Mac vs. PC

[Oskuro]

Looks can be a requirement when buying a car. Why can't they be requirements for buying a computer? Because a bunch of uptight, close-minded snobs say so?

Sorry, I wasn't talking about personal users, I was refering to the use of Mac in professional environments, where the user's taste shouldn't mean squat, as only the function matters.

A personal user can do as it pleases, and I agree that there are enough Windows or Linux snobs out there, both in the individual and professional arena, for that reason I tried to make my post a bit more generic, as I'm not actually bashing on the Mac, but on people (like the character Brent from the PVP comic I linked) who think of the Mac/Windows/Linux as a symbol of status or something, specially at work (like those graphic designers from my office).

So if you've used a Mac and have some sort of intelligent critique of the UI or how the overall machine works compared to a Windows box, please present it. Otherwise, you've really got nothing to contribute.

It's been a long time since I used a Mac, and it was a superficial use at best (of an iMac), so my apologies for my lack of contribution, I was more interested in talking about how users react to these things, my apologies if it seemed like I was trying to critique the actual capabilities of the Mac.

[Resinence]

A personal user can do as it pleases, and I agree that there are enough Windows or Linux snobs out there, both in the individual and professional arena, for that reason I tried to make my post a bit more generic, as I'm not actually bashing on the Mac, but on people (like the character Brent from the PVP comic I linked) who think of the Mac/Windows/Linux as a symbol of status or something, specially at work (like those graphic designers from my office).

It's already been stated that Mac's are preferred because the colour management actually works so you get the right colour's displayed (even when it's not print, the web is a lot "darker" in windows, the colour profiles remove a lot of saturation and contrast to reduce eye strain). As well it's just easier to work with images, you can drag them around and into your programs on the dock, or off a folder previewed in the dock into the software etc. Of course, if when asked they just say "because thats what your supposed to use lolol" then they are idiots, you CAN do the same work on a windows machine, it's just irritating. If they actually cared so much they could just buy their own macbook and bring it to work. It disgusts me that another department has to compile software on a machine that is now decades old and they would whine because not having macs make's their job slightly more annoying. I bet they have never had to sit and wait for a 5 hour compile.

[Oskuro]

Agreed. The funny part about these guys in my office is that they did not bother to justify their need for Macs based on their utility, instead they chose to state that it would be demeaning for an "artist" to work on something else than a Mac, and that it was a matter of professional standards.

Sad part is, they might get what they want, oh well... At least I recently got upgraded to a Pentium III.

[ray245]

So for a average user, who don't really need to do too much photo-editing and etc, a PC is a better computer?

Also, in terms of specs, isn't it cheaper to build a PC with good specs as compared to buying a mac?

[Hotfoot]

For the "average" user, who only needs a computer for emails, internet, and documents, the budget *nix machines like the Eee PC are the better computers. You don't need a tiny god to do any of those things. The thing is, however, a lot of average users are getting into digital photography, and Mac is generally better at making that a much easier and more cohesive experience than *nix and Windows. You do, however, have to pay quite the premium for the bundled software. The most expensive Eee PC currently (at least last I checked) was $500. The cheapest Mac is $599 and does not have its own monitor, keyboard, or mouse.

It's interesting, but there's a growing trend lately that simple and effective is what people are looking for more and more, and with the recession we're in, cheap is a growing factor. Look at the Console Wars, we've got 360 and PS3 flexing in front of each other while the Wii has come in and swept the market by storm, leaving the other two to scramble for second place. While I don't think products like the Eee PC are going to make such tremendous strides like the Wii did, I think we'll see a larger market opening up for budget systems that do what the Eee PC does. Providing everything you need for a low price.

[Uraniun235]

This thread is a lot more civil thanks to the Apple adoption of Intel hardware. Back when they were still using PowerPC chips there would probably have been a lot more swearing.

So for a average user, who don't really need to do too much photo-editing and etc, a PC is a better computer?

Also, in terms of specs, isn't it cheaper to build a PC with good specs as compared to buying a mac?

In terms of raw parts, maybe. But home-building a PC leaves you without a general warranty or support for the whole system, which is important for some people. Also it excludes the possibility (unless you're really determined and plan on violating an EULA (oh noes!)) of running OS X, which some people really like. There's also the aesthetic factor.

I use Windows at home and at work. If someone comes up to me and asks "hey what is a good computer to buy" I will usually first ask "Have you considered a Mac?" Yes, it's expensive, but it's also least likely to break. Me being ridiculous about computers (I spent a couple of hours last night futzing with used enterprise SCSI gear trying to make it work in ways it technically was not intended to) I don't mind as much if my home-built system takes a shit, but if I'm recommending a system to someone I'm going to recommend the one that is the least likely to break, and will have strong warranty support backing the product should it break.

[General Zod]

In terms of raw parts, maybe. But home-building a PC leaves you without a general warranty or support for the whole system, which is important for some people. Also it excludes the possibility (unless you're really determined and plan on violating an EULA (oh noes!)) of running OS X, which some people really like. There's also the aesthetic factor.

Who's going to worry about something like tech support or warranties if they know enough about PCs to put their own together?

[Uraniun235]

"Hey what's a good computer to buy?"
"Oh, don't waste your money on a brand name! I can put one together for you for way cheaper!"

*shudder*

[General Zod]

"Hey what's a good computer to buy?"
"Oh, don't waste your money on a brand name! I can put one together for you for way cheaper!"

*shudder*

Of course, I meant people who are building it for themselves, as opposed to anyone else. Which is what your post seemed to be talking about.

[RThurmont]

Most graphics people I know give a good reason for their request for Macs in the workplace. "I work better on it, it has good color reproduction, and having one at the office will make it easier for me to work from home." Believe it or not, graphic artists aren't actually stupid. They know what tools work best for them, and they tend to like the Mac's workflow, especially in Adobe applications, which attempt to emulate the Mac's document handling on Windows (poorly).

Believe it or not, I agree with you on this point. I also wish that Adobe would, instead of attempting to emulate the OS X UI model on Windows, design the UIs on their Windows products to instead adhere to the normal conventions of Windows software. For this reason, on Windows, I prefer *using* Corel, but unfortunately Corel is somewhat dangerous to use in a print production workflow due to occasional unexpected ahh misinterpretation of Corel-generated PDFs. (Also, Corel, since being taken away from its corrupt founder (who, in spite of his evil pillaging of his own company, did create quite an interesting organization with a fantastic range of products IMO), has become quite awful in many respects, and now represents, to a large extent, the nadir of the "feature-matrix" Windows software industry.) However, IMO, CorelDraw still manages to not suck as completely as Adobe CS2 from a usability and reliability standpoint.

I personally prefer to use Windows for my design work, but a number of designers use Macs, and they are justified in using them, for the reasons discussed on this thread. I resent the fact that many people seem to regard designers as being "stupid" to a huge extent. It's almost as annoying as the huge number of people who pay $500 to a high school kid (usually a nephew) to create graphics for them and then deem it to be acceptable graphics design. Alas, being a graphics designer means committing yourself to perpetually walk a trail of tears.

Looks can be a requirement when buying a car. Why can't they be requirements for buying a computer? Because a bunch of uptight, close-minded snobs say so?

Actually, I agree with you on this point also. Aesthetics are a huge factor in all of my computer purchasing decisions. I won't buy a system that doesn't look good (whether its a Mac or a PC). IMO my MacMini is one of the most visually interesting computers ever made (as are my two ThinkPad tablets).

And I'm not the only one who appears to be able to show this kind of restraint. Peter Bright at ArsTechnica recently posted an article about how broken Win32 is and what Apple did right with Mac OS X's development environment.

What irritated the heck out of me in that article is that the author did not touch on .NET. It has been well established since the 1990s that Win32 is a living nightmare of an API. For the past several years, Microsoft has been aggressively touting .NET as the method-of-choice for programming Windows applications. IMO the author's article would have been rather more relevant if it had compared .NET with Cocoa.

[phongn]

What irritated the heck out of me in that article is that the author did not touch on .NET. It has been well established since the 1990s that Win32 is a living nightmare of an API. For the past several years, Microsoft has been aggressively touting .NET as the method-of-choice for programming Windows applications. IMO the author's article would have been rather more relevant if it had compared .NET with Cocoa.

The author will likely touch on it more --- this is just the first in a series of articles. However, in the ArsTechnica forums, he has been a vocal critic of .NET and its design decisions, repeatedly butting heads with the board's Microsoft guys. Furthermore, Win32 will not die --- Win64 is pretty much Win32 extended again and again, and much of .NET is just a wrapper around Win32. In addition, major functionality exposed in Win32 is unavailable in .NET; the same cannot be said for Cocoa.

Who's going to worry about something like tech support or warranties if they know enough about PCs to put their own together?

I do. Warranties are a good thing to have.

It's already been stated that Mac's are preferred because the colour management actually works so you get the right colour's displayed (even when it's not print, the web is a lot "darker" in windows, the colour profiles remove a lot of saturation and contrast to reduce eye strain).

Part of the reason Windows looks "darker" is due to the gamma settings.

[RThurmont]

The author will likely touch on it more --- this is just the first in a series of articles. However, in the ArsTechnica forums, he has been a vocal critic of .NET and its design decisions, repeatedly butting heads with the board's Microsoft guys. Furthermore, Win32 will not die --- Win64 is pretty much Win32 extended again and again, and much of .NET is just a wrapper around Win32. In addition, major functionality exposed in Win32 is unavailable in .NET; the same cannot be said for Cocoa.

Fair enough. However, I don't see myself using either, my plan for GUI apps is to use a cross platform toolkit like GTK or Qt, and thus bypass this altogether. Neither Win32, .NET or Cocoa appeal to me that much, from what I've heard about them.

[Resinence]

I figure you have definitely thought of using GLADE, but thought I'd say it anyway: it's awesome, and there is windows binaries you can use for cross platform.

[RThurmont]

Glade is a GUI interface design tool for GTK.

[phongn]

GTK is cross-platform, but very much a second-class citizen outside of GTK-based WMs or GNOME. It just doesn't quite feel right on Windows (even with theming advancements), much less MacOS. Plus, it attempted to implement OO in C so they could avoid C++ (and then developed GTKMM anyways!)

Qt is better designed in that regard, but most of its applications seem to be designed for KDE.

[Resinence]

Glade is a GUI interface design tool for GTK.

uh. yeah. Thats why I mentioned it.

[Magus]

Who's going to worry about something like tech support or warranties if they know enough about PCs to put their own together?

I do. Warranties are a good thing to have.

I usually have a 1-3 year warranty on all the manufacturer's parts I use when I build workstations. Granted, fixing something is more work, but if you built the computer to begin with, doing your own repairs isn't a huge deal. I've never been left out in the cold by a parts manufacturer because of a no-warranty, crappy component.

[RThurmont]

Opera would be an example of a very notable Qt app that is not designed for KDE...Opera in fact is (or was) the website rendering engine in products like Macromedia Studio (presumably Adobe CS3 also).

IMO GTK+ looks great in Windows, but I haven't used it in OS X at all, although I wouldn't be suprised if it looks awful there (Opera does).

From what I've heard though, Qt4 does a much better job at "looking native" than Qt3 did, but most Qt apps that are out there are still Qt3 ones.

[Uraniun235]

Who's going to worry about something like tech support or warranties if they know enough about PCs to put their own together?

I do. Warranties are a good thing to have.

I usually have a 1-3 year warranty on all the manufacturer's parts I use when I build workstations. Granted, fixing something is more work, but if you built the computer to begin with, doing your own repairs isn't a huge deal. I've never been left out in the cold by a parts manufacturer because of a no-warranty, crappy component.

Yeah, it "isn't a huge deal" IF the problem happens to clearly manifest itself in a specific component, or IF you happen to have spare (albeit perhaps older) parts on hand with which you can do hardware troubleshooting. Also, what's the turnaround time going to be from an individual hardware manufacturer, compared with an OEM system builder? (Fuck you, Seagate.)

For some people, even if they have the technical knowledge to effectively build their own computer, the time and effort needed to track down and resolve a hardware problem is not worth it; they'd rather have an overall system warranty that lets them foist off problems onto the OEM to solve.

[Crown]

I know this is off topic, but I don't feel like making a brand spanking new thread about it; but does anyone know if there's any program that allows you to watch DVD's on a MacBook without having to change the region each time (which you can only do 5 times).

I used to use a progam 'Any DVD' for my PC, but was wondering what would be a Mac friendly program that does the same thing.

[Lisa]

I know this is off topic, but I don't feel like making a brand spanking new thread about it; but does anyone know if there's any program that allows you to watch DVD's on a MacBook without having to change the region each time (which you can only do 5 times).

I used to use a progam 'Any DVD' for my PC, but was wondering what would be a Mac friendly program that does the same thing.

VLC should do what you want.

[Crown]

I know this is off topic, but I don't feel like making a brand spanking new thread about it; but does anyone know if there's any program that allows you to watch DVD's on a MacBook without having to change the region each time (which you can only do 5 times).

I used to use a progam 'Any DVD' for my PC, but was wondering what would be a Mac friendly program that does the same thing.

VLC should do what you want.

Thanks Lisa, I already had VLC, but it still asked me to set my DVD player's region settings. I was hoping for a program that would repress that function.

[Praxis]

I know this is off topic, but I don't feel like making a brand spanking new thread about it; but does anyone know if there's any program that allows you to watch DVD's on a MacBook without having to change the region each time (which you can only do 5 times).

I used to use a progam 'Any DVD' for my PC, but was wondering what would be a Mac friendly program that does the same thing.

VLC should do what you want.

Thanks Lisa, I already had VLC, but it still asked me to set my DVD player's region settings. I was hoping for a program that would repress that function.

Not if you force quit DVD player when it asks you that question.

http://creativebits.org/toolbox/how_to_ ... n_your_mac

You just force-quit DVD player and launch VLC.

[Crown]

Ah, exactly what I needed, thank you.

[Praxis]

Let me know if it works. I did a bit more googling and it looks like some of the newer drives have a different firmware that VLC won't work on, so give it a shot and see if it works.