Why should MacOS be good?

i wonder whats the big deal about macOS... people say that it is more stable than windows. but what about the apps? firefox, icq, skype and those apps can be downloaded for mac and linux, but that's it. i hardly believe that you can get anything compiled under windows for windows run properly under macOS especially when it uses user3d.dll and such.

even worse is the so called "ubuntu" which colors look like dog**** and which almost nobody uses...
i wonder why there still is a little percentage using macos or even "ubuntu"...

All the programs would be recompiled for the specific machine.

I have found that 10.5 isn't as good as 10.5 - I have found that trying to copying the browser link code (after uploading a movie to YouTube) wont work - I have to copy it in bits...

And I wonder what's the big deal about Windows... I have a ton of Mac-only software that's not available for Windows - you know, creative stuff like Scrivener, Journler, Logic, Final Cut Studio... What I don't have on OS X, however, are those orgies of annoying bubble boxes popping up that are so Windows-like. Mac users usually don't care for Windows apps, and they also don't care for apps that look "ported". They only accept true native Cocoa apps. Period and end of discussion.

The market share discussion is about as fruitless as it gets. Enterprises standardized on Windows almost two decades ago -- that is the reason of Windows high market share. There was a need for a software standard without a lock-in to a specific hardware vendor. Microsoft delivered that product. And that's got nothing to do with quality, only with business models.

You should experience the Mac for yourself. I switched to the Mac after more than 20 years with Microsoft products, and I pretty much prefer OS X over Windows on the desktop. Both Apple and Microsoft suck big time as companies, and neither company really cares for its customers or developers. But at least Apple has put culture into their products.

There are more people that use this than you think. And yes the colour scheme is crap but it can be changed (hell install the right packages and you can change the window manager).


It is for one reason. MacOS X runs on a selected hardware configuration (in other word very limited), hence apple have better control mantaining MaxOS X drivers (like many laptops which have custom display drivers that can only be updated from the laptop vendor).

The only windows version that I find that is almost as stable as MacOS X (Tiger/Leopard) is MS Vista.



Obviously you haven't look very hard there then. There's loads of software around on the net you just have look past more than twenty Google search pages just to get get beyoned the Apple Inc stuff. The down side is that such software can cost the earth.


That isn't a MacOS X problem but a VM problem. Any thing that is emulated will not run as though it was running on real hardware.

And the winner of "The Most Ignorant Thread Started Today" goes to...


Use what gets the job done for you, and let others use what gets it done for them. To come on here and bash people's choices when you so clearly know nothing about them... sheesh.

'pc vs mac'-threads are usually neverending yes.. :P

you got that rightand that, too...

I use OSX in my Office, it's just an OS, you guys got too f**king excited about it.....!?

It looks a hell of a lot nicer than Windows, which for me is a consideration. It also feels a lot cleaner and more user friendly, IMO, especially compared to Vista. It doesn't hog massive amounts of system resources for DRM. The only thing stopping me using it is that I'm not shelling out for Mac hardware.

I thought we weren't supposed to discuss religion here.

I dont think commercial software on the Mac is more stable than on Windows - when I first got my Mac, I tried Photobooth - and it crashed straight away.

In addition, the current version of Flash has problems with some sites too, which is highly annoying.

It has a better look-and-feel than Windows, it is more stable than Windows, it is more secure than Windows, it is more complete than Windows.

1. Better look and feel: most users will tell you that although I think there are a few people that like the Windows 2000 look better o.0

2. More stable: there are two reasons for that: selected hardware configuration and the fact that Mac OS X is based of BSD.

3. More secure: also two reasons: black hats don't care so much writing malware for Mac and again: it's based of BSD.

4. More complete: a new Mac usually comes with Mac OS X itself (which contains a bunch of good software like address book, dvd player, iCal, iChat, iPhoto, iTunes, Mail, Photo Booth, Time Machine, GarageBand, etc.) and the software that you can install afterwards through the install discs like XCode (which contains so many programs that help you developing your applications, you hardly need any other program).

On the other side many programs won't run on OS X (many games for example) because Windows is the standard. It's Apples own fault, if they would create a OS X version for PCs they might have to rely on other vendors to deliver stable drivers but I really think many people would use it sice OS X itself doesn't cost as much as the most Windows versions. AND: OS X doesn't mistrust the user (no software registration etc.).

I really like my iMac and Mac OS X but I also have Vista Home Basic running via Bootcamp for Windows games and software.

I think both have their pros and cons.

My Mac sucks in terms of hardware performance on the gfx side and it's not really expandable but it's silent and nice to look at. The OS boots fast, i do have less crashes, no issues with viruses (but this is more due to the smaller market share instead of better technology but who cares as in the end it only counts how you experience it) and their update scheme is better. It generally feels more like an Amiga. I'm kind of limited on this machine but in a positive sense. There is less software around (just a fraction of what's available on win) but there do exist some really great shareware tools - just bought Audio Hijack Pro for instance. Gaming, at least the games i would like to play, is the dark side of OSX as all the games you want to play aren't available there.

My win machine on the other side is a flexible machine were you can put in what you want but it's hard building yourself a resonable system in terms of power consumption/peformance/design/pricing for instance if you're more after mobile components. Almost the whole software world is yours. A lot of rubbish as well but you always find enough pleasing apps and obviously the gaming situation is much better on windows too. If you're after emulation the Mac is way behind Windows with a lot of emulators.

From the usage there are things i dislike and like in both OSs like the wonderful easy possibilities to make screenshots or the pdf support in osx out of the box whilst in windows the explorer is much more effective to navigate and to organize stuff. OSX is built and priced more reasonable but you have to ignore the marketing and the zealots.

And so on...

Both aren't perfect and depending on what you have to do one is better than the other one. Leaving games and emulation beside i would favour OSX due to that it feels more reasonable in a whole. And the limitations which come with it often feel like a positive thing to me. I guess it's a little bit like if you are used to access everything on pirate boards and so getting all the stuff for free but having no time for actually using them vs. you can only afford a few apps/games but you actually have the time to learn how to use them.

Does it really matter? Putting down another operating system is like telling someone they have a bad taste in music. All have their strengths and weaknesses -- just use what you want and let other use what they want.

I liked their advertising campaign about how PCs are too complicated to turn on, and all you have to do is push a button on Macs.

My first proper time I used a Mac? Couldn't find the power button. Then you had to hold it in for the exact right amount of time. It took 5 seconds for it to do something (so I turned it off by pushing the button again not knowing if it was doing anything) and then I broke one just from trying to turn it on!

I don't care much what ppl use, as long as they aren't talking crap towards me like how bad Windows is bladibla and how much better their OS is bladibla. Last time I've seen a Mac was in a printing company where someone did some Photoshop'ing on a Mac, and within the 10 seconds I stood next to the guy, his Photoshop crashed. At the same time I can use my music PC for days with intensive mem/HD/CPU usage without a single crash. This would render all those mac/stable - pc/crash stories void. The way I see the diff between pc and mac is 'brand' and perhaps 'style'. The latter doesn't mean much to me, the first usually means things are more expensive as a brand costs money on its own.

@CS_TBL: It won't render the mac/stable - pc/crash stories void because all we mentioned was the stability of the SYSTEM, not of the 3rd party software. By the way: if an application on OS X crashes the app will be ended. If an app on Windows crashes you are lucky if it doesn't take the complete OS with it.

I'm doing a triple-boot setup on my Mac soon so will be running OSX/Windows/Ubuntu on the same Mac hardware. I prefer Mac hardware to PC hardware and I prefer the Mac OS to Windows/Linux, but putting that aside somewhat just to be able to support a larger market.

Why can't people just be happy using what they're using? By the way, Macs suck.

Shut your cakehole, Noel!! ;) hehehe
Mac's are cool..

how many macs are their (that are currently supported not retro models)

5? more? less?
when you have less 'models' 'flavours' or what ever you want to lable them as you can get your OS to work out of the box on all hardware platofrms
but pc's their are a gazillion combinations these days
so thats one thing that helps macs ... (afaik never gone mac shopping) limited choice
like the old days of amiga
a500(+)
a600
a1200
and their big box cousins

but also if you make the buttons nicer looking than just 'buttons' although nothing more than eye candy it can improve the feel of using the computer

but in the end the OS is what keeps the pc (including macs) going for you whilst you work on what ever program you are using

a digital photographer might want a mac for better editing software
if the software was evens across windows and mac os then it would probably be consumer preference (although pc's under cut macs 9 times out of 10 (i guess))

I've XP Pro SP2 and OSX 10.5.2 ... both has its benefit and its shortcommings, but together they are a great team actually.

At the moment I'm unsure if I should put a full windows installation on it through bootcamp as I mainly have it on here to run applications for stuff where no alternative is available or where the alternative costs money: Subversion, TexNicCenter, Blide to name the most important ones. Beside that, the Parallels emulation allows me to keep it "behind" the OSX networking, so less of a problem security wise.
For the rest, the available stuff seems to be more than enough, even GPGPU programming through CUDA is available to OSX as beta as well ...

hm, seems like the guy who draw this picture thinks that osx is easier than windows:

They used to say the same about C64/Amstrad and Amiga/Atari. Once Spore is out, and PC gaming finally dies the death it should have 6 years ago, these threads will go back to being "XBox360 vs. PS3".

I think it's okay as long as it "technological" or "geeky" religions. Like how Star Wars is much better than Star Trek.

Not really sure what the fuss is about. An OS is kind of like a handbag that you put programs in and thats about it. Just use the one that you feel suits you and be done with it.

Ubuntu can be any color, configuration or layout you want it to be, with weird and wonderful effects if you want them.
for eg: http://youtube.com/watch?v=p4KlLlQa2LM&feature=related (yes, even with a few games)
Myself, most of my mates, several co-workers, my mum and my girlfriend now use Ubuntu for serious computing as they have had it with windows and there are good alternatves (if not the real deal) for most progs people use. As for the little percentage, with hundreds of billions of dollars to back you up and dependency on your side, you could market cod roe as caviar and still sell it.

I have used all three and both MacOS(the unix based one) and the major Linux distros are not only better, more secure, more stable etc, but most importantly they come without all the BS like constant updates, ages before the pc becomes useable after logging in, spyware, websites that just by visiting can kill your PC or turn it into a zombie spam emailer, the need for ctrl+alt+delete>end task way too often, etc etc etc.

You could argue they come with different BS but IMO its nowhere near as annoying.

I can't remember the last time a crashing program caused my Windows to crash, that's BS.

Its good to get different perspectives on other OSs, never had the joy of MAC (no need ... yet). I confess, I put off leaving the Amiga until the Last edition of CUAmiga, nevertheless windows has provided me with some fantastic tools, a PIC burner (MPLAB), VB6 isn't all bad, VB.net (my hand was forced through college), oh, and last but by NO means least B3D and BMax.

Thanks for the opinions on the different OS's...

@D4NM4N:I have used all three and both MacOS(the unix based one) and the major Linux distros are not only better, more secure, more stable etc, but most importantly they come without all the BS like constant updates, ages before the pc becomes useable after logging in, spyware, websites that just by visiting can kill your PC or turn it into a zombie spam emailer, the need for ctrl+alt+delete>end task way too often, etc etc etc.

good point.

Its rare with XP(now) and vista but it still happens more often than it should. If something chews up enough cycles you cannot even ctrl+alt+delete, or you can but it takes like 10-20 minutes for the taskmon to appear. At least with Ubuntu etc. you can force another non-gui session (ctrl+alt+f1), log in and kill the offender (ps -e then kill xxxxxx) then switch back to the gnome/kde session (ctrl+alt+F6/7 or 8). This almost ALWAYS works as unix and linux kernels tend to be very robust. Im saying "almost" as i guess its -possible- but has never failed for me.

If XP gets blue screen then because you have a hardware device driver that was programmed by programmers not interested in stability but in "get it out fast". My Cynergy Hybrid XS USB2 analog / digital TV stick is such a thing. it somehow uses netmeeting or directmedia which per se is no problem but the moment someone requests a video conversation on MSN, the driver of that trash causes a straight bluescreen in its SYS file.
Same happens to some software firewall applications that install virtual "devices" into your network devices for filtering. if they aren't programmed in a clean way, wake on lan and the like can kill your system.

But other than that, no BlueScreen since SP2 was released at all.

I stil think a good kernel should simply crash the app and blacklist whatever the app was using rather than simply bailing out with a hard restart.

Practically every game will take Windows with it if/when it crashes (Call of Duty 4 comes to mind, John Woo's Stranglehold did the same). Just because you can't remember it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. In Linux you can ALWAYS get another terminal and kill whatever process is using up your resources.

I have had programs crash in Linux that takes out the whole machine.

I haven't, and ive been using it for 4 years full time (although im not saying its impossible, just EXTREMELY rare). It as always recovered for me using a kill via a non gui session (ctrl+alt+f1). The only reason i suspect this becomes impossible to do this is if something crashes either the video output or the keyboard input so you cannot do anything (or some kind of hardware failure/crash of course)

Well some people's computer crashes and takes out the whole OS and some people's don't, so can we stop with the "my computer does/doesn't do this, so EVERYONE's does it or my OS is better than yours".

As we can see we have a variety of Windows, Linux and MacOS crashing so what's the point saying Windows crashes the whole OS all the time and MacOS doesn't, because that's BS. That generalisation is what p-ed me off.

This p-ed me off too. I have a perfectly good memory thanks, as well, it'd seem, a more stable Windows computer than yours.

But I'm not doubting that others' do or don't if they say so, with whatever OS.

What we're on about is the frequency of crashing...

It all depends on what hardware and drivers you use, don't think it has too much to do with windows. My PC is 4 years old and has had a couple of crashes in that entire time.

I've seen more than one mac crash in kinkos when I had a bit print job, two systems on the same day. On the PC if you pick the right parts and don't dig around the insides of your machine you might never experience a problem. just like me.

Cygnus is always taking his PC appart and playing around with components inside, also seems to have some kind of magnetic field that destroys electronics including watches eventually and has pretty much the opposite problem to me :)

As I pointed out, it are often drivers that cause the bluescreen and no mather how good the kernel is, there is no way it can just kill the driver without theoretically asking for a chain reaction. Especially if it would kill firewall drivers, that are bound to other things and take your whole set of network device drivers to nirvana in the same step just as an example.

Oh I'm sorry. What does "I can't remember the last time a crashing program caused my Windows to crash, that's BS." mean then? Maybe in your version of English, bullshit is interchangeable with "I'm not doubting what you say"?

And yet you post two mutually exclusive statements in the span of 16 hours?

Sure it can. What do you think restarting eth0 does? Stops the driver, unloads it, reloads it, starts it again. There is no reason (except poor design) why you could not safely unload a crashed driver and restart it. Eventually Windows will catch up, I'm guessing about 8-10 years as that seems to be about what Microsoft are behind the curb.

Well it could but the restart will restart the firewall drivers as well as they are integrated to be part of the stuff. But they died and if they get reloaded, get killed by the security app again as they assume it to be a virus/worm interaction -> redie -> restart -> redie ...
The only usefull solution would be a break, notify the user of the problem and let him decide what to do.
Neither the automatic restart nor the BS are a solution in such a situation, and I am definitely not happy that trashy drivers cann BS the system. But given the fact they can kill Linux as well, I don't see why Windows should behave any better.

Thats the price of an open system ... you have to interact with stuff you have no control over.

Actually you can. Ive done it many times. For example trying to get a shyte belkin wireless card started. I guess it depends on how the system deals with the drivers. As long as the hardware itself is not locked up then the software side should have no excuses.
However other than that i totally agree with you, (especially where windows is concerned).

Agreed (again with the exception of poor design). More importantly every bit of hardware should have a soft-reset option, allowing the hardware to be reset by the drivers and/or OS.

I knew you were going to say that. It's called, making a figure of speech not meant to be taken literally.



This is what I was talking about, it's just blatent anti-Windows propaganda.


This was me giving you the benefit of the doubt and believing you when you say :


Though if you were not exaggerating then you should fix your computer, because my friends are avid Call of Duty players, including 4, and we have never experienced this problem.

Stretching my memory, so far this year I can only think of one game that would stop the OS when it crashed and that was because it's some really old game which wouldn't let you task switch out of it. I know Windows was still responsive (I could see the mouse pointer change cursor style at window edges etc) I just couldn't see it.

No it isnt, im an ardent user of windows, ive been with it since version 2 and DOS after and before that. I still say its shite and stand wholeheartedly by that statement. It is and always will be a ghost of its full potential due to bad and rushed design.

True. I remember a few years back when MS kept quiet about all the security holes in XP for six months. They said (when the bubble was bust) "We are developing a patch but its taking time because we don't want to break the OS" which in laymans terms means "We f**ked up big style"

Apple aren't all pearly white either. As it looks like some muppet forgot to make the default settings in the firewal to block all incoming conections. There may be otheres that may have be missed.

And just for the recored, I use all OS brands.

Ubuntu gives you freedom, Mac OS X/Windows and other unfree operating system don't. I like to own my computer.

If games crash your windows, then I would guess its not the Game that causes the crash but the hardware ... most likely the graphic card (thermal instability) / mainboard (thermal) or its drivers

I swear I'm going to give you a screenshot of my Ubuntu desktop next time I log into it.

I'll let you play "spot the difference" between Xp and Ubuntu. It looks like XP because I installed it on the missus laptop and *SHE COULD NOT TELL*

You're standing by a statement that I'm not talking about. Is it shite? Maybe. That's an opinion.

From my own personal experiance with Windows today, I'd say this is untrue and only a minority of crashes result in Windows crashing too. This is what I was talking about.

well its a 2 sided blade.
It gives you freedom in what to do
but on the other end very little freedom in which hardware you can use.

Not all games chrash windows. Just specific ones, recently anything that's "Gaming for Windows" (Kane & Lynch) and "Unreal 3" (Call of Duty 4).

What are you talking about? Hardware support is getting better at an increasing pace all the time, and the support is *really good* for all major parts. The only problems are with things like some webcams etc, hardware support is pretty good with Ubuntu.

http://badvista.fsf.org/what-s-wrong-with-microsoft-windows-vista

I guess you never have had to deal with the major manufactures then, whos support can be sketchy at best.

linux doesn't give you freedom. It restricts what software and hardware choices you have. It's only freedom to mess with the underpinnings of the OS, which is kind of boring anyway. Where's the freedom of software choice outside of utilities that most non techie people would rather stay away from anyway.

These days i buy hardware for the OS using the compatability charts not the other way round.
(For example you wouldnt buy a random PC and moan when OSX doesnt run on it would you?)
If some manufacturers cant be bothered to provide compatibility then its their loss.
On the other hand, saying that, i have had no problems with 7.10 on all the other laptops (friends etc) ive put it on.

Linux is fail - I think we're all agreed on that. :)

Only ever had problems with linux on laptops when using docking-stations

Hmm. I never saw a working wireless LAN on a Linux notebook. Ever. And I never saw a working plug & play solution for an external display on a notebook either.

You know, attach a DVI display to your notebook and instantly have an extended desktop to the external display. Or: Close the lid of your notebook and have your desktop on the external display only.

And, no, neither Fedora Werewolf's not openSuSE's nor Ubuntu's built-in features for that work. If you want any of that, you have to use either OS X or Windows.

Or simply set it up properly ;)

My wireless works perfectly on all 3 laptops with no fiddling whatsoever. The only time i had wireless problems myself was with a belkin. My external DVI and TV displays work fine too. I simply use ATIs tool to switch the displays.

The internal wireless system on my Linux laptop doesn't work. However, using a USB Philips one, it works fine.

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=h4iyksLeo7w&feature=related

Wireless works for linux, attaching multiple monitors works easy in Ubuntu etc

So does Windows. I think you'll find most hardware (particularly older stuff) will work much better under Linux than they ever will on Vista (for instance most more than 2 year old Creative sound cards). Also Windows doesn't even come with a compiler (only Windows Scripting Host, and seriously)! Or grep. Christ! Talk about limiting your software choices.

Ha - Microsoft can't win, can they?

They receive criticism like yours when they fail to bundle extra software with their OSs. When they do include extra software they are accused of trying to monopolise the market/crush the little man/etc.

No matter what they do, they're accused of "limiting software choices" in some fashion.

What are you talking about? Microsoft won 8 years ago.

No. They receive criticism like mine when they fail to supply even the most basic utilities, and instead we get such wonderful gems like solitaire cardgames, minesweeper and paint.

I didn't say they should add their own compiler to the OS. If they added Borlands, IBMs or even BRLs compiler to the OS, nobody could accuse them of monopolizing the industry, since they would then not be abusing their monopoly illegally.

Surely you can see why bundling IE with Windows is an attempt to monopolize the market segment, while bundling FireFox (for instance) and selling IE, would not be?

Well no. If they stopped going out of their way to destroy small software developers, and instead encouraged them to contribute usefully to the growth of the platform, you couldn't really accuse them of "limiting software choices". But yes, as long as they persist on intentionally crippling interoperability between Microsoft products, and everything else, people are going to call it as they see it.

What is critical about Windows in my opionion is that most users (lets say 90%) just go to nearest reseller grap a computer and don't think about what they're doing. I think that MacOS could be sold much better than it is today when everyone would just get some information about other operating systems.
Who just goes to a car-seller and buys a car without asking for a testride? Noone would, but many people aren't aware that there are many other possibilities than just Windows.

Windows definately has its pros like Linux has. I tried all three operating systems and for me Mac is the one that I can work best with. Allthough I still have an old computer that runs Win an Linux.

Woah
Undead thread or what!

Extra 2 cents: Recently i replaced my ubuntu partition with a suse one (actually it was this morning). I ONLY effected the ubuntu EXT3 partition. Now I can no longer boot vista. its thrown a wobbler saying that some file is corrupted (is it f*** i didnt even 'touch' it) Its almost as if it smelled a rival os and decided to be a pain. So yeah, on topic OSX and Linux are both better than windows, unfortunately dependence will keep people using it and keeping it hanging around forever like a hangover fart in a bedsit.

Unfortunately the "This superior operating system won't run the 90% of software in existence"-tidbit would be the dealbreaker to the vast majority of the people.

Like it or not, Windows (with all it flaws) still has a critical mass when it comes to market share, and that alone makes all other options marginal, regardless of their actual technical merits.

It's a bit of a catch-22...

I'm not even a fan of microsoft, but these claims of windows crashing all the time, or apps taking windows with it isn't true globally.

I keep my dev pc (windows) on for months at a time. Any time an app freezes up on me, the task manager has never failed me.

Any time in the past that I have run into 'windows' problems was because windows gave me too much freedom to mess with drivers and such; always been my fault or a poorly made applications doing.

People use what they prefer. Most of this topic is as dumb as religious debates as there is no getting through or 'converting' people.

Why dont we just say all the OS's suck and get on with another "<insert preference> vs <insert other preference>" topic.

I wish people did not say that, since it is absolutely not true. Ubuntu is always getting updates, any time of day and any day of the week. A few differences:

-Ubuntu's update manager is way better to use. Two clicks gets it going, then you can ignore the rest.

-Updates are centralized; you don't have Apple Updater, Adobe Updater and Norton Updater all trying to sell you stuff as they waste valuable resources at startup. Just one tool that is designed properly. (Neat discovery: Toribash is free again and has an apt repository. Automagic game updates = win).

-You do not wait until a beauraucracy is ready; you wait until the fix is ready and no longer. Case in point, the Debian LibSSL fiasco. Problem was realized, fixed and patches were downstream in distros like Ubuntu within one day. I greeted the pile of updates with much glee and amazement. Coincidentally, this was the day after Microsoft's Patch Tuesday. It also should be noted that the exploit - as a mere example - came after both the discovery and the resolution of that problem. All things considered, that was a really well handled mess.


PS: I don't want your worthless "90% of software". It is my opinion that a good 70% of Windows software is built by incompetent morons who hardcode paths such as "C:\Documents and Settings\" and don't think twice about it. You can see the incredible stupidity of software developers boiling over in Windows Vista just by looking at stuff which does not work. I think in most of those cases Windows is not to blame; that software was all terrible and should never have been encouraged.
The rest, excluding heavy DirectX stuff, works in Wine.

Besides that, people who use Windows ignore that there is a lot of neat software on Linux which has no Windows port. It's changing with a lot of KDE apps now that the KDE4 platform is able to run on Windows, but even so, you guys are missing a lot of cool stuff. Some examples...
F-Spot, Banshee, Tomboy, Evolution, Glom... GTK software generally is nicer to use in an actual GTK environment where themes and configurable menu accelerators work.

As for "crashed app takes down the system" in Linux, I do not doubt it. Something different here is that Linux is a monolithic kernel as opposed to a microkernel. (Mr Torvalds apparently hates microkernels, and I am gradually coming to understand his point). Most of the magic happens in usespace, so when you see horrible instability it could very well not be the whole system, or Linux the kernel to blame, but a big userspace system like the X server.

Its simpler to blame others for own incapabilities yeah, but that does not make the fact any better that Linux devs, while developing now stable stuff don't think further than their feets are long. Otherwise its hard to understand why they need that "instant fixes" and need multiple kernel patches per year.

The "all userspace" stuff is basically a good idea but both have their benefit and it yet needs to be shown that Linux is any better. It trades in one benefit for a corresponding bad thing bound to the architecture. There is and always will be shadow where there is light, no OS will be an exeption to that.

I use Windows and OSX. Gives me broad compatibility, a few nice apps on OSX and on top of that a WORKING Unix based X11 system. (something I've yet to see on Linux, especially the free-tuxies. At the current rate, SUSE and Mandriva will show the "click your OS" distributions how an OS is meant to work and to be handled)

Yeah, sorry i didnt mean it like that, of course it gets updates, all supported software does.

What i meant was there are "constant updates" yes, but it isn't "constantly updated" if you know what i mean :). ie. not totally "in-your-face" updates by every app you have installed, either at bootup or runtime, they dont do things like reboot timers and questions like "Reboot Now!?" which if in a hurry it is very easy to click yes.

What you said about a centralized updater (for everything), that you run when YOU want is what i was trying to say (ie. Without all the BS:). I tend to let the updates build up and install them when i am ready(every month/2weeks or whatever depending on the nature of them, as the need for them is not as security critical as on windows).

In fairness, your quoted portion of my post wasn't written very well. I know what you were getting at there, but I always fear that people misinterpret it as meaning "no support whatsoever because open source software developers are lazy... the GIT version control system is aptly named" -- which is definitely a misconception I do not want to see grown, especially as an unintended side-effect.
Just thought I would clear it up :)