Digital BW, The Print

Jos\ufffd Miguel Ferreira writes:

> For 7 years I worked as a Macintosh specialist. I sold, installed,
> configured and trouble-shooted Macs and Mac networks. Most of my customers
> were architects, designers, photographers, the usual crowd...
> I stopped my business just before Mac OS X came out, so I can't speak for
> that...

Mac OS X is a completely different OS, though ... a dramatic change that
resembles the preceding OS only superficially.  It's very much like the
change between the older versions of Windows and Windows NT/XP/200x.

Both OS X and the NT-based Windows operating systems belong to a new
generation of operating systems that are inherently very stable.  Any of
them should be able to run continuously for years without a boot or
crash (some of mine have).

The old Mac OS was garbage ... it belonged to the same generation as
16-bit Windows 3.1, and had the same defects.  It's amazing how long Mac
users put up with it.  OS X is probably not ideal for a desktop (the
UNIX foundation of the OS is a timesharing server operating system, not
a desktop operating system), but it's a dramatic improvement over its
predecessor.

Similarly, XP/NT/200x are dramatic improvements over their predecessors,
but it's not clear exactly what they want to be.  NT was designed as a
server, like UNIX, but Microsoft has pushed the operating systems more
and more towards a desktop architecture, making them prettier and more
friendly but also less secure, stable, and flexible.  The move towards a
desktop GUI does this to any operating system; it has the same effect on
OS X, which is less stable than a pure UNIX system.  Even a UNIX system
running a GUI like X Server is less stable and secure than a straight
UNIX server configuration.

> I now use one Windows XP machine for everything. It never crashes,
> maintenance is minimal. At equal computing performances, it costs
> *way* less than a Mac.

I can't speak for costs, but all three of my machines (XP, NT, and
FreeBSD) will run indefinitely without a crash.  I don't believe I've
ever seen XP crash.  I've seen my NT system crash a few times when I
tried to install buggy drivers.  I've seen FreeBSD crash for the same
reason.  Hardware problems can crash any system, of course.