Adobe AIR? Give me a list of non-Adobe employees who really care about AIR. Got ten fingers, no waiting. Does Chen really think that AIR is some major standard that merits out of the box support? Also, he seems to forget that Microsoft is put under ridiculous constraints when it comes to bundling software due to whining by companies that can’t tie their own shoes.

You might as well whine that an email client isn’t built-in, even though Windows Live Mail is a free download and can be bundled by PC vendors. As well as numerous other free email clients.

Snow Leopard is worth getting if you are willing to bet on its additions being properly exploited by developers. But unlike Windows 7, scarcely anyone with an old machine is going to look at Snow Leopard in a shop and decide it’s now time for a new system.

MacOS does contain FreeBSD baseutils. Correct.
MacOS does contain FreeBSD kernel code. Partially correct, but believe it or not there’s not much there anymore.
The Windows Unix Subsystem is a FULL BSD OS: False false false false false. Interix (Unix Subsystem) = BSD baseutils + GNU Toolchain + CSH/KSH + Perl + Xlib. Here’s a news flash, there is no “kernel” inside Interix, it utilizes the NT kernel.

No it is NOT. Darwin is XNU and is a hybrid of BSD and MACH technologies.

Additionally, BSD itself is not regarded as ’secure’ but OpenBSD is regarded as secure, as there are other BSD variations running around like FreeBSD that have significantly more vulnerbilities than Windows even.

BSD is an API set, a kernel interface API set. It is NOT MAGICAL!

If you want to run BSD, buy Vista or Win7, the Unix subystem that is a ‘check box’ to turn on is a FULL BSD OS subsystem running natively on the NT kernel along side the Win32/64 subsystem.

I hate the FUD and Myth regarding BSD and people STILL think it has ANYTHING to do with the security of OS X, as even the BSD designers will ‘gag’ if OpenBSD is compared in secuirty to OS X. (Just like the designer of the MACH kernel that works at Microsoft gags that such and ‘old’ kernel technology is still being used on OS X.)

PS Even the mighty OpenBSD was hit hard in the past few years, one example was when Berkley’s servers were compromised exposing Student data.

Citing BSD as a reason OS X is secure would be like me citing GoodYear tires as the reason a Corvette was fast – it depends on the tires, but that doesn’t make the car fast. Just like BSD doesn’t make OS X secure.

1) ****-Userland applications compiled in 64-bit; 64-bit kernel available
2) ****-Significantly improved multithreading with Grand Central
3) ****-GPGPU support
4) ****-Major update to Quicktime
5) ****-Tweaked UI

1)……….
64bit kernel is ONLY available on Server, Desktop Macs are NOT allowed to run with the 64bit kernel. 64bit Userland Applications means nothing, especially on OS X running on a 32bit kernel, as they are only getting additional address space and none of the other 64ibt advantages nor are running in a native 64bit mode on the Processor.

Apple has ‘hoped’ to put in the 64bit kernel for the desktop, but the driver hell that Vista and XP and Linux users have gone through over the past few years (which is now behind Windows) was going to cause Apple a massive outbreak of my scanner stopped working and I can’t get a driver and they had no solution and didn’t encourage hardware MFRs to get started on 64bit drivers.

2)……….
Improved multi-threading? Do people know why OS X had to update its multi-threading scheduler? Do people realize that Snow Leopard does not ‘fix’ the multi-threading/cpu problems, but only adds new APIs so that ‘newly’ written applications can properly multi-thread on multi-core processors?

This is where you go look up OS X and Funnel locks. As OS X is designed, and even Snow Leopard, its SMP support is horrid, as any process or driver can lock the OS and all running applications to use only one processor or processor core. This means that awesome Xeon Mac Pro with 8 CPU cores is most of the time running on one CPU as the other cores are usually locked from additional threads.

Why is this important? Because it is SO INSANE most of the UNIX and Windows world doesn’t have a clue that OS X does this as it is so stupid they never actually questioned the CPU scheduling in OS X. (Especially since BSD and MACH on their own do SMP wonderfully and Windows NT and Linux have been doing a good job at multi-core and multi-cpu support since the early 90s.

When Apple did the XNU and married the BSD to MACH kernel hybrid, they focused on overcoming multi-threading on a single CPU, as the kernel design they created was inherently bad at queue locking at the kernel and not multi-tasking very well. However, when doing this, they destroyed the SMP abilities of OS X to get the performance out of a single CPU system.

Snow Leopard only adds some multi-cpu threading APIs to duct tape ‘new’ applications.

3)……….
GPGPU support? This is not as major as it sounds, as GPU processing technologies were added to Windows over the years without an OS update from third parties. PhysX for example.

If you want to see REAL GPU processing in an OS, go look at Vista, that not only ADDS DX10 GPU computing API sets, but a real GPU scheduler and GPU manager that OS X has no concept of and will cause application bottlenecks as it doesn’t pre-emptive schedule or delegate the GPU at all.

Win7 adds DX11 with more GPU computing API sets, and as NVidia said themselves, OpenCL is a ‘reduction’ in features of their CUDA and GPU technologies where Win7 DX11 fully takes advantage of all the CUDA and future NVIdia technologies do to the architectural design.

4)……….
QuickTime Update? Windows has had Several Windows Media ‘technology’ and Player updates over the years for free and in service packs, this is not something that warrants a new OS. Heck, Windows even got VC1 (WMA/V 9) technologies for free, and they are now a HD standard unlike QuickTime’s bastardized version of MPEG4.

5)……….
UI Tweaks? Wow, those are some major updates requiring $$ from the users and a full OS install uh? Wait, they are minimal.

—————————————
So is Snow Leopard a ‘minor’ update or a service pack?

I say it doesn’t even get close to being a full service pack, as SP2 of XP added in more featuers and architectural changes by a factor of 10 to 1 over what Snow Leopard adds to Leopard. Go look up the changes in SP2 of XP, it was massive. Heck even look up Vista SP2, the list of ‘little’ changes is more than what Snow Leopard is giving users.

Darwin (kernel and command line tools of OS X) is based on BSD, which is regarded by computer scientists as one of the more secure operating systems in wide spread use today. When people want extremely good security, they choose OpenBSD. Windows 7 is certainly more secure than Windows XP, but it doesn’t come close to BSD or OS X in terms of security. OS X isn’t secure through obscurity–its BSD guts have been running some of the most critical internet infrastructure for the last 3 decades. People have had plenty of time to probe the security of BSD and try to find the backdoors. In comparison, Windows 7 has yet to prove itself.

“The DRM exists in Windows to satisfy the MPAA and RIAA”

Microsoft was not dragged kicking and screaming to DRM by the MPAA and RIAA. It was a very eager promoter of DRM from the beginning, but has largely failed to get others to sign on to Trusted Computing and Palladium schemes. Still, look at the DRM in Windows Genuine Advantage in Vista and WAT in Windows 7 and it is very obvious that Microsoft clearly wants DRM for its own purposes. Read the “Final Thoughts” section of Peter Guttman’s essay (http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html#thoughts) to understand Microsoft’s strategic interest in promoting DRM. Nonetheless, Apple is hardly any better on this issue since it implements DRM in its effort to promote its OS as a media player of “premium content”. If you care about your freedom from DRM, avoid both Windows and Mac. BSD and GNU/Linux are much better choices in this respect.

As for my system, it’s sticking with XP (plus the 7 RC until it expires), as there’s absolutely no reason to upgrade on what was a budget machine when I bought it in 2005. But my next system will be a PC running Windows 7.

It is extremely hard to create an “unbiased” review of operating systems (much like politics). Everyone has their own “camp” they’re loyal to. Mac people are pushing Mac’s “strengths”. Windows people tout Windows’ “flexibility” and the like. Meanwhile, Linux people just cry “open source, open source” to everyone else. You have an opinion one way or the other.

Mac has issues, Windows has issues. These issues were worked out a lot with these new releases. Mac has good features that were taken and used on Windows. Windows has good features that were taken and used on Mac OS. That’s just how it works. Everyone cries fowl when they do this (either way), but let’s face it – without these features, would you want to use the OS over the other one? That’s how competition works.