Anti-Windows Catalog

Snow Leopard smells like Vista

Written by Gordon Fecyk, 10/21/2009

I'VE BEEN CHEATED out of two years of the great Microsoft Windows Experience. No client, no employer, no family members let me play with Windows Vista. And here I am, sitting on the night before the release of Windows 7, playing with...

MacOS X Snow Leopard.

Seriously, anyone can take a PC and cram Windows 7 into it. But it takes a real geek to take a PC, and cram the impossible into it. I figure, hey, they didn't let me play with Vista, they won't let me play with Windows 7, so I'll go play with a pretend Macintosh.

Big mistake. Why would I shoe-horn an operating system on a PC that doesn't even work right on a real Mac?

SNOW LEOPARD MAKES ROOKIE DESIGN MISTAKES. I'm talking about pre-Y2K "Linux speaks NT" rookie design mistakes, and that's even after installing 10.6.1:

• The only user that can set printers up is the user that first installed the system. Any other user can't fix the printer they just installed. Or print anything. (No, I don't have a link; I discovered this one on my own.)
• When Snow Leopard talks to Active Directory, it talks for maybe fifteen minutes before it goes catatonic. "Domain Admins, what are those?" And forget about network logon after the next restart.
• And for that matter, the serious tools needed to speak Active Directory are buried in strange places. Anyone familiar with the last version of MacOS would be lost, like an XP user lost on Vista.

To top that all off, Apple's gone out of its way to "blacklist" bad Mac software. Major Mac vendors -- bread-and-butter vendors that are the life blood of the Macintosh -- are crying foul over the new OS. Microsoft Office 2008 runs just fine, so what's Adobe's problem?

Windows users went through this two years ago with Vista, only then everyone blamed Microsoft. Today, who's blaming Apple? It makes me wonder why so much effort goes into making this thing run on non-Macs. From a network admin standpoint, even Vista runs better.

SO WHEN YOU STAND IN LINE TONIGHT to get the newest PC with Windows 7 or get that shiny new box set, spare a thought for the poor souls over at InsanelyMac. Even if they used real Macintoshes, they'd have it much harder than you do. At least with Windows, it's politically correct to blame Microsoft. With a Macintosh, it's all your fault.

Oh, and after two and a half years, still no Vista viruses.

Related Links:

• Snow Leopard and Active Directory -- MacWindows.com
• Adobe Snow Leopard FAQ -- John Nack on Adobe

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