To Mac owners...
- Thread starter Kurogane
- Start date
chaos
The Boss
I hate windows from the depths of my soul.
I've been through more windows versions and computers than most people around here. Every time I needed to format everything, install things from scratch or lost hours of work (and once even more than a week's work) I dreamed of a world where this was not needed.
Sometime in the late 90's my life turned in the direction of computer engineering. Studied java when it was just released and became and almost became a college dropout so I could start working as a programmer. At some point, I realized I'm a full fledged geek.
The above points makes me believe I'm entitled to an opinion.
Until 6 or 7 years ago, I used to develop apps for windows and needed to use windows as my primary machine. Once I didn't had any particular need for I've moved to Linux. I did used Ubuntu a little, slackware for a while then I moved to Gentoo.
I've used Linux for several years and I still use it at work as servers, it's great, it works, BUT it's not simple yet. I haven't check ubuntu for while, but I've been dreaming of metisse over a touchable interface. I've never tried metisse myself TBH, but this demo just kick ass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxsUKX6xXyE
After Linux and its awesomeness, I've bought me a mac notebook because it looked cool, was really portable and Mac OS X is built on top of solid and powerful Unix system. After experimenting for a while with Gentoo Linux, I knew the power of a OS built built for your hardware.
My first test with a mac was simple and might sounds almost stupid.
I've opened a hundred windows of the browser. The system did get slow at some point, but it didn't froze / crashed or anything like that. I've tried the same thing on a PC, which was supposedly better (more cpu power more memory) and it frozen and then crashed halfway through it.
I've did a few more tests using things like MS web stress test tool and other geek stuff and my mac with less memory and less cpu power beat widows all the time, linux on the other hand got similar results, but considering I had more memory and cpu on the pc, I'd deemed that as a win for mac.
I believe that in the end, the time it saved me is worth the premium.
At work, I still lose time fixing / troubleshooting my windows desktop, time I could use to get more work done. At home, the time I don't spend troubleshooting my computer is well spent watching anime. xD
I've been through more windows versions and computers than most people around here. Every time I needed to format everything, install things from scratch or lost hours of work (and once even more than a week's work) I dreamed of a world where this was not needed.
Sometime in the late 90's my life turned in the direction of computer engineering. Studied java when it was just released and became and almost became a college dropout so I could start working as a programmer. At some point, I realized I'm a full fledged geek.
The above points makes me believe I'm entitled to an opinion.
Until 6 or 7 years ago, I used to develop apps for windows and needed to use windows as my primary machine. Once I didn't had any particular need for I've moved to Linux. I did used Ubuntu a little, slackware for a while then I moved to Gentoo.
I've used Linux for several years and I still use it at work as servers, it's great, it works, BUT it's not simple yet. I haven't check ubuntu for while, but I've been dreaming of metisse over a touchable interface. I've never tried metisse myself TBH, but this demo just kick ass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxsUKX6xXyE
After Linux and its awesomeness, I've bought me a mac notebook because it looked cool, was really portable and Mac OS X is built on top of solid and powerful Unix system. After experimenting for a while with Gentoo Linux, I knew the power of a OS built built for your hardware.
My first test with a mac was simple and might sounds almost stupid.
I've opened a hundred windows of the browser. The system did get slow at some point, but it didn't froze / crashed or anything like that. I've tried the same thing on a PC, which was supposedly better (more cpu power more memory) and it frozen and then crashed halfway through it.
I've did a few more tests using things like MS web stress test tool and other geek stuff and my mac with less memory and less cpu power beat widows all the time, linux on the other hand got similar results, but considering I had more memory and cpu on the pc, I'd deemed that as a win for mac.
It might be usable, but still, it's far from decent.Rui said:
on the blizzard games, how many times you see your friends on windows having to go reboot, crashing or things like that? when I've played diablo II, it did happen constantly and I've heard WoW was similar.Rui said:
Spaces is nice as well for little screen. I've mentioned before, my ma broke only once, because I've slept with it on my lap and when I woke up, I've let it fall. Even after falling, the only problem was that I needed to replace my network card.MrChom said:
I've never needed to reformat my mac, if I've spent more 2 hours in the last 5 years trobleshooting it, it would be too much.Nyu said:
I believe that in the end, the time it saved me is worth the premium.
At work, I still lose time fixing / troubleshooting my windows desktop, time I could use to get more work done. At home, the time I don't spend troubleshooting my computer is well spent watching anime. xD
Tachi
Mushi-shi
MrChom said:
Xp and Vista for gaming? hmm i wouldn't say thats a good idea, Vista is constantly referred to as "bloatware" as its ever expanding, takes alot of memory to run and slows your system considerably, There is ofcorse a way to combat this problem, you could either turn the system updates off so it doesn't update vista (which to be honest unless you have home basic is the best way as your not going to get anything new out of the update) or spend along time defragin your system to try to organise your data abit better and try to boost performance....could be a waste of time.
As its already been stated, Mac Os is hailed as great for gaming or media in general. Windows is more for a "all rounder", yes it plays games but is better at documents,spreadsheets and the suchlike.
If i were you i wouldn't Quad boot. it'd waste of time and sounds like your just trying to say "look at me, quad booting" when at most you'll need Xp OR Vista, no need for both, Mac OS for design and gaming.
Personally, i've always wanted a Mac, i like the look, the performance on media and the toolbar compared to windows.
But couldn't live happily without my Windows Os Laptop. it's like i said before, its used for a more general audience of programs and you can write files ect ect
There's an unofficial Windows XP patch out there, since there is no technical reason whatsoever that an ancient X-Box game would require Direct X 10. I've not heard of work arounds for proper Direct X 10 titles like Crysis though. Could be wrong.ryuzaki said:
Actually, I'm curious as to what people's reasons are IF they're the above as well. It's a long argued 'fact' that Macs are better for design, but the argument is so long in the tooth that I'm seriously inclined to doubt that PC software isn't at a similar point. I can see that perhaps at the cutting edge of design that Mac probably still reigns supreme (case in point would be Pixar, but then it always helped the Apple Mac's design profile that their company was related to a major computer aided movie house) but surely Macs sell to lower end designers simply on reputation rather than actual results?Kurogane said:
Personally, I'm inclined to stay away from Macs on the principle that my 4th Gen iPod became a rather pretentious looking, already over-expensive brick a year and a half after purchase. And only now, after five years of hard labour is my PC giving me serious ********. As long as you maintain a PC well enough with occasional anti-spyware and virus checks, you never need to format (which before I got my current machine was something I did all the time. But then, we're talking about a PC running on Windows ME, which was basically electronic cancer.).
I have no problems with other people using Windows if they enjoy it. I do not 
To address some points:
1. Pixar's connection isn't the sole reason here. Even Lucasarts (I believe) have use[d?] Macs for their movie processing for a long time and they aren't Mac devotees otherwise. Half their darn games aren't out on OSX I believe the reason was primarily that they were the meatiest near server grade built/supported desktops around at the time by some considerable margin but it also relates to...
2. Software. When it comes to FPS games and that kind of thing, you want Windows. It has the lion's share of the software to please that kind of user. However, there are still some gaping holes in its software library where there's no *decent* package to fill the needs. I'd have listed internet browser in there but Chrome has impressed me so far despite its bugs - deleted Firefox 3 from this system already.
I also used to work in an architecture company and the company policy was OSX only. Their complex software simply wasn't available in a competitive form on Windows, and the computers (busy, small companies generally don't like building their own from scratch remember) could take *and address* 4x more RAM than their competitors out of the box - very useful when you're using massively detailed blueprints for building entire apartment complexes, believe me. Most prebuilt Windows PCs still have trouble addressing as much RAM as they needed as minimum even now. There's a huge hole in the market there for high end machines focused on something other than getting the best framerates in Crysis or whatever.
Apple has also always had very strong ties with a little company called Adobe, which you may know as being a market leader in design and business software. PDF integration in OSX is sexily done - my Vista box is still having trouble talking with Acrobat Pro properly even now at work though the regular updates are helping. On the design side, that Adobe put so much time and effort into its Mac optimised versions of software in the past such as Photoshop built up a large following; the early Windows versions were horrible in comparison and so a great deal of current designers will have stuck with what they found was the best. Adobe still does a fantastic job on Mac software today even though they're more truly multiplatform than they used to be.
There's also powerful database software like Filemaker which blew anything I've used Windows side out of the water for what it's aimed at, though I might be out of date here. And the iTunes experience didn't draw me in to begin with but is now the core of my media use at home. There's nothing like it on Windows yet (even iTunes for Windows, which sucks sadly) - truly I don't think there can be unless Microsoft sorts it out themselves to get the level of integration needed.
I'm not anti Microsoft (ok, perhaps a little but not completely). I think Excel is the best office tool around and have MS Office for my Mac. I even prefer using it to the Windows version because unlike Windows, OSX doesn't get its panties in a bunch about what constitutes an app and what's a doc when I play alt-tab musical chairs.
On your iPod anecdote; my first gen iPod is still running perfectly - much to my annoyance - but I've had to spend a lot of time administering this Windows PC I'm using now through no fault of my own. It even stopped being able to shut down for a few weeks due to an update, causing me no end of anger (I fixed it eventually but it was a stupid waste of time that I had to). We all have problems with kit but what people like about Apple kit
I personally see Macs as "computers for people who deep down hate computers". I use computers constantly, but fiddling around with settings and updates is something I no longer care to do. I got over that in the BBC Micro era actually. I just want my data and I want the OS to shut up and behave itself. If you prefer tinkering in the slightly less predictable Windows style that's cool.
My husband and I bought both of our mothers Macs a while ago and there have been zero tech support calls in 5+ years now. It's magnificent. They make up new reasons to badger us instead, of course...
R
To address some points:
1. Pixar's connection isn't the sole reason here. Even Lucasarts (I believe) have use[d?] Macs for their movie processing for a long time and they aren't Mac devotees otherwise. Half their darn games aren't out on OSX
I believe the reason was primarily that they were the meatiest near server grade built/supported desktops around at the time by some considerable margin but it also relates to...2. Software. When it comes to FPS games and that kind of thing, you want Windows. It has the lion's share of the software to please that kind of user. However, there are still some gaping holes in its software library where there's no *decent* package to fill the needs. I'd have listed internet browser in there but Chrome has impressed me so far despite its bugs - deleted Firefox 3 from this system already.
I also used to work in an architecture company and the company policy was OSX only. Their complex software simply wasn't available in a competitive form on Windows, and the computers (busy, small companies generally don't like building their own from scratch remember) could take *and address* 4x more RAM than their competitors out of the box - very useful when you're using massively detailed blueprints for building entire apartment complexes, believe me. Most prebuilt Windows PCs still have trouble addressing as much RAM as they needed as minimum even now. There's a huge hole in the market there for high end machines focused on something other than getting the best framerates in Crysis or whatever.
Apple has also always had very strong ties with a little company called Adobe, which you may know as being a market leader in design and business software. PDF integration in OSX is sexily done - my Vista box is still having trouble talking with Acrobat Pro properly even now at work though the regular updates are helping. On the design side, that Adobe put so much time and effort into its Mac optimised versions of software in the past such as Photoshop built up a large following; the early Windows versions were horrible in comparison and so a great deal of current designers will have stuck with what they found was the best. Adobe still does a fantastic job on Mac software today even though they're more truly multiplatform than they used to be.
There's also powerful database software like Filemaker which blew anything I've used Windows side out of the water for what it's aimed at, though I might be out of date here. And the iTunes experience didn't draw me in to begin with but is now the core of my media use at home. There's nothing like it on Windows yet (even iTunes for Windows, which sucks sadly
) - truly I don't think there can be unless Microsoft sorts it out themselves to get the level of integration needed. I'm not anti Microsoft (ok, perhaps a little but not completely). I think Excel is the best office tool around and have MS Office for my Mac. I even prefer using it to the Windows version because unlike Windows, OSX doesn't get its panties in a bunch about what constitutes an app and what's a doc when I play alt-tab musical chairs.
On your iPod anecdote; my first gen iPod is still running perfectly - much to my annoyance - but I've had to spend a lot of time administering this Windows PC I'm using now through no fault of my own. It even stopped being able to shut down for a few weeks due to an update, causing me no end of anger (I fixed it eventually but it was a stupid waste of time that I had to). We all have problems with kit but what people like about Apple kit
I personally see Macs as "computers for people who deep down hate computers". I use computers constantly, but fiddling around with settings and updates is something I no longer care to do. I got over that in the BBC Micro era actually. I just want my data and I want the OS to shut up and behave itself. If you prefer tinkering in the slightly less predictable Windows style that's cool.
My husband and I bought both of our mothers Macs a while ago and there have been zero tech support calls in 5+ years now. It's magnificent. They make up new reasons to badger us instead, of course...
R
chaos
The Boss
At work, I've ordered an extra 2G of RAM so I would end up with 4GB and guess what happens? XP can't address more than 3GB properly... Very nice.Rui said:
Spot on for the support bit. My home macbook is for fun and studying and I never spend any time troubleshooting it... it's simply amazing! =)Rui said:
I think that whenever we see pc's we just ignore them, when there are macs, we notice them...The Aaron said:Yay for product placement? =/Yagami said:Has anyone ever noticed.. on most tv shows and movies they always have macs and not windows?
Guess I'll jus buy me a solaris to keep at home...
Tachi
Mushi-shi
The Aaron said:Yay for product placement? =/Yagami said:Has anyone ever noticed.. on most tv shows and movies they always have macs and not windows?
Subliminal Advertising, one of the basic reasons for it.
Notice that in mgs4 all the computers are apple? and there's an apple Ipod? its all a sales technique to get people to buy their stuff.
that line of advertising works well when its not TOO blatant.