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06/08/2003 11:25:52 PM · #26 |
We have three Macs in our house. One is four years old and still works really well. I think that Mac may be a better value, as it comes with lots of integrated software that make life easy for digitized folks: iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, etc. all feed off of each other and into each other, making life simple.
I also love the interface of Mac computers. It's very elegant and pleasant to me.
We do lots of music and sound stuff at our house, too, and almost all of the good software my wife needs is made for Mac, since the big movie studios all use Macs to do their sound.
I know lots of people with PCs though, and they're still my friends!
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06/08/2003 11:56:57 PM · #27 |
After 6 months of serious laptop searching, I decided to purchase an Apple 17" Powerbook about 2 months ago. I'd probably never buy a desktop Mac, but this is the sweetest laptop I've ever seen. It's 1" thin, lightweight, and has a screen and keyboard big enough to use as an everyday computer. The nicest part of the design, and probably something people overlook, is that when you close it up there is nothing sticking out or bulging out. It is a clean, smooth package. For desktops, I'm sticking to x86 hardware with Linux.
For photo editing, both PCs and Macs run Photoshop and other major packages. The G4 processors are adept at photo processing algorithms, as long as the software takes advantage of the Altivec features. DSP engineers should know what I'm talking about. So, the slower clock-speed doesn't necesarily mean slower software. Really, either platform should do well with photo processing. Apple seems to be better in the digital video editing field recently, though I don't do that so can't really comment.
The biggest drawback of the Mac is the price. |
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06/09/2003 01:20:21 AM · #28 |
//www.mindfreeproductions.com/test/mac.wmv
Here's a very funny short video about using a Mac. Check it out. |
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06/09/2003 02:09:35 AM · #29 |
The tipoff on that video's leaning is it's format. Unfortunately, Windows Media Player decided to display only a black screen while playing the audio, so perhaps I didn't get the whole experience. Is it available in QuickTime?
I don't have a beard. I do wear sandals. I also wear tennis shoes, on occasion. None of this really has much bearing on the computer I use, which is the 17" Powerbook G4. Really, what factored into my decision to buy a Mac this time around was my experience. I've always used PCs. I know them intimately, and have ten years of experience with Windows. Because of this, the Jaguar OS (X.2) was very appealing. Having switched over to a Mac, the XP interface starts to look gaudy, and PlayMatesish. I heard it stated very nicely over on the Apple discussion forums: you work on a PC, but you work with a Mac. It's true. My relationship with my Mac is more symbiotic, and less clinical.
I use Virtual PC to run my Windows programs, holdovers from my PC years, and I must say it's very enjoyable to be able to control Windows for once, having been in its grip all my electronic life. I can minimize Windows, or run it (ironically) in a window. With Virtual PC, Microsoft Office X, and the general friendliness of X, compatibility issues are minimal.
Now, I don't mean to engage in melodrama here; PCs are functional, useful, and well established as being so. They have their advantages - gaming, for instance. And the highest end PC right now does have a slightly faster processor than the best Mac, (please note that the GHz rating is not an indication) mostly because Motorola is paying attention to things other than its Power PC chip. But the difference is between blazing and scathing speeds, so this didn't really factor into my decision. No one can really argue, too, that PCs aren't the most universally supported. In other things, though, Apple is on top. The laptop I'm typing on now is, hands down, (for a few months at least) the best laptop on the market. Apple bundles the best software - iLife, anyone? and they actually care about things like aesthetics and authentic user-friendliness. For me, it's no contest - I've switched for good.
Martin |
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06/09/2003 07:27:42 AM · #30 |
without making any blanket statements, i will just relay my own personal experience:
used to be big time mac head, for about 7 years. between my wife and I we own/have owned almost 10 different macs.
started to have to use a pc at work every day (for web and graphic design work). used the pc at work for several years and eventually began to re-examine my premises. over that time, apple went through a lot of transformations that were disappointing to me in terms of how much they care about their loyal customers.
eventually couldn't deny the (to me) superiority of pc, especially for the price.
bought a new high end pc last summer for the price of the lowest end mac that i would consider, and havent looked back/regretted it once.
YMMV
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06/09/2003 10:42:20 AM · #31 |
Originally posted by Malokata:
I don't have a beard. I do wear sandals. |
Beard, Sandals, z/OS.
The guy opposite my is into VM/CMS. His beard is bigger than mine.
I use Linux/x86 at home, partly for bragging rights, partly for cost reasons, but mostly cos I put a passive cooler on my northbridge and Linux is a bit more resiliant when it faints in the heat. |
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06/09/2003 11:51:58 AM · #32 |
Originally posted by UberFish:
Originally posted by Malokata:
I don't have a beard. I do wear sandals. |
Beard, Sandals, z/OS.
The guy opposite my is into VM/CMS. His beard is bigger than mine... |
Rule doesn't count for programmers or anyone who's ever used punch-cards. |
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06/09/2003 01:36:39 PM · #33 |
Originally posted by magnetic9999:
without making any blanket statements, i will just relay my own personal experience:
used to be big time mac head, for about 7 years. between my wife and I we own/have owned almost 10 different macs.
started to have to use a pc at work every day (for web and graphic design work). used the pc at work for several years and eventually began to re-examine my premises. over that time, apple went through a lot of transformations that were disappointing to me in terms of how much they care about their loyal customers.
eventually couldn't deny the (to me) superiority of pc, especially for the price.
bought a new high end pc last summer for the price of the lowest end mac that i would consider, and havent looked back/regretted it once.
YMMV |
Uh oh, I didn't want to get involved. The fire burns in me.
You could say that I went through the same, only with one Mac but same difference. Basically Apple lost a very big thing in my case, trust. I no longer trust anything they say, about upgrades, about stability, about ease of use, etc.
Basically, in a quick nutshell...
Apple went and lost my trust, when I found out that their promise of a painless upgrade to PowerPC (i.e. my Mac, a "Quadra 840av" was PowerPC ready) was little more then a lie. I had been looking at the costs of upgrading PCs, I noted that in each case you got more features when you upgraded. I had thought I only needed a new CPU, or maybe a plugin card. I was told, yes, you can upgrade. You will need a new board, a new cpu, probably new memory, the cost comes to $980 (almost half of a complete PowerPC desktop at the time if I remember). It was a hit in the gut, I didn't have money like that to upgrade.
The number one reason why I got my mac at the time was it's audio and video connections built in. To edit home movies and such. Imagine my shock when I found out the upgrade, since I needed a new board, would not include any AV. The main feature that I bought the Mac for would be crushed, for only half the cost of a new Apple. The new board had the same numbers of slots, 3, all of which were filled. A new AV card (would require removing my expensive Photoshop accelerator card (add $200 to the cost of upgrade (now $1180) plus the cost of the AV card (somewhere around another $200 ($1380)). All for a "painless" upgrade. What they technically meant by painless, was that a dealer would install the stuff (for another fee, this time $50 ($1430)) instead of me having to do so. I also noticed for the first time, how quick the turn over rate was for Macs. Every month a new model came out. It was like they couldn't roll them fast enough. I became very unsure of the safety of an investment in the Macintosh line.
I lost a lot of respect for Apple right there and then. But I badly NEEDED to upgrade to PowerPC, more and more programs were switching over. First as dual mode programs which could do 68040 and PowerPC, then as PowerPC only apps. I was being left in the dark, and all because I wasn't a rich bastard with rich parents.
Then my answer came, Clones! The Clones were approved by Apple. And oh boy were they a lot cheaper then Apples. More respect was lost, I saw how cheaply Macs could be made without all the fancy case and auto-eject floppies. I started saving up what money I could get, my heart set on a clone. Finally I would have a chance to do what it seemed everyone else could do. About half-way to my goal of $1500. Apple decides it is loosing too much profit, and cancels it's clone licenses. Right then 5+ clone companies are left in the dark. They are permitted to sell the existing clones, but not build any more. Right then I saw that upgrading through the clones couldn't be done. The one I got would be it, there might not be a company to return it to in 30 days, nor get upgrades from. Another finely place gut kick from Apple. I hated them at this point. For what they did to me, everyone clone owner, would be clone owner, the owners of the clone companies. To grant permission to do something, then yank it away when it doesn't *favor* you is just plain wrong.
I'm sure Macs are good computers, easy to use, more stable. I'm sure OS X rocks and is smooth as butter. I am also sure those expensive, over priced cases look good too.
However, I have such a mistrust and hate for Apple that I don't think I could ever relax when near a Mac. When I see a Mac, my blood honestly boils.
So, that is my ordeal, and my opinion. It will take quite the great feat of Apple to win me back, including a public apology from Apple for their past wrongs, a reinstatement of cloning licenses, and a major price cut. Haha, fat chance.
Until that time, I will happily curse windows (WinXP is actually ok) and get my work done regardless, on a PC. I just built an AMD AthlonXP 2200+ system which has me quite ecstatic.
Just my 2 bits, tah!
-tog
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06/09/2003 01:51:26 PM · #34 |
In years of buying computers, I've NEVER found any upgrade path to be as economical as replacement. Buy more RAM, a necessary card, but plan on having another computer when you need more ....
My Quadra 840av will still function perfectly well as a fax/modem, a file server (I've seen actual websites running on that very model) or a variety of other functions, or for my son to play around with Photoshop (he's "painted" with a graphics tablet since he was 2). I just don't expect it to do production work ...
As for clones, it's my "understanding" that the long-term (3-4year) plan is to port the Mac OS to Intel chips, possible since it's now UNIX-based, allowing them to sell the OS directly to WinTel users ... they'd be stupid not to when they can sell a few 25-cent CDs for $100. People who like their cool equipment can still buy it. |
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06/09/2003 02:10:47 PM · #35 |
I haven't used a Mac on a regular basis in years, but I still keep tabs on what they're capable of because I think both have their advantages.
I think in terms of photo processing a Mac out of the box might be slightly better than a PC out of the box, but after tweaking they're probably about equal. I think where the Mac still wins is video and animation processing; it seems to be a bit better focussed on them, or maybe it's just that the OS works more smoothly with some of the higher-end video and animation programs (which often are Mac first and port to PC later, after all).
I'd like to add a Mac -- probably a laptop -- to my collection of boxes just because I'd like the option to play with both Mac and Windows machines for this very reason. Maybe for one set of things my PC tools would work better, and for another the Mac ones would, or maybe I'd switch to the Mac for some stuff and leave the rest on the PC, or maybe it would just depend on which box was busier -- the last being the most likely.
So I would say: buy whichever system you're more comfortable with in terms of user interface. Some people prefer Windows, some like the Mac OS -- some people swear OSX is godlike, some hate it and revert to older versions instead, in fact, even amongst Mac folks. I think it just comes down to what you feel is useful to you and how hard or easy you find a particular machine type to maintain. I don't have many stability issues with my PC and they're almost entirely memory-related (I overload my poor box routinely and really should feed it some more RAM seeing as how it's so cheap), and I'm running win98SE. My box will stay up and running for several weeks at a time if I don't push it too hard. When I upgrade (I have a new box, actually, that needs to be set up) it will be to a PC desktop because it's what I'm used to, just like I'm used to using Unix for mail and therefore still have shell accounts instead of using Eudora. Personal taste is probably more important a factor these days than anything, as cross-compatibility is fairly high. |
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06/09/2003 02:14:36 PM · #36 |
Obviously, folks are happy, generally, with the machines they are using, and that's great. I just wonder when the platforms will be so similar such discussions will not take place. I also suppose that it will be the stable Unix or other platform foundations that will ultimately "win" out.
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06/09/2003 03:36:50 PM · #37 |
Originally posted by GeneralE:
As for clones, it's my "understanding" that the long-term (3-4year) plan is to port the Mac OS to Intel chips, possible since it's now UNIX-based, allowing them to sell the OS directly to WinTel users ... they'd be stupid not to when they can sell a few 25-cent CDs for $100. People who like their cool equipment can still buy it. |
Unfortunately, I don't think that this will ever happen. Apple is primarily a hardware company, selling machines and peripherals, and uses its software to help sell the hardware. Would anyone these days choose to buy apple hardware (eg powerpc chips) instead of equivalent x86/pc kit (at half the price), if Apple sold MacOS & MacOS software for both platforms? I very much doubt it...
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06/09/2003 03:43:16 PM · #38 |
| Well I think the plan was supposed to abandon the PowerPC chip and build Apple machines with Intel-type chips. But it could all be bogus info--I have no verification or inside knowledge. |
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06/09/2003 03:51:20 PM · #39 |
| the only reason i would buy a mac is to be able to have access to the Itunes service for my IPOD. i heard somewhere that the iTunes service will eventually be available for pc as well...hopefully that is the case |
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06/09/2003 05:15:41 PM · #40 |
OS X actually is Unix-based (in response to dsidwell).
Here's the story on the new "Intel-type" chip General E is talking about: it's actually a next generation Power PC chip. Apple is preparing to dump Motorola, whose innovation on the existing PPC chip is a bit stagnant, and moving to IBM, who will be manufacturing their next processor. These new processors are not Intel-like processors; they'll still mostly likely sport the "supercomputer" configuration, but be twice as fast as existing Mac chips. This is big news in the Mac industry, as that will leave PCs (temporarily, at least) in the dust.
That's how the story's reading around the Internet, anyhow. Apple itself is very secretive about its plans.
Achiral, sorry to hear about your bad Apple experience. No matter how satisfied 99% of the customer base of a company is, there's always the one percent who gets shat upon. Apple's customer service and geberal corporate-customer relations are still the top-rated, though - it's a very low probability that Apple would fall on your head twice.
As for iTunes, Jobs has said that there will be a Windows version "by the end of the year," but my suspicion is that they'll release it much sooner. They like surprising consumers with unexpected software, hardware, etc - keeps them on their toes.
Martin |
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06/09/2003 05:23:53 PM · #41 |
lol one of my pet hate discussions -
i use both, both are tools and both have their uses.
both crash an equal amount - both have me ripping my hair out regularly
and that's about all i got to say on the matter :) |
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06/12/2003 05:11:46 PM · #42 |
There's not much difference when you're working inside a program.
PCs are stable and have minimal problems unless you have a rubbish one, dodgy hardware, a tendency to fiddle when you don't know what you're doing, or Windows 9x/Me. Macs can be just as unstable as an old Pentium 166 running Windows 98, only when they crash they crash hard.
Macs have minimal security and aren't really designed for networking.
Macs are way overpriced. What you're paying for is a turnkey solution. The sad part is that these days they use a lot of standard PC parts anyway. |
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06/12/2003 05:15:56 PM · #43 |
Originally posted by Anewbe4u:
There's not much difference when you're working inside a program.
Macs ... aren't really designed for networking... |
I have found exactly the opposite over the past 15 years of using a mixed network. Macs have been able to network from the very frist ones with just a cable, and have had Ethernet built-in for years. PC networking is .... |
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06/12/2003 05:18:43 PM · #44 |
Originally posted by achiral:
the only reason i would buy a mac is to be able to have access to the Itunes service for my IPOD. i heard somewhere that the iTunes service will eventually be available for pc as well...hopefully that is the case |
You can download software which allows your Mac Ipod to work with Windows. I have the Windows version of the Ipod.
Very nice. |
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06/12/2003 06:08:07 PM · #45 |
Originally posted by GeneralE:
Originally posted by Anewbe4u:
There's not much difference when you're working inside a program.
Macs ... aren't really designed for networking... |
I have found exactly the opposite over the past 15 years of using a mixed network. Macs have been able to network from the very frist ones with just a cable, and have had Ethernet built-in for years. PC networking is .... |
Fair enough. |
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06/12/2003 06:10:59 PM · #46 |
Originally posted by Anewbe4u:
There's not much difference when you're working inside a program.
PCs are stable and have minimal problems unless you have a rubbish one, dodgy hardware, a tendency to fiddle when you don't know what you're doing, or Windows 9x/Me. Macs can be just as unstable as an old Pentium 166 running Windows 98, only when they crash they crash hard.
Macs have minimal security and aren't really designed for networking.
Macs are way overpriced. What you're paying for is a turnkey solution. The sad part is that these days they use a lot of standard PC parts anyway. |
My experience contradicts the above on all points.
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06/12/2003 06:43:29 PM · #47 |
Linux owns you all...
(haha) Just had to get that in..
I use PCs. They're cheap. My preferred O/S runs brilliantly on them. I own a Toshiba Portege laptop and a dual athlon 1800. I put the dual athlon together for a little over $1200 ($200 of which was for the case) about a year ago. It runs Linux and it has remained up for the past 60 days, only rebooted because of a power outtage. My laptop doesn't stay up nearly as long but that's only because I usually shut it down at nights. It almost never crashes while I'm doing something. I've owned 5 other PCs over the years with Linux installed with similar stability characteristics.
I get all the software I use/need for free, and I haven't had to monkey around with configuration/settings since the O/S installation. Oh, and I'm still competitive in photo competitions.
While I drool over the Mac's asthetics, I'm not entirely impressed with OSX. I won't touch another MS product again. ever. I supported them for 5 years and that was enough. Granted WinXP is light years ahead of Win95, but I still won't touch it.
So, in summary. The PC's reliability problems are almost completely software dependent. They're cheap. They may not be as pretty, but they do the job and there is much more in terms of software and hardware available for them.
-Matt
(yes. I'm a computer geek. I know Linux isn't for everyone. You can go back to ignoring me now.) |
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06/12/2003 06:56:18 PM · #48 |
"I use PCs. They're cheap."
Have you checked out the new eMacs ? Built-in 802.iig wireless, 4x DVD-RW, 32 MB graphics card, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB hard drive, two Firewire ports and five USB ports - $1700. That is at least competitive with, if not cheaper than, an equivalent PC.
Throwing on some kindling,
Martin |
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06/12/2003 06:58:48 PM · #49 |
Originally posted by Malokata:
"I use PCs. They're cheap."
Have you checked out the new eMacs ? Built-in 802.iig wireless, 4x DVD-RW, 32 MB graphics card, 1 GB RAM, 80 GB hard drive, two Firewire ports and five USB ports - $1700. That is at least competitive with, if not cheaper than, an equivalent PC.
Throwing on some kindling,
Martin |
And you don't have to be able to build it yourself. |
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06/12/2003 07:06:45 PM · #50 |
And when that's not enough? I throw away my current eMac and buy a new one for $1700. As opposed to a simple HD upgrade, or a new monitor, or adding more memory, changing the video card.
I can upgrade my current system to a dual athlon 2800 for $500 which is the cost of two processors. Upgrade your mac to the newest G4s for less then that.
And I like building my systems myself :). I know what I'm getting.
Did you not read my last sentence? ;)
-Matt
edit: I've never understood the attraction of building systems into the monitors. Sure you have one less box lying around, but that just limits your upgrade capabilities that much more. Not everyone has $1700 every two years to throw at a new computer. Upgrading is (relatively) easy and cheap.
Message edited by author 2003-06-12 19:10:49. |
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