Discussion: Why Mac?

[Flerbizky]

All of the operating systems we use today is due to Unix and they are built off of Unix in some form.

Sorry - But do you have any idea what you're talking about?..

So because *nix was invented at Berkeley some 45 years ago, all OSs are *nix like?.. That's quite far fetched methinks...

Apple used a BSD flavour as foundation for OSX - And I'm not bashing OSX at all, neither have you seen me do so.

Windows is a completely different fruit in every way....

 

[Casio]

Apple ranks first in Software insecurity.

 

[Omnis]

The Mac novelty has worn off, lol.

 

[HACKr]

I use Windows XP Pro on my Dell Precision workstation (Xeons omg!), Mac OS X on my older G4 (mirrored drive doors omg!), and Ubuntu on my Compaq netbook. Both the workstation and the Mac are used to make music, but I pretty much only do softsynth-related stuff on the Dell (I do very much prefer hardware, but my budget does not allow me to purchase a $300+ synthesizer whenever I'm looking for a specific sound) as opposed to actual recording on the Mac.

I find that the Mac plays nicer with my outboard hardware than the PC does. My midi interface is literally plug-and-play on the Mac, no drivers needed. On the PC it was more like Install Drivers, Plug In, Continue Installation Process, Think It's Working, Oh No Why Is Windows Asking Me To Install Drivers For It Over And Over Again, Restart Even Though I Shouldn't Have To, Windows Asks For Drivers Again, Oh Wow It Works, Play.

Oh well, at least I can play games on the Dell. I also run Xubuntu and FreeBSD in VirtualBox on it. If Wine wasn't so difficult on Linux I'd rather be using it on the Dell. I find Windows to feel pretty vulgar and, well, ugly (in more than just a visual sense) when it comes to the user experience.

 

[Flerbizky]

I use Windows XP Pro on my Dell Precision workstation (Xeons omg!), Mac OS X on my older G4 (mirrored drive doors omg!), and Ubuntu on my Compaq netbook. Both the workstation and the Mac are used to make music, but I pretty much only do softsynth-related stuff on the Dell (I do very much prefer hardware, but my budget does not allow me to purchase a $300+ synthesizer whenever I'm looking for a specific sound) as opposed to actual recording on the Mac.

I find that the Mac plays nicer with my outboard hardware than the PC does. My midi interface is literally plug-and-play on the Mac, no drivers needed. On the PC it was more like Install Drivers, Plug In, Continue Installation Process, Think It's Working, Oh No Why Is Windows Asking Me To Install Drivers For It Over And Over Again, Restart Even Though I Shouldn't Have To, Windows Asks For Drivers Again, Oh Wow It Works, Play.

Oh well, at least I can play games on the Dell. I also run Xubuntu and FreeBSD in VirtualBox on it. If Wine wasn't so difficult on Linux I'd rather be using it on the Dell. I find Windows to feel pretty vulgar and, well, ugly (in more than just a visual sense) when it comes to the user experience.

You're talking about a 9 year old OS. Windows has come a long way.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

That is true. After Vista and 7, XP seems so outdated.

 

[Casio]

You're talking about a 9 year old OS. Windows has come a long way.

Yeah, it's an idiotic argument when people often compare bad experiences in Windows XP to good experiences in OSX 10.5/6. So therefor Mac is better.

Windows XP came out when OSX 10.0 was still the major Mac OS. So compare it with that. OSX 10.0 was so bad and buggy Apple gave a free upgrade to 10.1

If you want to get into XP doesn't count until Service Pack 2 arguement, then you have to compare it to OSX 10.3, which it still thoroughly whipped cause 10.3 was garbage as well (Though it added many features that were refined for current day OSX).

The fact that Windows XP still has (As off June) 54% marketshare compared 6.8% of all Mac Operating system. Shows how great an operating system Windows XP really is.

 

[Eric.]

All of the operating systems we use today is due to Unix and they are built off of Unix in some form.

*spits beverage all over desk, keyboard, monitor, etc etc*

 

[jjaisli]

Yeah, it's an idiotic argument when people often compare bad experiences in Windows XP to good experiences in OSX 10.5/6. So therefor Mac is better.

Windows XP came out when OSX 10.0 was still the major Mac OS. So compare it with that. OSX 10.0 was so bad and buggy Apple gave a free upgrade to 10.1

The man said he was running a G4 MDD. This model is nearly 10 years old and can not run the last two iterations of OS X. So he's comparing outdated model to outdated model. I thought this was clear.

Either way, just to correct you, when XP came out OS 9 was still the operating system being used by the majority of the Mac user base. OS X 10.0 was essentially a public beta and although it was sold by Apple at retail, it was included in the purchase of every new Mac. 10.1 was essentially a maintenance upgrade.

 

[Christian_C]

For me it's mostly because I'd have thrown the $1200 Windows Laptop off the roof by this point in time, so the act of purchasing another one pretty much brings the cost level to the same point.

The point behind which is that it would have done something to irritate me by now. I have a modestly equipped desktop with Windows 7 on it (which incidentally was made by Foxconn, the lot that make the iPhone), and I can cope with that. If it goes wrong, I'll open it up, have a poke around and in theory fix it myself. Which is fine - I don't rely on it to do anything other than play DVDs and function as a DVR, so if it decided to die tomorrow my productivity would actually go up.

That reaches the limits of what I trust a PC to do, basically. Which is fine - I prefer to think of it as an Alfa Romeo. It'll let me have fun occasionally, but as soon as I want to actually use it for work it'll break down and make me late.

I know someone will counteract me with 'oh but my PC is very reliable blahblahblah', but I don't really care. Every PC I've owned has died/become unusable within about 18 months of just sitting on a desk not moving, so either I'm doing something fundamentally abusive or they hate me. Oh and apparently they hate my mother too, as her 12 month old Samsung now takes 10 minutes from switch-on to actually being able to do anything, and that's been given such a gentle and luxurious life that it probably thinks it's on holiday.

This is similar to my situation.

To give you an idea of why I decided to get a macbook rather than a laptop here is what has happened in my experience of computers.

In my household over the past 5-6 years we have been through 3 desktop computers and 2 laptops. That's a rate of a replacement almost or every year. This is due to all manner of issues that have occurred one of the most prolific (occurring 3 times on two different computers) was windows deciding to overwrite critical files for no apparent reason, don't ask me why as I don't know and nor do I care as it happened so long ago.

Anyway, so I've had my mac for what is coming up to almost 2 years now and I've: tipped drinks over it, dropped it, sat on it, walking into doors with it in my hand, all manner of things and it still works flawlessly apart from having a few dents in the case and the OS doesn't make me want to tear my hair out like my computers did. I know people say they are expensive but when you add up all the cost of the other computers I've had its really not so bad as it's lasted much longer than I'd expected it would do.

In short, for me who is lazy and only wants my laptop to work for doing such tasks as: listening to music, browsing the internet, watching dvd's, homework its perfect. granted for anyone who wants to spend time on fiddling about with it, customising and playing games I'd take a PC anytime, its definitely a situation which depends very much on what you need/want and in my case the mac does everything I want.

 

[NissanSkylineN1]

Oh well, at least I can play games on the Dell. I also run Xubuntu and FreeBSD in VirtualBox on it. If Wine wasn't so difficult on Linux I'd rather be using it on the Dell. I find Windows to feel pretty vulgar and, well, ugly (in more than just a visual sense) when it comes to the user experience.

What problems are you having with Wine? I can help you.

 

[HACKr]

You're talking about a 9 year old OS. Windows has come a long way.

See the quote below. Both of these machines have outdated OSes. All of my stuff is old really...

The man said he was running a G4 MDD. This model is nearly 10 years old and can not run the last two iterations of OS X. So he's comparing outdated model to outdated model. I thought this was clear.

Funny thing too, the CPUs in the G4 are clocked at around a quarter or less than the speed of those in the Dell (867 mhz vs. 3.4 ghz), the memory is slower (2 gB DDR vs. 2 gB DDR2), the hard drives are slower (ATA @ 7200 RPM vs. SCSI Ultra-320 @ 15,000 RPM), and loads else is slower and lower spec, and to be completely honest, the operating system is slightly newer and more of a memory hog on the G4, but the G4 boots in less than 30 seconds, whereas the Dell takes around two minutes to be usable.

That being said, I don't have too many problems that affect my regular use of Windows. I'm posting from the Dell right now. I don't get loaded with viruses and spyware, and the only times it crashes are when I'm doing something that I KNOW will probably affect stability / blow up on me.

I can't speak much for Windows Vista or 7. I have had the chance to use both on computers that friends of mine or my family own, and it's usually when someone wants something fixed...

What problems are you having with Wine? I can help you.

I'm very much a novice with Wine. I'm trying to run the old 16-bit game Sim Tower on my netbook in Wine. It crashes unless the sound is turned off and using the menus causes the game to pretty much stop for a few minutes, then act as normal. From what I have read these are pretty common problems anyway. (Oh lol offtopic)