Re: Windows machines upgradeable longer/shorter than Macs and
Re: Apple's tightly integrated hardware/software as a feature. The contra argument to both is the inability to go back even one stinking version with new hardware in order to capture features you had with older hardware. You get the new hardware, but you get a regression in features from the operating system. On Dec 22, 2011, at 9:58 PM, Scott Lewis wrote: > That said, all Macs run Windows really well, and Linux for that matter. Windows 7 only for 2011 hardware, and since around 10.6.6 for everyone else using Bootcamp. Vista, XP, explicitly not supported which is not what you'll find on commodity PC hardware which can go back to frigging DOS. Why DOS? All of the disk manufacturers produce hard drive diagnostic software that is DOS based. Windows x86_64 and linux distros x86_64 expressly only support UEFI 2.x. Apple's firmware is not UEFI 2.x so you do not get (U)EFI boot with these operating systems* which means you're relegated to the CSM-BIOS Apple is using which has all of the limitations of BIOS plus extra limitations: a.) 2TB drive limits; b.) lack of more advanced power management especially laptops which is why they get pretty crappy battery life running Windows or Linux compared to Mac OS; c.) no USB booting; d.) no PXE booting; e.) slow initialization prior to boot; f.) BIOS that isn't configurable; g.) requires a hybrid MBR which are dangerous and non-standard; h.) Any non-Mac OS bootable volume is hard coded with the label "Windows" even if it is neither labeled Windows nor contains it. This just demonstrates to me that Apple considers Windows maybe sortof a justifiable evil on their hardware but are completely perplexed by the idea anyone would run to run linux. You're better off running Windows or linux in VM for most everything, but even that comes with caveats and limitations as Apple really doesn't seem to be doing squat with XNU to make it a helpful VM host kernel. XSan is pretty cool despite being crippled compared to StorNext, but it is included in Lion. Thunderbolt is pretty cool, even though we'd still need an adapter to get the required fibre channel setup. Otherwise I really don't see much server or enterprise here. * It is model specific. Some can do text only linux OK by passing one or more kernel parameters. Most hardware have various issues with EFI boot relating to graphics and ACPI support. _______________________________________________ MacOSX-admin mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-admin
