Mac or PC?

[Vic Winters]

And when people feel inferior about what they have they get defensive See how that works?

Regardless of the whole Mac versus PC business, OS X (which is a highly tweaked FreeBSD with custom libraries and mega commercial software support) is not even on the same planet as Windows.

I don't feel inferior or defensive. If I felt that way over something as trivial as my choice in consumer electronics, I'd need to reevaluate my life. As sad as it is, that's what people are taking a day off from work to stand in line and cheer other people on for.

 

[Black Bart]

LOL, why did Apple Lisa resemble Xerox Alto?

Read further back in the history about Jobs and Wozs visits to Xerox PARC.

Steves: "Hey, what's that?"
Xerox Employee: "Oh that, it's a little thing we call a mouse."
Steves: "And what's this on the screen."
Xerox Employee: "That's what we call a Graphical User Interface (GUI)."

And while we're at it everyone rent "Invalid Link Removed" - that was a fun little after school special.

 

[john turner]

Yes, I know the question has been asked here before. But it's been a while and Macs and PCs have changed.

Daughter is going off to college (!) and she needs a new laptop. She currently has an old HP which she has been happy with, and doesn't know if she should get a Mac or a PC. She's going in as a Bio major. Any suggestions or comments?

Thanks . . .

i'm back at college now, pursuing a 2nd degree/grad school in computer science, and i'm a TA right now for a programming course that a lot of non-cs folks are required to take (it's an object oriented programming in java class).

the only incompatibilities we've had to deal with were a single instance where a program would not work how we wanted it to on a mac. we provided the students with the required mac configuration code to fix the problem and then they were fine. this was not the first time i'd seen mac incompatibilities with some of the platforms used in intro to cs classes, although none of them were insurmountable.

in the grand scheme of things, i would think either would be fine, but believe it or not i've never heard of incompatibilities with windows boxes, which is really weird because many of the professors even use mac laptops. (note the incompatibilities were caused by the tools/systems (like how java handled graphical objects and how the mac wished to handle them, for instance) not with anything that the school was providing.

 

[john turner]

The Mac Pro is probably the worst value in the computer industry. I built a hackintosh for $1400 that is miles ahead of a $5000 mac pro. Even the base model, at $2500, only comes with 3 GB of ram. You'd have to have brain damage to pay those prices. And as far as "everything a PC can do, and more?" No USB3, eSATA, HDMI, bluray....

dont' forget no pci slots (all pci express) and top of the line video card available being 2x the price and 2 years old.

i own a mac pro 2008 model, and while i was considering building a hackintosh (i would not have been my first computer build, by any stretch), for my purposes at the time (recording and processing ~20 tracks of 24 bit 96khz audio realtime via motu hardware) i was not comfortable with the possibility that it would have hardware timing issues that would render it worthless for what i was needing it for.

 

[john turner]

Why does Windows 7 so closely resemble OSX?

how does windows 7 closely resemble osX? other than the fact that they both use icons, i don't really see it.

 

[Rusty Chainsaw]

I don't feel inferior or defensive. If I felt that way over something as trivial as my choice in consumer electronics, I'd need to reevaluate my life. As sad as it is, that's what people are taking a day off from work to stand in line and cheer other people on for.

Herein lies the rub, I think. You're obviously someone who buys a computer the same way they might buy a TV or washing machine - as a utilitarian device, that has to do a certain job to a certain level of ability. They're not products you feel any passion towards - it's just a tool.

For some people, computers are things they feel passion for, and it goes way back, well before Mac vs. PC - there was VIC-20 vs TI-99, C64 vs Sinclair Spectrum, Atari ST vs Amiga, even SNES vs. Sega Megadrive/Genesis for the gamers out there. You were passionate about your choice of system, and almost thrived on defending your choice to owners of its rival. As a user of a particular system, you become a member of a club, and you become proud of that. Nowadays, outside the realm of gaming, you see it most amongst Mac and Linux users. In the gaming world, it's still very obvious - Xbox vs PS3, DS vs PSP and so on.

 

[john turner]

Read further back in the history about Jobs and Wozs visits to Xerox PARC.

Steves: "Hey, what's that?"
Xerox Employee: "Oh that, it's a little thing we call a mouse."
Steves: "And what's this on the screen."
Xerox Employee: "That's what we call a Graphical User Interface (GUI)."

And while we're at it everyone rent "Invalid Link Removed" - that was a fun little after school special.

except that all that stuff : mouse, the precursor concepts for a gui, bitmapped screens and hypertext, along with a bazillion other things, were all developed at SRI in menlo park under the auspices of Douglas Engelbart. so talking about xerox as the originator of these things is still inaccurate - many of the staff at PARC who developed these technologies there were folks that had worked with him and took the technology with them when they left - they basically stole the technology from him.

see douglas engelbart's mother of all demos from 1968. 43 years ago, demoing this stuff. amazing, and long before xerox got involved or the PARC even existed.

 

[NineSpine]

It's a myth that Macs cost significantly more than PCs, with the possible exception of the Mac Mini. You can only build an equivalent PC by purposefully IGNORING features and pretending that computers with the same amount of POWER are identical, regardless of all the bells and whistles. To put this in perspective, it's like arguing that if my Honda Civic has the same amount of horsepower as your BMW, they are the same car. This is obviously ridiculous.

While it's certainly a valid argument to say "Well, I don't need those bells and whistles", you also have to recognize that *I don't need all that power*. If I have $1600 to spend on a laptop, I don't need something super powerful. I use my computer primarily for web browsing, word processing, watching videos, and sometimes recording a track for my band. None of that requires an exceptional amount of power by any stretch of the imagination, and any power beyond what I need is a complete and total waste of money. I'd rather get a computer that trades the power I COULD get from a PC in that price range, for bells and whistles that just make using the computer a little more convenient. That's exactly what a Mac does for me.

I think that a lot of PC people who are very into computers and genuinely enjoy messing around with them end up projecting that interest on to other people. I used to do computer repairs, and I never understood why people used Macs, because the PC always seemed to just work so well for me. Then, I slowly lost interest in working on computers. After a few years, it all made sense. A lot of the little problems that I basically shrugged off because I *enjoyed* messing around with my computer, are big hassles to people who just look at the computer as a tool for getting things done, and even a necessary evil in a lot of ways. Once my mindset had switched to seeing a computer primarily as a tool, and not a toy, I found myself way more interested in an operating system that is more intuitive and user friendly, which OSX is for the *average user*.

Remember, if you are an IT guy, or someone who has been building PCs for years, you are NOT the average user. You are an advanced user, and you can't project YOUR values and interests onto people who are not interested in looking at or using a computer in the way YOU do.

 

[Ziltoid]

I made the choice to go with a macbook pro two years ago for college, while I prefer Windows for desktop I don't see myself getting anything but mac laptops in the future.

 

[NineSpine]

The Mac Pro is probably the worst value in the computer industry. I built a hackintosh for $1400 that is miles ahead of a $5000 mac pro. Even the base model, at $2500, only comes with 3 GB of ram. You'd have to have brain damage to pay those prices. And as far as "everything a PC can do, and more?" No USB3, eSATA, HDMI, bluray....

So you built a $1400 computer... when the processors alone in the $5000 Mac Pro are $1k each. That's pretty fascinating.

 

[L-A]

So you built a $1400 computer... when the processors alone in the $5000 Mac Pro are $1k each. That's pretty fascinating.

Of course it's not the same hardware piece-to-piece, but you might want to compare those Nehalem and Westmere CPUs with the new Core i7 950. It goes for 260$ on Newegg right now.


Intel's official comparison chart:

Link Removed

As another point of reference, I undervolted my "old" Core i7 930 because I wanted less heat. To my surprise, it's stable enough that it still runs over 3Ghz without a hiccup. On OS X, the hyperthreading tech makes the system manage 8 cores and it's not a problem either.

 

[Black Bart]

except that all that stuff : mouse, the precursor concepts for a gui, bitmapped screens and hypertext, along with a bazillion other things, were all developed at SRI in menlo park under the auspices of Douglas Engelbart. so talking about xerox as the originator of these things is still inaccurate - many of the staff at PARC who developed these technologies there were folks that had worked with him and took the technology with them when they left - they basically stole the technology from him.

see douglas engelbart's mother of all demos from 1968. 43 years ago, demoing this stuff. amazing, and long before xerox got involved or the PARC even existed.

I didn't say that Xerox was the originator, simply that this is where they were exposed to those concepts. But I guess that could be deduced from my jest.

 

[NineSpine]

Of course it's not the same hardware piece-to-piece, but you might want to compare those Nehalem and Westmere CPUs with the new Core i7 950. It goes for 260$ on Newegg right now.


Intel's official comparison chart:

Link Removed

As another point of reference, I undervolted my "old" Core i7 930 because I wanted less heat. To my surprise, it's stable enough that it still runs over 3Ghz without a hiccup. On OS X, the hyperthreading tech makes the system manage 8 cores and it's not a problem either.

That's not a comparison of the processor in the Mac Pro. The one in the Mac Pro is 6-Core 2.66.

It's not that I don't take the point that Mac Pros aren't extremely expensive. It's perfectly valid to argue that using server processors is a waste of money for most people, or that they overcharge for RAM and video cards. However, the Mac Pro isn't targeted at a consumer audience, so I don't think it's really worth going into for the sake of this discussion. I'm the first to say that Apple should put out mid-level towers and not doing so is a disservice to their customers.

 

[L-A]

That's not a comparison of the processor in the Mac Pro. The one in the Mac Pro is 6-Core 2.66.

It's not that I don't take the point that Mac Pros aren't extremely expensive. It's perfectly valid to argue that using server processors is a waste of money for most people, or that they overcharge for RAM and video cards. However, the Mac Pro isn't targeted at a consumer audience, so I don't think it's really worth going into for the sake of this discussion. I'm the first to say that Apple should put out mid-level towers and not doing so is a disservice to their customers.

What would you look for, on top of what a Mini already has?

 

[Spencer!]

i own a mac pro 2008 model, and while i was considering building a hackintosh (i would not have been my first computer build, by any stretch), for my purposes at the time (recording and processing ~20 tracks of 24 bit 96khz audio realtime via motu hardware) i was not comfortable with the possibility that it would have hardware timing issues that would render it worthless for what i was needing it for.

We were concerned about that as well, but the hackintosh has been running Pro Tools HD for 6 months now without any hickups. There was a learning curve in getting OS X to play nice with the hardware, but it hasn't crashed once since I built it.

 

[NineSpine]

What would you look for, on top of what a Mini already has?

More power.

 

[Black Bart]

What would you look for, on top of what a Mini already has?

I would like a MacPro without Xeons for one to cut down on the cost, everything else could remain as is, more RAM slots, PCIe slots, drive bays, etc. A smaller enclosure might be nice though.

 

[GregC]

It's a myth that Macs cost significantly more than PCs, with the possible exception of the Mac Mini. You can only build an equivalent PC by purposefully IGNORING features and pretending that computers with the same amount of POWER are identical, regardless of all the bells and whistles. To put this in perspective, it's like arguing that if my Honda Civic has the same amount of horsepower as your BMW, they are the same car. This is obviously ridiculous.

While it's certainly a valid argument to say "Well, I don't need those bells and whistles", you also have to recognize that *I don't need all that power*. If I have $1600 to spend on a laptop, I don't need something super powerful. I use my computer primarily for web browsing, word processing, watching videos, and sometimes recording a track for my band. None of that requires an exceptional amount of power by any stretch of the imagination, and any power beyond what I need is a complete and total waste of money. I'd rather get a computer that trades the power I COULD get from a PC in that price range, for bells and whistles that just make using the computer a little more convenient. That's exactly what a Mac does for me.

What sort of bells and whistles would you say a Mac has that a similarly configured PC doesn't that make it easier to use? I'm not being combative, I'd like to know.

I recently priced out an HP desktop and a Mac desktop with a similar amount of memory, hard drive space and number of hard drives, similar Windows software (a necessity for me), same monitor size, wireless mouse and keyboard, wireless printer and the highest-priced speaker system HP offers. The HP came out to about $1500, the Mac nearly $2100. So the premium for the Mac was 35%. If it turns out it has features that would make it worth it to me, that's cool--I might even spring for it. Then again, I use software created by my company for internal use which may still be problematic with Macs, so I'd have to look into that.

I think that a lot of PC people who are very into computers and genuinely enjoy messing around with them end up projecting that interest on to other people. I used to do computer repairs, and I never understood why people used Macs, because the PC always seemed to just work so well for me. Then, I slowly lost interest in working on computers. After a few years, it all made sense. A lot of the little problems that I basically shrugged off because I *enjoyed* messing around with my computer, are big hassles to people who just look at the computer as a tool for getting things done, and even a necessary evil in a lot of ways. Once my mindset had switched to seeing a computer primarily as a tool, and not a toy, I found myself way more interested in an operating system that is more intuitive and user friendly, which OSX is for the *average user*.

Remember, if you are an IT guy, or someone who has been building PCs for years, you are NOT the average user. You are an advanced user, and you can't project YOUR values and interests onto people who are not interested in looking at or using a computer in the way YOU do.

On this point, my own experience contrasts with this somewhat. I am far from a computer expert (as the first part of my post may demonstrate ), but I ran a Dell for 8 years with only an OS upgrade--I started with the dreaded Windows ME--and a couple of hardware upgrades that took 5 minutes.

 

[Spencer!]

What would you look for, on top of what a Mini already has?

An optical drive?

 

[NineSpine]

What sort of bells and whistles would you say a Mac has that a similarly configured PC doesn't that make it easier to use? I'm not being combative, I'd like to know.

I recently priced out an HP desktop and a Mac desktop with a similar amount of memory, hard drive space and number of hard drives, similar Windows software (a necessity for me), same monitor size, wireless mouse and keyboard, wireless printer and the highest-priced speaker system HP offers. The HP came out to about $1500, the Mac nearly $2100. So the premium for the Mac was 35%. If it turns out it has features that would make it worth it to me, that's cool--I might even spring for it. Then again, I use software created by my company for internal use which may still be problematic with Macs, so I'd have to look into that.

Well, I'm assuming you priced out an HP tower versus an iMac. An iMac is an all-in-one, which is a totally different product than a tower. The fact that it is an all-in-one may be utterly worthless to you, but that's what it is, and therefore the price is going to reflect that.

Regardless, the fact is that if you need to use Windows for software reasons... then you need to use Windows, which negates a lot of the reasons for getting a Mac.

On this point, my own experience contrasts with this somewhat. I am far from a computer expert (as the first part of my post may demonstrate ), but I ran a Dell for 8 years with only an OS upgrade--I started with the dreaded Windows ME--and a couple of hardware upgrades that took 5 minutes.

Which means that you don't have extensive experience with each OS, so that kind of defeats your own point.