Mac or PC?

[Bob.Kerns]

Originally Posted by Gihgehls

For what it is worth, there is nothing about Vista or Win7 that magically slows down your computer over time. People with computers tend to crap them up, not watching what they install. If you crap up a computer so badly that you need to reinstall the OS every year, you're doing something wrong. Then again, some people might believe that you SHOULD be able to do whatever you want to your computer and still have it function perfectly. I recall some posters on this board who believed they should be able to charge and discharge their seg batteries however they wanted to without suffering ill effects. The truth is that if you do what you should be doing, a windows OS (and your segway batteries) will give you many years of service.

Also, I've seen PLENTY of osx installs that had the menu bar slammed with running programs, tons of things launching at startup, viruses, etc. If you treat your OSX installation poorly, it will do the same things windows will do.

No matter how you look at it, the problem of people's Windows systems getting slower over time is real. You can blame the user, but that really misses the point.

The problem is -- the cause is EXTREMELY diffuse. It's not just one problem, it's a whole host of MANY problems, most of which are usually minor. But either they add up, or in a particular user's case, they become extreme.

The problem can be disk fragmentation, or it can be a bloated temp file directory, or startup applications, or a virus, or growth in the size of data the user uses running up against the available physical memory, or software updates that take more room, or Windows Updates, or any of a million different causes, some unique to a particular user.

I don't know how this compares to the Macintosh. The Macintosh does some things more simply, so the problem may less severe.

But I don't think the user should be blamed for simply trying to use his machine. Often, the long-term performance impact of a user decision is simply not apparent. Often, it's something that really should be blamed on the author of the software (silly icon tray applets, for example -- Quicktime, WinZip -- are these really so important to my daily life that I have to have them initialize at startup, and consume some amount of resources continuously?)

I try really hard to reinstall only when there is a compelling reason -- such as a new OS. I've been known to convert a uni-processor EIDE install to a multi-processor SCSI install just to avoid reinstallation when I got new hardware.

But every so often, I have to go to significant effort to perform maintenance to maintain performance -- and even then, when I DO reinstall, I inevitably see a performance improvement. And all that effort has no value -- if the OS could take care of it for me, I'd have just that much more time to flame about other OS issues....

[Joushou]

Originally Posted by KSagal

What I read is basically that most agree that there is a huge emotional or personal attachment to what hardware/software package a person will choose...

Clearly, there are many who feel that Macs are superior, and are very vocal about it.

Not so clearly from this forum, yet very much clearly from other sources, is that PC based machines are the choice for them.

So I have a question for those who have posted about the superiority of the macs over the PCs... If they are so clearly superior, why have they so much smaller a piece of the market?

Bob answered that question very well... And since i would have said roughly the same, i i'll just point you in the direction of his:

<-- (Previous page )

Originally Posted by KSagal

Maybe a better way to phrase the question is like this... Is what the average Mac user requires from their choice of computer the same as that which the majority of computer users consider what they require?

Well, I'm definitely not an average user, but what i required at the time was a 17" laptop with high-res display (1920x1200), which wasn't ten times larger than what was necessary. I looked at the MBP, looked at the price, and looked away...
It took a while for me to decide what laptop to get (I had some bad experiences with some PC brands, so i was looking at all possibilities), but then i actually had the money... I looked back at apple's site, and decided "Why not try? You're already running a patched version on OS X on your HP desktop, why not get a nice small laptop, which actually runs it well?"... My main requirement was NOT bundled with Windows (I don't want to pay for something i'm going to remove immediately :P)... Also full compatibility with some Unix'ish OS (Which the Mac is with Mac OS X... Otherwise i would have to google myself to death, looking for the perfect Linux/BSD laptop).

That was the main thing... The main con of it was at first the keyboard-layout :P
I couldn't find any of the special-characters! Now i can't find them on a PC :S

Originally Posted by KSagal

While I do not think that the most sales equates to the superior product, I do feel that the most sales (in a free system) does reflect that which meets the needs of the largest demographic.

I agree, and the PC probably fits most peoples needs (Most software is for Windows, and there's a plenty of linux-distributions to choose from if you prefer that)... But i'm always different

Originally Posted by KSagal

Most would agree that a Ferrari or a Pantera are superior cars to a Kia, but many would also argue that while nicer cars, they may not fit the needs as well, nor be worthy of the extra expense of purchase nor maintenance for the average car owner...

No way! Kia beats Ferrari AND Pantera!

Originally Posted by KSagal

By the way, that automotive analogy does not have any direct correlation to this debate... As I sit here typing on my Toshiba Laptop, I do not want any mac users to flame me because I just called their mac a Kia...

A Kia is a GOOD thing! >:| (Just kidding of course, and no, i don't have one... We don't have any asian cars, other than our Hyundai Galloper (Which is in fact a licensed Mitsubishi)... The other 7 are VW and Ford )

Originally Posted by Gihgehls

Also, I've seen PLENTY of osx installs that had the menu bar slammed with running programs, tons of things launching at startup, viruses, etc. If you treat your OSX installation poorly, it will do the same things windows will do.

You can screw OS X up, but i doubt it would do exactly as Windows... For example, we don't have Blue Screen of Death, we have Grey Dialog of Death! (Kernel-panic... Only experienced 3 times, twice on my OSX86 install on my HP)...

I have screwed things up several times, but it was entirely my fault... One of the times, i accidentally installed OSX86 over my OS X install... It just froze! :O (The package was created wrong, letting it think that it should just be installed to the main HDD... *sniff*)...
Another time i messed with the GPT, and killed it... Reinstall once again...

Retail-versions of OS X have never let me down... Early 10.6 builds weren't oh so stable, but it never crashed completely... And the build i'm on now (10a394), seems completely stable...

OS X of course have problems, but i have had uncountable BSOD's when i ran Windows, but i have had 1 panic in OS X... And i tend to mess with internal parts that i'm not intended to mess with...

Back to complete fanaticism: Go Mac! We're 6 more than the PC!

[Gihgehls]

BSODS tend to be caused by hardware problems...

[Bob.Kerns]

Originally Posted by Gihgehls

BSODS tend to be caused by hardware problems...

More the other way around. Hardware problems tend to cause BSODs.

But so do driver problems. The shear number of PC hardware drivers pretty much ensures that most will be written by people who aren't really qualified to do so. It's gotten better -- Microsoft deliberately broke a lot of bad drivers with Vista, and so you had a lot of old hardware that either had to get improved drivers that followed more of the rules, or be discarded and replaced.

Still, this is a big area where Microsoft's openness has hurt them in the past.

[Joushou]

It can be caused by many things... Memory errors, cpu miscalculations (Usually because of voltage), or fatal software errors (Which, again is mostly caused by the above)...

In most/all of my BSOD's, it was software, not my hardware (This was running stock clock/voltages, and i ran memtest and a cpu stress-tests after some of the crashes).

Kernel-panics are also mostly caused by fatal hardware errors, but again all my crashes in OS X and Windows were fatal software errors... I learned what *not* to touch while i ran SuSE :P (Oddly enough, removing PCI-cards while running wasn't fatal... :P)

And, i would call driver-problems software-related, not hardware

[lilnyc]

Born PC, will die a Mac. Once you go Mac...you never go back, hahaha!!

I switched to Mac in 2006, and am thrilled with it. I have converted a few people to it, and more to the iPhone.

I have an OQO 2 as my PC, and it collects dust unless I need to use Windows to hack something.

If I could afford it, I'd buy a desktop Windows machine just to use Avid (a PC and 3DS Max (PC only) as well as Final Cut (Mac) and Maya (PC and Mac). I don't want boot-whatever-ya-call-it on my Mac. I'd prefer a dedicated machine.

[Joushou]

Originally Posted by lilnyc

Born PC, will die a Mac. Once you go Mac...you never go back, hahaha!!

I switched to Mac in 2006, and am thrilled with it. I have converted a few people to it, and more to the iPhone.

Good... Good... *Dr. Evil Laugh*

Originally Posted by lilnyc

I have an OQO 2 as my PC, and it collects dust unless I need to use Windows to hack something.

If I could afford it, I'd buy a desktop Windows machine just to use Avid (a PC and 3DS Max (PC only) as well as Final Cut (Mac) and Maya (PC and Mac). I don't want boot-whatever-ya-call-it on my Mac. I'd prefer a dedicated machine.

It's called BootCamp
And you could just buy some monster Mac Pro, with the enough power to virtualize 3DSMax :P

[vanslam]

I have a Power Mac G5, an IMac, A Dell 14in laptop and a Dell Netbook running Snow Leopard. I think that covers it for now.

[Gihgehls]

Originally Posted by Joushou

Good... Good... *Dr. Evil Laugh* It's called BootCamp And you could just buy some monster Mac Pro, with the enough power to virtualize 3DSMax :P

3D acceleration is still somewhat poor on with VMWare, however, there are zero downsides to using Bootcamp, other than the time it takes to reboot.

[Rocknail]

Mac will come out on top over windows soon. I had a hp pavilion that was the worst, the power supply didnt work and it would shut off at random times. I just bought a used ibook g4 and it works great, it has never frozen, even after I was using four programs and transferring 400 songs to Itunes, and the mac was just a fast. The wifi is amazing as well, it stays connected all the time and I can download super fast over wifi. Mac all the way, if you cant get a mac go for Ubuntu on a PC. It does take a little while to get used to a mac and how it works but it is way better then PCs any day.