Macs: Only cool enough for your granny

[Stark]

Most people who owns a computer would only bother to use it to surf, download songs, play a few fun games like Counterstrike and DOTA and chat.

The fact that you seriously think 'casual users' play Counterstrike shows how skewed your view of the world is. Get this: 80% of computer users play Solitaire and Minesweeper and that's it. A computer is a TOOL to most people, they don't want to play an incomphrensible game with 8yo Brazilian children: they want to print photos, email their family, manage their music, and make flyers for the school dance.

Like Phongn, I don't want to be branded a 'Mac fan': I don't own one, and I probably never will. However I can see the advantages without looking through some kind of internet filter where everyone wants what I want out of a computer.

[Durandal]

whups Did I read that right? MacBook Pro's with under-clocked GPUs and Ram busses right off the first page of my Google search? Want I should find more evidence for you? What's more, when Mac enthusiast/reviewers at BareFeats expressed surprise about mac underclocking, the overwhelming response on many mac forums was "what rock have you been hiding under the last several years?"

The cards are clocked down to increase battery life. Given the sales numbers of the MacBook Pros, most people don't mind. If it bothers people, they can download ATicellerator and adjust the frequency of their GPU.

and the only point I recall 'glossing over' is the multi-button mouse which should have died forever the day the multi-button mouse was invented. Because I'm going to go out and buy a mouse just to use it on my professors video-editing machine (my G7 is staying right where it is thank you very much) and then what? throw it away when I'm done? The fact that Macs even come with single-button mice is a travesty.

The Mighty Mouse, which ships with every desktop Mac, is a multi-button mouse. And frankly, the right-click on the MacBooks and MacBook Pros is far more intelligent than throwing another button on the machine. Hold both fingers on the pad and click. Your whining does not apply to currently-shipping machines.

[Praxis]

I can only tentatively agree with that, as I've never seriously looked at desktop Macs. Macbooks are similar to half-decent Windows laptops (at least in AU), but there is nothing under the AU$1600 lowend model to compare with the shit end of the laptop market.

However, for many people, it's worth a few extra hundred bucks for a system that won't have them on the phone to tech support every time they want to do something. I have zero interest in a PC laptop (particularly the AU$5000 highend huge 'gaming' ones) and Macbooks do everything I want in a small, easy to use package.

Out of interest, what 'feature flexibility' don't Mac laptops have? They've got almost everything standard, and you can add RAM/HDD/etc.

Mainly having the option of more components for less cost. Many sub-$1k pc notebooks offer dual layer dvd burners, for example. But good luck finding anything more than a cd-rw on a mac laptop for their low end costs. As far as having to phone tech support? I suppose that's applicable if you're not very computer savvy, but for someone like me whose been using PCs for years, Mac environments are pretty foreign and making adjustments to personalize your computers is standard, simple stuff.

I can understand that...a lady at CompUSA the other day almost bought a Mac, but she wanted something with the specs of the cheapest MacBook (or lower) but the screen of the MacBook Pro (17") and there were no options from Apple.

Costwise, the laptop I have right now only ran me $750. With the components I got a 2ghz Turion 64 processor, dual layer dvd burner, 80gbhdd, and 512mb of ram. If I wanted anything even remotely similar with a Mac I'd have to shell out at least twice as much.

That's a bit of an exagguration. The $1299 MacBook has a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo (two instead of one, plus faster per clock), same size hard drive, same DVD burner, plus double the memory and a camera and motion sensor and I'd assume better battery life and thinner and lighter.

Still, I understand the gripe about nothing being under $1099. If I could have, I would take the $1099 MacBook + a DVD burner (as I don't care about the difference between a 1.83 and 2 GHz processor).

[General Zod]

That's a bit of an exagguration. The $1299 MacBook has a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo (two instead of one, plus faster per clock), same size hard drive, same DVD burner, plus double the memory and a camera and motion sensor and I'd assume better battery life and thinner and lighter.

So $1,299 is nearly twice as much as what I paid for my machine, with some extra useless features.

As far as battery life, that's not too big of an issue. I tend to stay plugged into an outlet for the most part, the main advantage to buy a notebook for me is so I can have my files and software available when I'm on the go without having to lug around a huge tower.

[Praxis]

Yeah, but specwise, you've also got double the processing power, double the memory, AND the 'useless features'.

The complaint about there being nothing in that price range still stands, of course.

[Seggybop]

The best setup I've had has been OSX running on my Athlon 64 PC. It took a small bit of effort to get everything working, but after that everything was great. It was also many times cheaper than an authentic Mac with the same performance.

Explain, I've heard of such things several times, but have yet to see anyone actully provide proof.

Examine http://wiki.osx86project.org/ and you shall likely find what you seek

[General Zod]

Yeah, but specwise, you've also got double the processing power, double the memory, AND the 'useless features'.

The complaint about there being nothing in that price range still stands, of course.

Except if nothing I do requires that much processing power, then it's still money wasted on extra features that I don't need when a lower end machine will suffice.

[kheegster]

Scientists have to work in either Unix or Linux-based machines, and most people I've seen (me included) use Apple laptops even though it's cheaper to get a PC laptop and install Linux on it. The reason? Once we take into account the man-hours required to maintain and fix problems on a Linux machines, Apple laptops become far cheaper to use.

[General Zod]

Scientists have to work in either Unix or Linux-based machines, and most people I've seen (me included) use Apple laptops even though it's cheaper to get a PC laptop and install Linux on it. The reason? Once we take into account the man-hours required to maintain and fix problems on a Linux machines, Apple laptops become far cheaper to use.

Who cares about Linux? Outside of business, tech geeks or the university your casual end user isn't going to give a damn. Windows or OSX works for them because there's relatively little setup or maintenance issues involved compared to an open source environment.

[Uraniun235]

Once we take into account the man-hours required to maintain and fix problems on a Linux machines, Apple laptops become far cheaper to use.

How much money is an hour of your time worth?

[kheegster]

Once we take into account the man-hours required to maintain and fix problems on a Linux machines, Apple laptops become far cheaper to use.

How much money is an hour of your time worth?

Good question. I make about $15 per hour (officially) as a grad student, and it's probably 2x and 4x that for post-docs and faculty respectively. The price difference between a MacBook and an equivalent Dell laptop is around $300 at most, so I'll need a maintenance/down-time of 20 extra hours on the Linux machine to make it worth it. For a 2 year lifespan of a typical laptop, 10 extra hours of maintenance is a not a huge amount for a Linux system especially for newbies.

With someone on a higher salary, the choice is even more obvious.

[Sam Or I]

I bought a mac for video editing purposes, to be compatible with my computer using final cut pro. I honestly can say I prefer OS X to windows or Linux.

Heres why:
I used to build m,y old PC's, over clock them to see how fast I could get them, heck I once owned a DEC ALPHA running red hat and window NT dual booted just because. Then I got a job in phone support, I now hate working on computers. I know unix, and the power of using unix. I don't want to deal with linux alot of the time, if you get a crappy driver or what not, then trouble shooting. I am done. A mac is simple when I want it to be and it works when I want it too, and it has the unix interface when I want to play with it.

I rarely play games anymore, so gaming is not an issue. If it is, there is always bootcamp.

I prefer Final Cut Pro to adobe, and I prefer Light Wave 3d on the mac.

I cannot judge Vista, I have never used it, and I do not plan on it.

I can say my Mac has not crashed a single time going on a year and a half (My work iMac G5, I have an intel at home about a month old now.)

I am just tired of dealing with computer issues, but I also want a a powerful OS when I need one. OS X fits the bill.

[salm]

The Mighty Mouse, which ships with every desktop Mac, is a multi-button mouse.

I tried the Mighty Mouse at a friends place. I found it to be a very shitty mouse mainly because of the scroll ball. It´s way too small to work with reasonably.
But that´s not the poblem with Macs in my case. I could just go and get a fancy logitech mouse and use it on a Mac. The problem is that certain software doesn´t run on Macs.
I´d be interested in how certain software runs on Macs if you run Windows on the Mac.
Earlier in this thread i discribed how the Mac version of Photoshop is better than the Windows version because of the scrolling differences.
Does the scrolling in the Windows version run on a Mac suck as much as the scrolling on a regular Windsows box?