« Today on Stupid AppleScript Tricks | Main | More on Leadership done right »

Dear Windows people without any knowledge of the Mac Market whatsoever, or no ability to do research, please...stop. Just stop talking about Apple and the Mac like you know what you're on about, because well, you don't.

Take Matt Freestone of Windows Connected, and his blog post: The Vista Schoolyard Bullies........

He's trying to defend Vista and how users of older machines simply should not expect the same performance out of it as a new machine. That's logical. That's not really why people are pissed about Vista performance, but okay, we'll go with that.

But Matt has to compare Vista to something, and of course, he uses Mac OS X 10.5. The problem is, he doesn't know anything about the Mac market:

Before I explain some common sense things, let's first take a look at Apple's OS history and deployment strategies.  I ask you, how many Apple users do you know that own a 3 year old Mac, and install Leopard on it?  The silence is deafening.

If by "silence" you mean "The sound of PowerMac and iMac G5 owners running happily along", then yes, the silence is deafening. Yeah. See, G5s, while not as fast as a current Intel system for a lot of reasons, are not dogs.

You also have quite a few PowerBook G4 users on Mac OS X 10.5. Again, not as fast as a MacBook or a MacBook Pro, but none of those systems are running Mac OS X 10.5 in "Crippled Mode". Obviously, it didn't occur to Matt to go to Apple's support site and do a little research If he had, he would have found every machine released in 2005, (three or so year old hardware), listed nicely for him. But never let a lack of research slow you down, and Matt doesn't. He presses on:

All the Mac OS's through it's life cycle have been hardware dependant.  In other words, for the most part, you bought a new PC to get the new Mac OS.

Matt is so far out in left field here, he's in right field. While Apple does regularly cut off older hardware from the latest OS releases, that is still not, nor never has been the same as "You have to buy new hardware to get new OS versions", nor is it even close. In fact, prior to Mac OS X, Apple would constantly provide for truly ancient hardware in their OS releases. Mac OS X 10.5 still supports a machine with at least an 867MHz G4, 512MB of RAM, and a DVD drive. You have to go back into 2002 to start hitting sub-867 MHz G4s. Now, Mac OS X 10.5's performance on those machines won't be anything close to a Mac Pro, or even an Intel Mac Mini. But, if you have a decent G4 Tower with a good video card and decent RAM, you can run Mac OS X 10.5, and well. You certainly won't see any kind of OS degradation on a scale with VIsta's "NoAeroForYou!" issues.

However, Matt's got the backhoe firewalled, no slowing down here:

Obviously that has changed in the last 5 or more years, and has changed more drastically with Apple's adoption of Intel processors.  But still, this question is a valid one.  Mac OS's have never been designed with backward compatibility (hardware wise) in mind.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong. In fact, prior to Mac OS X, you could easily have Macs that were ten years old still on the list of supported systems for a given OS release. That caused Apple no end of pain, and that tendency to be far too generous with hardware support was a major factor in the death of Copland. But even in the Mac OS X era, neither Matt's facts, nor his implications are correct. However, we are in the Scoblelite era of "Fuck Research and Facts, that's what your readers are for". Somehow, I bet a similarly inaccurate screed by a Mac Web site be greeted with equanimity by the Mattster there. He now brings out the strawman:

Why?  Simple, Apple is a hardware vendor, not just a software vendor.  Apple makes 50% of it's profit from the hardware.  It's against their best interest for you to simply upgrade your old computer with their new OS.  They want you to buy a brand new computer.  This is a very liberating thing as it allows them to design the OS to take advantage of the latest hardware and provide much 'cooler' user interfaces as they don't have to worry about older or slower hardware not being able to run it. 

Actually, by that logic, Apple could easily get people to buy more hardware without giving a rat's ass about what OS they run on it. Matt's implications here are not just wrong, but bordering on stupid. Dell is a hardware company, Apple is a systems company. Apple sells you a system, of hardware, OS and application software all designed to work well together. Dell sells you a box and if you want, puts an OS on it. There is a difference, but I don't expect Matt to understand it. I only want him to stop talking about shit he doesn't really understand, or do a little damned research. Finally:

So again, I ask you.  How many Mac users have wanted to install Leopard on a 3 year old Mac, and if they do, how many complain about it's performance?  They don't because they knew it would be horrible.

<Raises Hand> I have several G4 machines running Mac OS X 10.5. Honestly, when it just comes to running the OS, it feels no slower than Mac OS X 10.4 did, and some things, like Spotlight, actually feel faster under Mac OS X 10.5. Same thing for G5s.

If Matt wants to make a point about unrealistic expectations for Vista, that's fine, but he should stick to things he knows, and folks, Macs are not in the set of "Things Matt Knows".

Technorati Tags:
Blogosphere = Dorkosphere, Blogosphere = Stupid, Mac OS X, Microsoft Vista, Don't Talk Out of your ass

Comments

Warning for Notes users: The commenting system uses HTML.
I know this will be scary for some of you, especially Notes fans. However, open standards, rah-rah.
If you want to use less-than or greater-than signs, or other similar charachters that HTML reserves,
you'll simply have to learn to do it the HTML way. Luckily, HTML is kind of popular, no matter what
your re-educators have told you, and you can easily find help on the intertubes.

Ha, what a douche. Let's see here. My Quicksilver G4 shipped with OS 9. When I retired it, it was running Tiger (admittedly there was a processor upgrade somewhere in that period). My brother's stock MDD G4 is running Leopard.

Posted by: Angry Drunk | May 1, 2008 4:14 PM

My original Mac Mini (Jan '05) runs Leopard just fine. It's not the fastest computer in the world, but it does its job quite nicely. On the other hand I just finished setting up a Dell laptop that shipped with Vista and gets a 1.0 "experience score".

Posted by: Matt Stocum | May 1, 2008 4:24 PM

I agree with his lack of research, but it's also true that Leopard does not play as beautifully with PowerPC systems as Tiger did. Tiger, I was able to run perfectly well on computers that were 5 or 6 years old at the time, and I never complained much about it. I might have stuck some more RAM in, and we're done.

With Leopard, I found that my 4 1/2 year old PowerBook G4 (1 GHz, I think) was pretty sluggish even with 2 GB of memory, especially compared to Tiger. HOWEVER, it's sluggish when I'm running modern applications, like Photoshop CS3. It's not sluggish for Web, email, Word processing, etc.

My 5-year-old dual 1.25 GHz PowerMac G4 is just fun running Leopard. It had enough oomphf and has enough RAM that it seems to cope with Leopard very well. I don't get translucent menu bars, thank god, but I was able to use it as my test Leopard box and was very happy with the performance.

My 5-year-old PCs can't run Vista. A laptop I bought to use XP in 2003 could barely run XP SP2, in fact, with all the anti-virus, etc., I had to install on it to make it safe.

Posted by: Glenn Fleishman | May 1, 2008 4:34 PM

I meant to say "just fine" running Leopard. It's serious business.

Posted by: Glenn Fleishman | May 1, 2008 4:36 PM

My 1GHz 12" PowerBook G4 was no slower running Leopard than Tiger, once indexing was complete. Of course, when running more demanding applications it slowed down, but again... no more so under Leopard than Tiger. Application software demands had increased on it, nothing more or less.

Posted by: sdf | May 1, 2008 4:53 PM

Maybe you misunderstood him. Maybe he meant "how many Apple users do you know that own a Mac that is exactly 3 years old, and install Leopard on it?" That would reduce the numbers.

And I too am using a soon-to-be 5 year old PowerBook G4 (12", 1 GHz) with Leopard.

Posted by: nomore | May 1, 2008 6:16 PM

Also, the twerp can't punctuate. Possessive 'its' has no apostrophe. I have a simple rule: if you can't spell and punctuate, your thoughts are not worth reading.

Posted by: Simon Pride | May 1, 2008 7:26 PM

Never heard of Matt Freestone before today and I'm obviously not missing out on anything. He is a waste of pixels and bandwidth at minimum. He may even be a waste of good hydrocarbons and trace minerals based on what he is apparently doing with his time on the planet.

Thanks, John, for acting as a bozo filter for the rest of us.

@Glenn Fleishman on May 1, 2008 4:34 PM
I wouldn't place the blame on Leopard for poor performance of Photoshop CS3 with your old PB G4.

First of all, I find that the CS3 apps suck donkey balls for performance on anything less than a dual G5 PowerMac, even when running Tiger. So place some blame with Adobe for poor (and late to market) code instead.

Secondly (and primarily *grin*) expecting CS3 to perform well on a 4.5 year old PB clocking at around 1GHz is unreasonable, I think. I'm no Adobe fan, but dude...

Posted by: Wrinkle_In_Time | May 1, 2008 9:41 PM

Satisfied 1.25 G4 Mirrored Leopard user here. What's always amazed me about my Macs going way back is just how long they stay relevant. I'm on five years now. Sure, the wife has an Intel box so I can run dev tests and stuff, but sheesh, five years and each OS iteration seems to have made the machine faster! (this has been true for much of the OS X cycle)

My Apple problem has always been that eventually I HAVE to upgrade and I don't know what to do with the perfectly good machine I'm replacing.

Posted by: ricket | May 1, 2008 11:18 PM

Pet peeve alert! I can't stand writers who pass themselves off as professionals when they can't even freaking punctuate properly: "Apple makes 50% of it's profit from the hardware."

It's. IT IS, contracted. Its is the flipping possessive.

What an idiot.

Posted by: PigInZen | May 2, 2008 12:28 AM

Systems I installed Leopard on:

1.2ghz PowerBook G4 (Q1 '04)
Launch iMac G5 (Q3 '04)
May '05 iMac G5 refresh (May 2005)
Core Solo Mac mini (Q2 '06)

Systems which improved in performance over the operating systems they came with: all of them.

I have a friend with an ancient iMac DV, too... Wondering if I can wedge it on there. ;-) I mean, I stuck Tiger on a first-run beige G3 with a bit of effort, so I feel I have to try!

Posted by: cthellis | May 3, 2008 7:16 AM

"Mac OS's have never been designed with backward compatibility (hardware wise) in mind."

I think you missed out some of the best hilarity here. Call me crazy, but when I had my first Mac, a Performa 6115CD (I know, not the best machine even in it's day), it had a PowerPC 601 in it. Yet it could run 68k apps.

I remember when I first switched to Mac OS X, Classic let me run older Mac OS 7.X to 9.X apps.

I also remember when I got my first Intel Mac running non-native software through Rosetta. In fact, I still have a couple of things that use Rosetta.

If that's not backwards compatibility, then there must be no such thing.

Posted by: Scott Lewis | May 6, 2008 7:08 PM

His pluralization of Mac OS (using an apostrophe-s) also rankles.

Posted by: Jason | May 6, 2008 7:36 PM

Actually, the original iBook G4s ran at 800 MHz, and they were available until early 2004, I believe. But the point still stands; my 1.25 GHz iBook G4 runs Leopard just fine. The only downside is hard drive use requirements.

Posted by: DTNick | May 6, 2008 7:44 PM

I hate to beat a deadhorse but my dual 1.42 G4 is running leopard just fine as is my 1 Ghz G4 12 inch powerbook. But alas my sparc station is still running solaris 9 and my pismo is still running Mac OS 9, oh well, I'll take it :)

Posted by: dogcow | May 6, 2008 7:53 PM

I just happen to be writing this on a 3 year old Powerbook G4 running Leopard. It's my main machine, even though we have an Aluminum iMac in the house.

But before we got the iMac last month, our primary desktop was a G4 400. Sawtooth. Circa February 2000. Running Leopard.

Posted by: monkyhead | May 6, 2008 8:28 PM

@Wrinkle_in_time: "I wouldn't place the blame on Leopard for poor performance of Photoshop CS3 with your old PB G4."

You misunderstand me. My needs include running that program, and my PowerBook G4 was perfectly adequate with Tiger and an older Photoshop, but when I upgraded to Leopard and CS3, it was outstripped.

And, despite your statement, yes, I have heard from many folks that the same software running under Leopard as under Tiger performs more poorly under Leopard on a G4. G5, I don't know.

This isn't to say the PB G4 can't run Leopard; it can't run it marvelously, but it works fine. I'll sell my PB G4 to someone who will likely be very happy with it.

Posted by: Glenn Fleishman | May 6, 2008 9:05 PM

I'm running Leopard just fine on a 2003 MDD G4. No deafening silence here.

Posted by: brett | May 6, 2008 9:34 PM

My mac that I bought in August 2003 ran much faster than the day I bought it when I installed Leopard on it. It never even occurred to me not to install Leopard on it. That's on a machine that is closer to five years old, albeit I'm talking about original Power Mac G5. I guess Windows PCs (which I haven't touched in years) are in a much poorer state than I thought. Their users can't even imagine using the latest OS on machines three years old. That seems so ridiculous.

Posted by: PierceWM | May 6, 2008 11:45 PM

I'm writing this comment on a 2004 iBook G4 1GHz that's at least as snappy under Leopard as it was under previous iterations. One thing that I've appreciated since switching is that Apple always offers some performance tweaks with the annual point upgrade, while I'm comfortable running a 2001 OS (XP) on my 2003/4 desktop hardware. (To get past 1.0 for Vista, I'd need to rip out the motherboard for PCIe graphics, which would likely mean replacing the CPU and RAM too.)

I know I'm heading towards the point where the Intel line becomes hard to resist -- Parallels or VMWare Fusion, along with other Intel-friendly or more demanding software -- but picking up on Glenn's point, I expect that a chunk of that MacBook's price will be covered by selling on my iBook, for a fair bit more than a PC laptop of the same vintage and price range.

Posted by: Nick Sweeney | May 7, 2008 1:05 AM

Well, my PowerBook G4 is a 2004 machine with 1.25GHz and 768MB RAM and Leopard works wonderful on it. I guess some people just have no idea what they are talking about.

Posted by: Tice | May 7, 2008 2:56 AM

I think my Mac is from 2002. I have a Dual 867 MHz PowerMac G4 (MDD). I got it on Ebay almost four years ago. I have all four HD bays filled plus a SuperDrive in the second Optical Drive Bay, an extra video card, a wireless card. I haven't had any problems whatsoever, and I use it 12 hours a day, every day.

Of course I am running Leopard, why wouldn't I?. It has been great. Every time I upgrade the computer gets faster. I have only 1.75 GB of RAM, but everything is smooth (coverflow view of files could load faster). I run FCP HD 4.5 on it. Best system I have ever used. My third party wireless card (also off Ebay) worked as soon as I popped it in and restarted.

Posted by: macdougal | May 7, 2008 3:26 AM

Of course, the main reason that older PCs don't do as well as older Macs is that Apple designs and specs better hardware than you get as standard in the PC market.

It doesn't help though that Microsoft seems to have totally lost the plot recently. I think maybe they fell into the trap of thinking that they could do no wrong, that the corporate market would always support them and so on and so forth. And quite *what* their UI designers think they're up to, I don't know. I thought XP was a step in the wrong direction, but with Vista they seem to have taken a giant leap.

Mind-you, I shouldn't complain. Every person switching to the Mac increases the size of the market for my company's software.

Posted by: alastair | May 7, 2008 5:25 AM

I've gone so far as to install Leopard on a 700Mhz G4 using a simple 'boot using firewire mode from alternate hardware.'

Machine runs fine.

Anyone can make silly claims about hardware, software, and relative performance. Few get it right for either platform.

Posted by: dkbarto | May 7, 2008 8:48 AM

No news is good news.

We have 10.5 running on PPC and Intel Xserves and, touch wood, no problems so far.

Posted by: nickpt | May 7, 2008 12:54 PM

Running 10.5.2 on my 2002 1 Ghz 12" G4 Powerbook without issue. Certainly no substantial slowdown from the OS.

Posted by: LarvaMoose | May 7, 2008 2:27 PM

We run my company J-List (online shop in Japan) on Macs. Our oldest machine in use right now is a 2 ghz G5, so that's a little shy of a slow G4, but Leopard is fine and we realize no hit or penalty by upgrading. Oh wait, I've got a Mac Mini in use too, that's equivalent to a Powerbook G4, and it runs as well as it ever did, too.

Posted by: Peter | May 8, 2008 3:29 AM

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: