[ A Bug's Life bug free ]

December 1, 1998

Here's another one out of the "Why You Don't Want to Use Windows For Critical Apps" file. . .

This is yet another blurb from Information Week, the November 23, 1998 issue. Writer Jennifer Mateyaschuk notes in the "Front End" section that Pixar's production of A Bug's Life, was, no pun intended, bug-free. Software bugs, that is.

Seems the fine folks at Pixar didn't use a single Wintel PC during development of the film. Instead, 100 Sun Enterprise 4000 servers and 24 Sun StorEdge A3000 Arrays were used to create the animated flick. According to Information Week, "it took 2 1/2 years to build a computer model, complete animation, and generate the thousands of rendered images needed for the film." That's a lot of data, boys and girls.

"Over the four-year process of sketches, scripts, and filming, Pixar says it didn't lose any data," the blurb goes on. "How much data? If it were stored on diskettes, the resultant pile would stand 8.6 miles high."

And once again, you can see an example of a company that knows where to put its trust for mission-critical data. Just imagine if one of these servers had been running NT, and had crashed, like it did on the US Navy's Yorktown destroyer earlier this year. The warship had to be towed back to port in Virginia. How many days, weeks, or months of animation might Pixar have lost had that happened to them? How many of our tax dollars went down the drain because the Navy decided to use NT?

This is why, when you have to lay it on the line, you do not use Windows, of any flavor. Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying you should use a Macintosh, either, though Macs are far more stable than Windows PCs. But that may change.

With Mac OS X, you just might want to use a Macintosh for your mission-critical applications. Because with Mac OS X (that's ten, not x), you'll have the power, flexibility, and most of all, stability and reliability of Unix, running beneath the easy-to-use Mac GUI we've come to know and love.

Bill Gates and the Microsoft Windows NT team should be afraid. Very afraid.

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