Apple Lies - Again
June 13th 2007 04:27
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Comment by Damo
I know that you may not like Apple but the results you are showing are not valid results for data testing.
The writer tested 3 sites 3 times to draw his results.
The most you can get from a sample so small is a peception. It isn't even enough to test statistical correlations or associations.
This is not how bench testing is done in the real world. It is done in a test lab where all the variables can be eliminated. In this case because we are dealing with the internet we are dealing with the time based variable of traffic congestion and location based variable of multiple server hosting.
What is missing from this test is a litany of testing proceedures to prevent the results from being subjected to unknowns.
Whether Apple lied ar not cannot be determined by this test.
Comment by Ahmed
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At least here they showed exactly what they were benchmarking and under what conditions they were running the tests in. With apple it's a bunch of numbers and 'look! our bar is longer than the others!'.
Now I don't hate apple, the problem is we live in this marketting climate where if you're at all critical of apple it means you're the devil himself. This is the result of Apple crafting an under dog image of itself (compared to Microsoft) and the false image that Apple was cheated because microsoft 'stole' apples original interface. You never hear how Steve Jobs 'stole' Xerox's idea of having a GUI, you never hear about how Microsoft announced index searching for Vista and then 8 months later Apple released their next iterative OS with indexed search result. This goes for a variety of other features, sidebar, 3D interface amongst other things all were first announced by Microsoft but Apple hurried and mashed them into their OS first.
You hear that Microsoft is slow to release new operating systems, but Apple is faster, yet Microsoft releases service packs for their OS, the equivalent of a whole new Apple OS release for free.
When Apple dumps all backwards compatibility with a new operating system it's just normal, when Microsoft moves everything to a new kernel and stil retains 99% backwards compatibility it is seen as a gigantic failure.
Heres a full review of safari on Windows: Really Long Link
Comment by Damo
Sorry but the technical results are worthless to prove anything either way.
Whether someone loves or hates Apple has nothing to do with bad testing methods.
I read the review before I replied and realised that this was just a simple first person impression. The margins of comparison were between 3-7 seconds difference.
I don't know much about the qualifications of the writer but if this is how he collects evidence I would have to conclude that he is not a data tech. Which is fine because the review is not aimed at Data techs.
Comment by Ahmed
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Safari is a beta product, it is very much under developed and definitely not ready to be marketted to the mainstream, it lacks a lot of features people have come to expect from browsers, for instance it doesn't automatically detect if you have missing components that you need to view web pages properly.
When Microsoft or Mozilla releases beta versions of its products they don't try to market it to a mainstream audience because it isn't ready, they market it to early adopters who are wiling to give it a spin throigh. Apple is the only software company I know in the whole god damn world that can release a beta product and claim it is better than non-beta equivalents and still get away with it.
Comment by Damo
The question is not whether I believe Jobs or not.
The question is whether the results they publically display can be varified independantly and scientifically.
Talk of marketing is not scientific.
Lets just imagine for one second I was a tech and was given the task of proving or disproving Apples claimes. What would I do?
The second question but just as important is whether the new browser is worth installing. Loyalty means nothing to a techical test. How would I do that?
In both cases I would set up a test that has as few variable as possible and test each claim multiple times until the question can be satisfactorily answered.
That way when I hand my report over to even a senior data scientist I would have no reason to blush.
Comment by Ahmed
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Safari Beta for windows is a, as the name suggests, beta product, it lacks a lot of key features non-beta sfotware would have and is under developed in many ways.
Would you consider claiming a beta is better than full version, fully tested product? OF course not.
If Microsoft released Vista Beta to the masses and said 'look how great our OS is!' would you believe them? Something that hasn't been tested and still has buggy code here and there, of course not.
Yet Apple, here they are, releasing a beta of their Internet Browser are making the claim it is better than other established and well developed browsers.
From a technical standpoint that is impossible, something in the testing phase will always have more faults and flaws than something that has been done, tested and is used by millions of people.
But hey, it's Apple, isn't it? They can make that claim and no one will call them on it.
Comment by Damo
A rose by any other name...
Alpha or Beta is just a name and says nothign about reliability
Question 1
I is Safari 3 Beta better than Firefox 2 or IE 6?
Answer 1
I don't know?
Question 2
How do we test it?
Question 3
Can you agree upon some objctive testing methods to determine this?
Comment by Ahmed
Video Gamer Kids
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PolyKicks
You have two cars, one has been tested on icy roads for breaking ability and has passed, it has also been tested on dry roads and has passeed.
The next car was tested on dry roads and passed, but never tested on icy roads.
Can I make a claim that the second car is better than the first because I say it is better on icy roads given I tested it under extremely controlled circumstances that I will not divulve on (pay no head to the fact I am the manufacturer of the second vehicle)? Add to that that the second car isn't even finished yet, still has some known issues (in-consistant ABS brakes?) You have nothing but my word for it.
As far as I'm concerned Safari has been proven slower on Gmail and Google Calander - they both use Ajax to accomplish their tasks. Safari failed both.
From this it isn't difficult to conclude that Safari will always run slower than Firefox because Firefox has beaten Safari in Ajax intensive scenarios. Regardless of whether or not you're going to accept it was Google related (which is actually a plus given Googles pedigree). Ajax on Google is the same as Ajax on Apple (if Apple uses Ajax).
I trust Wired more because there are more facts supporting wired, first of all it used an open testing method (rather than an in-house benchmark utility developed by someone who works at Wired which is also proclaimed 'the industry standard' showing what credibility apple has in this regard), second of all IE7 and Firefox are not beta products, they are tested and run welle nough, finally, i was benchmarked by a third party, not Apple.
From all this it is very safe to conclude Apple blatantly lied, at the very least if somehow Safari Beta does perform better than Firefox and IE7 the numbers Apple is genereting are stil false because they used biased benchmark utilities in mysterious circumstances to come up with their 'results'.
Comment by Damo
That is okay. I do.
This is Apples escape clause.
Pretty much says it all.
Comment by Ahmed
Video Gamer Kids
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Comment by yoda76
The Tube Blog
Apple, sadly, doesn't do a great job of porting software from OSX to windows. With tens of thousands of tracks, iTunes is painfully slow on my Windows machine - not so on my Mac. Media Player is far quicker, but I persist with iTunes cause I prefer the interface and setup. I don't know why the hell Apple think they need to release another browser for Windows....
Also this:
Microsoft releases service packs for their OS, the equivalent of a whole new Apple OS release for free.
Maybe, but OSX doesn't cost $600, or have 6 thousand flavours. One size fits all wether you're a student, software developer or just wanna email grandma in Turkey.
And it only costs $200.
And you don't have to buy it when you buy a new system - it's included.
And software update gives you sizeable dot releases to the tune of 200-300 MB in size... sounds like a service pack to me...
Ahmed, for as much as you hate Apple fanbois, you are often exactly that for Microsoft. Or more to the point, anyone that's not Apple...
Comment by Ahmed
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One size fits all within the context you're a movie editor of sorts, given all the stuff they force yout o buy with it. If you want Vista you can get it for as little as $250 which is actually the package most people would want.
$600 is the enterprise one, you wouldn't need it unless you're running the mafia. In which case you probably wouldn't pay for it. If Apple could match the raw amount of features, compatibility and robustness of Vista Enterprise then they're welcome to sell their OS for $250, as it stands they have a cookie cutter that can really only compare to the basic edition of Vista. Makes sense given OS X is never targetted at big business.
Vista is also included with new PCs.
Software updates by Microsoft come in the tunes of gigabytes, if you're updating everything on your PC, service packs update your OS as a whole, when was the last time an update gave your mac completely revamped networking capabilities, when was the last time an update to your OS gave you indexed searches? You had to pay for them, BOTH TIMES.
Oh tahts right, you had to pay for the new OS that came with the index searchces.
They're actually releasing the browser for windows for developers, the iPhone uses safari and hence developers (who use Windows) will be able to test their browsers on Safari.
Comment by yoda76
The Tube Blog
Then why judge it against those criteria?
Vista is also included with new PCs.
Yeah, but which one?
All I'm saying is, put yourself in the shoes of the completely un-techy consumer...
OSX: I buy a computer, and pretty much whatever I want to do I can do with what's there.
Windows: I can buy a computer once I understand the numerous (too numerous) hardware options and then choose from one of several OS's, the decision of which is at the mercy of what the salesperson want to sell.
Big business, programmers and power-users may be a different kettle of fish. Granted.
For me, when I wanted to run some simple editing software on my windows machine, I needed to upgrade to XP (ok, so it was a few years ago
This is my point. Basic edition of Vista is cheap, but if I need to go beyond...
Well, for my two sense (or $600), too much choice is just as bad as not enough.
And, yes... the incorrect spelling is intentional
Comment by Ahmed
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Because you're the one who says $600 is not worth it for an OS, I'm just saying if OS X could ever be worth $600 it would go for $600, there are cheaper versions of Vista not targetted at enterprises.
Probably all of them.
Well a consumer needs to wisen up and see why he/she wants either one for what reasons.
OS X: Comes in over priced hardware, very limited software choices (thanks to Apple), shoddy backwards compatibility (anything older than 5 years is pretty much out the window) but hey, it works, sometimes.
Windows: Runs many applications, full backwards compatibility with windows 3.1 even, gives users choices if they don't want to spend too much, excellent value for money to people who read about what they want to buy (as opposed to just buying a 'complete package' with macs that charge you an extra two to three hundred dollars).
Perhaps for film editing macs re better, but by and large Windows has too many advantages over OS X.
Why would you need to go beyond the basic edtion of Vista? It suppots everything you need it to, umm, some of the things it doesn't are bitlock encryption (you really wouldn't need it), 16gigabytes of ram (it can 'only' support up to 4) and some other such nitpicky details.
My spelling mistakes weren't intentional, so bleh, I can't spell