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re:cursive
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
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 Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 3:26 am Post subject: |
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I'm always a bit hesitant about entering into Mac vs. Pc debates but I'm going to post here (the couple of beers I've got under my belt may help).
First things first...this stuff about lack of right clicking and peripherals is stoopid. I've had a mac for a while now and have been able to plug anything in and use any devices I've needed. I purchased my mac without any peripherals and went down the road to buy a cheap two button PC mouse with a jog wheel and a PC keyboard. I plugged them into the USB port and Bob's your uncle they worked (including two button functionality). I plugged my external hard drive in and wow...it worked as well.
I use my computer a lot and have done so for over a decade. Up to this year I always used PC's and had no end of troubles. I don't believe the point that if you know what you are doing PC's won't be a problem. I lived in a sharehouse for 4 years with 2 PC yoda's. Guys who set up PC's, networks etc. as their main source of income. I had access to the knowledge and the resources to troubleshoot and fix any problem that came and still I had disasters...big ones that cost me time and money. Granted I was pushing my machine a lot.
Since buying a mac it's been all smooth sailing. Never had a virus. Never had a system crash. Never seen a blue screen. Never lost any data. Have never needed to reformat. And, I'm using my mac as much as I ever used a PC.
The performance I'm getting out of my mac is exceptional for the specs and price. My current mac cost me only a little bit more than my old Pc and has the same system specs but I'm able to get at least twice the performance out of it. For example using Logic (which I realise is now a native mac product) I can run way more audio channels, way more effects, way more vst's and the processing time is substantially quicker.
Back at uni I was doing a multimedia degree and guess what? Pretty much every machine was a mac. The only PC machines were in the 3D rendering farm running Maya. When speaking with industry people, they pretty much all used mac. There's got to be a reason for it.
The only negative aspect of mac that I can see is the cost and lack of cracked software. But at the end of the day that is a non-issue for me anyway. I'm quite happy to pay for my software and am also happy to pay a bit more to not experience costly downtime.
If anyone asks me whether to get a Pc or a mac I say it totally depends on what you are doing. If you're just doing basic stuff...get a PC and save yourself some money. If you're going to push your machine and need it to work...get a mac. |
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ulsanchris
Joined: 19 Jun 2003
Location: take a wild guess
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:30 am Post subject: |
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You don't have to hunt for drivers, download a bunch of crap.. you plug it in and it works.
Same with Windows.
This is a load. before being able to get pics of my digicams and use my printer i had to install the right drivers.
with my mac i just plugged them in and they worked without having to install anything. |
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rocklee
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 9:54 am Post subject: |
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| europe2seoul wrote: |
I am not going to go app by app and say what is available and how on Mac since it would take forewer - your list is too long and some parts are core OS components - hardly a freebie. However, things to do all those things are available and come on Mac for free as well. From media (video/audio), to readers, to productivity. Migration assistants, etc. From SQL Server point of view, if you install Developer package (comes for free from Apple - now also from MS the .NET Studio Express and .NET framework) you have DB support if you want for your development. So I didn't see a killer free app shipping with MS that you don't have on Mac. I did see lack of unix tools (sed, awk, sort, shell scripting) on Windows though.
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Well I just listed some of the freebies that were not included with XP. There were more but did not want to waste this site's bandwidth. I personally do not go through everyone of them and I think this is the reason why Microsoft does not have them on the OS if people don't need them.
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Well, with same analogy Windows was always Windows with some add-ons - from 3.0/3.1 until now since its called Windows, right?  Joking...
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Actually I agree. In fact the benefit of keeping the same theme is to ensure that the user is still familiar with the usability of the OS. People have tried to compare Windows to Unix and MacOS for years but the heart of Windows have never really changed because it works for the many millions of users out there. Love it or hate it, you have to give it kudos for lasting this long and for sticking to its guns.
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Actually, with Mac OS X Leopard comes new runtime and Objective-C 2.0 with additions to how code is done on Mac. Also, before Mac OS X could not pass certification to be Unix compliant, however now Apple says they will apply for that to pass it. Also what comes is the new file system what they call Time Machine - I guess based on Sun's ZFS filesystem and MS implemented that for Vista (and Win 2003?) called Previous Versions. There are some other advances in spotlight searches regarding meta-data registry and extending it to other data not just files. Also core animation component is added, etc. There are other upgrades and changes since its been brewing for 2+ years now, but can't remember all. And previous versions of OS X changed a lot from first 10.0/10.1 version to current 10.4 Tiger. Interface staid pretty much the same, but under the hood things improved. Same with Windows - if you fire up Windows Classic Look it looks the same as Win95 but it is not the same OS anymore like 11 years ago, is it? |
All that is true, I've been following the progress of OSX lately with interest since Vista came out noting major changes to file backups, search and file management. Vista has really up the mantle this time with the bunch of features that were only suppose to work on a unix environment. Its only going to make future generation OSes that much better. |
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luvnpeas
Joined: 03 Aug 2006
Location: somewhere i have never travelled
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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| rocklee wrote: |
Anyway, following are some stuff you could get for free from MS for XP (skip it since you get the idea) :
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In the future, please use a link instead of swamping us with ten times more text than anyone is going to read. |
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Missile Command Kid
Joined: 17 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:52 pm Post subject: |
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| superacidjax wrote: |
| I've seen many posts on this thread regarding the "scarcity" of mac periphrials in Korea. That's absurd. I can use nearly ANY periphrial on my mac. That's the beauty. You don't have to hunt for drivers, download a bunch of crap.. you plug it in and it works. The few periphrials that won't work on a mac (I haven't found any) are probably not worth owning anyway. |
Funny guy. For anybody who's exclusively used Windows in the past and are considering going with Apple, you need to be aware of the fact that the Apple mousing algorithym is quite different from Windows. Windows uses a linear path (move the mouse one centimetre, the pointer moves 5 centimetres on screen), whereas Apple uses a curved path (move the mouse one centimetre, and the pointer on screen will go slow for a bit, then all of a sudden speed up). People have equated it to feeling like you're dragging your mouse through mud, and I couldn't agree more. If you're switching, spend an extra $20 for Steermouse, a third party driver that gets rid of the curve in Windows.
On the other hand, my iMac runs OSX and Windows without a problem. It's got a tiny footprint, it's fast, and it's almost dead silent. The video card in it is good enough to run games like Company of Heroes. You don't need to use the crappy Mighty Mouse; I've got a Logitech G5 hooked up and it works beautifully (with the above drivers). I was willing to pay a premium for a low-profile computer, and for one that's barely bigger than a 17" widescreen LCD panel, it works great. I'm very happy with it.
Then again, I spend >90% of my time in Windows on my 32GB FAT32 partition... |
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Missile Command Kid
Joined: 17 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 4:56 pm Post subject: |
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| re:cursive wrote: |
| Since buying a mac it's been all smooth sailing. Never had a virus. Never had a system crash. Never seen a blue screen. Never lost any data. Have never needed to reformat. And, I'm using my mac as much as I ever used a PC. |
Well, here's some more anecdocal evidence: my five month old C2D iMac has crashed three times - all three close to boot-up, once because of Front Row, and once because I've had the audacity to try to run a program as soon as the bar at the bottom pops up.
My 3 year old IBM Thinkpad X31? Not a single crash. Then again, it did have a faulty daughterboard that needed to be replaced, so I guess YMMV. |
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europe2seoul
Joined: 12 Sep 2005
Location: Seoul, Korea
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:36 pm Post subject: |
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| rocklee wrote: |
Well I just listed some of the freebies that were not included with XP. There were more but did not want to waste this site's bandwidth. I personally do not go through everyone of them and I think this is the reason why Microsoft does not have them on the OS if people don't need them.
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I understand. But whatever those apps do you can do on Mac for free also. Except useless Apps like for example MS Agent - a funny charachter cracking jokes and talking. C'mon....I mean (1) Who is using that (2) Why (3) Is that a distinguishing feature so person will select Windows and not Mac?
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Actually I agree. In fact the benefit of keeping the same theme is to ensure that the user is still familiar with the usability of the OS.
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OS is not a theme. OS is not what you see on the screen. You can download a theme for Windows and make it look 90% like Mac OS GUI. Almost everything changes, Control Panel, windows, pointers, colors, etc...So theme is Mac OS but core is Window. OS is about how applications are installed, how are they ran on the CPU at the same time (a job of a scheduler), security features, memory protection, HDD writing scheme. How are they installed (Windows registry for example causeing lots of trouble), how are they executed (binary file format) and how do they find libraries for use (DLL on Windows). I do not know what your background is, computer science or english education, but companies do not change OS theme how you say with every new version because the underlying technology of OS is being improved and also backward compatibility. Not because they can't change the GUI - but then again why change GUI if it works and people like it. For example, there are tons of UNIX systems out there....UNIX didn't change its theme for decades but it was improved a LOT in all components of OS (file system, scheduler, network, memory, etc).
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All that is true, I've been following the progress of OSX lately with interest since Vista came out noting major changes to file backups, search and file management. Vista has really up the mantle this time with the bunch of features that were only suppose to work on a unix environment. Its only going to make future generation OSes that much better. |
GUI on Vista was a very obvious copy of what is on Mac OS with some updates. But all in all look very similar. File backups are also ZFS file system based. Search is same as Spotlight in Mac OS. There are tons of articles on the Internet comparing the 2 OSes (from independent writers) and it seems MS took this time to copy Mac OS X calling it Vista. Sure, they probably added a feature or two like everyone else would.
The point is that Vista did not make anything new or revoluntionary (except increasing sales of hardware since people should update their PCs to run it). And those features were already available on Unix as you mention or Mac OS X. So, I do not see how can Vista be the leader or pioneer of making "future generation OSes that much better". Maybe future generation of Windows that much better, to which I agree. Otherwise, MS would not even bother spending money on Vista development if there is no benefit.
But Rocklee, did you ever use Mac or? |
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europe2seoul
Joined: 12 Sep 2005
Location: Seoul, Korea
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Missile Command Kid wrote: |
Windows uses a linear path (move the mouse one centimetre, the pointer moves 5 centimetres on screen), whereas Apple uses a curved path (move the mouse one centimetre, and the pointer on screen will go slow for a bit, then all of a sudden speed up).
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How can I test that? After reading your post I was moving my mouse now fast and slow, in curve or linear (up/down/left/right only) and can't see this speed up or slow down. |
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europe2seoul
Joined: 12 Sep 2005
Location: Seoul, Korea
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 5:43 pm Post subject: |
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| Missile Command Kid wrote: |
Well, here's some more anecdocal evidence: my five month old C2D iMac has crashed three times - all three close to boot-up, once because of Front Row, and once because I've had the audacity to try to run a program as soon as the bar at the bottom pops up.
My 3 year old IBM Thinkpad X31? Not a single crash. Then again, it did have a faulty daughterboard that needed to be replaced, so I guess YMMV. |
Can you elaborate more on crash because of FrontRow and this bar at the bottom pops up? What bar at the bottom? "Dock" with those icons? It should't crash the system though - what did logs say and what app?
For Windows, well, mine doesn't crash that much either, its more it slows down after time and things start longer to load. Its like MS engineer put some function like checkInstallationTime() and if it is like 6 month or longer then they call something to slow system down for 5% and then more, etc.
I understand when installing lots of software, etc...registry grows to a large size. But I don't do that....its just after a long time apps that work good start to get slugish, apps crash (not OS) and all that for no reason. Then uopn reinstallation of OS and same Apps everything goes back to normal. |
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hanguker
Joined: 16 Mar 2005
Location: Korea
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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Mac is better...for me to poop on!
That's the definitive answer. |
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rocklee
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 9:21 pm Post subject: |
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| europe2seoul wrote: |
I understand. But whatever those apps do you can do on Mac for free also. Except useless Apps like for example MS Agent - a funny charachter cracking jokes and talking. C'mon....I mean (1) Who is using that (2) Why (3) Is that a distinguishing feature so person will select Windows and not Mac?
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There are many free applications for Windows that are not available free for the Mac. I can list a thousand more if you like not including games. OSX has several built-in features I find extremely useless as well like dock (a glorified taskbar), time machine (just plain old backups), the green button. But probably the worst application I've ever used was Quicktime. My goodness its amazing how a company could survive such a useless "media" player that doesn't even scale movies to full screen but charge people $25 to enable this feature.
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OS is not a theme.
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I think you're misquoting me here. When I say theme I mean usability, not Simpson/X-men or brushed metal wallpapers.
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OS is not what you see on the screen. You can download a theme for Windows and make it look 90% like Mac OS GUI.
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Who wants to model their Windows desktop to look like OSX???? There are so many different ways of customising your windows desktop, which is one of the advantages of using 95/98/2000/XP/Vista. Some of the stuff 3rd party companies come up with are very innovative, some are even incorporated into OSX as a standard feature (konfabulator).
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GUI on Vista was a very obvious copy of what is on Mac OS with some updates.
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Not really. I know a lot of Mac fans say this but Vista looks a lot like an improved XP. Remember that XP hasn't been updated for 5 years already, Vista development actually started way back and some of its features were demoed at various convention of which Apple could have picked up for OSX.
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But all in all look very similar. File backups are also ZFS file system based. Search is same as Spotlight in Mac OS. There are tons of articles on the Internet comparing the 2 OSes (from independent writers) and it seems MS took this time to copy Mac OS X calling it Vista. Sure, they probably added a feature or two like everyone else would.
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Microsoft had backup features on their server versions of 2000 and XP, Apple used the idea and came out with time machine. Spotlight is basically what Windows search has been doing for a long time. Search in Vista is even better than both. Spaces is a unix thing and has been available on Windows also for years. There are tons of information out there proclaiming that Apple copied Windows and Linux, dressing features up to look nicer.
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The point is that Vista did not make anything new or revoluntionary
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The ability to integrate so many different kinds of devices and getting them to communicate all in one's living room or car has put all computer users well and truely into a new era. Of course, Window users have been playing around with watching TV from their computers for years (and playing games!), Vista makes all that even easier to do.
I used Linux in the past and while I liked the GUI and different feel, it was frustrating just to get games to play with my video cards, enable TV output without having to play around with the refresh rate and so on.
While XP had always been the most popular platform for gaming on a computer, Vista sets out to make gaming even better and easier due to its better integration with video hardware. Which is interesting considering that MS already has a console design for gaming. The graphics for games on Vista? Amazing and unmatched by anything ever done on a Mac.
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except increasing sales of hardware since people should update their PCs to run it
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Hey this isn't as bad as forcing people to replace their battery depleted iPods for new iPods! Even Jobs said that people should replace their iPods every year! Anyway, I don't think MS has forced as many people to buy and replace their systems as much as Apple has.
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And those features were already available on Unix as you mention or Mac OS X. So, I do not see how can Vista be the leader or pioneer of making "future generation OSes that much better".
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Microsoft have forced Apple to reinvent itself even though it has not released a major version of Windows for 5 years. Playing various media formats and enabling the possibilities of watching FHD/HD/SD videos has created a new use for millions of users. Media player is leaps and bounds ahead of Quicktime. The Start button is the single most powerful feature in Windows, emulated by even some linux distribution. The search feature is the most powerful searching tool ever on a desktop.
All these ideas being passed around and shared is only going to produce better software in the future.
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Maybe future generation of Windows that much better, to which I agree. Otherwise, MS would not even bother spending money on Vista development if there is no benefit.
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You are missing out the fact that
Windows hasn't been updated for a few years before Vista came out. Hardware has matured a lot so it makes sense for MS to upgrade.
Microsoft showcases future features all the time to garner feedbacks. In fact as soon as XP came out they were already working on Vista. They are extremely open to 3rd parties (including Apple!) to come up with better products than their own. Apple doesn't and prefer to keep all their developments in absolute secrecy.
Regardless, all of this "you copied me so I copy you" does not mean ANYTHING to me or to millions of users who couldn't care less about it. I often find immature Mac users proclaiming Apple as pioneers or innovative, Apple is just part of the techno-circle of life just like any other companies involved in it.
But Rocklee, did you ever use Mac or?[/quote]
Yes I have and I hated using it. I hate using a one button mouse and the keyboard where I could just right click (games are an exception but even a one button mouse don't work well in them). While the OS is pretty, I find that a lot of what's on the screen is useless to me especially dashboard and dock. Also I don't believe I've seen the interface in any other colours apart from brushed metal. |
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Missile Command Kid
Joined: 17 Jul 2006
Location: Daegu
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 9:50 pm Post subject: |
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| europe2seoul wrote: |
| Can you elaborate more on crash because of FrontRow and this bar at the bottom pops up? What bar at the bottom? "Dock" with those icons? It should't crash the system though - what did logs say and what app? |
Dock, yes. Clicked on Safari just after bootup and the entire system locked. I sat there waiting for five minutes, but everything was completely unresponsive. Same thing happened when I loaded up Front Row after bootup: the entire system just stopped responding. |
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the_beaver
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2007 11:06 pm Post subject: |
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| Missile Command Kid wrote: |
| europe2seoul wrote: |
| Can you elaborate more on crash because of FrontRow and this bar at the bottom pops up? What bar at the bottom? "Dock" with those icons? It should't crash the system though - what did logs say and what app? |
Dock, yes. Clicked on Safari just after bootup and the entire system locked. I sat there waiting for five minutes, but everything was completely unresponsive. Same thing happened when I loaded up Front Row after bootup: the entire system just stopped responding. |
I had that same problem. And the fucking machine locked up half of the time when i loaded Photoshop. |
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luvnpeas
Joined: 03 Aug 2006
Location: somewhere i have never travelled
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| Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2007 2:15 am Post subject: |
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ABORTION STOPS A BEATING HEART
US IMPERIALISM IS #1 THREAT TO WORLD PEACE
THE 2ND AMMENDMENT GUARANTEES MY RIGHT TO OWN A GUN
SEXUAL PENETRATION IS VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMYN
Who wants to have REAL fun? |
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tesseract
Joined: 26 May 2006
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| Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 1:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Aaaaahhhhhhh!!!! Okay! I won't ask again! |
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