dilznik wrote:

Apple bet the farm and completely recreated their OS from scratch based on FreeBSD Unix and it paid off.

Thank you for bringing FreeBSD up! The core (no pun intended) reason for the brilliance of OS X.

Flappo The Grate wrote:

my mother who has problems working the kettle and who hasn't got a clue how to turn a computer on let alone use one is unusually interested in a pad like device that requires just finger presses and no actual os interaction , the os and file system are hidden as tbh they're just not needed anymore , she actually wants one , so that's a win !😎😁

Do you remember the old feature in some old version of Mac OS (8? 9?) where you could set it so that instead of the Finder you had single click icons of your programs?  It was really easy to set up a Mac for someone's little kid or mom or whoever.  It's kind of like that.  

yes , in many ways we've gone backwards in the ui

the save dialog boxes of 8 & 9 were much better than X's with many nice options

plus you could sort a folder by size , for some reason you can't in X !!!

saf wrote:

 it is a question if it at all is possible for any human to actually steer companies of such a size/complexity as those behemoths incl. Microsoft – or, realistically, pretend to expect it from such an individual.

Apple is a $50 billion (turnover) company.

Microsoft is a $59 billion (turnover) company.

Steve Jobs seems to be up to the task of actually steering a company of such size/complexity. 🙂

A corollary to the line of reasoning that managing such behemoths requires skill is that those who are able to do so should have no restriction in accepting whatever pay and bonus the Board of Directors decides it needs to pay in order to attract that caliber of talent.  

this made me chuckle...

"A 17-year-old bug in Windows will be patched by Microsoft in its latest security update," BBC News reports. "The February update for Windows will close the loophole that involves the venerable DOS operating system."

The Beeb continues, "First appearing in Windows NT 3.1, the vulnerability has been carried over into almost every version of Windows that has appeared since. The monthlysecurity update will also tackle a further 25 holes in Windows, five of which are rated as 'critical.'"

"The ancient bug was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy in January 2010 and involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run programs that date from the DOS era," The Beeb reports. "Mr Ormandy has found a way to exploit this utility in Windows XP,Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7."

The Beeb reports, "The patch for this vulnerability will appear in the February security update. Five of the vulnerabilities being patched at the same time allow attackers to effectively hijack a Windows PC and run their own programs on it."

Flappo The Grate wrote:

plus you could sort a folder by size , for some reason you can't in X !!!

This is not correct.  

On the Finder, folders can be sorted by size.  On Finder, View > Show View Options, check Size.

Then on Finder, View > as List, click on Size column.

BMW - check (Used to have Audi)

B&O - check

iPod - check

PC - depends... Linux running on two of them, Windows running on two other and dual boot with Windows and Linux on my on notepad. Besides - the Mac is also a PC. I used to have a Mac at work, which was great for development, since it's basically running a Unix clone under all the fancy art work. ;)

Oh, by the way:

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=macs_cant

Neither operating system is foolproof. There are almost monthly security updates for osx as well.

However Apple did the right thing dumping their old operating system and moving on to a more secure (unix based?) OS.

It did create many problems for existing apple users back them with issues of incompatible software. 
As the user base was smaller back them, it was easier to make that decision and the effort was clearly worth the pain. 

Too late and too bold a move for Microsoft to do the same now. 

Flappo The Grate wrote:

this made me chuckle...

 

"A 17-year-old bug in Windows will be patched by Microsoft in its latest security update," BBC News reports. "The February update for Windows will close the loophole that involves the venerable DOS operating system."

I doubt they're chuckling in Redmond.
This is the curse of the OS Microsoft offers the world. Without retaining the DOS-core, it's no longer proprietary, which is why it's being carried over "indefinitely" inside more and more sophisticated shells.
And it's also why the focus for a long time was on speed with their OS - the 512 scoops of data in DOS needed to shoveled out of the way faster and faster, for the OS to keep up with other offerings. And it's also why a speed-for-speed comparison with Macs is irrelevant, since you take larger chunks of data with each scoop, when using Macs (also because of the serial processing.)

Yes - Apple will pass Microsoft in turnover soon, that's something to think about.

Soundproof, where do you get these stories? There has been no "DOS core" in Windows since NT 3.1...

I'm sure that story of yours is a great bar joke at the Apple evangelists' convention, but let's try to stay with the facts here. Or just bury this crappy thread.