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(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 02:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 02:29 pm (UTC)Remember when Macs were for creative people, and us PC users were just blind consumers?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 10:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 11:57 pm (UTC)After the initial learning curve, I found OS/X much easier to navigate around and get stuff done than either Windows OR Linux. I'll be happy to give some detailed examples if you like.
Also, I find that the software for Macs seems to have more of a "polished" look and feel and has better integration to other applications. For example, Adium (my IM client) actually interfaces with the data file from the Address Book application. So if it can find a contact's screenname in the address book, it will happily pull up their real name and picture. I think that's pretty impressive. Colloquy, my IRC app, can also talk to the address book in a similar way. When I add an IRC contact, it prompts me to "match" it with a contact from my address book, or create a new contact if non exists.
There's also the virus/worm/spyware issue. This has been and continues to remain a serious problem for Windows machines. People on Slashdot like to joke about how MS Outlook makes "an excellent virus propagation platform". OS/X just doesn't have this issue. If you want to see for yourself, visit http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/ and search for "spyware" or "anti-virus".
I've only talked about the usability angles of OS/X so far. If you'd like me to get into some of the more technical stuff, or want clarifcation on what I've mentioned so far, please let me know.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 12:41 am (UTC)Also, i'd love to adium on windows, but done for the windows UI, of course. (yesyes, I know there's gaim, but it's still shitty GTK, instead of native win32)
Still, if someone really wanted to, they could write trojans/viruses/worms for OS X easy enough. GOd knows there ARE enough vunerabilities in OS X/Safari for someone to hit unpatched boxes
OS X apps (written FOR OS X) DO have better integration than windows apps. -.-
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 01:01 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 03:38 am (UTC)There's a reason Apple has an aggressive ad campaign that sells lifestyle rather than product, form rather than function, and that's because a performance/price comparison to PCs would dissuade buyers, while two guys in a white room pushing lucite cubes somehow makes turns people on.
Hey, if people want to drop the cash on a Mac, more power to 'em, but there's nothing I've seen out of Apple (in the last 15 years) that blows my doors off.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 04:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 02:53 pm (UTC)(The video is SFW).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 03:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 05:12 pm (UTC)Mac still is for creative people. And yes, it runs Windows software anyway, because, hey, creative people have always had a difficult time communicating to the mundanes and need to use the lowest common denominator sometime! @;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 10:32 pm (UTC)Creative people often don't make much money. I'll stick to what is most efficient and the most capability for dollar value for me, and that's a PC.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 03:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 03:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 03:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 06:17 pm (UTC)(Anyone who's used linux should get it)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 09:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-23 03:56 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-23 07:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-21 10:34 pm (UTC)What happeend to the mac ads that made you happy? Why have they all been replaced with this snarky coke versus pepsi bullshit?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 12:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 12:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 01:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 01:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 01:30 am (UTC)And there would have to be money spent at some point upgrading RAM too. ;)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 01:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 01:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 04:09 am (UTC)I'll counter the cost issue though by pointing out that it helps if you think of buying a Mac less as "another computer" and more like an investment. Consider this: if you buy a PC running Windows now, and the next version of Windows is released in 3 months and requires twice the resources to run, you're screwed. And the worst part is, you have no guarantee against this happening.
Macs, on the other hand, don't have that. Apple is well aware that their customers use their hardware for several years, and make sure that newer versions OS/X can run reasonably well on older hardware. Case in point, my parents' iMac G3 came with OS 9 but now runs OS/X 10.2 without incident. That's especially cool when you take into account that OS/X didn't even exist when they originally purchased that iMac. Also, from the reports I've seen, 10.4 is actually faster than 10.3, on account of Apple doing a lot of code optimization and less adding of bloated features.
On the hardware end, Macs tend to be pretty well loaded up front so that you can use a Mac you've bought for several years. For example, the 15" Aluminum Powerbook that I bought 2 summers ago has the following (going from memory here):
- Gigabit Ethernet
- 80 GB 5400 rpm hard drive
- DVD-RW drive
- Airport Extreme
- Bluetooth 2.0
- USB 2.0
- Firewire 400 port
- Firewire 800 port
- S-Video out
- DVI out
All of those things were rather high end in its time, but now they're not so high end. If I had spent $700 on a PC laptop, I suspect I'd be replacing it right about now. I've also used each of those things except for Firewire 800 and DVI, though I have plans to use them in the future. :-)
I figure I can get at least another 3 years out of this laptop before having to replace it.
Have you considered getting a Mac mini (http://www.apple.com/macmini/)? That might be a little more affordable.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 04:22 am (UTC)Also, I think my work laptop was 500 bucks.... and I would be interested in a Mac Mini if there was anything about Macs which I considered appealing. If people have fun with 'em and they're more comfortable, right on, but I simply don't see a reason to pay more for (what I consider) to be less.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 04:30 am (UTC)> price that'll still run Vista if I need to. What's really cool is that if
> I do wanna upgrade, I don't have to throw the baby out with the
> bathwater.
Are you serious? That impresses the hell out of me as it has not been my experience with PCs. (don't get me started on the Pentium 3 I had :-/ )
Also, I should have mentioned before that one of the reasons I went down the Mac route was because I got tired of doing upgrades. :-P Okay, I just upgraded to a larger hard drive/RAM/CPU, now what do I do with this old one? And that's how I would up with a bunch of old hardware that used to float around my place.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 04:37 am (UTC)(And his work laptop was $450, I bought it for him)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 04:36 am (UTC)My old dell laptop, with its 866mhz processor was my primary art machine for nearly five years. It would have been for longer but it started to misbehave, and after five years, I really did need more RAM. It ran Windows 2000, and I never ran across anything that did not perform under Win2K that I needed. I ran Win2K years after XP was released. I'll probably have this Inspiron 6000 for five years, screen's razor sharp and I don't think I'll need more than 2Gigs of ram to paint pictures and design sprites. My refurb $600 dell which is a year old has everything I need. It has firewire, it has USB 2.0, it has 1.5gigs of RAM, a nice video card that runs about any game I want to play (though it's not a gaming rig, really) a stupidly high-res 15.4" widescreen and a CD-writer. I'll probably replace it in about four years or if it starts fritzing out (I'm very hard on laptops, I bring mine absolutely everywhere) which is pretty all right by me, $150 a year for computing. My wife's primary desktop machine is LESS powerful than this thing, so you see where on the tech curve we are. ;-)
I just don't buy into the planned obsolence thing for Macs or PCs. All the new thangs that people replace their machines for, I don't. I tend to replace PCs when they break. There's nothing mystical about Macs to me, they're very nice machines built to high specifications with the absolute newest technology, none of which I need. There's no real reason you can't use a PC as long as a Mac, you just need to know what you're buying and what you think you'll need.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 12:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 12:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 01:02 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 03:36 am (UTC)*swipes*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 08:54 am (UTC)They illustrate that PCs lock up constantly, which I never find to be the case. I've had my new Dell computer for half a year now, have filled nearly half the hard drive, run every program I need to, had 10-15 programs running at once, and not ONCE in my entire time owning it has it locked up. Oh, and it's Windows XP based.
I just don't get where Apple thinks their stuff is better. I agree with someone above: Apple should appeal to people who want style, design and ease of use, as those are their strong points. Their stuff is very stylish and their core system is very well done at points, I'll admit. I think they should appeal to their strengths, not poke at untrue weaknesses in the competitors. It makes me have a huge disrespect for Apple. :|
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 12:35 pm (UTC)Mac here I come!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-22 06:52 pm (UTC)> The problem with a Mac is that, from my experience, when one program locks
> up, it takes the whole computer with it.
Was this on an OS 9 system? Just so you're aware, OS 9 and OS/X have little in common. OS 9 used pre-emptive multitasking and didn't have much in the way of memory protection. OS/X uses a BSD kernel (Darwin) and therefore has pre-emptive multi-tasking and memory protection. I've had individual apps like FireFox wig out on me from time to time and can kill them off without affect the rest of the system.
My computer at work is a Dell also running XP. I've only had it for 6 months, and from time to time it inexplicably freezes up for half a second. It's very irritating when I'm trying to type something. And here's the real issue I have with Windows: it's very hard to get to its internals. Its logs are in some bizarre binary format and don't even get me started on the registry. Heck, that's one of the reasons I got away from adminning Microsoft stuff: the "solution" for most bizarre problems was "reinstall windows". And this is from Microsoft's documentation, mind you. God forbid I should want to try and find the cause of the problem so it doesn't happen again... nope, must reinstall windows.
Contrast with OS/X: its logs are in plain text format so that I can view them with any tool, its config files are in XML format, and most importantly, the number of reinstalls I've had to do of OS/X: 0
Sorry for subjecting you to such a long rant, it's just that I have a rather bitter history with Windows. :-/
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-23 12:44 am (UTC)And yes, it was OS 9. But you know what? Just because it wasn't OS X doesn't mean I should just totally discount it. OS 9 meant it was, at least, their ninth try at perfecting the operating system, and it was still buggy as hell. That doesn't speak loads of confidence to me about anything.
I guess what I'm saying is that from all my years of using Windows (Windows 3.1 and every version up until XP) I've never had near as many problems as I've had in my few years of working with Mac OS8, OS9, and yes, OSX. (we have a Mac G4 at my current office, with OSX, and the thing is slow as all hell compared to the 3-4+ year-old Dells with Windows NT we have running everywhere else) I can't even remember the number of mental notes I had to write and tell myself "okay, I can't run this program while THIS one is running because the two don't like each other and will crash my whole computer."
This is coming from a very common computer-use person, mind you. I don't get into the technical stuff, like the bios or the logs. I use my computer to surf the internet, listen to music, chat, draw, and play games, and both my Dell five years ago and my Dell that I just purchased a half a year ago have not given me any problems.
My experience with Macs is so bad that I absolutely refuse to buy one. Ever.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-23 06:33 am (UTC)If you have an early G4 with stock RAM and OS X it'll be slow. X likes RAM.
If by NT you mean NT4, of course that's running great. NT4 was lean and mean. I was able to get it running quite good on 128MB DX4/100's.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-23 06:45 am (UTC)So yeah, I'll just settle with that.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-23 01:03 am (UTC)And to dip one toe into the mac vs. pc vs. linux wars for just a second...
My vitae in a nutshell: professional system administrator for 30 years, before Apple or Microsoft existed and unix hadn't made it out of labs.
My day to day work: Supporting our file systems for Unix, Linux, Mac, Windows.
My desktop: mac. Hands down, the most trouble-free of the OSs in current use. Yes, the hardware is more expensive. No, the OS isn't perfect. It's just better than the rest. No, the support isn't perfect. But when XP goes wrong on your Dell, expect a lot of finger pointing between the vendors. When OSX goes wrong on your mac, Apple is the responsible vendor. They don't always fix it, but they do a helluva better job than MS or Dell.
My opinion. Feel free to agree or disagree. Don't expect me to argue.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-23 01:26 am (UTC)What OSes did you admin before UNIX? o.O
(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-24 07:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-07-23 11:39 am (UTC)When Iain and I divorced and I was without my Amiga, I was left with choosing a PC - at the time Mike K-Mac made the compelling argument of "how many people do you know who use each?" At the time I knew a HECK of a lot more people that used PCs who could help me when something went wrong.
Arguably perhaps things go *wrong* less on a Mac... but that's water over/under/through the dam. The point is - now I HAVE a PC and until there is some easy relatively cheap way to convert the zillions of dollars of *software* I own... we'll keep cycling through PCs and grumbling. ;-)
This is the argument Ed used as well. He used both PCs and Macs when he worked at Avid. He liked the Macs just fine and we considered getting one so we'd have both platforms... but we decided it was easier to just have tons of existant software.
Someday I think I might like a mac. As far as I can see there *are* some things they really do right and support is one, and design is another. I'm one of those weird folks who thinks that elegant design counts for something and while I admit freely I haven't compared them very much, as far as I can tell there isn't much thought at ALL given to elegance of design when it comes to Windoze.
Oh well... meanwhile - it works well enough to check my email, read my LJ, and type my papers for grad school.
You can run Windows software in a Mac
Date: 2006-07-23 05:48 pm (UTC)More details at at http://www.apple.com/getamac/windows.html
More details on why to switch to a Mac can be found at: http://www.apple.com/getamac/