Mac VS Windows

[pasithea]

What am I doing right now? I'm not doing my project at work. No. I'm fighting with Windows and after several hours, screw it. I'm bitching about Windows too. Feel free to skip this post. I just need to vent a little frustration.

So.. Where to begin? Our software runs on Mac, Linux, and Windows. For a variety of reasons I do nearly all of my development on Linux followed by Mac. (I'm more familiar with the tools and we have more distributed build hosts for Linux and Mac. Not to mention SSH keys are easier to configure and more friendly, svn checkouts are about 1000x faster than Windows, and so on. Windows is just crap slow to work on)

So... Anyhow... I generally work out my code, then send it to parabuild which does builds of it for all three platforms. If one of the platforms doesn't like something (they all have their own pet peeves) then I go and fix it. Generally I can do this without even needing to copy my branch to another machine, but now this time. I was forced to boot into Windows for the first time in six months.

So... After an hour of service pack updates and virus scanner updates and renewing licenses for virus checkers and other crap that you don't need on decent platforms, I finally get to where I can work... Except we've upgraded C compilers in the past six months and this requires I update a bunch of stuff.

Now on Mac or Linux, the C++ compiler is free and it ends up under the automatic system update stuff, so you have to do nothing to get it updated. On Windows, it's an entirely different product, meaning it must be installed and configured more or less from scratch. Better yet, if you're using any odd SDKs, odds are they'll be broken and you'll be spending a few hours updating those too.

Now... I'm at a Satellite office and that means for our site license, some of the disks aren't here, they're on a central server which takes about a half hour to pull 2G of data from. The files are just written there are .iso disk images.

My first bit of fun came from Windows crappiness in the form of not being able to detect writable DVDs in the DVD-R drive. This drive works fine in linux on the same machine. It could read already-created disks. It could not write to them (and no, it isn't a +r drive)

Apparently you can purchase an app called 'PhantomDisk' for windows which mounts ISO files as a virtual drive, but guess what Microsoft installers won't let you do? Go on. Guess. So... After an hour of pulling my hair out with the drive. Screw it. I send the .iso file over to my mac (which, since Windows seems to be unable to see the Samba served spot I created for it, I eventually end up using FTP with the raw IP address)

On the mac, double-clicking a .iso file mounts it as a virtual drive or I can throw in a blank CD, mount it with disk utility, point it at the iso file, and burn it, which is what I do.

Next, there are the service packs for Visual Studio. Since I'm not eager to spend more time burning CDs, I foolishly try loading them from MicroSoft's website. Microsoft Visual Studio SDKs require that you turn off your firewall and various other things and put your computer in "PLEASE RAPE ME" mode on the outside internet. Their website also ONLY lets you do installs from it if you're using Internet Explore $CURRENT_VERSION. Awesome.

So... 5 hours in and I'm still not working on the code I planned to be working on at 8 this morning. Why are people still using this piece of shit OS again?

Comments

[tarathene.livejournal.com]

In general, partly because they are afraid that they will have to go through everything you are now all over again, plus even more new learning with a new OS. Of course, that really isn't the case for most people switching to things other than Windows. Most of the people we know who are still using Windows do it because their games won't run on anything else, and because they expect everything to be just as easy (ie: exactly the same) on something else before they will switch to it.

[emiofbrie.livejournal.com]

Because it's what they're used to and they fear change, even if it's for the better.

My boss was recently convinced to go Mac, and his only concern was his Act database. Turns out a Mac program called Daylight can natively read Act databases. :) Concern quelled, and AFAIK he's going Mac.

Macs just WORK, and its UNIX base means security is written into the core of the OS, not patched in like it is with Windows.

[idragosani.livejournal.com]

I <3 Linux and use it whenever I can (and my work laptop runs Linux exclusively)

Wish I didn't have to use Windows from time to time, can't afford to migrate everything to Mac.

[yetanotherbob.livejournal.com]

Heh. It's the same over here, too. We support Mac, Windows, and Linux. The codebase for Mac just works. The codebase for Linux just works. Windows is always the problem child. It doesn't help that the tech works with Ruby and Python. And Ruby and Python both are pre-installed on Mac and Linux as far back as we support, and is completely absent in all versions of Windows.

Also, if subversion ever is bothering you, be grateful you're not using git. Git loves to corrupt its own database when on Windows.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

This is what interns are for! *grin*

[salia-chan.livejournal.com]

Um. On two random notes, Daemon tools is what I use for all my iso virtual drive needs (http://www.daemon-tools.cc/eng/home)

And blarg. x.x

I'd use linux, but I have never really gotten to the point where everything is finished setting up, getting tweaked to work 100% for me, and so on.

On the other hand, I'm using damn small linux on a funko laptop. (pentium 166, 64mb ram, compact flash drive as a hard drive. No swap file, yay~ x.x)

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

I suppose that's true. I used Windows for a long time until Mac OS-X came out, my impression of Macs was that they were slow, overpriced, and no better than Windows. I used Linux for a lot of things but it didn't support the kinds of professional apps I needed for some of the projects I worked on.

It was only because a friend gave me a 400Mhz mac with OS-X and (for my very specific set of needs) I suddenly discovered I was FAR more productive with it than the 1.8Ghz Windows machine I was using.

Now, every time I need to switch back to it for something, I am just amazed I stuck with it for so long. It's so clunky. Mac cost me more money, but Windows costs me WAY more time and the later is much more valuable to me.

The only things I can say that Windows does better are (as you say) games, though I don't play a lot of games and when I do get in the mood to play one, the Playstation is generally sufficient.

The other, more important one is that I will admit that Visual Studio's debugger is much more user-friendly than GDB, including the gui fronts for linux and Xcode's front end on the Mac. OTOH, GDB is free. Visual studio is seven hundred dollars. (Which easily makes up the price difference between Mac and PC)

[viesti.livejournal.com]

I used to be under the impression that most Windows users are just gluttons for punishment. While this is true to some extent, I think the real reason people use Windows is because it's what their workplace forces them to use, so most people just simply have more exposure to Windows in the first place and thus go with a Windows-based computer for their personal use.

This often changes when a person gets to really use a Mac for the first time. And Apple has been making some impressive inroads lately.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Definitely a possibility.

BTW, Hi! How have you been? I haven't talked to you in a while.

Also also, is that a SecondLife avatar or something like CoH?

[viesti.livejournal.com]

Hi to you too :) I'm doing quite well these days though I went through a bit of a rough patch to get here. Would actually love to catch up with you at some point, and of course I'm always interested in adventure and excitement and things a Jedi craves not.

The avatar is actually my Rock Band character.

[tarathene.livejournal.com]

We got introduced to Windows starting with 3.11, after having only used (and enjoyed) monochrome Macintosh systems at school. Our next exposure to Mac was not until near the end of high school where we got to use iMacs in the library and eventually some better iMacs in programming classes. They were still on OS 9 at that point though and it was a scary experience for us compared to Windows 98 at home! We have gotten a chance to use OS X occasionally on friends' computers recently and we're actually quite impressed with how well everything works.

We moved primarily to Linux several years ago and don't even have a working Windows installation right now, but still keep wondering about Macs. If we ever have the money to replace our primary system and the specs match our needs, we may just have to go all in and get ourselves a MacBook. Our preferred photo editing program comes on all three systems, and everything has Firefox and SSH these days.

[praecorloth.livejournal.com]

I love this rant.

Also ++ to Daemon tools. And something that may get me burned here is IE8 is actually worth using. No no, I'm not a Microsoft fanboi. I'm a Gentoo guy myself. But I've been playing with IE8 and it is pretty speedy. May or may not be any more secure than IE6, but if you have to use IE at all, may as well use a version that renders web pages with some semblance of speed so you can stop using it sooner rather than later. :)