AppleInsider | Steve Jobs on Apple’s cash, NetBooks, Apple TV, and cheap PCs A couple of years ago I wrote this, a reply to a series of articles on OSNews on why the author wouldn’t be buying another Mac. I…

My operating system of choice now is Ubuntu Linux, not because of any technical superiority, but because of the community based nature of the system, and the fact that I am encouraged to share the software rather than having to pay large corporations.

It doesn’t look too shabby either, having adopted the best visual elements from both Macs and PC’s.
http://www.mooslim.com/ubuntu_screenshot.jpg

I am surprised that , just by mere mention, you didn’t attack the Amiga or BeOS. If you can see things for what they are, you will realize that, aside from the fact that all computers are flawed in some way, Windows is for the masses, Linux is for geeks (of which I am one), and Mac is for sycophants.

While I agree that the Linux community can at times be vicious to new users, Mac users certainly are just as venomous, for a far more petty reason. Linux users often have to look long and hard to solve a problem that a noob is trying to get. Mac users seem to be angry because bad business decisions have put their platform of choice in the minority, and instead of targeting the makers of those bad decisions, they want to lash out at everyone else.

I can’t say I’m fanatical about any system - I just need to get the job done. I have often been attracted to Apple Macs, but have never been able to afford one. Photoshop, PageMaker and QuarkXpress all work fine on my P3 PC any how and the designer-publisher compatibility issues were solved long ago thanks to Adobe Acrobat.

My dad who has years of experience win Windows recently got a Mac Mini and has nothing but praise for OSX - but then he only uses it for email and internet. He’s back on his PC for the real work.

My own PC is about six years old now - it shipped with Windows ME which was absolutely terrible - I used to do a lot of graphic work and it was constantly drained of memory - but I upgraded to XP in 2002 and the problem was solved. As an upgrade, it still has problems eg with video, but it is a vast improvement. As for my 3GHz, P4, 504MB RAM Dell at work - WinXP is a dream - no stabilty problems at all and real speed. Outlook 2003 is wonderful too - complete with its Hijri dates and Islamic holidays.

The Mac vs PC argument irritates me however - a computer is only a tool. A friend of mine who uses Macs was telling me about how lightening fast Macs have become since the advent of this “new” chip - I had to point out that the speed of an Intel is actually nothing new. There are pros and cons in all software and hardware.

The only thing that I’ve always wondered about Mac users is how they get by with a one button mouse. Hurrah for right clickability for high productivity!

Wasalam.

http://www.glom.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

I’m a GNU/Linux user (I only use window$, when I’m not using my computer, like now). I also don’t use proprietary software. I can understand that someone might need to use a proprietary software when there’s no Free Software for the same role. But there’s no real necessity in any other case. And I’ve to say that most pieces of Free Software I use are better than most proprietary alternatives for either Mac, or any other systems.

Access? That’s just garbage, just like other things (backpage, lookout, exchange, internet exploder, etc…). You can use MySQL with a modern GUI, for the same simple things, it’s fast and reliable. Have you ever saw a database done by someone without a tecnical background? It’s simply scary, you can’t trust in data integrity of thoes “databases”.

OS X it’s a great OS. Based in many Free Software projects. But Apple is just another pigopolist!