that a number of you, maybe a small number, understand where I’m coming from. The flip side of the coin is that no one really agreed with my last post, which makes me believe that maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I just happened to get a couple of bad boxes during the OS 9 to OS X transition and from PPC to Intel. It’s not outside the realm of possibility. I would love to hear your thoughts in comments. Am I completely off base? Should Apple transition whenever the feel like it to help push the computer industry forward? Or am I, maybe, just a little right?

I think you missed a key point here... Load the same version of Firefox on a PPC Macintosh and an Intel Macintosh (not a Universal Binary). Run both of them for a while and watch how the Intel version crashes quite a bit.

Do the same thing with just about any app that runs in Rosetta and you'll see a similar pattern.

The Intel build of OS X has also had quite a number of kernel panics on me, which is the OS itself screaming "NO MORE!" I'm not talking very specific stuff here, I'm just trying to use a program as an example. It's across the board.

This will be fixed, and in fact the latest updates helped to cure a lot of my woes, but the point still remains... It's the THIRD transition. The THIRD time this has happened. I just want Apple to pick a course and stick to it.

Will we be jumping ship and moving to the Power5 architecture when it's available in the PPC world? Don't laugh, we dumped everything twice before, what's stopping them from doing it again? I'm being overly extreme to make my point.

That's my point. Huge transitions = huge adjustment times. I would like to stop with the huge transitions.

Yes, transitions are painful, and you just happen to be here when they are happening.

But when we look back on it, we will no doubt conclude that these transitions are necessary. OS 9 to OS X was absolutely needed. And PPC to Intel will be seen the same way in a couple of years.

Also need to look at the what-if of the other choice. For example, if Apple made the PPC-Intel switch 3 years ago, people would've been even more upset than now since OS 9 apps would've died earlier. SJ was gonna switch until he was convinced by IBM that G5 had legs (which we now know, it doesn't). And if the switch didn't occur, could we have lived with 1.67 - 2GHz max G4s (no G5s) in the Powerbook for another 2 years? Don't think so,

"Rather than moving to the G5, it would have been nice to skip that cycle and go straight to x86. Rather than moving to PPC at all it would have been nice to skip that and just use x86?��Ǩ�� All I?��Ǩ�Ѣm saying is that it would be nice to have a solid platform that?��Ǩ�Ѣs not a moving target every 2 years."

You don't think Apple thought it had a solid roadmap back when they switched to PPC? Or that IBM failed to deliver a G5 for the laptop?

If Apple could actually see 5 years ahead, I'm sure they would have done things a bit differently.

I added that last sentence of your's because that pretty much was over-the-top for me. It's exaggerations of this kind that taint the rest of your post... that makes a reader feel that you are whining. It dilutes the valid point you do make.

Please - back those words up. Tell me what sort of changes in a "2 year" span makes the OS X platform a moving target.

OS 9 to OS X was needed, I agree 100%. I'm not sure that I agree that the G5 has no legs... Although that's what Apple would have us believe. When I look at things like the cell processor and the PPCs that Microsoft is using in the XBox 360 coupled with the Power5 I see some pretty long legs there... But realisticaly it was a financial decision. I'm still a huge PPC fan, but I'm a bigger Apple fan.

I do find it interesting that just about no one seems to fully agree with the underlying point... Which means very well that I'm wrong here. I'm just surprised.

For me, the MacOS 9 to OSX transition was very smooth indeed. Maybe it's because I waited until Jaguar to change. By then, there wasn't much reason to keep OS9, so a few days after I'd installed Jaguar I dumped Classic and its apps. OSX did what I had been hacking OS9 to do with Control Panels and System Extensions and more. For the first time since System 6, I was happy with the OS straight out of the box. For some things, Jaguar wasn't as snappy as OS9, but, the advantages outweighed the disadvantates. I could do much more with it and it was STABLE. I retired my itchy Command + S finger and rebooted every few weeks - when an upgrade demanded it. OS9 was not stable.

So, I'm applying the same policy to Intel. I'll upgrade my computers in a while, when the kinks have gone.

"I'm not sure that I agree that the G5 has no legs... Although that's what Apple would have us believe."

Then, I suggest you do a little more research. I will reiterate, again, that I am not an Apple zealot. The reality is, that Apple could not shoehorn a G5 into the PowerBook. IBM constantly under-delivered on promises and had issues with chip shortages and severe heat problems.

To compound this further, IBM developed the CELL processor for Sony and has a bigger fish to cater for. The G series, while promising much never delivered on the IBM hype. When you compare top of the line G5's to current gen Core Duo's the speed differential is already a big gap - that gap will turn into a yawning chasm as the new "crusoe" line is brought on stream.

The move to Intel is a good move and again you are really just complaining that "..the platform is unstable right now, so it's time to write off the whole idea as bad".

The danger for Apple is not that it's not keeping up with technology, which necessitates change - the danger would be to follow your advice and stick their head in the sand, hoping IBM could deliver on promises that it just can't.

The PPC architecture was ahead of it's time a few years ago - it now shows it's age against the current crop of intel multi-core x86 processors that a beginning to beat the amd athlon series.

Apple has switched at exactly the right time - building machines on proven x86 processor technology as the new lines, like the 'crusoe' come out and blitz everything.

Again - at this moment Apple is still ramping up the intel rollout, OS X has little more than 2-3 revisions on intel and has some way to go yet.

"I do find it interesting that just about no one seems to fully agree with the underlying point... Which means very well that I'm wrong here. I'm just surprised."

I don't think anyone disagrees with your statement that it's all a bit flaky right now, rather that it's early days and you're passing judgement of a platform and OS that has really yet to settle in.

The same kinds of dooms-day comments occurred around the time the PPC platform launched and with the OS X launch.

The change was and is still a good move for Apple - the only other option was to run with PPC, which really had no roadmap much above 3ghz, and certainly did not bode well for G5's in powerbooks - in today's climate, that's a bad place to be in.

There are points on both sides of the argument . Apple is the best option but have some very irritating positions vis a vis protecting investments of their customers.

Two points that come to mind - My Powerbook G4 (lovely machine) will go out of extended warranty next year - Apple has refused to renew. Now, I am inclined to believe its because they have "abandoned" the G4 platform in lieu of the Dual Core Intel. This attitude SUCKS big time. What are we to do with the machine if something goes wrong post warranty ? How can you just abandon a product mid life ?

Secondly - and MOST importantly - WHAT is WRONG with them vis a vis ISYNC ?! If you have shopped lately for a Mobile phone -- pda combine - you will see that ISYNC is so dismal with respect to compatibility that one can hardlly consider using the Mac if one is seriously also a hand-held or smartphone user. They dont sync with Microsoft PPC version 5 phones . That kisses goodbye to hundreds of options like O2 and Moto Q etc. They dont sync with several Symbian OS phones - which kisses adios to many Nokias and a host of other phones. WHAT is the point ?!

How difficult would it be for them to make ISYNC a hallmark in sync technology and get it to sync with everything out of the box. Even with Blackberry - its not Apple who lifted a toe to do anything - its Blackberry who paid POCKETMAC to do a sync software for apple users FREE of COST

so apple sucks on these issues for me and i wish users would SCREAM at apple relentlessly till they make ISYNC something worth having on ones computer. Either that or just outsource syncing to some third party and let them make a software replacement for isync that works with most phones out there. Why restrict us so much .

Comments

1. Posted by: brendan on May 15, 2006 4:46 AM:

Ok, a word of warning - this is a long one. :)

"Program X doesn't work quite right, so I will have a tanty and call out Apple because their intel roll-out is crap".

Sorry Ben, but that is how it reads. Lets not forget that is only in the last few versions that OS X has really started to shine, prior to "Tiger" OS X was really not that swish.. It's taken years to hone the interface and the BSD base it's built on into shape.

It is extraordinarily naive to believe that every universal binary will work perfectly, out of the box, from day one, where PPC binaries have had a massive development lead in comparison.

Of course firefox crashes - it's only just had the first official build out the door.

As you say - take a step back and think about the short intel history versus the long term Gx series platforms which had their share of issues from day one as well.

Given Apple are really targeting early adopters right now (you are an early adopter, right?) and have yet to fully transition all their product lines to intel - it's really very early in the game to write the whole idea off as a bad joke.

To counterpoint your 64bit query - intel has made a pretty clear move towards multiple 32bit processors on one die - right now the lastest intel Crusoe kicks' AMD's butt.

XP 64 bit has been universally canned as a bad idea and driver support is absolute sh*t - there is going to be a 64bit version of longhorn but who knows what the driver support will be like.

64bit is a great idea, however both intel and AMD have tried it with limited true 64bit success - the vast majority will be installed in 32bit windows xp. Vendor drivers are a major problem and would equally be a headache for Apple.

Just because AMD have sold an absolute packet of them, does not mean each one is, right now, running a 64bit environment. Other than a few linux installs and punters giving XP 64bit a spin, they run 32bit only.

Should 64bit become a real advantage (multiple core 32 bit is right now where it's at) then intel is well placed to provide Apple with 64bit power for the performance user.

I'm no Apple zealot, but it's pretty clear they are still getting to grips with intel architecture. That does take quite some time.

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