[OT] Music CDs

[The Natural Philosopher]

I've seen things go awry on Mac updates mate.

And on hardware installs.

No software is perfect.

E.g. Mac filenmes used to be case insensitive.

Until they weren't

Format a partitin as case sensitive and watch half te software you have installed fall over as sloppy coding meant that 'myconfig.cfg', 'MyConfig.CFG' 'MYCONFIG.CFG' were all acceptable ways to access teh SAME FILE.

Dont even MENTION Mac Font nightmares.

The fact is that peripheral manufacturers know that 5% of the market is MAC and thats worth writing decent drivers for, and MAC OS X is basically BSD unix with a pretty face, so its inherently more stable than Windows, anyway.

The extraordinary thing is that Linux (Mint, anyway) is now I believe ahead of windows in terms of ease of installation.

In my experience its pretty much like 'XP that actually works reliably and faster on 64bit machines'

The only two isssus vis a vis windows are that peripherals either just work, or they just dont.

Since my early experiences with Debian, messing around with config files has largely been eliminated.

The other issue is the ability to run programns taht simply dont exist for linux.

For that there is virtual box.

32 bit XP in a virtual box boots in a few seconds, crashes about as much as it always did, and does what it always did, and somewhat better since it doesn't have top do more than erun (in my case) 4 legacy windows programs I need, and one I dont..

[Tim Streater]

They still are.

Well, don't do that then.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well why would they let you if they didnt mean you to?

[whisky-dave]

I've run leap motion on this Mac to test the device after a student returned it.

I use carbon copy cloner to copy HD SSDs and as a means of backup.

There's many 3rd party software programs too W£rd rate hardware rarely has mac drivers as no on ewould want those products that have a mac as there are better more relible options that do run on a mac.

[whisky-dave]

In what way, somnetime the Mac restarts more than once but I've yet to see an update do serious harm to any Mac system.

When and what ?

Most isn't but few will do serious damage on the Mac anyway.

When was that then ?

In the days when PC filenames couldn't be longer than 8 characters ?

When was that then ?

as you can still format a drive so that the filenames are case sensative.

Are those really Mac files, they look more like PC names to me .

When has Mac EVER used the 8+3 and config is a PC file .

Not had one since around mid 1990s and was easy to sort out.

No it's 10% or higher, if yuo count the older macs which are still in use, whereas PCs get thrown out.

Ah config files ....

and then you have to buy windows OS (to be P.C) .

The reason most use linux is because it is free and the users expect softwarre to be free too so that's why adobe amonst others arenlt interested in supporting a platform where few are prepared to spend money on software.

Yes and PC software the OS's run well on almost all macs and better in some cases than they do ON PC hardware.

[Vir Campestris]

Printers and scanners shouldn't need drivers with any privileges. Memory and discs shouldn't need any at all.

Video cards? Yep, that's a thing. I didn't know about those.

Andy

[The Natural Philosopher]

They for sure need at the least under CUPS a PPD file for printers.

Scanners? Absolutelly they need drivers. Or some kind of configuration.

Ive had scaknners that simply didnt work on Macs.

Memory

Indeed not, but teh poimnt was about te claim that there was no third party hardware on a Mac.

Well only a very few will work, that Macs support or use already.

[whisky-dave]

Virtually everything needs some sort of driver as they need to identify themselves to the USB bus.

[Vir Campestris]

The point I intended to make was that there are very few 3rd party _drivers_ for a Mac.

A lot of the old Windows Blue Screen was down to crap drivers.

But by no means all of it!

(In fact a couple of times I've been to Seattle to make sure our drivers played well with Windows and all the other drivers)

Andy

[whisky-dave]

Most are already part of the Mac OS, so not realy needed as with software most is included that most people need. That's one big advantage of USB.

Because windows didn't support them so relied on 3rd party writers which isnlt always a good idea.

You have to go to another town to check drivers ?

[Steve Walker]

Because anyone could create their own hardware and write the appropriate drivers for them, whereas Apple required everything to be done through them keeping it a much more closed and therefore expensive system.

SteveW

[whisky-dave]

and viruses and anything that could cause problems with the hardware and software you already had.

I bought a WD HD for £84.99 at PC exactly the same price as a windows user would pay. So explain how it is more expensive on a Mac. I can get adobe CC for the same price on a Mac as I can on a PC. explain how that.

I can buy word for Mac or PC for £110 they are the same price.

[dennis]

But can you buy a graphics card?

[whisky-dave]

Yes but I don't need to because it's already present in fact I can most likely drive more monitors than your PC can via thunderbold.

I can run the interanal and 2 external monitors up to a resolution of 2560 by 1600 pixels. Without even buying a graphics card . And that's with a 2011 iMac.

So tell me why I;d want to buy another graphucs card ? and why do you need to buy a graphics card ?

[dennis]

Because decent graphics cards do more than drive a display.

[whisky-dave]

So what graphics card do you have and what else does it do ? and are you saying the one that came with your PC is crap so you needed to replace it ?

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You said your mac can do everything without an additional card?

For those who don't want all those features, why pay for them?

[dennis]

If you don't know then don't buy graphics cards.

They get better all the time, you may want to upgrade after a few years.

You probably don't need to upgrade the CPU these days.

[whisky-dave]

No I didn't, it can't make tea, but it can do everything I;ve wanted it to do for since I bought it. There's only been one occasion back in the ealry 2000s when my tower G4 couldn't play command and conquere zero hour it was just too slow and not enough grphics memory So I aquired a new graphics card ATI with doublke the memeory, put that in evertything worked first time I didn't need to install any drivers either.

Why do people buy cares that can exceed the speed limits ? Few get the chance to go on a race track to see if they can do a ton (tonne)

So why buy a grahics card if you already have one in your PC ?

[whisky-dave]

or a few weeks if you buy a low end PC which most likely will need a bigger PSU and faster memory.

But you could change the mother board , maybe the case will still be OK.

But I prefer deciding on the computer I want and get that rarther than spend time faffing with upgrades all the time.

Like my TV I';m still happy with HD, sure there's 4k ultra and even 8K soon, and threre;s those new roll up TVs, but I accept I can't replace my TV screen with a 4K or 8K if I want one I'll buy one. I didn't want 3D so I didn't buy a 3D TV. In furture perhaps VR or OR will come to a TV and guess what I'll buy a new TV. Or do you replace graphic cards in TVs ?