Not trying to start a firestorm or anything but...

[Maximius]

I was arguing with a buddy, an electrical engineer who swears by Macs and claims that anything done well is done on a Mac at some point to make it better, even stuff started on PCs.

 

I know that each has an advantage over the other is some departments, but I wanted to see what the current status was.

[Baddcog]

Maybe at one point in time Macs were better at graphics. Anymore I think a decent computer of any type is good enough.

 

Maybe Macs were also a cult item at one point, thought to be cooler because Bill Gates went corporate.

But Bill tried to make computers with Apple first, they were too cool for him though (they paid no mind).

Now Gates is ultra wealthy and gives alot of money to charity.

Apple makes I-Pods to make money, and stupid features like playing songs randomly based on how many times they've been played. So the first song played randomly will get played more often than the songs you haven't heard. Makes for a short repetitive random cyle.

 

If you wanna be cool go with Linux.

[Crispy]

Whatever gets the job done.

 

Macs are quite nice in the design and friendliness departments, but PCs have their points as well; cheapness, customisability, that sort of thing.

[OrbWeaver]

I think Macs are very popular amongst creative professionals -- graphic designers, music producers and other people who just want to "get the job done" and consider the computer as a tool for that purpose. Apple has the advantage in producing a useable solution because they control the entire package from hardware through to software, unlike PCs where the OS developers have to deal with an unimaginably large combination of hardware configurations.

 

In terms of what you can do, there is not much in it; it's just a matter of your personal preference: expensive, prepackaged and polished (Mac), fairly cheap, ubiquitous but not always very stable (Windows), free, customisable but often unpolished and requiring work to get things set up properly (Linux).

[Serpentine]

A PC. Because paying more for less is well... stupid.

 

Back in the day when Mac's were PPC based, they did have a nice performance edge in things like Photoshop work and some rendering engines - however since today they are nothing more than a pretty looking PC running OSX, they have little to no performance difference, and in most cases the Windows box wins due to the poor software dev'd for Mac's these days.

 

Then people go on about how amazing the OS is. If you're paying that much for a Mac's OS while everyone moans about the price of Windows, I fail to see why you are buying it in the first place. Also, most people that then go on about running away from M$, once they get to the pretty white Macland, go out and buy M$ Office and install the old Mac IE6 to do banking.

 

That said, I would not touch Vista with my own boxes.

 

I would take the money you are spending to buy a "pretty" Mac box and buy some vastly superiour hardware for less. If you dont _need_ windows, I would take a walk into one of the big nix distros, if you want the Mac happy interface, something KDE friendly is most likely to be a good option, specially with KDE4 around the corner. Running beta 2 of KDE4 on my FreeBSD box next to me - I like a nice DE when I want to be lazy - but it's really impressed me, even for a guy that loves being minimal. Compiz-Fusion + KDE4 is really something imho.

 

Anyway, thats me done : Stick with paying sane prices for hardware, even if you're going to run the hacked OSX on it, at least you didnt get ripped a new one and you have all the options

[Domarius]

Orbweaver is right about Macs. I've had a lot of experience with both PC and Macs, and they both have their uses. The PC is technically more "useful" but that doesn't mean much to the user who just wants one or two things from the computer and no fiddling, whom a Mac would suit better.

 

Maximus, your buddy is your typical religous Mac nut. For a lot of people wooed by the Mac propaganda, it really is like a religion.

 

Here's an example - a friend of mine is a music person who wants to compose music for her band and do live track recording. There is a Mac laptop bundle specifically for music people, which comes with "Garage band" (I think it's called) pre-installed and in the purchase price. So you buy this thing and plug it in and start making music, great

If she had have bought a PC, she'd have to pay for the whole PC seperately, then pay $600 AU for the PC version of Garage band seperately, then install it, and then find that the hardware on the laptop may not be quite up to scratch for multi-track recording (very likely, being a PC laptop). Or maybe it is, if you make some driver setting changes.

 

The other end is obviously a lot of people here like me - we want to be able to put a new video card in, play all the old Emulator games, run DosBox, create our own backup system, run LAN games with our friends, AND do some music recording or 3D modelling. That flexibility is where a PC is a much better choice.

 

Basically it comes down to people who are not "into computers" are probably better off with a mac, depending on what they'll be doing. Obviously if they have a situation where they need to be PC compatible they'll need to get a PC or make sure they have whatever they need to make their Mac compatible.

[ascottk]

I have an old G3 with OSX, a PC with WinXP, and a laptop with Vista. PCs took a step backwards with Vista. A lot of audio application and drivers (like Protools) are not compatible with Vista yet.

 

My mom and dad had PCs but after replacing several hard drives I talked my dad into buying G3s from EBay. Instead of troubleshooting stupid problems on PC I know have to teach my parents how to do a few things. I'll take teaching over troubleshooting any day.

 

At school, as a student employee, I work in a lab with 12 G5s. If this was a lab with PCs I'd probably be troubleshooting all the damn time. With the Macs my job is a helluva lot easier.

 

I miss the days when I played around with BeOS and Linux on my PC. But I rely too heavily on audio applications on the PC side. I would love to use ReactOS when it gets stable.

 

Windows still doesn't have a native monitor calibration tool and the tools you find online suck.

 

Transferring operating systems from one drive to another is hell on a PC. With Carbon Copy Cloner, transferring the OS to another drive is a piece of cake on a Mac.

 

Still, Macs have their faults & we don't live in a perfect world. I would take a Mac over a PC any day.

[Maximius]

Thanks for all your replies, I'm glad thats all settled.

 

 

 

I'm giving up Microshaft with this Vista piece of shit coming down the tubes. After we move to the suburbs, which by the way is soon praise Satan, and I get a job and a bunch of other important stuff, then Im going to try to load Linux.

 

 

Actually, I have an old 1 gig HD thats still quite new, if I could slave it to my Dells HD with XP, could I not install Linux or rather one of its prepackaged versions on that to learn how to use it, then switch the whole beast over eventually? It would be a great way to learn without having to lose computer usage time learning a new OS. Is this feasible?

[Crispy]

Certainly you could do that; just install Linux on the spare hard drive and dual-boot between that and Windows. It's what I do, since there are a couple of things I still need Windows for.