Macs vs. PCs - Page 2

Good advice!

hey abn610--

i am familiar with both mac and pc and bought an ibook G4 not too long ago. i too found OSX a bit strange at first too, but if you play around with it for about an hour or 2, you get used to it and find some nice features (like spotlight and expose).

In my opinion, OSX requires a lot less maintenance than my win xp laptop ever did. The only things I miss about win xp is hardcore 3D games, but only sometimes Also, many applications in the engineer world and, to an extent, the business world are win xp only.

if you ever need help getting the hang of OSX, there are a lot of very knowledgeable people on this forum. Also, I believe kakaze wrote a guide to OSX once, but idk the link off the top of my head.

well that's my 2 cents, inflation adjusted...

As far as I can tell the main benefit of getting an x86 Mac is looks. The hardware simply looks better than any other PC laptop and OS X simply looks better than Windows (XP or Vista) and Linux (any theme, any wm).

The trade off for looks is heat and all the things that go with it such as underclocked components, etc., and the generaly lack of software and lock in to Apple's view of the universe.

It is beyond me why PC vendors cannot come up with designs that look as good as Apple's. Garish, Alienware-type gamer PC's don't count. After all, the same manufacturers build the laptops for Apple and the PC vendors.

That said, there is a good bit of really sharp OSX software, but compared to the Linux or Windows universes' its tiny. In general OS X is very well made, elegant and clever.

i like that quote, but i wanna restate it, but dont want it sound insulting b/c its actually a good thing i am trying to say here. Apple dumbed down unix so much that just about anybody can use it, and even with minimal care it will be very hard to get it messed up (unlike a little OS made by microsoft). Though....still being unix @ heart it also offers some advanced features for the hard core users.

As for the hardware builds, at one time ASUS used to build PBs for apple... and I think that overall ASUS has very nice designs, by far better than well....you can find @ best buy. MSI also has some sweet designs.

I think what this comes down to really is practicallity.....how much are you willing to give up (or change) to get "the looks" (and hte simplicity) which most people find attractive (personally i'd take a Z96j over an MPB any day). One of my biggest issues with apple's laptops is that they are white (ok, now black as well) but what is wrong with macbooks turning orange? also...white is really not a practical color for something you touch with your hands every day and you drag it everywhere....just asking for trouble (err...dirt).

this debate is rather endless.....to each his own, but so far PC is holding a HUGE majority of the market.

I have to admit my MacBook Pro has had no heat problems at all, and is VERY fast. In build quality I have never encountered a PC notebook with this high quality build. My MacBook Pro has a greta form factor, the build looks and feels very tight and solid, and everything simply works, and works well.

As to OS X, to me it has had it's good and bad points.

As mentioned earlier, Apple has created a *nix that is user friendly. Don't underestimate the significance of that, because if Unix/Linux ever expect to gain real market share on the desktop they MUST be easy and quick to use.

On the score of usability, OS X scores well (although for the life of me I wish they would adopt 2 button mice and right click functionality). Speed is now excellent ever since Apple went to Intel (and this removed a blocker to me going Apple in the past, namely that OS X on PPC was so SLOW). Stability is very good as well, although my Windows builds have also been stable (my last BSOD was in the 1990's). That brings me to the bad parts of OS X.

Software. There simply is not enough software for the Mac. Whole arenas have no Mac products at all (like GPS road map software) or the product choices are very limited (desktop RDBMS). Apple could help this in a big way by (for example) putting its resources behind getting Darwine completely built and modernized (get it off of X Window) and building Darwine into the OS. Also by working up a CLR implementation for the Mac.

I love my MBP, but admit there are limits.

The only reason OS X and Linux are considered secure is their small market share makes them unattractive targets for the most common threats these days.

Windows, Linux, and MacOS are capable of being relatively secure if you configure them correctly.

That said, it is nice simply not having to worry about this crap with my wife's Mac. If she had a PC it would be continually infected. My Linux systems never have a problem (I've been using Linux since kernel .9, when the whole thing ran on a floppy). My one windows box is pretty secure and never has a problem.

That said, Linux is still kludgy. My next PC will be OS X capable.

Will my xpsgen2 ever run OSX? ... anybody try it yet and where successful?

At this point in time the only hardware you can legally run OSX has to be made by Apple, that is according to the EULA in OSX. Steve Jobs has said the Mac operating system will never be sold for installation on non-Mac hardware, but who is to say how long never is?

There were viruses for Classic Mac OS and that had the same market share. Infact, there were almost 100 viruses for Classic Mac OS. Mac OS X has been around for 5 years as OS X and another 15 beforehand as Rhapsody and NeXT.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that there hasn't been at least one successful virus written in that time. Any virus maker has to get around the fact that an admin password is needed for any actions that can be harmful, and even then there are a lot of restrictions on what can and can't be done.

Also, since viruses are generally written to cause the most amount of damage, the fact that there are no Linux viruses is very telling as well considering all the companies that rely on Linux for their infrastructure and all the web servers that run on Linux as well.

Market share is a factor but it is not the only one.

the difference is that without root privilages you can't do any real damage in linux.....thats why viruses dont work.

Saving the legallity discussion for later, is there a way to run OSX on a PC?

yes. http://www.osx86project.org/

once pc's can run osx, like mac can run winxp... the battles over.. PC owns the hardware market

I have a Jeep.

Yes I did, I was just being a smart-ass. I also have a VW, 2 Honda's and a dirt bike. i think i understood you quite well.

Yes I like variety. I also have a computer running XP Pro, 2 XP home, 1 Windows 2000 Pro, 1 98SE, 1 98, 1 95, 2 Ubuntu Dapper, 1 openSuSe 10.1, 1 Suse 10.0, and 1 running System 7.