I was wondering what the huuge hype over Macs is these days, I am having trouble finding any sites that are not(extremely)biased about why Macs might or might not be better than a Pc.
About all i know is everyone who knows nothing about computers think they are great, they are white, and ridiculously more expensive than the same Pc.
So am i missing something?
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
Apart from you wanting to start another stupid Mac Vs PC Jihad - what's the point of this?
You imply that people who use Macs are somehow inferior computer users. It's annoying, offensive and terrifically ignorant.
Posted by Xann. (Member # 11482) on :
quote:Originally posted by Troubadour: It's annoying, offensive and terrifically ignorant.
Soooooo..... I'm terrifically ignorant for asking a question and telling what i know, I specifically talked about trying to find a non-biased arguement, and I didn't mean offensive but most my information high school girls who think Macs are awesome.
The point is that i don't understand what is the truth and i thought asking people who nary lead me in the wrong direction would be my best choice.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
Macs are much better at video and sound editing, as well as graphic design.
PCs are much better at gaming.
Both are fine at word processing, emailing, and web development.
Posted by Xann. (Member # 11482) on :
Do they have software that is better for editing, or are Macs just made in a way that better handles editing?
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
quote:Originally posted by Xann.: About all i know is everyone who knows nothing about computers think they are great, they are white, and ridiculously more expensive than the same Pc
There's nothing unbiased about that sentence mate. I'll add 'deliberately inflammatory' to 'ignorant'.
Posted by HollowEarth (Member # 2586) on :
They are made with identical parts today so it has nothing to do with how they are made.
Those have traditionally been mac strongholds due at least originally to having much better software available. (Interestingly enough, this is also why originally almost all CNC work was done from macs too.)
They're essentially equivalent unless you have really specific needs.
Personally I think their mind share is much larger than one would expect from their market share. I think this is due to being the only real commercial competitor to microsoft and that they've worked to develop a certain cachet about their products.
Posted by Troubadour (Member # 83) on :
To step down from my high-horse for a moment, the video editing software in particular is superb:
Xann, I wouldn't normally dismiss someone's argument based on a couple of typos, but you have some major syntax errors going on.
Posted by Lanfear (Member # 7776) on :
I grew up a pretty hardcore PC user, fixing computers for cash in high school and building all my own cases and whatnot.
Now I have a macbook and a PC tower. The tower is mostly used for gaming.
The mac OS allows me to be more productive. I say this because, I don't spend countless hours tinkering or troubleshooting, because it is simplified.
But that is also its tradeoff. It's simplified. You are giving up some of your freedom to drink the apple koolaid. It just happens to be the best drink you've ever had.
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
See, that simplification horribly limits my productivity. Having used Windows for nearly 15 years, the way OS X is laid out drives me completely up a wall because it's not intuitive to me.
That said, Macs are slowly but surely morphing into PCs. The next version's inclusion Microsoft Exchange compatibility is only a small piece of that move. Switching to PC hardware was a giant shift. It's not remotely incorrect to assume that a large percentage of Mac owners run Windows on their Macs, and a small percentage of Mac users run Windows exclusively (I have seen many of these, in fact, which just absolutely boggles my mind, to be honest).
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lanfear: But that is also its tradeoff. It's simplified. You are giving up some of your freedom to drink the apple koolaid. It just happens to be the best drink you've ever had.
I don't think this is true. Certainly there is software available on Windows that is not available on Mac OS, and vice versa, but aside from that, there isn't a huge difference in the amount of freedom each system allows. (Spoken by someone who does game development and has a macbook pro at home and a dell desktop at work. But then, I spend most of my time either in a browser or in Terminal.app or cygwin, so it's all the same to me. More or less.)
Posted by wog (Member # 11782) on :
Hello I am new to hatrack. Long time fan of OSC's books and found you while looking for new reading material.
PC's are very functional, but they lack the amazing user experience you get on a Mac. It's just a different focus. That being said I have a PC, until I can afford a mac, I'll have to be content. wog
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:there isn't a huge difference in the amount of freedom each system allows
Keep in mind that for most people, "options" are defined as options within the GUI.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Keep in mind that for most people, "options" are defined as options within the GUI.
For sure. And I'll grant you that Windows' keyboard navigation for menus is more powerful than Mac's command key shortcuts. Even if it does usually require more keystrokes. Still, that's a power-user feature — I think most people use the mouse for everything. Or is there something else you have in mind that gives people more freedom on Windows?
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
Oh, here's another important difference that I think is slightly more powerful on the Mac side of things: the application-window paradigm.
On the Mac, every window belongs to an application. You can navigate the applications in several ways (command-tab, the dock, spotlight/quicksilver, exposé, etc.), but the main feature of an application is that when it is selected, all its windows are brought to the front. Usually — the exceptions are clear and well thought out. You can also navigate the windows within an application, or even all open windows in all applications.
Windows does this to an extent. There are some apps, like Photoshop and Word, that have a main window and subwindows. Also, the taskbar does a certain amount of grouping of like windows, and you can alt-escape (I think) to navigate that way. But still, the primary mode of interaction is with a single window at a time, not groups of windows. Also, there is no equivalent to hiding and showing applications on the Mac ("minimize group" is not the same). (Note: I use XP; things may be different under Vista, or not, I don't know.)
This difference in the underlying model of interaction can lead to confusion if you are used to one and try to use the other. This makes it very difficult to objectively evaluate the other system before you understand it and are at least somewhat proficient with it. This is less of a problem now than it's been, since more people have at least some experience on multiple systems, but I think this is the source of the, uh, jihadism that sometimes appears in these discussions: a Mac really is sucky to use if you're trying to use it like a Windows PC, and vice versa. It'll work, more or less, but it won't work well. Thus, my system is better than yours.
$0.02
Posted by Pegasus (Member # 10464) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mike:
Also, the taskbar does a certain amount of grouping of like windows, and you can alt-escape (I think) to navigate that way.
I believe it's alt-tab. I use keyboard shortcuts a lot at work cause my computer runs several pieces of production hardware, and when I'm actively moving around it's easier to reach over to the keyboard to fire off a command than to navigate with the mouse.
That said, I have no experience with modern Macs, so I don't have any input on that subject.
Posted by Vadon (Member # 4561) on :
I lost interest in this debate ever since the intel switch by Mac which allows you to put Windows on your mac. I figured, why argue about this when you can get both?
When I'm on my macbook, I'd say about 90% of my time is spent on OS X. I like it because it's a lot less prone to crashing and burning (though that has happened from time to time) or being cumbersome. But I still have the freedom to switch to XP and enjoy some games like City of Heroes or others.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
quote:Originally posted by Pegasus: I believe it's alt-tab.
Alt-tab cycles through the list of all windows, in the order of most-recently-visited. Alt-escape I believe cycles through windows as they appear in the taskbar. Which is precisely the distinction I was trying to draw.
Edit: I was almost right. Alt-escape pushes the top-most window to the back and focuses the next window (alt-shift-escape raises the bottom-most window to the front and focuses it). The key combo that I was thinking of is windows-tab, which cycles through the buttons of the taskbar itself, and is a little clunkier to use than Mac's command-tab.
[ October 13, 2008, 03:23 PM: Message edited by: Mike ]
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
A friend of mine once told me about a Popular Mechanics article where they ran a variety of comparisons and stress tests between macs and a couple of the main PC brands. He said that the results showed macs as a clear winner in basically every test they ran, indicating that even if you prefer windows, you should still buy a mac and then install windows onto it.
I'd love to have gotten my hands on said article, so I could read it for myself. As it stands, I have only his word.
Posted by Lanfear (Member # 7776) on :
PC Magazine had a feature a year ago I think? That showed that the Macbook Pro was the best computer to run Windows Vista on....
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
This is probably it. Not a particularly good comparison, to be honest. The only good comparison is the exact spec comparison between the Apple laptop and the ASUS laptop. With comparable specs, the difference is negligible. The desktop comparison is exceptionally poor for the simple fact that
1. Gateways are notoriously poor performers due to poor quality hardware and bloatware.
2. The Mac processor is 400MHZ faster than the PC. That can account for many of the differences they showed.
I'm curious about whether these were done straight out of the box or if the PCs were given a fresh install (as were the Macs. After all, Macs don't typically come with Windows installed.) They don't mention anything about prior reformatting. Granted, the average factory built PC isn't formatted to begin with, but if you're gonna do a proper comparison...
Posted by Lanfear (Member # 7776) on :
I think a pretty telling statistics that I tested on my own was my battery life on my macbook when I'm running XP versus OSX.
The battery life is over 30 percent longer on OSX. And the ram that I have handles much better in OSX than XP. I think that has something to do with how XP is just bloatware of WIndows 98, and how Vista is just bloatware of XP, wheras with OSX, Apple started from scratch..
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lanfear: I think that has something to do with how XP is just bloatware of WIndows 98.
That is horribly inaccurate on *soooo* many levels. For one, the kernel used in Windows 98 was ditched almost entirely after ME. Windows XP was built on the NT kernel developed in Windows 2000. Windows 2000 was in turn built off of NT4. XP and 98 were developed on entirely different paths from one another. The 98 path was meant for home use, the NT path was designed entirely for business use.
The difference you are seeing probably has more to do with power management software and settings than anything else. Further, OSX is optimized for use with the hardware they've chosen, so it's much easier for Apple's developers to manage power more efficiently.
Posted by Lanfear (Member # 7776) on :
I know that Macs handle ram much better than their counterparts.
A default windows install has so many little services running that don't need to be there.
Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lanfear: I know that Macs handle ram much better than their counterparts.
A default windows install has so many little services running that don't need to be there.
May I ask how you "know" this? And the thing about services is the same for OS X as well. Much of what is there in the average Mac is unused, but still running. And while I would *love* for Microsoft to offer customized installation capabilities in their OSes, the services that run are extremely simple to turn off permanently.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I know that Macs handle ram much better than their counterparts.
Ironically, it's been a rule of thumb in the IT business for years that any machine which would be expected to get by on 1GB of RAM needs 2GB if it's going to wind up a Mac. Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
My iMac at work had 2GB of RAM, and I was pretty surprised to find out that it regularly used 1.5GB of it when I had a few applications open.
Posted by C3PO the Dragon Slayer (Member # 10416) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:I know that Macs handle ram much better than their counterparts.
Ironically, it's been a rule of thumb in the IT business for years that any machine which would be expected to get by on 1GB of RAM needs 2GB if it's going to wind up a Mac.
That's because Macs, by design, do many things at once. On a PC, I usually just have one to three things open simulaneously, but on my MacBook, I have all my regular applications open across different Spaces, several tabs on Safari (or Firefox, depending on my mood), a heck of a lot of QuickTime windows for my midi compositions, and much more. And I still expect prime performance. PCs are only so good at handling one thing at a time. When I use Game Maker (one of the only things I keep to the PC nowadays, since everything else is cross-platform), for instance, I always am sure to nave no other applications running because dangerous lag can develop during testing.
I imagine the Mac uses excess RAM in order to handle the multitasking, what with Expose, Spaces, which are for having so many things open at once, quick Finder, and more, which all have a high processing priority.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
The OS grabs any RAM it feels like when apps aren't using it. RAM usage is not a good measure of efficiency of RAM usage; almost the opposite. Why have 2 GB of RAM if your computer avoids using it to make your experience smoother?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:PCs are only so good at handling one thing at a time.
*grin* I'm going to need to introduce you to my $600 PC of Multitasking Excellence, I see. Posted by Boris (Member # 6935) on :
Ooooh, damn. You do *not* have my job, C3PO. I am *constantly* using 4-6 things at one time with what I have to do each day. I spend three minutes every day closing windows so I have a clean system to start on the next day. I see no performance drop between having one window open and having 12. And I have a crappy piece of Dell at work.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Even if it does usually require more keystrokes. Still, that's a power-user feature — I think most people use the mouse for everything. Or is there something else you have in mind that gives people more freedom on Windows?