freelod

This is a very accurate description of the differences between a Windows system and a Macintosh.

FreshBite - A Fresh Bite at the Web

Redjake

I'll see your image and raise you:

http://www.ratemyeverything.net/imag..._Mac_User.ashx

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Off the record, on the q.t., and very hush-hush.

Baraka_Guru

I call:

http://www.ehmac.ca/gallery/data/2/m...rd_Clutter.jpg

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

RetroGunslinger

Not only does Redjake apparently think I'm an elitist asshole, but CAD has betrayed me as well...

I'll wager: http://inthevoid.co.uk/wp-content/up.../mac_vs_pc.jpg

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M.B. Keene

Plaid13

LOL retro i think that cartoon pretty much sums it up.

In reality mac has a great product both hardware and the mac OS. but when it comes to computers for most people they dont care about the hardware or the OS all that much as long as it can handle the software they need. And that is where the mac is lacking. games websites browser plugins and most basic software is all aimed at and made for windows. If what you use a computer for runs on a mac and you dont mind spending a little extra for the system macs are great.

Personally i will stick with the minor hassles of a windows based PC simply because if one part does break in the pc i have hundreds of brands to pick from to replace it in my budget and for my need instead of just forking out whatever mac decides they want to charge for the part. Not to mention I like to game Something a mac just does not do well for most games. Not the fault of mac only the fault of the people that make the games not making them for mac.

I Think mac needs to grow up a bit with its ad campaign. Maybe advertise itself instead of trying to make PC look bad. But these cartoons and stuff are funny anyway =)

Baraka_Guru

Games are the only thing keeping me on the Windows machines. I've been using windows for over 15 years. I've also been using OS X for nearly 5 years in a business/production environment. I can't see myself using a PC to do the same things. I work in publishing, and to think of the Windows hassles and nags when it comes to the work we do, I'm glad I get to leave all that at home for when I play World of Warcraft.

Although it's not the case for everyone, I see relatively few problems with Macs, and I mean both usability and technological stability. Our office has been gradually replacing them, but we still have two Apple PowerPC machines that I think are 350mHz chips loaded with only 256MB of RAM, yet it was only recently that Apple released a version of OS X that doesn't run on them. Wow. The only thing we've had problems with technologically is one of them conked out (mind you, this machine was old) and we once had to replace a monitor. We were running 5 of these machines and that was all that went wrong where it required replacing or fixing something. I'm not even sure how Apple's repair and replacement costs compare to PCs...but aren't there at least some third-party options for service?

This is a good point. But you'd have to be a pretty serious gamer to feel strongly about this. The game selection of Macs isn't bad otherwise. More games are becoming available over time, maybe because of Apple's reasonable gains in market share.

I don't watch or see many ads. Ads in general are a manipulative form of communication, regardless of who pays for them. Some are merely more subtle than others. (I studied advertising, so I feel a little bit like Neo when it comes to it.) But at least the Apple ads are funny. At least to me, one who knows both sides of the story.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Vigilante

Once you get to my level of experience, Macs are usually out of the question. Macs are for people who don't know how to work under the hood. I basically do everything in my PC except for mill the waterblock myself - I replace capacitors, I do all hardware changes and many mods such as voltage mods, I've even built my own temp sensor to interface the SMBus header and communicate to MBM5, etc. Can't do that on a mac unless you go unix. That's fine, I run freeBSD here at home, but any proprietary hardware gets in the way.

Oh and I game. So that knocks out the mac OS. Not sure how well windows would run on a given mac platform even if it is intel, but I suspect they still don't mesh.

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Willravel

Mac are also for people who may have the know-how (I've built PCs before) but don't want to bother going under the hood. I like tinkering with things, sure, but upkeep can be a hassle. My eMac has been just fine for something like 5 years. I've even got an iMac snow (for playing Mechwarrior 2) that's never even been opened up.

The game thing really isn't important as it was a few years ago. With Bootcamp you can play games on a Mac just fine. I played CoD on a new iMac running XP and it was just fine. Besides, WoW can run native on Mac.

Halx

Sigh. This again.

My PC rocks. I have no problems with it. Neither my home or work PC crash on me unless I deserve it. Would never use a Mac because there is not enough development being done for it.

That's all for me, really.

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RetroGunslinger

I'd like to also note that thanks to Boot Camp, which comes with all new Macs now, I can run Windows and vis-a-vis Windows programs and games on my computer now. Just sayin'.

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It's a rare pleasure in this world to get your mind fucked. Usually it's just foreplay.

M.B. Keene

boink

I have 10 years on an NT workstation and it's still running fine. I did just buy my 2nd PC ever and it's a Dell XPs with XP on it. I'm pritty pleased.

I bought the NT workstation for making art. 3D modeling and amimating in Softiamage which only ran on NT and SGI computers w/ Unix at the time. it also ran PSP for me just fine, not to mention some neat random shareware.

I've had a small problem transfering files but that's cause it's old and I forgot to tell the tec I was working with my drives were in a raid. other that that it's been a swell computer for all that time.

what gets me is, nobody ever comes up and says hey my PC is better than your whatever... why do people need to run around wagging their dick in everyones face ?

One thing PC users can do that Mac users can't...

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when you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way.

Plaid13

In the last few years windows xp as a OS has become very stable and any real crashes are mostly do to third party software or a very serious hardware problem. Back when windows 98 was the main windows OS it crashed so much going mac made perfect sense. But now you really should think twice about avoiding a PC if your afraid of crashing.

dd3953

All of those comics/pics were great. I use a Mac, and yeah, I'd have to agree: no one cares to make viruses for it (yet), and the games and browser software is lacking. However, I'm happy with it, it does what I need it to do (maybe that's because I'm not a gamer).

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RetroGunslinger

.... I can too shut up...






See?



I'm shutting up.... totally...
macs rule

__________________
It's a rare pleasure in this world to get your mind fucked. Usually it's just foreplay.

M.B. Keene

Willravel

Dude: "So what kind of computer do you have?"
Me: "A Mac."
Dude: "Macs suck."
... and that's why Mac users can't shut up.

Baraka_Guru

QFT

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

filtherton

I think that it is interesting to note that in generally, whenever any of my professors try to make a presentation in front of the class using their mac book and take the opportunity to make a snide comment about the superiority of macs, they inevitably can't get their computer working with the classroom's built in multimedia systems.

But then again, It's always interesting to me how someone can have a PhD in something like chemistry or mechanical engineering and know next to nothing about how computers do their thing.

buttless1der

One BIG problem with that, if the monitor dies the rest of the machine is nothing more than a paper weight. While you can say the same of most laptops that should not be an issue to deal with on a desktop machine.

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Willravel

Cost of a new monitor of comparable quality to the one in the iMac: about $300
Cost of fixing the iMac monitor within the first year: $0
Cost of fixing the iMac monitor within three years (Apple Care): $169

kofspades

Or the opposite. If you buy a new computer, you need to buy a new monitor.

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Vigilante

If you're an avid tech, these arguments make little difference.
Cost of iMac 1200.00
- video card is shit.
- 2.4GHz intel
- 1GB ram
Cost of dell pc with comparable price 1200.00
- video card kicks ass
- 2.83GHz intel
- 2GB of ram

And the wires can be near invisible if you know how to neaten up your living space.

iMac upgradable but not easy (easy for me but not easy for say, my uncle)
PC upgradable by anyone or with the help of the 13yr old neighbor

Cost of replacing any monitor under 1 year old (most likely including mac): shipping charges
Cost of replacing monitor with the same model 3 years from now: Probably 150 or less. Oh but one more thing, you can upgrade the monitor on the pc. Wow, maybe 20in will be small in 3 years, what a shame when you can't upgrade it.

This can go on all day, point is some people will like macs, and some people won't. I never will, maybe someone else does. From the technical aspect, the mac is a limited-use tool and the PC is the all-in-one that 80% of people with computers use. Sure boot camp helps, or virtualizing, but that is a pain to anyone but diehards because few people want to mess with 2 OSes when they have a choice.

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boink

wow, that's great. I just use the same old 21" monitor from my 1st PC which still looks better than most LCD's I've seen...no repairs or issues of any kind in ten years. plus on my new PC I've added a 42" Aquos as a 2nd monitor which looks pritty damn good too.
I didn't really know anything about setting up 2 monitors...I just hooked 'em up and and they worked. since hook up I have found several options of configuring them.

of course I have cables but they can be bundled to look tidy if needed. right now 7 cords, 2 monitor cords, keyboard and mouse, Internet, external drive and speakers. I'm shure bluetooth could cut some of that out.

pics like that are a fantasy (marketing lies). if your a slob with crap everywhere on the desk and on the floor, adding apple components won't make your room clean and stylish.

last years apple components at the computer recyclers look just the same as the rest of the computer junk on the pile. and there is plenty of it too.

as far as I can see this isn't a functionality issue in the machines. it's 100% an issue of the type of person who buys into the marketing of these things. some people seem to buy the idea that if they buy a certain thing, they're better than others. like the BMW driver who thinks the make of his car gives him right of way. I mean, are we gonna set up a special PC users bathroom and drinking fountain ? PC users sit at the back of the bus ?

people buy a piece of hardware and it seems to give them licence to belittle others. which in turn generates a defensive retort from those who bought something else.

it seems to me it all stems from marketing. macs are marketed as "art boxes" but honestly I've seen more apps for art in PC's than macs. when I was learning 3D and 2D on a computer for macking game assets all game assets I heard of were made on PC's
Softimage, 3D Studiomax, Maya, were all on PC's back then and not on macs. Doom 3 was showed first on a mac but built on PC's and to my knowledge was available for PC first and macers had to wait.

granted macers can run win apps on their riggs now, but I've NEVER heard of a PC guy jonesing for a mac app.

yeah... why would I need 2 OSes ?!??!

__________________
when you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer. Superstition ain't the way.

Baraka_Guru

Yep, this is really it.

It all comes down to needs and desires. And being human, we'll never all be on the same page.

I work in the publishing industry, and if I were to go to an industry event and say, "Dudes, I'm totally going to replace my Mac with a Vista machine," most people would look at me and think, "What the hell is he on?! He's fucking lost it...." The reason? Most of the industry uses Macs. Many creative industries do. And I'm guessing this is because we don't want to spend our time tooling, customizing, pulling on wires, and setting up things on our machines. We're too busy building books and designing websites. We just want a machine that works out of the box, and one that works well with other machines like it. One that makes adding things a snap. Macs are ridiculously easy to integrate with one another. That's the cool thing about homogeneous design of hardware and a well designed OS.

If I were to go with that Vista dream, I'd constantly run into trouble. Perhaps this would be mainly due to compatibility issues. I think I'd die from using the OS, personally. I've heard to bad things about it. (I have enough problems with XP at home.) They're going to fix it, right? I'm sure you techie guys know how to get it to do what you need it to do. But, as I've mentioned, we don't like spending the time to do shit like that.

I have a few books to go work on....

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Vigilante

Baraka makes my earlier point exactly. I will change it to be less condescending though: Macs are for people who don't want to work under the hood. That is of course a generalization, but I believe it to be a fairly accurate one.

I tinker with my PC when I'm bored. When I first built the watercooled/overclocked Q6600 system, I worked on the hardware for days. I got a nice stylish midtower lian-li case, cut holes for fans, fit the radiator, measured and cut tubes, swapped things around some to make it fit good, added some custom air ducting, etc. After that, I put the OS on it and played with that, and still do. To me an OS is never "done", there is always room for improvement.

I have very few problems with any OS I use. XP is a dream for stability. If it is not stable, it's because either hardware is bad or the OEM 3rd party apps are shit (they usually are). I run XP for months and don't reboot or anything. I just sit down, do my shit, and leave, then sit down later, do more shit, and leave again. Keep in mind on an overclocked system, which I test for stability thoroughly at the hardware level before I consider it ready for daily use. I have vista running too, and while the initial headaches are going away, I do not think it is a useful business OS yet. Bear in mind I run vista business just for that reason - testing and learning. So macOS is great on that front, it is much easier to use than vista and probably more stable, and it looks better than XP in stock form, but for what I want to do daily macOS is about as useful as linux or unix.

My point is I enjoy tinkering, and I can't tinker nearly as much on macs. If my computer just started up and that was it, I would be bored. If it starts up and I can choose my OS of choice, overclock it higher, maybe change up the watercooling, maybe upgrade and use the old parts for FreeBSD like I did last month, then I am much happier.

__________________
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telekinetic

Uh...since when are the only computers Apple makes are iMacs?
-----Added 23/8/2008 at 09 : 19 : 59-----
So you are telling me that new Dell computers allow you to upgrade the RAM without opening the case? Show me!

Vigilante

For one, the image above is the quintessential mac, white, neat, minimal, and the model given for our examples is the imac.

I have worked on the older imacs, and opening one of those is not only quite a bit more difficult than opening a dell, you had to have the right torx bit to open them. I called it the "mac extractor". I can't imagine the newer imacs are that much easier. When you open a dell case with just a lever and cram a stick of ram in a slot, that is easy. THIS IMAC IS NOT AS EASY, PERIOD.

__________________
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

Willravel

Older iMac? It's an alan wrench, I believe metric. Still, considering it's an all-in-one, it's not that difficult to open.

If you want a Mac that you can tinker with, get a Mac Pro. Changing the hard drive(s), ram, processor, disc drives, etc. is really just the same as changing them on a PC.

MSD

Flexo Sleeving 1.25 Inch Black Priced by the Foot
That way if a cable goes bad, you can replace it.

Plaid13

I think the real advantage of PCs is just how easy they are to personalize. Say you want a new fancy monitor you have hundreds if not thousands of options. same with video cards or ram or hard drives or whatever. If you want to spend the time and effort you can build yourself your perfect system that fits what you do and want the best. With a mac sure you have some options but just not nearly as many. For the average basic user a mac is just fine. want to get online chat with some friends and check your email or search google thats all fine and good. Move some mp3s around whatever its all good. But if you want to get every last bit of use out of the machine and do anything and everything that has to do with computers your most likely better off with a PC just because of all the options.

I dont really think one is better then the other mostly just different. One may be better for you then the other but its not going to be the same for everyone.

Willravel

Tons of options and configurations, if you want:


Or the classic All-in-One:


Or one of the better laptops on the market:

Vigilante

LOL. That's not options. That's just nice looking stock crap. Bear in mind mine are functional, not really "pretty". Then again, that's another option!

Old Option


New Option


Server Option


And that first/second rig (same hardware, new midtower case, another option you won't find with apple) is a overclocked quad that was (and still is) faster than any stock hardware on the market. Yet another option you can't pull off on macs. Oh and the whole thing was cheaper than the craptastic imac hardware, yet faster than a 3000.00 PC.

__________________
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

Willravel

You can overclock a Harpertown. You can throw two Harpertowns in there and overclock them both, but you'll need to upgrade the fan (which you can do on a Mac).

The Mac Pro takes up to 32GB RAM (8x4GB). It has 4 hard drive bays, but you can fit more in there. I saw a photo of one with like 8 or 9 hard drives. Can you imagine 9TB? Or better still get 1.2TB on SAS at 15k rpm. So long as you've got the RAID card, you'll be fine. Want decent video? It's ready for 4 cards. It can be shipped with the NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 1.5GB.

It seems perfectly customizable. A real pro could probably mod the iMac quite a bit, too.

Vigilante

Yeah, I agree, but overclocking utils are still lacking. Even linux is lacking in that dept to a certain degree.

__________________
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

Cynthetiq

Quadro FX cards aren't for gaming. They strictly are for rendering, so you're comparing not similar items (can't say apples to apples).

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Vigilante

Agreed but I'm too tired to care. Nite folks

__________________
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

japhyryder

I love these arguments, I have been using both for years.

PowerMac are completely upgradeable
PC are also completely upgradeable

Mac OSX is pretty damn cool but lacks software... oh wait it can run Windows XP and Vista (if you are a glutton for punishment)
Window is windows it is everywhere and it does do a pretty darn good job.

Mac (when they are current) are a very good value esp the iMac. PowerMac are like super customer PC's you can just go nuts with them, I priced one out fully loaded hardware only to the max and it was over 10 grand
PC's yes they are less expensive and you can get many non proprietary parts for them and upgrade the hell out of them for a long time. (one of my Dells, is almost 8 years old I have tweek and upgraded it and I have thrown Oblivion on it and it ran ok at 768 x 1024)

The bottom line is they are both good machines, for different uses. It is like when EA bought the NFL licence because NFL2k5 was so damn good. 2k5 forced Madden to be better, it should do the same thing with Macs or PCs they both help each other, otherwise we would have a football game that is about as good except for the nextgen graphics as something that came out in 2004.

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sadistikdreams

Okay, okay.

I like Macs.
I can understand why people use PCs.

But two words for you:
Apple Store.

Two more words:
Genius Bar.

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The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials."
-Lin Yutang

hearts, by d.a.

Vigilante

I don't get the references. Please explain.

__________________
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill

westothemax

You have no idea... I work for the IT department for a large hospital/university. I would say 2% of the faculty that I work with are computer savvy, usually the younger ones.

We're mostly a mac shop because the chairman of my department is a mac guy. Let me tell you, mac enterprise BLOWS. Especially when the rest of the university is running Active Directory. I think Mac is definitely a consumer brand, even though they have tried their hand at enterprise. Support is terrible, software is buggy, and documentation is sparse.

That said, I'm happily using my MacBook the university bought me for my home computer with Windows XP installed through boot camp and accessible in OS X through Parallels. I also built a desktop with WinXP and have been slowly replacing the hardware to be OSx86 compatible (can I mention that here?). Games run fine in WinXP/Bootcamp, BTW.

Vigilante

I have a good friend that works for Apple in austin, doing enterprise support. Even he says DON'T BUY APPLE FOR ENTERPRISE, and he freakin works for them.

__________________
We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
-Winston Churchill