Mac vs. PC

[Tolya]

I know Im stirring up a hornets nest, but I would like to pose this question anyway.

The problem is value for money. I was working on Macs for about a year ago and I must say that they are quick, quite reliable, while their control scheme is a bit weird for me, an old PC vet.

But that is a matter of personal taste, which is like a butt - everyone has their own.

In Poland, you can buy a Mac and be proud of it. However, when you think about how much money you just spent (you need to spend around 3-4 thousand dolars here, which is quite a lot), you come to a conclusion, that I can spend a quarter of that for a PC of the same speed, amount of memory etc.

Of course, with PC's you sacrifice the sleek unified looks among other things, but my question: is the extra buck worth for the Apple buck?

[Meest]

Who looks at your computer though? You talking about a desktop? If so it's ridiculous to even care about how your desktop looks. I have no incentive to get them when I can make workstations for a lot cheaper. I honestly don't get their appeal from a gaming to work standpoint.

[TheFeniX]

You have to figure out what you want your computer to do: work, game, browse the Internet, whatever. Make sure any PC you are considering purchasing does the job, then price compare based on hardware and performance.

I personally need a PC (and by extension Windows XP) for home use based upon my preferences of gaming, Internet browsing, and access to the work VPN. I'm sure I could find a Mac or beat on a Linux distro to do all of that, but I know Windows in and out and I also enjoy building my own PCs.

I've also found Apple to be hideously overpriced for equivalent PC hardware. Sure, there's a deal every once in a while, but there tend to be far better deals with PC platforms.

My sister on the other hand just needs a laptop to type up documents and browse the Internet. She learned on Macs and she's comfortable using them. More power to her.

[Darth Wong]

Durandal no doubt would disagree, but I just don't see the point of the Mac for anyone who's reasonably tech-savvy. If I want to play games, I need Windows. If I'm willing to live without (most) games and just surf the Internet and use some basic productivity software, I can get a linux PC for cheap. If I want to do web development, I can get a linux PC. If I want all of the above, I can dual-boot Windows and Linux. What does a Mac give me in return for its extra cost?

[Mr Bean]

Apple's don't have "Deals" occasionally they simply remove the 40% markup to a 10% markup and expect you to be ecstatic over it.

As Asus has demonstrated with the EeePC, Linux is value, Windows is games, and Apple is style and nich products.

Ease of use went out the window a while ago as damn near everything is "easy to use" now. The only leg-up Apple has left is in simple home-networking where it's much easier than a windows comparison, but some versions of Linux can do it just as idiot proof, but paradoxically you need to be tech savy enough to find said versions.

[DaveJB]

The main reason I have an Apple is simply because I find OS X to be quicker and far less problematic than XP and (especially) Vista. I can recall plenty of times under Windows when an errant app or driver would totally crash the OS, while I can't recall any occasion where that's happened on OS X. Linux has merits, but I need an OS that just works when I need it to, and to be honest I'm not quite savvy enough to use Linux with any particular degree of proficiency.

I will say though that I would never have considered a Mac back in the PowerPC days - being able to have a smaller XP installation alongside OS X was one of the primary reasons I moved over from Windows.

[Singular Intellect]

What does a Mac give me in return for its extra cost?

Amusing commercials attempting to show how inferior PC is compared to Mac?

[Tolya]

So, onto the second part: so, where does teh huge support for Macs come from?

I mean, all the guys who do photo editing (Photoshop) and movie editing (Final Cut) think Mac is great for that and I can agree to a point.

But c'mon, it's only a tiny percentage of people who do that professionally.

To me, you have to be batshit insane or just stupidly rich to buy anything as overpriced as a Mac, when you can get all the capabilities for a portion of the price.

Plus, you can mod your PC however you like. With a Mac, you hit a huge barrier which costs ludicrous amount of money to jump over (e.g. buy a new G<inster number>.

Mac commercials are...lame. I like the way their products look, but c'mon... Is Apple marketing and PR THAT effective?

[apocolypse]

Mac commercials are...lame. I like the way their products look, but c'mon... Is Apple marketing and PR THAT effective?

Yes and no. Apple does know how to make a product "sexy". And people are definately willing to pay for sexy. There's also the "Microsoft/PC iz t3h suxz" issue at play somewhat as well. My 2 cents....

[Zixinus]

Of course, with PC's you sacrifice the sleek unified looks among other things, but my question: is the extra buck worth for the Apple buck?

If it has the same speed, roughly the same technology and same capacities, then I would say no.

I view any sort of technology as a tool, not a fashion statement. If you like Macs for whatever reason you like Macs, I'm glad for you. But if I buy something more expensive then the other choice, I expect the other choice to be better for a technical reason, not because its hipper.

I'm a geek. I play video games all day and dress practically and to the weather and listen to whatever songs I like. I make my own style whatever way it is. I don't do sports. I think being concerned about using a sexy computer is a bit late if I want to go for the image. Besides, its not like most people could tell me the difference.

[RThurmont]

Its important first to separate Mac hardware and OS X. Increasingly, and indeed illegally, OS X is being used on PC hardware. IMO Mac hardware is quite good...I think Jonathan Ives is one of the top five industrial designers alive today (up there with J Mays), and from a pure aesthetic standpoint, Macs are the best-looking systems (the MacBook and MacBookPro aside). From a functional standpoint, the design is not as good, due to Jobs' incessant minimalist tendancies, but hey, at least there is a point of view. Some Mac products IMO offer quite a bit of value for the money (when it first came out, the Mac Mini was a *steal* in my opinion), but of late, Mac prices have remained increased while PC prices have decreased, so the advantages here are rapidly erroding (although it does look to me like Apple products depreciate at a slower rate than many PCs...look at the prices of used Apple systems on eBay for an example of this...but since most people, in my experience, do not sell or trade in their computers, it is a moot point).

OS X itself, as is well known on this board, is a product I have a lower degree of respect for. I like OS X Leopard quite a bit more than I liked Tiger, but I still find the OS to be unacceptably slow (on the hardware it was sold with - so much for hardware/software integration), the UI bizarre, and the general experience just not as good as Mac enthusiasts make it out to be. There is a case for using it if you're a graphics designer - it is the only OS that renders screen fonts correctly (at the expense of eye strain, I might add), and it is well known for the prowress of its color management facilities. However, many designers (including myself) use Windows without difficulties, including the very large number of graphics designers working for Microsoft, which I estimate is one of the largest users of graphics in the world (consider the vast amount of UI design, web design, print design, packaging design, and type design that occurs there).

From the standpoint of having a UNIX development environment, OS X has absolutely nothing, IMO, that FreeBSD and Linux lack, so that's really a moot point in its entirety. If anything, given that OS X lacks such UNIXy features as a /dev/dsp equivalent file for the sound card, and that the OS X implementations of programs such as Ruby are widely rumored to be broken, its better *not* to use it for that purpose.

So I guess at the end of the day there are two groups of people who are well served by the Mac: graphics designers, and the so-called "media saavy technophile set"; people who have blogs, enjoy using Facebook, et cetera, who are attracted to the Mac due to its chic nature.

[phongn]

There is the perception that the Mac "just works." People are willing to spend a premium for that peace of mind.

[Seggybop]

The problem is value for money.

Other than the Mac Pro (you can't assemble a modern dual CPU system for less than what you pay for a Mac Pro now), present Macs are pretty much horrible for the money.

Sometimes right when Apple releases a refresh of a particular model, the Apple system will have better specs for the cash than any competing product. However, their configurations will usually remained unchanged for upwards of 6 months and stagnate at the same price while every other manufacturer will update and discount on a regular basis.

[Durandal]

Durandal no doubt would disagree, but I just don't see the point of the Mac for anyone who's reasonably tech-savvy.

What's your definition of "reasonably tech-savvy"?

If I want to play games, I need Windows. If I'm willing to live without (most) games and just surf the Internet and use some basic productivity software, I can get a linux PC for cheap.

There's a difference between being able to do something and being able to do it in a manner that minimizes hassle. Currently, you also get a platform that has several major productivity applications available for it (Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, etc.) and provides a pretty much worry-free web browsing experience (no need to worry about viruses, trojans and other malware). The free ride for security won't last forever, but it is one immediate advantage to get a secure platform that's also officially supported by a lot of major vendors.

And subjectively, I just like it better. The UI is better thought-out, there's more attention to detail at the pixel level and things just work better. Pretty much, it's the little things. I can drag almost anything to anywhere else and have it behave in a way that makes sense. The UI is always very minimalist and uncluttered. Animations and visual effects almost always have a purpose and are used sparingly.

If I want to do web development, I can get a linux PC. If I want all of the above, I can dual-boot Windows and Linux. What does a Mac give me in return for its extra cost?

You in particular? Probably nothing. Maybe you'd like the interface, maybe you wouldn't. But you value the ability to tinker with hardware and tweak every conceivable aspect of the operating system, and Apple products in general embrace the concept of "less is more" in terms of choice. (And yes, I know this sounds like the insane policy of a megalomaniacal, fascist dictator who goes by the name of Steve Jobs coming from the mouth of a fanatically loyal acolyte who can't actually think for himself, but there is actual research behind this.)

[RThurmont]

The UI is always very minimalist and uncluttered. Animations and visual effects almost always have a purpose and are used sparingly.

The exceptions to that of course being the Dock and the Dashboard, fortunately, the former can be disabled, and the latter completely ignored. Unfortunately, with the Dock disabled, there is no convenient Start Menu/TaskBar like mechanism in the default UI.

The dashboard, I could care less about, this recent trend towards widgets, gadgets, plasmoids and what-have-yous annoys the heck out of me...vast numbers of useless, crappy little applications...

One nice thing about GNOME is that it seems to be the only major GUI project out there that is not embracing the trend. Instead, in GNOME, a number of much more convenient, smaller programs exist which can run directly off of a panel, and expand when clicked on. Now, if only they'd fix Nautilus and the dreaded GTK File Dialogue of Doom we'd have a good system...

[Kitsune]

I saw the latest in Mac vs PC commercials last night...
semms to be now that a PC is build from various different sources while a Mac is not. I thought a MAC was made from different sources as well as far as hardware?

[Praxis]

Toyla, the biggest disadvantage you have is location- the markup on Macs outside of the US is very high, which is a very big downside and something you'll have to weigh for yourself.

The real question is, why are you buying a computer? If it's for gaming and gaming only, honestly, there's probably not a lot of good reasons to get a Mac at this point, especially considering your location.

Machines like the iMac, however, have a lot more to them than just specs. The OS is generally more secure (no viruses whatsoever), and offers far less hassle than Windows while retaining virtually all of the same capabilities. You can always dual boot it with Windows if you want to do some gaming. Apple's machines have really slick hardware engineering- the iMac takes so much less space compared to a traditional desktop PC, but it still has a decent video card (especially compared to all-in-ones offered by other manufacturers).

You'll get used to the control scheme.

I highly recommend a Mac, but do look at your own personal circumstances and uses and judge whether it is worth it.

I saw the latest in Mac vs PC commercials last night...
semms to be now that a PC is build from various different sources while a Mac is not. I thought a MAC was made from different sources as well as far as hardware?

Certainly, but Apple packages it all up and makes sure the OS has the exact set of drivers for every hardware configuration they've ever sold.

Driver problems rarely plague Mac users. And you don't have other manufacturers wanting to install their own utilities all over the OS (Dell machines, for example, always come loaded with all kinds of third party crap and trials, plus stuff like "Dell Media Experience" and specialty Dell tools). Hence the "it just works" slogan.

[RThurmont]

Certainly, but Apple packages it all up and makes sure the OS has the exact set of drivers for every hardware configuration they've ever sold.

Well, I'd assume OS X isn't packaged with drivers for the "Apple ][".

Driver problems rarely plague Mac users. And you don't have other manufacturers wanting to install their own utilities all over the OS (Dell machines, for example, always come loaded with all kinds of third party crap and trials, plus stuff like "Dell Media Experience" and specialty Dell tools). Hence the "it just works" slogan.

My MacMini came preloaded with multiple craplets - a trial version of Office:mac 2004 (to my annoyance, IIRC I had to manually tell it to use iWork to open applicable office files, as the Office trial remained the default after I had installed the latter), some nasty cartoon drawing app I've never used, a somewhat interesting full version of OmniOutliner (preloaded software can be interesting, too, a Compaq I had from the 90s came preloaded with the Sim City 2000 Network Edition, and OmniOUtliner is an example of that), and some other random junk.

I don't know if Apple still preloads software onto their Macs, but IMO the claims of Apple and Apple enthusiasts that Apple products offer an escape from craplet-laden PC installs is rather ludicrous in light of the preloading of a trial version of Office (some PCs are preloaded with full versions of Corel's office suite, which actually has a number of fans, especially in the legal community).

[pucky18]

The OS is generally more secure (no viruses whatsoever)

What the fuck are you smoking? Did you just pull that out of your ass, or from some retarded Apple wanker?

[SCRawl]

The OS is generally more secure (no viruses whatsoever)

What the fuck are you smoking? Did you just pull that out of your ass, or from some retarded Apple wanker?

Um, they don't generally write viruses for Macs. Since they only have about 10% market share, it's not a very productive use of their time. Which brings about the question of exactly how productive a virus-writer's time usually is, but that's another topic.

[pucky18]

Um, they don't generally write viruses for Macs. Since they only have about 10% market share, it's not a very productive use of their time. Which brings about the question of exactly how productive a virus-writer's time usually is, but that's another topic.

there are not as many, but there are still viruses for Macs. this is aggravated by Mac users generally thinking that they don't have to do anything security-wise, due to Apple's misleading advertising.

[Zixinus]

By the sheer obnoxiousness of some Mac users I have heard of, writing a virus for Mac users is its own reward. Especially when Mac users think they don't need an anti-virus software.

[Praxis]

My MacMini came preloaded with multiple craplets - a trial version of Office:mac 2004 (to my annoyance, IIRC I had to manually tell it to use iWork to open applicable office files, as the Office trial remained the default after I had installed the latter), some nasty cartoon drawing app I've never used, a somewhat interesting full version of OmniOutliner (preloaded software can be interesting, too, a Compaq I had from the 90s came preloaded with the Sim City 2000 Network Edition, and OmniOUtliner is an example of that), and some other random junk.

I don't know if Apple still preloads software onto their Macs, but IMO the claims of Apple and Apple enthusiasts that Apple products offer an escape from craplet-laden PC installs is rather ludicrous in light of the preloading of a trial version of Office (some PCs are preloaded with full versions of Corel's office suite, which actually has a number of fans, especially in the legal community).

The trial of Office is slightly annoying, but you can just drag and drop it to the trash bin. The others, though, aren't trials- OmniOutliner and that comic app are both full apps.

Still, comparing an Office trial to the sheer amount of stuff most consumer PCs come with these days is a crime- 90 day AOL trials all over the place, etc.

Especially when Mac users think they don't need an anti-virus software.

They'd be right. There are absolutely zero Mac viruses in the wild. Running an antivirus right now is an exercise in futility.

What the fuck are you smoking? Did you just pull that out of your ass, or from some retarded Apple wanker?

You know, if you're going to come on here with minimal posts and cuss out someone else without offering any refuting evidence, while using false dilemma fallacies as insults, you're not going to last very long here, idiot.

There are zero Mac viruses in the wild. Not one.

there are not as many, but there are still viruses for Macs. this is aggravated by Mac users generally thinking that they don't have to do anything security-wise, due to Apple's misleading advertising.

Send me one, then.

I've followed every so-called virus released.

There have been three Trojans (note the difference between a Trojan and a virus) created for Mac OS X (as differentiated from the older OSes). One was a proof of concept created by an antivirus company and never actually released into the wild (MP3Virus.Gen, see http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2004/04/63000 ).

The second wasn't able to spread itself properly, required user stupidity to infect, and the server that had the virus was taken down within a week and it has since completely disappeared from the internet. http://www.macrumors.com/2006/02/16/the ... -x-trojan/

The third one, once again, relied on user stupidity- the user had to not only execute the virus by double-clicking on it, but then they had to enter their admin password when prompted.

http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.a ... 6D391B60D4

There has been no viruses that can spread themselves on the Mac platform, and all two of the trojans that have been released have since disappeared off of the face of the internet and only infected idiots anyway.


Now kindly shut up unless you can actually refute something, pucky.

However, Carl Howe, Apple analyst at Blackfriars Communications, disagrees with the market-share theory. He said that Macs have been less vulnerable to attack than Windows machines because of OS X is based on Unix.

"The two platforms have completely different business philosophies, architectures, and decisions behind them. And those differences matter when it comes to security" Howe blogged.

Among the differences is that OS X has less spaghetti code. "Ask any security guru and he or she will tell you: a simpler software model is easier to secure than a complex one," Howe wrote. "Any Unix has only about 200 entry points into the secure kernel environment. And while there are many libraries in the Mac OS X system, most of those don't have enough privileges to do anything really bad."

Howe said that OS X was not invulnerable and that it would face security problems in the future. But he said it was important to distinguish between having two known exploits on the Mac platform, the latest being a Trojan and not a virus, on the 50 million or so Mac OS X machines and the roughly 140,000 viruses extant for the hundreds of millions of Windows machines worldwide. "Two vulnerabilities don't make an epidemic," he wrote. "And given that Mac OS X is a harder target to penetrate, I don't expect those ratios to change dramatically any time soon."

[Praxis]

Almost all viruses require user stupidity to infect, and even those that don't need it might as well use it; stupidity is a far more common and difficult to patch vector than any technical hole.

EDIT: Saying it is more secure because it is based on Unix is pure bullshit, by the way, as well. Unixes has lots and lots of security holes too.

True, but the point remains that none of these viruses exist anymore. They couldn't spread well enough and the servers that hosted them are down. It's impossible to be infected by them.

[Durandal]

I saw the latest in Mac vs PC commercials last night...
semms to be now that a PC is build from various different sources while a Mac is not. I thought a MAC was made from different sources as well as far as hardware?

Media Access Controllers can be made from many different sources as far as hardware, yes.

By the sheer obnoxiousness of some Mac users I have heard of, writing a virus for Mac users is its own reward.

There could be motivation to write a virus for Mac OS X, but this isn't it. Mac users have been thought of as arrogant, elitist snobs for years, and there were plenty of viruses for Mac OS 9 when its marketshare was far less than that of Mac OS X.

So as to why there haven't been anything but proof-of-concept Mac viruses, I really don't know. It's probably a combination of relatively small marketshare and a good security model.

Especially when Mac users think they don't need an anti-virus software.

Why would they?

I honestly have to worry about the viability of the anti-virus software model as a whole. It's costing more and more money, has to inject itself into kernel reads and writes, perform heuristics and is incapable of catching the most dangerous viruses and worms: the ones it hasn't encountered yet. By its very nature, it's dangerous code to execute from a stability standpoint, and both Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee Virus Scan on Mac OS X are notorious for causing kernel panics.

Virus scanners exploded on Windows because there was a palpable need for them. The operating system itself was so disastrously insecure that it needed third-party applications to pick up the ball. We'll see once Mac OS X gets more popular and reaches a critical mass of marketshare, but I honestly don't see virus scanners taking off at that point even. The security model is good enough, and there are technologies in place that will allow the operating system to minimize the damage that can be done with a virus.