Emily writes: : At 1:59 PM +0800 2/13/08, karl shah-jenner wrote: : >2 points : > : > : >1 - update time for apple users who don't keep abreast of things. I : >supposed not all users are immediately aware of updates as they come : >to hand.. : : If they've set their Prefs to an interval they will get told : automatically about these updates. Once told they can then select : the ones they wish to follow through on or put off doing the updates : until it's more convenient. ah.. : >2 - it's a lot of fixes for an OS that claims to be a straight out : >of the box OS. Not that I'm a fan of Windoze, certainly not the : >latter OS's, but the MS fixes for the same period and comparable : >repairs to the OS totalled 13.9MB for XP - also largely overwrites. : >I found it a huge surprise.. not having looked closely of late at : >what Mac has been doing. : : Well, Apple is always trying to improve, so some of the updates : aren't "fixes" so much as upgrades. And then there are the Security : updates, which Apple chooses to do in small doses rather than massive : adjustments. A small dose would be around 40-60M, in my experience. OK. My experence with the older windows OS's is that a 60Mb update would be a huge thing. That's a whole complete install package for a new version of a browser! not that I am a fan of MS browsers! More an aftermarket person myself.. opera at 8Mb is a better deal :) I guess it's all come as a bit of a surprise learning how the competitor to MS is not as slim as I thought it was but more, I guess I'm generally amazed at how horribly large and bloated ALL the modern operating systems are becoming! : And, of course, as the web evolves Mail, Safari, iTunes and Quicktime : must adjust. So updates in those apps are pretty routine and not so : large. Then if you've got an iPod and they bring out a new model, : like they did a couple months before Christmas, that needs upgrading. Again I am surprised by all this. I have an old version of Winamp ( a common MP3 player for MS users) which plays everything excedingly well .. just as it did when I first installed it. Of course I updated a few times for more features before discovering hidden nasties like digital rights management rubbish and excessive drain on the system - then I went back and reloaded the sleekest version which played my music with the least demand. Quicktime and Relaplayer (and Windoze Media player) left my system long back, with VLC Videolan (a 9Mb download) - playing all the WMV's, MOV's, AVI's, MPEG's, RM's and DivX's .. even broken files and fragments. Gomplayer is a prettier version which does the same thing - I use that on my media PC (4Mb) .. no upgrades, it's worked fine since its release. : On the other side of the whole matter is a friend of mine who just : bought a new 20" iMac. She had been using a graphite iMac (the : tetrahedral type that used to come in garish colors) for 4 years or : so and was on dialup, as well as still using OS 9. : : The poor dealer was stunned to find that she had not ever even used : OSX. They had to install it on her iMac in order to move her files : from it to her new computer. Interestingly, however, she was : perfectly able to use the web with IE on her old Mac, even though : Micro$loth stopped supporting and upgrading IE three years ago and : she only used it when she had lots of time for the dialup. not such a surprise. I had someone tell me I can't actually visit the internet because I was running windows98 (!) - which made me laugh. Sure the current machine is a 3GHz P4 with 1/2 a terabyte of hard drives, but I can safely say yes, I can still use the internet ;) Mind you, I prefer not to use an inherantly usafe browser like IE, again, opera is much safer when visiting unfamiliar or mildly dodgy sites.. In factI also realised I have done no upgrades to my OS since installing the last unofficial Win98 upgrade pack - a culmination of all the updates and fixes MS ever released for win 98 about 8 years worth rolled into one package ..slightly over 10Mb in total. Thinking more on this, I am finding myself growing less and less impressed with the newer operating systems and programs. The modern machines are great, the Os's however seem to sap the vigour out of the new hardware :/ k
