I has a confession. [rant]

[XLR8A]

I become centered on computer technology only at the moment of purchase when i need a stable reliable and powerful computer for my studio, but i'm not one of those people who obsessed with upgrading all the time and messing with computers in general. Maybe that's why i prefer OSX over Windows, OSX lets me concentrate on the music and get more things done in less mouse clicks. And maybe that's why i never tried making music on Linux, it's a masochism of the highest order imho.

[LivePsy]

AppleInsiders industry comments (Mac vs Windows) are usually good. This is is a good call on the current state of them-

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...windows_7.html

I miss the age of tech innocence where nothing got updated, in fact it never needed to be updated. It did what the manufacturer designed. OK, things weren't as complicated back in the day, I'm referring to 80s and 90s digital synths, samplers and midi sequencers. But we've lost a sense of permanence and I suspect there is some plain old lazy coding because it can all now be fixed in an update.

I'd exclude the TI though, because its an extremely ambitious target trying to work with constantly moving OS's and DAW software. The synth part of the TI has been very good for some time. OS's however are a treadmill of updates, compatiblity mismatches and bugs being deliberately unnoticed by the coders. We're all dragged into something we didn't sign up for when we bought a computer.

B

[Timo]

Originally Posted by LivePsy

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...windows_7.html

Seems to me that Apple are rattled by Windows 7, and want as many people to join the Mac platform bandwagon before Win7 is formally released.

I was looking at WWDC this year (Apple's yearly convention) with regards to getting a macbook pro, but touchscreen OLEDs and Intel's new Nehalem architecture are waiting in the wings chez Apple, probably Christmas time. Think I may wait until then.

But there's quite a big difference between the two companies and their products.

Apple's success is their platform tied in with their hardware.
Microsoft's success is the fact their platform can work with every bit of PC hardware, but Microsoft in contrast to Apple don't dedicated PC hardware of their own. Microsoft's OS is 'open' in that way.

When it comes down to it, they're catering for two completely different areas of the market, so the execution of their products is also very different.

[LivePsy]

Timo, if you were an OS developer, which would you prefer: to own the hardware and write the OS to integrate with it, or write the OS and leave the hardware to someone else? I dunno which is better.

Personally, I'm surprised (but pleased) that Apple are still around. I also really like that OS X and Logic Studio don't require activation to run. I'm free to install on my hardware without concern that the software only runs if the manufacturer permits it. Virtualised Windows is a great idea because the image is portable. I use XP on the Mac inside Parallels so I can use Sound Forge along side Logic. It works quite well and I can always restore a backup of the virtualised image if I wish. I feel that is much safer than finding out that Microsoft, Sound Forge or Ableton Live don't want to activate on the PC. The difference is slim between software you rely on and dead files taking up disk space.

Cheers,
B

[XLR8A]

Originally Posted by LivePsy

if you were an OS developer, which would you prefer: to own the hardware and write the OS to integrate with it, or write the OS and leave the hardware to someone else? I dunno which is better.

Does Apple designs and manufactures the hardware used in todays Macs? Did it wrote it's current OS from scratch or it's a modified version of Unix? Does it even writes the drivers for 99% of Mac compatible hardware? Microsoft, on the other hand...

[LivePsy]

Originally Posted by annikk.exe

For Internet Security software, I rate Kaspersky pretty highly. It has a number of features that are genuinely useful and simply are not found in other softwares that purportedly do the same job.

For example, Kaspersky will let you see exactly which ports you have open, what traffic your computer has been having (how much, where it was destined or received from, etc), and shows a list of your active connections.

This is very handy for monitoring suspicious looking applications - if they connect to the internet and start doing stuff, you can see which process is creating the connection, the IP address they are connecting to, and how much data they are transmitting.

Kaspersky Lab also release updates more frequently than any other Internet Security Suite. An average of 2-3 updates every day is entirely normal, and the update process happens totally in the background without any user intervention required whatsoever. It's completely transparent and has never interrupted my work, ever. In some cases updates are released at a rate of one per hour. Their tech support department are awesome and every single member of staff I have dealt with has been exceptionally knowledgeable and overly willing to help me fix my problem.

Like many things on PCs, it takes a little bit of work to set it up. Once it is running, you'll never even know it's there. Unless something tries to hax you, of course... then it rears up with a vengeance and allows you to smite would-be attackers with a single mouse click.


-Annikk

Its been a long time since you said that, but yesterday I installed Kaspersky for File Server on a SBS2003 server to finally get rid of a Trojan which Symantec Endpoint Protection didn't know about. I had previously gotten lots of cleaned up viruses every day but the source of it all went unnoticed. Thumbs down SEP, and thumbs up Kaspersky.

B