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Mac vs PC

Uncle Otto said:
The way I see it is that they are two different OS's, each with their own quirks, problems and vulnerabilities, and advantages and disadvantages.
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Interesting. I tend to look at them as more and more similar the more I learn about each.
 
Uncle Otto said:
I had pc's for 10 years. Two and a half months ago I decided to take the plunge. I bought a 24" iMac. I had long bought into the myth that Macs are way more expensive than pc's. Not so in my case. I sat down and figured out what it would cost to replace all the peripherals for a new pc, that come built into the Mac-------speakers, monitor, webcam, headset, printer, (I got a new wireless all-in-one for $100 with the Mac. They then send you a rebate for $100). Especially the monitor. The result was that it would have cost me just as much to replace my old pc system bit by bit as it cost to buy the iMac with all that stuff built into it.

I was also amazed at how much electrical spaghetti I got rid of behind the computer desk---------only the power cord off the back of the Mac. No VGA line and power cord for a monitor, no wires or power cords for the speakers or web cam, and no need for a microphone or a headset. The new printer is wireless, and the Mac comes wireless capable. It took me minutes to set it up and I'm no techie by any stretch of the imagination.

Now having said that, I'm not a Microsoft hater. I used Windows for all those years and feel quite comfortable with it. I also have a laptop with XP on it, and intend to keep it for a good while. I also have the option to load my XP disc from the pc onto the Mac, and have both OS's on the machine. It's quite a procedure though from what I can see, and I don't know if I'll do that or not at this point. I just sent for the upgrade to Snow Leopard. We'll see how that goes. I should have it this week.

So I'm new to Macs, but I know other people who have them, and they just rave about how good they are. My daughter and SIL both have them now and they tell me they will never go back to a Windows machine. I work with a couple of people who have them and they
tell me the same thing. I'm still in the learning curve here.

The way I see it is that they are two different OS's, each with their own quirks, problems and vulnerabilities, and advantages and disadvantages. The Macs are nearly virus free, at least for the time being. Eventually, if Mac gets a much larger share of the computer market, someone will start finding ways to write the nasties for them. I have McAfee for Mac on mine because I'm a Comcast customer and it comes with your subscription. The fact is that right now, there are no known, current viruses for it to detect. Or so I've read.
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iMac is just a style. AIO or all in one. There are PCs as well.

http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/touchsmart/
http://b2b.sony.com/Solutions/category/desktops
http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/desktops/xpsdt_one/pd.aspx?refid=xpsdt_one&cs=19&s=dhs

There are others. Also in this day and age you don't really have the same "spaghetti wire" problem as before. Many monitors have built in speakers and webcam. Wireless mice, keyboards, and printers are common and cheap. So the only real cables you will have on a typical tower setup is the power cable from the pc, the power cable from the monitor, and the cable from the monitor to the tower.

Personally I use both but mac because of one thing really: Final Cut Studio. If this was not on a mac I would have no use for one. Every other program I need is on windows. Actually I could just use Avid (or even Premiere) and get cut macs out of the equation entirely but I like Final Cut more. But that choice isn't really up to me anyway.

And I agree they are more similar then they are different. Basically for the majority of typical home users who do simple tasks (web surfing, music, movies, light gaming, wp, etc.) there should be no debate. Both do the same things and they both do it well. Macs are great. I just have a disdain for their computer pricing. In fact the only thing I think they have priced reasonably for what you get is the new 27" iMac. Depending on the verdict I may even get a quad core 27". Though I can't see a typical user wanting one. That size is a bit large for most casual users and too small to use as a monitor from far away.
 
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Ya, I think the idea of new hardware making a PC wipe it's OS is as crazy as someone saying to a mechanic that his dipstick causes his car to overheat. It makes zero sense to me. I think that computer must have had major hardware problems (if it's not being greatly exaggerated).

That and the 4 hours to get a printer working.. Ya, I'd have given up at that in 1/8th the time and returned it. I don't even spend 4 hours at it when I take the time to reinstall my entire OS and software (something I used to do more often, convinced it was useful, but now haven't done for over two years without incident).

Somehow I suspect that all these PC horror stories are greatly exaggerated. I was a tech for 6 years. Even in the worst cases of problems we never had anywhere near the nightmares that people claim.. and usually it's Mac people explaining why they gave up their PC for a Mac. Like those horrible commercials that were on the air before the more recent "Switch" campaign.

"Then one time I hit a key, and the entire machine started violently shaking! I thought it was going to explode any minute. Suddenly, the hard drives shot out of the machine, through the case. I could have been killed. I was just trying to load my word processor! That's when I said 'Screw it, I'm getting a Mac'".

Are Macs "computers for dummies"? Or "idiot proofed"?
 
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Policenaut said:
Basically for the majority of typical home users who do simple tasks (web surfing, music, movies, light gaming, wp, etc.) there should be no debate. Both do the same things and they both do it well.
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I'm inclined to agree. While there are certainly situations out there for which the differences between the systems might be significant, the average consumer does not generally fall into this category.

ETA: The only exception might be the field-configurability issue. However, as I do not have any data on exactly what percentage of consumers care about this, I cannot say with any degree of certainty whether they are representative of the average.
 
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arthwollipot said:
Your mom's PC wasn't supposed to crash like that either. Personallly, I'd have sent it back. :D
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If she'd bought it "out of the box" from a computer manufacturer, I'd have told her to. But she didn't. Well, originally she did buy it from a custom PC builder, but over the years she'd upgraded virtually everything in it (including mb and processor), so the only original piece left was the case... So she couldn't "send it back". She could have returned individual malfunctioning pieces, if she had actually been able to find the piece that was malfunctioning, but she couldn't, so returning anything was not an option.
 
fullflavormenthol said:
Which is exactly not the reason I own a Mac. This is the type of ignorant post that bothers me, because you think that the only reason I would own a Mac is to be trendy, and not even think that for me (graphic design, film, and 3D Animation) a Mac would be the best choice. I get tired of being in a library and here people say those things about me, not knowing that I bought my Mac for actual reasons other than being trendy.

NEVERTHELESS...I originally bought my first Mac not of deal with any of the bonuses you mentioned, and so that is all relative.
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I repeat again. There are very few Macs used in the 3D animation/film effects industry. All the major 3D animation software vendors, Just one now really (autodesk), do not provide a whole lot of support support for Macs. The reason being that there are no high end graphic workstation cards for Mac.

There are only one or two native 3D animation programs for the Mac and no one in the industry would really consider them "Professional". Autodesk does have Mac ports for Maya. But good luck trying to find Maya 2010 for the Mac right now.

I have read many trade magazine bemoaning the condition of Macs in the 3D animation/film effects industry.

Print and film editing are another story though.
 
SkeptiChick said:
If she'd bought it "out of the box" from a computer manufacturer, I'd have told her to. But she didn't. Well, originally she did buy it from a custom PC builder, but over the years she'd upgraded virtually everything in it (including mb and processor), so the only original piece left was the case... So she couldn't "send it back". She could have returned individual malfunctioning pieces, if she had actually been able to find the piece that was malfunctioning, but she couldn't, so returning anything was not an option.
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For every Mac you buy, I'm going to not buy two.
 
KingofMadCows said:
What I don't like about Macs is that there's just too little customization.

If I build a PC, I can choose between an AMD build and an Intel build. I can get a 500 watt Antec PSU or an OCZ 80 plus gold certified 1,000 watt psu. I can get a GTS 250 or a Radeon 5870.

Plus I'm not sure about the quality of some of the Apple parts. I know for sure that the quality of the Gigabyte motherboard I have is excellent. I don't know how good the Mac mobo is. I don't even know the efficiency of Apple psu's.
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just try to buy a mac M/B for a intel chip
I can't find any for sale anywhere

apple makes some nice but very over priced stuff

but with the hackintosch type programs
and the right intel based parts [do your homework ]
you can run O/S 10.Xx on a pc box
for about 1/2 the cost of a mac
0verclock your pc for a faster rig

all the latest mac's use the same chips as pc's
same HD
same dvd/cd burners/players
same memory chips

so why do mac's cost twice as much ?

greed
 
(Ignoring the claim that they're twice as expensive..)

Because people are willing to pay what Apple charges. You can sit there all day and rant about how expensive Macs are. If people--lots of people--didn't think they were good products, they wouldn't sell. Clearly a lot of people like the Macs. They like the whole package, both hardware and software. The two aren't separate. The Mac is a complete package.
 
jsiv said:
(Ignoring the claim that they're twice as expensive..)

Because people are willing to pay what Apple charges. You can sit there all day and rant about how expensive Macs are. If people--lots of people--didn't think they were good products, they wouldn't sell. Clearly a lot of people like the Macs. They like the whole package, both hardware and software. The two aren't separate. The Mac is a complete package.
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People will pay $20,000 for power cables that "clean" the electricity that is entering their amps, despite the fact that any sane person can see that this is self-evidently money for nothing. You really can't use the "people pay the money, therefore it must be worth it" argument. There are lots of cases of marketers artificially raising prices on certain product lines so as to convey the sense that they are "luxury" or "top of the line" items. Macs have long tried to separate themselves from PCs on the basis of these kinds of intangible advantages. It will actually pose a dilemma for Apple if they ever start to seriously rival PCs as commodity computers: how to brand yourself as the special computer for special people if everyone's got one?
 
Yoink said:
You really can't use the "people pay the money, therefore it must be worth it" argument.
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His question was why they cost what they do, and the answer is that they cost what they do because people are willing to pay what they cost. The reason why people are willing to pay what they cost, is because they feel it's worth it (which for something that actually works, like a Mac, is subjective). Why would Apple charge less than they can?
 
I hear the virus protection on mac is far superior. I just bought a brand new Vaio and it's already having more problems than my bandmates old ass G-4
 
jsiv said:
His question was why they cost what they do, and the answer is that they cost what they do because people are willing to pay what they cost. The reason why people are willing to pay what they cost, is because they feel it's worth it (which for something that actually works, like a Mac, is subjective). Why would Apple charge less than they can?
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Hey, I'm not knocking it as a business model. But I know that when it comes time to replace any one of my current computers I won't bother even so much as thinking about a Mac, because I know I can get a PC that will "just work" for all the things I need it to do for less than the price of the cheapest possible Mac.
 
I agree completely. My PCs cost far less than Macs and do everything I want. Macs don't interest me in the slightest. In fact I'd rather go Amish.
 
daSkeptic said:
While it in no way refutes your core argument, I did find this:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_quadro_fx_4800_for_mac_us.html
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Too be more acurate I should have added "yet" to the end of my sentance.

The QuadroFX 4800 is nothing to sneeze at.

But to see what kind of horse power is needed to do proffessional level 3D CG check out the "geek bait" on the Tranformers 2 blueray disk. *Warning: there are several 3D geek jokes in the documentary that only an extremely small percentage (%.0000000000000000001) of the human population will find funny*

There's this baby"
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_quadro_fx_5800_us.html

And for those of you who are willing to give up a car in order to visualized molecular actions within a chemical reaction, I give you the Nvidia Quadroplex:
http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadroplex.html

That sucker will set you back $20,000.00

Take that Crysis
 
uruk said:
But to see what kind of horse power is needed to do proffessional level 3D CG ...
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You are quite correct that this is an area where Macs have not seen a great deal of use. SGI was the big name for a long time, but once things started becoming cheaper it shifted to Windows PCs. There's not really any technological reason to exclude Macs, the market just shifted to where the bulk of the business was.
 
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