Mac endorsement

[broadbill]

As someone who has worked in IT for over 10 years and currently for a company that has a large Mac population as well as PC's I can tell you this. There is nothing special about macs, they fail, they slow down, they crash.

Sure, all computers will slow down and fail. What you need to keep in mind is the rate at which they slow down and fail. Seems like Mac performance remains stable (speed, fail rate) for a longer period of time.

 

[Glasfeena]

And if you get and use iwork you will avoid Office as well.

Or you can download OpenOffice for OSX and do most everything you need to do for free.

I am not a PC nor a Mac. I am not a computer. I will not get involved in this debate.

 

[Synovia]

As someone who has worked in IT for over 10 years and currently for a company that has a large Mac population as well as PC's I can tell you this. There is nothing special about macs, they fail, they slow down, they crash. They are not a magic silver bullet for all computer problems.

Apple has done a very good job of marketing their products. Which has contributed to the allure.

Windows XP was a very solid operating system. I have three PC's in my home that have been running it for 5 years without crashing, slowing down, etc. Windows 7 has been even better so far in my experience.

With that said, I am very OS agnostic, I use Windows, Linux, Unix and MAC OS in my daily job. Each has it's place and function, and I can't say that anyone of them is "better" than the other.

and here is a little food for thought for anyone who thinks they can't get viruses or hacked.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/security-hacker-os-x-windows-7-flash,10205.html

The only real difference I've found as far as the two operating platforms is that Microsoft tends to release their product a bit earlier in the development cycle than Apple does. New MS OS's are a pain the first couple months, but after that, they're fine.


Vista is a perfect example of this, its a terrific OS, and frankly, 7 is just renamed vista with a little facelift, but the launch was so terrible because of all the driver issues and lack of manufacturer support, that everyone still thinks the OS is a mess.

 

[Synovia]

Sure, all computers will slow down and fail. What you need to keep in mind is the rate at which they slow down and fail. Seems like Mac performance remains stable (speed, fail rate) for a longer period of time.

As an IT guy, I would strongly disagree.


If we were talking early powerPC based Macs, vs the mess that was windows 98 FE, sure, but its just not true anymore. Computers slowing down, and becoming unstable is almost always a user issue. It is almost always the cast that the user installed some piece of rogue software that is causing the problems.

 

[Synovia]

I have saved thousands of songs and photos to my mac and it has not slowed one bit.

ANYTHING I saved on the PC slowed it noticeably.

Downloading files will not slow a PC unless you're up over 70% of hard drive utilization, and then it will slow down any machine, PC or MAC.

If your computer is slowing down, its because you have installed software that is running constantly.

 

[BlueSunshine]

Sure, all computers will slow down and fail. What you need to keep in mind is the rate at which they slow down and fail. Seems like Mac performance remains stable (speed, fail rate) for a longer period of time.

That's actually a bit of an illusion. OS X runs maintenance scripts that keep your computer in good shape as far as speed is concerned. You can do the same thing with PC's except it's not automatic.

Apple does seem to have more reliable hardware when put up against alot of crappy PC brands, but as with anything it WILL fail. I'd take Apple's hardware rather than HP's for instance, but the hard drives (and other parts) for both are going to have very similar lifespans.

 

[mitch171]

Until they allow me to install the MAC OS on any x86 chip/system I want, I will not pay for it. It's unfortunate that Linux isn't as trendy as Mac, people would be all over it with the new leaps and bounds it has made for usability.

If you're getting a Mac because you want to be cool, good for you. If all you're doing is basic work, then sure it's awesome system. But it's like buying a Sony Laptop, you pay a price premium over similar competition. If you plan on doing hardcore gaming avoid it, but the Geforce 9300/9600 that come in most of the mac laptops are adequate for mild-moderate gaming, unless of course you need to dual boot into windows to run it then it defeats the purpose of the Mac.

I tell everyone who asks my opinion, if money isn't crucial then go ahead. But go into the Apple store and type on it, use it do whatever for 20-30 minutes to get a feel for it. If you bring it home not knowing what the hell you're doing or not accustomed to the chiclet keyboard, it's going to suck.

ps. Left something out, backwards compatibility. My cousin can't use her Firewire 400 devices on her new Mac. Or the fact that most of the new OS's won't work on macs with the G series chips. But this is also a good thing because it avoids that Vista "compatible" disaster that happened way back when.

I play games on a game system. Another reason to buy a Mac is for photo/video editing. This is what I use my computer for. I am running Leopard on a G4 chip the only OS you can't run on the G4 is Snow Leopard which is just a performance upgrade over Leopard. But in the future they are no longer creating new OS for G chip so you are going to be right. I thought is was great that the new OS (Leopard) was able to be installed on the old chipset at all.

Also because of the new chip set you can actually run Windows just like on a PC, you no longer have to run OSX and then run Windows on top of it. So I really think that makes the decision in the end you have two OS running natively so you are in effect buying two computers for a bit over the price of one PC.

Right now with my imac I can boot in Windows XP or OSX, I can run any program on the market with a 27" screen that includes the computer and takes up less space than many monitors. Also I have free tech support any day I need it at the store ~15 min away. I don't see any downside...

 

[bakins]

I work in IT. I have a slightly different perspective. I design, deploy, and operate large websites (think top 1% of the web). All of us are old school Unix guys (and most of us aren't that old). When OS X came out, I jumped from my Linux laptop to a Mac. Got tired of trying to get X running reliably. I promptly installed emacs and haven't looked back My time is worth allot more than the $ difference in price between a PC an a Mac.

Also, seeing some of the Mac vs PC debates make me chuckle. Some folks may as well be saying moonbeams and bluesmoke make computers work...

 

[mightynintendo]

I like what you said about your time being worth a lot more than the price difference between Macs and PCs. It's more than just emacs, OSX saves me a ton of time finding files and being ready to do exactly what I want, when I want.

 

[Professor Frink]

I became a Mac guy a few years ago, and will never go back. But for the people who say they need to run Windows programs - just download Parallels (or another mirroring program), and you can run Windows from a Mac, it only takes about 25 G of your hard drive.

 

[The_Dtrain]

There is way to run PC programs on a MAC without virtual pc or parallels, its called WINE. I installed it and downloaded the Beersmith demo and it worked great. Follow the instructions carefully. You need to use the Terminal Application for installing and running the PC program, but it's not difficult if you follow the instructions.

http://davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/

Dtrain

 

[mitch171]

So wait, you don't utilize moonbeams? I thought you had to take into account the gravity of the blue smoke to determine the utilization of the moonbeams when booting up?

 

[mitch171]

There is way to run PC programs on a MAC without virtual pc or parallels, its called WINE.
Dtrain

It is also called, just boot in Windows. Now that macs are intel based chipsets windows can run natively.

From the apple site.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/compatibility/

It runs Windows, too.
Have a Windows application you need to use once in a while? No problem. Every new Mac lets you install Windows XP and Vista and run them at native speeds, using a built-in utility called Boot Camp.

Setup is simple and safe for your Mac files. After you’ve completed the installation, you can boot up your Mac using either Mac OS X or Windows. (That’s why it’s called Boot Camp.) Or if you want to run Windows and Mac applications at the same time — without rebooting — you can install Windows using VMware or Parallels software.*

 

[bakins]

So wait, you don't utilize moonbeams? I thought you had to take into account the gravity of the blue smoke to determine the utilization of the moonbeams when booting up?

Shhh... don't give away all the secrets

If the magic blue smoke ever escapes, we are all doomed.

I've had mixed results with Wine on OS X. Beersmith runs fine under it

 

[nebben]

....

After 5 minutes, I am getting really concerned. What is the hidden menace in my new laptop?

Finally we get it out of him.

THEY DON'T BREAK. (except the occasional mechanical part like the cd drawer) They don't crash. They don't get viruses. They don't need his services...............
....

FWIW, I've been working with brand new iMac desktops and laptops for the last month with little interruption. My project since then has been to deploy a gaggle of them to one of our new buildings. Up to this point, I have been a non-Mac user pretty much exclusively.

My project has involved installing, formatting, building working images, joining to 2 directories and deploying these things.

• They do freeze. Hard freezes, program crashes with "do you want to ignore this program that shutdown unexpectedly" type errors, spinning beachball of death (SBBOD - look it up if you haven't seen it yet)...etc.
• They do break. I just hauled the first one up to our local Mac dealer for repair. Even with full logging turned on, no reasons come up as to what is broken. It is completely unusable. I expect this type of scenario every now and then because even though they are "Apple" computers, they are made with the same guts that PCs are made out of. They will break too, just that you can't really fix them yourself since Apple can't tolerate anyone peeking under the hood at any of their products. Weak.
• For the record, in my 13 years of IS experience, the only computer that burst into flames and burned itself nearly completely (and the desk that it was on) was an iMac laptop about 3 years ago. Granted, I did hear of a colleague that had his apartment burn down because of a faulty Dell laptop power supply...

They are neat computers, but they're also just so bleeding expensive. MacOSX (I speak of 10.6+ since that is all I have experience in) is nice, clever, and well thought out, but like others have said, Windows 7 is getting much better too. It should also be noted that MacOSX(10.6.3) isn't without bugs. We just submitted one to Apple last week. It happens. If only Microsoft would get a better filesystem...

 

[cheezydemon3]

Good to know!

For my non-hardcore usage, it seems way better than any PC I have ever used, but most work PC's I've had access to are not the latest greatest, definitely not windows 7.