Appletell

With so much mayhem surrounding Psystar, the company that announced last week the availability of what are essentially Mac clones, I thought it a good idea to give an easy-reader breakdown of all the fuss.

It all started April 14th, when Psystar came out of nowhere claiming to be selling OpenMac computers, essentially really cheap Macs. The internet erupted with questions over the legality of it all. Someone named Robert then came forward and said that Psystar would challenge Apple’s license agreement in court. Then an official spokesperson from Psystar denied that Robert spoke for the company. The company’s website went down due to heavy traffic, adding to the pandemonium. Many assumed Psystar was a hoax or scam and had been taken down.

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Everyone loves the comedy in the Get a Mac ads, but what do consumers really like the most? Windows, Mac and even Linux are all of different in their own way, but why do you choose each one.

Ubuntu got a 4.5 on a scale of 0 - 5, which makes sense as its free (Why didn’t it get a 5?) While Windows Vista got a 2 and XP got 3. Price doesn’t determine everything, in fact most would choose a higher price for higher quality, but what about the process of actually getting the OS on the machine. Leopard topped this list, with Vista in second with a rating of 4 and Ubuntu with a 2.5 Leopard also tops the of the Interface and the Bundled Software with a 5 and a 4.5 The price and installation, interface and bundled software all help you choose which OS to buy, but what about 3rd party software to extend the functionally. Leopard only scored a 3.5 and Ubuntu even beat it with a 4, in terms of quantity of software. In quality, what really matters, Apple scored second and XP first.

Overall Scores

• 4.75 Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
• 3.40 Ubuntu
• 3.56 Windows XP
• 3.56 Windows Vista

Winner: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Via [MacDailyNews]

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Microsoft employee Jeff Jones has released his findings from a comparison of Vista, XP, OS X Tiger, and RedHat Linux.

“Windows Vista One Year Vulnerability Report” by “Jeffrey R Jones, Security Guy (and Microsoft Director)“ already has an inconclusive feel about it as soon as that title page is splashed up. But let’s give it a chance.

Before the report starts, we are met with an Executive Summary, telling me first that “This paper analyzes the vulnerability disclosures and security updates for the first year of Windows Vista and looks at it in the context of its predecessor, Windows XP, along with other modern workstation operating systems Red Hat, Ubuntu and Apple products.“

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Did you know your MacBook not only runs Mac OS X and Windows, but a lot of lesser-known operating systems? If you’ve ever thought about getting your geek on, Friendly Linux has a tutorial on how to get Ubuntu Linux running on your MacBook. Installation was fairly straightforward, apart from adding a parameter to the installer.

After booting up for the first time, there were a couple of settings that had to be changed to get some minor features fully working, but they were not earth-shattering and are fairly well documented.  The great thing was that 3D effects, backlight brightness and even the Apple Remote worked straight out of the box.

Check out the instructions and download your copy of Ubuntu.

Read [Friendly Linux]

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