I listened to Walter Mossberg's review of the new Mac OS X release this morning on Audible.com and I was surprised - shocked might be a better word - to hear him claim that the "best and most advanced operating system on the market" that leaves Windows XP "in the dust" experiences repeated delays in everyday tasks like running its built-in e-mail program. Delays, by the way, that did not exist in the previous version of the operating system.
As Ed points out, imaine what the reaction would be if this operating system update had been relased "by a company that was located further north?"
I'm not trolling for Mac flamers here. I use a G5 every day and love OS X. It has the most carefully crafted user interface I've ever used and is incredibly stable. But Apple has been developing a nasty habit of shipping known flaws and then fixing them after the fact. The Mac Mini problems with VGA monitors and the Java break in the last OS update to Panther are the latest examples.
I'd like to see the playing field be a bit more level. Either cut Micorosft a break for Windows' flaws or stop forgiving Apple for OS X's. All software is flawed - no matter how rigorously it's tested. To make a statement like Mossberg did this morning is just wrong. It's apologism of the worst sort.
Look… it's not like it's any secret that Mossberg likes the Mac and OS X. So do I. But let's have a little more balance and credibility in reporting.
P.S. John Siracusa does his usual fine job reviewing Mac OS X Tiger at Ars Technica. As he points out, there's a lot to like both in the new stuff you can see and the "behind the curtain" stuff you can't. But there are also a number of very curious and decidedly un-Apple-like UI decisions in Tiger that he raises, especially with Mail and Spotlight. I've had a couple of very interesting exchanges the past two days with a number of Mac users who think I'm either attacking Mac OS X Tiger (I'm not) or defending Windows XP (not doing that either) in this post.
I'm looking forward to Tiger every bit as much as I have every preceding release of the Mac OS and will install it once I am certain it won't break the critical application I run on my G5 (a web analytics server). So one more time - what Ed and I are talking about it reporting, not operating systems.
1. I completely agree, and this same bias is seen elsewhere — Jobs vs. Gates; Open Source vs. Commercial; Freeware vs. Shareware. A lack of critical honesty is tiring.
Posted at 4:57AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Zaine Ridling